Too High To Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution.

Rebeck, Ken

Too High To Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution, by Doug Fine, New York, NY: Gotham Books, 2012.

If the title of Doug Fine's Too High To Fait: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution doesn't make it clear, the thirty-plus pages comprising an "Author's Note," an "Introductory Position Paper" and a "Preface" that precede Chapter 1 prepare the reader for a full-scale assault on the Schedule I federal classification and criminalization of cannabis and an examination of the medical, environmental and economic benefits that would arise from decriminalization. From my discussions with colleagues over the years (I've found no recent surveys of economists on this issue), and especially a long-ago conversation with a mentor who said, "I have trouble believing that anyone trained as an economist would be against legalization," I believe a majority of The American Economises readers will agree with Fine's conviction. Allowing marijuana to be bought and sold by adults with regulation similar to alcohol will entail costs to society, but these costs will not come close to cost of continuing this misguided policy. (1)

What separates Fine's book from others is that he studies the issue at ground level, moving to Mendocino County in Northern California in 2011 to follow a cannabis plant from cloning to patient through the Kama Cooperative start-up and its young, optimistic, cannabis-farmer founder, Tomas Balogh. The county is the site of a pioneering attempt by the local government to, choosing California's medical-use marijuana law over federal law, provide a Zip-Tie permit program. This program leads to revenue for the county and growing rights to state and local (but not federal) law-abiding cannabis farmers who provide medical marijuana to patients.

A review of this book must first recognize that the author unapologetically brings his own world view to the analysis, and readers won't finish the book wondering about Fine's environmental, economic and political stances. Many tales involve his "vegetable-oil-powered" truck, he chooses the organic, sustainable, "not money obsessed" Mendocino County not-for-profit model to observe over the for-profit Colorado model (the title does read "Green" Economic Revolution), and he strives for a world where interaction is comprised of more cooperation over merely "it's a jungle out there" competition. He refers to Republican Congress members as "polluter industry employees" (a blanket statement), although in fairness he does decide that President Obama's drug policy is worse than President Bush's as his frustration builds toward the end of the book--the end of his time in Mendocino County. I point this out not as a criticism. This is Fine's book, the audience is not likely to be expecting a completely objective study, and I don't believe the book will have an impact on the issue (which I get to below) if he had written in another style.

After the first three chapters develop the argument for the importance of the medicinal properties of cannabis, the next six chapters paint a picture of Mendocino County, its relationship to and, for the most part, acceptance of cannabis (with cannabis growers even holding government positions). The reader learns that many cannabis farmers are forming and joining medical cannabis trade organizations such as MendoGrown (now merged into the Emerald Growers Association since the original publication). This is where the author meets Tomas Balogh, whom he chooses to be the primary focus among Zip-Tie farmers, and accompanies him on his search to find a property for his start-up.

Chapters 10 through 30 follow Lucille, a specific cannabis plant, as it is cloned from its mother plant at the provider, planted with over eighty other youths at Tomas's farm (the Mendocino County Ordinance 9.31's Zip-Tie provision limit is 99 plants for cooperatives), and tended to throughout its rapid growth and harvest. Lucille ultimately provides medicine that Tomas delivers to two elderly, grateful patients. Most of these chapters combine work on Tomas's farm with other aspects of Mendocino cannabis life: portrayals of law enforcement officers committed to upholding the rights of the law-abiding farmers, neighbors won over by Tomas's persistence and integrity, and "punks" inspired by the area's openness to cannabis farming who have no respect for the plant, their temporary farm land or community.

The conflict between federal law and state and local laws provides an environment of uncertainty and stress throughout the book. Ultimately, the federal cloud hanging over Tomas and the other Zip-Tie farmers culminates in an unfortunate extension of the 2011 Operation Full Court Press, a joint federal and local agency crackdown targeting illegal grows on public land in Northern California. Left alone during this crackdown, 9.31 Zip-Tie farms became targets of the DEA in October. One raid shuts down the coop run by Matt Cohen, a farmer, executive director of MendoGrown, and 9.31 "poster child" who plays a large role in the book. These raids, along with the threats on cannabis dispensaries or their landlords (Fine asks perceptively: "Is the landlord of a Manhattan office building threatened if a banker commits insider trading ...?") ultimately forces Mendocino County to, for practical purposes, shut down their innovative and, by most standards, extremely successful Zip-Tie program.

