Pubdate: Fri, 27 Feb 2015
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2015 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Adrian Higgins

WAITING TO INHALE

With Sales of Pot Still Illegal in D.C. and a Clear Grow-Your-Own 
Message From Police, You'll Need Patience Before You Have a Supply

The District's marijuana initiative offers many pitfalls for the 
cannabis connoisseur, with strict limits on how much you can have and 
where you can smoke it. JEFF CHIU/ASSOCIATED PRESS

But the hardest part may be growing the stuff.

Because marijuana sales remain illegal - unlike in states that have 
legalized recreational or medical use - the District's initiative is 
based on people growing their own. Or in the mantra of Police Chief 
Cathy L. Lanier: "Home use. Home grown."

Here's the bad news, potheads: If you start a marijuana plant from 
seed or a cutting today, you won't be smoking it until about 
Independence Day. It takes that long to produce the intoxicating 
buds, even if you have green thumbs.

"I don't think students and others are going to sit around and stare 
at soil," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the 
Washington-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana 
Laws (NORML). The new rules, putting into place last fall's 
successful voter passage of Initiative 71, will do little to affect a 
thriving illicit market for marijuana, he said.

But he's been waiting a long time for Thursday's conditional 
decriminalization, and he said he marked the milestone shortly after 
midnight at his rowhouse in Columbia Heights by placing a few seeds 
in moistened paper towels, to get them to germinate and grow into 
something lush and useful.

Lanier and others have made it clear that growing marijuana plants 
outside is still illegal anywhere in the city: in gardens, on public 
lands, on rooftops or on balconies. Forcing the cultivation indoors - 
in theory - doubles your growing season from one a year to two or 
even three by shortening harvest cycles, but it requires a fairly 
advanced level of horticultural knowledge, as well as equipment and 
supplies that can run into thousands of dollars.

One factor is whether you have neighbors who object - or not - to the 
stench of engorged flower buds. If they do, expect to shell out 
$1,200 for a fancy filtration system, said Chris Conrad, an expert 
witness in marijuana-related court cases and an instructor at the 
school to which you wished your parents had sent you, Oaksterdam 
University - the cannabis college - in Oakland, Calif.

I asked him why I couldn't raise marijuana as I do my cabbages, under 
cheap shop lights in the basement. He pointed out that my cabbages 
eventually go outside to that ultimate grow light, the sun, but any 
indoor cannabis plants would have to be raised under high-intensity 
discharge lights that draw 1,000 watts and cost at least $300 apiece. 
You have to buy ballasts and hoods as well. The lamps gobble energy 
and emit loads of heat, so you need a cooling system, too. Your six 
plants, he said, would need more energy each day than an entire family.

Add growing mix, expensive feeds and other needs - possibly a sound 
system to play the plants, I don't know, the Grateful Dead or Snoop 
Dogg - and you can spend a thousand bucks or more.

Conrad said you can buy starter kits with growing tents and 
less-potent lights, costing perhaps $500, but your yield would be 
much reduced. I think I' ll stick with the cabbages.

Assuming St. Pierre's seeds all germinate - some may be too old to be 
viable, he conceded - he will have to plant them into larger 
containers as they grow, ultimately in three-gallon pots.

Corey Barnette, who owns one of three medical-marijuana cultivation 
centers in the District, predicted that the new recreational 
initiative will induce many to try their hand at growing - but that 
few will stick with it.

"Just like the many thousands of people who love beer, most people 
don't brew their own beer," he said. In other words, you may have 
kicked that rent-paying hipster out of the growing room and spent 
hundreds of dollars and many weeks of your life growing ditchweed, 
and at the end of the day wished that you had just gone to that guy 
on the corner.

Part of the challenge is the peculiar nature of cannabis sativa: Each 
plant is male or female, and only the unpollinated female flowers 
produce the buds loaded in THC-rich resin, the compound that induces the high.

It takes about eight weeks for a plant to be ready to be tricked into 
flowering. At that point, the grower reduces lighting from 18 hours a 
day to 12. The plant thinks the days are getting shorter and races to 
bloom. As the gender of the flower buds then becomes evident - this 
takes two to three weeks - growers tend to discard the male plants. 
Once you have a known female plant, you can use that for cuttings, 
knowing that it will bud.

The District's initiative allows a resident to grow three plants to 
mature budding stage and to keep three at a vegetative stage. But to 
do that, the grower has to establish two separate growing areas to 
control the different light requirements. Many growers use opaque 
tents to regulate hours of light and prevent accidental light 
pollution for budding plants. Needless to say, this isn't a casual 
hobby for people who like to travel.

"One of the problems of indoor lighting is you can't have light 
bleeding into it from anywhere else," Conrad said. "You have to seal it off."

D.C. residents who meet the growing rules (age 21 or older) and, 
where required, have a permissive landlord or mom, can possess two 
ounces of marijuana or receive as a gift not more than one ounce.

Another problem, St. Pierre said, is that the initiative doesn't 
address where one might lawfully obtain seed or a cutting. He calls 
this conundrum one of "the immaculate conception."

Once you grow your own, you can make your own cuttings, but they 
would then count in your total plant allowances - a couple could grow 
12 plants.

Seed of potent, high-quality varieties are available on the Internet 
and through the mail, but buying them would run afoul of federal law, 
said George Van Patten, who has written about 20 books on cannabis 
cultivation under the nom de plume Jorge Cervantes. Seeds of choice 
varieties can cost $10 or more each.

The D.C. government, facing resistance from conservative lawmakers in 
Congress, has not adopted a regulatory framework that would permit 
the creation, licensing and taxing of commercial growers and 
retailers. Hence, the reliance on homegrown marijuana.

"This law in D.C., by any definition, is incomplete," St. Pierre said.

He doesn't know how his plants will turn out, but he doesn't hold out 
a great deal of hope for his batch or those of like-minded D.C. residents.

"This is going to be laborious, and I don't think it's going to meet 
many people's expectations, frankly," St. Pierre said. "I go into it 
with trepidation, even though I have a library at my disposal and can 
contact the best cannabis cultivators in the country."

"A lot of people will try, but just as we have seen in California, 
people don't have the time, effort and discipline to be getting at 
anything," said Barnette, who runs District Growers in Northeast 
Washington and is a speaker at a marijuana-growing convention this 
weekend organized by a company named Comfy Tree. A regulated growing 
industry would require growers to list the ingredients and potency of 
edible products and the purity of buds, Barnette said.

"That's why you don't buy vegetables from your neighbor," he said. 
"You go to the grocery store."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom