Mandatory Marijuana

To be clear, there is no violence associated with marijuana use.  Not even traffic accidents.  Indeed, one of the many battles that will develop due to legalization is the issue of impairment while driving.

You can't make this stuff up, but our own NTSB did a study in Amsterdam on the comparable effects of marijuana on driving performance.. Their findings held across all groups no matter how much marijuana had been consumed.  Here is the key sentence, buried deep in please-don't-cut-our-funding jargon about "lateral tracking" impairment and other scary phrases: "THC's effects on [driving impairment] were equal to or less than that of BAC = 0.07 %. "

That is, massively stoned automobile drivers perform as well as legally sober drivers under the law in all 50 states, where the BAC cutoff is .08%  Full report here.

The science indicates people over-compensate for marijuana's effects behind the wheel.  Just like Cheech and Chong taught us-- *

Marijuana is a better drug.  It may in fact not be a drug at all, but a key regulator in our health.

It would be unconstitutional, but check Bill Hicks' argument for mandatory marijuana. Skip to 3:20 for the relevant bit--

Back later this week.  Peace--
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* For the record, the stoner stereotypes portrayed by the comedy pair may have done more damage to the movement than anything else. But their satire was mistaken for fact by the squares controlling policy.  Chong did time in Federal prison for selling glass pipes on the internet, and has long appeared at pro-pot events.  Cheech Marin isn't as upfront about it anymore, but he still supports the weed.

Oh, the Irony, Part IV

There is not much else to relate regarding Les Crane's inauspicious arrival to Mendocino County, meteoric rise, founding of a marijuana church, and violent end that has not already been well-covered by local press. Suffice it to say that suddenly, unsurprisingly, no one wanted to talk to me about marijuana as religious sacrament anymore.*  

But the story of not meeting the minister explains how I was able, for the better part of five years, essentially to play anthropologist, living and working among what are accurately described as the secretive pot-horticulturalist tribes in the State of Jefferson, a place in many ways more difficult to access than the Amazon rainforest, or the Indonesian island whose inhabitants knew about the 2004 tsunami days in advance, and attacked the civilized "rescuers" arriving in the aftermath, pointing out they, the alleged primitives, had lost not a single life.
 
And I suppose you could be forgiven (after reading Parts I, II, and III) if you thought I was about to argue that marijuana legalization will end violence...because Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly murdered mostly for market share, that as more states decriminalize, permit medical use and outright legalize, supply will increase, prices fall, and violence fade away--

I do believe that worldwide legalization could accomplish this. 

But the more I investigate--both in the stacks, as it were, and on the ground, the more I believe the black market for marijuana isn't going anywhere soon.  The current state, county and local laws, even as they trend overall toward legalization, remain a hodgepodge of total legality, total bans, and everything in between.  Colorado, for example, arguably the "legalest" state in the nation, nonetheless permits cities and towns to ban marijuana businesses entirely, and is contiguous with many states where pot remains Very Illegal Indeed.  In Illinois, medical marijuana start-up costs are literally in the millions, guaranteeing no one but corporate industry and investors will get in.  These are hardly the people any knowledgeable consumer wants growing the latest iteration of Monkey Balls, and Denver is barely twelve hours away by car...

Put another way, there are still multiple borders--within states, between states and between nations--over which illicit money will be made, and some violence will inevitably follow--for decades to come. 


Here in Oregon, pot may well become fully legal this fall.  Whether that happens or not (and here's a hondo that says it won't, this time) the black and legitimate medical and recreational markets will either reach detente-- or the regulated industry will clamor for officials to crack down on their unregulated counterparts.  

I am trying to convince the people who have been producing high-quality marijuana for generations, learned folks who have a dozen or more varieties for every microclimate on their land, one for the riverside, another for the north slope, the flat, and under the trees...these hermits and hippies--our true marijuana experts--must step into the light long enough to become part of the legitimate system. They must be there already when the real money figures out a way around certain regulatory impediments, like those effectively requiring Oregon ownership--so they will be in a position to be bought out--

And so they can refuse.

