Author Topic: Over 90% of California’s Pot Farms Infected with Crop-Damaging Pathogen  (Read 1434 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Legal Insurrection by Leslie Eastman May 29, 2023

Meanwhile, the California cannabis industry is warning about and extinction level event…caused by the state’s regulation and taxation

I recently reported that a new study linked schizophrenia to marijuana abuse in young men and that fentanyl was being laced with pot.

It turns out that Mother Nature may be helping us help ourselves and our young people. A new, crop-damaging pathogen infects a vast swath of California’s pot farms.

    An infectious pathogen inside California’s pot farms is attacking cannabis plants and growing invisibly for months only to spoil a crop just as a farmer is ready to harvest. Scientists believe that it’s in nearly every pot farm in the state and could be causing billions of dollars in damages to the national weed economy.

Hop-latent viroid, or HLVd, shrivels pot plants and reduce how much weight they produce by as much as 30%. It also destroys the amount of THC, pot’s most common active compound, that a plant produces, greatly reducing the value of affected plants.

HLVd was first documented in cannabis in a pair of scientific studies published in 2019, including a study that confirmed the viroid’s presence in samples from a Santa Barbara pot farm. It’s now infected at least 90% of California’s cannabis grows, according to a 2021 estimate. It’s spreading globally, and a recent scientific paper declared the pathogen was the “biggest concern for cannabis” growers worldwide.

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Meanwhile, the California cannabis industry is warning about an extinction level event…caused by the state’s regulation and taxation.

    Debt problems have plagued the industry for years — a 2022 report estimated that the industry was collectively sitting on over $600 million in debt — but a change in tax law that took effect this year has stakeholders worried the mounting debt bubble will finally become fatal. A San Francisco politician introduced a law this year in the state legislature that would crack down on pot businesses that don’t pay their debts.

    State law recently shifted the burden for paying cannabis excise taxes from distributors to retailers, with the first tax payments due May 1. Retailers have historically had the most trouble paying their bills, and it appears that many shops lack the cash to pay their state excise taxes, according to new state tax data obtained by SFGATE.

More: https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/05/over-90-of-californias-pot-farms-infected-with-crop-damaging-pathogen/

Offline PeteS in CA

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Pot growers' crops have a disease that cuts into yields and diminishes the quality of what survives? Cry me a river.

Pot dispensary operators are terrible business operators? Anybody shocked (aside from the morons who lent dope-user/sellers $$, of course)?
If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Online bigheadfred

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She asked me name my foe then. I said the need within some men to fight and kill their brothers without thought of Love or God. Ken Hensley

Offline Smokin Joe

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I wonder if Bill Gates has figured out how to make money off this?

Pharma has already made THC pills, wonder if they'll mass market that?
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline Hoodat

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I take it that they are just now discovering that there are tradeoffs with genetic modification.  Sure their indica-ruderalis hybrids have been tweaked to yield a higher THC content.  But they now have a strain that is susceptible to a virus that did not affect the original strains.  Sometimes, it is better to leave things up to nature.  This is reminiscent of the Irish potato famine where all farmers decided to grow a single type of potato because it gave a higher yield.  But that type became afflicted with a blight that left four other potato types unaffected.
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

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"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

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Offline roamer_1

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Oh no !

Poor @corbe**nononono* :crying:


Offline corbe

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  I don't even buy the Colorado stuff anymore.  Texas has caught up and has great POT now.  Easily available and affordable, though still illegal.  @roamer_1
No government in the 12,000 years of modern mankind history has led its people into anything but the history books with a simple lesson, don't let this happen to you.

Offline roamer_1

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  I don't even buy the Colorado stuff anymore.  Texas has caught up and has great POT now.  Easily available and affordable, though still illegal.  @roamer_1

I dunno, @corbe ... A whole lotta Cali is moving to Texas... All it takes is a few of em bringing some seeds along, and POOF! Texas pot is up in smoke.  :shrug:

Offline Wingnut

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All good things gotta come to an end,
And its the same with the wildwood weed.
One day this feller from Washington came by,
And he spied it and turned white as a sheet.
Then they dug and they burned,
And they burned and they dug,
And they killed all our cute little weeds.
Then they drove away,
I am just a Technicolor Dream Cat riding this kaleidoscope of life.

Offline Smokin Joe

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Quote
...a 2022 report estimated that the industry was collectively sitting on over $600 million in debt...
Quote
A San Francisco politician introduced a law this year in the state legislature that would crack down on pot businesses that don’t pay their debts.

Send Luigi and T'chwon around with Louisville Sluggers to collect...
(Go 'East Coast' on their asses...)

They'll pay up...
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Online bigheadfred

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To maintain a strain of weed you have to clone the plant. Seeds give you a different phenotype for each seed aka a different strain. What they have done here is cloned an infected mother plant or plants and sold those clones to other growers and from there to other growers. Once it is in your grow it can spread to other plants. For it to have spread so far and wide speaks of poor farming practices. For them to eliminate it each grower would have to scrap their crops and sterilize/sanitize their entire operation.

