'Weeds'.......It's Not Just a TV Show !!!!!

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



How Are Some Middle-Class Families Coping with the Recession? Growing Pot

By Susan Kuchinskas, Miller-McCune.com. Posted October 22, 2009.

A financial stimulus for the recession-battered middle class: pot farming.




Sarah's whole street reeks of pot. This is not hyperbole. When you turn the corner onto this lane of 1970s tract houses, you smell the tang: the sour, earthy, green odor that wafts up from lush marijuana plants steaming in the sun.

Sarah estimates that seven of 10 households on her semi-rural street, a couple miles from white-bread-suburban Rohnert Park, Calif., are growing weed. She ran into one neighbor at the hardware store, in the new section devoted to cultivation, with the special dirt, fertilizer and outsized plastic pots the growers use. Her next-door neighbors, two brothers, trade plant-sitting with her and let their pit bulls loose at night to patrol both yards. The women across the street have a small crop in their vegetable garden. And the new couple on the block, noticing the smell, mentioned they'd like to get in on it. In fact, she says, she doesn't know anyone in Sonoma County who isn't growing pot.

Sarah (who, like all the marijuana growers quoted in this article, asked that her real name not be used) doesn't fit the image of a drug dealer. She's 58, colors her hair strawberry blonde and wears souvenir T-shirts, jeans and Crocs. Her ranch-style, three-bedroom home is filled with furniture from Costco and cat-themed knickknacks. She seems as mainstream as they come — and she is typical of the new breed of marijuana producer in Northern California.

As the economy tanked, layoffs rose, retirement savings shriveled and home-equity credit lines fizzled, Sarah and thousands of middle-class folks like her began raising extra cash by following local ordinances that allow the limited growing of Cannabis sativa for personal or medicinal use — while hoping that President Obama will keep federal law enforcers occupied with other things. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/143446/how_are_some_middle-class_families_coping_with_the_recession_growing_pot

[malaise]

1. Without ganja, Jamaica

would be close to Haiti in terms of the economy.
Ganja has been supplementing people's incomes for decades in these parts.

[liberalmuse]

2. I visited my cousin in Rohnert Park back in 2001...

No pot then that I was aware of. In fact, I'm very surprised at this since Rohnert Park is one of the last places in CA I'd expect a pot-growing community. CA really ought to legalize it all the way instead of auctioning off everything.

[alfredo]

3. Peter Tosh said it best

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HcXcYlF3_0

[rivercat]

4. I've lived in rohnert park for 5+ years.

while it's not as bad (or rather, as good!) as western sonoma county, where it seems like everyone AND their mother is growing; I might know a few people.