One early fall afternoon in 2021, 66-year-old John “Bo” Kenney and his wife, Shannon Biggs, were going about their business at their second home in Ormond Beach, FL. Kenney was the proprietor of Wash Hydro and DC Glass. Biggs ran her own business, La Tache Couples Boutiques.
Suddenly, a tremendous noise erupted on the front lawn.
“I thought there was a shootout in our front yard,” Biggs said.
Gun-totting federal agents in full body armor broke down the front door of his home, training their laser sights on the two. Using infrared imaging equipment, they scanned the walls, searching for guns, marijuana and cash.
“They (the agents) carried me by the seat of my pants out of my house,” Biggs recalled.
The Raid
The Department of Justice (DOJ), it turns out, had secured a search warrant for 21 locations associated with Kenney and Briggs, alleging the two were involved in a drug and money laundering conspiracy. In addition to the Florida house, agents searched their DC residence, their daughter’s District home, as well as their businesses in Florida, DC and Virginia. In Florida, the Feds seized Kenney’s truck, boat, iPhones, laptops, thumb drives. They even took a Kindle. In Virginia, they grabbed two delivery vans. In DC, they took all of Kenney’s cannabis growing equipment and then had it destroyed.
“They (federal agents) got some marijuana, but nothing else,” Kenney said, as well as $13,000 from a safe.
Meanwhile Biggs’ and Kenney’ businesses were ransacked. They say police took everything electronic—merchandise, cash , credit card machines, muzak radios and even the smartphones of employees who happened to be working that day.
“We had nothing that they were looking for,” Kenney said.
Trying to Do Right
Kenney is the owner of cannabis retail shop Wash Hydro located at 2318 18th St. NW. Technically, he did not “sell” weed. Rather, operating under the gifting exemption enshrined in Initiative 71, the referendum that legalized personal possession of cannabis, his businesses sold hydroponics, t-shirts and hats, providing a two-grams of souvenir pot to customers. All the cannabis in his shops was District grown either at his Calvert Street home, at the store or at his other shop DC Glass Gallery, formerly located at 2625 Connecticut Avenue.
By 2019, Kenney had paid about a million dollars in District taxes on the proceeds of his stores.
The Florida raid wasn’t the first time Kenney had been the target of law enforcement. In January 2019, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) raided Wash Hydro arresting his employees, who were acquitted the following March. The cops followed up with another 23 “controlled buys” in the next two years, court records show. By the time they were done, all the police had found were misdemeanor possession charges. In October 2022, then President Joe Biden (D) pardoned all those convicted of such offenses.
In 2023, the federal prosecutors charged Kenney’s businesses Wash Hydro and DC Glass with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a product containing a detectable amount of THC. They also threatened to bring additional charges against his wife and daughter, Kenney said. So, he agreed to plead both businesses to the simple charge of cannabis sales, the lowest in the federal registry.
In May 2024, Kenney reopened Wash Hydro as a District medical cannabis dispensary, qualifying for a social equity license due to his business’s federal conviction.
“We did everything we were supposed to do with ABCA (The Alcohol and Cannabis istration) and the ABC board (The Alcohol Beverage and Cannabis Board),” Kenney said.
Going Legit Is Expensive
Operating a licensed medical dispensary, Kenney said, put him at a commercial disadvantage. In its earlier I-71 incarnation, Wash Hydro cost him $40,000 to open. The cost requirements for a licensed medical dispensary is upwards of a million, he said. Moreover, the new operation’s hours were limited. He now had to close at 9 p.m. rather than 11 p.m., missing the post dinner and late night business.
And, the people operating on the wrong side of the law picked it up.
“Now that we’re legal and we’re open,” Kenney said, “I can literally step out my front door in DC and throw rocks at five stores.” When a store across the street was shut down and cleaned out by ABCA on a Friday, Kenney said, his sales tripled on the Saturday —then plummeted right back down when the competitor restocked and reopened in the next day or two.
As of Nov. 14, the government and MPD have shut down about 13 of the hundreds of I-71 stores in the District. However, Kenney said, his case history clearly shows that acting together, federal and District governments could take action if they really wanted to.
In October, ABCA shut down two such stores in the neighborhood, DC Dream and Grow Club, under the new law. Business has doubled since then, Kenney said. However, the largest so-called “gifter” in the city still operates down the street.
“There’s nowhere in the District of Columbia that says you can operate as an “I-71 retailer,” Kenney said. The whole point is that cannabis cannot be sold in the District without a license. “I don’t understand how you could have product marked as from California and be selling them in DC,” Kenney said. “Because I-71 language says cannabis should be grown in DC.”
“The other stores were left to operate, with products that are imported from out of state,” (drug trafficking across state lines), Kenney said, while he grew product in District. “They have out of state merchandise tags on them. It’s just not legal.”
Pressure from Illegal Wholesalers
The nebulous legal status of marijuana in DC has led to some bizarro situations — illegal operations coming for the legal sellers. On July 31, a woman walked into Wash Hydro, the medical dispensary operated by Kenney. “She proceeded to tell the two employees that things were getting ready to get real bad in DC, and you had to pick which side you were on and that things were going to be settled with guns,” Kenney related, “and you had to [decide], you know, “what turf were you going to be with?” is basically [the question].”
The woman offered the two employees cannabis, throwing a packet to one individual and instructing him to open it. He refused. And, she eventually left. But both felt threatened and called MPD to make reports, submitting the video from security footage along with it. Kenney put extra security in place.
The incident has sent shock waves through the legitimate industry. Many retailers, both licensed and unlicensed, hesitate to speak out about the cannabis ecosystem, fearful of this threat.
A similar incident happened in June 2023. A customer was trying to buy a pipe from Paradise Smoke Shop on West Virginia Avenue NE when two men walked in. They offered to sell him marijuana, pulling out scales to measure it. When the customer objected, they threatened him with a knife and robbed him. 29-year-old Kevon Lockerman was arrested, convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to seven years in jail. To be clear, no connection has been established between Lockerman and the incident at Wash Hydro.
Persecuted if You Do
Kenney feels like in going legal, the harassment has simply switched. First it was the feds and MPD. Now, it is some woman working for illegal distributors.
Kenney wants to walk the straight and narrow. He has got a good relationship with local government. But, he is not seeing the benefit, Kenney says. “We try to be very transparent with them,” Kenney said of ABCA, “but to be honest with you, we’re getting killed every day by the illegal competition.”
That word choice is perhaps unfortunate. However, Kenney’s livelihood and his employees’ jobs are at stake. Now fully licensed for the first time, Kenney’s cannabis business is struggling. At the same time, is relieved that his employees are safe –so far.
“One minute, I’ve got the Feds with red dots in my chest and my wife’s, and the next minute, I’ve got some street girl in my store threatening us with violence,” Kenney said. “[Telling us there’s] going to be a turf war. It’s going to be settled with guns and we better get on board with them.”
“It was damned if you don’t, damned if you do,” said Kenney.
