Хорошая статья в последнем High Times
Jan. 1st, 2009 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birdwatcherDan Skye
"High in the Hills"
(High Times, Feb 2009, p. 34)
On the satellite radio, Washington is trying to figure out how to stop the free fall. The stock market is doing a belly flop and, in Congress, the finance guys are causing panic with utterances like "recession," "depression" and "trillion-dollar losses." On this September morning, America is struggling with a sense of unreality.
Well, maybe not here. The first rays of light are just showing, and the tall pines have begun to materialize in silhouette against the morning sky. A small fire warms a trio of pot farmers who have just crawled out of their tents. They stand sleepy-eyed, staring into the flames in the morning chill, sipping strong camp coffee and chatting in low tones. The scene is being duplicated throughout cannabis country in Northern California, and it's a safe bet that nobody here is listening too closely to the radio and the ominous warnings about Wall Street: Their own stock is performing magnificently, and their growing portfolios are being managed with considerable expertise.
Despite the specter of raids and arrests, California outdoor growers once again generated a record harvest this past fall. Motivated by the inability of law enforcement to make even a tiny dent in statewide pot production, growers pulled out all the stops—more gardens and more plants per garden. As one female Humboldt County grower stated: "I'm through with these guidelines. I'm not worrying about being arrested anymore. I'm just going for it."
"Going for it" means two greenhouses, two outdoor gardens and a slew of potted plants sunning themselves on the deck attached to the southern side of her house.
In NoCal's largest pot-production region—the Emerald Triangle, consisting of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, plus Lake, Shasta, Sonoma and others—it is clear that her no-holds-barred sentiment is widely held.
Of course, that doesn't mean there is no risk. The Campaign Against Marijuana Growing (CAMP) has been doing its thing since 1983, how-ever ineffectively. An arm of the state attorney general's office, CAMP is funded primarily by the DEA. Five CAMP eradication teams work statewide, often dropping in on remote gardens from helicopters to hack down the plants and bundle them for transport to a burn site. Sometimes they arrest people, albeit fewer than they'd like. Fortunately, the noise of an incoming chopper allows on-site growers plenty of time to flee.
In this industry-depleted region, where the residents depend heavily—if not exclusively—on growing marijuana for a living, CAMP is the enemy. Local radio stations report where flyovers are taking place. CAMP cops can't get service in restaurants, and even if they could, they'd be wise to pass on whatever is served. They might also want to pass up the local motels, where maids have allegedly rubbed the bed sheets of CAMP guests with poison ivy.
This past summer, CAMP and other anti-pot law enforcement agencies only managed to aggravate the situation further. As forest fires raged throughout the region, the authorities launched Operation Southern Sweep—an overblown, ridiculously expensive series of raids, carried out by 450 agents and support personnel, that netted a paltry 10,000 plants. No one thinks kindly of heavily armed cops hacking down pot gardens while nearby homes go up in flames.
Law enforcement officials have also infuriated the populace with inflammatory statements that tacitly equate marijuana cultivation with terrorism and violent crime:
"It's like watching a green plague spread over the county," or "It's like trying to control Baghdad," or "Have we lost the war on drunk driving, rapes and homicides? We can't throw in the flag!"
The Feds are also rattting their sabers about the alleged invasion of Mexican pot cartels, and the mainstream media has bought the fairy tale (see sidebar). Apparently, the Mexicans have invaded and are doing the bulk of the state's growing in the Northern California forests. It's a lie rife with racist overtones, disseminated despite an appalling lack of evidence—a myth propagated by the Feds to account for their spectacular failure and repeated incessantly by them as they seek more funding to fight the elusive dragon.
In the meantime, a fundamental truth is ignored: The government created the marijuana black market, and law enforcement keeps it booming. But now, with the nation suffering through a calamitous financial crisis and tax revenues on the wane, it's getting harder for California lawmakers to ignore the huge elephant in the room: Why not tax cannabis?
Currently, the state receives about $12 million annually from medical-marijuana taxation. But Californians consume between $870 million and $2 billion worth of medical marijuana per year. Experts believe the state could reap anywhere from $70 million to $120 million in sales-tax revenues alone if medical marijuana was taxed like other herbal medicines. Also, a policy that treats and taxes marijuana like tobacco and alcohol would result in a decrease in the illegal activities surrounding cannabis, drug-law reform advocates argue, as well as in the creation of government guidelines for marijuana quality, better control of underage access, and the removal of the profit motive that attracts growers.
"Not so fast," responds Andy, a Trinity County grower. "The profit motive is why I'm here!"
