This Former Prison Is Now A Cannabis Storage And Cultivation Facility

Picture this; you were arrested on cannabis-related charges and sent to prison. Now, as the prison closes, it’s transformed into a facility that stores tons of marijuana. How would you feel?

This is the conundrum music manager Dan Dalton and his sister, Casey Dalton, are bringing to light after purchasing the 20-acres of the former Claremont Custody Center for $4.1 million. According to NBC News, the former prison was an ideal spot for storing cannabis as it has a dry and sterile environment protected by chilled cinderblock walls. 

What’s just as chilling is how the company, Evidence, is left to recall the unjust impacts of the war on drugs by conducting operations in the exact place where cannabis prisoners sat for activities the company is running today. 

The Dalton duo’s company cultivates cannabis plants in the backyard garden where, according to reports, prisoners used to look after vegetables. Inside the former prisoner’s mess hall, Evidence employees roll pre-rolls, and in the kitchen, they’re creating distinct formulations for edible gummies. 

Now, Dan Dalton hopes that companies running operations in former prisons will shed even more light on the industry’s lingering hypocrisy. 

“We’re moving thousands of pounds of flower now, and I’m going to go home to my family tonight,” Dan Dalton told NBC News. “There are people sitting in jail cells right now for personal possession of flower. And the hypocrisy makes no sense to me,” he added. 

Perhaps one of Dan Dalton’s biggest musical clients is also a firm believer that the term ‘cannabis prisoners’ should no longer exist. None other than Bob Marley’s son, Damian Marley, told NBC News that “As Jamaican, as a Rasta, as my father’s son, we’ve always been advocates of cannabis as something we use daily in our life, as a part of our spiritual sacrament.”

Damian Marley’s music video for “Medication,” which speaks upon the benefits of marijuana, was filmed in the former Claremont Custody Center around Evidence’s current cultivation site in the backyard. 

Marley concluded, “The fact that cannabis is now legal, you know, we want our brothers and sisters who are incarcerated to come home.”

Although operations are thriving for Evidence, Dalton can’t help but recall the sadness and anger that roamed his walls when individuals were imprisoned for now-legal activities. Dalton says, “I don’t know how they would feel. I think they would probably have mixed emotions about what we’re doing here.”