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Emerald Triangle communities were built on cannabis. Legalization has pushed them to the brink

News Feed
Monday, February 27, 2023

In summary Cannabis has been king in this rural area of northern California. But as prices plummet, communities and business owners are hurting, with no clear solutions in sight. Many blame Proposition 64 for undermining small growers. HAYFORK — It’s shortly before 8 a.m. and a touch above freezing at the Trinity County Fairgrounds. The food bank’s February distribution won’t begin for another half hour, but the line of cars already stretches into a third row of the parking lot. Joseph Felice, his red Dodge pickup idling with the heat cranked up, arrived around 7 to secure a spot near the front — eighth, to be exact — and ensure that he gets his pick of this month’s harvest: frozen catfish filets, eggplant, winter squash, potatoes, cans of mixed fruit, cartons of milk. Getting here early is crucial, because by the time the final cars roll through some two hours later — 210 families served — all that’s left are a few packages of diapers and noodles. Things are getting desperate in this remote, mountainous community in far northern California, where cannabis is king — the economy, the culture, the everything. Over the past two years, the price of weed has plummeted and people are broke. The monthly food bank distribution moved from a church to the fairgrounds last summer to accommodate surging demand. There’s only one sit-down restaurant left in town, a Mexican joint that closes every day at 6. Some residents have fled for Oklahoma, where it’s easier for cannabis cultivators to get licensed. Others are stuck, unable to unload their properties amid an abundance of supply and a dearth of demand. “I don’t see the same faces that I did before,” said Felice, 67, who performed maintenance work for a local grower for five years, until they called it quits at the end of last season. Felice lost not just his income, but also free housing on the farm. The food distribution is now a crucial bridge between Social Security checks and trips to Redding, 60 miles away, where he can get cheaper groceries. “I had plenty of money working out there,” Felice said. “But now that it’s gone, you have to do something.” First: A line of cars waits to receive food from the Trinity County Food Bank at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Second: Volunteers Jeff Mummy (right), Michael Merrill (center) and others prepare bags of food. Third: Volunteers Terry Scovil (center), and Shendi Klopfer load the car of a resident with food. Photos by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters Just what that something might be for Hayfork — and the rest of the famous Emerald Triangle of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties — is unclear.  For decades before California legalized recreational cannabis in 2016, this rural region of about 245,000 people was the base of weed cultivation for the entire country. The effects of the price crash, which has been particularly acute in the past two years, can be felt throughout the three counties, both within the industry and far outside of it. Cultivators who can barely make ends meet are laying off employees, slashing expenses or shutting down their farms. That means money isn’t flowing into local businesses, nonprofits are getting fewer generous cash donations in brown paper bags, and local governments are collecting less in sales and property taxes. Workers who spent their whole lives in the cannabis industry are suddenly looking around for new careers that may not be there. Store clerks, gas station attendants and restaurant servers who relied on their patronage now find themselves with reduced hours, meager tips or out of a job altogether. A sense of despair and heartbreak has taken hold in many communities. People whisper about friends who are thinking about divorce or who killed themselves because they could not handle the financial devastation. And the pain is compounded by a feeling that their suffering has been all but invisible, overlooked by most Californians and dismissed by government officials who have never made good on the promises of legalization. “We’re constantly at war. That’s how it feels,” said Adrien Keys, president of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, a trade association for the local legal cannabis industry. Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters These communities have been here before, stuck in a boom-and-bust cycle that played out with gold mining and cattle ranching and fishing. The last time, when the timber industry collapsed in the 1990s, cannabis cultivation flourished after the legalization of medical marijuana and filled the void. Now it’s unclear whether there’s anything left to sustain the local economies. Some imagine that growing tourism can be the salvation, or attracting new residents with remote jobs and a desire to live way off the grid, or perhaps a logging revival driven by the urgent need to thin out California’s wildfire-prone forests. Others hope that a cannabis turnaround might still be possible. But for a small, isolated town such as Hayfork — population: 2,300; high school student body: 88; empty sawmills: two — the answers are not obvious. The fear that the community could ultimately wither away is real. “Long-term, I’m worried about it,” said Scott Murrison, a 68-year resident of Hayfork who owns half a dozen local businesses, including the gas station and mini mart (revenues down 10-15% over the past few years), a grocery store (down by as much as a third), the laundromat (bringing in about half of what it did when it opened a decade ago), a bar (stabilized since adding food to the menu), a ranch (hanging on, because there’s still demand for locally-raised beef) and a couple of greenhouses (leased to his nephew, who is not growing cannabis this year). Scott Murrison inside a hoop house full of unused cannabis growing equipment in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters Without any real opportunities for young people coming out of school, Murrison said, they will have to move away, leaving Hayfork without a future. “A good, viable community needs those families and the young people,” he said. “A bunch of old people are just boring.” Boom and bust It wasn’t supposed to go this way. Cannabis should have been the sustainable alternative to gold and timber, a renewable resource that can be replanted each year. For a long time, it was. Despite the challenges of growing an illegal crop, including enforcement raids that still scar residents, the “war on drugs” kept product scarce and prices high. The lure of easy cash attracted people from around the world to the Emerald Triangle, an annual flow of “trimmigrants” who could walk away from the fall harvest season with thousands of dollars in their pockets, much of which was spent locally. “Everybody was making so much money it was insane,” Murrison said. “You could be here by accident, you could make money. Either trimming or growing or hauling water or if you had equipment, leveling spots or digging holes.” Then came Proposition 64, the ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that finally legalized recreational cannabis use and commercial sales in the state, though they remain illegal under federal law. Proponents including Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched it as both a social justice measure and a boon for tax revenues. But the “green rush” that resulted has arguably harmed the Emerald Triangle more than it helped. Pots full of soil sit unused and growing weeds on Scott Murrison’s land in Hayfork on Feb. 7 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters New farmers, sometimes licensed and often not, streamed in, flooding the market with cannabis. A cap on the size of farms intended to give small growers a head start was abandoned in the final state regulations, opening the door to competing cultivation hubs in other regions of California with looser restrictions. And with most local jurisdictions still closed to dispensaries, the legal market has been unable to absorb the glut, resulting in plunging prices and a vicious cycle in which farmers grow even more weed to make up for it. Cultivators who might have commanded more than $1,000 for a pound of cannabis just a couple years ago said it is now selling for a few hundred dollars, not enough to break even with their expenses, taxes and fees. Commercial cannabis sales in California actually fell by 8% last year to $5.3 billion, according to just-released state tax data, the first decline since it became legal in 2018 and a further cramp on the industry. State tax revenue dropped from $251.3 million in the third quarter of 2022 to $221.6 million in the fourth quarter. “You can’t keep printing a dollar,” said Trinity County Supervisor Liam Gogan, who represents Hayfork and nearby Douglas City, where he said business at his grocery store is down an estimated 20%, a decline he expects is less than many other shops in town. Some parts of the Emerald Triangle are better positioned to weather the cannabis downturn; the coast is a tourist draw, the newly rechristened Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata is undergoing a major expansion and there are government jobs in the county seats. But things are precarious in the vast rural expanses, which is most of Trinity County, where there are no incorporated cities. It has one of the smallest and poorest populations of any county in California — just 16,000 residents and a median household of about $42,000 a year. Outside of the Trinity Alps Wilderness in its northern reaches, there is little economy beyond weed. “It’s what