cannabisnews.com: Inside Dope










  Inside Dope

Posted by CN Staff on October 24, 2003 at 11:16:47 PT
By Quentin Hardy  
Source: Forbes Magazine  

In the quiet countryside just outside Vancouver, B.C. an ambitious young entrepreneur surveys a blindingly bright room filled with lovely plants--dozens of stalks of high-power marijuana. Almost ready for harvest, they hold threadlike, resin-frosted pot flowers, rust-and-white "buds" thickening in a base of green-and-purple leaves. The room reeks of citrus and menthol, a drug-rich musk lingering on fingertips and clothes. "There's no way I won't make a million dollars," says the entrepreneur, David (one-name sources throughout this story are pseudonymous). He runs several other sites like this one, reaping upwards of $80,000 in a ten-week cycle. Says he: "Even if they bust me for one, I'm covered." 
So, it seems, is much of Canada--covered with thousands of small, high-tech marijuana "grows," as the indoor farms are known. Small-time marijuana growing is already a big business in Canada. It is likely to get bigger, despite all the efforts of the antidrug crowd in Washington, D.C. On Oct. 14 the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to disturb an appeals court ruling, gave its stamp of approval to doctors who want to recommend weed to ease their patients' pain or nausea. In the U.S. nine states have enacted laws permitting marijuana use by people with cancer, AIDS and other wasting diseases. The Canadians are even more cannabis-tolerant; although they have not legalized the drug, they are loath to stomp out the growers. This illicit industry has emerged as Canada's most valuable agricultural product--bigger than wheat, cattle or timber. Canadian dope, boosted by custom nutrients, high-intensity metal halide lights and 20 years of breeding, is five times as potent as what America smoked in the 1970s. With prices reaching $2,700 a pound wholesale, the trade takes in somewhere between $4 billion (in U.S. dollars) nationwide and $7 billion just in the province of British Columbia, depending on which side of the law you believe. In the U.S. the never-ending war on drugs endures, to modest discernible effect. In a largely symbolic act the U.S. Justice Department has just imprisoned an icon of the pot-happy 1970s--Tommy Chong of the old Cheech & Chong comedy team--for selling bongs on the Internet. But in Canada the trade in pot, or cannabis (as many Canadians call it), is an almost welcome offset at a time when British Columbia's economy is in the doldrums. Tourism here is down, and thousands of jobs got axed when the U.S. slapped tariffs on exports of softwood and then banned Canadian beef after an outbreak of mad cow disease. The marijuana business, by contrast, is thriving, not least because Canada shares a thinly guarded 5,000-mile border with the U.S., a big market. Ultimately much of the revenue flows into the coffers of hundreds of legitimate businesses selling supplies, electricity and everything else to the growers and smugglers. And who are these growers? Not a small coterie of drug lords who could be decimated with a few well-targeted prosecutions, but an army of ordinary folks. "I know at least a hundred [of them], 20 years old to 70," says Robert Smith, who isn't part of the trade but indirectly profits from it at the furniture store he owns in Grand Forks, B.C., 110 miles north of Spokane, Wash. "Of the money coming through my door, 15% to 20% comes from cannabis--we'd be on welfare without it." Mexico remains the biggest supplier of foreign pot for U.S. consumers, growing valleys of lower-grade grass and sending it north; some 500 tons of pot were seized at the Mexican border in 2001, more than 100 times the volume confiscated at the Canadian boundary. California is a prodigious supplier, as well. But Canada's industry is notable for its dispersion. The scattered and all but undetectable production may well herald a modus operandi for other regions. Small growers like David bring in $900 a pound at the low end, with net margins of 55% to 90%, depending on quality, depreciation and labor costs. They produce half a pound to 30 pounds every ten weeks, selling their product to local users or peddling it to "accumulators," who then smuggle it over the border or sell it up the chain to larger brokers. Accumulators and brokers typically add $80 a pound to the cost, as do the high-volume smugglers who buy from them. Smugglers returning money to Canada for other dealers skim a 2% laundering fee. "The first time somebody gives you a bag of money so heavy that you can't lift it, it's surreal. Pretty soon, it's just dirty paper," says Jeff, who recently retired from smuggling up to a ton of weed a week.  Building The Perfect Bud Want dope? Plant seeds. Want high-end dope? Pay attention. LIGHTS: With 1,000-watt metal halide lights first blasting clones for 24 hours a day, followed by 12-hour intervals of dark to force budding, a half-year grow cycle is cut to ten weeks. GENETICS: Breeding stock is critical to top-quality pot. Branches of the best female plants are cut and potted. The genetically identical offspring are also cloned. AIR: Temperatures in the 70s. Added carbon dioxide boosts production, quality. DIRT: Or hydroponics or aeroponics. Nitrogen for growth, phosphorous and potassium for resinous flowers. Beneficial fungi and bacteria to boost THC. Sources: Ed Rosenthal; Advanced Nutrients. Jeff started out a few years ago by growing just 8 pounds of pot with his friends. Within a year they were brokering hundreds of pounds from other small growers to someone with connections to large U.S. distributors. When that person's buyer retired, Jeff paid him $250,000 for the buyer's client list. "Sounds astronomical," he says, "but at the time it looked free." Once in the U.S. the bud usually stays on the West Coast. In Seattle a pound of top-quality pot sells for $4,000, and by the time it hits Los Angeles it runs up to $6,000. High-grade cannabis then sells at smaller weights, eventually burning up at $600 to $800 an ounce. Back in British Columbia the business of pot encompasses wholesaling different strains of seeds for 95 