Baby Boomers and retirees are increasingly turning to growing marijuana legally

[superjoint]

Baby Boomers and retirees are increasingly turning to growing marijuana legally as a great business – particularly in California and Colorado and Rhode Island. Small wonder: The start up costs can be low, as little as $7,500, profit potential is great and, oddly enough, the wording of the California law appears to give an edge to older people starting these businesses (more later).

As owners of houses left empty by kids moving out but unsellable in the current economic climate, boomers, retired or not, often possess the critical infrastructure to become marijuana growers – empty unused indoor space. They also have the time to become growers and the financial motivation to jump into the business as a result of devastated retirement funds and a bleak employment outlook facing aging boomers.

The $7500 covers the estimated cost of starting a small garden — for training, equipment, seeds etc. Under CA law, you can grow 18 plants per year for each physician- recommended patient who has identified you as their “primary caregiver”. With each plant often producing more than $5,000-$10,000 in revenue annually, the profit potential is … well you do the math. These numbers are compilations of estimates provided by a number of industry guesstimators and total income can vary widely by how you sell the stuff. But it is clear that the numbers and demand for Medical Marijuana are drawing all manner of older people into the business.

“In the last few years there has been an upward swing in people coming into the business, in both age and affluence,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the DC-based National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) “They are either retirees or boomers seeing a chance for mid-life career change and grabbing it.”

Just how many older folks are now growing marijuana in their children’s old bedrooms? No figures are available but apparently many more than you would think. The Unruly Mob spoke to three different groups involved in educating people entering the Medical Marijuana business and all reported a significant upswing in the number of older people entering the business. Several said more than 50% of their students were in this demographic.

One company selling information about the Medical Marijuana Business has created a “Granny Grower Guide.”

“Discover why thousands of retirees and other people living on fixed incomes are growing marijuana to pay the bills. You never had a job so good,” its promotional material says.
California was the first state in the country to make growing, selling and using Medical Marijuana legal but today a total of 13 states with more than 25% of the US population have adopted Medical Marijuana laws. But California and Colorado have been the only states to permit the sale of Medical Marijuana and Rhode Island is about to become the third. The other states permit growing and sharing Medical Marijuana with people for whom it has been prescribed but no money can change hands for the “medicine.”

The oddity in the CA law that appears to favor older people is the provision that growers and dispensers of Medical Marijuana can provide for physician-recommended people who are “known” to them. Nathan Goodman, co-founder of MedicalMarijuanaEducation.com , said that just as a function of age, older people are more likely to know people suffering from the conditions for which doctors can prescribe Medical Marijuana. These include such age-related illnesses as arthritis; cancer; chronic pain; glaucoma; migraines; persistent muscle spasms, AIDS, among many others.

Medical Marijuana companies with storefront dispensaries are the most potentially profitable because they are vertically integrated from growing to selling. Most grow some of their product and buy the rest from legal growers at half the retail price.

However, these companies have drawn the most scrutiny and ire. Municipal al authorities have been critical of what they see as some flagrant attempts to reach out to general public rather than limiting themselves to sales to legitimate Medical Marijuana users. San Diego recently raided and closed all 43 dispensaries in that municipality claiming none were in compliance with state and local laws. Pro-Cannabis activists see the San Diego action as another example of the municipalities themselves trying to circumvent both the law and the will of the people.

Scott Rosenfeld, a dispensary veteran and founder of MedicalMarijuanaEducationandTraining.com, says he advises senior Medical Marijuana growers to avoid the dispensary business altogether. Instead he suggests that growers build their businesses as Home Delivery Services for Medical Marijuana users they know or get to know. They would not have the foot traffic of the retail store fronts but neither would they likely draw the ire of local authorities.

CA law requires that Medical Marijuana providers to be what the CA law calls “primary caregivers” meaning they provide health assistance to Medical Marijuana users. And a recent Santa Barbara Court decision, called the Mentch decision, determined that simply calling oneself a primary caregiver because you sell Medical Marijuana does not constitute actually being a primary caregiver.

This has left CA Medical Marijuana dispensaries scrambling to offer other associated health services such as massage and yoga. NORML’s St. Pierre pointed to the Harborside Health Center in Oakland as the model for Medical Marijuana dispensaries of the future. The center offers aroma therapy, yoga, Rolfing, massage, psychological counseling, AA meetings, and even addiction counseling as well as selling Medical Marijuana. The day of the Medical Marijuana coffee shop is over, he said.

To comply with Mentch, Rosenfeld suggests that in addition to growing and selling Medical Marijuana, Medical Marijuana Grower/Home Delivery services should also provide such other care services, like shopping for their patients or even homecare services. To be a primary caregiver in California, you do not have to be a licensed healthcare professional. You do have to have an ongoing relationship with your patient, however.

“If I were a senior, I would definitely go the Home Delivery route,” Rosenfeld says. “You’d make less money than a dispensary which gets lots of walk-in traffic but it’s a lot less hassle and you are truly helping people in a personal way.”

Still, the attractive profit potential is luring more affluent seniors into broader based variations of the business. “We are seeing a whole new level of people who are starting a whole new phase of their life. They are well capitalized and they are ready to go,’ said NORML’s St. Pierre.

Deciding what form you want your business to take is one matter. Growing marijuana good enough to compete in a competitive market is another.

A former Hollywood Writer/Producer who entered the Medical Marijuana business at age 63 advises newcomers to read the six books listed below and then to enroll in the Oaksterdam University classes on Medical Marijuana before beginning to set up your garden.

Oaksterdam University, the Harvard of Medical Marijuana education, offers a semester-long curriculum of 2-hour classes one day a week for the unHarvard-like tuition of $500. Classes include: politics, horticulture 1 & 2, cooking (of Marijuana confections), budgeting, distribution, dispensary management, cannabusiness, and advanced legal issues. Business is so brisk that Oaksterdam is moving into a new 30,000sf facility in Oakland and has opened satellite campuses in Los Angeles and Sebastopol.

Still, after doing all this and buying the equipment and seeds, you are faced with growing Medical Marijuana people want. And that is not so easy, says the Hollywood writer producer. “Some are under the impression that cannabis cultivation is a snap: you spit on the ground and throw a seed and come back some time later and harvest a pound of Grade AAA cannabis.

“On the contrary,” he said.

Here are the books the Medical Marijuana grower recommends:
Marijuana Horticulture- the Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible,” by Jorge
Cervantes. (Generally considered to be the single authority)

Marijuana Medical Handbook, by Dale Gieringer, Ph.D., Ed Rosenthal, Gregory T. Carter, M.D.

Big Book of Buds Version 3, by Ed Rosenthal

Marijuana Garden Saver, by J.C. Stitch (edited by Ed Rosenthal)

Ask Ed, Marijuana Gold: Trash to Stash, by Ed Rosenthal

Marijuana Cooking Good Medicine Made Easy, by Bliss Cameron and Veronica Greene