CNBC 'MARIJUANA INC.' LIFTS THE LID ON WEED BUSINESS

Trish Regan's Show on CNBC Is No Puff Piece.

Marijuana, Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry Thursday night at 9, CNBC

Don't worry that you're having a weed-induced flashback, dude, if you
think there's something familiar about Trish Regan's CNBC report
Thursday night on the American marijuana industry.

Lisa Ling reported the same story about two months ago on the
National Geographic channel.

But a certain amount of overlap doesn't diminish Regan's solid
feature, which focuses on Mendocino County, Calif, where
entrepreneurs grow marijuana the way Washington, D.C., grows cherry trees.

And in most cases, almost as openly.

For better or worse, pot has become a major player in American
agriculture, and Regan matter-of-factly notes that what corn is to
Iowa, marijuana is to a fertile triangle just outside San Francisco.

Fittingly for a CNBC production, Regan focuses more on the economics
than the sociology of marijuana, and the numbers make her point eloquently.

It costs about $400 to grow a pound of marijuana. The grower sells it
to a wholesaler for about $2,500. It's then broken down in smaller
quantities that can bring in about $6,000.

You see the incentive here.

One of the growers interviewed by Regan values his plants at about
$5,000 apiece. He has 20 of them, which makes him a small grower, but
still adds up to more than small change.

It also puts him into a gray legal area, Regan points out.

California several years ago started allowing residents to grow small
amounts of marijuana for personal medicinal use. But no court has
definitively ruled what constitutes a small amount, and then there's
one other complication: Growing any marijuana remains illegal under
federal law.

Most of Regan's interview subjects, who don't mind showing their
faces or wares on national television, seem unbothered by the
potential for prosecution.

Nor do her interviews with law enforcement officials suggest much
cause for concern. The main response of the marijuana police, local
and federal, is frustration that they can do so little about an
enterprise that some officials figure may in some way involve up to
60% of county residents.

Without marijuana farming, Regan's sources all agree, the county's
economy would implode.

"Marijuana Inc." adds up to a solid special with a well-supported and
inescapable conclusion: The commerce is unlikely to change and the
law has only a slim chance of doing more than containing the most
violence-prone offenders.

When it comes to marijuana, a whole lot of people voted some time ago
to just say yes.