Mike Smith stands in front of a general store in Orick, Calif., decked out in his Cal Fire officer blues.
As tourists and locals pass by, he warns them of possible death and destruction in a manner as straightforward as his name.
Though the fire can’t be seen or smelled, the dry air is as hot as struck flint in mid-August in Redwood National and State Parks, so everyone takes him at his word.
He’s stapled a “Fire Info Map” to a plywood easel in front of a cage
of AmeriGas propane tanks. The map features a large red blotch — the
fire — and has updates on the wind speed, humidity, and other factors
that might blow this manageable problem into a massive one.
Since there’s a good possibility that a fire in this area — part of the infamous Emerald Triangle
of Mendocino, Trinity, and Humboldt counties — started on an illegal
marijuana grow, it’s somewhat surprising that Smith doesn’t support
Proposition 64, the ballot measure that would legalize, and regulate,
recreational marijuana use for adults.
The veteran battalion chief’s light, almost transparent eyebrows
furrow to the point of real visibility as he considers the future.
“I’m from Riverside County, the heart of conservative country in California, so I’m worried what Prop. 64 will mean to my 12-year-old son,” he says.
Both opponents and supporters of the proposition have serious concern
about Prop. 64’s effects on children. Opponents claim it will allow
tobacco-style ads to run amok all over TV, while supporters claim the
regulation will reduce the targeting of kids by illegal drug dealers.
Smith mentions a synthetic form of marijuana called “spice,” which
reportedly sent more than a dozen people from Los Angeles’ Skid Row to
the hospital in August. And no one seems to be arguing against the
ineffectiveness and social injustice of the war on drugs.
He also doesn’t dispute the fact that taxation of recreational
marijuana could bring in lots of money.
Legalization has been earning Colorado and Washington State tens of millions of dollars each year.
On the other hand, he’s very concerned about the environmental effects of legalizing recreational marijuana.
“For generations, the people we saw up here growing, selling, and smoking weed
were long-haired hippies,” he explains. “Now they’re 25-year-olds in
business suits. If Big Weed takes over this area the way Big Tobacco
took over the South, I think everyone should be worried about the
environment.”
Although some might not agree with the comparison to Big Tobacco,
there are others who think Big Weed in California could be comparable to
the wine industry. One of Prop. 64’s biggest backers, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, laid out the social argument as simply as possible in the October edition of
San Francisco magazine
:
“Alcohol’s a hell of a lot more damaging to society than some mom, you
know, out there in Modesto who may vape once or twice a week.”
In its Sept. 15 editorial recommending passage of Prop. 64, the
San Francisco Chronicle
put it more bluntly: “Any serious discussion of marijuana legalization
must begin with the acknowledgment of reality: Prohibition is not
working.”
Like most thoughtful people, Smith feels Prop. 64 is a simple
solution to a very complicated problem. As far as the comparison to the
wine industry, his parting words before he revisits the fire to check on
suppression progress say it all: “People who drink wine are not the
same kind of people who smoke weed.”
WHAT ABOUT THE DROUGHT?
Experts are only guessing at what Prop. 64 may or may not do to or
for the environment. One result might be that the illegal growers in the
Emerald Triangle will become legal and follow more environmentally
sound practices. A five-year delay before allowing larger farms to grow
marijuana would allow current growers a window to adopt new methods.
Once corporations have the opportunity to move in, it’s difficult to
see why they would limit their exploitation of the land, air, water, and
natural space.
Jim Hagedorn, the chief executive of Scotts Miracle-Gro, told
Forbes
in July that he wants to “invest, like, half a billion in the pot
business” and that the opportunity to invest in legalized recreational
marijuana is “the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in lawn and garden.” Such
statements are not exactly reassuring to small growers in Humboldt County.
“It tells you all you need to know when you learn that one of the
largest funders of the measure is Weedmaps, whose founder told
The Wall Street Journal that he wanted to be the ‘Philip Morris of pot,’ ” Jennifer Tejada, who chairs the California Police Chiefs Association’s Law and Legislative Committee, wrote in the
Chronicle on Sept. 25.
