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Outlaw weed comes into the light
Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold
For decades shorthand for outlaw culture and the great dope it produces, Humboldt County is facing a harsh reckoning with marijuana now legal in California. The future? Think Napa Valley.
Link to tweet
Outlaw weed comes into the light
Humboldt County, the heart of California’s dark marijuana economy, is facing a new market force: legalization.
Story by Scott Wilson Photos by Bonnie Jo Mount
MARCH 16, 2018
ARCATA, Calif.
The quaint town plaza here is lined with locally owned stores, their names and products recalling the post-Flower Power migration from San Francisco decades ago: Moonrise Herbs, Heart Bead, Hemp Recycled Solutions.
The shops trade largely in cash with customers who are paid in cash — the marijuana growers, distributors and “trimmigrants,” seasonal workers who cut back the flowering plants for market each autumn. But business is stalling as marijuana’s dark cash economy comes into the light, pushed by the state’s legalization of the drug earlier this year.
Humboldt County, traditionally shorthand for outlaw culture and the great dope it produces, is facing a harsh reckoning. Every trait that made this strip along California’s wild northwest coast the best place in the world to grow pot is now working against its future as a producer in the state’s $7 billion-a-year marijuana market.
A massive industry never before regulated is being tamed by laws and taxation, characteristically extensive in this state. Nowhere is this process upending a culture and economy more than here in Humboldt, where tens of thousands of people who have been breaking the law for years are being asked to hire accountants, tax lawyers and declare themselves to a government they have famously distrusted.
....
Humboldt County, the heart of California’s dark marijuana economy, is facing a new market force: legalization.
Story by Scott Wilson Photos by Bonnie Jo Mount
MARCH 16, 2018
ARCATA, Calif.
The quaint town plaza here is lined with locally owned stores, their names and products recalling the post-Flower Power migration from San Francisco decades ago: Moonrise Herbs, Heart Bead, Hemp Recycled Solutions.
The shops trade largely in cash with customers who are paid in cash — the marijuana growers, distributors and “trimmigrants,” seasonal workers who cut back the flowering plants for market each autumn. But business is stalling as marijuana’s dark cash economy comes into the light, pushed by the state’s legalization of the drug earlier this year.
Humboldt County, traditionally shorthand for outlaw culture and the great dope it produces, is facing a harsh reckoning. Every trait that made this strip along California’s wild northwest coast the best place in the world to grow pot is now working against its future as a producer in the state’s $7 billion-a-year marijuana market.
A massive industry never before regulated is being tamed by laws and taxation, characteristically extensive in this state. Nowhere is this process upending a culture and economy more than here in Humboldt, where tens of thousands of people who have been breaking the law for years are being asked to hire accountants, tax lawyers and declare themselves to a government they have famously distrusted.
....