White lightning might be Appalachia’s most famous vice, but the smokable pleasure of green lightning is reported to be our most lucrative one. According to a 2008 History Channel documentary on Appalachia, the region’s annual pot production is valued at a whopping $4 billion dollars. That far exceeds farm incomes, and it even outstrips Appalachia’s other breadwinner–coal.
For instance, the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, earned $1.82 billion in 2010. That figure is based on worldwide production, and it is still dwarfed by the $4 billion pot industry in the Appalachian region.
The roots of this economic juggernaut can be found in the organic gardens and geodesic domes of the 1960s. If you’re over the age of thirty-five, you no doubt knew some long haired, peace luvin’, mountain hippies who had a private patch of weed. Some folks grew it under fluorescent lights in their back rooms. Others mixed it into their flower boxes. I know one couple who planted their prized hemp in a retired pig pen. To this day, they swear it was the most productive crop they’ve ever seen.
Wherever folks grew it, everybody seemed to be raising a little bud. Over the years, some of them started raising a lot of it. Full scale pot farms began to emerge as a serious economic force in Appalachia, eventually making ganja the biggest cash crop in the region.
Plants seized in Charleston, WV
Gary Potter, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who researches the marijuana trade, says that the proprietors of pot farms were, until a while back, friendly, approachable types. If you stumbled upon a marijuana field twenty years ago, he says, the owner would greet you and offer you a joint. “Now,” he adds, “they’re chasing you away with rifles.”
Gun toting is rough, but some of the tactics that are used to protect pot crops verge on the sadistic. “We’ve had officers caught in fish hooks with fishing line at eye level,” Sargent Jim Ingram of the Kentucky State Police tells The History Channel, “And we’ve had pipe bombs…explosive devices that were inside a marijuana plot.”
Officers have been maimed and even killed as they’ve searched for stands of marijuana. Nearly as disturbing are the places that they’re having to search–our national parks. Some of the biggest farms are woven into public lands. Deep in the heart of sprawling, protected forests, growers carve out one small plot after another. Each is just big enough to get ample light to their high-value herb, and even when officials search for them from helicopters, the plots are difficult to distinguish from the lush canopy that surrounds them.
As Appalachia’s pot industry has moved from “mom and pop” to “mafia”, public opinion about marijuana has shifted. Just this week, a Gallop survey revealed that more Americans now favor the legalization of marijuana than oppose it. It’s a slim margin–50 percent to 46 percent–but it may be enough to tip the policy scale.
In fact, in many places it already has. Medical marijuana is now legal in sixteen states and D.C., and possession of small amounts of non-medical marijuana is now on par with a parking ticket in several states. Even some members of the GOP are on board. Republican Presidential candidates Gary Johnson has said that he would consider pardoning all nonviolent marijuana offenders currently serving a prison sentence.
While it’s going to be incremental, all signs point toward the eventual decriminalization of pot. Naturally, the plants will have to grow somewhere, and cities are already jumping at the chance to license pot farms within their borders. D.C., for instance, is currently in the process of establishing its first round of marijuana “cultivation centers.”
As this transition picks up steam, what will it mean for Appalachia’s biggest cash crop? Will it end the guerrilla tactics that are currently used to protect pot stands? Without the need for clandestine operations and the protective cover of forest canopies, will marijuana be rolled into mainstream agriculture? Will we be planting maryjane alongside soybeans and corn?
If so, can Appalachia capitalize on its leading position? Can it turn pot into a legit revenue stream, maybe even fostering it in areas that are lower income or losing coal jobs? Or will America’s bread basket, the mid-west, become the marijuana basket, usurping our $4 billion in annual revenue? Will urban areas also cut into Appalachia’s marketshare by following D.C.’s lead and growing their own?
What do you think? As legalization expands, will it be a boom or bust for Appalachia?
If and when it becomes legal the fight will change from keeping people from growing or possessing it to keeping people from growing or possessing it and not paying taxes on it; just like moonshine.
I forgot to add that some cops I know have also complained of plots being guarded with punji (phonetic spelling) sticks like the Viet Cong used and bear traps.
