This podcast seeks to open up what we talk about when we talk about cannabis, beyond the limits of prohibition and the creative destruction of legal cannabis markets. Who are the people and places for whom this plant means more than control and commerce? What can we learn about the global legacy of cannabis before, during, and after its very recent global prohibition?
The name of our podcast is inspired by the title of Ray Raphael’s 1985 book about the emergence of the U.S. cannabis cultural economy in Southern Humboldt. The hippie “cash crop” has become an industry, in many ways disconnected from the more-than-cash value of their back-to-the land 1970s food gardens.
The secular decline of cannabis as a valuable cash crop in the wake of commercialization and legalization opens up space for more-than-cash values to return to the conversation: environmental stewardship, social justice, regenerative cultivation practices, and genetic diversity are good examples of ways to study and research cannabis beyond its cash value.