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276 LAND AND POWER IN HAWAII 8 /Hawaii:Subdividing Lava Fields 277 as sugar and pineapple combined.Newsweek in October 1982 wrote that the 1. In 1978 a Big Island realtor placed a general advertisement in a drug cul- Hawaii marijuana business"by most estimates..".now tops half a billion dol- ture magazine called High Times.Noting that two and three-acre lots in Puna lars annually." In 1982 sugar was worth $352 million and pineapple $206 could be had for as low as$1,500,the advertisement said:"Yes,Hawaii's Gold million.In October 1984 the state attorney general estimated that the annual Rush is not only in its smoke,but also in its land.On the Big Island[Hawaii], marijuana crop value was$3 billion,about the highest estimate so far.If accu- which has gained international fame for its sacred herbs, fantastic land val- rate this would probably make marijuana Hawaii's number two industry in ues are still available, but for how long?" "Think," the ad prodded, "what annual revenues.99 land prices will do when legalization occurs." The Big Island,with all those remote places for growers to hide their oper- With the discreet buyer in mind,the ad also said that sellers would finance ations,was the state's marijuana capital. Extrapolating from the amount of "with no questions asked," and there would be"total confidentiality on your marijuana seized by law enforcement officers county by county,in 1982–1983 purchase."52 the Big Island accounted for about two-thirds of the state's crop.Moreover,by Among the consequences of the ad were telephoned death threats to the one reliable estimate, marijuana by the early 1980s had become the Big Is- realtor.In an interview for this book,he said he assumed the calls came from land's single largest industry. Hawaii Business in 1982 estimated the value of marijuana growers who did not want more people in Puna. the Big Island's 1981 crop at$300–$500 million,as against revenues for Big Island tourism in 1981 of$180 million and $160 million for lawful agricul- ture.5° If the Big Island was Hawaii's marijuana headquarters, then the specula- tive subdivisions of Puna were the center of the center. Extrapolating from Big Island police estimates on the percentage of the Big Island crop grown in Puna, and from amounts of marijuana seized county by county, Puna in 1982–1983 accounted for about 40% of the total state crops' According to police most of this was grown by people living in the subdivisions. The creation of speculative Puna subdivisions required dirt-cheap land in large parcels,to attract amateur first-time buyers on a mass scale.This in turn meant the subdivisions were relatively cheap residential areas to move to, a fact of importance to prospective marijuana growers who were often young mainlanders with relatively little capital. In fact, moving in might even be free. So little did the average Puna absentee owner care about his lot, aside from its appreciation value, that there were occasional squatters—people who just appeared on a lot and lived there without benefit of the law. As noted, speculative subdivisions commonly existed only in places far from other people and jobs, on land usually valueless for other purposes; waste land or even hazardous. In other words, places where ordinary people would not really want to live and where indeed few built homes. All this was desirable to marijuana growers.They needed to be as nearly invisible as possible, they liked to have very few other people in the vicinity, and they needed to know by sight everyone else who had business being in a certain place. And they liked to be able to shift around if they had to. Puna had the remote spaces for this.With an area as big as Oahu,Puna in 1980 had • a population only 1.5%of Oahu's. Athough beginning in the late 1970s there was police pressure on mari- juana growers,mostly in the form of crop seizures but with occasional arrests, the main response into the mid-1980s was simply to move the principal culti- vation areas away from growers' dwellings and deeper into Puna's empty spaces;