I’d guess that a sizable portion of recreational smokers are intelligent and organized enough to produce weed for their own use. What percentage of users, do you figure, are the lazy disorganized “stoners” who would find this relatively minor challenge insurmountable?
Monster 104:
Geez, I’m sorry if I hit on a point of pride with you.
Enlighten me then, please. What is special about a pot plant that requires so much TLC? We grow everything from cacti to ferns in our house, and it doesn’t seem that hard. I’ve seen pot growing wild where some people tossed a bunch of seeds. In Alberta.
I’m sure that the best pot growers and purveyers of the gnarliest weed work their asses off to produce good quality bud. I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s calling in life. But I’m not sure that people wouldn’t settle for free homegrown stinkweed rather than pay $100/oz for pure Straightdopean maui waui golden sensimilla.
You could turn around and say the same thing about beer drinkers. Home brewing is a relatively minor challenge, yet most beer drinkers don’t undertake it. But I don’t call beer drinkers who buy from the grocery store instead of brewing at home “lazy” and “disorganized.”
It’s not a point of pride. It’s that you’re basically making stuff up in an effort to have some sort of point you can argue with against the legalization of pot. You’ve been arguing against the legalization of pot based on a false premise you managed to fix firmly in your mind.
Sure, marijuana is a weed and can grow in lots of places, even outdoors in a place like Alberta. But it’s not going to be a good productive plant. Any weed that does grow on such haphazard, neglected plants is going to be garbage (what little of it there will be). No stoner is going to be satisfied with that, so they’re going to keep buying weed rather than do that. If you treated a pot plant like ferns, or even a cactus (at least cacti require good light), you’re going to get a stretched out, stringy plant with very few growing tips, that produces an extremely scant amount of pot (if any).
To make marijuana behave like a bud-producing plant that someone could rely on to get a half-decent amount of half-decent quality herb, it needs to be treated much more like a vegetable or fruit plant. Otherwise, it’s going to behave like a weed and won’t grow much “fruit” (the buds). They need to be cultivated in such a way that the plant is encouraged to grow buds, and that takes time, effort, and knowledge. It’s not good enough that they just grow, they have to thrive in order to be decent plants. Again, more like vegetables, not like ferns or other decorative house plants.
Basically, in order to get an appreciable quantity in a decent enough quality, it’s not nearly as simple as you’ve been making it out to be. Which is a big inherent flaw in your arguments.
If growers would become so dominant if weed was legalized, why haven’t we seen similar effects in medical marijuana states that allow people to grow their own plants?
I’m not sure the two are comparable. Doesn’t home brewing require more elaborate equipment with a much greater risk of accidentally poisoning oneself?
I only use those terms because they were implied by Monster104’s statement which, I have to figure, grossly overstated the difficulty in cultivating a recreational amount of weed. A comparably recreational amount of beer is a considerably larger quantity.
How the hell did anything I say imply terms like “lazy” or “disorganized”? There are whole host of possible reasons why people wouldn’t grow legal weed implied in what I’ve said, so why did you pick those two? :dubious:
And you “have to figure” I’ve grossly overstated the difficulty of growing a decent amount of decent weed, just because I had to point out how off-base Sam Stone has been with his claims?
Well, you said “stoner”, so I picked two stereotypical stoner traits that might be of some relevance to the inability to stick with amateur horticulture. As far as I know, most recreational pot smokers manage to hold down regular jobs and such, and can probably manage to grow acceptable weed in acceptable personal quantities.
And I have to figure you’re wrong. Nothing personal.
I’ve seen home brew kits online for about $50. This wiki claims that the chances of a beginning homebrewer poisoning himself using standard beer ingrediants are practically nil.
There are all sorts of factors to consider when growing marijuana.
It requires direct sunlight or an indoor equivalent (high powered grow lights which suck up a lot of wattage).
In order for marijuana to produce the treasured psychoactive buds, the plant must face the same light conditions it would normally experience in the fall: 12 hours of sunlight, 12 hours of darkness. Any more light than that and it won’t go into its flowering stage. All it takes is a light source that’s brighter than the moon (which could include a porch light or a street light) and the entire cycle is thrown out of whack (and you won’t get buds). Indoor growers must be careful to perfectly seal their grow rooms so that stray light doesn’t come in, and outdoor growers should plant in a location away from stray light sources (and plant it at just the right time of the year).
