This project aimed to: a) provide the first empirical assessments of unlicensed production amounts and geography over time; b) identify what policies are correlated with growth or diminution of unlicensed cultivation; c) estimate unlicensed market product, including leakage from the licensed to unlicensed market; and d) test whether cultivation bans or permits are more effective at preventing unlicensed cultivation and environmental harms. It does so through a mixed method approach involving a first-in-kind mapping approach (using SWRCB's Cannavision platform), license data, consumer surveys, point-of-sale, supply chain and pricing data, interviews, observations, and secondary material research.

Since the legalization of cannabis in California (USA), unlicensed cultivation has unevenly persisted. Spatial patterns are likely associated with a combination of physical and socio-political factors, though their relative importance remains unexplored. This study examines interannual growth and decline in unlicensed cultivation, the spatial patterns of relocation, redistribution, and clustering, and the relationship between unlicensed cultivation and potential environmental impacts. It uses multi-year spatial data (from 2018-2024) and Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to conduct landscape-scale analyses of geographic trends, changes in cultivation density, and associations with physical and socio-political characteristics. We found that physical characteristics such as topography, building density, and remoteness were associated with changes in cultivation density, though the direction and magnitude of effects varied across periods. Socio-political factors, including enforcement intensity, fines, bans, and the presence of licensed farms, exhibited complex and sometimes opposing temporal patterns. Licensed farms were the single largest and most consistent predictor of reduced unlicensed cultivation (estimates ranged from -207.79 to -660.06 m2 per km2), suggesting that active participation in permitting regimes fosters stability, norm formation, and deterrence. In contrast, bans and enforcement alone often redistributed cultivation, producing "whack-a-mole" dynamics that increased volatility and, in some cases, environmental exposure. Environmental sensitivity emerged as a significant factor in later periods, with regulated counties showing reductions in cultivation in vulnerable areas, highlighting the potential for permitting systems to mitigate ecological impacts. These findings emphasize the importance of participatory, stable, and well-implemented regulatory frameworks for managing unlicensed cultivation and provide broader insights for formalizing informal or illicit resource use in varied socio-ecological contexts.

Although adult-use cannabis was legalized by state voters in 2016, more than two-thirds of localities have opted to ban its cultivation. These bans are the most common local policy in California. Why are bans adopted? What effects do they have? Do they achieve their intended aims? What unintended costs and consequences follow? This paper documents a two-year comparative ethnographic project of four ban counties, selected for their economic, demographic, ecological, geographic, and political diversity. We found that, under certain conditions, bans can achieve—at least temporarily—their explicit aims of stopping unlicensed production and reducing environmental impacts, crime, and nuisances. These conditions include: adequate personal and medical cultivation provisions; high local costs of labor and land; selective enforcement to foster informal norms among persistent cultivators; and significant resources involving multiple agencies and strategies. We also found that, more often, bans fail to achieve their expressed aims and can even create counterproductive results. By themselves, they rarely stop cultivation, environmental impacts, criminal activities, or nuisances and can sometimes make these dynamics more pervasive or harmful. They may be less costly than regulatory programs, but they have significant fiscal impacts. They may protect the interests of some residents, but they consistently negatively impact community dynamics and social equity, especially for medical patients, low-income people, and people of color. This report gives policymakers a number of considerations to ponder when considering the ban as a policy choice. Overall, well-designed zoning and land use laws may be more effective in achieving desired aims of controlling cannabis and its impacts. In the absence of external (state) support for regulatory pathways, low-resource counties may find utility in bans, though ban policies carry their own hidden costs. We argue that absolute bans, particularly those with zero exceptions, stringent enforcement, and steep consequences, fail to achieve policy aims and can backfire. Indeed, stringent bans will often recreate the harms and stigmas of the cannabis prohibition in a state where voters expressed a desire to move away from this past and legalized cannabis.

