THE STATE OF THE HERB IN NEW YORK

KEN GIBSON, NYC, 2023

Decades ago a young soldier returned from Vietnam. He, despite the rampant drug use in that era, had not used drugs and was against marijuana. Then he met a woman who used marijuana, and he tried it. Then he liked it. He went on to write the best selling hemp/marijuana book ever, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” Most readers would know who this was: Jack Herer.

Many other activists entered the ring, among them my sister, Mina Hegaard, who got to know Herer. In 2012 she started an online petition to the White House to make hemp legal. Soon afterwards the federal government did just that, allowing each state to decide its status. Many states have since made both industrial hemp and marijuana legal. Texas, Californian, and New York are on that list.

I live in the latter, and I have already written in this magazine a number of times about the ‘herb joints’ of Gotham. There are over 2,000 illegal ones, and so far, only five legal ones.

The situation is not the mellow scene that is unfolding in other states, it is not what Herer and Hegaard worked to achieve. A recent opinion in the ultra-liberal AM NY ended by saying:

“The entire cannabis industry in New York threatens to go up in smoke without substantial action to crack down on the illegal vendors, and stabilize the legal dealers, now.”

In the Manhattan Times, a bilingual weekly for Upper Manhattan, Gregg McQueen writes about CannaBronx, headed by Kavita Pawria-Sanchez. It is an organization dedicated to helping people with cannabis arrests get a piece of the action. Pressure from this and other groups did result in the New York State Cannabis Control Board approving, provisionally, 99 additional retail dispensaries. That figure included a number of petitioners who had their cases blocked.

She is asking not just for approval, but for investment from the state. In her words, “The New York cannabis movement is at a make-or-break moment.”

A recent post on gothamherald.nyc echoed these sentiments, adding a call for all marijuana plants grown here to be used not just for recreational cannabis, but for local paper mills as well – making sure that the entire plant is used to its fullest and that there are long term benefits given the plant’s economic and ecological potential.

The cannabis movement here has a liberal voter base which very much backs legal marijuana. However, the way in which illegal shops have conducted business, and the serious crimes which they tend to attract – a number of murders – are not helping to make it work.

Another aspect to this is that the consumers are losing confidence in the vendors. Many would rather pay the tax and surtax on legal marijuana rather than run the risk of having a problem with the product. And dealers, who are supposed to use New York state grown cannabis (each state mandates that the product be grown and manufactured in its borders) – are not always doing so. Crime cartels, often growing the marijuana with an enslaved workforce, have gotten into the picture. In some parts of California illegal pot farms are set up, some stealing the water supply from food farmers – at a time when food prices are skyrocketing.

None of this is the dream that Herer, Roulac, Hegaard and others worked for. New York must take a look at what is going on and remedy the situation. It must sort out the problems with permit applications, it must decide what to do with the illegal shops, and it must make sure that the marijuana industry is not falling into the hands of violent thugs, human traffickers and individuals who threaten the nation’s food supply.

It is not just a make-or-break moment for the hemp movement in Gotham, but for the national hemp movement. The hemp plant is a national treasure and needs to be treated as such.