we got,” said Gogan, who dismisses the possibility of tourism or any other industry offsetting cannabis losses as delusional. “No one’s knocking the door down.” Like many locals, he dreams that, with the exodus of cultivators and a drop in production, cannabis prices could rebound slightly. Some are noticing a modest recovery recently from the bleak depths of last year, when the most distressed farmers offloaded their product for fire-sale prices below $100 per pound, or simply destroyed crops they couldn’t sell. There have been nascent efforts at the state Capitol to help small cannabis growers. Newsom and legislators agreed last year to eliminate a cultivation tax after farmers from the Emerald Triangle lobbied aggressively for relief. But the intervention is far from enough to ensure their future in a turbulent cannabis market. State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of “suffocating rules.” He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an “antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure” that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products. “These are solutions that will help stabilize the market and lift up family farmers for generations to come,” McGuire said. “The state needs to have a backbone to get it done.” Newsom, who once called himself the “poster child” for “everything that goes wrong” with Proposition 64, declined a request to discuss what’s happening in California’s historic cannabis communities. A spokesperson directed CalMatters to the Department of Cannabis Control, which did not make Director Nicole Elliott or anyone else available for an interview. In a statement, spokesperson David Hafner said the department has “made a point of regularly monitoring and visiting the Emerald Triangle and engaging directly with licensees to understand their challenges in real time.” Hafner said the department has advanced “several policies and programs that have directly or indirectly supported legacy growers in the Emerald Triangle,” including granting more than 1,000 fee waivers to cultivators in the region, revising regulations to more closely align with traditional farming practices and providing $40 million to bolster licensing efforts in the three counties. “The Department stands ready to assist policymakers,” Hafner said, “in developing actions that improve the legal cannabis market.” Though growers in the Emerald Triangle have been sharply critical of how the state has regulated cannabis, particularly its early decision to forgo a strict acreage cap, one recent development may be promising: In January, Elliott requested an opinion from the state Department of Justice about what federal legal risk California would face if it negotiated agreements with other states to allow cannabis commerce between them. That could eventually open a pathway for growers to export their weed out of California, a market expansion that some believe is the kick-start that their operations need. An increasing strain The escape hatch may be closing for those seeking a way out of the industry. When the value of cannabis dropped, so did the worth of the properties where it’s grown — even more so for the many farmers who, because of environmental lawsuits and bureaucratic negligence, have yet to receive final approval for their state-issued cultivation licenses. After years of operating on provisional licenses, they still do not technically have a legal business to sell to an interested buyer, if they could even find one. Some are simply abandoning the properties that they have built into farms with greenhouses and irrigation systems, though evidence of this dilemma is anecdotal. The Trinity County Assessor’s Office said it could not provide data on recent property sales levels or prices. “There’s no way I could get out of my property now what I put into it,” said Keys of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, who figures he would be forced to walk away entirely if he stopped growing. “I don’t know if I could sell it at all.” Buildings for cannabis growing sit unused on Scott Murisson’s land in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters For those residents who stay, the strain is only deepening. The number of people in Trinity County enrolled in CalFresh, the state’s monthly food benefits program, in December was 31% higher than the year before and more than 71% higher than the same period in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic and inflation crisis, according to data compiled by the California Department of Social Services. That’s nearly three times the rate of increase for the entire state. Jeffry England, executive director of the Trinity County Food Bank, said his organization is handing out two and a half times as much food as when he took over the position six years ago. He estimates that the food bank serves about 1,200 families per month, as much as a fifth of the whole county’s population. It has added three new distribution sites in the past year. “It’s getting really bad,” England said. “There are some of them who are in line at the food bank who used to be our donors.” Jeff England manages the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters Not everyone who is struggling dreams of leaving Hayfork behind. Herlinda Vang, 54, arrived about seven years ago from the Fresno area, where she worked as a social worker at a nonprofit and grew vegetables near Clovis. Sensing the opportunity of recreational legalization, she moved months before the passage of Proposition 64 to start a cannabis farm. Vang has come to appreciate how safe and quiet the community is compared to a big city, where she worried about her youngest children, now 14 and 11 years old. She can hear the birds when she wakes up in the morning. “What I’m doing is also helping other people, saving other people’s life, too,” she said. “So that is something that I enjoy doing.” Herlinda Vang in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters But last year, Vang had difficulty getting county approvals and wasn’t able to start growing until mid-July, about six weeks later than she wanted. Her plants were small by harvest time, leaving her with less to sell at the already reduced prices. Even as she is making less than a third per pound now compared to when she first started growing, Vang remains committed to her farm for at least another few years to see if things will turn around — especially if interstate trade opens up and expands the market. Without many other skills or job prospects locally, she doesn’t expect she could make much more money than she does now trying to find more traditional work. She also loves that, on her farm, she sets her own rules and schedule, and is able to prioritize being a mother as well. “I cannot give up. I have put everything I have in here,” Vang said. “I have to hang in there for a couple more years and see if I can make it work.” That has meant sacrifices. Vang has stopped shopping online for new clothes and jewelry, sending money overseas and buying pricier groceries, such as seafood. She gave away three of her nine dogs and only takes her family out to dinner on rare occasions. Like many of her neighbors, Vang now supplements her pantry with staples from the food bank, though like many of her neighbors, she is also doing her part to hold the community together, helping to coordinate a new distribution site in Trinity Pines, a mountain settlement of predominantly Hmong farmers. A Facebook group called Hayforkers has become a forum for people looking for assistance or giving away extra food and household items. “I am a very tough person,” Vang said. “I’m happy that even though my income is not the same, but my family, my health remains the same and the people that I know, the community at large still love each other, still comfort each other.” First: Packaged noodles are part of the “cultural bags” distributed to Hmong community members by the Trinity County Food Bank at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Second: Cars line up at the Trinity County Fairgrounds for the food bank distribution. Photos by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters. Ira Porter is also on a shoestring budget. He covers his $200 per month rent by collecting cans and bottles — there are fewer than there used to be — from people who don’t want to travel all the way to the county seat of Weaverville or Redding to turn them in. Porter, 59, used to do maintenance and repair work on cannabis farms, fixing cars, water systems, and trimming machines. His wife was a trimmer.  “I’d be busy all year round, you know, because there’s always something to do,” Porter said through the window of his white Volkswagen sedan as he waited at the Hayfork food distribution with his pug Biggee in his lap. “I don’t know how many of these farmers left, but I’m not getting any calls this year as far as to do that.” Ira Porter and his dog Biggee wait in line to receive food at the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters As the line of cars slowly worked its way through the parking lot of the Trinity County Fairgrounds, past the volunteers handing out boxes of vegetables and bags of noodles, Porter cataloged the things he loves about Hayfork: The open spaces. The fresh air. Hanging out at the creek looking for gold. Being able to leave the keys in his car at night and not having to lock the door to his house. Chopping wood for kindling in the winter. “I moved up here to get out of L.A. because it’s a zoo down there, and there’s just too many people, and they’re all pissed off because they don’t got no elbow room,” Porter said. “Up here, it’s just beautiful. I love this place, you know? I mean, cannabis industry or not, I want to live here and die here.”

