How marijuana legalization affected the outlaw growers of Humboldt County
The New Yorker has an interesting article about the changes in the economy and society (I almost wrote “culture” there, but realized that the word has a double meaning in this context) of Humboldt County, California as a result of the state’s legalization of pot-growing. Illegal marijuana-growing used to be a big big deal there, with much of the population involved, so this isn’t some fringe thing.
It’s not just the legalization that has caused changes; as the article indicates, they’re been changing for quite some time as legalization and the regulation that goes with it happened by stages over several decades, and as the older hippie Boomer population of growers died out or retired, to be replaced by a younger group with different motives and a different profit mentality.
Here’s a quote:
For multiple generations, the people of Humboldt thought that they had found a back door out of the mainstream economy. While small towns and family farms across America saw economic decline, Garberville held on to its main street, its independent businesses, and its reputation as a haven for people who did not fit in. Cannabis allowed the community to sustain the illusion that it was a place apart, but the conceit is now ending. You could blame the correction that has been playing out on the first generation, for naïveté; or on the second generation, for pursuit of profit; or on the county, for demanding changes; or on the state government, for not protecting small farmers. But Humboldt can no longer claim its independence, and it will now have to see if it can hold on to its values.
Interesting that the author doesn’t seem to think that one of those values would be this: “It’s perfectly fine for me to break the law and grow an illegal drug because I’ve decided that I’m above the law and my motives are good and pot is good.” Several of the assumptions in that statement of values can be challenged, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the article (or in the illegal growers’ minds) challenging it. The piece focuses on the difficulties faced now that legalization has lowered the price that can be charged for the product, as well as fostering the growth of bigger companies compared to the more home-grown traditional farms. The message is to adapt or perish as a business.
The only part of the article I noticed that seemed to me to deal with some of the fallout of the earlier system is this one:
The community also faced the kinds of problems that are bound to occur in an isolated county where people kept their savings in cash, drugs were easily accessible, and nobody called the cops when things went wrong. Gellman lost friends to drunk driving on Humboldt County’s winding mountain roads. Two friends were murdered during pot deals gone bad. He lost friends to suicide, and later, as the heroin and meth problems that have affected rural areas around the country reached Humboldt, to drug overdoses. At the age of thirty-nine, he has a dozen laminated portraits in his home, memorials to friends who died. “There were a lot of deaths,” he said. “But I think it’s just because we know so many people. We have so many friends.”
An exercise in rationalization. No; it’s not just that you have so many friends. It’s that something was very very wrong.
However, I will add this: I’m almost certain that it wasn’t just illegal pot-growing that was responsible. I’m basing this on a community I knew when I was a teenager. I had a boyfriend for a while who was one of those “Rebel Without a Cause” types and who lived in a small town in a state in the northeast. On one of my visits to that town, he took me to the cemetery where he viewed the graves of a number of his friends who’d already died in various self-destructive ways, among which drinking and driving featured prominently. At the age of nineteen he already knew a lot of dead people, and this was a long long long time ago.
Something was very very wrong, and I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel it all around me. It wasn’t simply the economy; the town was located in proximity to a factory that was still bustling at the time and employed a lot of local people. No, it was something more difficult to define: a general aimlessness, a cultural anomie that even I, as a visitor, could sense.
It might now be safe to go hiking in Humboldt County. For years there was a risk of stumbling across an illegal marijuana patch and getting shot.
I can attest to what Mike K said.
Decades ago my wife and I thought about buying a lot in Humboldt County to build our retire home on much later. It is a beautiful area.
Then we learned about the mortal danger of walking in that scenery. Not only could you be shot by somebody, but there were numerous deadly traps and tripwires installed, which would trigger shotguns and other deadly devices.
We decided to pass on Humboldt County.
That is exactly how Jordan Peterson described his home town of his early life in Canada, where almost half of the young men led aimless, desperate lives. Anomie as endemic problem, which motivated his crusade for meaning as a vital urge of human existence.
In the modern world, young people with their lives sorted tend to move to cities. That’s where the best opportunities are for something different and for change.
That leaves the rural places with an excess of those without drive and desire.
