Humboldt County worries about life after legal pot

[Dave Monroe]

Humboldt County worries about life after legal pot

(AP) – 5 days ago

EUREKA, Calif. — Marijuana growing has long been a way of life in
Humboldt County, especially in recent years as timber and fishing jobs
have disappeared along California's North Coast.

Now some residents worry that their way of life is being threatened —
not by law enforcement, but by efforts to legalize marijuana in the
state.

Community members are gathering Tuesday night to consider the
consequences. They worry about the ripple effect that a drop in
marijuana prices could have on the county as a whole if legalization
undermines the black market.

"We have to recognize that if we have something that is this big a
piece of our economy that is subsidized by being illegal, that this is
an unsustainable situation," Humboldt County Supervisor Mark Lovelace.

In recent years, anti-drug agents have seized hundreds of thousands of
marijuana plants in the county, mostly from massive gardens in remote
mountain forests that have earned the region the nickname Emerald
Triangle. Law enforcement estimates put the street value of the crop
in the billions of dollars.

The eradication efforts have not halted marijuana growing in Humboldt,
but the number of plants seized does give a sense of the scale of the
industry.

Meeting organizer Anna Hamilton of Shelter Cove said she believes
legalization could be "devastating" to the region and that Humboldt
County should plan ahead by capitalizing on its name recognition as a
marijuana destination.

"We have to embrace marijuana tourism, marijuana products and services
— and marijuana has to become a part of the Humboldt County brand,"
said Hamilton, who describes herself as "intimately involved" with the
marijuana industry.

Supporters of a ballot measure to legalize marijuana in limited
quantities are still waiting for official word that they've submitted
enough signatures to qualify for the November statewide ballot.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMqcgW7kl-JhAG7ULtauWrlEtqngD9EJUOL00

Cf., e.g., ...

Last week I threw a pie at someone's Momma,
Last night I threw a party for my mind,
Last thing I knew that 6:02 was screamin' over my head,
Or it might've been th' 11:59...

[Refrain]:

Too many chain-link fences in the evening,
Too many people shiverin' in the rain,
They tell me that you finally got around to have your baby,
And it don't look like I'll see your face again.

Sometimes I wanna go back north, to Humboldt County--
Sometimes I think I'll go back to east, to see my kin...
There's times I think I almost could be happy,
If I knew you thought about me, now and then ... (GR, Pt. IV, p. 740)

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_music_blowtorch.html

Orwell's 1984 was about Communism; Pynchon's book looks at home-grown
American totalitarianism: Nixon/Reaganism. Vineland is set in 1984
partly to make the Orwell connection, but also because that was one of
the heaviest years of the CAMP anti-marijuana campaign in northern
California: a small-scale version of Vietnam with helicopters and
soldiers invading Humboldt and Mendocino Counties. Pynchon sees CAMP
as a paradigm of how bad things have gotten, how far fascist forces
have dragged us from the American ideal of personal liberty.

[...]

 The heaviest Federal/CAMP attack ever on Humboldt County marijuana
growers occurred in August, 1990.

[...]

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/intro.htm

You know you're in Humboldt County if ...

http://news.humcounty.com/You_Know_Youre_In_Humboldt_County.html