- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
![Cannabis grows near a salmon stream in Humboldt County. Environmental impacts of cannabis are among the research funded to inform cannabis policy in California.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/75311small.jpg)
Several scientists affiliated with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources have received grants from the California Bureau of Cannabis Control. The BCC awarded on Nov. 13 a total of $29,950,494 in public university research grants across California for research projects related to the implementation and effect of Proposition 64.
Research proposals had to fall within one of the several specified categories, including public health, criminal justice and public safety, economics, environmental impacts and the cannabis...
- Author: Jim Downing
![The July-December 2019 issue of California Agriculture journal focuses on cannabis.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/63153small.jpg)
In 1953, amid reports that cannabis was growing around San Mateo County, the local sheriff's office and the UC Agricultural Extension Service in Half Moon Bay issued a booklet entitled Identify and Report Marihuana. The booklet envisioned “total eradication” of cannabis. The authors couldn't have imagined that, in 2017, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors would pass an ordinance allowing greenhouse cultivation of cannabis in the county's unincorporated areas.
A lot can happen in 60-plus years — such as voter approval of Proposition 64, the 2016 ballot measure that altered California law to allow the recreational use of cannabis by adults.
The measure's passage presented...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
![Cannabis grows in Siskiyou County as seen from Google Earth. Research has shown that illegal cannabis production causes environmental damage.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/61459small.jpg)
California has legalized marijuana, but commercial cannabis growers have been slow to obtain the required state and local permits. To find out what deters them from complying with new laws, University of California scientists are asking cannabis growers to participate in a survey about their experiences with the regulated market.
“The majority of cannabis farmers are not joining the legal market and we want to know why,” said Van Butsic, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley. “The objective is to identify barriers to joining the legal market.”
The researchers plan...
- Author: Kara Manke
![Tree leaves and needles are removed because they block sunlight needed for marijuana plants. Pacific Southwest Region 5 photo, via Flickr](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/57845small.jpg)
Cannabis is unlike any other agricultural crop. Because of its circuitous history — once illegal to grow, and now legal but heavily regulated — cannabis has cast a unique footprint on the environment and the communities of farmers who grow it.
UC Berkeley's new Cannabis Research Center, announced today by a...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
![Cannabis grows near a salmon stream Humboldt. Diverting water to irrigate cannabis can dewater streams during the summer and impact wildlife.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/48440small.jpg)
Planting cannabis for commercial production in remote locations is creating forest fragmentation, stream modification, soil erosion and landslides. Without land-use policies to limit its environmental footprint, the impacts of cannabis farming could get worse, according to a new study published in the November issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
“Despite its small current footprint, the boom in cannabis agriculture poses a significant threat to our environment,” said co-author Van Butsic, a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and...