CANNABIS
CORNER – TRANSCRIPTS: January 13, 2015
Hosted by Debby Moore AKA Hemp Lady on http://www.BaconRock.com – Tuesday
8:00 PM CST
Debby Moore is CEO & Director of Research for Hemp Industries of
Kansas
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xxx
Global Million Man Marijuana March – May 2, 2015 – Riverside Park –
11:30 to 1:30 – Bring your own sign & Smile.
xxx
Pubdate: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 Source: Illawarra Mercury (Australia)
Copyright: 2015 Illawarra Newspapers Contact: editor@illnews.com.au
Website: http://www.illawarramercury.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/205
Author: Joshua Butler
SNIFFER DOGS WRONG IN 61% OF WOLLONGONG CASES
Wollongong police have defended the use of drug detection dogs, despite
data showing up to 61 per cent of searches in the Illawarra returning no
result.
Data provided by NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge showed there were 156
searches conducted in Wollongong after a drug dog indication in 2013, but
drugs were found in only 60 of those searches - what Mr Shoebridge calls
a “false positive” rate of 61 per cent.
There were 69 searches in the Lake Illawarra area in 2013 with drugs
found in 41 cases, while 10 drug searches in the Shoalhaven turned up four
positives.
Mr Shoebridge’s office said the data was provided from a question on
notice he had placed before the NSW Parliament.
Illawarra numbers are below the state average of 64 per cent “false
positives” with drugs found in just 6415 of 17,746 searches in 2013; and
far below the 80 per cent “false positive” rate from the Transport Command,
which found drugs in just 366 of 1876 searches.
Despite the numbers, a spokesperson for the NSW Police Dog Unit defended
the use of drug dogs.
“Dogs are able to assist police to locate prohibited drugs being carried
by a person, secreted in a house, vehicle, building and open spaces,” the
spokesperson said.
“Dogs are effective at locating odour and ... is one of many indicators
[police] use to decide if a search is to be conducted.”
Dogs can reportedly detect residual drug traces on a person’s clothes
or body long after the drug has been consumed or disposed of.
Superintendent Kyle Stewart, Commander of Wollongong Local Area Command,
said drug detection dogs helped combat Illawarra drug crime.
“We use dogs at specific events where prohibited drugs are known to
be used and supplied,” he said.
“We see the use of drug detection dogs as an important strategy. Drug
dog operations around licensed premises are another way to increase public
safety and reduce anti-social behaviour.”
xxx
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Page: S8
Copyright: 2015 The Toronto Star Contact: lettertoed@thestar.ca
Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Dana Flavelle
BAY STREET LAW FIRMS GOING TO POT
Corporate Lawyers Aim To Gain From Changes To Rules Governing Access
To Medical Marijuana
The pot industry has long created work for criminal lawyers. But now
it’s attracting some of the biggest corporate law firms on Bay Street.
A change in the federal rules governing access to medical marijuana
has created a wave of new business opportunities, not just for pot growers,
but also for lawyers, accountants and investment bankers.
Need help filing a licence application? Raising money on the TSX?
Signing commercial agreements with suppliers? There’s an expert for that.
“You have an industry where there’s going to be real commercial activity
and consumers of legal services,” says Hugo Alves, a partner with Bennett
Jones LLP, a leading corporate law firm in Toronto. “We want to be the
go-to advisers.”
Bennett Jones is just one of several law firms trying to get in on
the ground floor of an industry that Health Canada figures suggest could
be worth $1.3 billion within a decade.
Under the old rules, Alves said, there was really no way for corporate
lawyers to get involved in the medical-marijuana market.
Since 2001, patients who required medical marijuana were essentially
allowed to apply for a Health Canada licence to grow their own.
Initially meant to serve a limited number of seriously ill Canadians,
the program quickly spiralled out of control, the federal agency has said.
Some 37,000 Canadians now have personal production licences. The system
was fraught with potential health and safety hazards, not to mention the
risk of diversion to criminals, Health Canada claims.
Under the new rules, patients must buy their medical marijuana from
commercially licensed producers.
The rule change created a “Green Rush” of so-called “pot-preneurs,”
one that has seen some of the first licensees raise millions of dollars
from investors.
Toronto-based PharmaCan, which began trading on the Toronto Venture
Exchange on Dec. 17, 2014, is one of the new breed of investors.
