Farmer Tom Lauerman: From a 1999 Raid to Teaching the CDC About Cannabis

Farmer Tom Lauerman started growing cannabis at 13 in San Diego, got arrested at 16 in the Ocean Beach pier parking lot, and has spent every decade since fighting for the plant. On this episode of Unscripted Cannabis, host Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay) hands him the floor, and Tom walks through his whole history in one sitting: the collective, the raid, the farmers markets, and the two days he spent teaching federal scientists what a cannabis farm actually looks like. He runs Farmer Tom Organics, where he offers consulting for cannabis and hemp farms.

The full written recap is at Farmer Tom Lauerman: The Seed That Started It All.

In this episode

• Shelter from the Storm, the Prop 215 collective Tom grew for in San Diego: about 20 patients, $50 a month if you could afford it, and a jar filled once a week on the honor system. "It was a true collective model."
• The 1999 raid on his San Diego collective (it started with his dog nipping at a neighbor's fence), why the collective kept a media list (a lesson from Brownie Mary), and how NORML's lawyers and a courthouse protest got the charges shelved. The case led to San Diego's first medical marijuana task force.
• Moving to Oregon's Applegate Valley, then a five-acre former nursery outside Portland on the Washington side, where he cleaned the soil with pumpkins before growing.
• Washington's medical marijuana farmers markets, the magazine covers that came out of them, and lobbying in Olympia while the state wrote its legalization rules.
• The live extraction demo he organized for TV news that helped change the state's mind about concentrates: "If you don't regulate and tax, people are gonna continue to blow themselves up."
• Hosting CDC and NIOSH scientists on his farm in 2015 for a union-requested health hazard evaluation, including the CyberGlove study that produced the carpal tunnel warning for trimmers. The Lund Report covered the study.
• Teaching cannabis courses at Clark College, training over 300 farmers through his Hemp Farming Academy, and working as an expert witness in a large Kentucky hemp case.
• Why he turned down a deal that would have owned his name and face, and why he answers "exit plan?" questions the way he does.
• His role as a San Diego cannabis social equity applicant and the county buffer rules, where he walked staff through the pros and cons and the county went with his 600-foot recommendation over the 1,200 to 1,500 feet some cities wanted.

"Once you get arrested, the worst thing has happened and you really become an advocate for the plant at that point." - Farmer Tom Lauerman

"Being an advocate's more about being an educator." - Farmer Tom Lauerman

"There's still a lot of us in the trenches fighting." - Farmer Tom Lauerman

Connect

• Farmer Tom: the Farmer Tom Organics website. He's Farmer Tom Lauerman on Instagram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Your host, Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay): mrgudwudz.com and gudwudz.com. Meet him on his own episode.

Tom has agreed to come back for a part two with listener questions.