T<\/span>o most noses, a farm by any other name would not smell as sweet as Green Freedom, Justin Wildhaber\u2019s legal marijuana cultivation operation in western Washington state. One need not have lived next door to a dairy farm to recognize the difference between the olfactory pleasures of rows of cannabis plants and, say, the \u201cgrassy\u201d notes of manure.<\/p>\n But since Wildhaber is growing cannabis, Green Freedom<\/a> is not, technically or legally, a \u201cfarm.\u201d In turn, that makes the pine, skunk and lemon smells wafting from the terpenes in the tops of his plants\u2019 colas a violation of clean-air laws, rather than a fact of life in ag-land.<\/p>\n Why is cannabis treated differently than acres of row crops \u2014 and why can fresh dung escape penalty when fresh cannabis is treated as an environmental hazard?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The answer is in the question: According to state laws, cannabis is outside the norm. But in what could be a precedent-setting case, Wildhaber is moving to have his marijuana farm officially classified as a \u201cfarm.\u201d If he succeeds, cannabis odors will be treated in the same way as other farm smells, meaning they won\u2019t be punished. More importantly, marijuana farmers<\/a> will be a step closer to being treated as other workers of the land.<\/p>\n Capital Press has the news<\/a>\u00a0of Wildhaber\u2019s appeal to the state Pollution Control Hearings Board. Thus far, the board has deemed that marijuana plantings don\u2019t deserve the same protections as feedlots, ranches and farms from penalties for odor and dust because cannabis farms are too small \u2014 less than five acres, and ergo don\u2019t qualify as \u201cagricultural land.\u201d<\/p>\n Other arguments against giving cannabis grows farm status include the fact that the plant is still regulated under state drug-control laws and isn\u2019t taxed like other agricultural products. Sales of marijuana in Washington state are subject to a total levy of 37 percent, much higher than tomatoes or apples or other produce.<\/p>\n Wildhaber and Green Freedom were twice assessed fines of $1,000 after investigators detected the smell of marijuana on a neighbor\u2019s property, Capital Press reported, after a neighbor made \u201cdozens of complaints\u201d about the smell of marijuana.<\/p>\n Investigators visited and detected a smell strong enough to be \u201cdistinct and recognizable,\u201d or a \u201c2\u201d on a scale of \u201c0 to 4.\u201d Four, the strongest smell, means it caused a \u201cphysical reaction,\u201d Capital Press reported.<\/p>\n Wildhaber will host officials from the pollution control board at his farm on Jan. 18, who will then debate the merits of farm status at an ensuing two-day hearing.<\/p>\n Logic would dictate that Wildhaber has a real case. The operative verb in cannabis farming is \u201cfarm.\u201d Don\u2019t farmers farm on a farm \u2014 and wouldn\u2019t that make Green Freedom, to bludgeon the point to death, a \u201cfarm?\u201d<\/p>\n Lara Kaminsky, the executive director of The Cannabis Alliance, a Washington state-based marijuana advocacy group, certainly thinks so.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is legal. It is a legal crop,\u201d she told Capital Press. \u201cIt should have the same rules and regulations as other crops.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n At least some state lawmakers would disagree. An effort to add marijuana to Washington\u2019s official definitions of farms failed after a committee vote. According to state Rep. Tom Dent (R-Moses Lake), marijuana odors should not be treated like other \u201cfarm smells\u201d because \u201cthere\u2019s something in marijuana that can effect [sic] your nervous system,\u201d he told the newspaper.<\/p>\n In this, he is not entirely wrong. While you can\u2019t become stoned merely from smelling raw cannabis \u2014 THC appears in the marijuana plant as THC-A, or tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, and must be heated, or decarboxylated, <\/a>before it becomes THC \u2014 the cannabis plant\u2019s terpenes\u00a0may be potent enough to have application in aromatherapy<\/a>, which is more than can be said for other \u201cfarm smells.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think cannabis grows should be classified as official farms?<\/p>\n The post Pot Grower Seeks \u2018Farm\u2019 Classification to Avoid Odor Penalties<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Odor complaints are leading Washington cannabis cultivator Green Freedom to seek \u201cofficial\u201d classification as a farm \u2014 and thus exemption from penalties around the smell. To most noses, a farm by any other name would not smell as sweet as Green Freedom, Justin Wildhaber\u2019s legal marijuana cultivation operation in westernContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,5,306,1902,3000,3001,98],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22613"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22614,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22613\/revisions\/22614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Pot Grower Seeks \u2018Farm\u2019 Classification to Avoid Odor Penalties<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"