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--
