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A<\/span>fter a night of dancing and new year\u2019s eve celebrations, Swami and I made our way south to the Bay Area. There was no way we could resist being there to watch Steve DeAngelo, CEO of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, personally sell the first legal cannabis on the adult-use market in California. He had arranged for his dispensary (or do we simply call them \u201cshops\u201d now?) to be the first to open on this momentous day in the history of our golden, and now also green, state.<\/p>\n We arrived shortly before six in the morning, the sky still dark, yet already there was a line of eager customers. Considering no one really knew if anyone would actually show up, this was reassuring. It really was happening! We were ushered inside where the newly remodeled space was packed with the press, all trying to get the shot of that first bud sale. Steve and his brother Andrew said appropriately grateful words and then cut the ribbon with giant scissors \u2014 opening up to anyone with a legal ID who was over 21 years of age. The scissors were a nice touch I thought, a normalization of the cannabis business. Just like opening any kind of store, right?<\/p>\n It literally brought tears to my eyes, as well as others around me, as it sunk in that the time has truly come. \u201cI am still in shock and can\u2019t believe this is really happening,\u201d said Yoli Felix, Steve\u2019s wife and chief designer for Harborside. After decades of devotion to bringing this sacred plant to the world, we are actually seeing it in our lifetime. Hallelujah!<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not all buds and roses. While I shed tears of joy, others are pissed. Yes, they slipped some nasty legislation past us at the last minute and the new regulations are far from perfect, but this is our first step into the big pool. Whenever I find myself feeling any cynicism about it, I remind myself of the people who will now not go to prison for smoking a joint as well as the thousands who will now benefit from the many medicinal values of cannabis. We may have to pay taxes and jump through a million hoops now, but for those two reasons alone, it is worth it to me.<\/p>\n \u201cRemember when we were outlaws,\u201d I hear growers lamenting in the Emerald Triangle<\/a>. It is true: with the dawn of this new year, a lifestyle that is half a century old will be transformed for many sungrown<\/a> cannabis farmers.<\/p>\n Of course there will be plenty of diehard rebel\u2019s who refuse to change. Life for them will revert to circa 1990 when small plants were secretly cultivated under the manzanita bushes and hiding from the cops was de riguer<\/em>. Nobody knows how long there will be a black market to sell their unpermitted product, but in the new age of legal cannabis it can\u2019t be for long. At least not like it used to be. I have heard people whispering, \u201cBlack is Back\u201d \u2014 but for how long and at what price?<\/p>\n Now that we are basically \u201chistorical figures\u201d I guess it\u2019s been long enough that stories can be shared without fear of retribution. These stories need to be remembered now for posterity. In 150 years it will be like us now describing the 49ers of the Gold Rush as a gruff and adventurous lot of folks willing to risk it all for the thrill of discovery.\u00a0Buyers would drive north from the Bay Area and lay out wads of cash without hardly even stopping to admire the gorgeous homegrown weed. And that was when it cost up to $5,000 a pound.<\/p>\n Ah yes, there is no denying it was an adventurous life in the good old days before permits and taxes. I will always fondly remember crazy trim room scenes, drying under plastic canopies in the rain, late night rendezvous with a connection who inevitably was late.\u00a0People were pros at becoming invisible when helicopters flew frighteningly low and could kick into high gear and clean and evacuate a grow-op in record time. These may sound like odd accomplishments of which to be proud, yet they were all part of growing pot in the Emerald Triangle.<\/p>\n It really wasn\u2019t all scary. Often it was ridiculous, like scenes out of a Cheech and Chong film gone bad. Nonetheless, being an outlaw also had benefits. Like perfect mid-summer days when the plants were growing happily in the ground and we had time to leisurely enjoy ourselves. It certainly beat a desk job.\u00a0Of course there were monetary benefits too.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s face it, most farmers aren\u2019t businessmen. They are artists and similarly have little sense of money. A few stashed away enough or invested it wisely but most just spent it living life to the fullest. In the heyday, if a new truck cost $25,000 they\u2019d figure well heck, that\u2019s only five pounds. Our monetary values were skewed but at the same time we kept the other businesses in our counties quite flush. It was a trade off. While the good old boys didn\u2019t ever like us long haired growers in their neck of the woods, on some level they understood that we supported the communities.<\/p>\n And so we enter the new age of cannabis in California. Let us embrace the future and guide the wave as we ride through this transition. If anyone has suggested that I\u2019d see this in my lifetime when I was a flower child in San Francisco in the \u201960s<\/a>, I would have laughed and blown smoke in their face. Yet here we are and it our responsibility to do it right. What an honor!<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you feel like you are making history?<\/p>\n The post California Cannabis: We Are History<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Longtime growers in the Emerald Triangle experience the first retail cannabis sales in California. After a night of dancing and new year\u2019s eve celebrations, Swami and I made our way south to the Bay Area. There was no way we could resist being there to watch Steve DeAngelo, CEO ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":22585,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,80,119,2111,796],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22586,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22584\/revisions\/22586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/SteveDeAngeloHarboside.jpg\")
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\nRead More: California Cannabis: We Are History<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"