Oakland rules on pot

[DC]

Is it true that an ounce of weed lasts people a month?

only a short month of 14 days or so

 

[bit_pattern]

^^ LOL, yup that would be about my level of consumption, if I were to smoke the devil-weed, that is

No.

/argument

LOL at your assertion that HID lights put out more lumens than sunlight!

That's not what I said. When you grow indoors you don't get cloudy days, you don't get wind and rain that knock trichromes off the flowers, you can maximise luminescence by surrounding the plants with reflective material to maximise light, whereas outdoors you are always surrounded by dark-green, light absorbent. Growing under lights means to can maximise efficiency by controlling opimum conditions in a way you never could outdoors.

quadraginta - Despite the misnomer cannabis isn't a herb nor does it grow like one.

And if we are using other commercial crops as an analogy, think about tomatoes, not many people grow there own tomatoes and when they are on sale in the supermarket most people I know pay a premium for hydroponic tomatoes because, except for a month or two of the year when tomatoes are in season, the quality of the tomatoes is much, much higher. There's no reason a marijuana consumer wouldn't do the same thing.

 

[bit_pattern]

If there are new, 'sooper-seekrit', 'sooper potent' strains out there, then seeds from those will not take long to become relatively easy to obtain when legal barriers to cultivation are removed. Seeds, much like secrets, never seem to stay contained for very long.

They're not secret, they're quite available to anyone with an internet connection and a bit of dash to make an illegal import. But most of those varieties wouldn't grow outdoors anyway because they have been selectively bred to grow indoors. When you go to the seedbanks that have developed the strains they always have both indoor and outdoor seeds, and despite there being good developments in the strains suited to the outdoors the most potent strains are by far the indoor varieties.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

I hate to butt into an argument I tried to avoid but I've been reading recent articles on the medical marijuana law in WA and the articles mention this:

More importantly, should the patient choose not to grow the marijuana themselves - usually because they're too sick or don't live in a situation conducive to cultivating marijuana (it's not easy) - the law provides absolutely no legal avenue for them to acquire it.

Also, most "dispensaries" in the Greater Tacoma/Olympia/Seattle area have indoor plants (According to this article) So..eh?

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

quadraginta - Despite the misnomer cannabis isn't a herb nor does it grow like one.

Pedantry is rarely a useful rhetorical tool, unless it is used for humor. "Herb" is a well known pseudonym for cannabis, and I quite clearly used it as such. The convergence of that nickname with the point I was making (one which apparently escaped you) is an entertaining aspect of language.

Pedantry is even less useful as a rhetorical tool when you are just simply wrong.

If you were trying to make a botanical distinction between basil and marijuana as herbaceous plants, I think you will find that both conform to the scientific definition equally well. If you were somehow trying to find fault with the more conventional meaning then I'll leave it to you to explain why

a plant that is valued for flavor, scent, medicinal or other qualities other than its food value.[1]

does not accurately describe both of the two, either.

Perhaps you are referring to some less generally shared usage of "herb"?

And if we are using other commercial crops as an analogy, think about tomatoes, not many people grow there own tomatoes and when they are on sale in the supermarket most people I know pay a premium for hydroponic tomatoes because, except for a month or two of the year when tomatoes are in season, the quality of the tomatoes is much, much higher. There's no reason a marijuana consumer wouldn't do the same thing.

We were not using tomatoes as an analogy. You were. I merely pointed out the flaws in your analogy. You are to be congratulated, however. I think it is surprisingly cogent of you to discover that hothouse tomatoes are available even out of the growing season.

After I pointed that out.

Dried herbs are also available out of the growing season. Unlike fresh fruit, though, they are equally available to the home grower as a result of their own harvest, for reasons which I hope you will be able to puzzle out on your own.

 

[bit_pattern]

Pedantry is rarely a useful rhetorical tool, unless it is used for humor. "Herb" is a well known pseudonym for cannabis, and I quite clearly used it as such. The convergence of that nickname with the point I was making (one which apparently escaped you) is an entertaining aspect of language.

