[RetroGrow]

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:

https://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...965,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.

[RollmeoneKenobi]

Nice read.

[Behind_The_Mask]

I like this guys Attitude

[Grass Lands]

This sums it up quite nicely...

"Everybody old school was amazed at first: You can have a store and advertise and be above board. But the reality is you can't do that. . . . Everyone is just registering for their own take-down."

[supermanlives]

hell ya. thats how ya do it.

[VirginHarvester]

You know, I honestly have this suspicion that government likes it more when things are underground. It creates a demand for their services, something to go to war for the people over. Meanwhile all kinds of innocent if not useless demand for incarceration, servants in the court system, and of course, police, rehab, parole advisers. See what I mean?

[mr.brunch]

fuck em. we do our best work underground, have they not realised this.
skunk only got bred so nice buds would fit under lights.... no law, no need for small weighty plants. thanks govt!

[paladin420]

Fuckem n fade to black.
I tried to play by their silly rules.

[weeddaddy50]

very interesting article.....ya thats about right.....about 5 years ago we were having a trimming party and trying all the new strains that we grew...it was dead of winter...and all of us were comming up with names of the dispensary we were going to open....to help people with their medicine needs.....I kept saying....man...I am just not sure about this.....lets just see where it goes.......now all dispensarys are closed in our area....and all the big ones are going down....and its only a matter of time and they will mostly all be closed.......its just a big target on you.......a huge target.......the demand is huge and growing.....there just has to be a better way to get the medicine (weed) to people than the brick and mortor way.....and that way is back underground.

[Grass Lands]

underground is where I've always been and underground is where I will always stay...