Pubdate: Thu, 22 Jan 2009
Source: New York Daily News (NY)
Copyright: 2009 Daily News, L.P.
Contact:  http://www.nydailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/295
Referenced: Marijuana, Inc. http://www.cnbc.com/id/28281668/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Marijuana - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Marijuana - Popular)

CNBC 'MARIJUANA INC.' LIFTS THE LID ON WEED BUSINESS

Trish Regan's Show on CNBC Is No Puff Piece.

Marijuana, Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry Thursday night at 9, CNBC

Don't worry that you're having a weed-induced flashback, dude, if you 
think there's something familiar about Trish Regan's CNBC report 
Thursday night on the American marijuana industry.

Lisa Ling reported the same story about two months ago on the 
National Geographic channel.

But a certain amount of overlap doesn't diminish Regan's solid 
feature, which focuses on Mendocino County, Calif, where 
entrepreneurs grow marijuana the way Washington, D.C., grows cherry trees.

And in most cases, almost as openly.

For better or worse, pot has become a major player in American 
agriculture, and Regan matter-of-factly notes that what corn is to 
Iowa, marijuana is to a fertile triangle just outside San Francisco.

Fittingly for a CNBC production, Regan focuses more on the economics 
than the sociology of marijuana, and the numbers make her point eloquently.

It costs about $400 to grow a pound of marijuana. The grower sells it 
to a wholesaler for about $2,500. It's then broken down in smaller 
quantities that can bring in about $6,000.

You see the incentive here.

One of the growers interviewed by Regan values his plants at about 
$5,000 apiece. He has 20 of them, which makes him a small grower, but 
still adds up to more than small change.

It also puts him into a gray legal area, Regan points out.

California several years ago started allowing residents to grow small 
amounts of marijuana for personal medicinal use. But no court has 
definitively ruled what constitutes a small amount, and then there's 
one other complication: Growing any marijuana remains illegal under 
federal law.

Most of Regan's interview subjects, who don't mind showing their 
faces or wares on national television, seem unbothered by the 
potential for prosecution.

Nor do her interviews with law enforcement officials suggest much 
cause for concern. The main response of the marijuana police, local 
and federal, is frustration that they can do so little about an 
enterprise that some officials figure may in some way involve up to 
60% of county residents.

Without marijuana farming, Regan's sources all agree, the county's 
economy would implode.

"Marijuana Inc." adds up to a solid special with a well-supported and 
inescapable conclusion: The commerce is unlikely to change and the 
law has only a slim chance of doing more than containing the most 
violence-prone offenders.

When it comes to marijuana, a whole lot of people voted some time ago 
to just say yes. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake