Across Oklahoma, a staunchly conservative state with a history of drawing people in search of wealth from the land, a new kind of crop is taking over old chicken coops, trailer parks and fields where cattle used to graze.
Next door to a Pentecostal church in the tiny town of Keota, the smell of marijuana drifts through the air at the G & C Dispensary. Strains with names like OG Kush and Maui Waui go for $3 a gram, about a quarter of the price in other states.
Down the road, an indoor-farming operation is situated in a residential area near mobile homes, one of about 40 in the town of just 500 residents. “It might look strange, but this is where the action is,” said Logan Pederson, 32, who moved this year from Seattle to Oklahoma to manage the small farm for a company called Cosmos Cultivation.
Ever since the state legalized medical marijuana three years ago, Oklahoma has become one of the easiest places in the United States to launch a weed business. The state now boasts more retail cannabis stores than Colorado, Oregon and Washington combined. In October, it eclipsed California as the state with the largest number of licensed cannabis farms, which now number more than 9,000, despite a population only a tenth of California’s.
The growth is all the more remarkable given that the state has not legalized recreational use of marijuana. But with fairly lax rules on who can obtain a medical card, about 10% of Oklahoma’s nearly 4 million residents have one, by far the most of any other state.
There are a lot of marijuana farms (?) down near Medford. It is so strange to me to see it grown openly. We drove past a big field and, tbh, it stank. This was on a nice, warm, sunny fall day which may have had something to do with it. But I was thinking, no way would I want to live near that.
The whole legalization is so long overdue, but also so strange for those of us who developed a healthy dose of paranoia whenever we indulged. I mean, when our friends indulged and told us about it. The explosion of edibles is great. I (oops, my friend) never liked smoking and would always cook something herbal instead. There's all sorts of fancy boutiques here (as well as your basic dope shack kind of places). The boutiques crack me up--everything is packaged beautifully, the clerks talk about the taste of the smoke, the strength of the edibles, while new age music pipes softly in the background. This isn't your father's dope dealer.
Posts: 35428 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005
