You’ll have to pardon California cannabis farmers if you catch them gazing longingly to the north, daydreaming of life on the Last Frontier, where moose abound, the night sky turns green and pounds of marijuana wholesale for $2,800 to $5,000. A recent article on www.mjbizdaily.com details pot prices across the Land of the Midnight Sun, […]
Legalization
Posted inNews
As Cannabis Markets Lurch, Some Humboldt Towns Are Rising, Others Falling
First quarter sales at The Garden of Beadin’ are bad. The small beading supply store, which has been operating in Garberville for 33 years, is used to seeing a slower stretch at the beginning of the year but owner Charlotte Silverstein attributes unusually poor sales in 2018 to the impact of cannabis legalization. “In this […]
Posted inNews
New State Cannabis Regulations Allow for Limitless Grow Sizes
It looks like you’ll be able to munch down on that cannabis beef jerky come January but the stony shrimp cocktail will have to wait. California dropped its long-awaited emergency medicinal and adult-use cannabis regulations yesterday, setting the rules for legal markets slated to open in 45 days on Jan. 1. The new regulations — […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Our Shrinking Habitat
For too long now, Humboldt County has encouraged the reckless and destructive expansion of black market marijuana in forest habitat. The recently proposed commercial marijuana ordinance continues this dismal policy. Rather than learning from the massive failure of the medical marijuana ordinance, the proposed commercial marijuana ordinance continues to coddle black market growers. Rather than […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Inebriation by Automation
When former President Barack Obama struck a somber tone in his farewell speech last month, it’s unlikely many in the hills of Humboldt took much notice. “The next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas,” the then-president warned. “It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class […]
Posted inNews
Weed Legalization Headed to the California Ballot
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom (who visited Humboldt County pot farms last year) is launching the campaign for legal recreational marijuana today with support for an initiative that gathered enough votes to be on the November ballot. The initiative, which will need voter approval of more than 50 percent, has long been considered the most realistic […]
Posted inNews
Getting Legit: Local Growers Line Up to File on First Day of County Ordinance
A small crowd clustered at the top of the stairs of the Humboldt County Planning Department on Friday morning, waiting for the doors to open. In their hands, they clutched their land use ordinance permits for medical marijuana cultivation. “We’ve been gearing up all week for a big day,” said Rob Wall, interim planning director, […]
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UPDATED: Gavin Newsom to Talk Pot in Humboldt
UPDATE: North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman issued a press release this afternoon inviting the public to join he and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in Garberville on Friday afternoon to talk marijuana policy (full press release copied below). And Huffman spokesman clarified for the Journal that Friday’s forum isn’t officially part of Newsom’s committee work on […]
Posted inNews
This is What Legalization Looks Like
A quarter-mile down a gravel driveway from the cluster of mailboxes on Washington state’s Vashon Island, past second-growth conifers and bare alders, James Clark’s homestead could just as easily be in Fieldbrook as on this Manhattan-sized moraine lumped in the middle of Puget Sound. Clark is at work on a project that, for the moment […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
The High Court
You could argue that nine grown-ups who sit around all day in silky black robes always look ridiculous, but the U.S. Supreme Court looked especially foolish last week when it decided not to hear an appeal of the federal government’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — that is, a substance with no […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Green-eyed Cops
We get a lot of press releases here at the Journal, a steady drip of emails announcing everything from ribbon-cuttings to dance recitals to (let’s see what’s at top of my inbox here) a Holiday Gift Guide pitch for German-made electric irons. (Eat your heart out, Clark Kent.) Our favorites by far are law enforcement […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Expensive Weed
Last Thursday, a crew of volunteers was helping the state Department of Fish and Wildlife conduct a marijuana-eradication mission in a remote part of the Sequoia National Forest when Shane Krogen, a 57-year-old volunteer, fell out of a helicopter, dropping 50 feet to his death. Friends described him as a generous and dedicated outdoorsman who […]