Pedantry is even less useful as a rhetorical tool when you are just simply wrong.

If you were trying to make a botanical distinction between basil and marijuana as herbaceous plants, I think you will find that both conform to the scientific definition equally well. If you were somehow trying to find fault with the more conventional meaning then I'll leave it to you to explain why

I was just pointing out that it isn't basil, it doesn't grow like basil and it isn't as easy to cultivate as basil

We were not using tomatoes as an analogy. You were. I merely pointed out the flaws in your analogy. You are to be congratulated, however. I think it is surprisingly cogent of you to discover that hothouse tomatoes are available even out of the growing season.

Um, I said we are talking about commercial crops, not tomatoes, speaking of pedantry

Dried herbs are also available out of the growing season. Unlike fresh fruit, though, they are equally available to the home grower as a result of their own harvest, for reasons which I hope you will be able to puzzle out on your own.

Yet, everyday, millions upon millions of people pay consumer goods they could otherwise grow themselves. It's called value-added, not everybody has the time or the inclination to spend months and months cultivating something that they could just as easily pop down to the shops to buy and are prepared to pay a premium for the convenience of not doing it themselves.

 

[WildCat]

I was just pointing out that it isn't basil, it doesn't grow like basil

True, basil requires far more maintenance. You have to pick those leaves every day...

Yet, everyday, millions upon millions of people pay consumer goods they could otherwise grow themselves. It's called value-added, not everybody has the time or the inclination to spend months and months cultivating something that they could just as easily pop down to the shops to buy and are prepared to pay a premium for the convenience of not doing it themselves.

This holds true only for a certain price point. So long as peppers are $0.69/lb, no problem for most people buying them rather than growing their own.

Now, if the premium for store-bought peppers was $100/lb I suspect store sales would plummet and many more people would plant pepper gardens.

What premium do you think people will pay for a product they could grow just as well at home?

 

[bit_pattern]

True, basil requires far more maintenance. You have to pick those leaves every day...

As you've already told us, you've never actually grown pot and have no idea about what goes into cultivation.

This holds true only for a certain price point. So long as peppers are $0.69/lb, no problem for most people buying them rather than growing their own.

Now, if the premium for store-bought peppers was $100/lb I suspect store sales would plummet and many more people would plant pepper gardens.

What premium do you think people will pay for a product they could grow just as well at home?

People already pay a premium in places like California where it is perfectly legal to grow plants, up to $700 an oz for some strains, or so I'm lead to believe (not that I'd ever pay that much in a pink fit, but obviously some consumers are prepared to). And what if a consumer wants access to hundreds of different strains, they aren't going to go out and grow those hundreds of strains themselves because that really would be well into the realm of a commercial operation that would require a commercial level of labor intensity (strains, I might add, that can't be grown outdoors because they have been bred to thrive under indoor conditions). People are always going to be prepared to pay for such services.

Anyway, if the state wanted to maintain the integrity of their tax income in the event that the market reacts in the way you predict, it could easily make cultivation without a license illegal in the same way that distilling your own liquor is illegal or growing tobacco is illegal in places like Australia.

 

[GeeMack]

I have much experience in this type of agriculture, and WildCat's comments seem pretty accurate to me.

If you say so.

I do.

It's odd that in every one of these conversations some Furry Freak Brothers stoner seems to be under the impression that their weed is the only weed worth smoking, and everything else is ditch weed. It's not a contest, bit_pattern. It's reality, with consumer trends, cultural attitudes, and economic models that are fairly well established with other recreational intoxicants and self medication.

I find it strange that we can't have a discussion about something as straight forward as growing weed without the barrage of insults

It is a statement of fact that larger plants put more energy into plant growth that could otherwise have been put into flower growth and cannibinol production

Larger plants? Larger than what? Relative to something? Like maybe larger relative to the root system? How big a root system do you think you can get in a six foot deep layer of Illinois farmland topsoil? Also, nothing precludes us from pruning plants grown outdoors along the fence in the back yard, you know, if we didn't have that pesky little issue of risking the loss of property because of prohibition.

You've never actually cultivated marijuana outdoors in the USA Midwest, have you? If you did, and if it took three to five months longer than what you grow in your basement, you did it wrong.

You have a 4 month growing season in the Midwest? yeah, right

Six months from last frost to first frost where I live. Go just a hundred miles south to add two or three weeks to that. Starting a few plants in a cold frame like people do with green peppers and petunias can add a month or more to the front end of that.

You can certainly approach that in Alaska where, by the way, some of the finest pot is grown indoors or out. But the point is, your Beevis and Butt-Head attitude, that there is some kind of optimum weed and everything else is crap, is your own subjective opinion, which you are certainly entitled to, and is objectively wrong.

No, I am not wrong in the slightest. The level of environmental control available to indoor growers has created a revolution in selective breeding. And I am willing to bet my left teste that the VAST majority of quality strains being grown in America were developed by Dutch and Canadian growers working indoors.

You feel that you're not wrong in the slightest that "there is some kind of optimum weed and everything else is crap"? That's pretty much definitively subjective.

And it's irrelevant whether the labs are indoors or out. Strains are developed all the time to efficiently produce high quality outdoor crops of pretty much every kind of plant. Ain't agriculture a wonderful thing? People have been doing it for thousands upon thousands of years.

Oh, and about your bet? Go to Google Images and search for "bales of marijuana". Tons. Semi's full. Warehouses full. In bales. And that's just photos of the ones that were intercepted by the law. Where do you suppose all those tons of pot were grown, indoors or out? And if someone didn't think they were high quality enough to suit their standards, the growers wouldn't be growing it and the shippers wouldn't be shipping it. It's how supply and demand works, your subjective consideration of quality notwithstanding.

In your unsubstantiated opinion. And when you eliminate the legal ramifications of prohibition, that will also eliminate by far the greatest risk that concerns growers and smokers in the USA.

No. Go and research Sensi or Dutch Passion, these are the pioneers that made marijuana what it is today.

The pioneers that made marijuana what it is today were doing the best they could to optimize growing indoors to keep their product out of the reach of pilferers and out of sight of the law. Imagine the excellent quality marijuana that can be produced when those same breeders are dedicated to growing the best possible weed in real dirt where the root systems aren't limited, and in real, honest to goodness sunlight.

When people aren't risking the confiscation of their homes and property for growing a few plants outdoors along the fence row, outdoor grown marijuana, of a quality acceptable to the vast majority of users and competitive with indoor grown pot, will be as ubiquitous as home grown tomatoes or cucumbers.

Last time I checked we still have commercial tomato and cucumber markets. So what is your point exactly?

Of course the vast majority of those commercially grown tomatoes and cucumbers are grown outdoors. But more to the point, if people typically used only a pound of tomatoes a year, growing a year's supply in the backyard or with a small groups of folks in a co-op would be a piece of cake. Two pounds for Beevis and Butt-Head.

That indoor grown marijuana sure is easier to hide from the law, isn't it? When that becomes a non-issue, when prohibition isn't a factor, and if a tax rate is applied that makes it uncomfortable for people to just buy it at the pharmacy or liquor store, people will grow pot in their back yards, tons of it. There aren't just two kinds of pot, the primo that gets you and your pals all googly eyed, and ditch weed. Quality is a continuum. There are lots of flavors. There is a variety of types of buzzes.

You overestimate the motivational levels of your average stoner. I'm a busy professional and live in apartment, even if I could grow outdoors I couldn't be arsed spending 6-8 months nurturing plants and would happily pay a premium for quality-controlled, legal product, as would many, many other people. Just like I'm willing to pay the tax for a few cartons of beer than spending weeks brewing my own at home. There will always be a market out there.