The Social Security actuarial tables say the chances of a young man dying between the ages of 14 and 25 is about 1.08%. About 41% die in accidents, 21% from disease, and 38% from a mix of suicide, homicide, and ‘legal intervention’. In regard to the accidents, the CDC records about 9,150 men between their 15th and 25th birthday dying in accidents. Had that age group had a death rate from accident similar to that of the generic American woman, there would have been about 7,240 deaths. Sometimes accidents are just accidents. So, in that age range, it could be as few as 46% of the deaths are attributable to anomie or problems in living. That leaves us with 0.5% of the young men in that age group. A problem, yes, but not one of great incidence.
I have always been mystified as to why states/locals would legally add other harmful and/or addictive substance to the already way too long list.
I recognize that greed has a lot to do with it, as does some idea of supposed “freedom.”
But, I’d think that weighing the costs of adding yet another temptation along the road through life, another way to “spin, crash, and die” to the long list of other stupifying and/or addictive substances would ultimately cost more–more incarcerations, more injuries, more social and family disruption, decreased quality of life, decreased productivity, more traffic accidents, permanent disabilities and deaths than it would bring in in revenue–and, thus, that the cost benefit analysis would weigh on the side of declining to legalize.
But, I guess greed and stupidity win out again.
I note that Denver voters have now added the mind-altering psilocybins contained in “magic mushrooms” to the list of legal intoxicants.
Can Heroin and Crack be far behind?
Snow on Pine:
I think it’s actually pretty simple. A great many Boomers either use marijuana now or certainly used it in the past, and for younger generations it’s already been commonplace for a long time. Therefore people don’t see it as “adding” a new temptation. They see it (a) as ubiquitous already and (b) as innocuous, and (c) they want it to be legal for themselves as well.
Neo–As I understand it, though–thanks to the efforts of people working to increase the potency of marijuana–today’s marijuana is reported to be 100 times more potent than the marijuana that was around in the 1960s.
As for marijuana being “innocuous,” I have pointed out here in the past that there are recent, well-researched medical studies that have found that marijuana is far from “innocuous,” and that its heavy use by teenagers has permanent deleterious psychological effects, including permanent, irreversible decreases in I.Q.
Not the kind of life-altering changes that think a lot of people would want to sign on for.
But, hey, when you’re a teenager you think that you are immortal, and that while something bad might happen to the other guy, nothing bad will ever happen to you.
today’s marijuana is reported to be 100 times more potent than the marijuana that was around in the 1960s.
I suspect someone misplaced a couple of decimal points there.
I have many first, second, and third cousins who never escaped southeastern KY. They all died from self destructive lifestyles. They gave into hopelssness and never had what it takes to leave and start over. I was fortunate to be born to parents who fled Appalachia and moved to Iowa where they built a stable, productive life. Thanks mom and dad.
I’ve had exactly the same feeling visiting relatives in eastern rural Kansas. It is like a dying culture, a sense that a whole way of life has evaporated. They have been left behind, if you will. I don’t know how they will recover, but the Amish seem to being doing alright, although they too have their bad eggs.
Snow on Pine:
I wasn’t writing about my own opinion, just the opinion of a lot of people today (including my generation).
My own opinion has been aired here and especially here as well as here.
Art Deco—Couldn’t find the article that I read that gave the “100 times” statistic.
Looking around the Net today, I hadn’t realized that there were these many publications devoted to, and articles advocating for and praising marijuana. I guess I don’t travel in the right Internet circles.
A March 6, 2015 article in the “Atlantic” argued that it is impossible to tell with any accuracy what potency levels were several decades ago, because the measurements made by the government back then were made on the handful of samples they had been able to seize, while the measurements made today are from thousands of seized samples.
Moreover, that more advanced technical methods are used in testing today, and that that means that it is impossible to compare past results, which were arrived at using different and less advanced methods, with those results arrived at today.
One 2013 article says the marijuana they tested was 57-70% more potent than in the 1970s, another 2015 CBS news story reported test results that said that THC content rose from 4% in the 1980s to 20 or 30%, some articles cited THC content in 1960s marijuana as low as 0.3 %, and there are a bunch of other articles with percentages all over the map.
Apparently, it all depends on which batch of marijuana you sample, but THC potency levels are definitely and rapidly moving higher.
