Try To Understand

I have been trying to understand the mentality of the local pot growers, because they are the only growth industry around here. I won't be joining them, ever, because I have too much to lose to bother with illegal stuff, but security and safety come from understanding the dangers, and for that I need to understand their motivations. What I've worked out through twice weekly observation, plus observation on my many hikes is this:

1. Pot gardens are all over the place. Any tall fence or thick brush with a tarp over it? There's a pot field on the other side. There are LOT of those.
2. Pot smokers have figured out how to be high without bloodshot eyes and sunglasses as telltales, but they ignore the stink on their clothes which is pretty strong even from 10 feet away, or 100 feet if they are smoking it at the time.
3. Both towns here seem to be accepting that they are a party center for potheads, however only a few places have worked out how to cater to this crowd and extract money. Previously, Broad Street worked out how to cater to Cruiser biker clubs that come up for the weekend and party, not harassing or ticketing their rows of bikes because they spend money and the city gets tax revenue from that. Surprisingly few accidents, too.
4. Both towns prefer to hire locals, despite locals often being high on the job because wages are so low and benefits rare. Slogging through a crappy job, and dealing with the mistakes being high causes seems to justify the low wages for their companies, and the mistakes eventually bankrupt them. This is why legitimate businesses keep closing their doors. Why they choose to hire locally is their prerogative.
5. North San Juan Ridge, on the North side of the Yuba River is a popular growing region for pot when working on larger fields than the local town gardens or using someone else's land. These fields are the reason that BLM has assault rifles and the sheriff has an APC. The ridge runs from the Sacramento Valley all the way to the Pacific Crest of the Sierras, just south of the Yuba Pass near the Sierra Buttes. Its 50 miles by 10 miles, and a genuinely rural and somewhat dangerous place, with lots of logging roads and survivalist/preppers growing dope and squatting in very primitive conditions. There are the people with tiny RVs or building cabins with camouflage netting over the outside. They live up there, growing dope every summer, harvesting every fall and selling to their dealer network. There are several risks. When the sales are done, that's the money they live on for the next year. This pays better than any job up here.
6. When they've got their money, they get to decide what to do next. Many prep for another crop, spending towards living standards comforts or personal security. Better RVs, generators or solar panels. Laptops and movies to help pass the time. Firearms, 4WD or enduro motorcycles for getting in and out of the boonies. There seem to be a fair number of couples doing this job, too. Lots of women with really serious dark tans and babies. I am not sure they're happy settling for this lifestyle, but with a degree in liberal arts or whatever useless thing they studied and no job opportunities in legitimate work, is growing pot better or worse than "appointment setting" which is code for telemarketing people during dinner specifically conning old people into convincing them they forgot about buying something they really didn't? How about indoor sales, which is also code for telemarketing. This is better than 1/3 of all the jobs listed in Sacramento, btw. Con men, absolutely and completely. Are drug growers worse, morally? These days they don't have to push pot. It is popular enough that lots of kids smoke it in the high school. Meth is a big problem at the local junior high, but the school seems unwilling or unable to arrest kids using it even though possession is a felony. Or was. Prop 47 took effect immediately, so the job market is flooding with released felons from the state prison system. This fixes overcrowding, but also releases experienced and motivated felons into the wild once more. There will likely be a crime spree. And those who don't want to be so obvious will drift into drug growing, including raiding their neighbors near harvest time, which could increase the violence there. How do the drug growers feeling about their job downgrading to a misdemeanor while gaining seriously dangerous felon neighbors newly released from prison? Ambitious prisoners who understand the myth of morality?
7. Some of the drug growers will likely want out of the whole thing, or perhaps be educating themselves into safer jobs they're more suited for, using the money they made growing crops, and their contacts in that industry and the associated black market, to find a niche they can fill which is less dangerous and still provides acceptable income to live on. Many of those are at the local library reading about associated skills, like welding, machining, engine repair, soils, agriculture techniques. Some are just looking to improve yields and get more out of their crops, but others are probably thinking about getting out of the business to reduce personal risk in the coming war with the Mexican drug cartels, an inevitable consequence of getting into their market share and reducing their profits. The Mexican Cartels murder people in really showy ways to try and scare off others from competing. Same as any mafia. The president says they're just folks and works hard to insure that border patrol is helpless to stop them. I wonder if the Mexican Mafia donates to Democratic party campaigns to insure that borders stay largely unguarded? If I were evil that is what I would do.
