Tending ‘the Grow’: Marijuana at a crossroads

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Features » January 25, 2010

Tending ‘the Grow’
Marijuana at a crossroads.

By Michael Polson


In the warm, luminescent glow of the dust encrusted light fixture, the carpeted and dank hallway disappears into unvacuumed recesses. Darren grabs an unobtrusive handle along the wall’s flimsy wood paneling, pulls, and a crack of light pierces the gloom. Pushing aside a black screen of Hefty bags intended to block light and trap heat, he reveals his miniature grow closet. A heavy, supple branch tumbles out. It brushes my hand, leaving a telltale streak of sticky, stinky moistness. The resin goes away with a bit of water. The smell stays.

A ventilator and wooden door couldn’t dilute the pungent odor of the maturing female plants. When I point this out, Darren offers me only a mischievous smile. He’s proud of this little closet-conversion. Six plants in all, two to a shelf, a 150-watt lamp substituting for sunlight in this hallway cupboard. “You can hide it no problem, but the smell is crazy. Next week my whole house is going to reek! Clipping and all that,” he tells me. Ten days away from “pulling” the plants, Darren’s “babies” are reaching their most odorous phase.

On this trip, Darren is very ill, a result of his 24-year battle with HIV and his many years as a homeless addict. But he meets with me anyway. He closes the cupboard and I follow the trailing ties of his plaid terrycloth bathrobe to his bedroom where he unceremoniously plops himself on a frameless mattress.

Darren possesses a medical marijuana care receiver ID card, a designation established by California voters in the 1996 Proposition 215, the “Compassionate Use Act”, and its updated correlative, Senate Bill 420. “I want to be able to grow enough. I want to be able to do that for my sick friends. I have an obligation,” Darren explains, making sure I know his intentions for growing weed. A religious man and a veteran, Darren is not keen on being perceived as a criminal or a profiteer. His medical marijuana prescription had expired 9 months before, but he hadn’t been able to afford its replacement, rendering illegal his plants, stash and herbal gifts to another HIV-positive friend who had just suffered an aneurysm. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5457/tending_the_grow

[Bennyboy]

1. Well that is one of the best articles

about the marijuana industry in CA. It also goes a long way explaining why some people, myself included, don't really want marijuana legalized here.

[eShirl]

3. could you elaborate?

[Bennyboy]

5. Why sure....

There is a HUGE underground economy here that depends on the pot industry. Growers, trimmers, brokers, small time dealers etc that depend on the industry to stay alive (Myself included) etc. If it become legal, there will be none of that. It will be yet one more thing that becomes corporatized.

And you may thing I am crazy, but I wrote the business plan for a group of giant sucking douchebags that plan to do exactly that. To become the Bevs and More of pot. These people are scum. Lawyers and real estate agents who don't want their name out front but just want the money. They have no connection to the plant, don't want to know anything about it, just want the money. Seriously, it is all I can do to not puke on their shoes whenever I meet with them (Today).

There is something so cool about pot here. I know growers. I am a grower. We have a little group and we have a spiritual connection to the herb. And that will be lost when it become legal and is packaged like so much other crap.

(to be noted, I have not decided on how I will vote in November, I see pros and cons of both sides and have always dreamed that it would be legal)

[Yuugal]

6. I'm torn

On the one hand you have people like yourself who I can certainly empathize with. BUT, from the article:
"At a dispensary, a patient might spend $120 a week for a quarter-ounce of marijuana." Right there is where you lose me. That is just pure greed and nothing else. Its illegal in NY and um "my friends" rarely pay more than 200 for a Z. Why the hell would I want to pay 2 or 3 times more? It is cheap to grow because it is a freaking weed and should be 50 bux a Z, maybe 100 for some wild indica super spongy outerspace in your face zulu bud with sprinkles and a cherry on top.

Legalization will cure much of the greed as the law of supply and demand makes it so if I can grow it cheaper I can steal your business. At 120 a quarter the supposed heroes of the grow movement are taking advantage of sick people and that just plain sux. Since I can't afford the meds I am prescribed now I don't see how these dispensaries would help me at all. A little competition would go a long way here and that is what legalization would provide.