cents to $1.90 apiece, the prices depending, among other things, on how well a strain's buds rank at annual (and very public) "breeders' cup" competitions in Amsterdam and Vancouver. Plants can also be propagated from cuttings, sold for $3 to $10 each, wholesale. This is a job-creating industry. Trimming the dried flowers to maximize look and taste of the top product pays about $15 an hour for a skilled laborer; it takes ten hours for an experienced trimmer to turn out a pound of buds. Consultants get $40 an hour for helping junior growers. Marijuana underwrites other businesses, too. Vancouver tour guides brag of quality "B.C. bud," and "smokeasies" near the Canadian border cater to Canadian and U.S. customers. Local authorities wink at the offense. The owners of these smokeshops resemble camp followers of a particularly tough Grateful Dead tour. Customers include clean-cut men in golf shirts, grannies and women cradling babies. Advice magazines offer tips on growing; lighting shops are spread across the country to serve novice farmers; and fertilizer companies target their marketing to pot growers. In the wake of a federal crackdown on makers of marijuana pipes in the U.S., those businesses are relocating north of the border. In the Kootenay mountains of B.C., Gary Bergvall sold lights from a 15-by-15-foot space in 1996. Now he employs 28 people and runs a factory that ships, each week, lighting systems as well as two tractor-trailers full of air filters. Could the activated charcoal filters be useful for absorbing the telltale odor of certain plants? Maybe. The lights? Bergvall is circumspect. They are used "for a special purpose, whatever that may be," he says. Marc Emery started a mail-order marijuana-seed business in Vancouver in 1994, moving 100,000 seeds a year at an average $3.75 each. Today the tax-paying entrepreneur sells 350,000 seeds a year, even though he has more than 20 Canadian competitors (plus rivals in Holland, Spain and the U.K.). Selling seeds in Canada is illegal, but just about no one is busted for it. Web sites from Vancouver to Montreal sell pot to medical patients in Canada; one site requires only a doctor's letter testifying you have one of 192 afflictions (including writer's cramp and hiccups). Barbara St. Jean, a financial planner, got a pot prescription to treat pain associated with lupus. She and her husband, Brian Taylor, a former mayor of Grand Forks who later ran for national office on the Canadian Marijuana Party ticket, have taught college courses on how to grow cannabis indoors. St. Jean once gave a speech to some 40 city planners from across B.C., extolling the potential benefits of cannabis to their local economies. All of this action owes much to the U.S. and an inflow of draft-dodging pot smokers during the Vietnam War. The marijuana growers among them introduced sinsemilla (Spanish for "without seeds"), the unpollinated female plant, which is far more potent than its male counterpart. In the 1980s refugees from a northern California war on pot also headed to B.C., just as 1,000-watt lights made possible year-round production of top-grade strains. Locals learned to grow for their climate. The market is now mature enough for precise segmentation. Dealers grade buds like bonds, starting at BB, worth just $800 a pound because of its chemical taste and black ash when burnt. A-quality cannabis tends to be well-grown outdoor product, at $1,300 because of its somewhat loose buds. AAA, the type David grows and Jeff smuggled, is characterized by tight clusters of flowers, a pleasant smell of eucalyptus and enough drug-rich resin to coat the sides of a plastic bag. Even on a carefully grown plant only 50% of the buds are the right size and shape for AAA. The best stuff has odd varietal names--Mango and Blueberry for the fruity-smelling strains, and F---ing Incredible and Romulan (a nod to the warriors with dented heads on Star Trek), a testimony to the euphoric, incapacitating effects. Producing the seeds of such strains is up to guys like Daniel, a third-year apprentice breeder along western B.C.'s coast. He helps produce about 60 varieties, starting with a dark green bud called "Mighty Mite," a plant for urban window boxes that grows to the size and shape of a corn dog. At the other end are 14-foot-high monsters that reflect their origins in the Brazilian jungle. Daniel's newest creation is a straight-stemmed plant that stands 8 feet high and has thick, well-spaced clumps of flowers. "This is a good prairie strain," says the Alberta native. "You could harvest it with a combine or a sunflower cutter. I'd like to produce seeds in 50-pound bags." Like many people in the Canadian cannabis trade, he expects marijuana cultivation will be fully legal before long. For Daniel, thieves, not the the police, are the big worry. And with good reason: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which opposes many of Canada's pro-pot steps, concedes that in B.C. only one-fifth of marijuana busts result in incarceration and the average sentence is only four months. "Maybe the police can take these plants," Daniel says, nodding to a packed greenhouse. "Maybe they'll even take me downtown, maybe arrest me. Maybe. But we have clones and copies of every one of our plants in three more locations." With seeds or clones an indoor grower can spend just $1,600 to set up a 9-square-foot indoor plot capable of hosting 72 small plants that produce 31/2 pounds of mixed-quality buds in seven weeks. A well-wired operation with 20 lights costs $20,000 to set up. Most growers stop at 10 lights lest they attract attention with a steep electricity bill. A good rule of thumb in figuring yield is 1 to 11/2 pounds of bud per light. By using cuttings and closely regulating how much light the plants get, indoor gardeners crush a normal five-month growing cycle into ten weeks. Like high-end winemakers, these producers obsess about methods, singing the virtues of organic gardening, hydroponics (soilless agriculture), even aeroponics (with nutrient misted on the plants). Some pot farmers pump carbon dioxide into the room. Growing AAA is labor intensive: The plants need daily watering, spraying