Snow on Pine,
My experience is that a percentage of the people that are into marijuana are REALLY into marijuana and seem to spend practically all their lives talking about how wonderful it is.
I’ve had exactly the same feeling visiting relatives in eastern rural Kansas. It is like a dying culture, a sense that a whole way of life has evaporated. They have been left behind, if you will. I don’t know how they will recover, but the Amish seem to being doing alright, although they too have their bad eggs.
With three exceptions, the employment-to-population ratio for the states touching on the Great Plains were in 2018 above the national means. (The exceptions were Montana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and Montana’s deficit was minimal). That for Kansas was a healthy 0.645.
Per the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal income per capita for the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states is mildly depressed, about 5% below national means. That for Kansas is about 6.6% below. More affluent than all but a few European countries, btw.
Most Plains and Mountain states have low homicide rates. Kansas and Oklahoma are exceptions, with rates about 15% above national means.
What’s distressing is that you have about 90 non-metropolitan counties – which encompass about 40% of the state’s population – which are losing population. The state as a whole isn’t, but these places are. The decline is occurring at a rate of 0.45% per year on average, which adds up over time. Some counties have been demographically imploding since the Depression.
What’s distressing is that you have about 90 non-metropolitan counties … which are losing population
Why is it depressing? Do you want more people to live in places they don’t like?
Despite all the complaining, people generally prefer cities. That is why they keep growing. (As you point out, it isn’t particularly for the money or a job, because those exist in many rural places even as they depopulate.)
There’s nothing special about living in the countryside to most people. The romantic notion that somehow the countryside is better for you is a myth.
Why is it depressing? Do you want more people to live in places they don’t like?
The word was ‘distressing’. And what I want is communities thriving. Which means not winding down and abandoning the extant built environment and common institutions which occupy it.
Despite all the complaining, people generally prefer cities. The romantic notion that somehow the countryside is better for you is a myth.
Get back to me when you’ve discovered the social and spatial phenomenon known as the ‘small town’.
If you watch the HGTV TV show, “International House Hunters,” you soon see a definite pattern–in a majority of cases, women want to live in a city and to find “community,” men want to live outside the city and want some isolation and peace and quiet.
In literature, cities have traditionally been depicted as much more “sinful” than the country side.
In addition cities today feature a lot of anonymity. It is quite possible to never know who your neighbors are, and never to have met or had any real interactions with them.
Traditionally small towns & communities are supposed to be–for good or ill–“tight-knit,” places, where “everyone knows everyone else,” and, unfortunately, their business too.
The history of this country and of the expansion of our transportation systems and methods has seen families gradually spread out allover the country, disrupting those tight-knit families and locations.
So what do people really want?
Tight-knit communities, or more anonymity, isolation, quiet and privacy?
Traditionally small towns & communities are supposed to be–for good or ill–“tight-knit,” places, where “everyone knows everyone else,” and, unfortunately, their business too.
Not so, but usually you know someone who knows that other person. And your knowledge of your immediate neighbors doesn’t improve on what you’d have in an ordinary suburb.
In Iowa we have a serious problem with meth. Also some rural areas are declining, but others are holding steady and finding ways to bring back their economies.
I’ll take rural America over metro America any day. We know our neighbors in the rural Midwest, we support each other in difficult times, and we are mostly self sufficient. Can’t say that for metro America. Democrat ruled for generations, lots of poverty, billions of welfare payments to non productives, and billions of more lost to crime and corruption. Spare me your depair for rural America, look at your doorstep instead.
I am sure that when Prohibition was repealed, many locations in the U.S. where the economies were adapted to the production of illegal liquor suffered the same sort of economic dislocation. They adapted. So will Humboldt County.
Any business model that depends on a government prohibition or intervention of any sort must take into account that governments are fickle.
Art Deco,
I would echo your comments about small towns. My job once took me to a small town of 3,000 people for a couple of years. In those two years, I saw more alcoholism, drug abuse, teen pregnancies, spousal abuse, cheating, and casual violence than I had ever seen in the cities. The people who imagine some sort of bucolic paradise need a reality check.