The licensed cannabis industry represents one of the top five most economically valued agricultural commodities in California, yet farming largely remains on remote, environmentally sensitive, "marginal" lands. Using mixed methods, this paper examines the determinants of this marginalization, their embedded elaboration, and their relation to historical policy regimes. We used Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to determine the most important predictors of licensed cannabis industry development since the inception of a statewide licensing program in 2018 and to compare the distribution of licensed cannabis to other forms of rural agriculture, including vineyards and pasture, to understand landscape factors and environmental sensitivity of land uses. We found that a county's median income and the extent of traditional (non-cannabis) agriculture, as measured by the proportion of on-farm (non-cannabis) employment, were both negatively associated with its amount of licensed cannabis agriculture. Ethnographic data suggests that cannabis is often excluded from traditional agricultural areas, through formal local-level bans, restrictive zoning, high "prime" farmland values, and cultural exclusions from other powerful resource users. The resulting relegation to "marginal" lands foments conflicts with amenity land users and environmentalists, even as it partly supports "legacy" cultivators whose farms were established under prior policy regimes. Results suggest that cannabis is more likely to be grown under conditions that introduce regulatory hurdles, including farming on steeper slopes, with natural streams onsite, and without access to large groundwater aquifers for irrigation. Our findings suggest that failure to allow licensed cannabis farming in traditional agriculture regions has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein cannabis cultivation is largely relegated to environmentally sensitive areas where cultivation activity has an elevated tendency for environmental impacts.

As the largest polity worldwide to legalize cannabis, California has implemented uniquely high environmental and land use standards for cannabis agriculture. To date, however, regulations have suffered from low compliance rates, especially among smaller, "legacy" farms that existed prior to legalization. Meanwhile, both licensed and unlicensed farms are increasing in size, thus increasing environmental pressures. Is there a way to achieve environmental objectives, farmer compliance, and an equitable transition away from illegal markets? In the largest US survey of cannabis farmers to date, we found farmers are open to strong environmental protections yet face significant barriers in meeting regulatory requirements. We present this opinion article to suggest several strategies to ameliorate compliance barriers by reducing associated learning, financial, and psychological costs. Taken together, these strategies present an unprecedented opportunity to model a new kind of agriculture centered on small-farm production and environmental stewardship-a model that indicates new directions for agriculture beyond cannabis.

Cannabis is often framed as an exception to the War on Drugs. Legalization would simply remove “soft drugs” from prohibition while leaving the rest of the drug war apparatus in place. This “cannabis exceptionalism,” however, elides the centrality of cannabis in the global drug war. This chapter outlines the pivotal role of cannabis in global prohibition and how its supply-side tactics produced a modern, global, and illegalized peasantry. Relying on ethnographic data from California, this chapter illuminates the “exceptional” factors that shaped cultivation in the United States, leading toward the surprising advancement of legalization at the heart of the drug war empire. Despite its benefits, US legalization now marks US cannabis as an exception in a still-global drug war, perpetrated by the US, with consequences for illegalized farmers and market actors worldwide. A holistic perspective on (US) legalization thus requires a “de-prohibition” politics at a scale equal to that of the sweeping, global War on Drugs.

Conventional industrial agriculture in the United States (US) displays a number of recognizable characteristics. Market competition in agriculture, as compared with other sectors, tends to be particularly severe due to the large number of farms, their geographical dispersion, limited options for product differentiation, and the perishability of many crops, which inhibits farmers' ability to choose when to sell. Until 1996, cannabis production in California occurred outside of legal systems. In 1996, California voters approved the Compassionate Use Act (CUA), decriminalizing use and cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes. Fear of detection placed informal limits on farm size, especially on private property where plants could be tied to owners and property seizure and arrest was a real threat. The allowance of medical cannabis cultivation after 1996 affected production dynamics. Legal-medical protections, particularly physician recommendations, made it less risky to cultivate, thus fueling an expansion of the number of cultivators.