Wish me luck. 
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*I am also happy to report that religious DMT use is on the upswing, so perhaps, as Terence McKenna believed, there is hope for humanity--

Sorry

for the delay.  Certain survival items must occasionally be tended to. Kinda like Bobby Newmark  straddling the squishy border between cyberspace and meatspace.

Be back soon, hopefully tomorrow--where we will strive mightily to Tie This All Together, and conclude  that a certain level of assimilation --and thus destruction of the culture I've been describing--is unavoidable.

Peace.

Oh, the Irony, Part III

Through an adrenaline blur:

The helicopter blocks the head of the vertiginous trail to the river as it rotates slowly, silhouetted in sun above the south-slope stumps.  I am alone on the ground. The pilot is spinning into view, brightly lit in the bubble, but he's looking to the south/right, chattering into the headset, grim-faced behind aviator shades. I don't know if he sees me run for the north ledge to his left and leap off, recalling too late just how high that is. I twist around in midair, spreadeagled, graceless--and hit the edge hard, scrabbling in sandals and shorts, (is the pilot laughing?) then bounce and slide off bramble and rock to the switchback a dozen feet below.  I stagger upright, gasping in the sudden silence, then sprint the twisting, half-mile descent to the swimming hole, dodging boulders and scree, hopping roots of ancient madrone and Ponderosa Pine. I shriek a ragged warning every time I careen around a bend, in case the women are headed back up--

Chopper! Fucking CAMP!---

As trees give way to riverbank I can see several manicurists--I hadn't yet learned names--lolling on a sunny expanse of flat granite above the water. I stop at its edge. Even through blind animal panic, I can't help but notice the lithe beauty arranged before me, and wonder again at the numbers of rock-climbers, surfers, snowboarders and so on who comprised so much of that workforce.* Everyone else is swimming, and the rush of rapids that begin just downstream means they haven't heard a thing--

You made it! 

It's Spirit, peering up from the water, bobbing just below my feet.  She slicks back her hair, then she's pulling herself out fast and coming towards me, Omigod, what's happened to you?

My legs and heaving chest are covered in a sweat-sheen of blood. I drip dark dollops onto the rock.

Her voice induces sunbathers to spring up and swimmers to clamber out, eyes wide, some hands flying reflexively toward mouths, then they're grabbing and easing me down to a towel on warm granite as I splutter between breaths about pilots and radios and We Gotta Get Outta Here--

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Hours later, the full moon limns the forest and mountains with silver as I sway slowly in place by the bonfire, surrounded by dancing and drumming.  I've taken a lot of kidding in the meantime, as the story of my wholly unnecessary mid-day heroics spreads among the guests.  A be-dreaded twenty-something drummer/grandson of a master grower named Resin Nate takes a break and hands me a Sherlock packed full of White Widow. I accept it with bandaged hands, and he lights it for me. Stay away from the hash, man, he grins. Stick to weed. 

I hold the smoke in, nodding my thanks, return the pipe--and give him the finger. He laughs, takes his hit, hands it back--

Isis, Spirit, everyone, really--readily forgave my glaring, city-boy naivete, because it was pretty clear I truly believed we were in danger, and I cut myself up lovely trying to warn them. Got a lot of hugs for that, which frankly hurt, but definitely eased the sting of foolishness:

It was not CAMP, Isis assured me again in the bathroom as she cleaned my wounds, smells of soap and iodine and tea tree oil wafting around me. It was the power company. They have to inspect the lines, and they do it by air, especially through this terrain. 

She applied tape to a gauze pad and smoothed it over a butterfly-sutured gash on my ribs. And they love growers...'cause we pay huge power bills--on time.   

But if it was them, after all? I asked, wincing.  Won't they send somebody?

No.  No chance. CAMP doesn't care about us--they're ordered to ignore licensed grows. So even with the indoor plants--I'll show you those tomorrow--we're way under the limit. We're simply too small for them to bother.**

Unable to drum and too sore to dance, I wait instead for natural crescendos to build in the rhythm, then simply howl along with everyone else through the peak.  This gets me to the midnight meal, which kills. After the berries and cream, and a bit of wine, I crash with Isis, next to the dying fire.