With California's annual pot crops valued at close to $15 billion—approximately $1.5 billion in Mendocino County alone—and a pound bringing in anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000, the population of growers in the state's northern counties has been steadily on the rise. Andy is one of them. He'd just begun growing indoors in Santa Cruz; he'd purchased a spacious hillside home, but in a matter of weeks, the house plummeted in value. His mortgage was a "lease/option to buy" type which allowed him to walk away.
Now he and his family are carving out a new life for themselves in ultra-rural Trinity County—in this case, literally: Andy brought in an earth-mover to create terraces for his gardens. He also smoothed out a hilltop on a second parcel of land to build a new home, which he is racing to finish before winter arrives. There's something almost pioneer-like about his situation. His wife is eight months pregnant, and the nearest hospital is about 90 minutes away. They already have a two-year-old who is thrilled with his new life on the frontier, which means sleeping in a tent every night for now.
There are no bathroom facilities—you dig a hole—but you can grab a showel in town, only 18 mites away. At night, he and his wife sit by the campfire talking avidly about their future in the NoCal wild. That future looks bright—provided they can make it to harvest.
Andy's garden is a sprawling expanse comprising 70-plus specimens of Mendo Purps and Blueberry, partially covered by tarpaulins to prevent the sun from scorching the near-ripe buds. As in many other undeveloped parcels, a tent is pitched right next to the plants: Andy's partner sleeps alongside their veritable gold mine every night. Deep in the backcountry, you're responsible for managing your own security. As growers gear up for the work of harvest, traffic on the dusty back roads gets heavier.
Out-of-state license plates are immediately suspect, and a casual communications network keeps tabs on the movement of interlopers who may have pot poaching on their mind. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else around here, am no one wants to see their neighbors busted, much less ripped off.
Nighttime during harvest season can get noisy, too. Every garden's got a big dog with a big bark, and the humans have guns. Boredom, firearms and, often, a few drinks spawn the occasional clamor in the darkness.
Growers in Trinity County who have already established deep roots in the region are even bolder with their plant counts. Often, the sophistication of their grow ops leaves one in awe—like the monster plants growing in one such garden, individually boxed in either four-by-four or six-by-six-foot boarded planters, and whose water source features separate, easily adjustable spigots. Or another, laid out on half-moon terraces, with 11 pungent strains nearing completion. Both are completely open to the southern sky and easily identifiable by air—and yet they flourish, unimpeded by raids.
Even stranger, when you hit the local highways, again and again you see towering plants exceeding the height of the fences meant to hide them.
Of course, you'll also see haphazard grow ops with soda cans and other debris tittering the scene, as well as growers whose personal grow style is far more damaging. Law enforcement and ordinary civilians—both pro- and anti-pot—are concerned about the piggish behavior of some of the growers on public land and in US forests, who are careless in their use of fertilizers and pesticides that damage waterways, and leave their grow areas strewn with garbage and waste. Needless to say, the drug warriors have eagerly pounced on these misdeeds and held them up as evidence of the "green plague" that afflicts us all—despite the government's own abominable record of abuse of public lands.
And what would drive someone to grow deep in the forest anyway? Maybe property forfeiture, loss of one's children and incarceration, for starters.
In Mendocino County, law enforcement likes to wring its hands over the out-of-control "epidemic" of grow ops. For years, Mendo had the most liberal cultivation limits in the country. But in June, a measure was passed paring the limit of plants that medical-marijuana patients could grow from 25 down to six. Then, in August, a county Superior Court judge ruled that the new measure was unenforceable because the state's electorate hadn't consented to it. So when autumn arrived, the buds were blooming, as always, everywhere in Mendocino County.
Particularly noteworthy was the team of growers handling nine different gardens on a hilltop overlooking a quiet valley in northeastern Mendo. It's not unusual for more ambitious grow ops to be worked by partners. A backyard garden is relatively safe, but multiple gardens sown in rugged terrain necessitate extra vigilance in the last weeks before harvest.
All of the gardens were properly licensed, situated separately to reduce flyover interest. Garden maintenance here requires packing quads with equipment and motoring through a network of mountain roads. It's common for growers to travel packing a rifle: There are mountain lions in the neighborhood— as well as unsavory types looking to abscond with a summer's worth of someone else's toil.
The magnificent gardens that dot the hillsides across this tract of land have been meticulously sited. Once you park the four-wheeler, it takes a little bit of hiking to get to each. The fencing is unobtrusive, but sturdy and resistant to varmints. In the garden, each bush is exploding with bud growth: Goo, Super Silver Haze, Trainwreck, Cabernet, Stinky Pinky, Permafrost, Gold Rush—every strain a winner. The grower stops and says hello to each one.