Since most polls show that Prop. 64 has a good chance at passing, the
real question is whether California will govern a billion-dollar cash
industry in an ethical, equitable, and environmentally sustainable way.
One safeguard against massive and immediate corporatization of
marijuana in Prop. 64 is the delay of five years for licenses to people
who plan to harvest 22,000 feet or more of marijuana. However, the more
pressing question is: Where exactly will large corporations grow their
product, and, most importantly, where will they get their water?
A study done by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
found that the four major watersheds in Northern California supply
water to between 23,000 and 32,000 marijuana plants. These illegal grows
can suck approximately 200,000 gallons of water out of this vital
watershed per day.
Supporters of Prop. 64 hope that legal growers will avoid all of the
bad practices of illegal growers, which include driving huge water
trucks up and down old logging roads; causing erosion in streams and
harming endangered salmon populations; diverting streams from ancient
redwoods in order to feed thirsty marijuana plants; and spraying
juvenile plants with rodenticide to protect them from rats, which then
end up in the bellies of owls and other raptors, which quickly
introduces poison into the food chain.
Gregory A. Giusti,
a University of California’s forest and wildlands ecology adviser for
Lake and Mendocino counties, is wary but not overwhelmed by the possible
environmental impacts of Prop. 64.
“Socially, Prop. 64 will be a huge change,” Giusti says. “As far as
the immediate environmental impact, six plants per person won’t mean
much more than six tomato plants per person. The neighbors may not like
the smell of the smoke. That’s all.”
According to Giusti, a smaller but more significant piece of legislation for the Emerald Triangle may be the Heritage Act in Mendocino County, which could allow much larger plots for medical marijuana.
“Marijuana is one more crop. The issue will always be how do we
measure — and anticipate — the cumulative effect of drawing more water
out of our rivers and streams?” Giusti says.
Taking up the wine industry analogy, Giusti believes it’s important
to note that water use became an issue with vineyards when advances in
technology led to drip irrigation. Although drip irrigation uses less
water, it can be used on hillsides, which allowed vineyards to expand
past their traditional environmental boundaries.
“The amount of water doesn’t matter as much as where the water is coming from,” Giusti adds.
If Big Weed does move in, corporations will want a consistent
product. Just like flowers or other kinds of commercial plants,
consistency almost always means large greenhouses. And, apart from the
oppressive heat of the desert, that means big greenhouses for marijuana
could be anywhere in California.
But Giusti doesn’t believe the big corporate rush is right around the corner.
California makes its money off of agriculture because it overproduces everything and then exports it. That’s how Big Ag makes a profit here, Giusti notes, so why would Philip Morris invest in
California weed, even after the five-year delay, knowing full well that
transporting it out of state would violate federal law?
NO FEDERAL GUIDELINES
Much will also be left up to local jurisdictions to figure out. Just
as the vague language of Prop. 215, which legalized medical marijuana in
1996, led to a boom in marijuana farms, vague language could lead to
all kinds of unintended consequences with Proposition 64.
Take the use of pesticides, for example.
Since marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug by the federal
government, with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential
for abuse,” there are no federal guidelines governing which pesticides
to use on marijuana. Without those guidelines, it’s completely up to
California to test and approve pesticides for growers.
“It’s just one more layer of protection for people and the
environment that’s been peeled away,” Giusti says. “And we can’t forget
that marijuana is a very intimate product. People smoke it or eat it
directly into their bodies. It’s not like something that’s being sprayed
miles away and may or may not have some health effect.”
Scott Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, in Arcata, Calif. is also concerned about pesticide regulation.
“The overuse of pesticides is a real problem for our fish, and it’s also a problem for consumers,” Greacen says.
