U.S. chokes on 'Legal Weed'

Pun-loving brewer in Weed, Calif., defies agency's demand to quit printing alleged allusion to marijuana on bottle caps of his ale

June 10, 2008|By Eric Bailey, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS: Los Angeles Times

WEED, Calif. — This town is in a tempest over a bottle top.


"Try Legal Weed," the caps joke.



But in the two months since he received a warning, the 61-year-old brewer has found himself in a David-versus-Goliath struggle, cast as the little guy.


A balding ex-cop turned saloon owner and then master brewer, Dillmann isn't one to back down.

"This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face," he said recently. "Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business."

Besides, he said, the town itself was named for a man, not a plant. Abner Weed was a lumber baron who served as a state senator from northern California a century ago.


But the agency does intend to keep an eye out for alcoholic beverage labels violating the regulatory rules, said spokesman Art Resnick.

Dillmann's label faux pas, Resnick said, was twofold: "We consider it to be a drug reference and find it to be false and misleading to the consumer in terms of what may or may not be the properties contained within that product."

Folks in Weed, population 3,000, know whom they're rooting for.



Siskiyou County Supervisor Michael Kobseff also came to Dillmann's defense, saying the town is proud of the brewer and his accomplishments, including the economic stimulus his business brought to an area still recovering from the timber industry's decline.


Not that weed isn't being pushed inside the city limits.


Since he began brewing five years ago, Dillmann has built a business with six employees, a tasting room with carved-wood bar, a distribution reach all over California and a blossoming reputation for tasty microbrews. So far, more than 400,000 beer bottles have proudly worn the "Try Legal Weed" caps.


Dillmann has appealed. He vows not to cave, and he expects a long, expensive legal battle if need be. He says he just wants to keep his caps and not lose his shirt.