Harborside Health Center continuously strives to be at the forefront of all aspects of the medical cannabis movement. In the current era of scarce, costly resources and global environmental degradation, it is becoming readily apparent that we can no longer remain ignorant of the full environmental price of our medicine. Doing the math, the benefits of outdoor - or sun-grown cannabis (as we prefer to call it) - vastly outweigh the artificial, resource-intensive methods of growing indoors.

The sun-grown cannabis of today is a much different medicine than it was even ten short years ago. The commercial production of cannabis was literally pushed into the shadows from the 1980s to the 1990s. Plants that had once flourished under California’s glorious sun were forced under the shade of Redwood trees and Manzanita bushes. Cultivators switched to indoor grows, where this incredible adaptive plant - with the potential to grow sixteen feet tall or more - was confined and restricted to a much smaller space.

Pricing can be a tricky issue for cannabis collectives. Several factors need to be considered and reconciled with each other, which include maintaining fairness to a wide range of patients (from low income to affluent), staff and growers; preventing diversion to the illegal market; covering operational expenses, while supporting the movement and community through charitable donations; responding to competitive pressures, and sustaining an emergency reserve.

Each collective handles them in their own way, but these decisions are never easy. They require a lot of thought and care, discussion and debate, and ultimately must reflect the values and beliefs of the collective. It does not mean our strategy is right and others are wrong, it simply means that our strategy reflects our particular ideals.