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Book Review: Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution

If the title of Doug Fine’s Too High To Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution doesn’t make it clear, the thirty-plus pages comprising an “Author’s Note,” an “Introductory Position Paper” and a “Preface” that precede Chapter 1 prepare the reader for a full-scale assault on the Schedule I federal classification and criminalization of cannabis and an examination of the medical, environmental and economic benefits that would arise from decriminalization. From my discussions with colleagues over the years (I’ve found no recent surveys of economists on this issue), and especially a long-ago conversation with a mentor who said, “I have trouble believing that anyone trained as an economist would be against legalization,” I believe a majority of The American Economist’s readers will agree with Fine’s conviction. Allowing marijuana to be bought and sold by adults with regulation similar to alcohol will entail costs to society, but these costs will not come close to cost of continuing this misguided policy. What separates Fine’s book from others is that he studies the issue at ground level, moving to Mendocino County in Northern California in 2011 to follow a cannabis plant from cloning to patient through the Kama Cooperative start-up and its young, optimistic, cannabis-farmer founder, Tomas Balogh. The county is the site of a pioneering attempt by the local government to, choosing California’s medical-use marijuana law over federal law, provide a Zip-Tie permit program. This program leads to revenue for the county and growing rights to state and local (but not federal) lawabiding cannabis farmers who provide medical marijuana to patients. A review of this book must first recognize that the author unapologetically brings his own world view to the analysis, and readers won’t finish the book wondering about Fine’s environmental, economic and political stances. Many tales involve his “vegetable-oil-powered” truck, he chooses the organic, sustainable, “not money obsessed” Mendocino County not-for-profit model to observe over the for-profit Colorado model (the title does read “Green” Economic Revolution), and he strives for a world where interaction is comprised of more cooperation over merely “it’s a jungle out there” competition. He refers to Republican Congress members as “polluter industry employees” (a blanket statement), although in fairness he does decide that President Obama’s drug policy is worse than President Bush’s as his frustration builds toward the end of the book – the end of his time in Mendocino County. I point this out not as a criticism. This is Fine’s book, the audience is not likely to be expecting a completely objective study, and I don’t believe the book will have an impact on the issue (which I get to below) if he had written in another style. After the first three chapters develop the argument for the importance of the medicinal properties of cannabis, the next six chapters paint a picture of Mendocino County, its relationship to and, for the most part, acceptance of cannabis (with cannabis growers even holding government positions). The reader learns that many cannabis farmers are forming and joining medical cannabis trade organizations such as MendoGrown (now merged into the Emerald Growers Association since the original publication). This is where the author meets Tomas Balogh, whom he chooses to be the primary focus among Zip-Tie farmers, and accompanies him on his search to find a property for his start-up. Chapters 10 through 30 follow Lucille, a specific cannabis plant, as it is cloned from its mother plant at the provider, planted with over eighty other youths at Tomas’s farm (the Mendocino County Ordinance 9.31’s Zip-Tie provision limit is 99 plants for cooperatives), and tended to throughout its rapid growth and harvest. Lucille ultimately provides medicine that Tomas delivers to two elderly, grateful patients. Most of these chapters combine work on Tomas’s farm with other aspects of Mendocino cannabis life: portrayals of law enforcement officers committed to upholding the rights of the law-abiding farmers, neighbors won over by Tomas’s persistence and integrity,