cannabisnews.com: Boulder's Basement Bud


cannabisnews.com: Boulder's Basement Bud 





Boulder's Basement Bud 
Posted by FoM on February 11, 2001 at 18:22:58 PT
By J. Running Deer Harden 
Source: Boulder County Weekly 
Good ganja, like good beer, used to be imported. Today, quality beer is brewed right here on the Front Range at an array of brew pubs and microbreweries. The equipment used is cheap and easy to find. Likewise, modern drug users in Boulder want local pot, so they grow it, or their friends and acquaintances do. Small amounts are grown in the basements and back rooms of homes on nearly every block in every neighborhood in Boulder County. 
The days of potheads waiting on packages from Jamaica, or bragging about "Tijuana Gold," are over. We live in the information and technology age, a time when knowledge and cultural mores mean more than climate in the business of growing pot. And in Boulder, the culture and the knowledge base are just right for the cultivation of some of the country's kindest bud. Just ask any drug user in Kansas City or Cleveland where the best pot comes from. Topping the list will be Boulder County, where people share hydroponics knowledge and clippings for new plants. Hydroponics-a.k.a. aquiculture-is the cultivation of plants in water that contains dissolved inorganic nutrients. Twenty years ago, it was a little-known gardening technique used mainly by blue-haired ladies who grew orchids as a hobby. Today, people grow a vast array of plants hydroponically with heating lamps, water, nutrients and plastic containers, which cost less than $500 to set up. Learning how is easy. Simply log onto the Internet and read from any of the thousands of websites devoted to the practice of growing plants in water. What once grew only in the Amazon, can now thrive in a basement. "All plants grow better hydroponically," says Ed German, owner of Boulder Hydroponics on 1630 N. 63rd. "We have customers who use hydroponics for vegetable gardens, to grow wheat grass, and some of the best tomatoes on the planet. Chefs grow herbs hydroponically. People want vine ripened peppers and tomatoes, and they want to know exactly what goes into them, so they grow them at home. What you can grow yourself hydroponically is usually better, and cheaper, than the organic produce you buy at high-end supermarkets." And really good pot. Right? "I really wouldn't know about that," German says. "Anytime I even hear a hint of that from customers, I throw them out. I've told my staff to err on the side of caution. I've thrown people out simply for having the image of a marijuana leaf on a t-shirt. I recently threw a guy out of here because he had an earring shaped like marijuana. Some people come in here reading how-to books on growing marijuana, and I throw them out. We do not need customers who are planning to do anything illegal. There are plenty of legal uses for hydroponics." Some of his customers, German says, have coral reef aquariums. They buy lighting at Boulder Hydroponics because it's cheaper than buying identical products from aquarium stores, which are priced for wealthy consumers. German has become so sensitive to the hydroponics pot issue that he finds it hard not to discriminate against customers who meet certain "pothead" stereotypes. He remembers the day he first opened for business, five years ago. The first customer who walked in the store had long hair and looked like a hippie. "I can't be prejudicial based on looks, but it's hard," German says. "When that first customer came in and he had this really long hair, I thought 'Oh great, here we go.' But it turns out he was a CU student doing research, and he paid with a university check. So you never know." Ojo Rojo A criminal defense lawyer in Kansas City told me his drug clients often talk up Boulder County bud as something superior. He suggested I meet with a man who goes by "Ojo Rojo," who once grew indoor pot in Boulder County and distributed it in Kansas City. I met Rojo, a middle-aged Hispanic man, at Effrain's-a Mexican restaurant that happens to be next door to Boulder Hydroponics. I was expecting someone who looked like a drug dealer, not the well-dressed man who sat across from me and spoke in a soft, sophisticated manner. He told me the story of using a few hundred dollars worth of hydroponics supplies-along with an ample supply of Boulder County knowledge and marijuana clippings-to improve his family's plight. "I moved my family to this area in the early '90s from Mexicali, Mexico," Rojo said. "I own my own business now and have my bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Denver. Before I was driving taxi in Mexicali and then I worked at car-washes in Denver. I have four children who were very young and we didn't have very much money. Marijuana helped. Not just smoking it, but selling it." Back in Mexico, whenever his family needed cash, in the old days of marijuana trafficking, Rojo knew the right people on both sides of the