There is supposedly a crime problem involved with pot growing. And not just because some of the people growing it here in Humboldt are growing more than their legal limit. No, with a pound of pot worth $3,000 to $4,000, there is a problem with theft. Grow houses get ripped off. Drugs deals go bad. And people will steal plants out of the ground.

Or at least try too. A grower told me about the one time a rip-off was tried at his place several years ago. He and his buddy had guns, a shot was fired into the air, the perps screeched off the property,  and the crop–which was too well rooted to get yanked out–was saved, end of story.

Crime as a side effect of indoor grows are an issue in this November’s Humboldt County District Attorney’s race.

In an interview with Eureka’s local paper, the Times/Standard, DA candidates Allison Jackson and Paul Hagen said:

home invasion robberies and fires associated with grows in residential neighborhoods are out of control, and that something needs to be done to rein in abuse of Proposition 215.

Jackson felt that the county’s recently overturned 99-plant limit, an ordinance drafted by incumbent Paul Gallegos,

brought a massive influx of people from outside the county, outside the state and outside the country into this community. And, it’s made residential neighborhoods unsafe.

Gallegos disputes Jackson’s assessment about home invasion robberies, calling them drug deals gone bad and said with regards to
non-medical pot growing and sales:

Illegal marijuana is accessible to anyone who wants it — that’s how successful the war on drugs is.

Opponent Paul Hagen–the only candidate who supports Prop 19 and said he will vote for the measure which will legalize marijuana– has a solution:

If we make it legal, we can finally control it above board. You’re never going to get rid of it.

If the initiative passes, the DA will be plenty busy, since there could be a new wave of local controls, regulations and ordinances. And then there’s the economic side effects.

According to reporting in the Los Angeles Times,

Humboldt State economists guess that marijuana accounts for between $500 million and $700 million of the county’s $3.6 billion economy.

I stopped at gas station and went in to buy a pack of double-A batteries for my camera. I asked the cashier which he preferred for my $4 purchase, a debit card or a $100 bill.

Either

he replied with a smile–everyone in Humboldt is really, really nice and friendly and smiles all the time–so I gave him the C-note since I wanted change, and he didn’t even check to see if it was counterfeit. What a change from LA where many businesses have signs posted saying

No bills over $20

and a fake-bill checking pen resides in the cash drawer. It’s like they see them all the time.

Oh wait, they do…

So this morning I went into the fields and kicked it in an anachronistic but fundamental way, sexing plants and pulling the males by hand. This is done for two reasons. Growers, indoor and out, don’t want male plants to pollinate the females; and this farmer, like many of the OG Original Growers up in Humboldt wants to keep plant count down to comply with Prop 215 and more importantly federal sentencing guidelines. I was on an outdoor organic grow where the farmer has raised pot for over two decades and now is able to work on refining seed strains and creating new breeds, rather than growing purely for profit. He has other businesses now, and works on cross breeding decorative flowering garden plants of various sorts, but has a love an respect for the weed which got him to this plateau.

The male cannabis plants have little pointy horns, the females thin white hairs. I am slow at identifying them but good at pulling them out. But I don’t seem to have much of future as a ganja worker at least in skill, since the farmer has pulled twenty to my inexperienced six.

The plants smell great, green and musky, they are sticky and thick-stemmed. Years ago a company called Frantic Farmer baked pot cookies and other goods with butter made in huge vats cooked down with male leaves, shake and stems as well as the trim and waste from females. Everything form punk rock clubs to Drivers Ed class was a lot more fun with a snack of those. Luckily we didn’t have to watch Red Asphalt.

There is now a medical use for the leaves of the males, which are allegedly non-psychoactive, as an anti-inflammatory.  However these boys won’t be making it to the dispensary; they are are slated for a mulch pile, since there are plenty of males for the dispensaries.

Arcata, pop 14,000 is bucolic historic little town, home to Humboldt State University and the epicenter of grower chic, replete with a French style bakery, wine shops and a creperie.  The old frontier hotel with beautiful tile floors and ornate ceiling panels is owned by the local Native American tribe, and the bars lining the square which once  served the loggers, and still has some noontime drinkers see a huge uptick in young faces as soon as classes start up.

This could be just a basic college and tourist town, a stop on the 101 before you get to Loleta for the cheese, or Ferndale for the cemetery and county fair.  But the underground economy is what has pumped real life into this town, and at a cost to the environment.

Growing uses electricity, a lot of it. The Humboldt County Journal reports that one grow house case prosecuted by the DA was using 10,000 kWh, or about 20 times the average household. Sadly solar panels won’t make enough to fuel a grow house.

The extra electricity used by grows in Humboldt County totals an astounding 90 million kWhs a year — about 70 times the total output of all the solar panels in the county, or enough to power 13,000 typical homes. Generating that electricity, even with PG&E’s relatively low-carbon grid, puts 20,000 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. And that’s without considering the energy and environmental costs of using chemical fertilizers, which are significant.

But legalization comes with a bonus for many electricity consumers in the Emerald Triangle. Should Prop 19 pass, there will be traceable, reportable income streams for growers, and commercial growers will be paying taxes And their electricity bills.

The Humboldt Journal also reports:

Many growers have no reportable income so they qualify for subsidized electricity under PG&E’s “CARE” program, which is intended to help low income households keep the lights on. That means we all pay higher electricity rates and underwrite lower rates for growers who use this assistance program.

I’m all for helping low income folks. But like the kid from AmeriCorps speculated:

Seems like there’s a lot of income here, just not on paper.

Legalization will allow anyone who can to grow enough for themselves on a minimum 5′x5′ plot, with individual municipalities being able to set a larger space for private per person use.

Off grid growing currently presents environmental challenges as well. The Journal reports:

Grows on the grid are only part of the story. Many of the largest indoor grows are off-grid in the more remote areas of the county. These operations use diesel generators to provide the electricity and have even worse environmental consequences, since there are fuel spills as well as CO2 emissions. Setting aside the issue of spills, we used estimates from Jack Nelson of the Humboldt County Drug Task Force of the number and size of off-grid grows to estimate the amount of CO2 they emit — another 20,000 metric tons a year.

These clandestine remote grows, like the on-grid ones, allow for year ’round crops of weed to supply medical marijuana clubs and dispensaries state wide, as well as going to out of state distributors that aren’t so above ground.

I know some people that got in a lot of trouble for doing out state deals. Like, busted.

said one of my contacts.

Next: I sex plants and pull males.

Los Angeles has some really awesome rolling food vendors: Korean BBQ tacos, Canters Deli, Indian food, crepes, cupcakes, gourmet coffee and of course the basic burger and burrito trucks show up where ever there’s a crowd. Today’s lake victory parade in downtown had a newcomer to the mobile munchie force: Weed World Candies.com, a van featuring bikini clad babes sorting buds.

Fans along the victory parade route who had their medical marijuana cards with them were able to buy prescription pot and received a get-high gift with purchase–a cannabis candy lollipop.

Weed World Candies’ van owner Bilal Muhammad told the Los Angeles Times that he was recently forced to shut down his store in West Hollywood, and had taken his business on the road.

Weed World Candies apparently has outlets across the country, but their website is not up yet.

(photo of Weed World Candies Atlanta truck: P. Pressar, creative commons)