States share dope advice A mirror for our latest incarnation
A government guide to how to grow cannabis is in the works as legalisation opens up new opportunities.
North Carolina wants to know if marijuana could one day replace tobacco as a cash crop. Louisiana is wondering how it holds up in high humidity. And Washington state has questions about water supplies for weed.
Colorado agriculture officials this week briefed officials from about a dozen states – some that have legalised cannabis, others that joked that they would legalise ‘‘when hell freezes over’’ – on the basics of marijuana farming, and swapped stories about regulating a crop that the federal government still considers illegal.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture is working on the world’s first government-produced guidelines on growing marijuana. There’s no shortage of how-to books catering to growers both in and out of the black market, but Colorado’s forthcoming guidebook aims to apply established agronomy practices.
‘‘When you start with no knowledge at all, it’s rough,’’ says Mitch Yergert, head of Colorado’s Division of Plant Industry, an agency within the Agriculture Department that regulates marijuana production.
Yergert concedes that Colorado agriculture officials ignored cannabis entirely for more than a dozen years, from the time voters in the state approved medical marijuana in 2000 until recreational shops started opening in 2014.
‘‘Nobody in our agency ever grew marijuana, so how are we supposed to develop best practices?’’
But the drug’s commercial popularity, coupled with increasing concern over pesticides and unsafe growing conditions, forced the department to stop treating marijuana as a joke and start seeing it as a commercial crop in need of regulation.
Colorado sold about US$1 billion worth of marijuana last year, making it a cash crop, the same as many others. Now the agriculture department is sharing what it has learned about weed with other agencies.
Speaking at a recent soil conservation conference in Denver, Yergert briefed other state agriculture officials on how to inspect marijuana and hemp growers – and, just as importantly, how to regulate a plant that is illegal under federal law.
‘‘You kinda gotta get your mind around it,’’ Yergert said.
The visiting agriculture officials toured a large Denver growing warehouse, where a grower showed them the plant’s entire cycle, starting as clones in one room before they are transplanted to bigger tubs.
The grower, Tim Cullen, also showed the officials how the plant is trimmed and how its psychoactive female flowers are dried for smoking. Finally, they saw how marijuana waste – errant leaves and such – is rendered unusable before being thrown away.
‘‘This is blowing my mind right now,’’ said Erica Pangelinan of the Northern Guam Soil and Water Conservation District as she used Nobody in our agency ever grew marijuana, so how are we supposed to develop best practices? . . . We’d rather not rely on the 19-year-old at the grow shop. her cellphone to snap photos of wooden frames used to hold drying marijuana.
Guam allows medical marijuana, but many states on the tour don’t. Still, the visiting agriculture officials said they needed to be prepared in case laws change to allow growing at home.
‘‘We’re just looking to see what’s ahead,’’ said Pat Harris, director of North Carolina’s Division of Soil and Water Conservation.
Some states on the tour plan to grow cannabis themselves. ‘‘We’re getting in the marijuana business in Louisiana, so we need to know what we’re doing,’’ said Brad Spicer of the state’s Office of Soil and Water Conservation. The Louisiana legislature has authorised two universities to grow the plant for medical use and research.
Yergert warned the agriculture officials that regulating weed still isn’t easy and that they should be prepared for pushback from their own staff.
‘‘Our guys were saying, pick my kids up from because I smell like pot’,’’ said.
Another problem? Stony silence from federal agencies that agriculture offices usually turn to for help.
‘‘It hasn’t gotten a lot more ‘I can’t school Yergert warm and fuzzy,’’ Yergert said. ‘‘I think they look at us as, ‘What an annoyance!’. I mean, they deal with drug smugglers and international cartels, and here’s the Colorado Department of Ag coming wanting a permit for something.’’
Cullen urged the agriculture officials to look past the hurdles and see cannabis growers as farmers thirsty for guidance on growing healthy, profitable crops.
‘‘We want your help. We’d rather not rely on the 19-year-old at the grow shop,’’ said Cullen, who is one of Colorado’s largest growers and is advising the state agriculture department on its forthcoming guidelines.
The agronomists standing in the room full of plants nodded, saying they were open to sharing advice – though their knowledge must remain academic.
‘‘I can tell you how to grow it. But I can’t use it. I’m drug-tested,’’ joked Max Jones of North Carolina.
This week marks the beginning of Black History Month in the USA, a month where the country pays tribute to the descendants of slaves who lived in oppression, who worked tirelessly to achieve equality under law, and whose contributions and achievements helped to make this country what it uniquely is. It started with banality and a bungle. Most certainly not a bang.
President Trump opened his remarks at a White House event to mark the occasion by promising that he’d get over 51 per cent of the vote in the next election. He mentioned Martin Luther King Jr, but in the context of a ‘‘fake news’’ story about the alleged removal of a MLK bust from the Oval Office.
He lied about the extent of his electoral support from the African-American community (he won just 8 per cent of the black vote). And he closed his remarks with a reference to television oddball and would-be villainess (and now White House aide) Omarosa. She sat next to him for the remarks, which culminated with: ‘‘Omarosa’s actually a very nice person – nobody knows that. I don’t want to destroy her reputation, but she’s a very good person, and she’s been helpful right from the beginning of the campaign, and I appreciate it. I really do. Very special.’’
The president actually spent more time regaling Omarosa than Martin Luther King.
Dr King is, of course, an American hero and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was a martyr in the long struggle for civil rights, giving his life for the idea that one day, his children would live in a nation where they would be judged not by the colour of their skin but the content of their character.
On justice for one being justice for all, he wrote that America was ‘‘caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny’’, that ‘‘whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly’’, and that ‘‘anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds’’.
Omarosa was a famed contestant in The Apprentice. She was a conscientious antihero. Her single-monikered character (like Sauron or Voldemort) was self-centred, cold, and villainous. She paid her dues selling gratuitous