Mr Gudwudz (Just Jay) sits down with Farmer Tom Lauerman of Farmer Tom Organics.
Mr Gudwudz opened by calling Farmer Tom “closer to godfatherly when it comes to cannabis and hemp,” then handed him the floor. Tom used it to tell his whole story in one sitting: growing at 13 in San Diego, an arrest at 16, a Prop 215 collective, a raid in 1999, the Washington farmers markets, two days teaching federal scientists on his farm, and the work he is doing in San Diego County today. As Mr Gudwudz put it at the end, the introduction was an entire episode by itself.
An arrest at 16 made him an advocate
Tom was a landscaper as a kid and started growing at 13, with seeds coming across the border into San Diego. At 16 he was caught in a sting in the Ocean Beach pier parking lot after a surf session, holding what he calls “a couple Thai sticks.” That arrest set the direction for everything after.
“Once you get arrested, the worst thing has happened and you really become an advocate for the plant at that point.”
Farmer Tom Lauerman
Shelter from the Storm, a true collective
After Prop 215 passed, Tom grew for a San Diego collective called Shelter from the Storm. It had about 20 patients living with cancer, AIDS, arthritis, glaucoma, PTSD and chronic pain. Nobody bought weed there. You paid $50 a month if you could afford it, came once a week, and filled your jar on the honor system. Members shared meals and supported each other. “It was a true collective model,” Tom said, and Mr Gudwudz summed it up as “more community than commercial.”
The 1999 raid, and why they kept a media list
In 1999 the collective was raided after Tom’s dog nipped at a neighbor’s dog through the fence and the neighbor called the police. They were ready. From Brownie Mary’s case they had learned that if the media is there, the police have to play by the rules, so they kept media lists, and Tom’s wife, the collective’s nurse practitioner, started calling reporters on a cordless phone while the raid was under way. NORML provided free lawyers, the collective organized a protest outside the courthouse on the day of trial, and the charges were set aside. The case also led San Diego to form its first medical marijuana task force.
From Oregon to the Washington farmers markets
Tired of being followed by police, Tom and his wife moved to Williams, Oregon, in the Applegate Valley, then to a five-acre former nursery across the river from Portland, on the Washington side. The property came with 500-foot greenhouses and 70,000 landscape plants to sell off, and Tom cleaned the soil with rounds of pumpkins before he grew anything. When Washington ran medical marijuana farmers markets, he sold there, and the markets put him on magazine covers because that was where the action was.
Being an advocate means being an educator
While Washington wrote its legalization rules, Tom spent a lot of time in Olympia. Butane hash oil explosions were in the news, and the state was leaning toward banning all concentrates. Working with KOMO News, Tom brought top extraction people together for live demonstrations: an open blast done the right way outside, a closed-loop system indoors, plus bubble hash, water hash, RSO and CO2 extraction. His message was that if you don’t regulate and tax, people keep blowing themselves up. Within a week, he said, the state changed course and made concentrates legal.
“Being an advocate’s more about being an educator.”
Farmer Tom Lauerman
Teaching the CDC on a cannabis farm
That attention led a union to ask Tom to take part in a federal health hazard evaluation. On his first call with 10 CDC agents, he asked where their information came from. The answer was YouTube. So in August 2015 six CDC scientists spent two days on his farm, and Tom brought in labs, extractors and equipment makers to show them the whole picture. They came back in October for three days of harvesting, bucking and trimming, and fitted the trimmers with a CyberGlove. The study produced a warning that trimmers can develop carpal tunnel from hours of trimming. The Lund Report covered the study. Tom says he is still friends with the scientists, and one of them calls him “the seed that started it all.”
Teacher, expert witness and social equity applicant
Tom has taught cannabis courses at Clark College, trained more than 300 farmers through his Hemp Farming Academy, grown at the scale of 50 acres and 58,000 plants, and served as an expert witness in a large Kentucky hemp case. He sits on the American Council of Cannabis Medicine’s committee on plant medicine, seeds and genetics, and speaks at events including Idaho Hemp Fest. Because of his San Diego arrest he is a cannabis social equity applicant there, and he walked the county through the pros and cons of buffer distances for social equity cannabis. The county went with his recommendation, a 600-foot buffer, where some cities wanted 1,200 to 1,500 feet.
Still in the trenches
Tom turned down a deal that would have owned his name and his face, and he has no plans to exit. He sees a divide between the original growers and advocates and a regulated market that rarely puts money into the fight.
“There’s still a lot of us in the trenches fighting.”
Farmer Tom Lauerman
Tom offered to come back for a part two with listener questions, and Mr Gudwudz is already setting it up.
Connect
- Farmer Tom: farmertomorganics.com, where he offers cannabis farm consulting. He is Farmer Tom Lauerman on Instagram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Mr Gudwudz (Just Jay): mrgudwudz.com and gudwudz.com. Hear his story on his own episode.
- Listen on Castos: Farmer Tom Lauerman: From a 1999 Raid to Teaching the CDC About Cannabis.