For These New York Farmers, Harvest Time Means High Times

In fields from Sag Harbor to Ithaca, a new crop ripened this fall: cannabis plants grown for recreational marijuana.

It was a longtime cash crop in the United States, as American as apple pie.

Cannabis sativa fields stretched from New England to Virginia even before the Revolutionary War, when the crop’s main product, hemp, was used in the production of rope, sails, paper and clothing.

George Washington grew it on his plantation. Thomas Jefferson came up with new ways of threshing the fibrous, fast-growing plant. Through the 19th century, the psychoactive drug derived from some varieties of the plant was often used in medicines and cure-alls that claimed to alleviate various conditions including rheumatism and melancholia.

The growing of cannabis was all but prohibited in the United States after 1937, when Congress, in response to rising anti-marijuana sentiment, passed the Marijuana Tax Act in an effort to regulate varieties of the plant containing high levels of the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. It was the start of an effective ban that has eased in recent years, as a result of gradual decriminalization, but is only now beginning to lift fully in many states.

Across New York, from Sag Harbor to Ithaca, farmers have lately been harvesting the first legal cannabis crop grown for recreational use in many decades. Some of them had been preparing for this moment even before March 2021, when New York became the 16th state to legalize recreational marijuana for people 21 and older. [Read More @ The NY Times]