From Farm to Pharmacy

Ten spectacular miles south of the UC Santa Barbara campus is the beachside community of Carpinteria. A throwback to the easygoing, sedate beach towns of the 50s and 60s. Problem is, some people say, it stinks.

Stinks as in cannabis stink. Skunky stink. Stink that permeates the classrooms of  the local high school. That stink has turned Carpinteria into an internally divided community in the national spotlight.

Story//George Thurlow ‘73  Photos//Courtesy Autumn Brands

In the middle, a handful of Gauchos who see cannabis as a future agricultural powerhouse in California and its beneficial attributes as a potentially huge new medical revolution.

Tina Fanuchi-Frontado, ’90, relaxes in the living room of her country style home on the outskirts of Carpinteria. For decades she has been a leader in the non-profit world of Santa Barbara County. Her resume reads like a Who’s Who of charitable organizations, from health to education to community festivals.

That experience and the personal pain she went through with the loss of a brother to AIDS, her mother to cancer and her father to heart disease led her to found KopSun, a medical marijuana resource.

It has also led her to take the lead in the community debate over marijuana. She has become a formidable advocate and its champion.

“Most people think this is about joints,” she explained. “That is so passe.”

“This new legal industry now offers those suffering a variety of ways to utilize the benefits of cannabis, from tinctures, to edibles to balms to pain patches and much more.”

It was a lesson she learned from treating her father who went through the entire pharmacopeia of drugs for pain relief as he struggled with heart disease that left him in agony and with anxiety and insomnia. “I learned how to dose cannabis with my dad. It made his life so much better.” Her brother and her mother found that cannabis provided immediate benefits. (Her mother was something of a legend in Carpinteria. She owned and operated the town weekly newspaper.)

KopSun now holds regular seminars called Leaf Learning to educate the community on the benefits of CBD, THC, CBG and CBN as well as the difference between hemp and cannabis CBD.

Fanucchi-Frontado told the local Santa Barbara News Press, “Those who have cared for family will go to hell and back to find the best treatment. We spend days and weeks and months going to doctor appointments and wanting nothing more than to provide comfort. I found it infuriating when we finally tried medicinal marijuana that it was some alternative treatment. It should have been the first choice.”
 

The Gaucho Growers

The county of Santa Barbara now holds 30 percent of all cannabis cultivation licenses in the state of California. The Carpinteria Valley is now the home to 9 percent of California licenses eclipsing even Humboldt County, long the center of illegal marijuana harvesting. At three to five crops a year from each greenhouse, the potential revenues to the region and to state and county tax  coffers is immense.

Ironically, much of the cannabis is now being grown by fifth and sixth generation Dutch growers who came to this valley decades ago to grow cut flowers. But the cut flower industry was decimated by cheaper imports from South America and so the conservative Dutch turned to cannabis.

Walk across the street from Fanuchhi-Frontado’s house and you enter one of the medium size cannabis greenhouse enterprises operated by longtime Dutch growers and two UC Santa Barbara graduates, Autumn ‘04 and Abe ‘02 Shelton.

Inside the opaque walled greenhouses, which are open to natural sunlight, are row upon row of cannabis plants. From tiny cuttings, to mature flower heavy plants, to the a small grove of the “mothers,” from which clones are cut, the operation is smooth and efficient. A small crew is harvesting plants in one area while bud trimmers work in another.

The Shelton partners, the Brands, are fifth and sixth generation growers and as Autumn notes, “we grow cannabis similar to Gerber daisies.” She adds that the Autumn Brand operation is pesticide free and that all the cannabis produced here is subject to rigorous state testing. It also is tracked, with each cannabis plant bearing a bar code to track it from greenhouse to retailer.

Growing cannabis in the Carpinteria Valley has huge potential. As many as three to five crops a year can be coaxed from the greenhouses. But unlike other types of farming, cannabis has complicated and thorny issues surrounding its production.

Their cannabis is sold in shops throughout California and carries such rich monikers as Banana Dawg, Chocolate Hash Berry and Dream Walker. The varieties contain various mixes of sativa or indica strains, which produce different types of highs. The most popular strains among Autumn Brand buyers: Strawberry Banana and Sour Diesel. Autumn’s favorite: Chem Dawg.

Growing cannabis in the Carpinteria Valley has huge potential. As many as three to five crops a year can be coaxed from the greenhouses. But unlike other types of farming, cannabis has complicated and thorny issues surrounding its production. Running a normal business is challenging,” explained Autumn, who majored in psychology and Italian at UCSB. “But running an agricultural business in a new and developing industry that is highly regulated, still writing and interpreting the rules at the state and local levels, federally illegal, and developing a brand and consumer packaging product that is limited to only specific California retailers is beyond difficult.” 

She concluded, “This is by no means for the light at heart.”

Like other California jurisdictions Santa Barbara County is trying to determine how many acres of cannabis should be approved, where it should be grown and then how it should be sold. Because Carpinteria has become one of the fastest growing cannabis regions in the state, the public controversy over land use has been intense.

Much of the criticism is focused on yet another Gaucho, county supervisor Das Williams ’05 MES , who helped write the county pot ordinance.

But Fanucchi-Frontado is adamant that cannabis is going to become a revolutionary health product as well as a product that will soon have the same type of consumer cachet as Napa Valley wine. 

“You don’t want Santa Barbara County to be the “Pot Capital of the World,”” she explained. But you do want Santa Barbara cannabis to get “top dollar.”

All three Gauchos agree that their time at UCSB shaped them into pioneers and risk takers. “It was the best experience of my life,” said Fanucchi-Frontado. “It is not about what your major was,” added Autumn. “It’s about the education itself. UCSB taught me to organize my time and responsibilities. Most importantly, it taught me how to think on micro and macro levels.”

In the years after Prohibition, states, counties and cities grappled with how to license and sell alcohol. For decades there was a hodgepodge of rules, from dry counties to state operated liquor stores. 

Today craft beers, trendy wines and locally distilled spirits entice consumers to sip and enjoy.

Cannabis will take a while to get right. In the meantime, Autumn Brands motto will greet a new generation of consumers: “Inhale, Exhale, Smile.”