As a teen in the '70s, Alexis Bronson sold joints to his Berkeley High School classmates in front of the school cafeteria. Bronson lived in hotels with his father and two brothers and made enough money selling weed to eat and to buy clothes. He figured he could probably make enough to keep a roof over his head, too. In 1980, two years after he graduated from high school, Bronson began cultivating cannabis, planting the seeds for his future business. After California voters passed Proposition 215 to legalize marijuana for medicinal use in 1996, Bronson began selling his cannabis flowers to a dispensary in San Francisco. [continues 816 words]
In a dark room, Jahful Price slowly worked a row of pungent plants guided by his headlamp. He wore a white biohazard suit, methodically picking up cannabis plants by their stems and hanging them upside down on a rack with plastic clothes hangers. Price, a 31-year-old Oakland resident who is black, is getting hands-on experience in cannabis cultivating that he hopes will help him run his own business one day. Since July, he's had a paid internship at NUG, a cannabis business owned by Bloom Innovations, a horticulture consulting and management firm in Oakland. NUG chose Nine Mile Tribe, a business owned by Price's family, as one of its equity partners. [continues 1023 words]
Pro-Marijuana Group Allowed to Distribute Fliers Around Festival Despite New Policy Henry Koch chilled out on a sunny, crisp Saturday afternoon. Koch said it was his "hollow" hemp shirt that kept him from sweating as he mingled with fans at Columbia's 3 Rivers Music Festival. "I thought you weren't supposed to be out of your booth," Alex Dingnam, a 13-year-old Hand Middle School student, said as he walked by. "We get that sometimes," said Koch, president of the Midlands Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. [continues 445 words]