8. From what I've seen, pot growers are preppers, and around half the preppers posting questions or articles on the bulletin boards are pot growers. They have rural bunkers, supplies, and often start from a tent in the woods under camouflage netting and gradually build up to owning the land, digging a well, upgrading to an RV, then building a cabin with bulletproof adobe walls and pretending its really eco friendly when what it does is stop rifle bullets from rivals while sleeping. Rivals snipe each other, you see. Those stories rarely get into the local hobby newspaper.
9. The paper is pro-pot and thus biased against negative stories. They don't tell about the trimmers that get murdered, raped, or ripped off by the grower they're working for. Some raped trimmers end up having babies and being common-law wives with nowhere to go. Its easy when they've been drugged up with superstrong pot. After enough raw date rapes to insure a baby, they're pretty well stuck. I see these women with very grim and hopeless expressions at the library pretty often. The ones with two or three kids, each a different color from a different father are rather the most pitiful. Eventually they turn into the devil may care hags with all the tattoos and a belt to hold down their flat and floppy breasts, in 20 more years. Its really sad, but they chose this industry and all it meant. Being naïve can kill you. I think a lot of them talk themselves into pretending they love their rapist, but women have a special kind of masochism all their own. Ending up a trimmer is a direct result of the current poor quality college education today. Colleges do not teach how to start businesses, because professors do not know how. Corporations outsource jobs and pay the lowest wages they can get away with to maximize profit. College grads can't pay rent AND student loans, so they end up off the books and desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. Like break the law.
10. The pot growers happily use any technology that is cheap and durable enough to give them an advantage, including agricultural humidity sensors to help with water conservation. As many of the growers near the various forks of the Yuba River have to tend to pumps with jerry cans and rifles to keep rivals from touching them or stealing them, not wasting the fuel, and getting the most pot for their buck in an industry where sharing crucial details is disadvantageous to your own operations, there's serious motivation to get this right. During the summer months it is COMMON to find pumps running and water streaming up the canyon wall a couple of hundred feet in what looks like firehose then vanishing into the woods at the top. These are going to pot fields. That water is full of cholera, btw, from leaky sewer pipes in Washington, a small gold mining town 20 miles east of Nevada City. It is so deep in the Yuba River Canyon it is at the same elevation as Nevada City. Washington is pretty dull, but one of the places where gold panning and rockers are still in use today. It also has lots of pot growers, having access to the San Juan Ridge to its north via fire roads.
11. It is common to find growers squatting or renting access to water via a garden hose and long orange power cords off a nearby house. Some actually park a tiny trailer in BLM areas in the boonies and then commute down to Sacramento for one of those minimum wage jobs, while tending a pot field in their evenings. I have seen these setups personally, 12 years ago when mapping fire roads. Locals did not shoot us because we were NOT the building enforcement department, and not trimmers looking to home invade and kill everyone, which ALSO happens around here. 90% of home invasions are drug related. The other 10% were the wrong address. Very important to remember that.
12. Semi legality of marijuana means there is increasing competition, which lowers the price. Growers see their profits falling, and understand they have to either ramp up production endlessly or lose the money they've come to depend on for their lifestyle. I expect it will eventually become fully legal and regulated one day, in order to cut down on violence with the Mexican drug gangs. The Mexicans will try to fund efforts to stop legalization because they make a lot of money from pot sales through their black market network of contacts. They don't want to give up the profits either. This dispute is going to escalate as more US troops come home from the wars with battle experience, since the Mexicans hire them as mercenaries and they're very good at killing, at security, at booby traps and demolitions and even at recruiting. As war veterans coming back to an economy that only offers minimum wage jobs, some of them will take the mercenary work. Most of the more vicious killings along the US border go back to US military veterans. Its not the guns, its the veterans.
13. I don't know whether to feel glad or sad at the pot growers making money from their chosen crops. They are spending money locally, which extends the life of lots of local jobs. They are employed, so they aren't burglarizing houses in my neighborhood, at least. They aren't growing inside rentals anymore because they're growing in gardens and fields the Sheriff can't touch thanks to the flimsy license requirements for growing "medical". They aren't competing with me for work. And the local police arrest the worst offenders going into public high and violent, and there's some of those every couple days. Legalization has definitely increased crime. And the cities are dealing with it. Any that leave that life behind for a new job ARE competing with me for work, but they're also likely saving their own lives in the process. I should be happy they are choosing life. I just wish there were more legitimate jobs around here.