Males must be separated from females early on. If the grower screws up and neglects to do that, the entire crop is probably compromised. A pollinated female is going to spend virtually all its energy on producing seeds rather than THC. This makes a HUGE difference in the quality of the weed. Any self respecting stoner who finds seeds in their bag should demand a refund, IMHO. 
Outdoor growers also have to be concerned about deer, rabbits, and insects.
There’s also an art to drying the buds properly once they’ve been harvested. I’ve run into many an improperly dried bud in my lifetime, and wet bud can be a pain in the ass to smoke.
Well, nothing you describe sounds particularly difficult, and I can see corners being cut without a problem if the final product is acceptable.
Of course, if the product becomes commercially available, as beer is now, I can well imagine it being easier to just buy the stuff.
This is where you are wrong. Conspicuous consumption is a BIG DEAL in the world of pot smoking. It’s quite ridiculous how much money people will spend on different varieties of “brand name” weed. You can get the cheap shit very cheaply where I live, but most people (at least the white, educated people I tend to run across) would rather spend 8-10 times as much money on a product that is 2-3 times stronger. They will then try to compare the different “brand names” as if they were different drugs. (It’s all pot. It all gets you high. That’s all there is to it.) Never underestimate the stupidity of the American consumer.
Most recreational pot smokers who hold down regular jobs and such would find it more convenient to just buy pot, than go through the trouble of learning the ins and outs of growing decent bud that remotely compares to what is commonly available on the street. Therefore, even in a legalized environment where anyone and everyone could grow for themselves, there would still be plenty of people who simply won’t bother growing their own bud.
Why? Google is at your finger tips, if you think I’m wrong, correct me.
A lot of things sound easy when you read about them. Until you have to learn how to do it yourself in order to have a halfway decent result that is even comparable to stuff that is readily available already.
Corners being cut results in a less acceptable final product, which has been my point as to why marijuana growers should not be a disincentive against the legalization of pot. The stuff many people have become accustomed to smoking is grown on plants by growers who don’t typically cut corners.
Well, yeah, but Sam Stone was basically arguing that it would become so cheap because of how easy he thinks it is to grow bud (that people want to smoke compared to what they can easily buy), that it wouldn’t be a profitable/tax revenue generating move, and therefore we shouldn’t legalize the growing of pot even if smoking it becomes legal.
Which is, of course, where my first post comes in (and I haven’t posted here in ages). I just fundamentally believe people should not be advocating legal positions based on flawed ideas and misconceptions regarding the subject in question. But alas…
Leagalize it’s sale, but not home growing. Require that each pack be sold with an appropriate amount of doritos and you minimize the DUI risk.
Of course… but they could grown their own if they wanted to. It’s not like taking up brain surgery as a hobby.
And acceptability is relative.
Anyway, the biggest factor in pricing, post-legalization, will probably be how much taxation the government slaps on it. I don’t expect supply or distribution will pose any kind of problem.
Yes, they could grow if they wanted to (and that’s how it should be), but most simply won’t, for one reason or another. I think a lot of people would try (because they think erroneously that it’s easy to grow a bud plant and get pot like they’re used to smoking, or for shits and giggles), but that would be something born out of the novelty of it finally being legal to do so. It’s not something that most smokers would really do, because it’s not easy to grow bud of comparable quality to even average street stuff.
In states where growing medical marijuana is legal, you don’t see most carded ‘patients’ growing their own weed. They go to pot dispensaries, or get someone to grow plants for them (in states that allow this). Hell, they even have pot vending machines in some places. Compared to that sort of convenience and availability of good quality bud, growing your own bud would basically become a hobby in a legalized environment.
Acceptability is relative, true, but the bar for acceptable weed is set pretty high in states with legalized medical marijuana, and I don’t expect it’d be any different with full legalization.
I agree with this.
Living in the Netherlands, I knew plenty of college student who just dumped a dozen or so plants outside in the spring. Who cares that it’s not top quality? A few large pots will still produce more than a student house consumes in a year, unless it’s filled with full-time stoners.
Note: even though possession is decriminalized, large scale production is not and decent weed goes for about 8 - 10 euros a gram in shops around here, so a single plant can be a significant savings for a regular smoker.
