VA: Marijuana An Economic Opportunity For Our Region

Ron Strider

Well-Known Member
I remember when my aunt and uncle had a 2-acre allotment of tobacco. I didn't understand then, but growing small allotments of burley tobacco was in its twilight, becoming decreasingly profitable for years. My aunt and uncle stopped growing in 2006, as did most everyone else.

The death of small allotment tobacco finally occurred with Congress's passage of The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act in 2004. Ostensibly aimed at creating more jobs, this Act deregulated the tobacco market. But the "Tobacco Buyout" replaced the nearly 70-year-old Agricultural Adjustment Act and ended small allotment tobacco farming.

Now, cigarettes are more taboo, and pot is increasingly legally and morally acceptable. Marijuana has become an economic and entrepreneurial opportunity, no longer simply a problem to be suppressed by throwing tax dollars at it.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 29 states and the District of Columbia have decriminalized marijuana. Possession is either a criminal misdemeanor with no jail time or not punishable. Nine of these states have gone on to legalize the adult use of marijuana and its personal cultivation. Several other state legislatures are debating whether to decriminalize or legalize marijuana for medical and/or recreational uses.

Around our region, North Carolina has decriminalized small amounts of weed. Neither Virginia nor Tennessee are seriously grappling with the changing legal and moral status of marijuana, though Virginia did recently lessen the punishment of marijuana possession. Morgan Griffith of Virginia's 9th district and Phil Roe of Tennessee's 1st district have both given modest support to medical marijuana. Roe, for example, introduced House Amendment 748 in 2014 that prohibited federal agencies from preventing states from authorizing the use of medical marijuana. Griffith introduced the Legitimate Use of Medicinal Marijuana Act the same year.

In the mountains of Central Appalachia, though, congressional and state representatives are still rather aggressively fighting the "war on drugs." In 2012, local, state and federal police agencies confiscated over $1.5 billion in marijuana, and 500,000 plants were seized in Kentucky alone in 2016. To put this in context, Tennessee and Kentucky were among the top three growers of marijuana in the country. North Carolina and West Virginia were also in the top ten.

Consider how much marijuana the police are not confiscating. The extraordinary amount confiscated may indicate that a lot more weed is grown in Appalachia, suggesting that marijuana is likely one of the region's largest exports. The absence of political will to initiate policy developments like other states is matched by a presence of local will to grow in the hills, mountains and steep valleys that make up central Appalachia.

A majority of average folks support some positive legal change to the prohibition against marijuana in part because the plant is less morally reprehensible. When referendums or initiatives on the decriminalization or legalization of weed have been up for a vote in other states, they usually pass. In states with marijuana-related ballot measures in 2016, for example, voters approved eight out of nine.

In Arizona, medical marijuana is legal. Its cultivators are highly regulated and produce small allotments, which they sell to state-sanctioned distributors.

In Michigan, medical marijuana is also legal. Patients can grow up to 12 plants; their caregivers can grow more. A new law going into effect this December will create a closely regulated but much bigger market for growing marijuana.

Several states have legalized marijuana for adult use. Maine residents can grow their own marijuana, but it cannot be publicly smoked. Instead, the state law plans to regulate and license social clubs where, instead of alcohol, people can buy and consume marijuana. With this legislation, Maine is entering a marijuana market, including weed tourism, that is worth billions of dollars annually.

These changing marijuana laws remind me of Virginia's comparatively strict liquor laws that were legislated after the liquor prohibition ended in 1933. The state still controls liquor and has a monopoly on wholesale and retail sales through 367 ABC stores located across the commonwealth. Laws and morals have evolved with alcohol, and also with weed.

Imagine small allotments of state-regulated and licensed marijuana cultivation in Southwest Virginia or Northeast Tennessee. Imagine state-regulated, licensed and taxed XYZ pot social clubs in Southwest Virginia or medical marijuana dispensaries in Johnson City.

Small farmers could grow pot under state-regulated conditions today like they once grew tobacco. Transformations in the legal and moral status of marijuana have created economic opportunities for our region.

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