border. "Two thousand dollars to drive a truck from a pasture of cow shit in Mexico to a pasture of cow shit in Texas," Rojo recalls. "At the time it was impossible to give up. I'd have to pay off some cops in Mexico and wait for some hippies in Texas. I look at those days with nostalgia." Rojo tells of the time he was chased by border patrols and agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "And I'm actually a citizen. Thinking back, the risks I took for that ditch weed were just stupid." After years of racing across the border with Mexican weed, Rojo heard of a better way. In Texas, he learned about wealthy professionals in Colorado-outed in 2000 by a federal report as having the highest number of pot smokers in America-who pay exorbitant prices for pot grown in basements. Rojo asked questions, read articles and decided to go for it. He moved to Boulder County and started a small-scale basement garden of hydroponics weed. He had no trouble selling it locally, and moved into other markets only because word had spread about the quality of his product. "It's all information, man! That's what I love about this area," Rojo says. "It's part of the culture. Rich, smart people smoking pot. Rich, smart people growing pot. And Boulder bud is nationally known. Ask our friends at High Times. But instead of one guy in a moving truck trying to take 700 to 800 pounds worth of shitty weed across the nation, everyone's got a friend in Boulder with a couple of plants. Two or three pounds, two or three plants...it's much safer and it jacks up the price." Rocky Mountain high So I called High Times, to see if Rojo was right. Is Boulder County hydroponics marijuana famous? Well, sort of. At High Times, a magazine based in New York City that's all about drugs, Boulder County is known as sort of a second tier marijuana Mecca. "It's a rural area with a long-standing hippie culture, and with that comes a bit of a marijuana cache," says Steven Wishnia, a senior editor at High Times. "But I've still never had anyone hand me a pipe and say 'You've got to try this, because it's from Colorado.' It's still not in a league with hydroponics from D.C. or Humbolt County (Calif.) or Vancouver." Boulder's pot culture isn't known for causing trouble. It's an exclusive class of pot smokers, and unlike alcohol, their drug of choice has seldom been accused of causing violent crime. "Shoot, I remember a kid getting killed in Denver over a dime sack of bud," Ojo says. "Now that doesn't have a damn thing to do with marijuana. It has to do with culture. Hippie progressive types smoking good bud-I don't have any problem with that and there's a lot of money to be made. In the inner-city, smoking pot has to do with escaping your surroundings. It's something else to kill the pain. Here, pot is a unifier. It brings yuppies closer to one another." Still, pot is illegal. If it's so rampant in Boulder, why aren't cops seen kicking down doors and making arrests? Rojo says they can't, most of the time, because the hydroponics operations are too small to detect. They don't generate much traffic. The heating lamps increase a power bill about as much as a new computer. By keeping a low profile, with today's higher pot prices, a grower can make good money selling small amounts to trusted friends and acquaintances only. The risk is low. "Keep it small, a couple plants," Rojo says. "The small farms (3 or 4 plants) have taken over the big guys. That's what hydroponics have done. It's shifted the emphasis from quantity to quality." Very true, says Wishnia, of High Times. Pot has changed, the price has increased, and hydroponics are the rage. "What happened wasn't some new development in technology," says Wishnia. "Hydroponics has been around for a long time. What happened was the drug war. Suddenly you had crackdowns at the Mexican border. You had crackdowns on exports from Jamaica and Columbia. You had black helicopters flying over the marijuana farms of Humbolt County (and Ward, Colo.!). So pot growers took it inside, where it's less detectable. Smaller operations meant higher prices, so people who were mere users 10 years ago began growing their own. The drug war created this." Wishnia says the phenomenon is good and bad for his readers. Marijuana is better, but more costly despite the rise in competition among growers, distributors and sellers. "I remember when Mexican brick weed was $40 an ounce, and cocaine was $400 an ounce," says Wishnia. "Today, good hydroponics marijuana is $350 an ounce, and coke is still $400 an ounce." However, Rojo and Wishnia agree that consumers have never had more choice or availability than they do today. "There are 420 strands of marijuana," Rojo says. "There's Northern Lights, White Widow, Afghani. You name it, and we have it right here in Boulder County. It's all hydro-tweaking out the bud for the most THC. Everybody knows how. It's no secret, and when it comes down to it the cops are more concerned with meth labs in Weld County than