IV potsmoking & M&D

[Doug Millison]

Thinking about the way the California marijuana culture has evolved  
since 1970, that year is something of a cusp.  Substantial numbers of  
hippie-minded folks had moved up north to Sonoma, Mendocino, and  
Humboldt counties and began cultivating pot for lifestyle purposes and  
as a cash crop.  Around this time, somebody noted the bit about female  
plants containing the psychoactive cannabinoids, learned to cull the  
males before pollination could occur:  sinsemilla!

Now comes the branching path. One fork leads to Proposition 215 and  
the current eco-system of State-licensed medical cannabis dispensaries  
and the slightly murkier legal area of City-approved growers to supply  
the clubs (Ed Rosenthal knows the legal ins and outs of that scene,  
unfortunately).  For these growers, the goal is to produce medicinal  
quality product - organic (no pesticides, which leave a taste),  
outdoor grown if possible because the plants get bigger and produce  
more and taste better having feasted on sunshine and fresh air, buds  
for which the picky pot club buyers will pay top dollar, and resell  
for premium prices.  A second tier of homegrowers purchases  
"clones" (cuttings from proven mother plants, rooted and ready to  
transplant) from the dispensaries ($12 each is the going price), to  
grow at home. This community of growers/consumers centered on the  
legal pot clubs is responsible for producing all manner of edibles  
(cookies, brownies, candies, oral sprays, tinctures, etc.),  
concentrates (hashish, pressed kif, jelly hash), buds, "shake",  
cannabutter & etc.  They tend to charge premium prices, too - last  
time I checked the average cost of a daily medicinal dose, at Berkeley  
Patients Group, was about $6.  That would buy a single edible, and  
that would be the cost per gram of the lowest grade smokable -- in  
either case, the approx. 1 gram daily that some experts have  
determined to be a therapeutic dose.

I've heard that in the town of Arcata, near Eureka up north, so many  
houses are given over to indoor growing (because the fog and low  
temperatures make outdoor cultivation problematic along the coast)  
that whole neighborhoods give off that skunky aroma.  People are  
growing both for personal use, and to supply the pot clubs, and some  
people are probably selling some of the excess (if any) to their  
friends.

Outside the legal pot club channel, it's the Wild West -- all the  
outlaw production that too often ruins public lands (pesticides,  
chemical fertilizers, irrigation ditch digging) and which CAMP  
pursues, going after the $200/ounce wholesale price that I've heard  
discussed as a baseline in illegal distribution channels, for decent  
but not the best highgrade sinsemilla.  With all the problems that  
come along with the transnational business of illegal, underground  
drugs.

IV presents a view of the a California scene as it was in 1970 ready  
to go down these branching paths. Vineland shows another view, at a  
later moment. I'm not finding, immediately here, the passage in M&D  
where a pot industry evolves in a huge marijuana plant (that's how I'm  
remembering it right now), but that may be worth looking at in the  
context of Doc's potsmoking in IV.