Smokin' Design Features Futuristic Pot Plant

Laboratory-like Oakland facility aims to supply med marijuana dispensaries
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2010 3:02 AM CDT
Updated Oct 5, 2010 3:30 AM CDT
Smokin' Design Features Futuristic Pot Plant
   (AP)

Imagine a world where all anxieties are tranquilized, all boredom amused, thanks in part to a sterilized, hermetically sealed, blindingly white California marijuana growing operation. That's the kind of laboratory-like plant Oakland nonprofit organization Gropech has designed. The 60,000-square-foot facility would nurture 30,000 plants (worth $50 million a year) on three levels in a squeaky clean environment intended to deliver perfect product to medical marijuana users, notes a video of the proposed operation created by Gropech.

The super warehouse could supply medical marijuana dispensaries across the state—once it gets a permit from the Oakland City Council. Gropech aims to create a safe, sanitized method of growing dope in an unregulated industry that's currently supplying pot of questionable quality to many ill users with compromised immune systems, points out Gropech co-founder Derek Peterson. "A lot of cannabis sold by medical dispensaries is grown by farmers—and I hesitate to use the term farmers—in basements and garages," he tells the Atlantic. Click here to view a video of the operation.
(More Oakland stories.)

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