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The moon has dropped below the treeline; the stars fade into grey.  We lie on the double hammock, dozing in and out. I listen to her breath, to the mountain wind, to the strangely slow, pensive tapping of unseen pileated woodpeckers--

Did the minister ever show? I murmur at some point. I'm not sure if I'm speaking or dreaming.   But then Isis sighs, and sits up. 

No. I didn't know what to tell you, it was all rumors and crazy talk...

She climbs out of the hammock, and gracefully dons fleece as I'm rocked back and forth. I'm not alert enough to pick up on it yet. A few minutes later she wakes me again, coffees in hand, and a look on her face that says Pay Attention.

I swing my feet to the ground and accept a mug. Thus anchored, I take a sip. Okay. Tell me.

You've come down for nothing. I'm sorry. There can be no interview.

Well, he's being prosecuted, his lawyer probably nixed it.  But this trip is hardly for nothing--

She smiles faintly. Thank you, but--oh Gurn--he was coming, he really wanted to talk to you--but three nights ago--the night you left Oregon, he was robbed and murdered--

I'm surely awake now--

--and word is the church was specifically targeted--by someone they knew well.

Next: A Last Bit of Irony and My Training Begins in Earnest
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*I finally figured this out, years later: since the mid-1990s, working the Emerald Triangle harvest for two months could secure enough funds to surf and ski the rest of the year. Modern market realities dictate that, except for a very select few, this life is no longer possible.

**Astute readers will have noticed the last entry's link to the wiki on CAMP contained all data necessary to conclude I was just ignorant and paranoid.

Oh, the Irony, Part II

Or: Justice Roberts Sends me to Mendo

Maybe ten Septembers ago, I'm seated inside a large outbuilding on remote property in Mendocino County, California. A tiny farmhouse outside is tucked onto the flat of a knife-shaped, steep-sloped outcropping, the dead end of a private road that to this day does not exist on GPS. As I'll soon be reminded, the stumps of thirty cut marijuana plants visibly protrude on the slopes and flat around the house. Ten more still ripen on the north slope; easily twelve feet tall, expertly topped and drooping with colas.  They check the calyxes twice a day with a jeweler's loupe, and before clear trichomes turn milky or golden, the plant will be cut and hung in a room nearby.

Isis and Spirit, the sisters who own this place, sing to their plants often, but always at the full moon, which is tonight, and a bit of a happening.  Drummers will arrive before dusk and set up in the fields, a bonfire will be lit, joints and spliffs and hand-blown glass passed around.  A collective howl at sunset will start it off. Some women will drum and some men will dance, but mostly vice-versa, and everyone will sing or wail or ululate to the plants, and we'll mean it.  At midnight, we'll eat an organic feast of roasted roots: carrots, potatoes, beets and yams, with fresh berries and cream as the topper.  This dinner happens every month during the grow, with various menus, and is in fact integral to it.

Isis, my then-girlfriend, invited me here to meet a minister who claims that marijuana is his congregation's sacrament--that First Amendment religious guarantees mean the cops can't bust them for grass any more than they can roust Christians for wine, or Jews for anything kosher.  Timothy Leary tried this argument long ago, and it did not go well for him.  The courts of the day said, in coarse vernacular, fuck your religious freedom, marihuana [their archaic spelling] is toooo dangerous.* I did the research [I got skills], starting with modern cases and extending back to Leary, and no one had ever beaten a pot rap using religion.** 

The upstart church was already fighting criminal charges at the state level.  I called Isis to make the introduction because Chief Justice Roberts had just ruled--with a unanimous Court behind him, that a tiny religious group in New Mexico could import and manufacture a dimethyltryptamine [DMT] brew for its members--then pass the collection plate. In other words, the court allowed them to import, manufacture, distribute, and profit from this totally illegal, powerful hallucinogenic--

So long as it's for church. 

