{"id":15316,"date":"2019-04-18T18:15:15","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=15316"},"modified":"2019-12-16T20:05:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:05:58","slug":"washingtons-pot-industry-isnt-as-green-as-youd-think-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2019\/04\/washingtons-pot-industry-isnt-as-green-as-youd-think-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington’s Pot Industry Isn’t As Green As You’d Think"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"\"

Moe Ainsley, a grower with Kaya Collection, tends to marijuana plants at the company\u2019s Wacky Tabacky facility near Gold Bar. (Matt M. McKnight\/Crosscut)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Washington\u2019s pot is a bit more potent than the national average. And the state\u2019s teens are more likely to smoke marijuana than young people nationwide.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Although we have the same problems with marijuana as we do with liquor abuse, no blockbuster conclusions came from a recent report on Washington\u2019s marijuana universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a couple of somewhat unexpected environmental wrinkles from Washington\u2019s marijuana industry \u2014 both legal and illegal \u2014 also emerge in the second annual\u00a0look at the state’s experience<\/a>\u00a0since passage of a 2012 initiative allowing recreational pot sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marijuana growers and processors use 1.63 percent of the state\u2019s electricity, which is a lot, according to the report by the Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area \u2014 a combined effort by several federal, state and local government agencies. By way of comparison, all forms of lighting \u2014 in homes, commercial buildings and manufacturing \u2014\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0for just 7 to 11 percent of electrical consumption nationally. Or, as the report puts it, the power is enough for 2 million homes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The high power consumption stems from the heat lamps and the accompanying air conditioning for indoor marijuana growing operations. \u201cThey are exceedingly energy-consumptive,\u201d said\u00a0Steven Freng, manager for prevention and treatment for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.<\/span><\/p>\n

The carbon footprint, according to the report, equals that of about 3 million cars.<\/span><\/p>\n

And illegal pot\u00a0growers siphoned off 43.2 million gallons of water from streams and aquifers during the 2016 growing season \u2014 water that tribes, farmers and cities would otherwise use as carefully as possible, in part to protect salmon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sixty percent of Washington\u2019s illegal\u00a0pot\u00a0was grown on state-owned land in 2016.\u00a0That\u2019s because black-market growers tend to worry about gun-toting owners on private lands, according to Freng and Luci McKean, the organization’s deputy director. The black-market operations use the water during a roughly 120-day growing season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marijuana purchases have boomed in Washington. Legal marijuana sales were almost $1 billion in fiscal year 2016 and were on track to be about $1.5 billion in fiscal 2017, which ended June 30. As of February, the state had 1,121 licensed producers, 1,106 licensed processors and 470 licensed retailers.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Washington’s marijuana users are getting is above average in\u00a0potency.\u00a0According to the report, nationwide marijuana products average a THC percentage of 13.2 percent, while Washington state\u2019s THC average percentage was 21.6 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Teen use of marijuana has grown slightly.\u00a0Depending on how the numbers are crunched, marijuana use among Washington\u2019s\u00a0young adults and teens ranges from 2 to 5 percent above the national average. Five percent of Washingtonians age 18-to-25 use\u00a0pot\u00a0daily, slightly above the national average, the report said.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a survey cited in the report, 17 percent of high school seniors and 9 percent of high school sophomores have driven within three hours after smoking\u00a0pot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adult use before driving is still a fuzzy picture.\u00a0A third of Washingtonians arrested for driving under the influence had THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in their bloodstreams. One study found an increase in dead drivers with THC above the legal limit in their blood from 7.8 percent in 2013 to 12.8 percent in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAdults still don\u2019t understand the effects of impairment behind the wheel of a car,\u201d Freng said.<\/span><\/p>\n

McKean said that one major unknown is marijuana-laced edibles, which authorities believe have become a significant factor in THC-impaired drivers, but has not been studied enough to provide solid numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another major unknown, McKean and Freng said, is how marijuana consumption contributes to emergency room and hospital cases because the state hospitals have not agreed to release that data to government officials.<\/span><\/p>\n

This story has been updated since it first appeared to add a link to the report.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span>Source: <\/span>https:\/\/crosscut.com\/2017\/10\/washingtons-pot-industry-not-environmentally-friendly-marijuana<\/a> October 2017<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington\u2019s pot is a bit more potent than the national average. And the state\u2019s teens are more likely to smoke marijuana than young people nationwide. Although we have the same problems with marijuana as we do with liquor abuse, no blockbuster conclusions came from a recent report on Washington\u2019s marijuana universe. But a couple of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,68,82,89,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-economic","category-environment-drug-politics","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}