In the final two chapters Fine discusses issues surrounding legalization, such as the responsibility of parents and the debate over the addictiveness of marijuana while acknowledging the recreational use of cannabis. He also revisits and extends economic arguments made in the opening remarks regarding the peace dividend and industrial and energy uses of hemp.

Although the book provides an economic analysis of many aspects of the war on cannabis and what would transpire if cannabis became legal at the federal level, I would not recommend it for, say, an economics instructor's course reading list. There are arguments and claims made that detract from the book's credibility in this area.

For example, many will be skeptical of the argument he makes in his Introductory Position Paper where he lists "disingenuous banks" as part of the obstacle to legalization, wherein legalization of marijuana will hurt their profits from laundering profits of cartels. This argument is left with little support outside of a very brief example (actually, just a chapter-leading quote) of a bank in Texas later in the book, which seems far from evidence of any kind of pressure on policymakers. And this argument certainly runs counter to his prediction of the multi-billion dollar industry that will be generated by legalization, and, by extension, now above ground with dollars moving through the banking system.

As another example, Fine states several times as fact that at $35.8 billion, cannabis is "far and away" the number one cash crop in the United States, apparently in a genie-is-out-of-the-bottle argument and a forecast of potential tax revenue. Here Fine curiously chooses to cite ABC News rather than the original report by a former head of NORML, a single-issue advocacy organization for marijuana legalization. By any economic standard this estimate, $13 billion greater than the number two cash crop com, is dubious. This value has been criticized as highly speculative in Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs To Know (Caulkins et ah, Oxford University Press, 2012), where the authors argue that this figure is likely "around $2.1-$4.3 billion" (p. 41). Any estimate is speculative, of course, but Fine should have considered this argument with some skepticism, especially in light of his request later in the book that readers know who pays for research studies.

Economists might also question Fine's logic when he credits the drug war for fostering rapid research and development--insight, it would appear, gained from one meeting with one local botanist. Fine states that this rapid advance in identifying and providing new strains with exciting medicinal benefits, "conventional wisdom has it ... is almost entirely the result of prohibition." He further claims that cancer patients benefiting from a specific strain of cannabis that encourages appetite should thank the drug war. I didn't follow why a legal medical cannabis market would not have encouraged advancements over the past forty years as has been seen in so many other industries, nor why the underground botanists were in settings more conducive to research. One libertarian argument might be that the FDA and regulatory oversight of a legal cannabis industry would stifle advancement, but even then, would it still lead to less advancement than prohibition? Regardless, I don't read Fine as the anti-FDA, anti-regulatory type, but I could be wrong. Nor did this rapid innovation seem to be taking place in a setting of prohibition-driven, R&D-inducing profits. But again, I could be wrong.

Where Too High To Fail excels is in its portrayal of above-ground cannabis farmers and the patients that rely on them. A likely reason some are cautious of or against decriminalizing marijuana is the notion of it being a stoner industry, for lack of a more professional label. Fine introduces the reader to a quite respectable aspect of the cannabis trade. The reader will first meet a sixty-three-year-old veteran who now rides horses, hikes and returns to his wood-working business since turning to medical cannabis over prescription drugs. Other medical cannabis patients are discovered throughout the book before Lucille reaches the elderly couple who had been awaiting cannabis treatment for one's painful arthritis and the other's effects from chemotherapy (a delay in delivery caused by the raid of Cohen's farm, the couple's now shutdown cooperative). It is the connection one will likely feel with these patients, as well as the portrait of the honorable, productive and sober cannabis-farmer-next-door that will be new to many of us already in favor of decriminalization, and certainly to many against it. The grounds of freedom of choice and the failure of the war on drugs in general need not be the only arguments for ending this ridiculous war on providers and consumers of marijuana.

KEN REBECK

Professor of Economics

St. Cloud State University

(1) Like Fine, I will not dwell on the distinction between legalization and decriminalization.