Cannabis has been king in this rural area of northern California. But as prices plummet, communities and business owners are hurting, with no clear solutions in sight. Many blame Proposition 64 for undermining small growers.

Joseph Felice (right) and Kim Payne wait in line to receive food at the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

In summary

Cannabis has been king in this rural area of northern California. But as prices plummet, communities and business owners are hurting, with no clear solutions in sight. Many blame Proposition 64 for undermining small growers.

HAYFORK — It’s shortly before 8 a.m. and a touch above freezing at the Trinity County Fairgrounds. The food bank’s February distribution won’t begin for another half hour, but the line of cars already stretches into a third row of the parking lot.

Joseph Felice, his red Dodge pickup idling with the heat cranked up, arrived around 7 to secure a spot near the front — eighth, to be exact — and ensure that he gets his pick of this month’s harvest: frozen catfish filets, eggplant, winter squash, potatoes, cans of mixed fruit, cartons of milk. Getting here early is crucial, because by the time the final cars roll through some two hours later — 210 families served — all that’s left are a few packages of diapers and noodles.

Things are getting desperate in this remote, mountainous community in far northern California, where cannabis is king — the economy, the culture, the everything. Over the past two years, the price of weed has plummeted and people are broke.

The monthly food bank distribution moved from a church to the fairgrounds last summer to accommodate surging demand. There’s only one sit-down restaurant left in town, a Mexican joint that closes every day at 6. Some residents have fled for Oklahoma, where it’s easier for cannabis cultivators to get licensed. Others are stuck, unable to unload their properties amid an abundance of supply and a dearth of demand.

“I don’t see the same faces that I did before,” said Felice, 67, who performed maintenance work for a local grower for five years, until they called it quits at the end of last season.

Felice lost not just his income, but also free housing on the farm. The food distribution is now a crucial bridge between Social Security checks and trips to Redding, 60 miles away, where he can get cheaper groceries.

“I had plenty of money working out there,” Felice said. “But now that it’s gone, you have to do something.”

Volunteers Terry Scovil (center), and Shendi Klopfer load the car of a community member with food from the Trinity County Food Bank at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
First: A line of cars waits to receive food from the Trinity County Food Bank at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Second: Volunteers Jeff Mummy (right), Michael Merrill (center) and others prepare bags of food. Third: Volunteers Terry Scovil (center), and Shendi Klopfer load the car of a resident with food. Photos by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

Just what that something might be for Hayfork — and the rest of the famous Emerald Triangle of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties — is unclear. 

For decades before California legalized recreational cannabis in 2016, this rural region of about 245,000 people was the base of weed cultivation for the entire country. The effects of the price crash, which has been particularly acute in the past two years, can be felt throughout the three counties, both within the industry and far outside of it.

Cultivators who can barely make ends meet are laying off employees, slashing expenses or shutting down their farms. That means money isn’t flowing into local businesses, nonprofits are getting fewer generous cash donations in brown paper bags, and local governments are collecting less in sales and property taxes.

Workers who spent their whole lives in the cannabis industry are suddenly looking around for new careers that may not be there. Store clerks, gas station attendants and restaurant servers who relied on their patronage now find themselves with reduced hours, meager tips or out of a job altogether.

A sense of despair and heartbreak has taken hold in many communities. People whisper about friends who are thinking about divorce or who killed themselves because they could not handle the financial devastation. And the pain is compounded by a feeling that their suffering has been all but invisible, overlooked by most Californians and dismissed by government officials who have never made good on the promises of legalization.

“We’re constantly at war. That’s how it feels,” said Adrien Keys, president of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, a trade association for the local legal cannabis industry.

Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

These communities have been here before, stuck in a boom-and-bust cycle that played out with gold mining and cattle ranching and fishing. The last time, when the timber industry collapsed in the 1990s, cannabis cultivation flourished after the legalization of medical marijuana and filled the void. Now it’s unclear whether there’s anything left to sustain the local economies.

Some imagine that growing tourism can be the salvation, or attracting new residents with remote jobs and a desire to live way off the grid, or perhaps a logging revival driven by the urgent need to thin out California’s wildfire-prone forests. Others hope that a cannabis turnaround might still be possible.

But for a small, isolated town such as Hayfork — population: 2,300; high school student body: 88; empty sawmills: two — the answers are not obvious. The fear that the community could ultimately wither away is real.

“Long-term, I’m worried about it,” said Scott Murrison, a 68-year resident of Hayfork who owns half a dozen local businesses, including the gas station and mini mart (revenues down 10-15% over the past few years), a grocery store (down by as much as a third), the laundromat (bringing in about half of what it did when it opened a decade ago), a bar (stabilized since adding food to the menu), a ranch (hanging on, because there’s still demand for locally-raised beef) and a couple of greenhouses (leased to his nephew, who is not growing cannabis this year).

Scott Murrison inside a hoop house full of unused cannabis growing equipment in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Scott Murrison inside a hoop house full of unused cannabis growing equipment in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

Without any real opportunities for young people coming out of school, Murrison said, they will have to move away, leaving Hayfork without a future.

“A good, viable community needs those families and the young people,” he said. “A bunch of old people are just boring.”

Boom and bust

It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

Cannabis should have been the sustainable alternative to gold and timber, a renewable resource that can be replanted each year. For a long time, it was.

Despite the challenges of growing an illegal crop, including enforcement raids that still scar residents, the “war on drugs” kept product scarce and prices high. The lure of easy cash attracted people from around the world to the Emerald Triangle, an annual flow of “trimmigrants” who could walk away from the fall harvest season with thousands of dollars in their pockets, much of which was spent locally.

“Everybody was making so much money it was insane,” Murrison said. “You could be here by accident, you could make money. Either trimming or growing or hauling water or if you had equipment, leveling spots or digging holes.”

Then came Proposition 64, the ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that finally legalized recreational cannabis use and commercial sales in the state, though they remain illegal under federal law. Proponents including Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched it as both a social justice measure and a boon for tax revenues.

But the “green rush” that resulted has arguably harmed the Emerald Triangle more than it helped.

Pots full of soil sit unused and growing weeds on Scott Murrison's land in Hayfork on Feb. 7 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Pots full of soil sit unused and growing weeds on Scott Murrison’s land in Hayfork on Feb. 7 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

New farmers, sometimes licensed and often not, streamed in, flooding the market with cannabis. A cap on the size of farms intended to give small growers a head start was abandoned in the final state regulations, opening the door to competing cultivation hubs in other regions of California with looser restrictions. And with most local jurisdictions still closed to dispensaries, the legal market has been unable to absorb the glut, resulting in plunging prices and a vicious cycle in which farmers grow even more weed to make up for it.

Cultivators who might have commanded more than $1,000 for a pound of cannabis just a couple years ago said it is now selling for a few hundred dollars, not enough to break even with their expenses, taxes and fees.

Commercial cannabis sales in California actually fell by 8% last year to $5.3 billion, according to just-released state tax data, the first decline since it became legal in 2018 and a further cramp on the industry. State tax revenue dropped from $251.3 million in the third quarter of 2022 to $221.6 million in the fourth quarter.

“You can’t keep printing a dollar,” said Trinity County Supervisor Liam Gogan, who represents Hayfork and nearby Douglas City, where he said business at his grocery store is down an estimated 20%, a decline he expects is less than many other shops in town.

Some parts of the Emerald Triangle are better positioned to weather the cannabis downturn; the coast is a tourist draw, the newly rechristened Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata is undergoing a major expansion and there are government jobs in the county seats.

But things are precarious in the vast rural expanses, which is most of Trinity County, where there are no incorporated cities. It has one of the smallest and poorest populations of any county in California — just 16,000 residents and a median household of about $42,000 a year. Outside of the Trinity Alps Wilderness in its northern reaches, there is little economy beyond weed.

“It’s what we got,” said Gogan, who dismisses the possibility of tourism or any other industry offsetting cannabis losses as delusional. “No one’s knocking the door down.”

Like many locals, he dreams that, with the exodus of cultivators and a drop in production, cannabis prices could rebound slightly. Some are noticing a modest recovery recently from the bleak depths of last year, when the most distressed farmers offloaded their product for fire-sale prices below $100 per pound, or simply destroyed crops they couldn’t sell.

