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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2017
Growers: Pot farming still illegal under federal law
Continued from Page 1A
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W A NTED
as he tells of dealing with old
counter-culture types who peel
off $100 bills, but provide little
detail about who they are, what
they want and what they’re
doing.
“You have to have the
patience of Job to work with
these guys,” he said.
At another booth, veteran
grower Joe Pietri promoted
his “Grow Like Joe” methods
and his book, “The 15-Ounce
Pound,” in which he predicts
“Big Pharma” will patent can-
nabis and use the IRS and DEA
to control other growers.
He said pot growers need to
match the efficiency of com-
mercial nurseries.
“If you can’t grow canna-
bis like they do chrysanthe-
mums, they will wipe you out,”
Pietri told a couple people who
stopped at his booth. “You
won’t survive in this industry.”
Representatives of a Colo-
rado “Hemp Temps” company
said they offer growers trained
and temporary bud tenders,
trimmers and harvesters. The
company expects to open an
Oregon branch this spring.
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Jenny Argie, from Brook-
lyn, New York, demonstrated
products she offers through
her company, Baked At Home.
Argie is a cancer survivor, and
used cannabis as an alternative
to pharmaceuticals to man-
age pain and nausea. She sells
legal cookie, cake and brownie
mixes that allow buyers to add
their own cannabis oil at home.
That gives users control over
their dosage, Argie said.
Argie joked that she’s
become the Betty Crocker of
cannabis baking.
“The interest and enthusi-
asm is so big,” she said.
Argie also sells lotions
infused with CBD, or canna-
bidiol, which along with THC
is one of the primary elements
of pot. CBD doesn’t get users
high, however, and is primarily
used for pain relief.
Danny Grimm, the Salem
grower who is expanding his
business, was at the Portland
conference with the blue rib-
bons he won at the Oregon
State Fair.
“It’s a pretty big deal,” he
said.
r
T UESDAY E VENING
Economic buzz
Nonetheless, the economic
buzz of cannabis legalization
escalates.
At the annual Cannabis Col-
laborative Conference in Port-
land in February, vendors of
all types displayed the technol-
ogy, products and services that
have sprung up in step with
legalization.
At one booth, a company
called Root Sciences, with
an office in Belfair, Wash.,
showed German-made dis-
tillation equipment that pro-
duces 99 percent pure canna-
binoid oil concentrates for use
in medical products or rec-
reational edibles. One model
sells for $159,000, which
includes shipping, installation
and training.
Down another aisle at the
convention, 69-year-old elec-
trical contractor Gregory Fuller
showed his mobile grow-
ing unit. Fuller, of Federal
Way, Wash., retrofitted a ship-
ping container with LED grow
lights and insulation. The unit’s
electrical requirement is small
enough that it can operate on
200-amp residential service.
Plug and play, as it were.
“This is agriculture,” Fuller
said. “I can grow 2,000 pounds
of lettuce in here a year.”
But it’s pot growers he’s
marketing to, and the units sell
for $110,000. Fuller laughs
Eric Mortenson/EO Media Group
Veteran marijuana grower Joe Pietri warns new pot pro-
ducers they must be able to match the efficiency of big
nursery operations or “You won’t survive in this industry.”
la
THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
The federal Financial
Crimes Enforcement Net-
work, or FinCen, issued a 2014
guideline that allowed banks
to work with state-legal can-
nabis businesses that were fol-
lowing the Cole Memorandum
rules. But FinCen “put the onus
of due diligence on the banks,”
Rudolph said by email, and
many financial institutions are
unwilling to take that risk.
ies Au xi
Producers thinking about
growing cannabis, however,
should realize major questions
have not yet been answered.
Most critically, it is still ille-
gal under federal law. On the
books, marijuana is listed as
a Schedule 1 controlled sub-
stance. Cannabis activists
say the ranking is ludicrous
because it puts pot in the same
category as heroin and LSD,
while methamphetamine and
cocaine are Schedule 2 drugs, a
notch below.
Current state-level legal-
ization is based on a shoul-
der-shrug interpretation of the
August 2013 “Cole Memoran-
dum,” named for James Cole,
an assistant U.S. attorney gen-
eral who wrote it.
In the memo, the Obama
administration essentially said
it wouldn’t interfere, so long
as states legalizing cannabis
had “strong and effective reg-
ulatory and enforcement sys-
tems” in place. The administra-
tion didn’t want pot available to
minors, crossing into states that
hadn’t legalized it and funding
the operations of cartels and
gangs.
Growers, processors and
retailers in Washington, Ore-
gon, California and elsewhere
took that as a sign to get busy.
“Why did everyone just start
blowing through this risk factor
like they couldn’t care less?” a
lawyer-blogger with Portland’s
Emerge Law Group wrote.
