Californian town goes to pot over marijuana cultivation
The smell of marijuana hangs in the air in Arcata, California, a pleasant and well-kept town of 17,000 residents and 6,000 students.
A decade ago the town voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 215, a ballot resolution across California that meant the drug could be grown legally by patients with serious illnesses such as cancer and Aids. The vote gave the state the most relaxed medical marijuana laws in America.
It can also be grown on their behalf by licensed "dispensaries" and sold to those whose doctors say they need it. But now there is a growing backlash.
Angry residents are questioning why the town has four officially approved medical cannabis sales outlets, compared with just two ordinary pharmacies for all Arcata's other health needs.
A dispensary worker in Arcata tends an indoor medical cannabis crop. Here in the UK he would be committing a crime which carries a 14 year prison sentence. Its time the UK got with the program..
They are even more irate about the way that illicit marijuana growers and dealers have quietly moved in, converting up to 1,000 homes into illegal "grow houses".
Some of Arcata's dispensaries are accused of paying little heed to whether their patients are genuinely sick, or have just obtained a dodgy doctor's note from a $200 "consultation".
In one dispensary, a range of different marijuana products with names such as Brain Wreck and Purple Haze are on display – often bought by healthy-looking college students.
The dispensaries operate a sliding rate for clients, depending on income and disability, but the usual rate is $40 (£20) for an eighth of an ounce.
The drug is generally smoked as a "joint" or through a pipe, although some prefer to ingest it in cakes.
At least one dispensary provides menthol-flavoured cannabis lozenges and marijuana inhalers made from products distilled from the leaves for those who might need or want to take their hit more subtly – at the office, for example.
One, the Humboldt Co-operative, which operates out of a disused car dealership, has 6,000 registered patients across northern California, 2,000 of whom buy the drug regularly.
Carla Ritter, the general manager, said: "Whether someone is using marijuana for medical or recreational reasons can be a difficult call, but we make all the checks required that a patient has a doctor's recommendation."
Kevin Hoover, the crusading editor of the Arcata Eye, says he has had death threats since launching a campaign against the town's flourishing illicit grow houses.
"We are attached to our liberal heritage here and there is widespread support for medical marijuana," he said.
"But what is happening now is all about profiteers and greed. Our residential neighbourhoods are being turned into industrialised drug production zones."
The scale of the problem only became clear after fires caused by shoddy wiring broke out in two grow houses. There has also been a spate of armed robberies by cannabis thieves and an influx of outsiders with pit bull dogs and what locals describe as threatening attitudes.
Arcata's residents, who once turned a tolerant blind eye to the hippies and travellers attracted by their region's world-famous crop, are now banding together against the new invasion. Wade DeLashmutt, a carpenter and lifelong resident, exposed a neighbour who was illegally growing 600 cannabis plants.
He said: "We've let criminals into our town and nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. We're a very liberal community and the wrong people have taken advantage of that in a big way."
The mayor, Mark Wheatley, said that residents had been shocked by the surge in crime. He added: "Arcata is a highly tolerant community, but we have now reached the tipping point. People have had enough.
"As a community we need to make clear to these people that they are not welcome."
Improvements in technology mean that each grow house can easily produce more than 100lb of processed marijuana from four harvests a year.
The illicit pot is sold for about $3,000 (£1,500) a pound, and is usually shipped to buyers around San Francisco, Los Angeles and farther afield.
The town's police chief, Randy Mendosa, is alarmed that his sedate town is rapidly gaining an unsavoury reputation. But he acknowledged that he did not have the resources to stop the grow houses.
He said: "As a community, we need to make clear to these people that they are not welcome. There was a perception that Arcata was a safe place to come and conduct their marijuana enterprises, and that they were within the law. They are not.
"The problem in Arcata is outdated liberal policies and a shortage of law enforcement personnel. You are seeing the end result, but I think the pendulum is finally swinging in the other direction – and about time. It's not an issue of politics and medicine. It's all about greed and crime."
At a hearing last week into abuses of the loosely-drafted law, the most moving testimony came from 42‑year-old Brenda Saavedra.
She was pushed into the room by her husband Michael in a wheelchair and uses marijuana to ease the pain and discomfort from Huntington's Disease, an incurable disorder of the central nervous system.
The couple were worried that the backlash might hit their ability to seek help.
"Our support group consists of the medical marijuana dispensaries and the compassionate souls who staff them," she said in a voice slurred by her condition.
"They are truly having a wonderful effect on our lives."
Stop the swinging pendulum - control & regulate actively - get rid of the grey areas, control & licence mass-production farming. It can be done for regular pharmacies, it should be possible for pot dispensaries.
Cannabis News 
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