So if it ever comes down to a choice between quasi-legal and truly legal I'll go with the latter. No need to worry about that here in a backwards state like NY though. Our asshole legislature couldn't find it's ass with both hands.

[Bennyboy]

8. Well that article is INCORRECT.......

Pot prices in CA are down, way down. 50 tops for an 1/8th on street and less in the dispensaries. 35 in a lot of them. Not the best primo grades, but the same you see in the street for 50. Not to mention they are always there.

I don't know anyone that isn't selling for next to nothing right now. 800 qp's for primo.. that will only get more so too with the recent CASCourt decision to allow clubs where they were once banned. I saw ounces, in September (pre harvest) in Humboldt for 100 bucks this summer.

But the second it becomes legal we will have a lot of people put out of good jobs.

One other thing and I know it is weird to even think this, is that if you legalize pot totally, inner city youths will have one of the only ways there are to make money taken away from them. So instead of selling pot, what are they going to be selling? As it stand right now, the only business you can get into for 100 dollars is pot. Because you know that the liquor an tobacco sellers will do what they do to beer and cigarettes.

There might be a "Craft brewing" market, but for most people, just "weed" is enough for them. they don't care the strain, the anything other than it is weed. So they will buy it for convenience and go to the store.

I guarantee you this, if I took a pack of cigarettes to the liquor store, stood out front and offered people that pack for the same price they would pay inside, they would still buy inside. We are conditioned to that and pot will go that way too....

[madrchsod]

9. 100 an ounce? dam that`s cheap....!

in 67 gold was 25 an ounce..hell black hashish was around a hundred an ounce.

[Bennyboy]

10. Well we are headed there.

the 100 oz was good bud too but I was in Humboldt right at harvest. And now there is this new strain, Boost, that is tasty as all get out, has a HIGH yield,and is ready in early September.

[Yuugal]

12. You give me hope

Of course I will probably have to move to realize that hope but with 4 ruptured discs in my back and the rest steadily deteriorating I'm going to have to do something to avoid the narcotics my doctor keeps trying to push on me. Since I have kids I just can't be whacked out on big pharma's heroin-like crap when a few puffs of mother nature is so much safer and cheaper.

[MicaelS]

11. And if it becomes legal, then

The whole criminalization of people who grow, sell and consume it goes right out the window. All the little people put into the criminal justice system will no longer forced to to be there. Fewer people in prison, and fewer prisons in general. Lives will no longer be ruined because of the criminalization of pot. The money government at all levels on the "War on Drugs" will be reduced. The militarization of law enforcement will be reduced. The amount of tax money derived from pot just might help to fund national health care.

From the article itself:

Nationwide, in 2008, 847,863 people were arrested for marijuana-related charges; 55 percent of federal prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders; and 1 in 45 Americans are parolees and subject to heightened searches, seizures and re-arrests. Since 1991, marijuana arrests have increased 150 percent, with males aged 15 to 19 bearing rates eight times above average and African Americans experiencing 300 percent higher arrests than whites, despite having only 25 percent higher reported rates of use.

All in all, I don't give a damn about your "spiritual connection to the herb" or how cool you perceive your grower / smoker world to be. And being cool is just soooo important right? You wouldn't to be confused with the regular squares would you? That would be horrid beyond belief. :sarcasm:

If it meant pot would be legalized over night, and this vast part of this criminal justice system dismantled, and millions of people across the US would not longer suffer from being perceived as a criminal or potential criminal, then I'd throw the whole lot of you right under the biggest bus I could find. I don't give a damn about your incestuous little world of growers, dealers, trimmers and smokers.

[Bennyboy]

4. IGrow, the WalMart of Weed opens in Oakland...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/28/BA4T1BOGCV.DTL

[madrchsod]

2. this is going on all across america

your next door neighbor could be growing pot and you`d never know it.

[tridim]

7. There are at least 4 houses within 100 feet of me that are growing MMJ.

Including my next door neighbor.

They don't know that I know. :)