OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2017
Founded in 1873
HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Johnson would be
a smart choice for
Ways & Means
T
he Oregon Legislature has one role above all others: Write
a balanced state budget.
With budget expert Richard Devlin set to leave the state
Senate, state Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose would be a log-
ical choice to take over as co-chair of the Joint Ways & Means
Committee. A longtime member of Ways & Means, she currently
serves as a co-vice chair.
Because Democrats control the Senate, there is a 99.99999 per-
cent chance that Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, will
appoint a Democrat to succeed Devlin.
Johnson is a Democrat but not constrained by rigid ideology or
partisanship.
She teamed with Republican Sen. Tim Knopp of Bend to seek
reforms in the Public Employees Retirement System. She was
instrumental in the bipartisan transportation package approved this
year. She speaks bluntly about the federal government’s failed for-
est policies, which contributed to this year’s massive wildfires.
As important as her legislative resume is her life experience.
Johnson founded and ran successful businesses, led a state
agency and worked with nonprofits. Add in her training as a law-
yer and she has an understanding of all three branches of state
government — executive, legislative and judicial.
Above all, Johnson stands for political honesty. She says what
she thinks, which sometimes rattles colleagues whose values are
more politically malleable. If she doesn’t know the answer, she’ll
say so instead of trying to bluff. Time and time again, she is the
legislator who asks the common-sense questions that average
Oregonians would be asking if they were in the State Capitol.
Johnson also displays a sense of humor in a Capitol too often
ruled by ego. Her speech defending the western meadowlark as
Oregon’s state bird this year was a masterful combination of hilar-
ity and poignancy.
We recognize that her forthrightness and independence might
be a liability if the Senate Democratic leadership prefers to pre-
serve the status quo. We hope that’s not the case.
Dumping NAFTA would
hurt Northwest farmers
P
resident Donald Trump’s ongoing experiments in “the art
of the trade deal” are proving to be a white-knuckle experi-
ence. Currently in Asia for economic and diplomatic talks,
the president and his administration have raised some valid points
about trade imbalances. However, his tactics may ricochet back
and hurt U.S. industries he is trying to help.
A case in point: U.S. farmers have realized a lot of benefits
from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 pact
between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
It’s also true that farmers who have benefited from the deal
would also like it to be a bit better — but not blown to smither-
eens. Northwest wheat growers say the pact has opened up the
Mexican market, increasing exports by 400 percent. At the same
time, they have gripes about Canadian wheat pricing.
Everyone wants to keep what works, and fix what doesn’t. But
anytime you renegotiate, you run the risk of the other country’s
fix causing trouble. That’s part of normal negotiations. These are
hardly normal negotiations. By sometimes threatening an outright
cancellation of NAFTA, the president puts political theatrics ahead
of effective negotiating tactics.
Late last month, dozens of major agriculture trade groups
warned the Trump Commerce Department that NAFTA with-
drawal would cause “immediate, substantial harm to American
food and agriculture industries and to the U.S. economy as a
whole.” Even the threat of such an abrupt turnaround in U.S. pol-
icy has our trading partners looking around for options for sales
and purchases — in China, for example.
“If the president were to withdraw from NAFTA, I think that
would cause a lot of problems in farm country,” Ben Conner,
director of policy for U.S. Wheat Associates, said. “The president
has a lot more negotiating experience than I do, but if they’re try-
ing to make counterparts in Canada and Mexico concerned, it also
has us alarmed.”
Pick up the president’s book, “The Art of the Deal.” Written in
1987, the book outlines Trump’s 11-step formula for negotiations.
Step No. 5 is “use your leverage” — walk away if you can’t get
what you want.
“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desper-
ate to make it,” Trump wrote. “That makes the other guy smell
blood, and then you’re dead.”
Is Trump threatening to abandon trade treaties to gain leverage,
or will he walk away in the hope of making a better, bigger deal
some other day? Such doubts — whether about wheat, airplanes
or the host of other products Northwest states export — are not
beneficial.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
A life in the cannabis trade
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
W
ayne Zallen, 64, is the
owner of Hi Dispensary
and a partner in Mystic
Roots Cannabis on
U.S. Highway 26
near Seaside. He is
the owner of a can-
nabis-friendly RV
park in Josephine
County, “Smoke
on the Water Lake
Selmac,” and has been profiled in
national publications for his role as
consultant and chief executive officer
of Grow Condos, Inc. As a business
owner on the North Coast, Zallen
has made his goal to be part of the
community, dedicating a portion of
funds once a month to charitable
organizations.
Q: Where you from?
A: I’m from Mineola, New York.
I grew up in Ohio, moved to the Bay
Area and then up to Medford, Ore-
gon, where I raised my family.
Q: Were you a longtime advo-
cate of cannabis?
A: I have been smoking pot since
I was 16.
Q: You started in Ohio? It was
illegal at the time.
A: Oh God, yes — it was the
’70s.
Q: Did you ever get caught?
A: I dropped 2 pounds off at a
guy’s apartment in Columbus when
I was in college. I was on my walk
back when I was busted. I didn’t
even have a seed on me. I did have
some cash, but I didn’t have a drop
of marijuana. So they got me for con-
spiracy to possess. They thought I
was going there to buy instead of to
sell. So they had nothing on me. The
records got expunged.