Because Congress identically classifies both marijuana and DMT as Dangerous Drugs With No Use Whatsoever, I'm understandably fascinated. I plan to interview the minister tonight, here on friendly ground--then write about it.

I ponder this as I sit alone in the outbuilding, trimming buds of Trinity.  They left some big, easy ones for me, humoring their guest, on a clean tray with a new pair of snips. The women (Isis, Spirit and not-quite-a-passel of skilled manicurists who return here from around the world at harvest like spawning salmon) have gone for a swim in the Russian River.  If I don't join them, past experience tells me they'll be back shortly in the late afternoon heat, dripping, mostly naked, to joke about my work and get high with me before prepping for dancing and dinner.  The attitude toward clothing here was simple: if you're hot, take it off.

I promise this didn't suck.  I promise I was relaxed as I have ever been, in that chair, waiting for beautiful women, with pounds of finished marijuana in turkey bags all around me, pounds more drying on racks in the next room, never mind the shotput-sized ball of finger hash I was just finishing a bowl of--when I heard the helicopter.

Now, the occasional helicopter/small plane flyby is not itself unusual near O and C territory; forests do burn, after all. But this helicopter's sound drew inexorably closer, then flew along the ridge, and now hovered low--almost directly overhead.

I had heard about CAMP raids--hell, pirate radio broadcasts the flyover schedule every day. So as I feel the rotor-thud in my chest, I envision black-clad tactical men dropping in on ropes, masked, weapons ready, fingers already inside trigger guards, sweeping the place. They see the outbuilding of course.  

They head for it, of course.

I rise, dumping the tray, and run in panic for the door.  The helicopter isn't going anywhere. It sounds like it might land--

Terrible truths race in parallel through my brain: I think it's best I go outside, hands raised (I'm white), and I simultaneously think if I'm wrong, at least my last look will be these mountains, this forest, even if my AR-15 bullet-ridden corpse is flashed everywhere by breathless news media, giving my parents and friends a very bad last look indeed--

The light is dim by the door, away from the worklamps of the trimming tables.  I heave it open, and step out where the chopper roars so close it nearly blots the sun--

Next: We Have Good News and Bad News, Gurn--and the Irony Ain't Over

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*If you care, the full legal opinion can be found here.
**A decade hence, you still can't.  But we're getting close.

A Very Quick One

to point out to my Burning Man friends I haven't seen since 2010--I love you all and we will meet again, somewhere...maybe even on the Playa.  

Oh, the Irony

I'm currently in Oregon hillbilly country, (that is, anything south of Hippietown), advocating for medical marijuana dispensaries before alarmingly hostile city and county councils.

Resistance to medical/legal pot in these parts is reported to come from the usual suspects: parents, conservative folk, and small-town, volunteer councils, backed and advised by Kochsuckers like the League of Oregon Cities.*  While the League has certainly proposed legislation that could allow local governments to permanently ban dispensaries, the most significant push-back on medical marijuana (and seemingly inevitable Oregon legalization in the fall) stems from--Surprise!--the existing underground industry. Because Oregon's economy has been devastated for decades by logging restrictions, many locals understandably turned to more lucrative crops.

Former students of Father Guido Sarducci well know that increased supply decreases price.  Emerald Triangle  industry people have much to lose...so of course these folks quietly voted with reefer-madness republicans against legalization in California in 2010.  Established growers in Oregon will likewise do what they can to maintain price.  Dispensaries and total legalization threaten their business model.  

But legalization looms and likely cannot be stopped. This will eventually draw the big bucks, an avalanche of corporate cash (and the lawyers that come with it) that can simply undercut and starve out the family-owned pot-farmer, replacing some of the best marijuana in the world  with industrial schwag.

I'm here to somehow prevent that from happening.  

How I got here, however, should be told first.
 
Next: A Murder in a Mendocino Church Lands Me a Job in the Industry

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*That marijuana is indisputably-beyond-debate medicine is a massive understatement.  The human body has so many receptors for the various components of the cannabis plant it is now known as the endocannabinoid sysytem...even the National Institutes of Health admits it.