Once a month, the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Enthusiasts (SVCE), a nonprofit corporation, holds an open meeting on the patio at the Sonoma Grille on W. Napa Street, a block from the Sonoma Plaza. I have attended all but one of the meetings since they began last June.
There have been no big disputes, and for the most part there’s a sense of optimism, though some growers moan and groan because they can’t sell their crops. That’s what happens when there’s a glut on the market, as there has been over the past year.
Marijuana is cultivated from Cazadero and Cloverdale, to Petaluma and Bodega Bay. But nowhere are cannabis growers, dealers and manufacturers more effectively organized than in Sonoma Valley, which extends from Kenwood to San Pablo Bay and between the Mayacamas on one side and Sonoma Mountain on the other side.
In Sebastopol, growers have been meeting in public for several years, but attendance has recently waned, as has enthusiasm. In Sonoma Valley enthusiasm and membership have held steady. There are 62 members of SVCE.
In Sebastopol, meetings can be nebulous. In Sonoma, they’re businesslike, with discussion of practical matters such as dues and the mission of the organization, which is to make Sonoma Valley cannabis as well known nationally and internationally as Sonoma Pinot Noir.
SVCE aims to promote “responsible adult use.” The organization also wants to help change the image of the industry and remove the stigma that has been attached to it. No one gets stoned at SVCE meetings.
Part of the reason SVCE has been so successful is that it has the backing of big names in the wine industry, including Mike Benziger, a biodynamic farmer who helped put Benziger Family Wines on the map of California vineyards and wineries, and Phil Coturri who makes his own wines and manages dozens of organic vineyards in Sonoma and Napa.
Benziger’s daughter, Erinn, attends meetings as does Coturri’s son, Sam. The group includes members of at least two generations — parents as well as their offspring — who provide a sense of family and togetherness.
It helps that members of the organization can buy a glass of beer or wine inside Sonoma Grille and sip it during the outdoor meetings. Food is also available.
Ken Brown, who was twice the mayor of the town of Sonoma, is the president of SVCE. His wife, Jewel Mathieson, a cancer survivor, sits on the board of directors at the Sonoma Patient Group (SPG) on Cleveland Avenue in Santa Rosa, the oldest continuously operating dispensary in Sonoma County.
The SPG plans to open three new dispensaries in Sonoma County in the near future.
Mathieson attends meetings of the SVCE. “Look around at the people who are here,” she told me at the most recent meeting. “There are a lot of important people here.”
I looked and saw Erich Pearson from SPARC, the corporation that owns several dispensaries and several grow sites, all of them with permits. I saw Michael Coats, the owner of Coats Public Relations and SVCE’s vice president, and Mic Mercer, who hosts the Cannabis Hour on Tuesday nights on radio station KSVY, 91.3. The SVCE secretary is Jani Friedman.
Not everyone in the group has a big name and a reputation to go with it. There are two dozen or so regular guys who work in the industry and who have banded together under the assumption that belonging to a group can mean survival in difficult times. Men outnumber women four-to-one in SVCE.
At the September meeting, discussion focused on the topic of appellations, which are defined in large part by geography, but also by climate, soil, history and culture. The idea is to borrow from the wine industry and create an appellation for the cannabis industry in Sonoma.
In California, the Department of Food and Agriculture oversees appellations.
“The State of California will use the wine model,” Benziger predicted. “It won’t reinvent the wheel.”
Next on the agenda was the topic of elections and endorsements. The organization decided not to back any candidate, though individuals on their own initiative were encouraged to express support for anyone running for public office.
“We want to have power,” Coats said. For the time being, SVCE will tread lightly when it comes to politics, though there are plans to reach out to other organizations such as the Sonoma Ecology Center and create viable networks.
Ken Brown delivered good news. For the first time, it would be legal to grow marijuana, both indoors and outdoors, in the town of Sonoma. The limit: three plants. It’s not a lot, but it’s a start in a town where some elected officials, including veteran councilwoman Madolyn Agrimonti, have viewed cannabis as a dangerous drug.
“It’s one little step at a time,” said Gil Latimer, the founder of yet another organization, the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group, which lobbies for marijuana patients. Latimer added, “You always want more. You take what you get.”
Jonah Raskin, a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University, is the author of Marijuana: Dispatches from an American War, published in French as well as English, and shares story credit for the feature length pot film Homegrown.
