Americans grow cannabis to beat the recession

[JonLP24]

Some people cancel holidays abroad, others stage yard sales or start shopping at low-cost supermarkets. To that list must now be added a new way to get through economic hard times: grow cannabis.

Law enforcers on the west coast of the US and in the middle states straddled by the foothills of the Appalachian mountains are reporting a common trend. It is boom time for marijuana cultivation, and much of the incentive they say is to beat the recession.

So far this year, police in parts of the country where cannabis is traditionally grown have chopped down plants with a street value of $12bn. The core growing area is in California, Washington and Oregon to the west, but the Appalachian states of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are also witnessing an explosion.

More than 600,000 cannabis plants have been cut and burned in those states this summer, reversing a previous decline in production brought about by stringent law enforcement. It is not only the quantity of crop that is on the rise, the nature of the growers is also changing.

Ed Shemelya, who leads the marijuana eradication programme in the Appalachia region, says a new type of grower is emerging wholly different to the family cartels that have cultivated the drug for generations. "We are seeing a lot more individuals who wouldn't normally be growing marijuana. They are not your professionals."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/11/cannabis-recession

[saltpoint]

1. From a chicken in every pot to some pot in every kitchen.

What a good gig it must be to be the person who updates the Hints from Heloise series.

[Triana]

6. Heh. You funny!

:hi:

[saltpoint]

9. Hi, Triana.

It seems as if a country that allows MDs to hold stock in pharmaceuticals they prescribe to their patients would be a country where the same physicians would be arguing for the therapeutic benefit of marijuana in cancer patients, etc.

So far the AMA has been relatively quiet on the issue but in a sluggish recession, plus some old-fashioned stock greed, it could happen sooner than anybody thinks.

[Triana]

10. Twood be a good thing all around, IMO. n/t

[ShortnFiery]

11. ...

:smoke: :thumbsup:

[saltpoint]

18. --- ---

:hi:

[pipi_k]

16. My mom had one growing in her kitchen

although she never knew it.

My little brother had a pot plant growing on the windowsill and asked my mom to please take care of his "tomato plant".

She never had the greenest of thumbs, and she forgot to water it and it died and she felt awful for killing my brother's "poor tomato plant"


:rofl:

[saltpoint]

19. Yep. Those darn tomato plants. Ya gotta keep waterin' 'em or they'll

die on ya.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Like, wow.

[ixion]

3. ya know, what will it take to get us over the charade that humans don't enjoy smoking pot?

I mean, it's cultivated everywhere. People smoke it. Can we stop with the 'stringent' law enforcement that does nothing more than destroy people's lives, not to mentioned hundreds of thousands of perfectly smoke-able plants?

[rurallib]

4. That could give the economy a real boost

And the taxes from the sales could help pay for - I dunno - health care maybe?

[Mari333]

5. moonshiners did it.

they also have meth labs.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

12. Moonshiners still do it. I have three jars downstairs.

[Robb]

7. Interesting. If only HBO would create a series concerning this. nt

[G_j]

8. they should stop wasting our tax money on prohibition

all those helicopters cost a lot to operate.

[windoe]

13. Hemp for Peace

grown for centuries, such a good plant.

Trying to keep Cannabis away from humans is futile, and an expense we cannot afford.

[abumbyanyothername]

14. As near as I can tell the best I could do is

$2500 per plant. Perhaps 3 crops per year.

Not sure that is going to cut it for me.

As a non-user (clean and sober), I was sort of hoping I could convince myself that I couldn't support myself as a grower anyway.

[pipi_k]

15. I'm wondering how on earth they get away with doing it

I couldn't do it here even if I wanted to. We have small planes flying over all the time checking fields for the stuff. They especially concentrate on newly cleared fields. We had some logging done here about 8 or 9 years back and the planes flew over just about every day.

Oh, and besides that, the growing season is pretty short here so you have to get your "crops" in early if you want to see any decent growth.

Anyway, I'm surprised we didn't get raided by the ATF this past winter when our electric bill went up almost 100%. Turns out the meter "reader" was adding a few extra kilowatt hours onto the bill each month. I wouldn't blame them if they thought we had a little enterprise going on in the basement.

:scared:

[Pangolin2]

17. Why are they burning plants provided by God? In Genesis

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[kalli007]

20. You know, I really need glasses

because every time I see this thread I think it reads " Americans grow cannibals to beat the recession".....

[OneBlueSky]

21. I live in the lower Hudson Valley in NY, and cops in my county are using helicopters . . .

to scan for marijuana crops . . . apparently (according to the story I read) the stuff is fairly easy to see once you know what you're looking for, and in the past week they've busted four people for as few as six pot plants that were spotted from the air . . . seems like a huge waste of taxpayer dollars to me . . .