Those who can't make their finances work in an economy with Cheap Pot will shift from Pot to Opium production, because it's a high dollar crop that will easily grow here. Deputies look grimmer than ever, btw. You have to SHOOT heroin junkies. They tend to lunge with knives. I'd be shocked if there aren't already test fields being cultivated, right now, up in North San Juan. They're poor, not entirely stupid. Heroin is a terrible addictive drug, and there's always demand for it, and it's easy to make more. The first time is always free. There's been a few OD's at the local emergency room, but so far they say it isn't local production. So far.
And I'm so glad I'm into Motorcycles and scooters instead of drugs...
When this eventually happens this town becomes the trading hub for North San Juan's opium on the Ridge north of the Yuba River, I will think hard about whether to stay here. If the cops shoot the junkies, I'll stay. If the courts argue endlessly and people get killed, I'll leave. You can't be tolerant with Heroin. It makes people really nuts.
What can they do to avoid this? I think North San Juan should Incorporate. They should get a water and power utility going locally and treat their sewage so the South Yuba stops going green from sewer-algae all summer. It's their own fault their kids get sick, using that bad water. Them and Washington (town of, California) have leaky septic systems that gets into their drinking water. They get sick from that. It's hurting their kids and putting cholera and potentially typhoid on their food crops. They pump untreated river water out of the canyon, you see, to water themselves, their crops, and their veggies. Contaminated water. The same water they use to grow drugs and pay their taxes. Those taxes should be going for public utilities.
It will cost money for them to incorporate, and to pave the main road, and to install pipes for water and sewer, and bring in electric power. It won't be cheap, but it won't be impossibly expensive either. Keeping their violence under control, and offering a more stable set of utilities might prevent Opium taking over the town and a surge of violence coming with it.
North San Juan built a local library, not associated with the county library, for their kids. Good. And there's a fire station, I think. And a tiny market called Mother Truckers. A converted house, if I recall properly. Its been over ten years since I'd been there. The roads up the Ridge are mostly gravel and dirt. Some properties have utility power, but many are on generators or solar, and miserable living conditions.
The pot farmers import poor white educated junkies with disappointing college degrees as labor for their pot harvests, paying them in room and board (slavery), and a small salary after the harvest, and pot to either use or sell. Some of these are trying to make pot oil, a type of Hashhish for higher markup, a way to use inferior pot. Some people have been burned or started fires that resulted in arrests, such as in Truckee and a guy that got caught, twice, here in Grass Valley.
Pot farm labor is all off the books and room and board isn't the same thing as pay. It is slavery. It can be worse too. Strong pot use and deliberate seduction finds women end up providing other services on their backs or knees until the harvest is over. Then they turn up on the County Welfare Rolls as single mothers with tattoos, no support. You see those young distracted mothers all over town. Some still have the affections of their seducers, and more children, but few marry since these are fake-hippies. The hippies I grew up around ran up against the same economic problems as the new ones: growing legal crops won't pay the bills. And I guess being high all the time makes for poor decision making when it comes to sex. Funny how working on a pot farm leads to children. It is foolish, but it is what these women choose.
It shouldn't be a choice the rest of us pay for, however. Some of those kids grow up pretty wild, and others stabilize and decide they want better for themselves than keeping secrets in fear of the Law coming down. Growing pot is still technically illegal, and sometimes results in serious prison sentences. I see both kinds of kids at the Library. I sometimes help them find books. I hope they make better choices. I don't want North San Juan to end up like Oakland, full of institutionalized crime and abuse. Most of the folks on the Ridge wanted to start subsistence farming. If only they could do it, legally, and not have taxes to pay, but they'd cheat if they did. Too many reasons to get away with it, mostly for more profits. They need to be a proper town.
With public utilities, water, and sanitation, the area of off-the-grid homesteaders that turned to pot growing to pay their bills (and taxes) would be taxed more, but they'd get sick less, and be a lot less desperate, and less likely to risk the lives of their families growing and selling drugs. They need to grow up and stop being petulant children, playing at self sufficiency when their vehicles drive them back to civilization for groceries and gasoline and medicines to treat the diseases they pump out of the river. The Environmental Health Dept issues reports on that water. Cholera and Typhoid, still, in that water. This is the modern world. This is why I'm so unimpressed with Tiny Houses and their stinky composting toilet boxes. A wooden tent is still a tent. Have better standards. And build cheap public showers so those who insist on homesteading can wash once in a while instead of stinking up the town. Please bathe with soap.
I also worry about other towns in the same position, growing dope and shifting to opium because dope doesn't pay anymore and there's no industry and wages are too low to justify the fuel costs of commuting to work. Those towns will have to figure this out, same as we do. North San Juan is a local problem where I live. Same with Chicago Park, also a major pot growing region between here and Colfax. They, too, must have some utilities brought in to reduce the costs of living and raise their living standards. Maybe then they'll give up growing dope?
Or am I being naïve again?
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