There have been nascent efforts at the state Capitol to help small cannabis growers. Newsom and legislators agreed last year to eliminate a cultivation tax after farmers from the Emerald Triangle lobbied aggressively for relief. But the intervention is far from enough to ensure their future in a turbulent cannabis market.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the north coast, blamed Proposition 64 for setting up family farmers for failure with a litany of “suffocating rules.” He is preparing to introduce legislation this spring that could undo some of those regulations for small growers, including an “antiquated, cockamamie licensing structure” that requires them to keep paying annual fees even if they fallow their land because of the price drop and a ban on selling cannabis directly to consumers, something that is allowed for other agricultural products.

“These are solutions that will help stabilize the market and lift up family farmers for generations to come,” McGuire said. “The state needs to have a backbone to get it done.”

Newsom, who once called himself the “poster child” for “everything that goes wrong” with Proposition 64, declined a request to discuss what’s happening in California’s historic cannabis communities. A spokesperson directed CalMatters to the Department of Cannabis Control, which did not make Director Nicole Elliott or anyone else available for an interview.

In a statement, spokesperson David Hafner said the department has “made a point of regularly monitoring and visiting the Emerald Triangle and engaging directly with licensees to understand their challenges in real time.”

Hafner said the department has advanced “several policies and programs that have directly or indirectly supported legacy growers in the Emerald Triangle,” including granting more than 1,000 fee waivers to cultivators in the region, revising regulations to more closely align with traditional farming practices and providing $40 million to bolster licensing efforts in the three counties.

“The Department stands ready to assist policymakers,” Hafner said, “in developing actions that improve the legal cannabis market.”

Though growers in the Emerald Triangle have been sharply critical of how the state has regulated cannabis, particularly its early decision to forgo a strict acreage cap, one recent development may be promising: In January, Elliott requested an opinion from the state Department of Justice about what federal legal risk California would face if it negotiated agreements with other states to allow cannabis commerce between them.

That could eventually open a pathway for growers to export their weed out of California, a market expansion that some believe is the kick-start that their operations need.

An increasing strain

The escape hatch may be closing for those seeking a way out of the industry.

When the value of cannabis dropped, so did the worth of the properties where it’s grown — even more so for the many farmers who, because of environmental lawsuits and bureaucratic negligence, have yet to receive final approval for their state-issued cultivation licenses. After years of operating on provisional licenses, they still do not technically have a legal business to sell to an interested buyer, if they could even find one.

Some are simply abandoning the properties that they have built into farms with greenhouses and irrigation systems, though evidence of this dilemma is anecdotal. The Trinity County Assessor’s Office said it could not provide data on recent property sales levels or prices.

“There’s no way I could get out of my property now what I put into it,” said Keys of the Trinity County Agriculture Alliance, who figures he would be forced to walk away entirely if he stopped growing. “I don’t know if I could sell it at all.”

Buildings for cannabis growing sit unused on Scott Murisson's land in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Buildings for cannabis growing sit unused on Scott Murisson’s land in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

For those residents who stay, the strain is only deepening.

The number of people in Trinity County enrolled in CalFresh, the state’s monthly food benefits program, in December was 31% higher than the year before and more than 71% higher than the same period in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic and inflation crisis, according to data compiled by the California Department of Social Services. That’s nearly three times the rate of increase for the entire state.

Jeffry England, executive director of the Trinity County Food Bank, said his organization is handing out two and a half times as much food as when he took over the position six years ago. He estimates that the food bank serves about 1,200 families per month, as much as a fifth of the whole county’s population. It has added three new distribution sites in the past year.

“It’s getting really bad,” England said. “There are some of them who are in line at the food bank who used to be our donors.”

Jeff England manages the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Jeff England manages the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

Not everyone who is struggling dreams of leaving Hayfork behind.

Herlinda Vang, 54, arrived about seven years ago from the Fresno area, where she worked as a social worker at a nonprofit and grew vegetables near Clovis. Sensing the opportunity of recreational legalization, she moved months before the passage of Proposition 64 to start a cannabis farm.

Vang has come to appreciate how safe and quiet the community is compared to a big city, where she worried about her youngest children, now 14 and 11 years old. She can hear the birds when she wakes up in the morning.

“What I’m doing is also helping other people, saving other people’s life, too,” she said. “So that is something that I enjoy doing.”

Herlinda Vang in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Herlinda Vang in Hayfork on Feb. 7, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

But last year, Vang had difficulty getting county approvals and wasn’t able to start growing until mid-July, about six weeks later than she wanted. Her plants were small by harvest time, leaving her with less to sell at the already reduced prices.

Even as she is making less than a third per pound now compared to when she first started growing, Vang remains committed to her farm for at least another few years to see if things will turn around — especially if interstate trade opens up and expands the market.

Without many other skills or job prospects locally, she doesn’t expect she could make much more money than she does now trying to find more traditional work. She also loves that, on her farm, she sets her own rules and schedule, and is able to prioritize being a mother as well.

“I cannot give up. I have put everything I have in here,” Vang said. “I have to hang in there for a couple more years and see if I can make it work.”

That has meant sacrifices. Vang has stopped shopping online for new clothes and jewelry, sending money overseas and buying pricier groceries, such as seafood. She gave away three of her nine dogs and only takes her family out to dinner on rare occasions.

Like many of her neighbors, Vang now supplements her pantry with staples from the food bank, though like many of her neighbors, she is also doing her part to hold the community together, helping to coordinate a new distribution site in Trinity Pines, a mountain settlement of predominantly Hmong farmers. A Facebook group called Hayforkers has become a forum for people looking for assistance or giving away extra food and household items.

“I am a very tough person,” Vang said. “I’m happy that even though my income is not the same, but my family, my health remains the same and the people that I know, the community at large still love each other, still comfort each other.”

Ira Porter is also on a shoestring budget. He covers his $200 per month rent by collecting cans and bottles — there are fewer than there used to be — from people who don’t want to travel all the way to the county seat of Weaverville or Redding to turn them in.

Porter, 59, used to do maintenance and repair work on cannabis farms, fixing cars, water systems, and trimming machines. His wife was a trimmer. 

“I’d be busy all year round, you know, because there’s always something to do,” Porter said through the window of his white Volkswagen sedan as he waited at the Hayfork food distribution with his pug Biggee in his lap. “I don’t know how many of these farmers left, but I’m not getting any calls this year as far as to do that.”

Ira Porter and his dog Biggee wait in line to receive food at the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters
Ira Porter and his dog Biggee wait in line to receive food at the Trinity County Food Bank distribution at the Trinity County Fairgrounds on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters

As the line of cars slowly worked its way through the parking lot of the Trinity County Fairgrounds, past the volunteers handing out boxes of vegetables and bags of noodles, Porter cataloged the things he loves about Hayfork: The open spaces. The fresh air. Hanging out at the creek looking for gold. Being able to leave the keys in his car at night and not having to lock the door to his house. Chopping wood for kindling in the winter.

“I moved up here to get out of L.A. because it’s a zoo down there, and there’s just too many people, and they’re all pissed off because they don’t got no elbow room,” Porter said. “Up here, it’s just beautiful. I love this place, you know? I mean, cannabis industry or not, I want to live here and die here.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Another name surfaces as potential Menendez successor: New Jersey's first lady

Sen. Bob Menendez has pledged not to resign, though he hasn't said whether he still plans to seek reelection.