A private equity firm, the company has raised $13.5 million in four
rounds of financing and invested in eight companies, including five licensed
production facilities.
PharmaCan’s current market value is $27.5 million, a figure that’s
dwarfed by Tweed Marijuana Inc., the first publicly traded producer.
Housed in the old Hershey’s chocolate factory in Smith Falls, Ont., Tweed
is valued at $97.5 million.
Still, the industry is facing a number of challenges, including backlogs
in the licensing process, product recalls and inadvertent drug seizures,
along with delays in receiving needed RCMP security clearance.
Investors are also awaiting the outcome of two critical legal challenges
that could determine the size and scope of the market for these new commercial
enterprises.
The first case, which goes to a federal court in British Columbia on
Feb. 23, will determine whether the thousands of Canadians with personal
licences to grow medical marijuana can be forced to switch to commercial
suppliers.
Vancouver-based pot activist Jason Wilcox, who is leading the challenge
under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says many patients can’t
afford the higher prices commercial facilities will charge.
PharmaCan chief executive officer Paul Rosen says he’s not worried
about the outcome. Most patients are going to want to buy from highly regulated,
inspected commercial facilities, he says. “We’re in this for the long term.”
The second case, which will be heard in the Supreme Court of Canada
in March, will determine whether medical marijuana can be sold in other
forms besides dried flowers.
xxx
Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 Source: National Post (Canada)
Page: A10
Webpage: http://mapinc.org/url/4BrWntAX Copyright: 2015
Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286 Author: Brian
Hutchinson
POTENTATES OF POT TAKE ON TRUDEAU
Run At Liberal Nomination Aims To Sign Up Smokers
The old building at 307 West Hastings St. is like a marijuana superstore,
without any marijuana for sale. There’s a large retail shop on the ground
level that offers old-school pipes and papers and bongs, and pricey high-tech
vaporizers for the modern, more health-conscious crowd. Upstairs there’s
a comfortable if malodorous lounge where bring-your-own cannabis products
are openly consumed. Tobacco smoking is not allowed.
Everywhere there are illustrations and pictures of this town’s patron
saint of marijuana, the so-called Prince of Pot, Marc Emery. This is his
joint, and on most days since his release last summer from a U.S.
prison, where he served a five-year sentence for selling marijuana seeds,
he can be found inside his store or in the lounge, getting high and handing
out free samples of potent hash oils and what he calls his “8-bud blend.”
Mr. Emery is as cantankerous as ever, directing written and verbal
jabs at anyone whom he considers an enemy of the marijuana freedom and
legalization movement, and to those whom he perceives as threats to himself
and his wife, Jodie. His targets include Stephen Harper, whom both Emerys
despise.
They have also included Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. Which is a problem
for Jodie. She’s a politician. She once ran as a provincial Green
Party candidate in B.C.. She’s now a member of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal party,
and hopes to be his candidate in the riding of Vancouver East in the coming
election. Vancouver East is NDP territory, long held by MP Libby Davies,
who recently announced that she won’t seek re-election.
It’s hard to tell if Ms. Emery’s intentions are a lark, perhaps a publicity
stunt to benefit her and her husband’s mini-business empire, or if she’s
serious.
“What if some radical managed to get a position and ran for the party
and caused a massive headache and caused them to lose the election?” she
asked, during an interview this week inside her third floor office at 307
West Hastings. “Some people might say that would be me,” Ms. Emery
added with a laugh. “I’m just joking.”
A large bong sat on a desk inside the office. On another desk lay a
back issue of Cannabis Culture magazine, which the Emerys used to publish.
I picked up the magazine and a sprinkling of medium-grind marijuana slid
from the front cover and fell onto the floor.
Ms. Emery, 30, doesn’t like being called a one-issue candidate, but
marijuana and marijuana legalization seem the most important things to
her, after her husband. She smokes marijuana recreationally, she advocates
for it, she wants it to be made accessible to every adult in Canada.
Two years ago, after Mr. Trudeau became Liberal leader and declared
his party in favour of marijuana legalization, the Emerys decided they
could endorse the Grits. Last year, a pair of Vancouver East riding executives
asked Ms. Emery if she would put her name forward as the Liberal candidate.
She thought it over for a couple of months and then decided she would do
it.