and cutting back, producing a trash bag full of unwanted leaves each week for a small grow. David, the western B.C. grower who dreams of making a million, has hired caretakers to oversee three additional rooms of 20 lights each; the employees include a retired mining executive and a middle-aged American fugitive, he says. They get 25% of the crop, and David splits the rest with his financier, a retired grower/smuggler. His landlords get an extra $1,500 a month on top of the rent, and he pays for repairs from any water or soil damage when production ceases. He lives in a neat house on a quiet cul-de-sac, rigged with radio-controlled motion detectors. Full of kids, dogs and golf clubs, it is prosperous and unremarkable, except for details like the beat-up cracker box brimming with the household pot stash and the note on the fridge that reads: "Gretchen called: Probation!" It seems almost like a game, until Anne, his wife, voices the underlying stress. "When someone goes down, we all feel really bad, but you can't get too close to someone who's involved with the law," she says as she prepares the kids' breakfast. "You try to keep them away from it as much as possible." A helicopter cuts through the morning fog, and she tenses momentarily. "You do a lot of yoga; you try to pretend it isn't real." Prepared product is packed in half-pound lots. Forty bags fit into a typical carry-on suitcase. Small-scale marijuana smugglers, or "rabbits," run dope to the U.S in car rides, marathon jogs, three-hour kayak trips or floating hollowed-out logs on the tide. The Mounties, with a patrol fleet of just four boats, are not a big worry on the water. "You can get 80 pounds into a backpack, and you get big legs running over the mountain," says Paul de Felice, co-owner of the Holy Smoke smokeasy in the eastern B.C. town of Nelson. "I've seen them so nervous they vomit before they take off--but I never see them stop." As in all business, it is important to manage risk. Jeff would first try a smuggling method with 50 pounds; if it worked, he would try 100, then 300. He moved pot in the fiberglass hulls of yachts and in the false floors of long horse trailers. "No border agent wants to unload all those horses, shovel out that manure," he says. One method: Drag a shipment underwater behind a fishing boat. A zinc strip fastens a buoy and a length of line to the package. If the boat is stopped, the crew cuts loose the shipment, which sinks, buoy and all. The zinc dissolves in the seawater within 12 to 18 hours, and the buoy surfaces with its line tied to the pot, letting Jeff recover the dope. Another method involves bisecting a propane truck, inserting 500 pounds of bud below a false floor and setting the gas pressure in the truck to read as if it were full. Eventually "you use a lot of planes," he says. "They're faster, they give you more control and you get better prices if you can deliver 40 miles over the border, past the hot zone." Pilots fly low, hugging mountains on the lee side of fire towers. Jeff has retired in the face of exhaustion, a fear of snitches in the network and rumors that the U.S. government has planted an agent in the system, who over time is rising high enough to decapitate a big smuggling operation. When asked how many people in the big operations really leave, however, he says, "Maybe 5%. I've got pilots I made millionaires, and they still fly." Jeff's fear of a mole may be well grounded, for the Mounties hope to strike a blow to Canada's cannabis business with a string of big, high-profile busts over the next several years. But the pot business, with a structure less like typical crime rings and closer to that of the Internet--lots of little nodes (in this case, producers) feeding a loosely organized hierarchy--will be difficult to shut down. The Mounties are not happy about legal marijuana for medical patients--they say the drug needs more study before it is dispensed--but they worry more about the effect of the marijuana-rich gangs on the Canadian economy. It is not just the possible violence (U.S. guns have been traded for Canadian pot), but the business considerations. "There are many millions of dollars here, wrecking the legitimate business," says Rafik Souccar, director general of drugs and organized crime enforcement for the Mounties. The contraband dealers launder money through unprofitable concerns, which then charge artificially low prices for legit goods. Police also worry about the hazards of poor electrical wiring, hazardous molds and excessive chemical use at grow houses--and a public too blasé about the dangers of drug use. "Part of the problem is a laissez-faire attitude on the part of the public," says Charlie Doucette, a Mountie in charge of drug enforcement in Vancouver. "We don't have an appetite in Canada to say 'This isn't right.'" Some police think the battle may well be over. Rollie Woods, head of vice and narcotics enforcement for the Vancouver police department, noticed indoor growers throwing out unwanted leaves and dirt at a site the city uses for refuse collection. He told the staff there to note the license plate numbers of every such farmer but called off his plan a few months later. "There were hundreds [of cars]. No way we could track them all." At this point he supports legalization, if only so he can concentrate on Vancouver's growing crack problem. "If it wasn't for pressure from the U.S., we'd just regulate this," says Woods, who has all of six agents pursuing the pot trade. Investing millions more in a crackdown may be of little consequence, he adds. "You could give me a hundred people, and it wouldn't make a difference." Source: Forbes Magazine (US)Author: Quentin Hardy Published: October 23, 2003Copyright: 2003 Forbes Inc.Contact: readers forbes.comWebsite: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/current/Related Articles:Inside Dope - Forbes Magazinehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17670.shtmlMarc Emery Puts Pot Industry on Business Map http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17638.shtmlU.S. Appeal Of Marijuana Case Rejected http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17568.shtml