So what is to stop me from taking my aerogarden, the one designed to do tomatoes and vines so it goes to 3 feet instead of 2 feet, and growing weed in my living room with whatever nutrient blend is deemed best for weed. Keep in mind I normally have a black thumb with plants, but I have been growing the best tasting and prolific herbs in my aerogarden with minimal effort, so someone who makes an effort to grow quality pot.
I for one don’t see much difference in many plants grown in pots and outside with anal-compulsive gardeners. It seems to actually take less effort to turn out amazing stuff inside, and with an aerogarden you have a lot of tweaks you can do with food and light that are vry easy for anybody with a hand written 3x5 card of instructions and access to an agway for chemicals.
I would be willing that the instant it gets legal aerogarden will come out with plugs and fertilizer that are marijuana specific.
“Ask the trained botanist/horticulturist” here.
Pot’s a plant. Give it decent soil, adequate but not excessive water, reasonable ventilation, macro and micro nutrients in proper quantities, and sunlight or a substitute of the proper wavelengths, and it will grow like any other plant. Heck, give it those things and lots of light and it will grow explosively, reaching several meters in height. There is no problem producing vegetative mass in pot plants.
The problem (if such it can be) is that the desired chemicals (THC primarily) are produced mainly in association with sexual reproduction of the plants. Further complicating is the fact that pot is dioecious, meaning that there are separate male and female plants. THC is produced in large amounts in association with female flowers and the buds that produce them. THC is present in much smaller amounts in leaves, stems, and male flower buds. And so in cultivation it is preferred practice to rogue out, or remove, male plants. This serves to eliminate plants that will have little value, and also helps to reduce pollination of the female flowers, thus limiting production of seeds and yielding the coveted sinsemilla buds.
Further, pot is a “short day plant”, meaning that it flowers only during short days (or long nights). Thus (assuming the USA and Canada at least) a plant started in early spring will have a very long growing season, and perhaps reach considerable size, before it ever comes into flower. However, a plant started in summer or late summer may begin to flower when it is only a foot or two tall. Both the huge plant and the tiny plant will produce “bud” of quality related to the growth conditions of the plant (with some genetic variation, admittedly) but not directly related to overall size. Thus both indoor systems and outdoor management, by choice of planting times and manipulation of photoperiod, can be used to produce extremely high quality bud from plants of limited or almost unlimited size.
An example of such a scheme is used for commercial production of poinsettia plants, whose bright red flower bracts are popular ornamentals for winter-season holidays. These too are short day plants, and if grown outdoors will produce the red bracts when night length reaches 12 1/2 or so hours. This though is well before the best sales season in many places where the plant is grown, and would result in “spent” or post-flower plants at market height. So growers “interrupt” the night with an hour or so of bright artificial illumination in the middle of the dark period. This delays flowering indefinitely, until perhaps early December, when the lighting is stopped, the plants go into flower, and fresh, bright poinsettias are available for Christmas.
So it would be difficult to grow pot as a window box or indoor plant unless the homeowner doesn’t use artificial light. They just don’t flower heavily or reliably under long-day lighting. But a plant could be grown indoors in good growing conditions, started in summer to limit its size to manageable proportions. Several plants could be started, since sex cannot be determined until flowering. Then, at any point in fall when day length is 12 hours or less, the plants could be moved outside to a dark side of the house, away from outdoor floodlights. This would induce flowering within a week or two. Male plants could then be identified and removed. Female plants could be supplied with continuing fertilization. And the grower would have some really fine bud shortly. This is only one possible scheme. There are lots of potential variations, none of which are particularly difficult or consumptive of time. Granted, relying on ambient photoperiod restricts the grower to a single growing season. It is not possible to treat pot like parsley, by picking some fresh whenever one wishes. But a home grower could produce several plants in quite a small space, with minimal effort, and freeze the result for use throughout the year.
Or of course one could invest in the dedicated interior space and the lighting systems needed to produce artificial “growing seasons” completely indoors. But that would be a rather dedicated advanced amateur!
This still doesn’t sound as difficult as making beer.
I generally agree with what you have been saying in that pot is not that easy to grow correctly. Realize though that growing pot is still illegal at the Federal level and any medical growers can be and are raided by Federal agents. They are also subject to arrest by State and local police if they sell product to anyone not affiliated with a medical mj shop. These busts happen all the time around here.
It’s all wine. It all gets you drunk. That’s all there is to it. Yet somehow there is a huge industry of wine connoisseurs.