Cannabis advocate and local provocateur Thorne Peters died at the Shelby County Division of Corrections facility at Shelby Farms sometime over the weekend, according to county officials.
Peters entered the public eye in 2009, when he made local news for operating a “420” friendly nightclub in Millington. Then, the self-proclaimed “Poet Laureate of Planet Earth” and “Galileo of pot” beat a cannabis charge, smoked and sold cannabis in front of 201 Poplar, and started the Cannabag Challenge (a spin-off of the ALS ice bucket challenge that involves dumping a bunch of pot on your head in the name of marijuana law reform).
He was arrested in February 2015 on charges of selling cannabis and for possessing a firearm during the crime. He was booked into prison here in December 2018. He lost a court appeal earlier this year to overrule the gun charge and lower his sentence.
A media release from the Shelby County Division of Corrections said Peters was discovered unresponsive in his cell by corrections staff. He was housed in an individual cell, according to corrections officials, and had no cellmates.
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has taken the lead on the investigation and the medical examiner has taken possession of the body.
Peters was scheduled for release in December 2021.
Leo AwGoWhat (left) and Thorne Peters (right) in an undated photo showing the two with a vaporizer, hookah, and glass pipes.
The half-pound of pot found in Thorne Peters’ possession was only for use in a “Cannabag Challenge.” And the gun found nearby? Peters was only keeping it safe for him, said perennial Memphis mayoral candidate, Leo AwGoWhat.
Memphis cannabis crusader Thorne Peters tried to convince a state appeals court of this version of his 2015 pot bust recently, hoping to reverse a lower court’s decision and get some time shaved from his four-year sentence. But it didn’t work.
Peters entered the public eye in 2009, when he made local news for operating a “4-20” friendly nightclub in Millington. Since then, the self-proclaimed “Poet Laureate of Planet Earth” and “Galileo of pot” beat a cannabis charge, smoked and sold cannabis in front of 201 Poplar, and started the Cannabag Challenge (a spin-off of the ALS ice bucket challenge that involves dumping a bunch of pot on your head in the name of marijuana law reform).
Cannabis Crusader Loses Appeal in Bizarre Drug Case
He was arrested in February 2015 on charges of selling cannabis. According to court papers, that’s exactly what he wanted. But he was also arrested for possessing a firearm during the crime, which came with more jail time. That, he didn’t want.
Earlier this year, Peters asked the the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals to review his case. On Friday, judges upheld the original ruling and sentence on Peters’ case dealt by the Shelby County Criminal Court.
Court papers from the appeal craft a bizarre narrative of a cannabis proponent following his own rules and taunting Memphis leaders and law enforcement to arrest him — all in the name of legalizing marijuana.
[pullquote-1] ”The defendant [Peters] moved from California to Memphis with his girlfriend, Linda Harrah, with the goal of getting arrested and challenging Tennessee’s marijuana laws,” reads the very first statement about the case from the appeals court decision.
On the night of February 3, 2015, Peters and Harrah were at Harrah’s Orange Mound home on Mariana Street. Police had watched the house all day and saw a lot of foot and vehicle traffic in and around the home. Satisfied that drugs were being sold on the premises, police entered the house.
“At the time officers executed the search warrant, the defendant was at her [Hannah’s] home with a large amount of cannabis because he was ‘going to do the Cannabag Challenge, which is like the ice-bucket challenge, with cannabis,’” according to court papers.
[pullquote-2] Peters told the Flyer all about starting the Cannabag Challenge and his efforts to push marijuana reform in an interview in 2014. Read it here.
What does the Cannabag Challenge look like? Have a look here:
Cannabis Crusader Loses Appeal in Bizarre Drug Case (2)
For days before police entered the Orange Mound home, Peters had been openly dealing marijuana on Facebook. He also posted images of himself dealing marijuana and placed those posts on the Facebook pages of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, the Memphis mayor, and the Shelby County District Attorney.
In court, Peters said he did it all so that he “could make them come and arrest me, so I could take on the legal-industrial complex here at the trial of the millennium.”
Inside the home, police found found three mason jars containing marijuana, a plastic bag containing marijuana, and a digital scale. Police recovered 297.31 grams of marijuana, just more than a half of a pound.
While Peters told police that night that the marijuana was his and he was selling it, Harrah told them it was really for the Cannabag Challenge. Peters then appealed the marijuana-related charges, claiming he had no intent to sell any of the pot found on the premises.
