http://www.salon.com/life/drugs/index.html?story=/mwt/pinched/2010/08/02/weed_for_the_recession
Squeezed by college debt and the recession, these Californians found
a way to get by -- unless it gets legalized
Aug 2, 2010
By J.B. Powell
It's harvest time in downtown Oakland.
"Paul" leads his roommate "David" (not their real names) into their
apartment's spare third bedroom. They are soon joined by their friend
"Adam," who has come to help with the evening's task. A
floor-to-ceiling curtain of thick white plastic partitions off a
corner of the room. Paul pulls back a part in the drape. Bright light
and warm, herb-smelling air pour through the opening. Inside the
enclosure, 18 mature members of California's largest cash crop crowd
each other. The plants, hybrids of the so-called Casey Jones and
Hindu Skunk strains, started off weeks earlier as tiny potted
cuttings. Now they are as tall as their growers and bristling with
dozens of sticky, hairy, cone-shaped buds.
The guys chat and sip beers as they snip branches from the plants and
carefully trim away excess leaves and stems. Later, Paul will hang
the pruned buds up to dry in a nearby closet. The work is slow and
tedious. Pretty soon, the small talk subsides. It's going to be a
long night. It's barely nine o'clock in the evening, and no one
expects to finish until well into the wee morning hours. Then comes
the hard part. They have to figure out how to sell the stuff.
All in all, Paul and David hope to reap a little over a pound of
dried, salable smoke from the crop. That's too miniscule a yield to
interest the local medical marijuana dispensaries, so they plan to
peddle their wares in smaller quantities on the black market, an
ounce or less at a time. For all of their efforts, and the legal
risks involved, Paul, David and a third partner who doesn't take part
in the daily operation of the business each stand to clear about a
thousand bucks after expenses. That's a thousand dollars in profit
for several weeks worth of work. Not exactly a windfall. But in these
tough times, Paul says he's happy to have any source of income.
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"For me, I'm just looking for this to help me pay rent, utilities,
basic things like that," the slender, bearded 27-year-old said. "Once
this gets going, it requires minimal day-to-day maintenance. It's
just starting it up that's hard, but I have time for that right now."
Like millions of his fellow Californians, Paul has a lot of extra
time on his hands these days, because he can't find a decent job. A
year ago, he never expected to be eking out a living as a small-time
cannabis grower and dealer. He had just graduated from a local
university with an advanced degree in one of the hard sciences. His
goal was to teach. But he made the mistake of finishing his studies
in the middle of an economic meltdown. He soon found himself sending
out résumés to schools that were cutting their staffs, not looking to
bring on new teachers just out of graduate school.
"The state took billions from public education, U.C., state and
community colleges," he recalled. "Obviously, that doesn't go hand in
hand with hiring new faculty."
After weeks of searching, the only job Paul could get was a part-time
gig serving coffee and making sandwiches at a local cafe. It paid
minimum wage. Then his third roommate decided to move out, opening up
a spare bedroom in the apartment he shares with David. The two
friends decided not to post the rental on Craigslist. Instead, they
chose to make a more lucrative use of the space.
First, Paul went out and paid $100 for a medical marijuana
prescription from a local doctor, claiming he suffered from knee and
back pain, as well as mild attention deficit disorder. In less than
hour, he had his "215 Card," named after 1996's Proposition 215,
which legalized medical pot. In Oakland, possessing a card allows one
to grow up to two dozen plants at a time for personal use. Next, Paul
went to a nearby cannabis dispensary and purchased 18 off-the-shelf,
ready-to-grow clones, or cuttings. Add some potting soil, lights and
some 3 mil plastic sheeting, and the boys were in business.
Eventually, they plan to combine their personal use allotments into a
medical cannabis "collective," allowing them to tend three times as
many plants. But make no mistake, while the growers may sample their
product from time to time, almost none of them will be for personal use.
"This is definitely a money-making operation," Paul confirmed. "At
least, we hope it is."
It is an open secret that many Californians pay for medical cannabis
prescriptions without necessarily needing them to treat serious
conditions. But a lesser known fact is that a good number of small
growers in the state use their scrips as cover to produce crops
destined for the recreational market. Given the drug's current
quasi-legal status in the state, particularly in Oakland, starting a
modest operation is just too tempting to pass up for many unemployed
young people like Paul or for others, like David, looking to make extra cash.
"It pretty much feels legal to me already here in Oakland," David
said. "I mean, I don't want the landlord to find out, but other than
that, I'm not scared."
Like his friend Paul, Adam is a 27-year-old with an advanced degree
from a well-known university. Unlike Paul, Adam was lucky enough to
land a decent job out of graduate school. But even with a steady
salary, the tall, Nordic-looking blond struggles to pay his bills
every month. He is a new father. His wife is in graduate school
herself now. And he is trying to pay down tens of thousands of
dollars in student loan and credit debt. For him, as for Paul and
David, the state's less-than-stringent medical marijuana laws and the
readily available supplies at local cannabis dispensaries made
growing part time an easy choice. He is currently using a
prescription for "joint pain" to tend 12 plants in his Berkeley home's garage.
"You can get your clones at any club for like 12 bucks," he
explained. "It's amazing, high-yielding weed that basically grows
itself. You don't have to do any of the traditional stuff like
breeding the best strains. You don't have to do any hybridizing. I
mean, I've never had to own a male plant."
At today's prices, each of those $12 clones can yield up to $400
worth of high-grade product. That's a serious rate of return, at
least on paper. But as farmers have known for thousands of years, the
three young growers have discovered that agriculture can be tricky.
Paul and David's plants took a month longer to ripen than expected.
Mold wiped out one of Adam's early crops. Then there is the even
larger headache of bringing their harvests to market and getting a
fair price for them, a process that could get even more complicated
in the coming months.
Polls show about a 50-50 chance that California voters will opt to
legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana statewide this coming
November. A recent Rand Study said that could drastically lower the
price of cannabis. Looking to maximize the tax revenues that a yes
vote on the legalization measure could bring, Oakland's City Council
just moved to allow the city to issue permits for Walmart-size weed
facilities that could flood the market with cheap, mass-produced bud,
bringing prices down even more.
But even before these initiatives, industry insiders say the going
rate for weed had been dropping steadily.
"Two years ago, I was selling pounds for $4,200. Now, I'm selling
those exact strains for $3,600 and I'm hearing guys grumble at paying
even that much," said "Henry," a 29-year-old broker for growers in
Humboldt and Mendocino counties. Henry regularly ferries large
wholesale shipments of pot to medical cannabis dispensaries in
Southern California.
"I don't know anybody in this business that's getting rich right
now," he went on. "I mean, you've got electric bills, water bills,
overhead. At the end of the day, a lot of these guys are busting
their asses just to break even. Guys who are doing these small-time
closet grows, I don't know how they're making it."
"Closet"-size growers like Paul, David and Adam answer that they're
making it by keeping their expectations low.
"I have a lot of expenses. Student loans, rent, childcare, credit
cards," Adam said. "Really, I'm just hoping that growing will help
free me up a little bit."
Not surprisingly, Adam plans to vote no on the November legalization
measure. For his part, Paul says he will vote yes, even if it does
stand to wipe out his new business venture.
"There's no doubt that an operation like this benefits from the black
market," he said. "I mean, it's still worth more than its weight in
gold right now. But if anybody can suddenly grow it, it'll probably
wind up worth about as much as tomatoes."
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