Legalization promised a future for small growers. In Michigan, one would-be craft operator found a market built for speed, scale, and deep pockets.
Growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I remember a local police officer from the D.A.R.E. program coming into my elementary school classroom with a high school football player who looked impossibly large to a room full of third- and fourth-graders. They warned us about marijuana with the seriousness of a hostage negotiation.
We were told drugs would ruin our futures, disappoint our parents, destroy our athletic dreams, and maybe turn us into criminals before we had a chance to become anything else. At some point, they taught us a song about refusing drugs and “calling the shots” in our lives. Even then, most of us sensed some bullshit in the air.
The town I grew up in had more bars than churches. Adults treated alcohol like weather: sometimes unpleasant, occasionally dangerous, but mostly unavoidable. Factory work, stress, beer, and silence all seemed to live in the same neighborhood. But cannabis was the moral emergency. That contradiction stayed with me because kids notice when adults build entire systems around pretending.
Photo courtesy of Diyahna Lewis via Unsplash
Legalization Changed the Permission Structure
Years later, after legalization began moving across the country, I found myself inside a different contradiction. Cannabis had gone from something people whispered about to something cities, investors, attorneys, consultants, landlords, and regulators could all make money discussing in public. The plant had not changed that much. The permission structure had.
For me, craft cannabis never meant luxury branding or boutique jars with embossed labels. It meant cultivation at a human scale. Small batches. Careful genetics. Living soil or thoughtful hydroponics. Slow drying. Proper curing. Hands that knew the plants. …
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Author: Christopher Connolly / High Times
