IN MENDOCINO COUNTY, POT INITIATIVE'S A TOUCHY TOPIC

LAYTONVILLE - Along Mendocino County's Redwood Highway, just beyond
the sign depicting a hovering alien spaceship, veteran marijuana
cultivator Tim Blake sees the future.

He views his Area 101 spiritual retreat as the answer to the looming
upheaval for a renowned California pot-growing region challenged by a
November state ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for adult
recreational use and new growing techniques.

Blake hopes his roadside haven, where local marijuana tenders gather
to share smokes and tales of the harvest, will emerge as a nostalgic
tourist draw - a destination honoring Mendocino's proud pot traditions.

California produces one-third of America's pot, with an estimated
$13.8 billion cash crop, counting legal medicinal grows and vast
illicit production. In this county of 90,000 people, it is an
uncomfortable topic. Most civic leaders would rather talk about the
enchanting Mendocino Coast, the picturesque mountains and the charming
towns.

But weed fuels the regional economy.

"There are people who don't want to talk about it because that may
seem as if they're endorsing it," said Bert Mosier, chief executive
officer of the Chamber of Commerce in the county seat of Ukiah. "But
this affects our community."

It isn't just the November initiative that has upset the area's pot
culture and stirred calls for new approaches.

Blake and others say the local market is already in free fall. Across
California, legal medical marijuana dispensaries and indoor
hydroponics warehouses that grow high-potency pot are undercutting
Mendocino's outdoor crop.

For years, most Mendocino cultivators have grown their "Northern
Lights" and "Super Skunk" strains beneath the stars and coastal
redwoods. Increasingly, their weed can't compete with the high-octane
"Purple Urkles" and "OG Kushes" that flower under glowing indoor lamps.

Pot from Mendocino County fetched more than $5,000 a pound just a
decade ago. Now it goes for closer to $2,000, Blake says.

"Most people up here are growing," he said. "And for every grower, you
support the gas station, the dry cleaners, the health food store. But
everybody's numbers are down. Nobody has any money."

On Saturday, scores of Mendocino marijuana growers and local officials
met in Ukiah to ponder the impact on the county if California voters
decide to legalize marijuana beyond current medical use. They
brainstormed remedies to economic fallout, including promoting pot
tourism and branding local medicinal products to bring recognition to
Mendocino's crop and its tenders.

Anna Hamilton, a Mendocino musician who hosts a radio talk show in
neighboring Humboldt County, warned that the "legalization of
marijuana will be the single most devastating event" to hit the region.

But Matthew Cohen, a Mendocino grower whose Northstone Organics
delivers pot to medical marijuana patients in Northern California, saw
an economic opportunity. "Mendocino can have a hand-picked, boutique
market," he said.

'Way of Life' Threatened?

Pebbles Trippet, a strictly small-time grower, says many cultivators
are "worried their way of life is going to be taken away from them."

Trippet, who served jail time for pot-related offenses in three
Northern California counties before she settled in Mendocino,
organically farms onions, garlic, squash and medical pot on a small
riverfront parcel in Cloverdale.

Others see legalization as an opportunity to reshape Mendocino's
illicit culture into a legal attraction. They envision Mendocino and
neighboring Humboldt County blossoming with smoke fests and
meet-the-growers tours, recasting itself as the Napa Valley of pot.

"People in Mendocino County know a better way and they're ready to
show it," said Marvin Levin, 35, president of the Mendocino Farmers
Collective, a new union of medical pot growers. The collective hopes
to market Mendocino's outdoor pot as environmentally sustainable
cultivation.

Levin contends that indoor operations, many in or near cities, leave a
substantial carbon footprint with excessive electricity use,
fertilizers dumped into sewage systems and buildings damaged with
moisture and mold.

Indoor cultivators, a minority in Mendocino, use controlled
environments to produce multiple cycles a year of thick-budding
designer pot strains. Outdoor growers have one large harvest producing
plants 12 to 16 feet high.

At harvest time, Area 101 sponsors an annual "Emerald Cup" honoring
the best local pot. No indoor product is allowed. Levin says last
year's winner was a special "Cotton Candy Kush." He calls it "a
sweet-flavored weed" that is "less musty" than a similar "Diesel Kush"
grown indoors.

Tradition of Illegal Growing

Mendocino's effort to honor its pot traditions belies its long - and
continuing - role in criminal marijuana cultivating and
trafficking.

Blake admits he used to illicitly truck thousands of Mendocino pot
plants for distribution in the San Joaquin Valley. He says he quit the
illegal trade after he was spooked by a series of federal raids. "I
went from a kingpin to a no-pin," he says.

Now Blake, a 53-year-old cancer survivor, has a county permit to grow
99 medical marijuana plants, the maximum allowed on large acreage. The
county allows 25 plants on parcels of five acres or less, if grown for
multiple medical users.

But many growers have neither pretense of medical cultivation nor care
about limits. Last September, sweeps by federal, state and local
narcotics officers resulted in the arrests of numerous local residents
illegally cultivating several hundred plants each in mountainous
terrain near Laytonville.

Local grower James Taylor Jones, a grizzled Grateful Dead fan who came
to the county nine years ago with his wife, Fran Harris, is a
recovering drug addict and alcoholic. He quit cocaine 25 years ago and
gave up drinking 16 years ago. He regularly attends Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings, yet says he is a spiritual devotee to using and
cultivating pot for medical purposes.

Jones and Harris, who also run a Laytonville tie-dye T-shirt shop, are
part of the Humboldt Farmers Collective and have provided products for
dispensaries in Mill Valley and San Francisco. They said they made
$55,000 in the pot business last year. They reported it to the
Internal Revenue Service as "farm income."

Jones says they're in this lifestyle to stay "no matter what the
profit is." But he opposes legalizing recreational use. He believes it
will drive other growers out of Mendocino County.

"If it's legalized, the market is going to plummet. There's no
question," he said.

But then Jones added: "Who the hell are we to say who can have
pot?"