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Comment #22 posted by The GCW on October 27, 2003 at 17:20:55 PT
from Cannabis Culture
Marc Emery and Advanced Nutrients in Forbes Magazine 
by Pete Brady (25 Oct, 2003) Emery and Canadian MJ Business Heralded as Canadian Economic Powerhouses 
http://www.hempbc.com/articles/3130.html (includes photo)The Canadian marijuana industry, Marc Emery, and Advanced Nutrients are featured in Forbes magazine's November 1st edition.The prestigious publication has a pot leaf on its cover and thorough coverage of the Canadian marijuana industry inside.The article was written by Forbes journalist Quentin Hardy, who also wrote an article about Emery that was published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in 1995. The WSJ article credited Emery with creating the entire retail marijuana seed industry, and lauded him for being a philanthropist.In the Forbes article, Hardy reports Emery's sales have increased from 100,000 sold per year to 350,000 sold per year since Emery founded his seed business in 1994, even though a flood of imitators have swept in to capitalize on what he started.It's doubtful that Hardy could have written his article without Emery's assistance. Emery provided Hardy with insider access to all aspects of the pot world, from smuggling to massive commercial grow houses.Hardy spent weeks interviewing Emery's pot work connections, while photographers took pictures of buds, pot entrepreneurs, and grow rooms.One of the companies Emery brought Hardy to see was Advanced Nutrients, a Vancouver-area marijuana nutrients company that is creating pioneering products that are revolutionizing the way marijuana is grown.The company gets broad coverage in Hardy's article, which notes that Advanced Nutrients' high-quality products are increasingly available worldwide."When Marc brought Mr. Hardy to our manufacturing facility, we were thrilled," said Mike Straumietis, an Advanced Nutrients co-founder. "If it hadn't been for Marc, we would not be in Forbes."The Forbes article is another example of major media coverage Emery has received this year. The Summer of Legalization tour garnered much reporting. Emery's Iboga Therapy House is going to be featured in a Rolling Stone article due out in the next month. Emery has been in more than a hundred newspaper and magazine articles this year, and has also been featured in dozens of electronic media interviews and reports about the cross-country legalization tour, the BC Marijuana Party, and other cannabis issues.Check out www.forbes.com for information on the article.Write Forbes magazine at www.expressresponse.com/cgi-bin/forbes/displayArticleWebForm.cgi. Tell them you are glad to see a major magazine with Forbes' reputation providing an in-depth look at the world's most amazing GROWTH industry.
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Comment #21 posted by WolfgangWylde on October 27, 2003 at 13:55:00 PT
Just a humorous note...
...I walked into my office this morning, and there on the reception area table was glossy mag with a big green pot leaf on the cover.  I thought to myself, "Holy crap! Who left an issue of High Times here!", but then realized it was just the latest issue of Forbes.
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Comment #20 posted by Dankhank on October 26, 2003 at 09:14:16 PT