Police also found a .45-caliber handgun sitting on a floor speaker in a bedroom. It was loaded with a magazine and had a round in the chamber, court papers said, and “was not obstructed in any way.”
Thorne Peters/thornepeters.com
Thorne Peters (right) and Leo AwGoWhat (right) in an undated photo.
Peters told police that the gun may have his fingerprints on it (it did). But, he said, he didn’t like guns and it wasn’t his. In court later, Peters’ friend and perennial Memphis political candidate Leo AwGoWhat said that the gun was his. Harrah was keeping it for him, he said, because he had children at home.
[pullquote-3] However, Peters had previously posted a video to Facebook with him holding the gun with this caption:
“I was just sitting around hoping some sorry want-to-be wigger motherfucker was going to stop by with his partner to rob me of all this weed and money I’m holding so I can take target practice on their sorry asses,” Peters said in the video, according to court documents. “If you know anybody that wants to try me, let them know, I will be up all night, armed and dangerous.”
All of this was enough for the state appeals court to affirm Peters’ conviction.
If you want to read the court’s full opinion, dive into it here:
Thorne Peters entered the public eye in 2009, when he made local news for operating a “420” friendly nightclub in Millington. The self-proclaimed “Poet Laureate of Planet Earth” was an easy target for local media when he turned down a guilty plea and decided to do 19 months in jail while waiting to go to trial.
Now that he’s a free man, Peters hasn’t exactly put away the pipe. Instead, he’s turned into a full-blown marijuana activist, actively selling and smoking weed on his YouTube channel while calling out everyone from Judge Joe Brown to Barack Obama on what he considers to be unfair marijuana laws in America.
We caught up with Peters to find out about his latest project, the “Cannabag Challenge,” a spin-off of the ALS ice bucket challenge that involves dumping a bunch of pot on your head in the name of marijuana law reform. Peters recently posted a YouTube video of himself partaking in the challenge and calling on others to follow suit. — Chris Shaw
Flyer: What inspired the Cannabag Challenge?
Peters: I had seen the ice bucket challenge raise awareness about the crippling disease ALS, and it occurred to me that there are far more people who are going to suffer from the laws against cannabis than will ever suffer from ALS. I realize it comes across like we are party crashers, but sometimes that’s what you have to do. There are people whose lives are being destroyed by these laws. I’m always looking for ways to express the outrage I have over these restrictive laws on cannabis. I’ve done the challenge here with seven people, and I encourage everyone else to do it.
This isn’t without precedent. In 1972, when I was in the fifth grade, we had a book drop across the schools of America in protest of the Vietnam War. I was 10 at the time, and the war had already gone on for 10 years. It seemed like I was on my way to being one of the casualties they showed on the battlefield. We all dropped our books, and a month later, the peace talks were negotiated. It felt like we had really done something. Even if I’m the only one who ever does the Cannabag Challenge, the point has been made.
Have you thought of moving to a state where weed is decriminalized?
The battle isn’t in California or Denver. It’s in Memphis. And don’t kid yourself by thinking that pot is legal in California, because it isn’t. There are all kinds of people getting arrested in California for weed all the time. Pot is not legal anywhere on the face of the earth, not in Colorado and not in Washington, because people are still in prison for using or selling marijuana.
“Decriminalized” is a word that means nothing to me. Decriminalizing means what? Medical marijuana means what? People go to prison and stay in prison over this every day. All of these propositions that are 15 pages long are unnecessary. My proposition is two words — legal pot. That’s it. When a pothead is arrested, the pothead is the victim. How can you be the victim and the criminal?
Since you’ve been out of jail, have you had any other run-ins with the law?
I tried to have one on 4/20 of this year. I went down to the courthouse to smoke, and I had heard from a lawyer friend that they were planning to arrest me for disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct but not for the pot. I’m going to return on April 20th with dealer weight and make them charge me with a felony. It’s not that Galileo was such a genius. He just had the balls to stand up during the Inquisition and say “Wait a minute, morons.” People don’t remember the name of the prosecutor who threw a book down in court to prove that the room wasn’t moving, but 500 years from now Galileo’s name will remain.
And that’s what you hope to achieve with marijuana reform?
Yes, I’m going to be the Galileo of pot. I want to be the Moses of pot and say, let my people go. Or I’m just going to be the random person who just keeps getting thrown in jail and people make fun of, and some day people will figure it out.
Shelby County Division of Corrections 
Thorne Peters/thornepeters.com 
Thorne Peters/thornepeters.com 
Chris Shaw