14 DAY TRIAL // Recent news from California informs us that ever more people in this state are getting involved in the business of growing marijuana for medicinal purposes.
However, several environmentalists warn that, just like in the case of oil palm plantations, the business of growing pot can pretty much wreak havoc on the environment, especially if the people engaged in such activities do not hold sustainability very close at heart.
Thus, sources inform us that, in order to accommodate for these marijuana farms, several American citizens in Humboldt and Mendocino counties took it to themselves to clear forest lands and divert streams.
Moreover, some of them make use of pesticides and fertilizers on a regular basis, which means that their weed farm can be held responsible for polluting the natural ecosystems in their proximity.
What is interesting is the fact that, because ongoing federal legislations forbid people to grow marijuana, regardless of what they plan on doing with it, authorities cannot take any kind of measures that might help cut down on the ecological footprint of this industry, simply because doing so would endorse it.
“This is not about marijuana: good or bad. This is just about the reality that this one industry, due to prohibition, has been essentially granted immunity from regulation. That's the unintended consequence of federal prohibition,” one specialist argues.
As well as this, it is believed that increasing the public's awareness with respect to how these marijuana farms impact on the environment would also help diminish the ecological footprint of this industry.
More precisely, the people who have looked into this matter state that most of the American citizens who find themselves engaged in such activities simply lack information concerning the effects their daily working routine has on the natural world.
“A lot of people would have a more environmentally sound farm if they understood the cumulative impacts of everything that is happening in the hills,” Alison Sterling Nichols from the Emerald Growers Association (i.e. a medical cannabis trade group) believes.