Michael Polson, PhD

Michael Polson, PhD, is an anthropologist at UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, where he directs the Cannabis Research Center (CRC). He has been conducting ethnographic research in cannabis-cultivating communities since 2010 and has published widely on matters relating to cannabis and land use, real estate, environmental regulation, compliance and licensure, local cultivation policies, activism and social change, enforcement, and the manifold legacies of prohibition. He has been funded by NSF, NIH, and numerous private foundations. With funding from California's Department of Cannabis Control, he completed two team projects on unlicensed production and cultivation bans. He is now Principal Investigator on two interdisciplinary projects on (a) geographic shifts in California cannabis cultivation and (b) investors, operators, and the state of market competition. He works on a third project on cannabis' role in Hmong agrarian diasporas. Dr. Polson is a commissioner on California's Cannabis Advisory Committee.