What are the environmental effects of Cannabis?

Answer 1

Outdoor cannabis has virtually no carbon footprint. It draws all of its food energy from air, water, and sunlight, though it is often fertilized with chemical fertilizers derived from petroleum. There are also finite small costs in transportation and distribution. This is all a tiny fraction of the environmental impact of indoor boutique marijuana. The growing uses intensely bright light that draws a huge amount of current. Indoor marijuana gardens thus draw huge amounts of power from the grid (either legitimately or by stealing municipal power directly from the grid) and to create this electricity coal is being burned in cogeneration plants. It would be relatively easy to measure the amount of carbon released from generating enough power to produce one ounce of cannabis. There is also, of course, smoke being released from the smoking of a joint. In that sense, an ounce of cannabis contains roughly the same amount of organic combustibles as 28.5 cigarettes.