anything here. And the real beauty is that some poor sucker like me doesn't have to drive to a cow shit field to get it for you all." The ever increasing cost of living in Boulder is, says Rojo, a major motivation behind hydroponics marijuana operations. "What do you call a guy in scrubs standing in a welfare line in Boulder?" he asked me. "Doctor. I don't know if you come from a million dollar trust fund, but a lot of us don't. Pot has always been a good way to make ends meet-especially for someone with family responsibilities." It's true, say cops None of this, of course, is news to local drug cops. "Most of our cases deal with indoor growing operations," says Lieutenant Jim Smith, of the Boulder County Drug Task Force. "With hydroponics it's all about the THC content. The price of really good bud is getting close to the cost of cocaine. This is where technology and the market have taken it." Although Boulder has a national reputation for liberal attitudes regarding pot, don't be deceived. It's no more legal here than anyplace else in Colorado. Attorney Mark Langston, a Boulder native who defends marijuana cultivators, says the common consumption of marijuana in Boulder often leads to a dangerous assumption that it's almost legal. "Anyone who thinks Boulder is so bud-friendly needs to understand that cultivation of marijuana is a felony act here and everywhere," Langston says. "There is nothing legally special about Boulder when it comes to pot." Despite his warning to pot users and growers, Langston says local law enforcement agents tend to have relatively progressive attitudes about pot. They enforce the law, but understand that alcohol presents bigger social problems. "I've heard members of the law enforcement and judicial community side with pot over alcohol," Langston says. "They know that something like 75 percent of all cases have an alcohol element. How many times do you hear about a CEO coming home after a long day, smoking a joint and beating his wife? What makes Boulder weird is that you can get in trouble for pot, but you can get in a lot more trouble for lighting up a cigarette in a restaurant than going outside and burning a joint." Smith says the Boulder County Drug Task Force seized approximately 1,800 pounds of marijuana last year. "That's somewhere between 2,300 and 2,400 plants," he says. "We have busted major distribution networks stemming out of Boulder County. Sixty to 70 plants is usual for operations like that." Although Boulder has become best known in recent years for its home-grown weed, Smith says the days of running drugs into Boulder aren't completely over. He describes a market between Boulder, Mexico and British Columbia-a place High Times says still has far better pot than Boulder. "In the last year we've busted two major distribution networks," Lt. Smith said. "Usually these 'distribution networks' are just a couple of buddies," says Langston. "Someone in Canada knows a couple guys in Washington or Oregon, and they know a guy in Boulder or Humbolt County, California. So they get together on it." The community of growers in Boulder, Smith says, is about as diverse as the different strains of pot. Some are engineers and scientists, others are just the lazy dopers one might expect. Sergeant McGraw of the University of Colorado Police Department, says his agency handled 55 drug cases last year. The vast majority, he says, involved small amounts of marijuana-less than an ounce-making the crimes class 2 petty offenses that seldom result in more than a fine. So what is the cumulative effect of Boulder's Rocky Mountain high times as a distribution hub of high-grade marijuana and an international trading partner with pothead Canucks? An American Drug and Alcohol Survey showed Boulder Valley 11th and 12th graders getting far more stoned than state and national norms. In the 1998-99 school year, 37 percent of the district's seniors were brave enough to tell an anonymous survey that they had smoked marijuana, compared to the 30 percent of high school seniors nationwide who admitted to getting stoned in a one month period. The issue of dazed and confused juveniles came up at the Boulder County Movement for Children Legislative Forum. The panel included Alyson Shupe, health planner for the Boulder County Health Department, and Bill De LaCruz, a Boulder Valley School District board member. In the Louisville Times, De LaCruz says: "Nobody talks about what it is to be a community. Our affluence allows us not to talk about it. We go into our million dollar houses and are able to forget about what is going on. What is going on in the affluence of the 'new Silicon Valley?'" De LaCruz asks rhetorically. "Our children are mirroring what they see." What do the children see? "There are a couple of different theories about the higher rate of drug and alcohol abuse by our kids," Shupe says. "Some think it's because the University of Colorado is a party school-Ski U. Some blame it on Boulder being an old