Not every Liberal was thrilled. The Emerys are controversial. And Mr.Emery
and Mr. Trudeau have a history, of sorts. In 2009, before he went to prison,
Mr. Emery made a fiery speech attacking Mr. Trudeau, who was then just
an ordinary Liberal MP. Mr. Trudeau had voted in favour of a Conservative
government bill supporting mandatory minimum sentences for lawbreakers,
such as unlicensed marijuana cultivators.
“[Mr. Trudeau] has smoked with me four or five times,” fumed Mr.
Emery, “so it really pisses me off when I see Justin Trudeau, who took
big gaggers with me, is in Parliament actually voting for Bill C-15.
What a f—king hypocrite.”
Mr. Trudeau later accused Mr. Emery of “flat-out lying” and said he
had never smoked marijuana with him.
Her husband has mellowed, Ms. Emery claims. “Since Marc’s been out
of prison, a lot of people were waiting to see how outrageous he would
be, what kind of crazy statement he would make, how he would humiliate
Trudeau,” she says. “But a lot of people forget that prison kind of calms
one down, and as time goes by, you have a chance to stop and think and
strategize.”
The strategy for securing the Vancouver East nomination? Sign up as
many pot smokers as possible. Ms. Emery has been door-knocking and signing
up new party members, and running a nomination campaign from her office
at 307 West Hastings, where the walls are festooned with in-house posters
that encourage patrons to join the federal Liberals. Because, the
posters read, “The Liberal Party wants to Legalize Marijuana.”
Meanwhile, her husband takes shots at the three other Liberals hoping
to secure the nomination. They include Joanne Griffiths, a local volunteer
and former wife of Arthur Griffiths, the once wealthy, now down-on-his-luck
Vancouver businessman.
Her “entire life has been giving away money and [she] has never had
to struggle a single day in her life,” Mr. Emery recently posted on Facebook.
Ms. Griffiths countered that for years she has “worked hard to help people
in need.”
To date, none of the four hopefuls have had their nomination papers
approved by party headquarters, and a nomination meeting has not yet been
scheduled. The fix is in, Mr. Emery suggests. He claims that Mr.
Trudeau favours someone other than his wife.
Given everything, that seems plausible.
xxx
Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Sean Silbert, Silbert is a special correspondent
CHINA SENTENCES JACKIE CHAN’S SON
BEIJING - The son of action comedy star Jackie Chan pleaded guilty
Friday to providing a venue for drug users, one of thousands caught up
in a widespread crackdown on illegal drugs in the capital.
Jaycee Chan was sentenced in a courtroom in the Chinese capital to
six months in prison and a fine of about $322.
The 32-year-old was detained in his Beijing apartment in August, along
with 23-year-old Taiwanese movie star Ko Chen-tung, known as Kai Ko, among
others. Ko was released after a 14-day administrative detention for drug
use.
The state-run New China News Agency reported that both tested positive
for marijuana use, and police seized 3.5 ounces of marijuana during the
raid, crimes that, according to the news agency, have a maximum sentence
of three years.
“I violated the law. I deserve to be punished,” Chan said in trial
video that aired on state broadcaster CCTV. “When I return to society,
I won’t do it again.”
Video of the raid, including Chan identifying marijuana in his home,
was shown on national television before his plea. The CCTV report said
Chan had told police he had been using illegal drugs for eight years.
Chinese authorities’ attitudes on drug use traditionally have been
severe, with little distinction between marijuana and harder drugs, and
enforcement has intensified since the summer. Drug abuse, nearly unheard
of before the 1980s, is now a growing problem.
In February, China’s public security ministry instructed national police
to “get tough” on drug use and prostitution. President Xi Jinping echoed
this in June when he called for “forceful measures” against illegal drug
use.
The edicts spurred raids in the summer that, according to police, ended
in the detention of more than 7,800 people on drug charges. Officers
visited bars and nightclubs and used on-the-spot drug tests.
Authorities deported foreigners who tested positive.
