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HEMP
sociates bartered, using cannabis once again as
a kind of currency. Just as commonly, members
of the underground economy traded cannabis
for favors, knowing that their friends would get
them back when and if they could. The same
spirit carried forward through the 60s and 70s,
with generations of hippies unknowingly acting
out the same pattern of sharing economy which
they inherited from the great Harlem jazz musicians who preceded them.
But now, with state regulations in Washington
and Colorado strictly regulating the cannabis industry, the long history of using the commodity
in the place of money has come under threat.
Rules like the 25% excise tax of Washington
state only contemplate the value of cannabis
as a product exchanged for cash, a paradigm
harshly reinforced by license applications prohi bitive liquidity for any would-be entrepreneur
attempting to enter the business.
It’s a new paradigm. Who knows what may happen? With such massive shifts happening in the
cannabis market, perhaps even a long-honored
tradition like cannabis for currency could be
regulated out of existence.
ARTICLE
11
Follow Jeremy
Jeremy Daw, J.D. is the editor, with Chris Conrad, of
The Leaf. A 2008 graduate of Harvard Law School,
he worked as editor-in-chief of Cannabis Now Magazine until 2013. Besides Cannabis Now and the
Leaf, his writings have been featured on Salon.
com, SFGate.com, AlterNet Drugs, and numerous
other outlets in print and online. His book Weed
the People: From Founding Fiber to Forbidden
Fruit (2012), a 400-year history of cannabis policy in
North America, has been acclaimed as “one of the
best accounts of the early US hemp industry” by
Michael Aldrich, PhD, and was declared “fascinating
and incredibly well researched” by Danny Danko,
senior cultivation editor at High Times. Jeremy is
also a professor at Oaksterdam University in Oakland, California, where he teaches Politics & History
as well as Economics. He lives in Berkeley, CA.