Just posted our report on cannabis cultivation bans in California — their causes and effects, intended and unintended! The report is the culmination of a 2-year project with Margiana Petersen-Rockney (UC Berkeley/University of Montana) and Christy Getz (UC Berkeley). You can check it out on the CRC page or download it off my publications page.
On January 1, I took over the directorship of the Cannabis Research Center from the amazing Drs. Van Butsic and Ted Grantham. I was there when we got it started in 2017/18 and have been part of it ever since. Happy to be leading a center at the cutting edge of research on cannabis legalization! Grateful for all my collaborators and CRC supporters!
Last week I received word from the Department of Cannabis Control that three of three projects I proposed will be funded. One on monopolistic tendencies and anti-competitive industries (with Drs. Nathan Sayre, Jesse Goldstein of VCU, Dilara Uksup of UCLA, and Rob Chlala of CSU-Long Beach), another on the geographic trends in unlicensed cultivation and its basis in local policy (with Drs. Van Rustic, Chris Dillis and Margiana Petersen-Rockney), and the last on Hmong diasporas and medicinal and farming practices (with Drs. Christy Getz and Margiana Petersen-Rockney). See the press release here.
A snippet:
It was the explicit intention of Proposition 64 that California build a cannabis industry “around small and medium sized businesses by prohibiting large-scale cultivation for the first five years.” This policy objective was undermined in several ways. Part of this stems from the asymmetric burdens regulation has placed upon farmers – burdens that are eroding the potential for a cultivation sector built upon smaller production. Thriving smaller farms can serve as the bedrock of communities, grounding them in stable livelihoods, ancillary economic development, and a kind of land stewardship that more often comes when farms are locally owned and operated. This report was developed by researchers from seven different University of California and California State University institutions who convened to discuss and provide detailed recommendations that might be taken to ensure the place of small-and medium-sized cultivators and enterprises in California’s cannabis cultivation sector. They believe California has the chance to lead toward a sustainable, and equitable agricultural system suited for the unique challenges of today’s world – from climate change and supply-chain security to social equity and rural resilience.
We convened to develop this paper at a critical moment for cannabis regulation and markets in California. Cannabis producers, the ecologies and communities with which they are entwined are under enormous pressures: wholesale prices have crashed, farms are failing, and local regulatory systems are struggling, among myriad other challenges. This report presents multiple pathways for consideration by state and local governments, in their efforts to improve cannabis cultivation policy. You can read and download it here.
New article in Land Use Policy entitled “After Legalization: Cannabis, Environmental Compliance, and Agricultural Futures.” And the summary goes like: “We present this opinion article to suggest several strategies to ameliorate compliance barriers by identifying the learning, financial, and psychological costs of transitioning to the licensed cultivation market and recommended pathways to reduce these costs. Many hope legalization of this agricultural crop, poised to become California’s most valuable, will reduce environmental harms associated with illicit production, ensure safe cannabis products for consumers, and equitably support farmers along the way. Yet, the transition to a legal market faces challenges. Meanwhile, both licensed and unlicensed farms are increasing in size, thus increasing environmental pressures. Our proposed strategies present an unprecedented opportunity to model a new kind of agriculture centered on small-farm production and environmental stewardship—a model that indicates new directions for agriculture beyond cannabis.” It’s open access and you can download or read it here.
This Wednesday I will be giving a talk entitled Prohibited Commoning: Lessons for an Emancipatory Legalization” at Cal Poly Humboldt. The talk will be online so please join wherever you are. Zoom link is on the flyer below or by clicking here.
Hekia Bodwitch, PhD, and I just authored a new article in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene on “Prohibited Commoning.” Stemming from discussions we have had on fisheries and tobacco and the unexpected success of equity-seeking regulations, we were both interested in thinking through the question of what equity, or, in our mind the more powerful language of “emancipation,” would look like in relation to cannabis. To move forward, we argue, does not mean erasing or disqualifying the past. We not only need to repair the harms prohibition caused but we need to recognize and build from the forms of resilience and resourcefulness that people innovated under prohibition. This article explores some of that history and applies it to present debates over equity. It is a continuation of the work we did in our 2020 publication on the grower survey, where we posed some potential avenues to create greater equity and access for cultivators, but we do it here in a decidedly different, ethnographic register and with a sharpened focus on the political causes and implications of legalization. Enjoy. You can access it here!
Thanks to David Farber, Clark Terill, and Marjorie Galelli for creating a great teaching companion website to the just-released edited collection, The War on Drugs: A History. Each chapter, including mine on cannabis exceptionalism, has guiding questions and keywords. There are great source documents for in-class teaching activities. And there is an awesome timeline at the bottom of the page. Check it out!
Just posted on my Publications page: “Industrializing Cannabis? Socio-Legal Implications of Legalization and Regulation in California” with Chris Dillis, Hekia Bodwitch, Jen Carah, Mary Powers, and Nathan Sayre. Also, a second chapter just by me entitled: “Legalization and Prohibition: Breaks, Continuities and Shifting Terms of Racial-Capitalist Governance.” Both of these are available in the just-published Routledge Handbook of Post-Prohibition Cannabis Research, an edited collection by Dominic Corva and Josh Meisel at Humboldt State University.
