Workers who spent their whole lives in the cannabis industry are suddenly looking around for new careers that may not be there. Store clerks, gas station attendants and restaurant servers who relied on their patronage now find themselves with reduced hours, meager tips or out of a job altogether.
A sense of despair and heartbreak has taken hold in many communities. People whisper about friends who are thinking about divorce or who killed themselves because they could not handle the financial devastation. And the pain is compounded by a feeling that their suffering has been all but invisible, overlooked by most Californians and dismissed by government officials who have never made good on the promises of legalization.
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For decades before California legalized recreational cannabis in 2016, this rural region of about 245,000 people was the base of weed cultivation for the entire country. The effects of the price crash, which has been particularly acute in the past two years, can be felt throughout the three counties, both within the industry and far outside of it.
Cultivators who can barely make ends meet are laying off employees, slashing expenses or shutting down their farms. That means money isn’t flowing into local businesses, nonprofits are getting fewer generous cash donations in brown paper bags, and local governments are collecting less in sales and property taxes.
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Some imagine that growing tourism can be the salvation, or attracting new residents with remote jobs and a desire to live way off the grid, or perhaps a logging revival driven by the urgent need to thin out California’s wildfire-prone forests. Others hope that a cannabis turnaround might still be possible.
But for a small, isolated town such as Hayfork — population: 2,300; high school student body: 88; empty sawmills: two — the answers are not obvious. The fear that the community could ultimately wither away is real.
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Then came Proposition 64, the ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that finally legalized recreational cannabis use and commercial sales in the state, though they remain illegal under federal law. Proponents including Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched it as both a social justice measure and a boon for tax revenues.
But the “green rush” that resulted has arguably harmed the Emerald Triangle more than it helped.
New farmers, sometimes licensed and often not, streamed in, flooding the market with cannabis. A cap on the size of farms intended to give small growers a head start was abandoned in the final state regulations, opening the door to competing cultivation hubs in other regions of California with looser restrictions. And with most local jurisdictions still closed to dispensaries, the legal market has been unable to absorb the glut, resulting in plunging prices and a vicious cycle in which farmers grow even more weed to make up for it.
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There have been nascent efforts at the state Capitol to help small cannabis growers. Newsom and legislators agreed last year to eliminate a cultivation tax after farmers from the Emerald Triangle lobbied aggressively for relief. But the intervention is far from enough to ensure their future in a turbulent cannabis market.
State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of “suffocating rules.” He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an “antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure” that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products.
“These are solutions that will help stabilize the market and lift up family farmers for generations to come,” McGuire said. “The state needs to have a backbone to get it done.”
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