It took awhile, then it hit me. I was walking down Carpinteria’s Cravens Lane, a k a Cannabis Row, past the tall green-draped chain-link fences, the acrid skunk stench, the surveillance cameras, and the don’t-mess-with-us signs. Around the corner on Foothill, I had seen an avocado orchard mowed down in two hours, verdant green acreage transformed into a moonscape, now home to Cresco, the billion-dollar cannabis player. Then it hit me.
If you worked in Miami in ’80s, like I did, you could feel it in the
air, at the beach, at the malls, at the law offices stacked vertically on
Brickell Avenue. A white blanket had settled over South Florida, corrupting
even the sidewalks. “In Miami you could refuse to take drugs. But whatever
you did, drugs would be part of your life,” wrote T.D. Allman in his opus,
Miami. “It’s on the table when
you settle up your bridge scores; it’s in the collection plate when you go to
church … and the money in every purse, however
coarse or dainty, is smeared with cocaine dust.”
Welcome to the new Santa Barbara — soon to be the Cannabis Capital of
the Universe! — if the reigning Board of Supervisors have their way.