Toke it, smoke it, fire it up. It’s now legal to sell marijuana (cannabis) in the state under Prop 64.
Passed by voters in 2016, the new law allows adults 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of weed or eight grams of concentrated cannabis in public and grow up to six plants for personal use.
Commercial cannabis businesses are now allowed to operate in the state if licensed, but each county is allowed to decide if it will permit commercial grows, retail outlets, etc. and to what extent.
There are currently only a few places where pot can be purchased for recreational use as the state is just beginning to issue licenses to sell pot in counties where it’s allowed.
Locally, don’t expect to find pot stores popping up as last month the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance banning commercial and medicinal marijuana activities for 45 days.
It also established a Cannabis Advisory Committee to explore how the county should handle the commercial cultivation and sale of marijuana.
The ban on commercial sales does not impact the ability of medical cannabis dispensaries to operate as previously allowed.
However it does affect local growers who provide products to those dispensaries. Until the ban is lifted, dispensaries can only buy products for their customers from outside the county. Previously they were able to get product from members of their “collectives” in this county.
Pot use is also banned in the City of Placerville. However, City Manager Cleve Morris said staff plan to bring a report to the council in the next couple of months to review the new regulations.
Ka-Ching!
Pot is expected to be something of a bonanza for government entities because of the new sales tax revenue it will generate.
The state plans to tax recreational pot in three ways — an excise tax of 15 percent on retail sales, local and state sales taxes ranging from about 7.75 percent to 9.75 percent and a cannabis cultivation tax of $9.25 per ounce of flowers and $2.75 per ounce of leaves.
Added together, experts predict that means an effective tax rate of about 45 percent.
However certain sales of medicinal cannabis are exempt from sales and use tax if the person has a valid Medical Marijuana Identification Card.
The law also decriminalized prior pot use with some people given the option of being re-sentenced and/or having their records destroyed. Many pot related crimes that previously were felonies will now be misdemeanors.
People still can’t use pot at work and medical users of marijuana are not exempt from workplace drug tests.
Driving while under the influence of pot is still illegal although law enforcement agencies in California haven’t started using pot breathalyzers yet because they don’t have a reliable method of measuring how much marijuana is in someone’s system.
Making it legal in EDC
Pushing to legalize the growing and selling of recreational pot in the county are growers who are members of the El Dorado County Cannabis Growers Alliance.
The group, led by Rod Miller, has only been in business a few months in this county but is a subchapter of the California Growers Association, is a statewide group that’s been around for six years.
“We’re looking to the Board of Supervisors for leadership on a policy that will benefit growers and the county,” said Miller.
At $1,000 a pound and with at least 300,000 pounds grown locally, Miller predicts $300 million in yearly economic activity.
Estimating the county already has 1,000 growers who are supplying medical dispensaries in this county and elsewhere, he said they would love to come out of the woods and be legal.
“This county is ideal for growing pot because there’s no fog. Most strains of cannabis are from Afghanistan and are adapted to a drier climate. Other strains were developed in the tropics.”
Miller said Georgetown, Garden Valley, Somerset and Grizzly Flat are already big cannabis growing areas and as members of a collective were supplying pot to dispensaries prior to Prop. 64 passing.
“There are an estimated two million pounds of pot consumed in California yearly and 600,000 pounds of it is used in dispensaries,” claimed Miller.
Promoting the business, he said it would bring jobs and the use of marginal land in the county as well as prop up property values.
“Eventually I think the Board of Supervisors will permit these businesses,” he said. “We have an industry that is already here and there are more people who’d like to come here and set up a business because of the perfect climate.”
From double dream to purple alien
One of those currently growing, who asked not to be identified, has a special room just for her plants.
Under sodium vapor lights she showed how she uses cuttings from her “mother” plants to start new plants.
A local grower shows a neatly trimmed marijuana bud.
All hybrids, the different varieties have names like girl scout cookie, double dream and purple alien.
Leafy and healthy, she explained, “We don’t use the leaves. We use the buds and extract the active ingredients from them.”
Growing for herself as much as to sell to local dispensaries, she gives the buds to the collective and in return is paid for her time and expenses.
On a personal level she uses marijuana to treat anxiety, PTSD and to ease the pain from a titanium implant in her back. She also supplies edibles to her 86-year-old father who suffers from the effects of multiple surgeries and fluid build up in his eyes.
Illegal grows and the environment
One of the concerns with growing pot is how it affects the environment, especially once it is cultivated on a large scale.
Originally Prop. 64 restricted licensed cannabis farms to 1 acre in size. But new regulations open the market to commercial grows.
Water usage figures into the question with each plant requiring 3-6 gallons per day during the growing season. Adult marijuana plants use 5 to 10 gallons of water a day. However Tim Blake, founder of the North Coast’s Emerald Cup cannabis competition, said mature, tree-sized plants need closer to 15 gallons a day.
To supply that amount of water, especially for illegal grows, many times pot farmers will divert water from creeks and streams to feed their plants, depriving native wildlife, fish, trees and other vegetation of the water.
Clear cutting of trees to make way for a grow and the use of banned pesticides and other chemicals also has the effect of poisoning the water table and killing wildlife.
In 2014, 24 North Coast salmon-bearing tributaries were reported to have gone dry, according to state Fish and Wildlife Senior Environmental Scientist Scott Bauer who specializes in salmon recovery and is working on a study of the issue.
Bauer’s study examined three watersheds in Humboldt County and one in Mendocino County, all of them known for marijuana cultivation. Using satellite images, researchers determined that an average of 30,000 plants were growing in each of the four watersheds in 2012, an increase since 2009 of 75 percent to 100 percent.
Another case was a Willits-area property rented to marijuana growers who used bulldozers to clear several acres of forest.
The Oakland landowner of the property, Joung Min Yi, was required to pay $56,404 in penalties for state and federal water code violations and another $80,000 to restore the land.
In response to questions about environmental damage, Miller said the state has prepared pages and pages of regulations to govern the cultivation of marijuana.
He believes that allowing commercial grows in the county will actually help authorities fight the black market in marijuana and eliminate the abuses found in illegal grows.
Miller also thinks the tax revenue from pot sales can go toward educating children about marijuana and to other needed services.
“It should be looked at as being like alcohol,” he said, “but people have to use it responsibly. We need to keep it out of the hands of kids and pregnant women shouldn’t smoke it.”
Already convinced it’s just a matter of time before the Board of Supervisors approves the commercial growing and sale of marijuana, he said on Feb. 10 there will be a big growers’ party at the Gold Trail Grange in Coloma to celebrate growing in El Dorado County.
credit:mtdemocrat.com
