Who Are the Enemies of Pot?

Do not think otherwise; they are there. They stand in the way. Someone has decided that pot growers have cooties, are depraved, or should be treated specially, but not in a good way. You have certainly heard of the slaughtered goose that laid golden eggs; after that poorly thought-out plan, the goose was gone, and so were the eggs. But this all is much worse, cloaked in “maybe,” “we didn’t mean that,” and “who knew” —deniability; it now seems that the County and the State are clueless and in some very damaging collusion with the licensing and regulating authorities. For a long time, I thought that was just crazy conspiracy thinking, but now, I think that something is going on. No one needs to buy out the small farmer or out-compete the small farmer’s unique advantages. No, all they need to do is wait while the real, legacy growers are slowly crushed by oppressive regs, fees, fines, and repeated requests to do it again. Always at great cost.

This is, in one way or another, how the market is taken away from the entrepreneur, how this fresh thinking is corralled, and how consumers, in the end, find themselves with less rather than more.

The word is that the CDFW is rogue in Humboldt County but is pretty normal for the rest of the State; this is certainly caused by the individuals running CDFW’s District 1. The district is doing everything possible to build the costs until they are too high for the farmers to survive. By all indications, the actions of CDFW, District 1, seem intended to squash the farmer, especially the small farmer. You must wonder what these people were doing when the big corporate logging interests settled on Humboldt like vampires; not much, it would seem. My farm can see that damage all around on my land — damage that the Humboldt CDFW is now demanding that the farm repair, at threat of license revocation. This damage was not caused by any of the farms being impacted by their demands. A lawsuit is in play to address the roque actions of Humboldt and the consequences that one homestead up here is suffering (and they don’t even grow pot). After the escrow cleared, the County waltzed in and placed the retired, new owners in abatement for a barn that used to have pot in it. There is a whole story here; abatement means the owners are cited and fined. The County lets the fines accrue, and now these poor people owe millions of dollars.

The especially sad part is that the farmer’s own neighbors are seeking ways to hurt their neighbors. Some folks up here in Humboldt have always been anti-pot — it uses too much water (no, it doesn’t), it uses too much energy (no, it doesn’t); these “people” are just too greedy (no, they are not). The very idea that these folks up here are secretly intent on destroying their own land is ridiculous; them hippies in the Back to the Land movement were, in fact, focused on restoring the land that had been destroyed. Measure A was on the last ballot, and it was soundly defeated, 2 to 1, just so; it was pushing more onerous regulation in an already horribly regulated situation. Regulation seemed to have as its source a biased point of view, a view that cannabis farmers are little more than criminals.

You could tell something was afoot years ago when the State did not classify cannabis as an agricultural product. This, in effect, placed cannabis in a detrimental position (sort of like a turkey tied up on your front lawn, waiting), a position that now allows cannabis production to be preyed upon. As if pot growers are rich, but that supposed wealth, and it was there, is very gone now.

This has all been a little doom and gloom, but there is more to the cannabis “experience” than just these troubles that I have shared. Cannabis culture is a transformative thing, and, as often as not, cannabis users think outside the box. Lord knows, someone has to do that. Sometimes, I think that all the destructive effort aimed at cannabis is based on fear just because these fearful people know, perhaps in their hearts, that cannabis is transformative. It still is in fashion to help people, right?

Listen to Steve as he hosts The Cannabis Show on KMUD Community Radio. The show airs every Monday from 5 to 6 PM Pacific, and it is archived at kmud.org.