As First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy has had a much more hands-on role than her predecessors, taking on a policy portfolio, occupying an office in Trenton and becoming her husband’s lead fundraiser. Now, she’s talking to Democrats about potentially running for elective office — the Senate seat occupied by newly indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, according to three Democrats with knowledge of her discussions about it. Murphy’s name has been floated for elective office before. But this appears to be the first time that she’s taking the prospect seriously. At the same time, Democrats are aware that Murphy going for the seat — whether by appointment from her husband should Menendez resign, or running for it in a primary election next year — would be an ironic twist in the Menendez saga. The senator, who’s accused of doing official favors for businesspeople, a developer and the Egyptian government in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cash and gold bars, last year helped elevate his political neophyte son, Rob Menendez, to the House. Menendez has pledged not to resign, though he hasn't said whether he still plans to seek reelection. If Menendez were to resign, Gov. Phil Murphy would be able to unilaterally appoint his successor for the remainder of the term, which expires in January 2025. The Democratic insiders familiar with the discussions, who were granted anonymity while discussing internal deliberations amid a quickly-shifting political landscape, cautioned that Tammy Murphy is not close to making a decision on whether to run. But they said that the talk has intensified because Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) has suggested in conversations with Democrats that she’s unlikely to pursue Menendez’s Senate seat and focus on running for governor in 2025. That could create an opening for Tammy Murphy — a well-known presence in the state and one of its top Democratic fundraisers — to run to become the first woman to represent New Jersey in the upper house. If she were to run, she'd likely face Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who announced Saturday he'll seek the Senate seat, and possibly others. New Jersey Globe first reported that Tammy Murphy was fielding phone calls about running. A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy’s office declined to comment. A spokesperson for Sherrill did not respond to an email seeking comment. Though she’s never run for office, Tammy Murphy has developed a policy portfolio during her husband’s time as governor. She has spearheaded a major effort to reduce New Jersey’s infant mortality rate. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll from February found that Tammy Murphy had the highest name recognition of 10 ambitious politicians the survey asked voters about, at 73 percent, though a 43 percent plurality didn’t know enough about her to form a favorable or unfavorable opinion. Murphy, a Goldman Sachs alum like her husband, is a former Republican who said she left the party over environmental issues and abortion rights. “No one doubts she’s a formidable candidate. She’d be able to fundraise. She’s had issues she’s led on for years. She can connect with communities,” said one of the Democrats. But Tammy Murphy has potential political liabilities as well. With Phil Murphy she co-owns a soccer team that early in Murphy’s first came under fire for poor living and practice conditions for its players, and was later named as one of several teams that was named in an alleged immigration scheme. A State Trooper lawsuit also alleges that she denied a member of the governor’s security detail the family’s carriage house to pump breast milk during breaks. Phil Murphy said he couldn’t address that allegation directly because it’s ongoing litigation, but added “anybody who knows my wife, knows her values, knows what she believes in and stands for, would just hear what’s been said, alleged, and, I don’t know what the reaction is, they would probably find it outrageous — that would be a word I’d use — and completely untrue.” Alex Wilkes, communications director for the New Jersey Republican State Committee, said criticism of Tammy Murphy is fair game. “She’s not a first lady who’s a little bit more ceremonial. She’s been brought into the fold in a lot of ways, on the business side and on the political side.” Wilkes also hit on the nepotism angle to a potential Tammy Murphy Senate run. “’It just feels like these things that belong to ‘we the people’ are these commodities to be traded among self-serving politicians,” she said.

