Lifestyle: Damian Marley "Frees Up" a former prison as a Pot Farm

Damian Marley has announced that he, in partnership with Ocean Grown Extracts, is converting a former 77,000 square foot California State prison into a cannabis grow space that will cultivate medical marijuana for state dispensaries.
"Many people sacrificed so much for the herb over the years who got locked up," says Marley, 38, noting the poetic justice of turning a prison that once housed non-violent drug offenders into a cannabis cultivation facility. "If this [venture] helps people and it's used for medicinal purposes and inspires people, it's a success."

Damian Marley Opening Colorado Weed Dispensary

By that measure, the prison-to-pot farm initiative is already a triumph. With their purchase of the Claremont Custody Center in Coalinga, CA for $4.1 million, Marley and his partners instantly relieved the economically-challenged Central Valley town of its roughly $3.3 million debt. The venture will also generate 100 jobs -- in an economically stagnant region plagued by an ongoing, historic drought and descending oil prices, both of which have damaged the region's traditional farming and oil industries -- and will generate an estimated million dollars in annual tax revenues for Coalinga.

The new business began "in a very organic way," says Dan Dalton, Marley's longtime manager. "Cannabis is something that's around Damian every day with friends, family and with his Rastafarian faith. We've watched people who have sacrificed their lives for it. That injustice has motivated us to be advocates as well as knowing that there are healing properties in cannabis."

Marley today also announced the introduction of Speak Life, a proprietary strain of cannabis he created with Ocean Grown. The strain is based on the company's lauded OG Kush, but altered genetically with the help of a Ph.D trained chemist at who helped cultivate the unique breed.
"The OG has always been my favorite," says Marley, who met with the chemist while making Speak Life. "When they introduced this strain of OG I really loved it and loved its consistency." The bud is a hybrid made of 70 percent indica and 30 percent sativa, and is hand-watered and trimmed.
Marley and his partners are prepared for the "green rush" should California's Proposition 64 -- which would legalize cannabis for adult recreational use -- passes in November, as the polls seem to indicate. And California isn't alone in reconsidering marijuana's legality, either. Voters in seven other states will choose whether to legalize recreational and/or medical marijuana -- Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada could approve the use of recreational pot; Arkansas, Florida, and North Dakota will decide on legalizing medical marijuana, which a status the plant has been assigned in 25 states and the District of Columbia.

A Little Gem from Down Under: The Hard Word

For those of us largely fed on myopic Hollywood fare, this 2002 gem from Australia is a rare and welcome treat. That fact that it effortlessly blends a bunch of conventional genres (heist thriller, prison drama, social commentary, psychological exercise) without tiring the viewer is further to its credit.

Three brothers, Dale (Guy Pearce), Shane (joel Edgerton) and Mal (Damien Richardson) are mysteriously sprung from jail on the orders of the state governor. Their new-found freedom procvesto be short-lived however, and they discover that they are pawns in a game of greed and deception (what else?) that also involves Dale's wife (Rachel Griffith) and a crooked lawyer (more on him later.)

First-time director Scott Roberts shows a deft hand in bringing his own script to life. Both violence and a considerable level of raunch are delivered without the lurid edge that often attends the features from the big-budget guys. Its almost done matter-of-fact.... almost.

The cast is superb, but three really stand out. Pearce, as the unofficial but unquestioned leader is the kind of career criminal to almost give the "profession" a good name; he blends gut instinct with literary appreciation and accepts that violence is a part of his chosen life, but without courting it. Griffith, as his wife Carol, is equally smart, feisty, and strong-willed and guided by her own moral compass, which entails sleeping with Frank (Robert Taylor), the greedy and amoral lawyer and fixer who's been stringing everybody along for his own ends. The few scenes in which the three of them are together are really priceless.  

By film's end, everyone has pretty much gotten what's coming to them, and at the risk of giving the final scene away, I'll say that if you're looking for any signs of reform amongst the brothers, you'd best look elsewhere, like to the skies. If you're looking for a smart, taut, pull-no-punches thriller, then look Down Under. This one's it.