As far as collecting debt from growers and/or sellers, I think I've found a home for 87,000 new IRS agents.
She asked me name my foe then. I said the need within some men to fight and kill their brothers without thought of Love or God. Ken Hensley

Offline GtHawk

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To maintain a strain of weed you have to clone the plant. Seeds give you a different phenotype for each seed aka a different strain. What they have done here is cloned an infected mother plant or plants and sold those clones to other growers and from there to other growers. Once it is in your grow it can spread to other plants. For it to have spread so far and wide speaks of poor farming practices. For them to eliminate it each grower would have to scrap their crops and sterilize/sanitize their entire operation.

As far as collecting debt from growers and/or sellers, I think I've found a home for 87,000 new IRS agents.
:pondering: Who could benefit most from the destruction of California's pot farms, if maybe there were some drug runners, maybe south of the border down Mexico way, someones whose names had a word starting with C as part of it...

Offline Wingnut

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:pondering: Who could benefit most from the destruction of California's pot farms, if maybe there were some drug runners, maybe south of the border down Mexico way, someones whose names had a word starting with C as part of it...

Paraquat. 
I am just a Technicolor Dream Cat riding this kaleidoscope of life.

Offline GtHawk

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Paraquat.
That word! Up until recently with shysters running ads for another you might be a winner if...with the possibility of Paraquat causing Parkinson's Disease. Other than that the last time I heard it was decades ago, remember if you will the infamous or not KMET DJ Pat Paraquat Kelley, got his ironic nickname from an herbicide used against cannabis fields in Mexico in the early 70s.

Online sneakypete

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I am GUESSING the chances of this being a natural development are close to absolute zero,and chances are it was the international mega-pot farmers behind it.
Anyone who isn't paranoid in 2021 just isn't thinking clearly!

Offline Hoodat

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Paraquat.

We smoke pot
We like it a lot
So don't poison us
with your Paraquat!
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

-Dwight Eisenhower-


"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

-Ayn Rand-

Offline Kamaji

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Quote
and that fentanyl was being laced with pot

Wouldn't that actually be the other way around?

Offline Wingnut

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That word! Up until recently with shysters running ads for another you might be a winner if...with the possibility of Paraquat causing Parkinson's Disease. Other than that the last time I heard it was decades ago, remember if you will the infamous or not KMET DJ Pat Paraquat Kelley, got his ironic nickname from an herbicide used against cannabis fields in Mexico in the early 70s.

Yup!   Most of the Pot we got came from Mexico back then.  AFter the big "P" scare we moved on to stuff that was imported from Maui....if we could get it.  All it did was drive the price up for good clean stuff.  We were the 1st generation to go "Organic"
I am just a Technicolor Dream Cat riding this kaleidoscope of life.

Offline Elderberry

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I switched over to "Home Grown" for my last few yrs as a pot smoker. I gave up pot when we had our 1st kid. I didn't want to raise our kids as a "Dope Smoker".

Offline roamer_1

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Yup!   Most of the Pot we got came from Mexico back then.  AFter the big "P" scare we moved on to stuff that was imported from Maui....if we could get it.  All it did was drive the price up for good clean stuff.  We were the 1st generation to go "Organic"

Maui Wowie... Ordered over the phone, came to the shop on a freight truck in car part boxes...

Things were easier back then...  happy77

Offline PeteS in CA

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Quote
Debt problems have plagued the industry for years — a 2022 report estimated that the industry was collectively sitting on over $600 million in debt — but a change in tax law that took effect this year has stakeholders worried the mounting debt bubble will finally become fatal. A San Francisco politician introduced a law this year in the state legislature that would crack down on pot businesses that don’t pay their debts.

State law recently shifted the burden for paying cannabis excise taxes from distributors to retailers, with the first tax payments due May 1. Retailers have historically had the most trouble paying their bills, and it appears that many shops lack the cash to pay their state excise taxes, according to new state tax data obtained by SFGATE.

Legislators are POed that the vast tax revenue legalization advocates claimed haven't been realized. And that the illegal sales haven't magically disappeared, as advocates claimed would happen. And I understand ... who could predict that people accustomed to breaking the law would shirk paying taxes and/or buy/sell MJ on which taxes have not been paid, because it's cheaper?

 :beer: for the informative post, @bigheadfred. I'll be sticking to my cherry tomatoes, green beans, and sugar snap peas I'm growing, I promise.
If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Offline Kamaji

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Legislators are POed that the vast tax revenue legalization advocates claimed haven't been realized. And that the illegal sales haven't magically disappeared, as advocates claimed would happen. And I understand ... who could predict that people accustomed to breaking the law would shirk paying taxes and/or buy/sell MJ on which taxes have not been paid, because it's cheaper?

 :beer: for the informative post, @bigheadfred. I'll be sticking to my cherry tomatoes, green beans, and sugar snap peas I'm growing, I promise.


:thumbsup:

Online bigheadfred

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Back in my farm hand days we had a chemical company salesman show up in the lunchroom. A young guy wearing a Paraquat hat. He had more hats and was trying to hand them out. No one took one. One of the guys told him he had friends who got sick from Paraquat. The salesman told him well, they shouldn't have been drinking it.
She asked me name my foe then. I said the need within some men to fight and kill their brothers without thought of Love or God. Ken Hensley

Offline PeteS in CA

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Back in my farm hand days we had a chemical company salesman show up in the lunchroom. A young guy wearing a Paraquat hat. He had more hats and was trying to hand them out. No one took one. One of the guys told him he had friends who got sick from Paraquat. The salesman told him well, they shouldn't have been drinking it.

 ****drummer How far into his cheek was his tongue?
If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.