Marijuana could be a financial boom for Lodi and San Joaquin County, supporter of legalization says

Could pot plants end up sharing ag land with vineyards, as seen here in a photo of illegal plants discovered in Washington state? One national marijuana advocate says that San Joaquin County would be a prime growing location for the plant if the drug is legalized. (Thomas Hurst, The Seattle Times)

Marijuana could be a financial boom for Lodi and San Joaquin County, supporter of legalization says

By Andrew Adams
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Saturday, May 30, 2009 6:23 AM PDT

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If marijuana is legalized, one proponent of the drug says San Joaquin County could soon see a new type of tourist who doesn't swirl, sniff and sip from a wine glass, but instead rolls, lights and tokes a joint.

The debate on legalizing marijuana has taken on new life with the state mired in a multi-billion dollar deficit, a change in administration in Washington, D.C., and growing social acceptance for marijuana.

A San Francisco lawmaker has introduced legislation to legalize the drug, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he's open to hearing proposals on the issue.

For Cliff Schaffer, a Los Angeles-based proponent of legalization, it's not a matter of years until legalization — it's a matter of months.

And he's convinced that San Joaquin County and the rest of the valley should use its excellent soil and sophisticated ag-industry to take advantage of the coming reefer riches. He envisions a region in which sophisticated pot connoisseurs could tour from grower to grower, sampling their wares.

Schaffer puts the value of the state's illicit marijuana crop at around $11.6 billion based on what has been seized by the authorities.

"If all we did was take that and sell it through licensed distributors, that would solve most of the problems of the Central Valley," he said.

But Schaffer goes further in saying that pot aficionados would pay even higher prices for weed of the highest quality, grown in the best conditions. He said that if anyone were to visit one of the dozens of L.A.-area medical marijuana dispensaries, they would find consumers evaluating the product based on appearance, aroma, flavor and potency.

"Instead of 30 varieties of wine, you got 30 varieties of weed," he said. "The behavior of consumers is very similar to that of consumers in a good wine store. There's a lot of sex appeal in it, taste appeal in it."

How much money could you make?

Cliff Schaffer, an expert on drug laws and a proponent of decriminalizing marijuana, said the returns on pot could be astounding.

He breaks it down like this:

Assume 20 square feet per plant.

That's about 2,000 plants per acre.

A plant yields about $4,000 worth of marijuana.

At $4,000 per plant that equals $8 million per acre.

Cut that in half as the price drops with legalization and that's still $4 million an acre.

Schaffer said that with thousands of different varieties of marijuana, he could see clusters of small growers each focused on producing their own style of marijuana.

"Therefore, I think you'll see something very much like the wine market," he said. "The Central Valley could be an accelerated version of Napa Valley."

Local reactions to Schaffer's vision are not so enthusiastic.

"I would not want Lodi to be known as the marijuana capital of San Joaquin County," said Lodi Mayor Larry Hansen, a former police chief. "I like it being the zinfandel capital of the world."

Hansen said that he has come to realize that the nation is losing the war on drugs as it spends billions on enforcement and incarcerates people for various drug offenses. But he said "the cop in me" knows that legalization will come with further abuse.

If there's no threat of incarceration or arrest, Hansen said more people will be driving after smoking weed, or experimenting with harder drugs.

He said he wouldn't be surprised to see a ballot proposition to legalize marijuana, and he also wouldn't lose sleep if someone were to open a pot farm near Lodi.

"If it was legalized, it's out of my hands," he said. "I wouldn't like it, but I wouldn't fret or agonize over it."

Hansen noted that a few local winegrape growers have opted to pull their vines in favor of olive trees, so he knows they're open to new crops, but he said the stigma that comes with marijuana would be hard to overcome.

And he added that he just doesn't understand the allure.

"I never tried it. I've never wanted to try it. I've never understood it, so it's hard for me to grasp the draw to it because I've never experienced it," he said.

Joe Valente, former San Joaquin County Farm Bureau president and vineyard manager for Kautz Farms, was surprised at the very thought of local farmers growing marijuana.

"I've never heard a farmer saying they'd be interested in doing it," he said. "I could understand they could grow it and tax the hell out of it, but politically it's still an illegal drug, and how do you get past that hurdle?"

And Valente added that claims of legalized weed being a cure-all for the state's finances could prove too good to be true once marijuana cultivation is put to the test of the open market.

"The crops that make money, everyone plants, and then there's an oversupply of it and prices go down so they have to look at something else," he said.

Prices would drop with legalization, Schaffer said, but he points out that wine is still a profitable business, and he maintains that the market could sustain several different price points — meaning that if a farmer works to produce the very best product, he could still see a healthy profit.

He estimates the return to farmers to be in the range of tens of billions of dollars.

Jon Tecklenburg, owner of Tecklenburg Ranch, said he could see the money-making potential of marijuana, and he also knows from stumbling on illegal marijuana crops tucked away in corn fields and on Delta islands that the plant would prosper in the valley.

But as someone who has had melons and other produce stolen from his ranch, it's the security question that concerns him.

"Offend me, no; but worrisome, yes. I'd be more concerned with guys trying to steal it," he said.

Tecklenburg said he now has a six-foot-tall fence topped with barbed wire to protect his produce, and wonders what would be needed to secure a pot farm.

Schaffer said that any farmer who didn't have the resources to protect his investment would be quickly forced out of business.

He said there's no end to the nation's demand for marijuana, and there's three sources of supply: organized crime, private business or the government.

Right now, he said, organized crime is running the show, and the government would do a terrible job.

"Think of the situation if the government decided to produce all the wine. You wouldn't get much variety, and mediocre quality," he said.

That leaves the private sector, and Schaffer said he's already getting several calls a week from people who are trying to find resources for more information on how to grow themselves.

"The typical profile of someone who wants to go into growing is an established businessman with interests in other property who's never considered it before," he said. "These are basically established, mature business people who want to do it as a business. They want to be in on the ground floor."

Contact City Editor Andrew Adams at andrewa@lodinews.com.

Reader Feedback

brinna wrote on Jun 4, 2009 8:02 PM:

" I want to thank the Lodi News-Sentinel, and Andrew Adams in particular for presenting this issue in such a balanced manner. Unlike other journalists and editors, your paper did not once resort to lame puns which only serve to indicate embarrassment at the discussion of this extremely important subject. We need more journalism at the level of this exceptional standard. Kudos. "

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