Natural resource managers have recently spearheaded efforts to document the environmental impacts cannabis cultivation has on wildlife, fish, and the atmosphere. These environmental consequences have been felt most severely in the cannabis producing region of Northern California.
With millions of plants eradicated in thousands of outdoor cannabis grow sites in the last two years alone, illicit cannabis agriculture has become the region’s primary environmental problem.
The Promise of Legalization
In 2016, California voters passed Proposition 64, legalizing recreational cannabis. Heralded by policymakers as the environmental gold standard of cannabis legislation, the goals of the measure were to address environmental issues related to unregulated cannabis production and provide funding for conservation, restoration, and enforcement of environmental laws.
In the first six months of legalization, California has struggled to reign in the unregulated market and bring growers into compliance with environmental laws. Of the estimated 60,000 cannabis cultivators in California, less than ten percent have made the transition to the legal market, with about half driven back to the unregulated market by the new rules.
· Some of the barriers to entry include a regressive state tax on cultivation, higher than average local taxes and permits fees, and an ever-changing permit landscape that has worked in favor of large cannabis operators with deep pockets.
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As a result of NIMBY zoning practices and local bans, cannabis enterprises are not permitted in approximately 70% of jurisdictions in California, driving thousands back into the unregulated market.
Post-Prohibition environmental protections?
· Environmental protections written into the initiative, such as limits on the number of licenses and acreage caps on cultivation, have been overridden by the state, leading to lawsuits by an alliance of small- and medium-sized farmers. These changes removed protections for small cultivators trying to compete against large industrial players, and encouraged cultivators to expand operations, increasing their demands on environmental resources. While the state has issued approximately 4,000 permits to cultivate cannabis, the majority of growers are those that hold multiple licenses, making the actual number around 1,800.
· Although the environmental impact of indoor cannabis agriculture has been estimated at 3% percent of the state’s electricity consumption, the state has failed to address the carbon footprint generated by cannabis industry, licensing large-scale indoor projects throughout California.
· In addition, cannabis policymakers have excluded important environmental experts on cannabis boards and advisory commissions, opting instead to appoint corporate cannabis interests to those positions.
While policy trade-offs (economic growth/environmental protections) will continue to be central to cannabis policy debates, the current regulatory approaches fail to prevent and mitigate the significant environmental impacts of the cannabis industry. As legalization proceeds in Canada and the US, policy makers should include meaningful incentives that encourage the adoption of best management practices as well as address the barriers to entry that currently drive cultivators back into the unregulated market.
Tony Silvaggio is an Associate Professor at Humboldt State University where he teaches environmental sociology in the Environment & Community Graduate Program and Department of Sociology. His research focuses on understanding the ecological impacts of cannabis agriculture and the role drug war/post-prohibition policies play in exacerbating environmental problems. He has published, taught, and organized conferences on cannabis and the environment, and conducted policy research on cannabis manufacturing for the State of California. Tony is a founding faculty member of the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research (HIIMR), and senior research associate at the Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy.
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