Freshly watered young plant in a greenhouse at a small marijuana grow. The shot was taken in early spring. By late spring, the plant will be soaking up the sun outdoors.

Article author, Emily Brady is a friend of LoCO reporter Kym Kemp. 

A story in the Daily Beast, “How Green is Your Green?,” takes on the environmental consequences of marijuana growing particularly in Humboldt Co. The author, Emily Brady, wrote the new book about cannabis and this county entitled Humboldt: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier (reviewed here.) 

Brady addresses the environmental damage caused by some marijuana growers.  She writes, “Up in the Humboldt Hills, there’s even a word for the kind of pot the careless and greedy grow. It’s called ‘pollution pot.’”

But she offers a vision of the environmentally conscious grower also.  She suggests that consumers can influence the way marijuana is grown.  She points out,

As for the consumer, if you smoke pot medicinally or recreationally, and you care about the environment and what you put in your body, it’s time to start asking about how your pot is grown, just like your organic strawberries and your free-range eggs.

Meanwhile, back in Humboldt, a group of environmental pot growers have put out a “best practices guide,” in an attempt to encourage and educate others about how to grow pot in healthier ways, in accordance with the values of the hippie outlaws, the small farmers who started it all.

It will be interesting to see if articles like these influence how cannabis is regulated as more states move towards a legalization model.

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Puzzling question: The photo accompanying the article is visually nice but when will serious cannabis articles start using photos that represent the actual story rather than some artistic but not informative image?