Those detained included notable actors, directors and pop stars whose
names were publicly listed. The State Administration of Press, Publication,
Radio and Television has said such cases were a bad example for the country’s
youths.
xxx
Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 Source: NOW Magazine (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 NOW Communications Inc. Contact: letters@nowtoronto.com
Website: http://www.nowtoronto.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/282
Author: Matt Mernagh MATT MERNAGH
Author of Marijuana Smoker’s Guidebook (Green Candy Press) and host
of
The Mernahuana Zone webcast, Tuesdays at Vapor Central. @mernahuana
The younger stoners jokingly refer to me as the Lady Gaga of Ganja
for my cannabis costumes at our 4/20 smoke-outs. But my style is more David
Bowie. Outlandish clothes help hide my physical shortcomings - in my case
my crooked spine.
Sometimes I view my body as broken. Chronic pain has me measuring my
suffering on a scale of one to 10 every day. It’s a way to help me understand
a body riddled with hidden health issues: scoliosis, arthritis, fibromyalgia.
Marijuana is my other coping mechanism. A decade of our public puff-downs
has pushed pot prohibition onto the front pages, but the federal government
continues to restrict access to medical marijuana and threaten to jail
people for growing their own medicine.
I did time in the Don for growing my own in 2008. I got a licence to
possess pot after taking the government to court, but I’m still not sure
if I’m going to get busted anyway every time I travel outside Toronto.
The government continues to deny marijuana’s therapeutic benefits. Now
they’ve turned over production to a few big companies that are making it
too expensive for many who require pot as medicine. It’s the only
medicine that’s helped my seizures. Another ruined me so badly, I shattered
my shoulder and was in physiotherapy for a year. But that experience
instilled a strong workout ethic that continues six years later.
Without my medical marijuana - and weekly Pilates sessions - I’d never
have become physically able to ride a bike, walk, climb a mountain (Grouse
Grind) or have the courage to be photographed sans clothing.
Doing spectacularly fun stuff is my other way of giving pain the middle
finger. Mentally, though, it can be extremely upsetting to know the pain
will never go away. Mindfulness is teaching me to let certain feelings
go and focus on the moment.
xxx
Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 Source: Sun Times, The (Owen
Sound, CN ON) Page: A1
Copyright: 2015 Owen Sound Sun Times Contact: http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/letters
Website: http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1544
Author: Denis Langlois
POT PLANT PROPOSAL WELCOME NEWS
Planned Medical Marijuana Facility Would Bring 100 Full-Time Jobs
A Toronto-based company hopes to transform the remaining section of
the former PPG plant in Owen Sound into one of the largest medical marijuana
production facilities in North America.
The Canadian Bioceutical Corporation said the operation, which it announced
Wednesday, will go ahead as soon as the firm receives the required licence
from Health Canada.
The plant, once fully operational, would employ up to 100 people full
time, the company and city said in separate news releases.
“That’s the start. Who knows where it could go? But a manufacturing
firm that employs 100 people is rare these days anywhere,” Owen Sound’s
economic development manager Steve Furness said in an interview.
The prospect of the new plant and resulting jobs is welcome news in
the city, which has seen several factories and other businesses close in
recent years.
Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy said along with the jobs inside the plant,
there will likely also be spin-off employment such as for transportation
and packaging.
“We need it badly. We need the jobs and we need the assessment of an
industrial plant again. These are the things that we’re after,” he said
in an interview.
Boddy, who has met with the company’s president and CEO Scott Boyes,
said the firm believes the 155,000-square-foot building is the perfect
site for their new facility.
Boddy congratulated local developer Peter Van Dolder and the rest of
the ownership group at Peninsula Pro-Growth business park for revitalizing
the vacant factory “and making it possible to attract new manufacturers”
like Canadian Bioceutical.
The publicly traded company, formerly known as Allegiance Equity Corporation,
has been developing herbal and natural-based medicines and supplements
for more than 20 years.
The company plans to expand its business “into the production, processing
and distribution of medical marijuana and cannabisbased medicinal products,”
it said in a news release.
The company noted in its release a B.C. Appeal Court ruling in August
that said limiting patients from access to other types of cannabis medicines,
aside from the dried variety, is unconstitutional. The court gave Health
Canada one year to amend the language of its medical marijuana access regulations.
“When the regulations are amended later this year (as anticipated),
we hope to be ready to supply patients with multiple formats of high quality
cannabis medicines,” the release said.
The planned offerings include cannabis extracts in the form of capsules,
oils, tinctures and creams. The firm’s newly incorporated, wholly-owned
subsidiary Bio-Cannabis Products Ltd. recently submitted an application
to Health Canada to become a licenced producer under the Marijuana for
Medical Purposes Regulations, which came into effect on April 1.
