‘Dead Skunk’ Stench from Marijuana Farms Outrages Californians
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I don't expect grow operations will ever hit the scale of other agriculture, either - there's just not enough demand, and legalization isn't going to make some order-of-magnitude change in that. When I was in Colorado this spring, in a small town way up in the mountains, my host pointed out multiple well-known growing operations in various buildings in town. All hydroponic, indoor farming, so the light and temperature and water can all be controlled. Easy to air filter that.
"But she says she made the choice to live next to a dairy farm and prefers that smell to the odor that drifted over from the marijuana farm next door to her house."
So it's okay to make a smell if it's one you prefer. If you're some whacko anti-pot person who thinks that it's going to destroy society, you'll find any reason to not like the pot.
I live out in the country and this issue comes up over and over. People from the suburbs/city decide they want what they think is a peaceful, bucolic country life and move to a rural area without learning enough about the area they're moving to.
And then they find out the farm next door has constant loud machinery noise when planting or harvest time comes. Or when the wind shifts, you're gagging because of the smell from the hog lagoon or dairy farm down the road. The farmers have been there, doing their thing for decades, and they're not about to stop just because someone moved in and can't deal with the reality of living near a farm.
Hell, we used to have a neighbor who complained about horses pooping on the road. Still don't know if she expected us to put diapers on them.
Nothing smells worse than a turkey farm. They are the absolute worst!
Simply grow some hemp plants, and kill your females.
High quality marijuana production requires the female plants do not get fertilized, which means an absence of male plants.
Once fertilized, cannabis puts its energy into seed instead of increased flowering.
Wind and insects will distribute the pollen to your neighbors, and the plants will start making seeds instead of stinky flowers.
Not resorting to extra-legal means to settle business disputes is one of the big advantages of decriminalization.
As for Humboldt County grow operations... see what I wrote earlier about the benefits of decriminalization. There's no reason for legal businesses to shoot at anyone. They're supposed to call the cops when they need someone shot, and they do. Shooting trespassers at rural grow operations is an anachronism from the days when that was their only recourse to defend their business.
I still believe in the principle that the criminal justice system is a poor avenue for addressing most issues related to drug use. But I think the jury is still out whether individual users are generally good at being good neighbors about their use. And industry... honestly, I'd think that an industry that recently had to hide as much production activity as possible would be better about this. But monetary incentives are a hell of a drug, and this isn't going to be the last issue a market oriented society that brings cannabis industrialization into full fellowship is going to face.
The vape cartridges and the concentrate wax are essentially scent-free. Certainly less smelly than nicotine and recreational non-drug vapes.
Industrial production will move out into the country as with any agricultural or livestock production that has a smell and you'll never notice it. The shit smell of a beef ranch dwarfs any odor you'll ever get from a pot production facility.
Cannabis doesn't have a lot of societal overhead.
The user pushes a button, breathes in some vaporized oil, and puts the battery back in their pocket or bag. It takes about four seconds. A user could do this in a bathroom, a confessional at church, on a bus or on a train.
It is much easier than setting something on fire, passing it around while it's burning, and then putting that fire out.
A gram cartridge is about the size of a pen cap, lasts even a heavy user for a week or more, and doesn't make the user's bag smell like weed.
Are you imagining those giant wizard vapes that are the size of a pack of cards?
Also dead skunk is how you know it's good so... shrug
Sometimes people think the depth of the scent of the un-smoked weed means it contains a deeper variety of specific volatile organic compounds called terpenes. I'm not sure if the distinct aroma-causing compounds make much of a difference for the end result compared to the cannabinoids, but people use their nose as a quality estimator this way.
Yes, marijuana stinks. So do slaughter houses and landfills. There's a reason we don't zone these near residential areas.
$$$$$$
Somebody here has the power to start branding based on being strong but not smelly; get on it first, you'll find a huge market.
Smelly weed isn’t going anywhere, but I’m thinking there will be a lot of smokers who prefer a milder scent and the market will provide it.
There are ways around the smell being an issue. Growing indoors, it is quite easy to filter out the smell with activated charcoal filtration, which is how it was done when it was illegal and smelling up your block was a nice way to get caught. The problem is arising from outdoor grows and greenhouse grows which don't treat the smell and can't really in a cost-effective way since they would need to filter all of the air.
I studied forestry and know what I prefer on a hot summer's day, the orangey tang of a Douglas fir stand or the resinous smell in a pine forest on sandy soil are infinitely preferable over both hogs and chickens. Or weed, for that matter.
I'd agree that they're less offensive to the sense of smell than paper mills, or dog food manufacturing, or any number of other large scale commercial operations. But now that recreational marijuana is legal in so many places we have to consider (and regulate) it like the industrial process that it is.
The stench coming from those farms, woowee!
open-air farming is harder to handle. I grew up a few miles away from a pig farm, and late august was unavoidably...special. You get used to it, but the first hot end of summer day was a salient experience.
(Or you know, leave out the hyperbolic pictures.)