In defense of ...
seedy compresseed mexican schwag (cut and paste, I can spell), I must say a few things.It ain't as bad as some would have us all believe. IT ain't kind bud, but occasional batches, are easily two or three TOKE batches.How high do you want to get?If I had kind bud I probably would smoke a toke or two every few hours ... how high you wanna get?Two or three tokes of the better "schwag" is enough for any reasonable user, you just don't know when the better stuff will show up.OK is on the fringes of the Cannabis culture, much as Tennessee was wilderness in colonial America.Most cannabis users are just that ... users, consumers. Those who want to grow will grow no matter where they are.There is some uncommpressed, may be local/regional.Some here wonder why they are forced to smoke "shwag" here, not so much for it's supposed lack of stonyness as for wondering why those who live in "better places" have to talk shit about how folks around here have to get high.Can't we just get along? 
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Comment #19 posted by WolfgangWylde on October 26, 2003 at 06:29:00 PT

Interesting article...
...especially where the Canadian official states that if it weren't for the U.S., they'd just regulate the stuff. However, I'm wondering the author didn't do a numbers comparison to the U.S. crop. My understanding is that the majority of marijuana consumed in the U.S. is grown in the U.S., and that marijuana is the number one cash crop in America as well.
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Comment #18 posted by jose melendez on October 25, 2003 at 04:56:10 PT