Tracking down a poison: Getting the lead out of spices in Bangladesh and Georgia

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a 2-part series, “Tracking down a poison.” See part 2 here. NEW YORK CITY — In 1988, turmeric producers in Bangladesh had a problem. The country sits on the world’s largest delta, where three rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, flooding annually and leaving behind rich soils that farmers depend on. That year, all three rivers reached their peaks within a matter of days, creating a deluge that submerged three quarters of the country and killed at least 2,000 people. When the floods subsided, farmers found black and soggy turmeric roots — unappealing to prospective buyers, even if the raw spice remained intact. Turmeric polishers, who prepare the roots for sale, found a solution: a quick polish to smooth the exterior then a dusting of a yellow pigment to enhance the natural color. They didn’t know the powder was poison. They were adding lead chromate, a toxic material used in paints and plastics for its yellow hue. The practice persisted for decades until research collaborators from Bangladesh and the United States uncovered the problem. Bangladesh isn’t alone. Investigators have identified lead in spices brought to the United States from Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, India, Georgia and other countries. Many low- and middle-income countries have laws governing food safety, but lack the resources to monitor and enforce them. Lead is unsafe in any quantity, affecting children most severely with behavioral and developmental delays. An estimated one in three children in the world has lead poisoning from contact with common exposure sources like paints, informal battery recycling centers, cookware, cosmetics and, in some cases, spices, a 2020 report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Pure Earth found Tests for lead poisoning occur rarely in low- and middle-income countries, where cases are clustered, because doctors lack the information and resources to administer them. Yet in Bangladesh and Georgia research that narrowed in on a specific lead-poisoning problem and its source, along with government investment in enforcement, made the difference. Both countries transformed their spice industries to remove poison pigments. Uncovering a lead exposure problemIn 2018, a study of pregnant women in rural Bangladesh revealed that 31% had elevated blood lead levels. A research team from Stanford University and Bangladesh’s International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, or icddr had evidence the women were encountering lead in the solder on tin cans, in turmeric roots and in small pieces of clay sometimes chewed during pregnancy. They analyzed each source at its atomic level and found that only the lead in turmeric matched the lead in the women’s blood. That finding led them to the spice supply chain. “We wanted to be very detailed, because there have been a lot of food safety scares in Bangladesh,” Jenna Forsyth, a research scientist at the Stanford School of Medicine, told Environmental Health News (EHN). Debunked reports of fake eggs and plastic in rice had left the public and government skeptical. Interviews and workshops with turmeric producers revealed that the practice of adding yellow pigment to turmeric roots started with large floods in the 1980s and persisted decades later. Even when the roots weren’t black from wet conditions, the yellow pigment increased profits. Turmeric roots are a duller brown on the outside, and polishing reveals the yellow spice inside, but that means losing weight and earning less for each root. With the lead chromate pigment, polishers could preserve weight and mimic the warm yellow color. Finding the lead in GeorgiaThousands of miles away, in the country of Georgia, spice mixes containing the regional yellow marigold flower were contaminated with the same lead chromate pigment. Here, instead of a dusting of color, spice packagers added pigment straight into powdered spices, sometimes in enormous quantities.Health officials noticed the first signs of trouble in New York City. In the state, doctors test all 1- and 2-year-olds for lead and conduct risk assessments until age 6. Whenever a high blood lead level is identified in a child or an adult in New York City, investigators look for the source. “We identify patterns in the types of consumer products that contain high levels of lead,” Paromita Hore, director of environmental exposure assessment and education at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told EHN. “[Data] can identify at-risk communities.” Her team has found lead in spices from around the world, typically carried from other countries by individuals into New York. Georgian spices repeatedly ranked among the worst offenders, with high quantities of lead. In the worst instance, a spice mix sample taken during an investigation in September 2020 contained 78,000 parts per million of lead, meaning that nearly 8% of the spice was pure lead. “The solution is fixing the issue in the abroad country,” said Hore, “so one of our approaches is to share our findings with foreign authorities.” The team reached out to the Georgian consulate in 2011 and in 2015.Continuing to identify lead in spices from Georgia, in 2017 the New York City health department issued a warning for New Yorkers to get a blood lead test if they had eaten spices from the country. News sites in Georgia picked up the story, and the Georgian National Food Agency responded saying the information “ has nothing to do with today’s reality,” and admonished the media for misleading the public, according to a Google translation of a 2017 Facebook post.Yet a 2015 study of blood lead levels in Georgia had pointed to a bigger problem in the country. It was led by Dr. Ziad Kazzi, a medical toxicologist and emergency medicine professor at Emory University who traveled frequently to Georgia because of a family connection.“I asked a question about lead in Georgia and I rapidly discovered there was no answer at the time,” Kazzi told EHN. He launched a study of children’s blood lead levels at a hospital in Tbilisi in 2015, and found that many children had levels above five micrograms per decilitre. This level means a case of lead-poisoning, and it causes children to lose about three to five IQ points, according to UNICEF.The finding motivated the Georgian government to add blood lead testing to a national survey of children’s health. UNICEF coordinates children’s health surveys in developing countries around the world, but they had never included blood lead testing. Most low- and middle-income countries, where the surveys are conducted, don’t have the equipment or experience to test blood samples for lead. In Georgia’s case, the Italian National Institute of Health agreed to test the samples, collected from more than a thousand children around the country in 2018.The testing revealed that 41% of children in Georgia had lead poisoning. “It was really appalling, nobody expected this,” Abheet Solomon, global program lead on healthy environments for healthy children at UNICEF told EHN. In a region of western Georgia called Ajarra, 80% of children had lead poisoning.As the Georgian government and UNICEF started outreach and medical care, Bret Ericson, former chief operating officer at Pure Earth, arrived with a research team to root out the source of lead exposures.The Pure Earth team went to the homes of children who tested exceptionally high for lead, at 30 micrograms per decilitre or more, six times the typical level for serious concern. They brought an expensive handheld machine that could identify lead presence in anything it was pointed at.Ericson recalls spending hours in the first few houses, scanning every conceivable item and surface. Then he remembered a few studies he read on the plane to Georgia that mentioned spices as a source of lead exposure, and they started testing spices from families’ kitchens.Particularly in the Ajarra region, “we started getting hit after hit of exceptionally high levels in spices,” Ericson told EHN. “We found one at 25,000 parts per million, that’s poison, and it’s just in some kid’s house, so it’s heart wrenching stuff,” he said.Pure Earth contacted spice producers to understand how lead ended up in people’s food. They modeled their outreach off of Stanford and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research’s work in Bangladesh, Andrew McCartor, executive director of Pure Earth, told EHN.“We interviewed everyone in the supply chain from the retail vendor in a bazaar to the wholesaler that supplies them to the manufacturer that supplies the wholesaler,” he said. They discovered that the same lead chromate yellow pigment used in Bangladesh was added to spices by people packing them for sale across Georgia.The yellow marigold flower loses its bright hue as it dries, so packagers added yellow pigment to increase visual appeal and total weight, “There was no real understanding about the threats” from people in the spice industry, Khatuna Akhalaia, Georgia country director for Pure Earth, told EHN.Getting the lead outGeorgia’s government passed regulations to ban lead in spices, developed their enforcement capacity and began a public health awareness campaign. Bangladesh already had laws banning lead in food, but a lack of awareness of the problem in turmeric meant it was never enforced. The mountain of data and information published by researchers convinced the government they needed to act. The Bangladesh Food Safety Authority distributed roughly 50,000 flyers to people in wholesale markets selling turmeric and the public, explaining that lead chromate powder used on turmeric is poisonous and that they’d start enforcing the rules. Like the spice packagers in Georgia, turmeric polishers and wholesalers in Bangladesh weren’t aware of the health dangers. Producers became “champions” of removing lead from turmeric once they knew about the health risks, said Forsyth. Her team tested blood lead levels of some people working in turmeric production: high levels were found in everyone from the people doing the polishing to business owners more removed from the raw pigment. After making the industry aware of the rules, the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority entered a spice market in Dhaka in 2019 with testing equipment, a mobile court and a camera crew to make a public example of enforcing the law. Officials tested turmeric on the spot, and found it in two shops, where they confiscated the roots and issued $9,288 fines. The media picked up the story, and turmeric producers across Bangladesh saw that the lead chromate had to go. Early signs of success in removing leadThe research team in Bangladesh returned to turmeric producers in 2021. First they tested turmeric in markets, and found no lead in more than 600 samples purchased from dozens of wholesalers in Dhaka, compared to the 47% of samples that contained lead in 2019. They visited turmeric polishing sites where they had previously seen the yellow pigments at 30% of production sites, and this time found no evidence of its presence. Finally, they repeated blood testing of turmeric polishers, finding a 30% drop in blood lead levels.For children, removing an exposure source can lower their blood lead level and stop the impacts of lead from progressing, but neurological and developmental damage can’t be undone. In the most extreme cases, with a blood lead level above 45 micrograms per decilitre, doctors can use chelating medicine to remove lead from the blood, but it isn’t recommended below that level due to harsh side effects. Good nutrition with sufficient vitamins can help the body absorb less lead while it’s present in the blood.Turmeric isn’t the only source of lead exposure in Bangladesh. The country has many informal lead acid battery recycling sites, which can expose people to lead through the air and soil surrounding them. But Forsyth is optimistic when it comes to spices. “We’re seeing some exciting results that, indeed, these local levels have declined frankly more than expected,” she said.Similarly, in Georgia Pure Earth tested samples from markets in 2022 and found no evidence of lead in any spices, reported Akhalaia. She and Md. Mahbubur Rahman, project coordinator at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, both emphasized the importance of continuing strict monitoring.“When you take action it works, but later on, when people forget, they can turn back to the same position,” Rahman said. Pure Earth Georgia and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research continue to monitor spices in their respective countries to stay vigilant for back sliding.As for New York City, where the lead in Georgian spices was first flagged, Hore and her team are “seeing a 95% decline in the rate of children with Georgian ancestry with elevated blood lead levels,” she said.Read part 2 to learn more about global efforts to stop lead-poisoning, an often overlooked health crisis.