Medical Anthropology QuarterlyVolume 35, Issue 2 p. e26-e28 BOOK REVIEW The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma and the Patient Experience. Newhart, Michelle and Dolphin, William, New York: Routledge, 2019, 302 pp. Michael Polson, Michael Polson Davidson CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Michael Polson, Michael Polson Davidson CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12635AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume35, Issue2June 2021Pages e26-e28 RelatedInformation

Cannabis legalization is spreading rapidly. In California, as the plant transitions from an illegal drug to agri-cultural product, regulations have been implemented to manage its production and associated environmental impacts. Yet, at the early stages of this process, many of the state's cannabis farmers continue to operate illicitly. This study examines why some cannabis farmers are engaging in the state's licensing initiative while others are not. Through an anonymous survey of cannabis farmers in California, we analyzed socio-normative and cost-related factors influencing farmers' decisions to participate in legal markets, or not. Approximately one third of the 362 cannabis farmers who completed the survey reported that they had never applied for a license. These non-compliant farmers were likely to be smaller cultivators who grew cannabis as part of a diversified livelihood strategy. Farmers' non-compliance was primarily attributed to an inability to overcome barriers to participation. These included not only financial barriers but also administrative and psychological ones, all of which dispro-portionately affect farmers with fewer resources. Socio-normative factors, including pressure from neighbors and perspectives on the benefits of environmental regulations, were not found to motivate non-compliance. As a result, policy efforts to mitigate the administrative burdens of compliance, such as streamlining permitting processes, extending agricultural support services, and supporting farmer collectives, warrant further attention to enhance compliance, public safety, environmental outcomes, and rural development in cannabis cultivating communities. Reforms to promote compliance, particularly among smaller farmers, may prevent the kinds of industrial consolidation seen in agricultural and in other governmental efforts to regulate informal resource use and trade.

Prohibitions, according to many , are moments in which social strictures override individual behavior, forming a foundation for social interaction. Cannabis prohibition does not simply proscribe behavior, it generates administrative apparatuses, innovates conceptual vocabularies, shapes social relations, and much more. In liberal capitalist societies, ideologically premised as they are on the free barter, truck, and trade of goods, prohibition is a unique mode of governance. The placement of prohibited realms beyond regulatory reach enables them to develop their own social systems, with their own symbolic codes, languages, ethics, circuits of knowledge, and such. Prohibition also requires a governance apparatus for its material-discursive administration. Legalization may be defined as a moment of policy regime shift, coming in several forms. In Amador County in the Sierra Foothills, cannabis was translated to legal forums through the register of "land use". Legalization generates unique social forms.

The cannabis industry in California is attempting to transition from an international epicenter of unpermitted production to one of the world’s largest legal markets. This formalization process will likely establish new centers of production outside the state’s historical cannabis-producing regions, with implications for local communities and the environment. In this paper we analyzed how cultivation regulations and land characteristics correlate with the geographical development of permitted cannabis production centers in California. We used permit data from the first two years of California’s statewide cannabis regulatory program to document geographic variation in cannabis production and farm characteristics (prevalence of onsite residence, non-landowner farming, county zoning classifications, size of cultivation area). We also used multilevel regression models to analyze whether geospatial characteristics likely to be relevant to environmental regulations (size of parcel, average slope of parcel, density of stream network, land cover type) were associated with farm size (cultivation area) or the likelihood of a parcel being enrolled in the state program. We found that a small number of large farms represented the majority of the permitted cultivation area, with the top 10% of largest farms comprising 60% of total cultivated area statewide. The counties with the most growth in permitted cannabis cultivation area also had the highest rates of tenant (non-landowner) farming and lowest proportions of farms with permanent onsite residency. Farms in these counties were almost exclusively sited on parcels zoned for agriculture. On a statewide scale, parcel size was a reliably positive predictor of enrollment, while average slope and stream network density had reliably negative effects. The same relationships held in predicting cultivation area, together suggesting that the development of the newly-formalized cannabis industry in California may be responsive to environmental regulation. Our results suggest two divergent paths of industry development: one in which smaller farms, which often pre-date legalization, navigate regulations in more remote and rugged regions and a second comprising large farms, which are often newer and operate in areas more favorable to meeting environmental requirements of state and county policies.

