2023-05-17
3 分钟Reporter David Weinberg spent years following one California Mojave desert town’s transformation from a city of prisons to a city of pot. And it worked... Until it didn’t. From Crooked Media, this is Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto. Coming June 7th wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2014, Adelanto, California, a small town in the Mojave Desert, was so broke, there was talk of dissolving itself completely.
Then along came John Bug Woodard Junior, a 63 year old gun toting conservative hippie who had a wild idea to save Adelanto.
I got on old Google.
I did a little googling, and I found out the secret.
The secret, according to Bug via Google, was cannabis.
I've heard those cannabis shops make a lot of money.
Bug's plan was to make Adelanto the first city in California to legalize commercial cannabis cultivation, which, it turns out, is a very difficult and complicated thing to pull off.
It's hard to overstate how much riskier and more dangerous the cannabis industry is because of the inconsistency between federal and state law.
But still, Bug persisted, and his idea started to catch on with the rest of the city.
The wheels are in motion.
Ain't nobody getting in the way.
I don't care if you're the sheriff.
I don't care if you're the governor.
I don't care who you are.
What started as a simple solution to revive this small town would lead to a series of backroom dealings and a shocking scandal that would spread far beyond the city limits.
I knew that cannabis was going to become just absolutely a fucking battleground for the wealthy.
I seen that duffel bag of money come in, and it didn't go to the bank.
Adelanto is a spanish word that means progress.
But Atalanto California has a history of outsiders with big plans that often seem too good to be true, and of its leaders taking advantage of the citizens and ending up on the wrong side of the law.
To developing news.