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a 2-part series, “Tracking down a poison.” See part 2 here. NEW YORK CITY — In 1988, turmeric producers in Bangladesh had a problem. The country sits on the world’s largest delta, where three rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, flooding annually and leaving behind rich soils that farmers depend on. That year, all three rivers reached their peaks within a matter of days, creating a deluge that submerged three quarters of the country and killed at least 2,000 people. When the floods subsided, farmers found black and soggy turmeric roots — unappealing to prospective buyers, even if the raw spice remained intact. Turmeric polishers, who prepare the roots for sale, found a solution: a quick polish to smooth the exterior then a dusting of a yellow pigment to enhance the natural color. They didn’t know the powder was poison. They were adding lead chromate, a toxic material used in paints and plastics for its yellow hue. The practice persisted for decades until research collaborators from Bangladesh and the United States uncovered the problem. Bangladesh isn’t alone. Investigators have identified lead in spices brought to the United States from Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, India, Georgia and other countries. Many low- and middle-income countries have laws governing food safety, but lack the resources to monitor and enforce them. Lead is unsafe in any quantity, affecting children most severely with behavioral and developmental delays. An estimated one in three children in the world has lead poisoning from contact with common exposure sources like paints, informal battery recycling centers, cookware, cosmetics and, in some cases, spices, a 2020 report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Pure Earth found Tests for lead poisoning occur rarely in low- and middle-income countries, where cases are clustered, because doctors lack the information and resources to administer them. Yet in Bangladesh and Georgia research that narrowed in on a specific lead-poisoning problem and its source, along with government investment in enforcement, made the difference. Both countries transformed their spice industries to remove poison pigments. Uncovering a lead exposure problemIn 2018, a study of pregnant women in rural Bangladesh revealed that 31% had elevated blood lead levels. A research team from Stanford University and Bangladesh’s International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, or icddr had evidence the women were encountering lead in the solder on tin cans, in turmeric roots and in small pieces of clay sometimes chewed during pregnancy. They analyzed each source at its atomic level and found that only the lead in turmeric matched the lead in the women’s blood. That finding led them to the spice supply chain. “We wanted to be very detailed, because there have been a lot of food safety scares in Bangladesh,” Jenna Forsyth, a research scientist at the Stanford School of Medicine, told Environmental Health News (EHN). Debunked reports of fake eggs and plastic in rice had left the public and government skeptical. Interviews and workshops with turmeric producers revealed that the practice of adding yellow pigment to turmeric roots started with large floods in the 1980s and persisted decades later. Even when the roots weren’t black from wet conditions, the yellow pigment increased profits. Turmeric roots are a duller brown on the outside, and polishing reveals the yellow spice inside, but that means losing weight and earning less for each root. With the lead chromate pigment, polishers could preserve weight and mimic the warm yellow color. Finding the lead in GeorgiaThousands of miles away, in the country of Georgia, spice mixes containing the regional yellow marigold flower were contaminated with the same lead chromate pigment. Here, instead of a dusting of color, spice packagers added pigment straight into powdered spices, sometimes in enormous quantities.Health officials noticed the first signs of trouble in New York City. In the state, doctors test all 1- and 2-year-olds for lead and conduct risk assessments until age 6. Whenever a high blood lead level is identified in a child or an adult in New York City, investigators look for the source. “We identify patterns in the types of consumer products that contain high levels of lead,” Paromita Hore, director of environmental exposure assessment and education at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told EHN. “[Data] can identify at-risk communities.” Her team has found lead in spices from around the world, typically carried from other countries by individuals into New York. Georgian spices repeatedly ranked among the worst offenders, with high quantities of lead. In the worst instance, a spice mix sample taken during an investigation in September 2020 contained 78,000 parts per million of lead, meaning that nearly 8% of the spice was pure lead. “The solution is fixing the issue in the abroad country,” said Hore, “so one of our approaches is to share our findings with foreign authorities.” The team reached out to the Georgian consulate in 2011 and in 2015.Continuing to identify lead in spices from Georgia, in 2017 the New York City health department issued a warning for New Yorkers to get a blood lead test if they had eaten spices from the country. News sites in Georgia picked up the story, and the Georgian National Food Agency responded saying the information “ has nothing to do with today’s reality,” and admonished the media for misleading the public, according to a Google translation of a 2017 Facebook post.Yet a 2015 study of blood lead levels in Georgia had pointed to a bigger problem in the country. It was led by Dr. Ziad Kazzi, a medical toxicologist and emergency medicine professor at Emory University who traveled frequently to Georgia because of a family connection.“I asked a question about lead in Georgia and I rapidly discovered there was no answer at the time,” Kazzi told EHN. He launched a study of children’s blood lead levels at a hospital in Tbilisi in 2015, and found that many children had levels above five micrograms per decilitre. This level means a case of lead-poisoning, and it causes children to lose about three to five IQ points, according to UNICEF.The finding motivated the Georgian government to add blood lead testing to a national survey of children’s health. UNICEF coordinates children’s health surveys in developing countries around the world, but they had never included blood lead testing. Most low- and middle-income countries, where the surveys are conducted, don’t have the equipment or experience to test blood samples for lead. In Georgia’s case, the Italian National Institute of Health agreed to test the samples, collected from more than a thousand children around the country in 2018.The testing revealed that 41% of children in Georgia had lead poisoning. “It was really appalling, nobody expected this,” Abheet Solomon, global program lead on healthy environments for healthy children at UNICEF told EHN. In a region of western Georgia called Ajarra, 80% of children had lead poisoning.As the Georgian government and UNICEF started outreach and medical care, Bret Ericson, former chief operating officer at Pure Earth, arrived with a research team to root out the source of lead exposures.The Pure Earth team went to the homes of children who tested exceptionally high for lead, at 30 micrograms per decilitre or more, six times the typical level for serious concern. They brought an expensive handheld machine that could identify lead presence in anything it was pointed at.Ericson recalls spending hours in the first few houses, scanning every conceivable item and surface. Then he remembered a few studies he read on the plane to Georgia that mentioned spices as a source of lead exposure, and they started testing spices from families’ kitchens.Particularly in the Ajarra region, “we started getting hit after hit of exceptionally high levels in spices,” Ericson told EHN. “We found one at 25,000 parts per million, that’s poison, and it’s just in some kid’s house, so it’s heart wrenching stuff,” he said.Pure Earth contacted spice producers to understand how lead ended up in people’s food. They modeled their outreach off of Stanford and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research’s work in Bangladesh, Andrew McCartor, executive director of Pure Earth, told EHN.“We interviewed everyone in the supply chain from the retail vendor in a bazaar to the wholesaler that supplies them to the manufacturer that supplies the wholesaler,” he said. They discovered that the same lead chromate yellow pigment used in Bangladesh was added to spices by people packing them for sale across Georgia.The yellow marigold flower loses its bright hue as it dries, so packagers added yellow pigment to increase visual appeal and total weight, “There was no real understanding about the threats” from people in the spice industry, Khatuna Akhalaia, Georgia country director for Pure Earth, told EHN.Getting the lead outGeorgia’s government passed regulations to ban lead in spices, developed their enforcement capacity and began a public health awareness campaign. Bangladesh already had laws banning lead in food, but a lack of awareness of the problem in turmeric meant it was never enforced. The mountain of data and information published by researchers convinced the government they needed to act. The Bangladesh Food Safety Authority distributed roughly 50,000 flyers to people in wholesale markets selling turmeric and the public, explaining that lead chromate powder used on turmeric is poisonous and that they’d start enforcing the rules. Like the spice packagers in Georgia, turmeric polishers and wholesalers in Bangladesh weren’t aware of the health dangers. Producers became “champions” of removing lead from turmeric once they knew about the health risks, said Forsyth. Her team tested blood lead levels of some people working in turmeric production: high levels were found in everyone from the people doing the polishing to business owners more removed from the raw pigment. After making the industry aware of the rules, the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority entered a spice market in Dhaka in 2019 with testing equipment, a mobile court and a camera crew to make a public example of enforcing the law. Officials tested turmeric on the spot, and found it in two shops, where they confiscated the roots and issued $9,288 fines. The media picked up the story, and turmeric producers across Bangladesh saw that the lead chromate had to go. Early signs of success in removing leadThe research team in Bangladesh returned to turmeric producers in 2021. First they tested turmeric in markets, and found no lead in more than 600 samples purchased from dozens of wholesalers in Dhaka, compared to the 47% of samples that contained lead in 2019. They visited turmeric polishing sites where they had previously seen the yellow pigments at 30% of production sites, and this time found no evidence of its presence. Finally, they repeated blood testing of turmeric polishers, finding a 30% drop in blood lead levels.For children, removing an exposure source can lower their blood lead level and stop the impacts of lead from progressing, but neurological and developmental damage can’t be undone. In the most extreme cases, with a blood lead level above 45 micrograms per decilitre, doctors can use chelating medicine to remove lead from the blood, but it isn’t recommended below that level due to harsh side effects. Good nutrition with sufficient vitamins can help the body absorb less lead while it’s present in the blood.Turmeric isn’t the only source of lead exposure in Bangladesh. The country has many informal lead acid battery recycling sites, which can expose people to lead through the air and soil surrounding them. But Forsyth is optimistic when it comes to spices. “We’re seeing some exciting results that, indeed, these local levels have declined frankly more than expected,” she said.Similarly, in Georgia Pure Earth tested samples from markets in 2022 and found no evidence of lead in any spices, reported Akhalaia. She and Md. Mahbubur Rahman, project coordinator at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, both emphasized the importance of continuing strict monitoring.“When you take action it works, but later on, when people forget, they can turn back to the same position,” Rahman said. Pure Earth Georgia and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research continue to monitor spices in their respective countries to stay vigilant for back sliding.As for New York City, where the lead in Georgian spices was first flagged, Hore and her team are “seeing a 95% decline in the rate of children with Georgian ancestry with elevated blood lead levels,” she said.Read part 2 to learn more about global efforts to stop lead-poisoning, an often overlooked health crisis.

