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Vice Blog

WEED DEALINGS - COVERING THE BASICS

So, you found last week's article to be boring? I can't say I blame you, but I'd fault you if that's all you took from it. It was complicated; sifting through web results written in the most cryptic of laboratory code, then finding a few abstracts that seem like they might be relevant; randomly email and call anyone whose contact info is attached to said articles (don't forget to show some level of comprehension for this cryptic doctor tale you just read so that they don't write you off as a total dope); manage to get in touch with someone, have to stay on them, then talk on the phone for an hour and not be awkward; take notes on what this very smart person—who usually talks to other very smart people—is saying, absorbing the material and asking questions; then, distill the essential parts, assimilate all of this information, determine how it's useful, and try to go about presenting it in a useful way to an audience that is probably not familiar with the material, or the concepts.

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It may have come off dry, but the form fit the content. As much as I love the exciting stuff it's all real stuff out here, so not every part of this is going to be exciting. But, if it's not exciting please trust that it's for a good reason. If it's boring you then check back next week, and I'm sure it'll bore you less. The longer I'm doing this the broader the basis for these things get. But, there's nowhere to go if I don't cover the basics. So, with that in mind the next couple of articles are going to be on some folks I've met recently. By default these people would be categorized as activists, but calling them activists would put them in a category with people who merely pantomime what they live for.

If you wanted to take the Cannabis movement/industry, and break it down, I don't know how you would do that. I suppose it would depend on who you were breaking it down for. But, for my own sake, and for the sake of this article I'll break it down; there are people involved in commerce—growers, dispensaries, patients, insurance agencies, government; there are people involved in production—growers, hash makers, trimmers, chefs, testing facilities; there are people involved in the politics—patient advocacy groups, law enforcement, local government members, lobbyists; there are people involved in the science—researchers, laboratories, breeders, growers, government, pharmaceutical companies.

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Now, somewhere amidst all of these people who are involved in various ways are the people who have been involved since the beginning—the people who started it all. For these folks it's a different affair. For many of the people who started all of this, the whole movement/industry has sprung up around them in many ways. Historically, growers in the Emerald Triangle were not leaving the area to sell their crop, instead their buyers came to them. I spent a month and a half in Humboldt, and while nearly everyone I met had a 215 card, maybe three or four people had actually been to a dispensary. While this primary producing region is not separated from the rest of the industry by any significant amount of space, it is separated in every way that matters. The people at the root of the cannabis movement have largely operated in secrecy because the less conspicuous they were the less likely it was that federal agents would come looking for them. Of course some of what they've done has been explicitly public—such as Pebbles Trippits' legal struggle that lead to the clarification of crucial laws in favor of patients—but their struggle has largely been one carried out in private.

So, with a history that has benefited from not being connected to the cannabis industry the people who started the whole effort to allow us to have access to our medicine have been shut out of a lot of the machinations of the industry thus far. But that's changing. I was recently in Mendocino County for the 8th annual Emerald Cup. The Cup is a competition to determine who grew the best weed, who made the best hash, and a way to celebrate the harvest. The Cup is organized by the Mendocino Farmers Collective. In addition to the Cup they are also working with local law enforcement to create policies to regulate the cultivation and distribution of cannabis. One of the members is being featured in a National Geographic adventure program, many members are involved in the dispersion of information on patients' rights, and so on. The MFC is a collective formed at the source of US cannabis, and it is the vessel through which some of the largest contributors to this movement have been made (many before it was named as such, but the people who formed it were the same).

If you've been bored by all the facts, then fret not, it's all people stories coming up. And, it's all people that you'll be thrilled to know about. Till next week…

ZACHARY G. MOLDOF

Click here for last week's Weed Dealings