It said it will take “significant time and cost” to obtain the licence.
Meanwhile, Boyes said the company has signed a letter of intent to
lease the former PPG building, which he called ideal for the proposed new
operation.
“The region offers a capable labour force with a strong small town
work ethic, while business costs and taxes are favourable compared to many
other jurisdictions in the province. But, just as important, we also found
a highly supportive municipal government and community anxious to encourage
the growth of new business and employment,” he said.
Boyes said the company will start right away to “adapt the building
to support the cultivation, processing, packaging and distribution of medical
cannabis and cannabinoid-based products.”
Owen Sound city council passed a motion last month to kick-start a
process to establish areas of the city where Health Canada-approved medical
marijuana production facilities are permitted. It approved a staff recommendation
to hold a public meeting on a proposed zoning bylaw amendment that, if
approved, would allow the buildings on industrial lands that meet certain
criteria.
The proposed areas include the former PPG plant land.
At the time Owen Sound officials said the city was being proactive
by starting the process on its own. They acknowledged receiving some inquiries
from potential medical marijuana production firms but said no formal applications
had been received.
Health Canada introduced regulations in June 2013 to permit larger-scale
medical marijuana production facilities. The producers must be licensed
by Health Canada and the facilities must meet certain requirements for
quality control and security.
xxx
Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 Source: Sydney Morning Herald
(Australia)
Copyright: 2015 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: letters@smh.com.au
Website: http://www.smh.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441
Author: Michael Bachelard, Indonesia correspondent Banda Aceh
CAFFEINE HIGH TAKES ON NEW DIMENSION IN ACEH
Aceh might be famous for its brutal application of Islamic sharia law,
but it’s also where a certain intoxicating weed has been getting people
high for generations.
Marijuana sales once helped fund the 30- year war waged by separatist
rebels and when they descended from their mountain strongholds after the
2005 peace deal, the plantations remained.
To this day, two lucrative cash crops - coffee and “ ganja” - provide
a healthy income in Aceh’s rural hinterland.
In a pungent smoke haze at a secret location in the capital, Banda
Aceh, an enterprising group of young stoners is combining the two into
what could perhaps be viewed as the essence of Aceh.
Syahrul* and his two buddies take 250 grams of rich, dark Arabica beans
grown in Gayo and mix in 10 grams of the finest, fieldgrown organic mull,
then, squatting on the floor of their tiny room, they grind it all together.
The end product is packaged like normal coffee and named with a wink
after the infamous civet catexcreted Coffee Luwak: they call it “ Coffee
Lawak”, which literally means, “ Coffee Buffoonery”.
“ Coffee normally makes you feel alert and wakes you up,” Syahrul says.
“ This coffee doesn’t do that.”
They sell their special mix to cafes in Banda Aceh where you can buy
a cup for 70 cents compared with 30 cents for a normal espresso -
if you know what to ask for. And it’s delicious. The three boys - all Muslims
- insist their brew is guilt free, because it’s permitted under Islamic
law. Their home-made religious ruling is based on the fact that nowhere
in the Koran is ganja mentioned. It’s the same grey area that allows millions
of Muslims to smoke cigarettes.
Wrong, Banda Aceh’s sharia police enforcement chief Evendi Latif says:
“ Any substance with an intoxicating effect is haram [ illicit]” .
But it’s not mentioned in the Koran? “ That’s just an excuse they use
to smoke ganja,” he says.
The Acehnese have a long tradition of cooking with weed. It made the
best goat curry in the land, so they say, and, if you know where to go,
you can still sample it. That too, sadly, is haram, Latif says.
Despite these fatwas, Aceh’s drug addiction is profound. Acehnese are
often caught shipping ganja by the tonne to the rest of the country and
recently police destroyed 800,000 plants on a property four hours walk
from the nearest road. Some suggest that these raids are merely to protect
a much bigger and more lucrative business run by the police themselves.
Aceh is also the link between Malaysia’s huge ice manufacturing factories
and the growing market for the drug ice in Indonesia, where it is called
sabu sabu. A police officer was arrested in October trying to smuggle a
kilogram of it into the country.
The sabu sabu trade distresses Syahrul and his buddies. They say pushers
are targeting high school students with cheap product to get them hooked.