Roy Nathanson:
Don’t worry those dysfunctional behaviors now are manifest in the urban paradises of Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, and L.A. in the blue tarp nirvana’s of the homeless. It must be a problem of too much morality and repression. /s
Who Roy, is imaging bucolic paradise? Not me, I acknowledge there are issues in the rural Midwest. But compared to the metro areas, we live in relatively serene socities. You must live in a neighborhood in a metro area well patrolled by police and private security, removed from the drugs, various crimes, including drug gang wars, MS13, and the killing fields of neighborhoods you treat as no go zones.
Roy,
“In those two years” exactly where and when, plus why were you required to suffer those two years in the deplorable waste land of rural America? Come on be specific. I’ll check back tomorrow because I am sleepy.
I would echo your comments about small towns. My job once took me to a small town of 3,000 people for a couple of years. In those two years, I saw more alcoholism, drug abuse, teen pregnancies, spousal abuse, cheating, and casual violence than I had ever seen in the cities. The people who imagine some sort of bucolic paradise need a reality check.
If my own experience is any guide (and New York I think does have more agreeable non-metropolitan zones than other areas), the signatures of exurbs, small towns and the countryside are as follows:
1. Almost no violent crime.
2. Rates of burglary and auto theft about 1/3 lower than you’d see in urban areas.
3. Considerable anxiety about traffic deaths. You’re traveling at higher speeds on roads more likely to have uncleared snow and ice. Also, many people have a social life which incorporates driving (some distance) to places where liquor is sold. I often dreaded opening the local paper.
4. Less affluent, but more leveled in. Overall income levels are > 20% lower than you find in metropolitan tract development. The most impecunious tend to live in visibly shabby digs or in trailer parks. Trailer parks aren’t slums. You have some shizzy conflicts between neighbors (“She put a dent in my car. We agreed not to report it and she’d pay me but she hasn’t paid me…”), but conflicts generally have boundaries.
5. Cheaper housing, longer commutes. Most notable in regard to medical services. My doctor was 40 miles away.
6. Manifestations of certain sort of social dislocation and personal dysfunction at similar rates to those parts of the city outside the slums: divorce, ba*tardy, repair to the foster care system, alcoholism. My wager is street drugs are less common. I had a relation living in a town on the Oregon coast who thought her neighbor was cooking meth, but I never saw anything like that myself.
It should be noted that there is some distinction between living in town and living in a country homestead.
I live in one of the most agricultural towns in Connecticut. And for those unfamiliar with the state except for the I95 corridor, it has a lot of rural areas. This town is one of the largest in area for the state. The population is 6000, and the primary industry is dairy farms, a 12million chicken egg facility, a huge wholesale plant nursery, and a large mulch company. We know a good proportion of the people in the town, and the idea that people are ready to help each other out is true.
The high school has an average class size of 100. Both of my daughters developed deep friendships growing up, but also both were eager to leave. Both attended college far from home and have now settled in Atlanta and Orlando. They both want the city environment: jobs, and the general culture that appeals to young people. And both are very successful in their current life paths. The friends they left behind who still live in the town are languishing. Most are in dead end, low level jobs, and spend their free time like they did in high school: hanging out and partying.
I still believe raising them in such a small town environment was good, but I also think they needed to get out and experience a wider world. I also think that maybe when it comes time for them to raise a family the appeal of the small town may return to them. John Mellencamp’s song keeps coming to mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CVLVaBECuc
Parker,
The town was Crescent City, California. This was in about ’86 – ’87. I was an engineer working on the construction of the new state prison there.
I didn’t say that I “suffered” from living there. It was a spectacularly beautiful location and there were some wonderful people living there. However, I was surprised to find all of the vices that I had been led to believe were evils of the big cities were present in spades. My point is that small towns are not necessarily all like Mayberry, with Andy Griffith as Sherriff.
I currently live in a medium size town that fits my wife and I just fine. Neither of us enjoy the big cities.
Roy Nathanson:
Ya think that the project that you were working on may have been somehow related to the problems that “surprised” you. Construction jobs can be unstable, transient, and thus stressful to workers, communities, and families; boom and bust. Also at that time in the NW the logging (timber) industry was not doing so well, IIRC. More community stress and turmoil for the residents.