It's a weed, folks.
Because it's illegal, a gram can fetch 20 to 30 dollars, I think WAMM claimed it cost them 94 cents per gram to grow.
Poison is legal, just not pot.
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Comment #17 posted by CorvallisEric on October 25, 2003 at 03:05:32 PT

The other Forbes article (link in comment #15)
The unique part in the other article (the stuff that isn't found here) starts with: "Sidebars: Breaking the Two-Pound Barrier" and runs to the end. You can search for "Breaking"
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Comment #16 posted by SoberStoner on October 24, 2003 at 23:25:47 PT

You have to pay attention...
While mostly it came off sounding nice, they slipped up a lot.five times as potent as what America smoked in the 1970sWRONG! No conclusive studies were ever done of 70s cannabis because the US wouldnt allow any. And what studies were done, were done with the seeds and stems of ditchweed."Of the money coming through my door, 15% to 20% comes from cannabis--we'd be on welfare without it."Since when did 'drug dealers' start keeping accounting ledgers to track how much drug money they are taking in?The marijuana business, by contrast, is thriving, not least because Canada shares a thinly guarded 5,000-mile border with the U.S., a big market. Uh oh...guess that means we need to build a wall to the north, just like we have in the south....we better keep all the nasty drug dealers out..Mexico remains the biggest supplier of foreign pot for U.S. consumers, growing valleys of lower-grade grass and sending it north; some 500 tons of pot were seized at the Mexican border in 2001, more than 100 times the volume confiscated at the Canadian boundary.oops, scratch that idea...maybe a BIGGER wall...and more guns...and lighttowers..maybe we could use the berlin wall as an inspiration?Small growers like David bring in $900 a pound at the low end, with net margins of 55% to 90%, depending on quality, depreciation and labor costs. They produce half a pound to 30 pounds every ten weeks, selling their product to local users or peddling it to "accumulators," who then smuggle it over the border or sell it up the chain to larger brokers. Accumulators and brokers typically add $80 a pound to the cost, as do the high-volume smugglers who buy from them. Smugglers returning money to Canada for other dealers skim a 2% laundering fee.and again with the drug dealers who double as accountants.Other than that..not bad..although i wish they would have made the connection that if it was legal it wouldnt be worth as much and the millionare growers would be the breeders, and only maybe a few of them since it would just another agricultural crop..Oh well, maybe next time.SS
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Comment #15 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 22:37:41 PT

Forbes Magazine: Inside Dope
Here is a slightly different article then the above from Forbes Magazine.Inside Dope: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread17670.shtml
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Comment #14 posted by The GCW on October 24, 2003 at 19:33:13 PT

This article is different.
It makes Me chuckle, knowing the end of the uncivilized cagings is near. ...And seeing others know it also...you have to be pretty ignorant to not see it ending / or / coming... -motion / momemtum is this way--  It speaks in a past tense sort of way, that allows Us to see it for a moment as though it is over, before it is over.The phat lady is ready.Only the worst amongst Us can hang onto this gross uncivilized need to cage humans for using a plant. The very worst of the worst. Low. 

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Comment #13 posted by phil_debowl on October 24, 2003 at 19:32:09 PT

Prices
Just to keep you guys up to date :). Seedy compresseed mexican schwag (similar to the weed that is coming out of mississippi state from the government) goes for anwhere from $400-$1000 lb and ranges from 2%-5% thc content. Takes about 1 full large bowl or 1/2 a fat joint for one person to get high. It really isn't potent enough for most medical applications.b Really potent, yummy, flavorful, medical quality marijuana, that hasn't been allowed to seed, has been developed over years of strain breeding for certain qualities (type of high, flavor, medical qualities, potency, etc...) goes for $2500-$4500 lb depending on where in the country you live. It's thc count usually ranges from 15%-30% thc along with a much higher percentatge of other cannabinoids. Alot of time and effort is usually put into growing and maintaining these plants, and paying extreme close attention to that strains specific needs, where as "schwag" is tipically grown in large fields in mexico, not paid very much attention to, allowed to seed, and then just compressed all together into bricks. Northern California is on the low end of the price scale for high quality, because alot is grown there, everywhere else pretty much is on the high end. It seems to only be plentyful on the west coast and in some places in the extreme Northern states bordering Canada, yet usually more expensive in the states bordering canada. This marijuana is very smooth, has a variety of flavors from blueberry to grapefruit to bubblegum, buds are not compressed, have 0 seeds, smell is very hard to contain (a 1/4 oz in a pocket can (very good)smell up a whole room if it's not sealed)and are usually covered in a sticky resin, and only takes 1-4 tokes off any smoking device to get high/relieve medical symptoms. This is kinda a pointless post, but maybe will help you discern between real prices and fake prices in future articles. 
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Comment #12 posted by ekim on October 24, 2003 at 19:30:59 PT