How the shift to electric vehicles is fueling the UAW strike

"The EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy.”

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, in three automotive factories across the Rust Belt, night shift workers left their posts and poured out onto the streets to join whistling, cheering crowds. TV news footage from the night showed picketers intermingled with cars honking in support as R&B blared from sound systems on the sidewalks in front of the factory gates. For the first time in history, the United Auto Workers union, or UAW, initiated a strike targeting all of the “Big Three” automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which owns brands like Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge.  The strike marks a breaking point after months of negotiations failed to result in a deal to renew the union’s contract with Big Three automakers, which expired on Friday. For now, the strike covers only 13,000 workers at a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri; a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio; and a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan. But the three closures could be just the beginning. UAW president Shawn Fain has warned that all 146,000 union workers are ready to strike at a moment’s notice. “If we need to go all out, we will,” said Fain Thursday night on Facebook Live. “Everything is on the table.”  If the work stoppage goes on for more than 10 days, analysts estimate it could cost automakers over $1 billion and hurt plans to push new electric vehicles, or EVs, onto the market. EVs, and what they mean for the future of union labor in the automotive sector, loom large over the picket line. Automakers say meeting the union’s demands would threaten their ability to compete with non-unionized EV producers like Tesla, adding burdensome labor costs just as they’re making expensive investments in EVs. Workers, meanwhile, worry that billions in EV investments aren’t translating into good-paying, union jobs. Employees work at the assembly line of the Volkswagen ID 4 electric car in northern Germany on May 20, 2022. David Hecker/AFP via Getty Images “It’s our job to organize,” Tony Totty, president of UAW Local 14 in Toledo, Ohio, told Grist. “These corporations don’t wanna share in our sweat equity with the profits we provide them.”    Collectively, the Big Three have committed to investing well over $100 billion in EV manufacturing over the next few years. The companies have also proposed 10 EV battery plants owned jointly with companies including South Korea-based LG Energy Solution and Samsung. Most new EV and battery plants are located in a growing “Battery Belt,” with Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee leading the charge alongside the traditional automotive heartlands of Michigan and Ohio. Many of those states have “right to work” laws that curtail collective bargaining, leading to lower union density and lower pay grades overall. Indeed, the vast majority of the Big Three’s proposed battery plants are nonunion.  To keep union membership strong, protect worker safety, and prevent the EV surge from undermining their bargaining power, the union has asked to include EV battery workers in their national contracts. “Now is really the moment, as the industry starts to take off, to ensure that those jobs can be union jobs,” J. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who studies labor issues and climate justice, told Grist.  Ford and Volkswagen have estimated that 30 percent less labor is required to build an EV compared to an internal combustion engine car, since EVs don’t require the complex parts needed to build engines and transmissions. Meanwhile, non-union automakers like Tesla and Toyota are gaining an edge in the EV space, and offering substantially lower compensation than the Big Three. Ford has estimated the Big Three’s average hourly labor costs, including benefits, amount to around $65 per worker, compared to about $55 for foreign non-union automakers in the U.S. like Toyota and Nissan. Tesla’s labor costs are even lower — at around $45 to $50 per worker per hour, according to industry analysts.  Auto workers are watching this change with some trepidation, according to Marick Masters, a professor of management at Wayne State University who studies the auto industry and labor. “The shift to electrification both threatens jobs and it also threatens to establish another lower tier of wages in the industry,” he said. The UAW has so far had a string of organizing failures in the South, mostly associated with the region’s large number of foreign automakers, like Volkswagen and Nissan.  Totty, the Toledo-based UAW local president, has advocated heavily for union contracts at new battery plants. He personally welcomes the EV shift. His plant, Toledo Propulsion Systems, received $760 million in federal funding to transform the transmission plant into a plant that makes EV parts. Totty doesn’t believe it’ll take much extra training, or that anyone at the plant will lose their job. “We’re embracing it,” he said. What’s more concerning to him is the power and income imbalance between the people who do the backbreaking work at the plant, and the people who own it.  Read Next The fight for worker safety protection heats up at the Phoenix airport Katie Myers Among the UAW’s demands for its new contract is a 40 percent raise over the next four years, which it says is equal to the collective rise in CEO compensation at the Big Three over the past four years. The union has also asked for cost of living adjustments, the reinstatement of pensions, a 32-hour work week, and the elimination of a tiered wage system that pays newer employees less for the same work. So far, the three companies have countered with a 20 percent raise. As of Monday, the companies had not agreed to most of the union’s other demands.  In an interview with the New York Times, Ford CEO Jim Farley claimed that meeting UAW demands would prevent the company from investing in EVs. “We want to actually have a conversation about a sustainable future,” he told the Times, “not one that forces us to choose between going out of business and rewarding our workers.” According to the union, the companies continue to make record-breaking profits, netting over $21 billion in just the first six months of 2023 and $250 billion over the last 10 years. Though the vast majority of those profits come from internal combustion engine cars, with EVs still a relatively small market, the auto companies are already tapping into billions of dollars in federal investments to electrify their fleets.  EVs are central to President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. Through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration has authorized nearly $100 billion in funding dedicated or availables to support growth in the industry’s domestic supply chain. It’s part of Biden’s plan to, according to a recent Department of Energy EV funding announcement, “Create Not Just More Jobs But Good Jobs, Including Union Jobs.” More than $15 billion of that number is intended to support existing factories in the EV transition, in hopes of keeping manufacturing jobs in communities that rely on them. The administration has also made aggressive regulatory moves to push for EVs — under vehicle emissions standards released by the Environmental Protection Agency in April, EVs would need to make up two-thirds of all car sales in the U.S. by 2031. Masters says that auto companies are responding to this pressure. “The companies,” he said, “are on board, and their train has left the station. They’re going out of the internal combustion engine business.” Read Next Biden’s EV charger rollout has begun. Will it deliver on environmental justice? Naveena Sadasivam Some are calling the UAW strike the biggest labor crisis of the Biden presidency so far. The UAW has not yet endorsed Biden as a presidential candidate, citing inconsistencies between the administration’s push for EVs and its close ties with the labor movement. The union has previously criticized the president for lending billions to auto companies for EV manufacturing without requiring protections for union labor. UAW leaders have asked Biden to hold firm on his promises to deliver union jobs with clean energy investment, or else risk the energy transition exacerbating economic inequality. The strike will continue, UAW has said, as long as parties fail to reach a consensus. Workers are organizing at Big Three factories across the country, preparing to shut them down if the moment calls for it. Experts say that a long-term strike could seriously hurt sales at the Big Three, possibly giving companies like Tesla a competitive edge. “The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry,” Fain said in a release. “But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the shift to electric vehicles is fueling the UAW strike on Sep 18, 2023.

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