Now that Colorado and Washington state have made even recreational marijuana legal, I notice a huge number of stories in the alternative press linking hemp oil and marijuana to all sorts of healing properties. No wonder Big Pharma wants to take over medical marijuana.
Here’s a piece that helps us to understand how and why hemp (and marijuana) were originally vilified. Just like trains were undermined by Big Oil in favor of the automobile, so was hemp undermined by competing corporate interests.
The Hemp Conspiracy: Why U.S. Hemp Farming Was Banned
So now, we have the ramp-up for industrial hemp, which, BTW, was also approved by Washington State. California is starting to follow suit:
Industrial Hemp Bill Passes California Senate
And, for economic and cultural ramifications, see the new view from “Mile High” Colorado:
Even if you didn’t know that Denver has become America’s undisputed stoner capital, there are clues. Like the two Jerry Garcia-themed bars. Or the 24-hour-a-day stand-up-comedy radio station. And the too-perfect-to-be-a-coincidence nickname (Mile High City) and NBA franchise (the Nuggets). But even if you didn’t pick up on any of that, there’s a good chance you’d notice the smell – skunky, green, a little piney – wafting through an open car window as you cruise along I-25 into town.
Follow the scent to the industrial zone of Platte River Valley, where vast, anonymous warehouses hide more than 250 high-octane, connoisseur-grade weed operations. Or as one grower says, “Platte River Valley – highest concentration of marijuana on Earth.” If your nose is Snoop Dogg-calibrated to sniff out only majorly primo herb, you just might end up at Gaia Plant-Based Medicine, a booming high-end cannabis enterprise with big-time ambitions. There, in an unmarked 40,000-square-foot warehouse across the street from a police station, 15 or so gardeners tend to an indoor jungle of artisanal weed worthy of a Peter Tosh album cover, which the company sells in its three medical-marijuana dispensaries.
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One quick question: And how is all this going to shake-down with the federal government? What an beautiful idea, that the movement to defang centralized nation-state power would be fueled by the resurgence of marijuana and hemp! Not even in our wildest stoner days of yore would we have imagined this kind of scenario now.
