It’s been awhile but we’re back with another addition of the Underground Review. Here at HU we’ve been doing a lot of reflecting. As cannabis normalization marches into the New Year, we are taking a fresh look at what legalization means, how (sometimes if) it should be implemented, and what identity and role HU will take moving forward. When we first started the Humboldt Underground we held an ideological view born out of the chaotic medical cannabis grey market of California. Our ideological hope was for bolstering the status quo of medical marijuana through legalization (which is happening to an extent).
We thought, and still think, the current non-profit cooperative/collective model is revolutionary – it decentralizes cultivation and sale of cannabis while holding mainstream big business (and investment) at bay (albeit it makes the industry difficult to regulate). Nonetheless, this ideological hope inevitably met the material reality of western socio-political and socio-economic systems. With the passage of the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), the current cooperative/collective model is set to expire one year from a date the yet to be created Board of Medical Marijuana Regulation (BMMR) makes an announcement to this end. For profit medical cannabis sales will began January 1, 2018 and all sellers and producers will have to obtain state issued licenses (more info here). This new act, combined with potential legalization in 2016, has sent Northern California into a stir.
In local headlines just last week, the day after the State of the Union address, directly above a picture of Obama waving from the podium, you guessed it: weed, cultivation ordinance tension to be specific. In the shadow of MMRSA and in the headlights of legalization, city and county governments have been tasked with facing the proverbial elephant-in-the-room and bringing the cannabis industry into the light. Currently they have until March 1, 2016 to establish local guidelines (although this date is expected to be amended). This has sent local governments into frenzy, with many opting to ban all sale and cultivation in a hasty bid for time to contemplate legal weed. In Humboldt, CCVH has given the county a head start (thumbs up) and Humboldt (including the Emerald Triangle) seems to be further along than the rest of the state (as we should be). However, this doesn’t make the process any easier.
The Humboldt Underground 