“ We don’t like that. It’s synthetic and no good,” Syahrul says.
“ We like this,” says his friend, indicating the joint smouldering
between his fingers. “ We’re just nature lovers at heart.”
xxx
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 Source: Nation, The (Thailand)
Copyright: 2015 Nation Multimedia Group Contact: letters@nationgroup.com
Website: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963
Author: Ken Albertsen
REFORM OF ANTI-DRUG LAWS LONG OVERDUE
Reading the article “Punishments for drug offences to be reviewed”
was like grabbing a cup of water after a long slog through a desert.
How many young people’s lives have been unfairly ruined by the draconian
drug laws in Thailand and other Southeast Asian bureaucracies tens
of thousands, or hundreds of thousands? Thailand’s drug laws follow
those of the US note for note. America is slowly getting reasonable on
that topic, but I’m surprised Thailand is following just by months instead
of years.
Recently some of the strictest archconservative Americans met and realised
what reasonable people have known for a long time: The “war on drugs” can
only be lost. There are much more effective ways of curtailing drug use
than killing or harshly punishing users and mules. I’m glad Thailand’s
leaders are coming around, albeit belatedly, to a modicum of reason.
Ken Albertsen
Chiang Rai
xxx
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 Source: Alaska Dispatch News
(AK)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/Wwf3MjUS Copyright: 2015
Alaska Dispatch Publishing
Contact: letters@adn.com Website: http://www.adn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18 Note: Anchorage
Daily News until July ‘14
Author: John Havelock
Note: John Havelock is a former Alaska attorney general and was a supporter
of Ballot Measure 2, the initiative by which Alaskans voted to legalize
marijuana in 2014.
ALASKANS VOTED TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA, NOT TO CREATE A POT INDUSTRY
The 52 percent vote for legalization of marijuana was a vote for decriminalization.
No more sending our young folk to jail, ruining careers before they get
started with criminal records, spending money on prisons not education.
It was not a vote to build a vibrant marijuana industry. The model we should
be following is a tighter version of cigarette control, not alcohol.
The early 20th century drive that brought us alcohol prohibition was
fueled by moral sentiments. The health case was there but not nearly as
well documented as today. As the insanity of prohibition became more obvious,
the public’s growing disdain was so strong that alcohol entered the market
as if it had been a condemned form of candy.
The death rate from alcohol is perhaps not as obvious as the murderous
effects of cigarette smoking. The cigarette death rate allowed a movement
against the preexisting, normal commercialization to gain footing notwithstanding
powerful resistance funded by the enormous profits and employment base
of the tobacco industry. With marijuana, no giant industry is in place
with that kind of financial and political power to resist sensible regulation.
Commercial advertising can be a baleful industry. Like corporate life
in general, it is short on moral limits. Advertising is about growing profits
through enhanced sales. An example: Apparently we have to explain to our
children and grandchildren at an early age what “erectile dysfunction”
is, as the advertising industry works on TV to enhance aphrodisiac sales.
Tough luck for Alaska’s reindeer horn exports.
Mind-altering drugs, available by prescription only, kill far more
people every year than all illegal drugs combined. Their consumption is
encouraged by ads directed at the general public: “Ask your doctor...”
even though any information on the nature of a prescription is strictly
the doctor’s business and should come from her to you. The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration requires that advertisers list damaging side effects.
But they are buzzed through in the ad like source explanations in political
ads.
Big advertising has been a co-conspirator in America’s obesity epidemic
with its sales of salt, sugar and now caffeine-saturated “soft” drinks,
to be consumed by the underaged until they can drink whiskey and beer.
But that’s another story.
The world would be better off if alcohol had never been discovered.
When prohibition was repealed, it would have been better to have legalized
it with controls on marketing. As that child figuring out what erectile
dysfunction is turns to alcohol advertising, he finds out that the very
coolest people consume alcohol at terrific parties and that it is a great
way to be beautiful and meet beauties.
Decriminalization of marijuana does not mean we follow the liquor road.
Like cigarettes, marijuana should have continued availability to avoid
criminalization with appropriate classification, but should be sold only
with applicable warnings and no sales pitch.
Most of you do not want your children to be exposed to ubiquitous TV
ads that tell them that smoking marijuana is as American as apple pie and
that they should try higher octane varieties for a sweeter sense of satisfaction.
