Word: potted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spring. Like pears and firs, this crop is a moneymaker, yielding an estimated $70 million a year. But, unlike the other natural products of the valley, it is illegal. The plant is sinsemillas (Spanish for seedless), a highly cultivated strain of marijuana that has recently found favor with U.S. pot smokers. It thrives in the fertile soil and relaxed legal atmosphere of southern Oregon...
...heady plunge into the pot agribusiness began in 1973, when Oregon's legislature reduced the penalty for possession of less than an ounce of the weed to no jail sentence and a maximum $100 fine. Bookstores soon reported a brisk trade in manuals like The Complete Guide to Growing Marijuana. Cultivation still remains a crime punishable by a maximum ten years in jail and a $2,500 fine, but the more tolerant law on possession seemed to wilt the ardor of anti-dope investigators. "The police just don't care as much since the state decriminalized possession of less than...
Last year Assmus flew over the state's backwoods to check out reports of clandestine pot farms. "We saw a whole lot more than we ever suspected," he recalls, flipping through color photos of half-acre patches that pock the hillsides. "It's all over the place." To escape detection, many weed farmers raise their plants on terrain owned by the government or the lumber companies. Rural police say they do not have the time or the money to chase after all the tiny plots in remote areas. Residents sympathize with the lawmen's plight and pay little heed...
Equally adept at agronomy and foiling the police, Oregon's pot farmers turned home-grown weed into a profitable racket by developing their unique sinsemillas hybrid. The robust, waste-free strain attracts buyers willing to pay $1,600 a pound, the yield from just one well-cultivated plant. Studies show that sinsemillas weed contains five times more tetrahydrocannabinol (pot's narcotic ingredient) than the common Mexican variety. Even federal drug experts are impressed. "A good deal of expertise goes into producing that kind of plant," notes Dr. Carlton Turner, director of marijuana research for the National Institute of Drug Abuse...
Harvard considered joining the City of Cambridge in an--er--joint effort to test marijuana for traces of paraquat, a poisonous herbicide used by he Mexican government in its anti-pot campaign, which may cause severe lung damage in anyone who smokes treated dope. The University, however, had to weigh its concern for student health against the state's contention that the dope testing would be illegal, and held off from full cooperation with the city. "There is a question of violating the law--we're in marijuana never-never land on this one." University Counsel Dan Steiner '54 admitted...