Speaking of the “big city” vs. the countryside.
From the evidence of what I am seeing from multiple sources, what I am pretty certain is true is that former New York City Mayor Giuliani’s “broken window” method of policing—penalizing those who break the law, who do not take care of and then fixing the smallest of infractions, as a way of preventing those infractions from spreading and generating even more and worse infractions—works.
And that its opposite—decriminalizing and ignoring little violations of the law, of public order—leads to greater and more consequential disorder and, then, on to the disintegration of public order and, eventually, diminished quality of life.
Big cities tolerate this. Small towns and rural areas, it seems to me, won’t and don’t, with what seem to me to be predictable results.
What I have in mind are the recent pictures and videos chronicling the accelerating decline of major liberal Democrat run cities in this country—Seattle, LA, San Francisco, Portland—their often high housing prices, couple with their decriminalization of all sorts of public order offenses, and drug possession—and the resultant growth of homelessness, tents everywhere and larger tent encampments, downtown streets lined with tents and makeshift shelters, trailers lining streets that people use as permanent homes, and the sanitation and congestion problems they cause, garbage and debris everywhere, people living on the street and in doorways, drug addicts shooting up in public, streets covered with needles, public urination and defecation, crazy people shouting and gesticulating on the sidewalks and, as a result of all this lawlessness, chaos, and filth, the re-emergence of diseases of poor sanitation like Typhus.
Overall, what I’m seeing is, from all appearances, a steep decline in the quality of life in these big cities, that used to be so beautiful.
The obvious solution would be to re-criminalize public order offenses, and drug possession, to permanently clear out these tent encampments and squatters in doorways, along highways and public parks, to clean up the mess they’ve made, and to get the people living in these conditions—many—perhaps the large majority of them—suffering from mental illness and/or drug addiction—into what they need—be it a hospital, into treatment programs, into some sort of public housing, and, then, when possible, into programs to start to get them on the road to productive jobs.
However, in response to this festering calamity and erosion of quality of life, the leaders of this cities are, it seems, largely in denial, are apparently not taking these problems on directly, but are doubling down, by spending increasing amounts of money on things that obviously don’t work, and by decriminalizing even more things.
To be fair, I have seen reports of Seattle’s city government and NGO’s attempts to build a small number of what have turned out to be extremely expensive public housing units. But, why so expensive?
Some of the other solutions I have seen reported for these cities, which are supposed to decrease the “income inequality” that is supposedly one of the causes for these conditions, are—eliminating library fees and fines, and eliminating fares and late fees for failure to pay fares in public transit.
That’s it.
Cont’d—Some of the evidence:
See “Seattle is Dying” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
See “Drug users Take Over Corridors of San Francisco Civic Center and BART” at https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/04/25/drug-users-san-francisco-civic-center-bart/
See “Typhus Outbreak at City Hall Had Attorney Believing, “I Was Going to Die”” at https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/02/06/typhus-outbreak-may-mean-all-carpets-have-to-be-ripped-out-of-city-hall/
See “San Francisco Human Feces Map Shows Waste Blanketing the California City” at https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-map-shows-human-poop-complaints
See FOX’s Tucker Carlson’s Series, “Homeless in America” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMJnMQjo4wA
And on and on.
om,
Of course, it was an ecomically distressed area. Prosperous communities do not want prisons built anywhere near them.
No, prosperous communities are NIMBY.
If you view the Seattle is dying video and other things, you get the impression that the leaders of these cities that have this problem are permissive because they believe that being permissive is somehow being kind and considerate to addicts, to the mentally ill, to the homeless, to use an old fashioned word, to the “downtrodden.”
That not forcing them to take some personal responsibility, to make the effort to try to clean up their acts, is somehow being kind to them, is allowing them to have their “freedom.”
Notice that, in this thought process, the effects of their policies on the productive citizens of these cities, on the taxpayers, and the people who do obey their laws, on their quality of life, is secondary if not tertiary, not given much, if any weight at all.
This is exactly the wrong mindset and approach.
Coincidentally, this article discussing, praising, and recommending the practice of “broken window policing” just appeared.
See https://www.takimag.com/article/in-praise-of-broken-windows-policing/