Sure there'll be a market out there. But at the same time only a tiny fraction of people smoke Cuban cigars while billions upon billions of Marlboros and Winstons are flying off the store shelves. There's not a case of fine champagne in everyone's refrigerator, but millions and millions of gallons of beer are made and sold by Anheuser-Busch or Miller Brewing. Unless every retail buyer in the country is making really bad decisions, somebody is buying and consuming the plain-old-ordinary ~95% of the commercially produced product.

When commercial marijuana production and home grown pot becomes legal, the trend in choices will likely be similar to how we choose tobacco and beer. Billions of cigarettes are sold every year with names like Marlboro, Winston, Camel, and Pall Mall, and millions upon millions of gallons of beer get sold with names like Budweiser, Miller Lite, and Milwaukee’s Best. And although there are arguably more potent, better tasting beers and tobaccos, it only matters to a tiny fraction of consumers. And only a tiny fraction of marijuana smokers will care to emulate Beevis and Butt-Head and smoke until they puke. Understand that not everyone has your very narrow and subjective opinion on what is acceptable quality in marijuana, bit_pattern.

That is your own subjective opinion, which you are certainly entitled to, and is objectively wrong.

My objective opinion can be substantiated by going to your local grocer or liquor store and comparing the quantity of high dollar champagne to the quantity of Budweiser and Miller Lite in twelve packs, cases, and kegs. The owners of those stores stock those products in those proportions because that's what the consumers are buying, in those proportions.

And if we are using other commercial crops as an analogy, think about tomatoes, not many people grow there own tomatoes and when they are on sale in the supermarket most people I know pay a premium for hydroponic tomatoes because, except for a month or two of the year when tomatoes are in season, the quality of the tomatoes is much, much higher. There's no reason a marijuana consumer wouldn't do the same thing.

Yes, and you and your pals smoke twice as much primo sinse as the average guy, too. But that's what makes your opinion subjective. Or maybe you shop at a wholly different kind of store. Pretty much every medium sized or larger grocery store I've ever been in has most of an entire aisle dedicated to tomatoes. Sauces, stewed, paste, diced, with or without a pinch of herbs and spices added. Thousands of pounds at every large grocery, not to mention hundreds more pounds in the condiments aisle where you find the ketchup.

And a huge majority of those billions of pounds of tomatoes are grown outdoors. Even in the fresh produce department, even in the winter, there are probably three or four times as many outdoor grown tomatoes as hothouse tomatoes, maybe more. Obviously people are buying them, grown in dirt and sun, a product apparently quite acceptable to most tomato eaters, billions upon billions of pounds a year. Not talking about the Furry Freak Brothers here, but there's no reason the average marijuana consumer wouldn't do the same thing.

 

[quadraginta]

I was just pointing out that it isn't basil, it doesn't grow like basil and it isn't as easy to cultivate as basil

No. It isn't basil. (Good catch.) Yes, it does grow like basil. Remarkably like basil, in fact. It even prefers much the same conditions. Yes. It is as easy to cultivate as basil. In fact many of the (rather standard) techniques for improving the quality and yield of both plants are almost identical.

Um, I said we are talking about commercial crops, not tomatoes, speaking of pedantry

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but when you first brought the subject up, in this post, you used the phrase "commercial tomato". So I think I can be forgiven for paraphrasing you as I did.

Speaking of pedantry.

Yet, everyday, millions upon millions of people pay consumer goods they could otherwise grow themselves. It's called value-added, not everybody has the time or the inclination to spend months and months cultivating something that they could just as easily pop down to the shops to buy and are prepared to pay a premium for the convenience of not doing it themselves.

I can produce quality basil (organic, even ) without much undue effort. A few minutes per plant, a few time a week, and I can harvest enough out of several plants to last me most of the off season. I can do the same with reefer.

No, it may not be the very pinnacle of stoner gourmet delight. But I can get a result which produces a righteous buzz, with a good flavor, and even bunches of nice, sticky flowers with no seeds. (Or so I've heard. )

Now I will cheerfully admit that not everyone bothers to go to the trouble of growing their own basil, even though it is ridiculously simple. Fewer still do it while apartment dwelling, like I do, but that is largely because the stuff costs about three bucks a ounce, and most people don't use anywhere near as much as I do.