The breeze is scented with sweet smells. Anticipation is also in the air—the same emotion that makes kids giddy on Christmas Eve. Something good is coming.
THE 'MEXICAN POT CARTEL' MYTH
The past year has done little to quell Drug Czar John Walters's rhetoric regarding the alleged involvement of so-called "Mexican cartels" in US pot production. Speaking to reporters in September, Walters claimed that up to SO percent of all outdoor marijuana is now cultivated on public land, primarily in national parks. The Drug Czar's claim is both dubious (federal estimates regarding domestic pot production are a based on little, if any, actual data) and ironic, since the federal penalties for cultivation are typically stricter than state penalties. This indicates either that a) the Drug Czar is lying, b) punitive federal anti-drug laws don't deter illicit activity, or c) both.
Walters further alleged that the bulk of pot grown on public land is being cultivated by "Mexican drug cartels," a charge that longtime California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer disputes.
"There's no question that a lot of Mexicans are arrested for marijuana growing here." Gieringer says. "A lot of native growers hire Mexicans-common practice in Mendocino and other California counties, where Mexicans are typically hired for farm work. Whether these individuals belong to cartels is another matter. By definition, a 'cartel' is a combination of producers who control a single market. By contrast, the marijuana market is highly competitive, and there's no evidence of control by any Mexican cartel."
According to Gieringer, the claims by law enforcement officials regarding supposed cartel involvement date back several years, but increased "astronomically" following the terrorist attacks of September 11. "My own hypothesis is that the post-9/11 border crackdown has induced more Mexicans to corns stateside and do their growing here so as to avoid crossing the border.' Gieringer says, though he cautions that it's also not unheard-of for American growers to litter their plots with tortillas and other Mexican cultural artifacts in an effort to mislead law enforcement.
Even if there was a grain of truth in Walters's egregious claims, his charges only lend support to the calls by drug-law reformers for taxation and regulation in the commercial cultivation of weed, a move that would all but eliminate the involvement of organized crime in cannabis production, and put to rest the White House's bizarre notion that there are pot-pushing narco-terrorists lurking under our beds-or at least in our national parks.
"High in the Hills"
(High Times, Feb 2009, p. 34)
On the satellite radio, Washington is trying to figure out how to stop the free fall. The stock market is doing a belly flop and, in Congress, the finance guys are causing panic with utterances like "recession," "depression" and "trillion-dollar losses." On this September morning, America is struggling with a sense of unreality.
Well, maybe not here. The first rays of light are just showing, and the tall pines have begun to materialize in silhouette against the morning sky. A small fire warms a trio of pot farmers who have just crawled out of their tents. They stand sleepy-eyed, staring into the flames in the morning chill, sipping strong camp coffee and chatting in low tones. The scene is being duplicated throughout cannabis country in Northern California, and it's a safe bet that nobody here is listening too closely to the radio and the ominous warnings about Wall Street: Their own stock is performing magnificently, and their growing portfolios are being managed with considerable expertise.
Despite the specter of raids and arrests, California outdoor growers once again generated a record harvest this past fall. Motivated by the inability of law enforcement to make even a tiny dent in statewide pot production, growers pulled out all the stops—more gardens and more plants per garden. As one female Humboldt County grower stated: "I'm through with these guidelines. I'm not worrying about being arrested anymore. I'm just going for it."
"Going for it" means two greenhouses, two outdoor gardens and a slew of potted plants sunning themselves on the deck attached to the southern side of her house.
In NoCal's largest pot-production region—the Emerald Triangle, consisting of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, plus Lake, Shasta, Sonoma and others—it is clear that her no-holds-barred sentiment is widely held.
Of course, that doesn't mean there is no risk. The Campaign Against Marijuana Growing (CAMP) has been doing its thing since 1983, how-ever ineffectively. An arm of the state attorney general's office, CAMP is funded primarily by the DEA. Five CAMP eradication teams work statewide, often dropping in on remote gardens from helicopters to hack down the plants and bundle them for transport to a burn site. Sometimes they arrest people, albeit fewer than they'd like. Fortunately, the noise of an incoming chopper allows on-site growers plenty of time to flee.
In this industry-depleted region, where the residents depend heavily—if not exclusively—on growing marijuana for a living, CAMP is the enemy. Local radio stations report where flyovers are taking place. CAMP cops can't get service in restaurants, and even if they could, they'd be wise to pass on whatever is served. They might also want to pass up the local motels, where maids have allegedly rubbed the bed sheets of CAMP guests with poison ivy.
This past summer, CAMP and other anti-pot law enforcement agencies only managed to aggravate the situation further. As forest fires raged throughout the region, the authorities launched Operation Southern Sweep—an overblown, ridiculously expensive series of raids, carried out by 450 agents and support personnel, that netted a paltry 10,000 plants. No one thinks kindly of heavily armed cops hacking down pot gardens while nearby homes go up in flames.
Law enforcement officials have also infuriated the populace with inflammatory statements that tacitly equate marijuana cultivation with terrorism and violent crime:
"It's like watching a green plague spread over the county," or "It's like trying to control Baghdad," or "Have we lost the war on drunk driving, rapes and homicides? We can't throw in the flag!"
The Feds are also rattting their sabers about the alleged invasion of Mexican pot cartels, and the mainstream media has bought the fairy tale (see sidebar). Apparently, the Mexicans have invaded and are doing the bulk of the state's growing in the Northern California forests. It's a lie rife with racist overtones, disseminated despite an appalling lack of evidence—a myth propagated by the Feds to account for their spectacular failure and repeated incessantly by them as they seek more funding to fight the elusive dragon.
In the meantime, a fundamental truth is ignored: The government created the marijuana black market, and law enforcement keeps it booming. But now, with the nation suffering through a calamitous financial crisis and tax revenues on the wane, it's getting harder for California lawmakers to ignore the huge elephant in the room: Why not tax cannabis?
Currently, the state receives about $12 million annually from medical-marijuana taxation. But Californians consume between $870 million and $2 billion worth of medical marijuana per year. Experts believe the state could reap anywhere from $70 million to $120 million in sales-tax revenues alone if medical marijuana was taxed like other herbal medicines. Also, a policy that treats and taxes marijuana like tobacco and alcohol would result in a decrease in the illegal activities surrounding cannabis, drug-law reform advocates argue, as well as in the creation of government guidelines for marijuana quality, better control of underage access, and the removal of the profit motive that attracts growers.
"Not so fast," responds Andy, a Trinity County grower. "The profit motive is why I'm here!"
With California's annual pot crops valued at close to $15 billion—approximately $1.5 billion in Mendocino County alone—and a pound bringing in anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000, the population of growers in the state's northern counties has been steadily on the rise. Andy is one of them. He'd just begun growing indoors in Santa Cruz; he'd purchased a spacious hillside home, but in a matter of weeks, the house plummeted in value. His mortgage was a "lease/option to buy" type which allowed him to walk away.
Now he and his family are carving out a new life for themselves in ultra-rural Trinity County—in this case, literally: Andy brought in an earth-mover to create terraces for his gardens. He also smoothed out a hilltop on a second parcel of land to build a new home, which he is racing to finish before winter arrives. There's something almost pioneer-like about his situation. His wife is eight months pregnant, and the nearest hospital is about 90 minutes away. They already have a two-year-old who is thrilled with his new life on the frontier, which means sleeping in a tent every night for now.
There are no bathroom facilities—you dig a hole—but you can grab a showel in town, only 18 mites away. At night, he and his wife sit by the campfire talking avidly about their future in the NoCal wild. That future looks bright—provided they can make it to harvest.
Andy's garden is a sprawling expanse comprising 70-plus specimens of Mendo Purps and Blueberry, partially covered by tarpaulins to prevent the sun from scorching the near-ripe buds. As in many other undeveloped parcels, a tent is pitched right next to the plants: Andy's partner sleeps alongside their veritable gold mine every night. Deep in the backcountry, you're responsible for managing your own security. As growers gear up for the work of harvest, traffic on the dusty back roads gets heavier.
Out-of-state license plates are immediately suspect, and a casual communications network keeps tabs on the movement of interlopers who may have pot poaching on their mind. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else around here, am no one wants to see their neighbors busted, much less ripped off.
Nighttime during harvest season can get noisy, too. Every garden's got a big dog with a big bark, and the humans have guns. Boredom, firearms and, often, a few drinks spawn the occasional clamor in the darkness.
Growers in Trinity County who have already established deep roots in the region are even bolder with their plant counts. Often, the sophistication of their grow ops leaves one in awe—like the monster plants growing in one such garden, individually boxed in either four-by-four or six-by-six-foot boarded planters, and whose water source features separate, easily adjustable spigots. Or another, laid out on half-moon terraces, with 11 pungent strains nearing completion. Both are completely open to the southern sky and easily identifiable by air—and yet they flourish, unimpeded by raids.
