Growing Weed to Become Just as Corporate as Everything Else

In a bid to reassert itself as the dominant force in American life, Capitalism today announced that it plans to immediately counteract the coolness of the legalization of medical marijuana by poisoning it with the awfulness of factory farming.

"Hippies and other anticapitalist types had been acting pretty happy about the slow but inevitable decriminalization of marijuana," Capitalism said. "As weed entered the legal world, I saw a great opportunity to snatch some revenue from growers who've been operating in the black market for decades."

Capitalism's tool in its nefarious and unstoppable plan is California businessman Jay Wilcox, who is taking advantage of Oakland's liberalization of marijuana laws to fuck every longtime hippie grower right in the ass. According to the LAT:

Jeff Wilcox, who owned a successful construction firm and has already incorporated as AgraMed, hopes to convert his empty industrial buildings near Interstate 880 into an enormous production facility. He plans to manufacture growing equipment, bake marijuana edibles in a 10,000-square-foot kitchen and use two football fields of space to grow about 58 pounds of marijuana every day, many times the amount now sold in Oakland. "Fifty eight pounds of chronic per day, totally legal, totally corporate, in my own fully-controlled factory," mused Capitalism, lighting up a machine-rolled joint with a golden Zippo. "Try to undersell that with your ten hydro plants from your closet, hippie. You'll be out of business in a month. This is the fucking Wal-Mart of weed. It'll be beautiful." "We have guns, too," the economic system added.

http://gawker.com/5591680/growing-weed-to-become-just-as-corporate-as-everything-else

Yes, there will be corporate models of distributorship, just like there are for beer and for vegetables. Yet despite the ubiquity of these products, millions of people around the nation continue to till their own backyard gardens with homemade compost in preparation for a plot of obscure white heirloom tomatoes; millions more bubble mad potions of grain and hops and yeast and magick for small batches of delicious homebrew which they will consume themselves and share with friends as part of a marvelous chain of "community socialism" of enthusiasm and generosity.

Relax, my friend. As the good old I.W.W. used to say, "we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

as home brewing. The average person won't want to deal with the hassle and will just stop at the store for a pack of smokes.

Not that I grow it myself. But, I do know someone who does.

have plans ready to go for when pot becomes legal. And you know what? I don't really have a problem with that. People would be better off smoking pot rather than cigarettes, people can still grow their own if they want (it's a freaking plant for chrissakes), and I'd sure rather have corporate gangsters (who at least would actually contribute to state revenue streams by way of taxes so that we could maybe fix some of our rapidly crumbling infrastructure items) selling weed than, I dunno, say, violent Mexican drug lords...you know?

This came out in industry memos during the years of tobacco lawsuits before the GOP shut them down.

Overnight, they will plant and deliver. And they already have an incredible distribution system in place.

Small growers will keep growing and for a short time they will sell a lot, but they will lose. They won't be able to compete with big tobacco.

This is chicken little nonsense.

nearly all the local brands. 20 years ago things were not as nice as now.

Except for the system that big tobacco already has in place.

oops...

I had no idea that the various networks and contacts from which I've procured weed over the years were all fronts for big tobacco...

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc....

At one time, microbreweries did not have the distribution either. The market demanded one be put into place. The market has also demanded more and more access to privately grown vegetables, and it appears that the producers and suppliers have responded.

At this point in time, I see no evidence to believe the same would not happen to marijuana.

ooga booga!

That is what I always take away from your little "see post #x" comments, onehandle. To be honest, it makes me take you a lot less seriously.

I'm one. There will always be privet strains, I have two. There will always be reduction and regional strains.

Stuff like weed growing becoming corporate sounds like scare tactics to me.

But decriminalization (or full legalization, for that matter) is still the right thing to do.

And tax revenues will likely increase as a result, in any case.

60,000 Hectares (or ca 148,000 Acres) of glorious sticky bud of the people!

What's the beef? Let big tobacco grow and produce - there is most certainly a market for them to exploit. But as long as I can grow my own or patronize smaller growers by choice, there's no problem in that.

and then there is grandma's apple pie. It will be no different with legalized weed. The important aspect of the debate it would seem would be the removal of the extreme profit motive for violent gangsters and the end to the insane policy of arresting and incarcerating millions of pot smokers.

I'll be considered sticking it to the man. Nice just more reasons to not get high.

Marijuana's pretty easy to grow at home. Tobacco, not so much. Big agri hasn't taken over tomatoes yet, and marijuana is easier to grow and takes less space...

The companies are going to try to process it in such a way that it is an easier smoking and easier burning product.

It will certainly make it more available, and there will always be people that just want the end product. But at the same time, there will always be people who will want to grow their own at home, to tinker with and for the pride of effort. That's why I was using tomatoes as a comparison (poorly on my part, I admit).

The tobacco plant requires pretty specific conditions in which to flourish, which is why the best tobacco in the US is grown primarily in the Southeast. Cannabis, on the other hand, is literally a weed, and much much hardier than tobacco.

If legalized, tobacco companies will almost certainly face competition from home cannabis growers. They definitely have the "convenience store" angle locked down, but other than that, homegrown weed will be very widespread (vs. tobacco today, which nobody grows at home) should it become legal to do so, just because cannabis is so much easier to grow at home than tobacco.

as opposed to people buying it off the streets from either shady drug dealers who mix other drugs / toxic stuff in there, or Mexican Cartels that are involved with kidnapping and murder.

I would rather people have the choice of either growing weed or buying it in safe, regulated environments, as opposed to off the street (which is very dangerous).