Greacen points to an investigation last year by
The Oregonian. “A combination of lax state rules, inconsistent
lab practices, and inaccurate test results has allowed pesticide-laced
products to enter the medical marijuana market,”
The Oregonian determined in June 2015.
And the wine industry comparison doesn’t sit well with Greacen either.
“It was the sudden and dramatic growth of the wine industry that
helped drive all the coho salmon in the Russian River to the brink of
extinction,” he adds.
Prop. 64 puts aside money for the cleanup of illegal cultivation
practices, but it makes no specific anticipation of any environmental
problems that will come with legalizing weed. According to the text of
the proposition itself, most of the new state and local tax revenues
would have “to be spent for specific purposes such as youth programs,
environmental protection, and law enforcement.”
The proposition breaks down the spending of new pot revenue as
follows: 60 percent for youth programs, 20 percent for public health and
safety, and 20 percent for cleanup of illegal marijuana grows. The
money that would fund all of this activity is largely dependent on how
many people decide to buy legalized weed, and according to Prop. 64’s
advocates, those numbers are unknown.
“What we see on the ground here is semi-truck after semi-truck
hauling soil and water up the hills to help grow marijuana,” Greacen
says. “That is not a best practice, to say the least.”
Greacen feels the argument that the weed industry will never be as bad as Big Tobacco or Big Oil is just not good enough.
“We’re driving salmon extinct up here,” he remarks. “Can’t we do better than just trying to prevent extinction?”
Greacen is clear that he has nothing against marijuana itself, just
the development that comes along with it, such as setting up small,
intensive agricultural operations in isolated landscapes in a pristine
environment very vulnerable to erosion.
What has caused the most trouble in the Emerald Triangle area,
Greacen says, has been all the logging. Before the ecosystem really had
time to recover, the marijuana industry moved in. It’s been a one-two
punch.
Another disturbing aspect of Prop. 64 for environmentalists is
grandfathering in some illegal growers if they get their permits.
Allowing growers to keep the plots they have cultivated for years,
perhaps generations, has grand local appeal. And there will be
incentives for these plots to be moved to less environmentally sensitive
areas. But, like most big, unwieldy pieces of legislation, how people
will respond — or not respond — to the law remains to be seen.
And when those who are being asked to comply have made their living
breaking the law, it’s not just a change in the law that’s being asked
for. It’s a complete change in the culture.
Many current growers have no interest in passing Prop. 64 because
they prefer the current system of medicinal marijuana legalization that
helps keep the farms smaller and more manageable.
A QUESTION OF SCALE
No matter which side one chooses, there’s no denying the facts: Marijuana needs lots of water.
And most important in drought-stricken California, marijuana plants
tend to need lots of water: A single, mature plant can consume up to six
gallons a day, double that of a typical grapevine.
Tony Linegar, Sonoma County
agricultural commissioner, shares the environmental concerns about Big
Weed. But he’s hoping his county, as well as others, will establish best
practices for medical marijuana cultivation that can be used as a model
when Big Weed is allowed to really move in.
“My main concern when the ‘big boys’ move in is the impact that
adding a whole other cash crop will have on California’s existing
agriculture,” Linegar notes. “What will be the added stress on natural
resources? No one really knows.”
He’s hopeful that the “layers and layers of restriction” for medical
marijuana will certainly dissuade only the most serious and committed
businesses from becoming involved.
Linegar also believes Sonoma’s climate can do for marijuana what it
does for grapevines. “We have the warm days and the cool nights. The
cool nights help the plant tissues harden off. I see this as a boutique
wine country for cannabis.”
Even if Prop. 64 does an immaculate job of replacing illegal growers
with more environmentally friendly growers, that’s only the cultivation
part that is both legally registered and out in the open (as opposed to
cultivation done in growhouses). Since Prop. 64 would allow anyone over
21 to grow up to six of their own plants, there seems to be an incentive
for just about anyone to convert their closets into a weed farm with 24
hour lamps to speed growth — and put a large stress on California’s
already stressed power grid.
