Care Giver..or Drug Dealer?

purklize said:

Bob I don't think you are accounting for your hours properly. I also think "yeah, it'll only take me 10 minutes to change those buckets" and then 3 hours later the wife is asking me wtf I'm doing because I'm still not finished.



So you were SELLING for PROFIT?



Yeah pretty much.

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Yup, I was making a small profit. Got my meds free, didn't need anyone's plant count, made about $400 a month after expenses to grow. Figure that works out to about about $15.00 per hour...now that p2p is deemed illegal, I've cut back to growing just for myself...

Sure, people can buy into all kinds of complicated hydro systems..I know guys that DO spend hours and hours of time on their grow. But it is because they continually have to fix the stuff that they fucked up. A good grower, that knows what he is doing, doesn't spend that much time on the grow.

The damn weed will grow outdoors with no tending at all. If you can provide correct environmentals, then indoor growing isn't much different. Water every few days and leave them alone.

Yes, set up is expensive to do it right. I've probably got over 4 grand in equipment for a 12 plant grow. But now its pretty much just bulbs a couple times a year, bag of roots organic, worm castings and promix here and there..$25 worth of guano every 6 months.

CharlieBud said:

As much as someone is willing to pay them.

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"Whatever the market will bear"

There is nothing wrong with selling for profit. It's what you do with said profit that matters.

alotaball said:

THis guy is a trolling idiot .. Gardner really.. were not talking about cutting grass .. If someone doesnt like the cost.. get it somewhere else.. I can think of 50 places to obtain meds..

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Exactly. Cutting lawns is much harder work..might even break a sweat.

Bob, if you've invested 4k in grow equipment, how many ounces have you sold? How much did you sell each ounce for? Did you actually make your money back?

You are flat out wrong when you say good gardeners don't spend much time on their grow. Lucky and bad gardeners don't spend much time. Good ones will spend at least an hour a day checking their plants for pests and any other problems that might appear, and a LOT of time (as in 40 hours+ a week) battling pests diligently when they do appear. Hydroponic systems actually save work from my experience and make problems easier to fix than in soil.

Growing is harder work than cutting lawns coming from someone who has done both. Bob, you just have never experienced any difficulties in your grow. It's like an insurance executive saying "wow, this is the best business idea ever! We just sit here and they give us money for doing nothing!" because he is so naive and new to the field that he doesn't realize hurricanes do in fact strike Florida sometimes and most of that cash will be lost the next time one makes landfall.

Bottom line guys, is that in Michigan the p2p ruling was to STOP so called caregivers from profiteering. If p2p were to be legal again, I could easily provide quality meds at $100 a zip, and make a nice little 400 a month, while actually providing top shelf meds at a very reasonable cost.

Cg's are pretty much screwed in Michigan too. Now that they can only distribute to their signed patients. The sad part of this whole thing, is that patients and true caregivers suffer, while the guys growing for profiteer reasons, just continue on their way with less competition.

If it's so easy to make so much money growing, why aren't more people doing it? If it was so easy, there would be thousands of people doing it, and the market would be so flooded it would be impossible to sell. Obviously, you are missing something.

bob harris said:

The sad part of this whole thing, is that patients and true caregivers suffer, while the guys growing for profiteer reasons, just continue on their way with less competition.

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This is what happens when the government "fixes" things it should not ever mettle in.

purklize said:

Bob, if you've invested 4k in grow equipment, how many ounces have you sold? How much did you sell each ounce for? Did you actually make your money back?

You are flat out wrong when you say good gardeners don't spend much time on their grow. Lucky and bad gardeners don't spend much time. Good ones will spend at least an hour a day checking their plants for pests and any other problems that might appear. Hydroponic systems actually save work from my experience and make problems easier to fix than in soil.

