Erika Morlan made a hard decision. Fed up with the noise from the generators and fans, the odor of diesel exhaust, the rapidly disappearing meadow around her home, she did something that’s just not done in Honeydew: She blew the whistle on her neighbor’s grow. Morlan, who goes by the nickname “Squeaky,” has lived in […]
The Week in Weed
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Who Owns Your Pot?
Who owns that marijuana plant you’ve been tending on the hill? You might think it’s the property of the landowner, the one paying you to garden for her. Maybe you think it belongs to that cancer patient you’ve been caretaking? Perhaps you think it’s yours? Increasingly — however — it’s possible that plant is the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Bring Me the Numbers
Data is a lovely thing. Many is the evening I’ve passed in the Journal office, whistling over a warm, freshly-printed batch of documents, a fistful of various-colored highlighters, Post-It notes and paperclips standing by to help me weave raw numbers into sturdy prose. There’s something so satisfying about finding a cache of information that backs […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Gold Bars and Budget Amendments
Things were looking pretty bleak for Anthony Pisarski. A 2012 multi-agency raid on his SoHum property found more than 300 marijuana plants in a pair of greenhouses, loaded guns and hundreds of thousands of dollars in vacuum-sealed cash, along with almost $30,000 worth of gold and silver bars. After the case went federal, leaving Pisarski […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Happy Birthday, Prohibition!
On Aug. 2, 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act passed. Although later laws would codify punishment for cannabis smokers, sellers and cultivators, House Resolution 6385, drafted by Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, is regarded as the first time the federal government laid its heavy hand on the plant. The […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
A Snowball’s Chance in D.C.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker introduced a bill Aug. 1 that would legalize marijuana federally. “Our country’s drug laws are badly broken and need to be fixed,” the New Jersey Democrat said in a statement. “They don’t make our communities any safer — instead they divert critical resources from fighting violent crimes, tear families apart, unfairly […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
DEU Do’s and Don’ts
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office wants you to know the circumstances under which it will rip up your weed. On July 11, the agency eradicated 5,491 plants near Hyampom at an unpermitted grow. On June 28, it served three search warrants on a McKinleyville resident, Brent Visser, and reported finding 367 pounds of processed and […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Stay Grounded
Can we all slow our collective roll just a little bit? I know weed is now legal in the Golden State, with new businesses and products popping up at a Whack-A-Mole pace, but some of us are clearly getting a bit carried away. This is a notion that’s been nagging at me for some time […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Emergency!
Most stoners know the feeling: The last bag is empty, the dealer’s dry and there isn’t a roach to be found. It’s an emergency! Well, that’s basically the scenario in the entire state of Nevada right now. State voters legalized recreational weed at the polls last year and 47 retail outlets opened their doors about […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
RSVP: I Will Not Attend Your Weed Wedding
I’m over the word “infused.” I am over reading about cannabis-infused cocktails, bread, baking soda, bath salts, olive oil, etc. I get why these products are potentially useful but can we be done? Can we be done fetishizing the brand value of cannabis and trying to shoehorn it into every aspect of our lives? It’s. […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
End This Insanity
Burnt marijuana — it’s a smell everyone on the North Coast knows well, whether you’re a habitual smoker or never touch the stuff. It hangs in Old Town’s doorways and alleys, wafts across beaches and between redwoods. It’s everywhere. So I ask you, has that scent ever made you fear for your life? It feels […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Game Changer
With little fanfare, state lawmakers passed a landmark bill last week that will have reverberating impacts on the state’s budding marijuana industry. Attached to the Legislature’s votes on the state budget was a rider that will essentially merge the landmark Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MCRSA) and Proposition 64 into a single regulatory framework […]