As Greacen told
Capital and Main‘s Judith Lewis Mernit
in late August, “The rules are being written by people with long
histories in the property-rights movement. They have zero interest in
environmental protection.”
Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of
Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know, believes any environmental impact will be short-lived.
“First of all, 10,000 acres of land would be more than enough to
provide marijuana for the entire country at its current level of use,”
Caulkins explains.
The bigger footprint, he believes, would be from the indoor grows
because of the high electricity use by those who would blast lumens on
their hidden crop to get as much bud as quickly as possible.
The issue for Caulkins is the near term, not the long term. “I
predict national legalization of marijuana is 10 to 15 years away. In
the meantime, the black market can thrive in California by supplying
other states. The portion of that production that comes from guerrilla
growers on public lands tends not to care as much about the
environmental impact of how they grow their stuff.”
Once marijuana is legalized, though, the worries about any
environmental impact of marijuana on the redwoods or streams or animals
of the Emerald Triangle will be moot, Caulkins adds, saying there just
won’t be any reason to grow weed there.
As far as any interstate restrictions, states’ special powers over
the interstate alcohol trade were granted by the constitutional
amendment that repealed Prohibition. When marijuana is legalized
nationally, there won’t likely be any constitutional amendment and
corresponding powers.
After national legalization, if Midwestern farmers get over their
hang-up about marijuana cultivation, the crop could be mechanized, as is
done for hemp and extracts in some countries. Instead of fields of
wheat, the Missouri River delta, a climate where marijuana is most
ideally suited, could have fields of tender bud.
As Caulkins told KQED n September: “In the long run, I think we’re
going to wonder why we thought it was a good idea to create a corporate
sector for promoting use of another dependence-inducing intoxicant.”
In the final analysis, it mostly feels like a question of scale. In
the best case scenario, Prop. 64 creates an environmentally sustainable
business by replacing the currently illegal $1 billion industry with a
legal $1 billion industry. In the worst case scenario, part of the
illegal industry is pushed further into the redwoods, and the
environment is forced to sustain both the legal and illegal industries.
If a redwood doesn’t get water from an illegal or legal operation, why does it matter to the redwood?
One option to replace illegal growers with legal ones seems to be to
create something like a boutique, organic wine market that does not use
pesticides. The idea is that people will pay for a safe, plant-friendly
product, and that the illegal growers will simply be run out of
business.
But Scott Greacen remains unconvinced by that marketing strategy.
“The majority of wine sold today is Gallo, and the vast majority of beer
sold is Budweiser,” Greacen told
Capital and Main. “And the people who buy Gallo don’t care about the lack of salmon in Napa’s streams.”
Even Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Committee that studied the impact of
legalizing recreational marijuana recognized that the transition from
illegal to legal cultivation would not be quick or easy.
“Illegal
cultivation,” the committee found, “especially trespass grows on public
and private land, will remain a problem that deserves attention even
after legalization.”
Proponents of Prop. 64 continue to point to the overflowing coffers
of Colorado and Washington as the main reason for passage. In a perfect
world, California would wait 10 years and see how the Colorado and
Washington experiments play out. But corporate interests have a way of
winning over the slow, methodical science needed to protect the planet.
At the very least, most experts argue California should follow
Washington’s model and not Colorado’s.
Colorado’s challenges will not be California’s, though. Most of
Colorado’s municipalities opted out of allowing marijuana, with Denver
and Boulder becoming the de facto bases — and therefore the object of
not just the scorn of the rest of the anti-marijuana state but also
Colorado’s upset neighbors — Oklahoma and Nebraska, which are suing
Colorado in federal court because of the increase in drug traffic over
their borders. They charge that Colorado’s law, Amendment 64, was
“devoid of safeguards.” And approximately half of Colorado’s cannabis
businesses failed within a year and half, according to the state’s
Liquor and Cannabis Board.
Both Washington and Colorado have what California does not, namely,
more open spaces for cultivation and, in the case of Washington, a
reliable source of water.