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I'm not going to guess at how many ounces that I have given patients for a small donation. But yes, I certainly was able to get payback for equipment before p2p changed. The patients that I helped were almost all from my Parkinson's support group. (that's why I grow the strain that I do..need thcv for Parkinson's)

I have great luck in soil...never grown in anything else. Not saying hydro is bad, just that I prefer true organics, and have had no issues with it. Done properly, you don't even have to ph your water..just tap water that is allowed to dechlorinate.

In organics, at least from my experience, people get in trouble when they concentrate on the plants rather than the soil. Get a healthy micro beastie population and a good soil recipe, it's pretty much a water only proposition. I can check for bugs in seconds, doesn't take long. Shake a branch over some white paper..you'll find bugs if you've got them. Treating bugs is quick and easy, so long as you find them before they have taken over. If you find webs, and that's your first indication of mites, well all I can say is what have you been doing with all that time in the garden.

Have I bee "lucky"..maybe..mites is the worst thing that has ever happened to me...But I'm careful too. Don't show off the grow to anyone (don't want them bringing in hitchhikers) Tend my garden after I have showered,,not in the same clothes I just went fishing in...simple stuff.

Good growers do make it look easy, and I guess you could say they are lucky...though I think it has more to do with being careful.

purklize said:

If it's so easy to make so much money growing, why aren't more people doing it? If it was so easy, there would be thousands of people doing it, and the market would be so flooded it would be impossible to sell. Obviously, you are missing something.

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Oh, there are thousands of people doing it. And the markets are flooded. It has gotten impossible to sell, unless you break the law. Cannabis is the most sought after illicit substance in the world..the demand will always exceed the production on a world wide scale.

Not only that, but the tons of mid grade crap that these "professional" growers were flooding the dispensaries with, did drive down the price of quality meds. Prior to the p2p ruling, I COULD take a couple oz's to a dispensary and receive a donation for my meds.

I don't rely on growing for anything but my own meds, but it would be nice to be able to legally transfer what I don't need again.

And if that happened, it would be nice to see the distribution system (whatever that may be) have quality meds.

I fought root aphids and it was 40 hours of work a week for a solid month. I was up till 8am every day flushing out the soil trying to kill the bastards. Some pests are very hard to kill.

It's easy to sell, people can still sign up patients.

It's great you offer meds cheap to people in your support group and I admire that. I just don't think it's right to judge people for asking higher prices, people who may have had problems that took a lot of work to correct like my own, or who are in desperate need of money for one reason or another (paying medical bills, making the rent, buying some decent food to eat... with unemployment as high as it is, and only min wage work around, these can be difficult to take care of).

purklize said:

I fought root aphids and it was 40 hours of work a week for a solid month. I was up till 8am every day flushing out the soil trying to kill the bastards. Some pests are very hard to kill.

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I have heard they are horrible. I'm lucky in that I have never had anything that severe. If that happened to me, my inclination would be to trash everything, sterilize and start over. That would cost some plant cycles, but seems the surest way to get rid of them..

Best defense against bugs is to not get them in the first place. Limit the times anyone goes in the garden, including yourself, Don't bring home clones from unknown sources. Stuff like that. But I suppose that bugs can get into any garden if you get unlucky.

bowlfullofbliss said:

This whole conversation about judging people who grow for whatever reason they do, and how they do it. What ever happened to minding your own fucking business.

Sick of this stupid argument......even the people that hung in here have left because of this bs.

No one bitched like a bunch of chatty Cathy's about growers putting out dank before we got legalized on the State level....now all of the sudden there are more people on their white horses riding in and telling everyone why they suck and are now all of a sudden drug dealers.....FUCK OFF.

I grow for the right reason, but I don't judge people for making ends......

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Amen!!!!!!!

