Could Cannabis Help the American West Solve Its Thorniest Environmental Issues?
A Growing Industry, and an Entire Region, Wrestle with Questions Around Water, Land Use, and Conservation
The study of cannabis is a personal one for me. Outdoor cannabis production in the rural Western U.S. has its roots in back-to-the-land movements of the 1960s. That’s when counterculture groups began growing cannabis surreptitiously as a source of income, a political statement, and a spiritual practice. I grew up in rural Southern Oregon, the child of hippies from that era. The communities where we lived were, at least in part, founded on and funded by cannabis.
In 2015, the year Oregon legalized recreational cannabis, I was home applying to graduate …
