on the cover / By Bob Doran

Gold From Green In A Gray Area

You might be surprised who profits from the semi-legal marijuana trade

(Nov. 8, 2007)  A gentleman with a neatly trimmed beard stands at the counter of an Arcata business on a weekday morning and asks the clerk for an eighth of an ounce of Trainwreck, a popular strain of sinsemilla marijuana. The young woman on the other side of a glass partition, who looks to be a typical Arcata college student, reaches under the counter and produces a bag of fresh green buds. She pours a portion into a paper cup set on an electronic scale, then carefully transfers it to a plastic bag.As she does so, the customer asks questions about other strains available. He’s looking for some variety. He ends up buying small bags of several different kinds, paying the going rate — $40 per eighth of an ounce — with a handful of $20 bills.

Variety is definitely something the Humboldt Cooperative (popularly known as THC) has in spades. A display behind the glass shows an array of 20 varieties of sinsemilla buds available to those with the proper doctor’s recommendation. A dry-erase board above them tells whether the individual variety is a sativa strain, an indica strain or a cross.

GALLERY >

The counter also holds a row of small, colorful, hand-blown glass jars for sale, along with copies of an autobiography by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. A bulletin board on one side of the entrance is crowded with fliers for rock and reggae concerts. A framed poster on the other side of the door shows a Native America smoking a peace pipe. The overall feel of the place is more akin to a crowded little head shop than a doctor’s office or pharmacy. But this is a head shop hippies in the ’60s only dreamed about, one where the sale of pot is legal — at least under state, county and city law. This is an officially sanctioned medical marijuana dispensary.

A billowing cloud of controversy surrounding medical marijuana has made it the hot topic du jour in Arcata. Last month, after an indoor medical marijuana growing operation burned in a rental house, the subject jumped from the front pages of local newspapers to the City Council chambers. City staff from the planning, fire and police departments had been chewing on the perceived problem at weekly confabs for over a year, but the house fire moved the issue to the forefront of public debate.

Worried homeowners, pot activists and representatives from the business community all took their turn at the microphone at the Oct. 17 City Council meeting, as did Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond. Dressed in his usual dark suit and tie, Richmond weighed in on the negative impacts of the marijuana business, touching on housing issues, fire safety and danger from “the criminal element associated with marijuana growth.”

“This community has waited too long to deal with this issue,” he said. “It’s now in your laps because you’ve let it lapse before.”

Richmond then turned the mic over to his colleague Vincent Feliz, a pony-tailed drug and alcohol counselor from the university who said he finds it “scary” that Humboldt regards marijuana culture in such a “complacent” manner.

“It’s in the mall — we have a Trainwreck sweatshirt,” Feliz said. “Humboldt County is known [for] marijuana. It’s affecting recruiting at Humboldt State and anyone who wants to come into the county.”

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