They got into my garden from a bag of organic potting soil. I will never make that mistake again. I was new to growing (cannabis, not plants in general), had gone 10 years without a single pest indoors, then suddenly I had two spotted mites (killed them easily), fungus gnats (killed them easily), thrips, root aphids (horrible), and then I got russet mites (probably from a clone), which proceeded to ravage my entire garden over 2-3 months and cost me all my genetics which I had spent quite a while getting together. Russet mites cannot be eradicated without tearing down the whole grow, I eventually came up with a relatively easy way to eradicate root aphids but the russets are another story entirely. Either way I know these disasters don't just hit patients but hit caregivers too, and markets are affected by these events, just like an insurance pool is influenced by hurricanes, it drives prices up.

realize there are a few assholes who get legalized to grow a couple dozen plants for "patients" they could care less about, they put $ before quality & grow bs in mediocre environments & sell all w/ Hopes for much profit. Those are the ones I judge.

purklize said:

They got into my garden from a bag of organic potting soil. I will never make that mistake again. I was new to growing (cannabis, not plants in general), had gone 10 years without a single pest indoors, then suddenly I had two spotted mites (killed them easily), fungus gnats (killed them easily), thrips, root aphids (horrible), and then I got russet mites (probably from a clone), which proceeded to ravage my entire garden over 2-3 months and cost me all my genetics which I had spent quite a while getting together. Russet mites cannot be eradicated without tearing down the whole grow, I eventually came up with a relatively easy way to eradicate root aphids but the russets are another story entirely. Either way I know these disasters don't just hit patients but hit caregivers too, and markets are affected by these events, just like an insurance pool is influenced by hurricanes, it drives prices up.

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I can agree with that. Just like frost on the cherry trees..crop lost. But that is a known hazard going in. But I think that if someone has problems over and over again, it's probably more related to how careful they are. The bugs almost always have to be transported in...can happen in the bag of soil..and that would suck.

I never switch strains..that helps too..no clones coming in. I don't know anyone that can swich strains all the time and grow "top shelf" meds..good maybe, but not the shitzzz. Growing a strain over and over, especially in soil, lets you zero in the "zone" for that strain. Not just what it likes in its soil mix, but lighting schedules, temps, co2 levels and humidity.

It's what causes the difference that you see on testing reports. There may be 5 "jack hereer" grows listed, and they range from 12% thc to 22% thc.......a lot of "quality" lies in the hand of the grower.

RawBudzski said:

realize there are a few assholes who get legalized to grow a couple dozen plants for "patients" they could care less about, they put $ before quality & grow bs in mediocre environments & sell all w/ Hopes for much profit. Those are the ones I judge.

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Those are the ones I'm ragging on. I have no issue with someone that is truly care giving.

i agree dont judge people for why they grow. 20k every 2 months, before expenses, which are considerable, is not really that much, compared to say a doctor or pharmacist. and an oz per patient per month is 12*6=72 ozs from the 108, not 12. this doesnt leave too much for the people he has to find to buy his weed, and where i am, 200 an oz is really good weed, most people dont even buy that much. and his patients wont go wanting, an oz a month is a great deal. sounds like a legit guy.

mufastaa said:

i agree dont judge people for why they grow. 20k every 2 months, before expenses, which are considerable, is not really that much, compared to say a doctor or pharmacist. and an oz per patient per month is 12*6=72 ozs from the 108, not 12. this doesnt leave too much for the people he has to find to buy his weed, and where i am, 200 an oz is really good weed, most people dont even buy that much. and his patients wont go wanting, an oz a month is a great deal. sounds like a legit guy.

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Thing is...how does a grower compare to a Doctor or Pharmacist in fairness of pay? It's a full time gardener position at best...why should it pay executive wages? Kind of takes the "care" out of Caregiver, doesn't it?

Care giver + giver of care not Care profiteer..the whole structure of the word, and the sentence it is in, Innfer, in the most common of language, that care giving is done out of desire to care for the patient...a labor of love, that yes, you can make a little from, but not executive wages...please..for growing 72 plants?

No one is asking for executive wages. 25k/year is janitor pay. 50k/year is auto worker pay. Executive wages would be 250k to 250 million.