Kapt what percent did Lou Dobbs
have at the end of the week he called the forgotten war. was it 91% === i bet ol Steve has been for a boat ride with Bill Buckley Jr a time or two.
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Comment #11 posted by goneposthole on October 24, 2003 at 17:40:33 PT

cannabis growers
It is the only occupation that pays a decent income in a lackluster economy. Expect more cannabis on the market. Plenty of people willing to try some more. Have a nice weekend. Another day of the drugwar drags on.
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 17:27:58 PT

Arthropod
You're from my neck of the woods. Someday when these laws are changed we will all be able to meet. I have faith that day will come.
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Comment #9 posted by Arthropod on October 24, 2003 at 17:12:08 PT:

Never knew
I had no idea prices could get that high. I live in southern Ohio, and the very highest priced weed around is 3200 a pound. The only two varieties that go for that much are White Widow and Northern Lights #2. I think I know where these people are getting their prices from though. They aren't taking into account that when you buy in bulk you start getting discounts. An eight of an ounce costs 25-30 around here, a half-ounce only costs around 70-100, an ounce can be had for 130-170, ect.
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Comment #8 posted by kaptinemo on October 24, 2003 at 16:23:40 PT:

I have to admit, I'm shocked
Namely, at the singuar lack of judgemental criticism of this article...coming from the presses of a magazine whose owner is anything but open minded when it comes to cannabis.Given that Steve Forbes is one of the wealthiest antis around, you have to wonder: was he even aware that this article would be published? Or is this a signal that a major anti has made the realization, just as noted above, that cannabis prohibition is a singularly stupid waste of time?The LTE's in the next edition ought to be real interesting...
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 14:07:39 PT

boppy
Panama Red. It made me think of this song! http://www.eliminated.org/mp3/High.Times/10-New.Riders.of.the.Purple.Sage-Panama.Red.mp3
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Comment #6 posted by boppy on October 24, 2003 at 14:02:48 PT

$35.00 when it was special
I remember it being $30.00 an oz in 1975 and if it was $35-40 than it was something special like Panama Red (if that's what it really was but it was very good). I'm speaking for the Midwest.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 12:56:27 PT

OverwhelmSam 
Thank you. Hopefully the price will drop when the laws are changed because I remember when an ounce cost $35. Willie Nelson said I remember when a dime bag was $10! The laws have caused the price to go up. The higher the price the more risk of violence because of the money but not because of Cannabis.
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Comment #4 posted by OverwhelmSam on October 24, 2003 at 12:51:37 PT:

Prices of Pot
It's around $1,000/lb Mexican retail in Texas. In California I've heard that it can go for $3,000-$5,000/lb for quality weed. That means that only 200 pounds would net you in the neighborhood of $1,000,000.00. Heck, I can throw 200 lbs on my shoulder. 
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 12:36:54 PT

Prices
I didn't know that pounds could cost $4,000 up to $6,000. I don't know anything about prices but that seems like a lot of money.
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Comment #2 posted by OverwhelmSam on October 24, 2003 at 12:31:36 PT:

Interesting Proposition
So theoretically, anyone could grow One Million Dollars worth of marijuana one time for three months and retire.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on October 24, 2003 at 11:22:34 PT

Forbes Magazine
This is a detailed article if I've ever seen one.
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