More evidence of the governments crackdown, and many medical growers are being forced back underground. Interesting story in the L.A. times about a grower/dealer, "Rickie". It's a long article so here is the link, and I will post part of it:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-delivery-20120907,0,5541965,full.story
"A stocky onetime mortgage broker is speeding through Costa Mesa in an old pickup with two pounds of weed in a paper bag. He wears gray cargo shorts and flip-flops and a faded cap with the image of a marijuana leaf stitched on the front. He just smoked a joint thick as a knuckle.
Cypress Hill thumps through the cab.
I'll hit that bong and break ya off somethin' soon
I got ta get my props,
Cops, come and try to snatch my crops
These pigs wanna blow my house down
For a man whose apartment was raided recently and now faces felony drug possession and cultivation charges, he doesn't seem particularly worried about the mission at hand. Ricky rants about a federal and local crackdown on medical marijuana that closed various dispensaries that he ran and forced him back to the streets, where he began as a teenager in the 1970s. (Except then, he was a dealer. Now he is a "mobile dispensary.")
"It's too late!" he bellows. "The genie is out of the bottle. A huge demand has been created. It's back to the underground. Anyone who is smart is just going to take it back to the streets."
He says he knows lots of people scurrying to the shadows as the state has struggled and failed to regulate the medical cannabis industry and local law enforcement agencies and the federal government have tried to curtail it.
It's an easy journey to the underground, as the line between the legal and illegal markets in California has always been sketchy. The medical cannabis trade did not rise from a boardroom meeting when voters passed the medical marijuana initiative Proposition 215 in 1996. It sprouted out of the marijuana networks that already existed, with largely the same growers, middlemen and customers.
As the medical cannabis industry evolved, sharp differences with the illicit market developed, but only at the extremes: the AIDS patient getting his lab-tested cannabis from a dispensary in a regulated city like Berkeley on one end, the street dealer selling Mexican cartel weed to high school students on the other.
In the middle was a vast, amorphous gray zone, and many operators have found it wise to stay there, keeping their heads low and leaving no paper trail.
Which is how Ricky does business —- no taxes, no permits and no paperwork. He stashes his cash in safe deposit boxes all over and buries it in the ground. But he still sells only to people with medical recommendations, he says, mainly in case he lands in court and needs a defense."
The rest of the story is a worthwhile read. At least I thought so.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-delivery-20120907,0,5541965,full.story
"A stocky onetime mortgage broker is speeding through Costa Mesa in an old pickup with two pounds of weed in a paper bag. He wears gray cargo shorts and flip-flops and a faded cap with the image of a marijuana leaf stitched on the front. He just smoked a joint thick as a knuckle.
Cypress Hill thumps through the cab.
I'll hit that bong and break ya off somethin' soon
I got ta get my props,
Cops, come and try to snatch my crops
These pigs wanna blow my house down
For a man whose apartment was raided recently and now faces felony drug possession and cultivation charges, he doesn't seem particularly worried about the mission at hand. Ricky rants about a federal and local crackdown on medical marijuana that closed various dispensaries that he ran and forced him back to the streets, where he began as a teenager in the 1970s. (Except then, he was a dealer. Now he is a "mobile dispensary.")
"It's too late!" he bellows. "The genie is out of the bottle. A huge demand has been created. It's back to the underground. Anyone who is smart is just going to take it back to the streets."
He says he knows lots of people scurrying to the shadows as the state has struggled and failed to regulate the medical cannabis industry and local law enforcement agencies and the federal government have tried to curtail it.
It's an easy journey to the underground, as the line between the legal and illegal markets in California has always been sketchy. The medical cannabis trade did not rise from a boardroom meeting when voters passed the medical marijuana initiative Proposition 215 in 1996. It sprouted out of the marijuana networks that already existed, with largely the same growers, middlemen and customers.
As the medical cannabis industry evolved, sharp differences with the illicit market developed, but only at the extremes: the AIDS patient getting his lab-tested cannabis from a dispensary in a regulated city like Berkeley on one end, the street dealer selling Mexican cartel weed to high school students on the other.
In the middle was a vast, amorphous gray zone, and many operators have found it wise to stay there, keeping their heads low and leaving no paper trail.
Which is how Ricky does business —- no taxes, no permits and no paperwork. He stashes his cash in safe deposit boxes all over and buries it in the ground. But he still sells only to people with medical recommendations, he says, mainly in case he lands in court and needs a defense."
The rest of the story is a worthwhile read. At least I thought so.