Here is their abstract:
The place of cannabis in global drug prohibition is in crisis, opening up new directions for socially engaged cannabis research. The Routledge Handbook of Post-Prohibition Cannabis Research invites readers to explore new landscapes of cannabis research under conditions of legalization with, not after, prohibition: "post-prohibition." The chapters are organized into five multidisciplinary sections: Governance, Public Health, Markets and Society, Ecology and the Environment, and Culture and Social Change. Case studies from the United States, Uruguay, Morocco, and the United Kingdom show readers alternative ways of thinking about human–cannabis relationships that move beyond questions of legality and illegality. Representing a cross-section of cannabis scholarship, the contributors provide readers with critical perspectives on legalization that are not based upon orthodoxies of prohibition. While legalization signals a global shift in the legitimacy of cannabis research, this collection identifies openings for academics, policy makers, and the public interested in ending the drug war, as well as a way to address broader social problems evident in the age of neoliberal governance within which prohibition has been entangled.
This article is the culmination of 2 years of research with Hekia Bodwitch. We set out originally to discover why it is that some people are entering compliance and others aren’t. Were there particular characteristics that typified people who applied for licenses? How about those who didn’t? Was the issue that people didn’t like regulations and were resisting them? Or were people interested in getting licenses but barred by various factors? What were those factors? Were there appreciable differences between people that applied and those who didn’t? To answer these questions, we consulted other studies on compliance, particularly among agriculturalists, and came up with a number of possible reasons that people were or weren't motivated. Then, we crafted a survey using Qualitrix, which we tried out on a few groups of willing farmers. We refined the survey and then sent it out live, working our cultivator networks. We got back over 700 responses, about half of which completed the whole survey. It gave us one of the first glimpses into farmer behavior, calculations, and experiences singe legalization began. It is likely the largest survey done to date of cannabis cultivators in the US and certainly the largest survey of unregulated farmers. We hope its results can be helpful to policy makers, industry and political advocates, and the public as they consider the multiple crises in and because of agriculture.
Just out in Land Use Policy is a new article with Chris Dillis, Eric Biber, Van Butsic, Jen Carah, Hekia Bodwitch, Phoebe Parker-Shames and myself. Some of the biggest takeaways for me were that: 1) 60% of the cultivated land in CA is done by 10% of licensees; 2) larger grows are more likely to be permitted and operate as tenant farmer/absentee owner situations; and, 3) that the cultivation sector is splitting: new, large, ag-zone, sparse farms and small, heritage, mixed-zone dense farms. You can download the article or you can go to the journal’s page and access it there. Thanks to Chris Dillis, who did the bulk of the work coordinating and polishing this!
I received word this weekend that I received two major grants from the State of California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control. Funded through tax proceeds, as directed by Prop 64, the research funds are likely the biggest infusion of non-prohibitionist cannabis research money into the topic…ever? First, with Christy Getz and Margiana Petersen-Rockney we will be continuing and expanding our research in Siskiyou County in a project titled: “Cultivation Bans, Local Control, and the Effects and Efficacy of Proposition 64.” It will involve 4 months of field research across 4 case studies throughout California, examining why cultivation bans take root and what their effects are. Second, with Ann Laudati and Nathan Sayre, I will be conducting a study called: “Transformation of Unregulated Cannabis Cultivation Under Proposition 64.” We will conduct ethnographic and mapping projects across three regions, twelve months total, looking at how unregulated production has transformed under the new dynamics of legalized cannabis. In total, funding for these two projects comes out to be nearly $1 million and will take place over the course of two years. To learn more, check out the press release.
Listen to Drs. Hekia Bodwitch, Van Butsic and me on KMUD Radio’s Monday Morning Magazine. All shows available via the archives. We talk about the results of our statewide survey, the barriers to becoming successfully compliant, and the issues facing cannabis farmers and their communities in depth. (Just search for Monday Morning Magazine (two parts) on October 12 at 7-9AM in the pulldown menu.)
WeedMaps just released a new documentary on California’s experience with legalization. It’s well shot, concise and gripping. Kudos to the filmmakers - I’m appreciative they looped me in on the project. You can find all the episodes on this site.
Uprooted is a 3-part docuseries that shines a light on California cannabis and the state's complicated road to legalization. Through the experiences of more ...
Check out Dr Hekia Bodwitch’s YouTube presentation on our 2019 cannabis cultivation survey. Lots of work went into this!
Check out my YouTube video on lessons in cannabis policymaking from my ethnographic fieldwork.
Yesterday I signed an offer letter for a Visiting Assistant Professor at Davidson College in the Anthropology Department. I’ll be teaching 5 courses a year, one of which will be Introduction to Anthropology…and the others? One on The Commodity Society, perhaps. Another on Political Ecology. A third on Capitalism and Its Discontents. We’ll see. As for when I will physically arrive there, who knows? Waiting to hear if the semester is online or in-person. Regardless, I’m packing it in and heading east. So happy to have helped co-found the Cannabis Research Center at Berkeley and I look forward to working more with the research collaborators I’ve met!
So happy to give a colloquium in UC Berkeley’s Environmental Science, Policy & Management Department, where i’ve been located for the past 3 years! On April 9, I gave a talk entitled “Whose Rural? Policing, Cannabis Activism and Political Ecology in Exurban California.” it was their first Zoom-based colloquium talk and I think it went alright. Feel free to listen to the whole talk by clicking here.
