Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jan 2011
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2011 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Peter Hecht
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

POT GROWERS TEAM UP TO GO LEGIT IN CALIFORNIA COUNTY

EUREKA, CALIF. - Joey Burger was 14 when his naturalist parents moved 
from Santa Cruz to settle in the coastal forest of Humboldt County.

Local hippies and homesteaders welcomed the new kid in the woods. 
They schooled him in the regional art - growing marijuana.

"It was never looked upon as a bad thing," Burger said.

Except before the fall harvests, when helicopters full of narcotics 
officers whipped through the sky. Neighbors rushed "to call their 
friends to make sure they were okay," he said.

These days, it isn't just helicopters that frighten Humboldt County's 
pot culture.

America's most renowned bastion of illicit marijuana growing is 
threatened by cavernous, city-taxed cultivation warehouses soon to be 
licensed in Oakland. It is alarmed by cities from La Puente to 
Berkeley to Sacramento that approved taxes on dispensaries or 
endorsed medical marijuana cultivation, sanctioning a pot economy 
wider and more competitive than ever.

So Humboldt seeks to save itself by going legit.

In an area where marijuana growers typically evade attention, Burger 
is the public voice of the new Humboldt Growers Association. Aligned 
with a Sacramento lobbyist, it is working for county approval to 
license and tax outdoor pot plantations of up to 40,000 square feet.

The proposal - for local growers who can confirm that they have 
contracts to supply marijuana to California medical pot shops - is 
attracting serious attention. But the plan riles small marijuana 
farmers, pits indoor vs. outdoor growers and stirs up fears that 
Humboldt's legendary marijuana brand could lose its character to 
industrialization.

Humboldt, which permits local medical pot patients to grow up to 100 
square feet of plants, is beginning work on a more liberal 
cultivation ordinance.

"Doing nothing is not an option," said county Supervisor Bonnie 
Neely, who supports the Humboldt growers' plan in concept but is 
uncertain how large a scale of growing the county should allow. "This 
is a major part of our economy. I just don't think we can let Oakland 
or anyone else just become the leader."

The idea of taxing and regulating marijuana in Humboldt - where pot 
growing is considered a natural right - isn't an easy sell.

Kim Nelson, a shaggy-haired, mustachioed carpenter who grows 
marijuana outside his cabin above Garberville, supports local pot 
taxes and oversight. But Nelson, secretary of the local Medical 
Marijuana Advisory Panel, said other growers express "anger and rage 
over getting a permit to grow marijuana." 'Taking market share'

Burger fears that Humboldt, which long ago saw its timber and fishing 
industries wither away, will lose out again if it doesn't take 
proactive steps to legitimize its pot trade.

Now a 28-year-old businessman with early flecks of gray in his hair, 
Burger runs a gardening supply showroom and supervises a well-tended 
outdoor orchard of marijuana that sends its product to medical 
dispensaries elsewhere in the state.

He looks warily at municipalities elsewhere in California levying 
taxes and capitalizing on medicinal growing.

"They are taking market share from people who spent a generation 
risking their lives and their land," Burger said. "We want to see 
people who paid their dues get a chance. We want to come out and 
compete legally."

Max Del Real, a Sacramento lobbyist working with the growers 
association, said its proposed ordinance could generate $10 million a 
year in county tax revenue. The plan would impose annual county fees 
of $20,000 on a quarter-acre outdoor pot garden and $80,000 for an acre.

Neely is skeptical of the tax revenue projections. But she considers 
the plan a reasonable proposal in a county where pot is so entrenched 
in the culture, economy and politics that supervisors four years ago 
drafted a letter petitioning Congress to legalize marijuana.

In Humboldt, population 138,000, it is more common to ask who doesn't 
grow pot than who does. As open-air gardens and greenhouses bloom in 
the mountains, average residents supplement their income growing 
under shimmering lights at home.

Adam Hineman, 31, toiled long hours in the restaurant business until 
he began growing pot in a modest suburban house. The registered 
medical marijuana patient provides his "Big Bud Train Wreck" to pot 
shops in Humboldt and Santa Barbara counties. And he builds on a 
Humboldt dream - of someday buying property in the country and 
sustaining his family with marijuana flowering in the open sun."You 
couldn't make it in Humboldt without weed," he said.

Lelehnia Du Bois, 40, learned to trim neighbors' pot plants in nearby 
Trinity County when she was 9.

After moving to Southern California, becoming a fashion model and a 
department store buyer, she returned to the pot-growing region when 
her mother, then a Humboldt resident, fell ill. In 1999, while 
working as a nurse in a senior care facility, she caught a falling 
patient and ruptured her spinal cord.

Now Du Bois is on disability and supplements her income in the craft 
introduced to her as a little girl. Her "Sweet God" marijuana strain 
"goes right to the spine" to ease her pain. She makes medicinal pot 
tinctures and lip balms. She hopes to market them if new Humboldt 
regulations "support the small farmer," indoors and out.

But she fears Humboldt may go too far in industrializing its trade.

"I don't want our town to be taken over," she said. "It won't be a 
community anymore. It will be a factory town." District attorney

Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos, the only prosecutor 
in California to publicly endorse Proposition 19, the initiative 
voters defeated Nov. 2 that would have made recreational pot legal, 
says it is time that Humboldt legitimizes the trade "that permeates 
our society."

Gallegos prosecutes more than 1,000 marijuana cases a year - mostly 
for grows exceeding 99 plants. Authorities also deal with robberies 
and home invasions at pot sites. In August, a grower was arrested on 
suspicion of shooting two laborers, killing one.

While pot sustains the economy, growers have purchased firetrucks and 
paid for emergency medical training for volunteer fire crews.

Recently, in the town of Redway, an anxious meeting took place over 
how to protect the trade.

Robert Sutherland, an environmentalist known as "Man Who Walks in the 
Woods," submitted a proposal declaring that the county must "work . . 
. to guard the worldwide reputation of Humboldt County marijuana."

Dennis Turner, a former school counselor who runs a dispensary in 
Arcata, pitched a regional brokerage to market small growers' 
marijuana to pot shops statewide.

Another advocate proposed a local "cannabis council" including pot 
farmers, a human rights advocate and an expert "in weights and measures."

An informal poll taken at the event showed more support for licensing 
smaller marijuana grows - 2,000 square feet instead of 40,000.

But Del Real, the Sacramento lobbyist, ebulliently pitched the 
growers association plan. It could sanction local growers who 
cultivate for hundreds of medical marijuana users or allow scores of 
small growers to share cultivation space. "The revolution is starting 
here," he said.

As attendees stepped outside for contemplative marijuana tokes, one 
pot spiritualist began to cry over the idea of taxing and regulating 
Humboldt pot. "This herb is a sacrament," he said.

Nelson, the local grower and medical marijuana advocate, called for 
protection of small cultivators and the county's pot-growing 
lifestyle. But he hailed the growers association for pitching a path 
to sustainability.

"I think it's time," he said, "to stand up for who we are."

- - Sacramento Bee
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom