Short film (16 minutes) featuring just one of many legacy family cultivators trying to survive in the Emerald Triangle, where some of the best cannabis flower we all enjoy is grown.

Starting at the Mendocino Producers Guild markets in Laytonville, Matt Grimshaw catches up with MPG’s ringleader Traci Pellar and visits McLovin Farm to see their landrace cultivar called Heirloom Pineapple that’s been grown in the same spot, soil to seed, for over 20 years.

They seem like a nice couple, don’t they? Doing their best to provide for the greater good. But, because of insane regulatory policy, including dual-licensing and over-taxation, the impressive legacy of Emerald Triangle family farms, from which so many of the rest of us have benefited from for generations, will only be a memory if the State does not move quickly to help the smaller cultivators recover from financial losses.

“Local Control”, part of the dual-licensing system on which the city of Sonoma relies to protect sparc’s monopoly, not only threatens the livelihoods of smaller cultivators, it helps sustain the illicit market (which Prop 64 was supposed to eradicate) and endangers the health of consumers who have limited or no access to legal products that have been tested for pesticides, harmful contaminants, and mold and mildew.

Why would one choose to turn a blind eye to the injustice of limited access and all the harm it causes, from putting small farms out of business to jeopardizing public health? Why would one try to rationalize how permitting only one dispensary in a service area of 40,000 people makes any kind of sense?

And just a reminder, Sonoma’s disregard for its own citizens is mirrored by roughly two-thirds of local governments across California, folks.