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Marijuana cultivation is a fact of life on the North Coast and Humboldt County ranks among the more attractive places to grow these particular crops. But what draws the marijuana growers here?
"There's the soil and altitude and all these things that has made it a great growing region," said Steve Bloom, senior editor of High Times magazine.
"We have the perfect growing climate here, perfect," said Dave, a Humboldt County resident who is involved in growing pot and asked to use a fictitious name.
Sgt. Wayne Hanson, of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department Drug Enforcement Unit, cites other reasons.
"Humboldt County always continues to be a problem because there's a large portion of the county where the economy's going to the south. With lumber and fishing dwindling away there's no major industry in Humboldt County anymore, so part of the population, I don't know what percentage -- and I'd hate to venture a guess -- has decided to grow marijuana because it pays up to $3,000 a pound." Hanson said.
Medical marijuana
On Nov. 5, 1996, more than 5.3 million Californians, 55.6 percent of those who went to the polls, voted in favor of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes. The law allows patients with recommendations from medical doctors to grow a certain amount of plants, which varies county to county, for their own personal, medicinal needs.
California Health and Safety Code section 11362.5 states that a person who qualifies with a legitimate doctor's recommendation can have up 10 plants, indoor or outdoor, or 2 pounds of processed marijuana.
"Medical's a complete victory, except for the federal government is trying to shut it down," Bloom said. "Ninety-five percent of the population is in favor of medical marijuana. For the rest of us who just want to have the privacy to smoke and do our thing, I think it was a big step."
Hanson said every medical marijuana case is investigated separately.
"Do we leave medicinal marijuana behind? Yes, we do," Hanson said. "Tuesday we did a search warrant in Highway 36 on two residences next door to each other. A search warrant for each house. The first residence the guy had 10 puny little marijuana plants. He said it was medicinal, lived by himself and that's all I saw. I left all the marijuana for his medicinal needs. The next house we had search warrant too, they had 12 marijuana plants, a little bit bigger. I arrested three people. The mother of the house, who was in her 40s, had a medicinal recommendation along with her boyfriend. She had a 17-year-old daughter in the house and a 16-year-old daughter. The 17-year-old had a 2-year-old son. By her own admission she (the mother) took it upon herself to hand marijuana to her 16- and 17-year-old to smoke whenever they wanted. To me it wasn't a medicinal marijuana issue, it was certainly child endangerment. I think society's getting numb. I mean what would society think if you gave a bottle of whiskey to your 17-year-old son?"
Hanson questions some of the medical recommendations he's seen.
"It's not up to me to argue the fact because I'm not a medical doctor, but I've seen numerous ones for PMS, I've seen it this year for bad teeth, for alcoholism," Hanson said. "When the voters of California voted in medicinal marijuana I think they were thinking of people suffering from AIDS and cancer. Only twice over the past three years have I investigated a case where someone was actually dying from AIDS or cancer. In both those cases I left everything."
Dave said doctors in Humboldt County recommended marijuana for years before Proposition 215.
"I was severely injured at one point in time and I had doctors tell my parents, before Prop. 215, that I may need to resort to marijuana, even though, at that time, they couldn't legally recommend it," Dave said. "Federal law still supersedes state and local laws and it is still illegal. Even though the state of California said you can smoke medicinal marijuana. I believe it should be legal. It's been used as a medicine for thousands of years, before Western medicine was even known."
"The Sheriff's Department honors 215," Hanson noted.
Smoking and growing
Damon Moreno put on the Humboldt Fall Harvest Bash on Oct. 11 at the Eureka Veterans Hall to show the unity among the marijuana smoking community.
"I decided to throw the bash to basically show that we could have a gathering based around that concept (marijuana) and shed some light," Moreno said. "With NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and Steve Bloom from High Times and cool groups like that bringing some information in and educating in a safe and legal way. I just wanted to prove we could do it in a safe and honest fashion. To give people a chance to get the information they normally don't get."
The Bash was a night of bands, pipe vendors and booths filled with literature against marijuana prohibition. More than 400 tickets were sold and there were no problems with police.
"Humboldt's laid back and everyone's smokin' the green," said local headshopclerk Damon Culver. Headshops sell smoking paraphernalia. "Everything stays in and contributes to the community, like glass blowing. It's too bad that they have to act like it's such a harsh thing." A lot of companies that make glass pipes and sell them throughout the world are based in Humboldt County.
Another Harvest Bash patron offered his view on the pot-smoking community.