Do you reckon the price of reefer will go down to three bucks an ounce if it becomes legal to grow at home? Because if it doesn't I foresee a lot of new home gardeners.

 

[WildCat]

As you've already told us, you've never actually grown pot and have no idea about what goes into cultivation.

I've told you no such thing.

People already pay a premium in places like California where it is perfectly legal to grow plants, up to $700 an oz for some strains, or so I'm lead to believe (not that I'd ever pay that much in a pink fit, but obviously some consumers are prepared to). And what if a consumer wants access to hundreds of different strains, they aren't going to go out and grow those hundreds of strains themselves because that really would be well into the realm of a commercial operation that would require a commercial level of labor intensity (strains, I might add, that can't be grown outdoors because they have been bred to thrive under indoor conditions). People are always going to be prepared to pay for such services.

Marijuana isn't legal in California without a prescription. And even then you are violating federal law.

Let me know how your theory holds up when it's actually legal.

Anyway, if the state wanted to maintain the integrity of their tax income in the event that the market reacts in the way you predict, it could easily make cultivation without a license illegal in the same way that distilling your own liquor is illegal or growing tobacco is illegal in places like Australia.

Doubtful you could do that in the US. Distilling liquor is illegal because stills can explode. There's no public safety issue with growing marijuana.

 

[bit_pattern]

I've told you no such thing.

Yes you did, I asked whether you'd actually ever grown pot and your response was 'no'.

Marijuana isn't legal in California without a prescription. And even then you are violating federal law.

Let me know how your theory holds up when it's actually legal.

The police don't prosecute for personal amounts, it virtually is legal as far as market conditions are concerned.

Doubtful you could do that in the US. Distilling liquor is illegal because stills can explode. There's no public safety issue with growing marijuana.

It is also illegal because it protects tax revenue. There is nothing in the constitution that stops the regulation of such things, is there? If so, it can be done, and as I've pointed out it HAS been done in other jurisdictions.

 

[WildCat]

Yes you did, I asked whether you'd actually ever grown pot and your response was 'no'.

Link?

The police don't prosecute for personal amounts, it virtually is legal as far as market conditions are concerned.

Dude, the market is illegal.

It is also illegal because it protects tax revenue. There is nothing in the constitution that stops the regulation of such things, is there? If so, it can be done, and as I've pointed out it HAS been done in other jurisdictions.

I've seen no legalized marijuana proposal, such as the one up for referendum in CA, that prohibits growing your own.

 

[bit_pattern]

Link?

You're unbelievable, I'm starting to think this ignorance isn't feigned at all. Post #97 ON THIS PAGE.

Dude, the market is illegal.

Yet it virtually operates as a legal market, especially when it comes to growing a personal supply, especially somewhere like Oakland.

I've seen no legalized marijuana proposal, such as the one up for referendum in CA, that prohibits growing your own.

So? That doesn't mean it couldn't happen if, as you contend, government tax revenue was going to be threatened by hordes of people choosing to grow their own rather than purchasing it.

 

[WildCat]

You're unbelievable, I'm starting to think this ignorance isn't feigned at all. Post #97 ON THIS PAGE.

The "no" was to your ditch weed claim.

Yet it virtually operates as a legal market, especially when it comes to growing a personal supply, especially somewhere like Oakland.

No, it doesn't. It's not legal, people get arrested and go to jail for growing and distributing pot in California.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_15983469?nclick_check=1

http://www.krcrtv.com/news/24861799/detail.html

So? That doesn't mean it couldn't happen if, as you contend, government tax revenue was going to be threatened by hordes of people choosing to grow their own rather than purchasing it.

It's extremely unlikely this would happen.

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

nevermind. I should read the whole thread before I start replying.