Q: Did you move into a more
traditional career?
A: Yes, I had a totally traditional
career. I graduated college with a
degree in advertising and market-
ing. I went out to San Francisco to
try to find my way and started an
ad agency that dealt with car deal-
ers only. I made a lot of money. The
car dealers in the Bay Area were
very receptive. I got bored with that,
and then I went into the financial
services.
Q: In what way?
A: In the late ’70s and early
’80s, I got into the mortgage bank-
ing business. At the time mortgage
rates were 19 percent. I made a for-
tune doing that. Then I went into the
restaurant business in Alameda, Cal-
ifornia. I sold all-beef Vienna hot
dogs. All businesses are tough, but to
make money in the hot dog business
at a buck a hot dog, you have to sell
a million of them. I sold it and the
new owners turned it into a Chinese
restaurant. I moved to Medford in
1992, where I was an Allstate agent
for 15 years.
Q: When did you get into the
marijuana business?
A: Me and a friend of mine
would go in on pounds in Northern
California. We did that for decades. It
was pretty crazy.
Q: How did it play out?
A: I sold my insurance agency,
got a whole bunch of new money
from that, and then I went out and
bought a rafting company because
I love to be out on the river. Mari-
juana was medically legal in Ore-
gon — this was when Obama said he
wouldn’t go after the medical people
— so I started an indoor-grow ware-
house in southern Oregon.
Q: How did you go about it?
A: Basically, I had to get patients
and cards. We bought seeds on the
internet from seed banks. We sexed
them, sprouted them. We did that for
nine years. Then the laws began to
Photos by R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Hi Dispensary in Astoria undergoes renovations.
Wayne Zallen
change. Everything began to change.
Q: Why did you open a
dispensary?
A: It was vertical integration.
Q: What’s that?
A: It means I just moved money
from one pocket to the other. Instead
of buying from you, I’m buying from
me.
Q: It’s like growing and selling
corn?
A: It’s like having a vegetable
stand.
Q: Why did you choose
Astoria?
A: Good question. I do love the
Oregon Coast and I love the fish.
When we first became OLCC (Ore-
gon Liquor Control Commission)
licensed, I tried to buy a dispensary
in Portland. At the time, Medford, in
Jackson County, where I lived, had
a ban on marijuana facilities. The
owner had two, one in Portland and
one in Astoria, and the one in Astoria
did better than the one in Portland.
Q: So he was selling his two
shops?
A: Yes. I made him an offer and
his lawyer said write it up, so I wrote
it up. Now I’m remodeling the whole
thing. That’s why I am here.
Q: Why did you start the other
store in Seaside?
A: I started that with another gen-
tleman from Seaside. He had an ad
on Craigslist that he needed a part-
ner. I said the only way I am going
to make this work is to have a vested
partner that lives in the area. He is
there most days.
Q: You are the first person to
open a pot-friendly RV park?
A: The people I bought it from
had been there for 11 years. They
lived in Palm Springs, California.
I bought it from them, and we are
open year-round. Even in the dead of
winter my RV park is full.
Q: Why is that?
A: Because all around me there
are hundreds of pot farms. The trim
workers need a place to stay, so they
stay in my park. We sometimes call
them “trimmigrants.” They need a
place to stay while they are trimming
the weed for the farms.
Q: What’s a trim worker?
A: They cut the buds off the
sticks. They sit there for eight hours:
trim-trim-trim-trim-trim, all day
long. All they need is scissors. They
make $10 to $15 an hour. They’re
coming from California and around
the state. They even come from the
East Coast to be in the weed business
for six months of the year, then they
go away. The only thing we don’t
have in the RV park is the weed. But
I’m working on that. I have an appli-
cation for that with the OLCC.
Q: Have you ever had any con-
tact with organized crime?
A: No. We are too small on the
big scale of things.
Q: Where do you see the pot
business going or growing in the
South County? Do you see people
coming here for cannabis?
A: You see cruise ships coming
into Astoria. There are people maybe
our age and they haven’t smoked
pot since college or whenever: ‘Oh,
honey, it’s legal here in Oregon!’ So
they buy some weed, smoke it or eat
it. We can see a huge spike in our
numbers when the ships come in.
Q: Do you have a business
philosophy?
A: One day a month we donate
a percentage of our proceeds. We
see huge spikes on that day. We’ve
donated to the hurricane fund, we’re
donating to the Oregon firefight-
ers, and then in November we will
donate to the food bank in Asto-
ria. It’s just like any other busi-
ness. We’re just like mom and pop.
I want people to see this as a normal
business.
Q: Is there camaraderie in your
business?
A: I asked my manager if he
would set up a meeting with the
other dispensary owners. They didn’t
want to do it, but that’s how I do
things.
Q: Where do you see the canna-
bis business headed?
A: I see prices going down. I
don’t know how much on the retail
level, but on the wholesale level. A
week or so ago a distributor came by
and was asking for $1,700 a pound.
My manager said to me the same
guy, same weed, was $1,400 a pound
a week later.
Q: What’s the secret to your
success?
A: I am just a businessman who
happens to be in the pot business.
And really most of the people in this
business are not businessman.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.