Kevin Rector reports from Garberville, in Humboldt County, California. The headline is, "The War on Drugs Part II: California taxes, rules are killing small legal weed farms." An excerpt follows:
Across California’s legal cannabis industry, small operators are facing financial ruin.
Farmers have been forced to rely on government assistance and have stopped paying their taxes. Some legacy growers who entered the legal market are considering going underground into the thriving illegal market, where they would avoid state oversight and tax bills.
The farmers say they support regulations that ensure their weed is safe for consumers. But they object to rules that nitpick their farming practices and needlessly drive up their costs — rules that their illegal competitors don’t follow.
In addition to paying cultivation and excise taxes, state licensing fees and other upfront costs, legal cannabis farmers have been forced to comply with intense tracking and testing regimens and an array of bureaucratic rules that dictate how they can farm their crop — some of which state officials have conceded are excessive and have begun to walk back. One that the state eliminated had required farmers to weigh every one of their plants individually. Another restricted outdoor farmers’ use of “light deprivation,” a traditional farming method to limit the amount of sunlight plants get in the field.
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Faced with increasingly desperate pleas from licensed farmers, California has eased regulations and state and local taxes have been reduced in recent months, after officials began realizing that legal weed can’t be the cash cow they once envisioned. Not if they expect it to also compete with and one day overtake the illegal weed industry, which is causing labor and environmental catastrophes across the state.
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