 

[Manger Douse]

In my experience its difficult to stop the female plants getting pollinated when growing outdoors - I've always had a much better result indoors compared to outdoors (southern Spain to be specific) but there's loads of variables so until we can run a randomised, double blind trial I guess we'll never know

 

[bit_pattern]

^^ Another EXCELLENT point I'd forgotten about. Pollen can literally travel hundreds of kilometres, I remember about fifteen years ago when there was a cloud of hemp pollen stretching across the Med from Morrocco to Spain that was wreaking havoc with outdoor growers. It is virtually impossible to maintain the integrity of a strain once it is grown outdoors and you want to grow a batch of seed for the following year.

Really, it is such a ridiculous argument, only people who'd never had much to do with growing pot would possibly try and argue that growing outdoors was more efficient than growing indoors.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

Really, it is such a ridiculous argument, only people who'd never had much to do with growing pot would possibly try and argue that growing outdoors was more efficient than growing indoors.

It would be if that was the argument being made, but I think that misrepresents (or misunderstands) the actual dissent.

Leaving aside the problematic issue of what is meant exactly by "efficient", growing outdoors is just easier.

I am more than willing to concede that the very pinnacle of outstanding and righteous herb is likely best pursued under carefully controlled conditions, and indoors may be the best way to achieve them, but the wide spectrum of good enough is very easily achieved outdoors. The tools and equipment are almost literally lying around everyone's house. A garden trowel (or a sharp stick ). Something to carry water in. Maybe a pair of scissors or small pruning snips. That's about it. Add some seeds and you're good to go. Nearly anyone who is less than fifty degrees of latitude from the equator can play, and more than a few who are farther.

The "easier" thing is a major part of this. Homebrewing was brought up earlier. I got into that for a while. I started, as most do, fairly simply, buying canned malt. I took it way beyond that, eventually even trying to malt my own grain, and grow my own hops. (That last was one of the simple parts. ) It was fun. It was educational. By the time I had gotten well into it I owned different large pots for boiling (and extra cleaning equip. for the top of the stove ), a large assortment of big vessels for fermentation, several bottle cappers, and a rather impressive collection of bottles. I had sterilization equip. I had devices for testing specific gravity. Several of them. I had a growing amount of space set permanently aside for malting, fermenting, storage of equipment ... and product, and what gradually became a dedicated work space.

I actually got pretty good at it. Not only in my own mind. After a while, and a lot of failures, people would even ask me if they could have some of my results, as opposed to being badgered into taking it.

As I said, it was fun, it was educational. It might (and I emphasize "might") have even saved me a little bit of money, although that could be another whole debate . But it was an awful lot of work and an awful lot of time with a substantial financial investment.

I can cultivate, harvest, and cure a plant (Which, lets face it, really almost needs to be discouraged from growing in most climates. It's no coincidence that one of the nicknames is "weed".) with a tool set that fits in a child's sandbox bucket and a trivial investment of time, and still end up with a result which is good enough.

 

[bit_pattern]

It would be if that was the argument being made, but I think that misrepresents (or misunderstands) the actual dissent.

Well, it was one argument that WildCat made...

Leaving aside the problematic issue of what is meant exactly by "efficient", growing outdoors is just easier.

I am more than willing to concede that the very pinnacle of outstanding and righteous herb is likely best pursued under carefully controlled conditions, and indoors may be the best way to achieve them, but the wide spectrum of good enough is very easily achieved outdoors.

I don't have a problem with that whatsoever. The bone of contention though was the claim (again, from WC) that you could grow comparable quality to that grown indoors. This demonstrably false.

I can cultivate, harvest, and cure a plant (Which, lets face it, really almost needs to be discouraged from growing in most climates. It's no coincidence that one of the nicknames is "weed".) with a tool set that fits in a child's sandbox bucket and a trivial investment of time, and still end up with a result which is good enough.

Indeed, but for a good deal of consumers "good enough" isn't good enough, and I am certain that there will always be a considerable market for discerning consumers who are prepared to pay a premium price for a premium quality product.