Please keep in mind there is a difference between marijuana and it’s cousin….hemp! Though they look the same, there is a world of difference! Hemp will NOT get you high no matter how big a joint you smoke! WE NEED HEMP! It would stabilize our economy and help save the world. It is used for food, clothing, building materials and fuel. West Virginia needs to get behind legislation to LEAGALIZE HEMP!
What’s missing from this article is that legalization will cause the price to plummet as it has in western states, assuming the number of users stays fairly constant as it has in western states. The $4 billion industry will suddenly be worth a lot less because the premium that growers currently demand to take that risk will disappear.
A little top soil on those mountain top mining areas would be cash in poor peoples pockets. Wake up WV.
gun toting – not totting. Sorry, I just discovered your article. Good job.
Martha, you are officially my new proofer! Correction made.
Yay – Now I can share the article with my pal in WV – we are eagerly awaiting the ability to start a legal farm !
The price of hemp may go down when grown commercially , but if our western “legal” states are any indication…..that won`t be the case for medical and recreational pot . From all I`ve read and seen , dispensary or medical clubs prices are WAY the heck higher than street prices . Good thing about dispensaries is that most places have the herb analyzed . They can`t have mold , fungus , bug killer , phosphorus , etc that can harm medical users or recreational users . Federally pot is illegal , yet the US gov`t holds a patent for pot . Figure that one out !
One thing that stands out to me with the “medical” vs. “legalized”, Even if it is legalized, there should be stipulations on employers to discontinue including THC being in an employee’s system as grounds for dismissal. I don’t smoke the stuff, though I have, but I’ve seen a good number of fellow employees, damn good workers lose their jobs because of it. People who would never smoke it on the job. I see more often, the abuse of perscription drugs in the workplace than I do marijuana. Folks with perscriptions going well beyond their perscribed dosage during the day. Downright pathetic. But I have the feeling that the only way to legally have it in your system and keep your job is the route of “medical”.
WV better wake up, legalize all marijuana or we will continue to be last in every thing. Colorado has done extremely well with tourism & taxes they have made from selling cannabis. We need the tax revenue from it for our roads, schools, etc. Obviously from the article, it’s already here, why not profit off of it?
Virginia coal miners are desperate as coal companies begin the transition from coal to natural gas and move their coal operations out west.
Obama has not killed coal, he is more interested in keeping carbon emissions from killing the rest of us. In fact, Obama has done far more than coal companies to ease the pain of transition with millions of dollars in “transition” funds to help re-educate and create more jobs. Coal companies have declared bankruptcy and reneged on health and benefits for coal miners. And coal companies and their bought off politicians have successfully killed all attempts to develop new jobs and industries in Appalachia. In fact marijuana , or rather marijuana laws,have already successfully created the second biggest industry in Appalachia, regional jails and prisons, to house all the drug offenders caught growing and selling marijuana. Most inmates are one time offenders.
Tobacco has essentially been outlawed as a cash crop for many Appalachian subsistence farmers. Big tobacco growers are still making money but many acres of Appalachian farm land is now lying fallow and eroding like the Appalachian economy.This land could be put to productive good use and many Appalachian families could benefit from growing hemp and or marijuana. We are looking at an Appalachian economic melt-down that will make the 60s look like a nostalgic memory.
I cannot begin to characterize the extent of the erosion of Appalachian economy and culture, and the extent of drug use, increase in the prison population, orphaned children living with grandparents. We need a quick response to this economic and cultural meltdown and we need it fast.
Last time the response was prisons ,which became a self-fulfilling prophecy of prison occupancy, and now legacy, and this is not a response that does anything to benefit the local economy or the culture. In fact, prisons, full of the productive young people, further depletes the local economy and does nothing to create jobs or industry.
Hemp and marijuana growth are not a complete solution, we need a complete political and economic overhaul! But most people still own some land that they could use to grow hemp and marijuana. Both products have been subsidized in the past by the US Government and there is no reason for them not to help the people of Appalachia in this time of their disastrous economic meltdown.