One reason was “the fact that
so many people are involved in
the industry now that there’s a
feeling of safety in sheer num-
bers. ‘What are they going to
do? Arrest everyone?’”
Probably not, the blogger
concluded, but Trump and con-
servative Attorney General Jeff
Sessions could deliver a “big
chill” if they decided to change
course.
On Feb. 24, Trump press
secretary Sean Spicer said the
Justice Department would pur-
sue “greater enforcement” of
laws regarding recreational-use
marijuana. The offhand remark
confused the situation.
“Trump seems insistent on
throwing the marijuana mar-
ket back into the hands of crim-
inals, wiping out tax-paying
jobs and eliminating billions
of dollars in taxes,” said Ethan
Nadelmann, executive direc-
tor of the Drug Policy Alliance.
The group is a Washington,
D.C.-based lobbying group
that favors marijuana and other
drug policies “grounded in sci-
ence, compassion, health and
human rights.”
New Approach Oregon, the
Portland group that backed and
works to implement Oregon’s
2014 legalization of adult rec-
reational cannabis use, called
Spicer’s remarks “concerning.”
But New Approach Director
Anthony Johnson said Trump
and Sessions hadn’t been heard
from.
“Greater enforcement by the
Justice Department, if it does
occur, could mean that the fed-
eral government may just mon-
itor state-regulated businesses
more closely,” Johnson said in
a prepared statement. “Poten-
tially, federal charges could be
brought if cannabis businesses
violate state law and regula-
tions, such as selling marijuana
to minors under the age of 21.”
The availability of capi-
tal and banking services also
are major questions for canna-
bis producers, processors and
retailers, because federally reg-
ulated banks aren’t supposed
to handle money from illegal
businesses.
Garrett Rudolph, editor of
Marijuana Venture magazine,
said banks’ relationship to the
cannabis industry is “basically
a giant gray area.”
Lad
What’s also abundant is the
money and economic spin-off
that accompanies legalization.
Cannabis activists have long
maintained pot is Oregon’s
most valuable crop. While
there aren’t official farm gate
numbers available to back that
up, a former Oregon State Uni-
versity professor estimated in
2015 that the state’s pot crop
was worth $948 million annu-
ally, or more than the combined
value of hazelnuts, pears, wine
grapes, Christmas trees and
blueberries.
The 17 percent tax on rec-
reational pot sales is an open
spigot. The Oregon Depart-
ment of Revenue received
$5.3 million in tax payments
in January 2017, and said it has
received $65.4 million in can-
nabis tax collections since Jan-
uary 2016. After the depart-
ment’s administrative costs
are met, 40 percent of the tax
revenue goes to the Com-
mon School Fund, 20 percent
to mental health, alcohol and
drug services, and 15 percent
to the Oregon State Police. Cit-
ies, counties and other services
split the remainder.
Advocacy groups say pot
legalization creates jobs. New
Frontier Data, a Washington,
D.C., analytics firm that spe-
cializes in cannabis issues, esti-
mated the sector would cre-
ate more than 280,000 jobs by
2020. Adult cannabis use is
now legal in eight states and
in D.C., areas with a combined
Eric Mortenson/EO Media Group
Vendor Jenny Argie, left, of Brooklyn, rubs pain relieving medical cannabis lotion on Brian
Bergmann’s hand during the recent Cannabis Collaborative Conference in Portland. The
lotion is infused with non-psychoactive CBD oil, or cannabidiol, extracted from pot plants.
er
A m ic a n
Most valuable crop?
Eric Mortenson/EO Media Group
Under the glow of cannabis grow lights, Uplifted Farm em-
ployee Haley Dickerson changes out the nutrients in the
Salem company’s flowering room.
y
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s
no different.”
The guidelines, growing and
cropping techniques involved
in raising marijuana could be
applied to grapes, tomatoes or
anything else, he said.
Individual producers may
not favor pot farming, but the
Oregon Department of Agri-
culture has given its official
approval. After voters legalized
adult recreational production,
possession and use in 2014,
then-department Director Katy
Coba famously declared, “Wel-
come to the family.” Since
then, the department has taken
growers in hand to help them
through the regulatory network.
“It may not look the same
as what we’re used to, but it’s
definitely agriculture,” said
Sunny Jones, a pesticide expert
who was picked as the depart-
ment’s cannabis policy coordi-
nator. “That’s definitely been
ODA’s take on the situation;
it’s one more crop in the many
crops that Oregon grows.”
Jones said pot growers
demonstrate a work ethic and
problem-solving ability that
traditional agriculturists would
admire.
“When many of us think
of farmers, we think of some-
one creative, someone who
can keep the equipment run-
ning with baling wire and duct
tape,” she said. “That is abun-
dant in the cannabis industry.”
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