Meet The Cannabis Farmer Who Can't Own His Farm
(Courtesy of Circa)
PORTLAND, OR - When HiFi Farms in started in Oregon five years ago, there was one person Lee Henderson knew would be integral to the farm's success.
"We immediately called Richard," Henderson explained, sitting in HiFi's corporate office in a renovated industrial building-turned-co-working space in Portland, Oregon. The framed records, music posters and hand-drawn cannabis art hanging on or leaning against the office's walls reinforced Esquire Magazine's 2017 designation of HiFi as "the coolest cannabis farm in Oregon."
Richard Vinal said yes, leaving a gig making steel drums in Asheville, North Carolina to build a grow room in the basement of a craftsman house in North Portland. Five years later, HiFi farms has a permanent home in the farmlands of Hillsboro, Oregon, twenty miles west of Henderson's rocker-themed office.
Vinal studied horticulture at the University of Georgia and used his carpentry experience to help with the initial build out in North Portland, back when HiFi only grew medicinal marijuana. Over the next five years, he helped to create and execute the grow plan, developed new strains, and oversaw the farm operations in his role as Chief Operations Officer.
What Henderson and team had to overlook, though, when they called Vinal to Oregon, was his criminal record.
As a Georgia college student, Vinal was caught and charged with possession of one pound of cannabis and operation of an illegal grow house. According to Vinal, he never sold to minors and only to friends and family. He had never been convicted of any other crime before his arrest for marijuana.
As a Georgia college student, Vinal was caught and charged with possession of one pound of cannabis and operation of an illegal grow house. According to Vinal, he never sold to minors and only to friends and family. He had never been convicted of any other crime before his arrest for marijuana.
After some time in jail and on house arrest awaiting trail, Vinal took a plea deal and was sentenced to three years incarceration - of which he only served part before being released on parole - and four years probation. His probation ended in December 2017. Sitting on the couch in his living room in Hillsboro, Oregon, Vinal shook his head a little.
"It's completely ridiculous that laws are from state to state about a plant are severe enough that you could go to prison on the tax payer dime," he said. "There was a time that I was locked up and I was watching, I think it was, the Discovery Channel. I was watching a show about dispensaries in Colorado."