Even stranger, when you hit the local highways, again and again you see towering plants exceeding the height of the fences meant to hide them.
Of course, you'll also see haphazard grow ops with soda cans and other debris tittering the scene, as well as growers whose personal grow style is far more damaging. Law enforcement and ordinary civilians—both pro- and anti-pot—are concerned about the piggish behavior of some of the growers on public land and in US forests, who are careless in their use of fertilizers and pesticides that damage waterways, and leave their grow areas strewn with garbage and waste. Needless to say, the drug warriors have eagerly pounced on these misdeeds and held them up as evidence of the "green plague" that afflicts us all—despite the government's own abominable record of abuse of public lands.
And what would drive someone to grow deep in the forest anyway? Maybe property forfeiture, loss of one's children and incarceration, for starters.
In Mendocino County, law enforcement likes to wring its hands over the out-of-control "epidemic" of grow ops. For years, Mendo had the most liberal cultivation limits in the country. But in June, a measure was passed paring the limit of plants that medical-marijuana patients could grow from 25 down to six. Then, in August, a county Superior Court judge ruled that the new measure was unenforceable because the state's electorate hadn't consented to it. So when autumn arrived, the buds were blooming, as always, everywhere in Mendocino County.
Particularly noteworthy was the team of growers handling nine different gardens on a hilltop overlooking a quiet valley in northeastern Mendo. It's not unusual for more ambitious grow ops to be worked by partners. A backyard garden is relatively safe, but multiple gardens sown in rugged terrain necessitate extra vigilance in the last weeks before harvest.
All of the gardens were properly licensed, situated separately to reduce flyover interest. Garden maintenance here requires packing quads with equipment and motoring through a network of mountain roads. It's common for growers to travel packing a rifle: There are mountain lions in the neighborhood— as well as unsavory types looking to abscond with a summer's worth of someone else's toil.
The magnificent gardens that dot the hillsides across this tract of land have been meticulously sited. Once you park the four-wheeler, it takes a little bit of hiking to get to each. The fencing is unobtrusive, but sturdy and resistant to varmints. In the garden, each bush is exploding with bud growth: Goo, Super Silver Haze, Trainwreck, Cabernet, Stinky Pinky, Permafrost, Gold Rush—every strain a winner. The grower stops and says hello to each one.
The breeze is scented with sweet smells. Anticipation is also in the air—the same emotion that makes kids giddy on Christmas Eve. Something good is coming.
THE 'MEXICAN POT CARTEL' MYTH
The past year has done little to quell Drug Czar John Walters's rhetoric regarding the alleged involvement of so-called "Mexican cartels" in US pot production. Speaking to reporters in September, Walters claimed that up to SO percent of all outdoor marijuana is now cultivated on public land, primarily in national parks. The Drug Czar's claim is both dubious (federal estimates regarding domestic pot production are a based on little, if any, actual data) and ironic, since the federal penalties for cultivation are typically stricter than state penalties. This indicates either that a) the Drug Czar is lying, b) punitive federal anti-drug laws don't deter illicit activity, or c) both.
Walters further alleged that the bulk of pot grown on public land is being cultivated by "Mexican drug cartels," a charge that longtime California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer disputes.
"There's no question that a lot of Mexicans are arrested for marijuana growing here." Gieringer says. "A lot of native growers hire Mexicans-common practice in Mendocino and other California counties, where Mexicans are typically hired for farm work. Whether these individuals belong to cartels is another matter. By definition, a 'cartel' is a combination of producers who control a single market. By contrast, the marijuana market is highly competitive, and there's no evidence of control by any Mexican cartel."
According to Gieringer, the claims by law enforcement officials regarding supposed cartel involvement date back several years, but increased "astronomically" following the terrorist attacks of September 11. "My own hypothesis is that the post-9/11 border crackdown has induced more Mexicans to corns stateside and do their growing here so as to avoid crossing the border.' Gieringer says, though he cautions that it's also not unheard-of for American growers to litter their plots with tortillas and other Mexican cultural artifacts in an effort to mislead law enforcement.
Even if there was a grain of truth in Walters's egregious claims, his charges only lend support to the calls by drug-law reformers for taxation and regulation in the commercial cultivation of weed, a move that would all but eliminate the involvement of organized crime in cannabis production, and put to rest the White House's bizarre notion that there are pot-pushing narco-terrorists lurking under our beds-or at least in our national parks.