hippie enclave. Those hippies are still around. It could also be a matter of prosperity and affluence." Until last week, drug concerns were far from normal conversation material in Boulder. Then Brittany Chambers died. The local freshman took Ecstasy at her 16th birthday party and faded into a deadly coma. At Saint Louis Catholic Church in Louisville, the Rev. Donald Willette began last Sunday's mass with a prayer for Brittany's soul. "This young girl was looking for ecstasy on her 16th birthday," Willette says. "Many people are looking for ecstasy in their lives, young and old alike." Willette describes Boulder County's drug culture as a symptom of narcissism. "Affluent communities are always more in danger of this," the priest says. "You asked me, 'What's my stance on marijuana?' Marijuana has to do with me, me, me and me. Like with everything, what is the motivation behind the activity? Marijuana is probably no better or worse than alcohol in that regard." Note: Forget Mexican Brick Weed, the county's smokin' Boulder's ganja.Source: Boulder County Weekly (CO)Author: J. Running Deer HardenPublished: February 8 - February 14, 2001 Copyright: 2000 Boulder WeeklyContact: : Editorial boulderweekly.com Website: http://www.boulderweekly.com/coverstory.htmlCannabisNews Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #7 posted by Dan B on February 12, 2001 at 09:42:55 PT:
I Stand Corrected
Once upon a time it was higher, but even then--you're right, I wasn't even close. I guess I'm out of touch when it comes to exchange rates. Math, too.I just changed a grade today (for the better) for one of my students, in part because I neglected to add one very important number to the point total. I can see that I need to be a bit more careful when it comes to math.Thank God I'm an English major.Dan B
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Comment #6 posted by Dave in Florida on February 12, 2001 at 09:30:44 PT
British Pounds
Dan B said: 160 British pounds equals pretty close to 350 American dollars, depending on the exchange rate. Your money is worth more than ours per monetary unit.Sorry Dan, The current exchange rate is $1.45. 160quid x $1.45 is $232.00
//http://www.xe.net/ucc/
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Comment #5 posted by Dan B on February 12, 2001 at 07:43:23 PT:
Superskunk, Consider Exchange Rates
160 British pounds equals pretty close to 350 American dollars, depending on the exchange rate. Your money is worth more than ours per monetary unit.Dan B
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on February 12, 2001 at 05:34:54 PT:
For all its' faults, it was not bad
This article certainly won't make it to the 'Stoners Review', but it makes its' points. Such as the affluence of the area seems to cause a reduction in the amount of aggressive law enforcement; people who can afford 'million dollar' homes can certainly afford to keep hotshot, powerhouse lawyers on retainer in case they get busted for cannabis possession...unlike some kid from the poorer stretch of town, who gets hammered for having a joint. Without belaboring the point, Running-Deer Harden has very deftly pointed out the tremendous gulf that exists vis-a-vis law enforcement's treatment of the well-to-do as opposed to the real targets of the DrugWar. More ammo for our side, and an embarrassment to the antis who, like Dame Justice, are supposed to be blind to the ugly truth that when Money talks, Justice walks. 
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Comment #3 posted by Superskunk on February 12, 2001 at 05:16:56 PT:
prices
in this article you say that good hydroponic ganga cost $350 i am from england and the same type of skunk cost �20 1/8 and between �100 �160 (depending on the dealer) an ounce i don't know if british weed is cheaper or that American weed is just really really expensive
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Comment #2 posted by freedom fighter on February 11, 2001 at 22:17:44 PT
motivation 
"Affluent communities are always more in danger of this," the priest says. "You asked me, 'What's my stance on marijuana?' Marijuana has to do with me, me, me and me. Like with everything, what is the motivation behind the activity? Marijuana is probably no better or worse than alcohol in that regard." So that makes it okay to put people in prisons for using marijuana? One cannot grow Ecstasy in Boulder's basement.. Why would the author try to lump it with cannabis? The girl did not die from Ecstasy. She drowned herself by drinking three gallons of water in 45 min. What that has to do with Boulder's Buds?Nothing!
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Comment #1 posted by yagoddabekiddn on February 11, 2001 at 22:09:40 PT
More reefer madness
This whole freaking article is nonsense. More reefer madness, New Millenium-style. Sheer and utter crap. We need to start calling these so-called "journalists" on these "facts".
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