"How come you never hear of any other drug users uniting and holding festivals?" an anonymous smoker said. "Where's methfest or heroinmania or crackapalooza? There's no harm with marijuana."
Dave has grown marijuana many different ways over his illegal career.
"It's a weed, it grows anywhere on the planet." Dave said. "It just depends on how well you want it to grow. The more you take care of it the better it will be. I know people who go into the forest sometime in August when it's the warmest, they find a damp spot, they throw it in the ground, come back three months later and they pick it. Or they start at the beginning of the year in April, go out there and check on it every week, water it every week, take care of it, prep it and make it the best it possibly can be. It all depends on how much ego you got involved. If you want to walk around and say 'I grew this and this is the best stuff around' you're all about that way. If you want to make a little money off it or have some free smoke, you don't really care."
He has also grown the drug indoors.
"With indoor growing there's a couple different varieties," Dave said. "You can either start all the plants at the same time, most the time they're started from a clone, and they're grown out and budding in two months or so. So it averages out to be a three-month cycle. Or you can put your plants on a cycle where you can harvest one plant every week or every so often, it all depends on your own personal cycle."
Dave warns that you don't want to go hiking in the woods in Southern Humboldt County because of the high concentration of marijuana gardens, which are either booby trapped, patrolled by armed guards or both.
"It's not a place you want to go joy riding," Dave said.
Running the numbers
Of the 40,000 marijuana plants destroyed by the Drug Enforcement Unit this year so far, 23,000 were found in 230 outdoor gardens and 17,000 in indoor grows.
Last year the unit destroyed a total of 60,000 plants, 40,000 outdoor and 20,000 indoor.
The Humboldt County Drug Task Force has confiscated 54 pounds of processed marijuana, 588 plants, mostly from indoor grows, and 1,010 grams of hashish. Hashish is the concentrated resin from a marijuana bud that's usually a byproduct after the buds are trimmed and cleaned.
Dave could only estimate the amount of marijuana that would come out of Humboldt County this year.
"The number I'm going say is going to sound asinine," Dave said. "Minimum estimate, 10,000 people grow in this county. Each person has a minimum of 10 plants but could have up to 10,000 plants. An outdoor plant done right can harvest anywhere between a pound and three pounds. So if they have 100 plants they can have 300 pounds per garden, that's $900,000. There are people with 55-gallon drums filled with money buried in the woods. Before CAMP came around, individual people would make multimillions of dollars a year."
According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws website, 12 million people have been arrested on marijuana charges in the United States since 1965. Also according to the website, Humboldt County ranked 13th among California counties in the number of marijuana-related arrests between 1995 and 1997.The top three counties were, in order, Colusa, King and Madera.
The future of marijuana
Some marijuana smokers don't think it will ever be legalized.
"Legal 100 percent? I really don't think they're ever going to do that," headshop clerk Culver said. "If they do, all they're going to do is tax the hell out of it and make it more of a pain ... than it already is. What are they going to do? Raise prices and try to control it more."
Some marijuana advocates think legalization is on the horizon.
"I just heard Keith Stroup from NORML give an interview and say 12 years. I don't know where he came up with that, but there's some gradual thing going that's changing," Bloom said. "There have been polls on CNN that show 75 to 80 percent of people are in favor of changing the laws around pot, and not just for medical.
"There's been setbacks. We expected a little more help from Clinton, you know, a baby boomer, and he really wasn't there for us and he got sidetracked on other things. And Bush, well he's kind of a closet drug user, so you can't really trust him" he said, without elaborating. "We don't have a lot of support in high places. There's some politicians in smaller spots but it's not on the bigger picture. I think it's amazing how people just refuse to give up as far as the struggle to change the marijuana laws and it's been going on a long time and passed on from generation to generation now.
"And it's frustrating for those who have been doing it a long time, but there's a whole new generation coming up and it's a whole new thing. It's like 'OK, we're going to change these laws.' They recognize the history, it's been a long time and let's do it now. There's a lot of momentum."
Some marijuana growers think that prohibition is financially motivated.
"When the government can make money off of it," Dave said. "When they can control it enough to make money off of it. They're making more money off of fighting it, they're making more money off sending CAMP out and telling people how much CAMP is taking every year. Then people are more willing vote on the things that are going to pay for CAMP, that's going to get CAMP more money for next year to try to get more."
Complete Title: Pot in Humboldt County: Climate Attracts Many Growers
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