Oddly, criminal prohibition can lead to “commoning,” when individuals, left unprotected by state and formal property rights, innovate collective systems to access, use, and benefit from illegalized resources. “Legalization” entails the conversion of these prohibited commons to legal property systems, bringing new freedoms and liberties as well as the dispossession of collectively generated assets (material, relational, and otherwise). This paradox of legalization is currently playing out among U.S. states moving to legalize cannabis. Motivated by the failures of cannabis prohibition and its grievous harms, the question looms: How will states and markets grapple with the collectively generated assets and relational systems generated under prohibition? Building from ethnographic research and survey data, this article argues for recognition of the commoning practices that produced the resources upon which the legal market is based. These practices illuminate ways that legalization may deliver not only markets and regulation but also emancipatory justice in the wake of the War on Drugs. First, we document the commoning practices of cannabis cultivators, the collective benefits they generated under prohibition, and how legalization is affecting these practices and dynamics. Second, we explore strategies, like allotment and pricing systems, that build from prohibited commoning practices to achieve greater collective benefits and the emancipatory potential of legalization.

As the post-1980s revanchist drug war transformed US cities, another spatial formation was materializing: exurbia. The final roost of suburban white flight, exurbia also formed via the spatial–racial dynamics of the drug war. The “exurban fortress” projected an imaginary of urban danger and rural security that (1) solidified an anti-drug constituency among (older, white) property owners and disciplinarily transitioned racially marked and poor white residents from an industrial to postindustrial service economy and (2) ameliorated key contradictions implicit to the production, consumption, and governance of exurbia. Taking the case of Calaveras County, California, this article shows how cannabis prohibition politically stabilized spatial meanings and capital accumulation during a period bookended by recessionary crises in housing production (1992–2010). It also shows how medical cannabis activists reimagined the urban and rural in capacious ways, thus catalyzing a local transformation that mirrored national trends around drugs, penality and Rightist politics. This case illuminates a neglected dimension of drug war geographies and their activist-driven transformation and urges attention to new bordering practices emerging from exurbian spatial imaginaries.

Over the past two decades, activists and market actors have successfully liberalized marijuana consumption and distribution in most US states. Given ongoing federal supply-side interdiction strategies, however, production has been another matter. This article traces the emergence of marijuana cultivation as an environmental matter. “The environment” increasingly constitutes a material-discursive social field into which actors (e.g. activists, law enforcement, producers, conservationists) can launch interventions into productive processes. The article traces three early, formative interventions in northern California: by federal agents to “reclaim” and protect public lands; by a county government to discipline and segregate compliant environmental citizens from recalcitrant, racialized “criminals”; and by producers themselves to mobilize environmental discourses in regulatory debates. Amidst ideas of pollution, reclamation, stewardship, and sustainability, these projects revalorized marijuana production, articulating with and departing from entrenched systems of inequality and stigma. As marijuana production liberalizes, this article draws attention to the legacy of prohibition moralities in regulatory debates, the necessity of incorporating criminalized actors in civil regulation and knowledge formation, and the possibility for a liberation environmentality that exceeds the terms of exploitative, extractive relations that dominate contemporary agriculture, land use, and drug policy.

Since California's cannabis legalization, localities have played a central role in determining the regulatory terms of where, how and within what legal bounds cannabis cultivation occurs. Siskiyou County, a rural, conservative and majority white county in Northern California, chose not to recognize cannabis cultivation as agriculture. It drew up highly restrictive cannabis cultivation regulations, largely under the purview of law enforcement rather than civil agencies. Hmong-American cultivators, made highly visible through enforcement practices, policy forums and media discourses, have borne the brunt of this regulatory regime. Cannabis policy, especially in its ethnic-racial dimensions, has become symbolic of broader anxieties about cultural and agricultural change. We employed ethnographic methods to research the formation and enforcement of Siskiyou's restrictive cannabis cultivation regulations, and their differential effects across local populations. We found that the county's law enforcement–first regulatory approach blurred civil and criminal lines, made some cultivators more visible and vulnerable to enforcement, and promoted criminalizing approaches to cultivators, even among civil regulatory agencies. These developments hinder the ability of agencies (including the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife) to ameliorate negative social and ecological effects of cannabis cultivation through civil regulation, support and services.