Marijuana Farmers Of Northern California's Emerald Triangle

Katelyn Baker

Well-Known Member
Proposition 64 contains important sentencing reforms that eliminate or reduce most adult use and cultivation marijuana offenses. There are many illegal "grows" that make up Northern California's Emerald Triangle, a marijuana-producing mecca at the intersection of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity Counties.

The proposal has deeply divided marijuana farmers in the heart of Northern California's pot-growing region.

- Changes state marijuana crimes and penalties.

In this Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016 photo, Nikki Lastreto trims "little buds" from last season's harvest at her home near Laytonville, Calif. Lastreto and her husband, Swami Chaitanya, who grow their "Swami's Select" medical ma. I spent many years going into schools to educate our youth about the ill effects of tobacco, and I can see no benefit in legalizing a drug to get high on that would most assuredly have ill effects on this same population.

"If we wait, we will fall behind", says Swami Chaitanya, 73, a longtime grower in remote Mendocino County whose ranch is situated in a peaceful meadow of Hindu statutes and marijuana plants 5 miles down a tooth-rattling dirt road.

Proposition 64 will alleviate California's overburdened criminal justice system and directly roll back America's failed War on Drugs.

Others say it's time to end criminalization and make sure California doesn't fall behind. It ends the wasteful of expenditure of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year in California on the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of nonviolent, marijuana-only offenses.

Nonetheless, Costa and others said, it's only a matter of time before other brands such as those named for singer Willie Nelson and comedians Cheech and Chong move in, upending a tight-knit community accustomed to doing business on its own terms.

At harvest time, most farms follow the same general routine: Workers cut bud-bearing branches from plants that can reach as high as 16 feet.

A conservative, back-of-the-envelope estimate is that each marijuana plant yields 1 pound of bud. One pound of Northern California marijuana fetches anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 wholesale.

The drug often changes hands several times, getting marked up repeatedly, before it's consumed.

Proposition 64 aims to regulate - and tax - that entire supply chain. The New York Times article reports that even though 57 percent of Americans believe marijuana should be legalized, some scholars caution that legalization is "very much a shot in the dark, a vast health experiment".

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News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Marijuana Farmers Of Northern California's Emerald Triangle
Author: Joanne Flowers
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Photo Credit: Evan Amos
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