continued from page 15 professes no prior experience in the pot trade — founded the Vashon Island Marijuana Entrepreneurs Alliance after four clients approached him with cannabisrelated business ideas, and he concluded that small-scale local growers needed help staying competitive so that bigger operations don’t drive land values out of reach and displace family farms. “If someone doesn’t step in and make the island safe for growers,” Los says, “someone will come in from off-island and eat our lunch.”
Five hundred miles
south, somewhere in rural Humboldt County, “Jack” listens to the nutshell version of Washington’s marijuana licensing system and tries to imagine what it would mean for him. A 40-something father of two and a grower for more than a decade, Jack has embraced California’s dispensary system after selling on the black market for most of his career in cannabis. “My approach to it is to take the least gray, most legitimate path possible,” he says. “I want it to just be part of what we do here on our farm — we produce food and medicine.” Jack says he enjoys the predictability of sales and price that he gets when dealing with a clinic, even though it’s less than he was getting before. “It’s pretty much a normal business with normal taxes,” he says. But for him, the dispensary market hits the sweet spot between the black market and Washington-style licensing efforts. “Would I be interested in something with a lot more red tape?” he asks. “I think that would go over like a lead balloon.
“The industry got started in Humboldt because of its political and social climate and its geographical remoteness, not because of its great farmland, abundant water and pot-friendly weather,” Jakubal says. “People are going to have to ultimately face up to the fact that their remote, off-grid Summer 2013 organic outdoor homestead on a steep north Afghan Kush colitas by Colibrí. slope can’t compete with Colibrí’s primary focus is to flatland-grown weed.” Instead, create adapted landraces for the he suggests, it will take shrewd Northwest climate of short, cool summers and lots of wet. These kinds marketing, efficiency and With an active nature healthcare community, tinctures of landraces being identified now professionalism to go up against and other medical applications of cannabis are common will be the future of Washington growers in Sonoma County, and made to exacting standards. photo by Shango Los outdoor marijuana. photo by Shango Los for instance, who have better weather and are located closer Washington, when medical cannabis was Everyone on the producer side is enjoying to urban customers. One place to start, made legal, they created a regulatory something a little looser.” says Nevedal, is for growers to look at framework, so when they became adultFilmmaker Jakubal can understand this whether their property is permittable, use states, they already had an industry attitude. “A lot of Humboldt growers will in terms of water sources, water storwith parameters,” she says. “In California, find state licensing really tedious after a age, and preventing agricultural run-off they’d be regulating an industry that is couple of decades of a free-for-all where — thinking about it the way you might likely the largest cash crop in the state, they could do what they want,” he says. consider any other crop grown for sale. and has had 17 years of unregulated deBut he foresees a different kind of payoff. With legalization looming on the velopment.” “There’s a certain freedom to being an horizon, the traits that made for success Even if California does legalize recreoutlaw in the hills,” he says. “But to not in the marijuana business are about to ational cannabis, the transition won’t be worry about helicopters flying over or change — not instantly, but over a period instantaneous. Humboldt will still have your driver getting intercepted in Nebrasof years as people adjust to the possibilgrowers like Paul, who stay in the black marka, and not having to teach your kids to lie ity of buying their pot as conveniently ket as long as they can — an attitude borne about what you do — that’s another kind and straightforwardly as their liquor. out by the large margins racked up against of freedom.” How Humboldt growers and regulators Proposition 19 in southern Humboldt three Legalization of recreational cannabis respond will determine whether the years ago. “It will be easy to remain a petty poses profoundly different challenges in county’s latest economic driver runs out outlaw,” Jakubal predicts. But over time, he California than in Washington and Coloof steam like the many booms, from gold anticipates that market pressures will take a rado, according to the Emerald Growers to old-growth timber, that have come heavier toll than legal restrictions. Association’s Nevedal. “In Colorado and and gone before it. l
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