As the Legislature parses the issues, you don’t want to see a rubbing of
hands at the prospects of growing a great industry so that state revenue
will be enhanced. We are permitting marijuana, not encouraging its use.
A reasonable tax regime should be a part of the system, but not so high
that the illegal industry retains a footing through the price differential.
Marijuana is not good for you. There is no nicotine in it, but smoke
in your lungs is not healthy. Early Colorado data show that about 25 percent
of users are those who use marijuana almost every day. The heavy user functions
below par. No, it’s not addictive like heroin or meth, but a psychological
addiction can become compulsive too. Many a young person out there has
been badly, sometimes irretrievably damaged.
So let’s not let the advertising industry take over even if, wherever
we go with marijuana, the decriminalization of possession, use and sale
is still a good result.
xxx
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 Source: San Francisco Chronicle
(CA)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/MIM8vBbl Copyright: 2015
Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
BUZZ OVER MARIJUANA EQUITY FIRM’S FUNDING
The legal marijuana industry is estimated to be worth $2 billion to
$3 billion, says Taylor West of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
Bay Area venture capitalists have built an industry on risky investments.
But until Thursday, the largest firms have kept their distance from one
unpredictable market: marijuana.
Founders Fund, a venture capital firm well-known for backing Facebook,
Palantir Technologies and SpaceX, has changed that by investing undisclosed
millions in Privateer Holdings, a Seattle private equity firm focused on
the burgeoning medical and recreational marijuana sectors. Privateer called
the funding round the first of its kind.
“It’s a big moment in terms of planting a flag for the industry,” said
Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association,
a trade group. “Up until now, almost all of the investment has come from
individuals, from private investors - often from friends and family of
the business owners.”
Founders Fund is bigger than that, with a reputation for lucrative
investments and high-profile names including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel
on its payroll.
“In any industry a company would be thrilled to have Founders Fund
as an investor,” said Brendan Kennedy, Privateer’s CEO. “In this industry,
for a lot of people, it’s unfathomable.”
Privateer has raised $22 million through Series A funding and a convertible
bridge note. The firm previously raised money from wealthy individuals
and families. The Founders Fund investment - the scale of which Privateer
wouldn’t confirm - is part of a Series B funding round.
Founded in 2010 as a collaboration between three MBAs, Privateer became
the first private equity firm to invest in the cannabis industry in 2011
when it acquired Leafly, a website that allows users to rate strains and
dispensaries of cannabis.
Geoff Lewis, a Founders Fund partner, said he discovered Privateer
when a friend with a California medical marijuana card used Leafly to find
particular marijuana strains whose effects mitigated symptoms of an illness.
“I hadn’t thought at all about medical cannabis prior to her experience,
but as a venture capitalist, I always have my investment cap on,” said
Lewis, who first approached Privateer about a deal in 2013.
Privateer generated mainstream buzz in November when it funded Marley
Natural, a brand of marijuana, with the family of late reggae singer Bob
Marley.
The legal marijuana industry is estimated to be worth between $2 billion
and $3 billion, West said, and to date, 23 states, including California,
and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana. Four states
- Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Alaska - also allow recreational marijuana
use.
“The entire year of 2014 has been a tipping point,” West said. “We’ve
really seen dramatic growth in the industry, but also a lot of occurrences
that make it clear that this is an industry that’s here to stay.”
Despite states’ efforts to legalize medical or recreational cannabis,
its use is illegal under federal law. Though recent legislation bars the
feds from interfering with state medical marijuana laws, an assistant U.S.
attorney wrote in a court filing last week that the plant is a psychoactive,
addictive drug that is not accepted as safe for medical use.
Those legal concerns - along with the drug’s social and political baggage
- were factors that have kept venture capital at bay, insiders speculate.
But with California voters likely to see a ballot measure to legalize recreational
marijuana in 2016, more venture capital deals could be on the horizon.
Kennedy believes Founders Fund’s investment will give the financial
world - even more conservative investors such as private equity firms and
investment banks - greater leeway to look at the marijuana industry.
“A big part of it has been reputational risk. People are always concerned
about their reputations,” said Lewis of Founders Fund. “We think a lot
of the best investments seem a little bit out there when they’re first
made.”
Lewis said he believes marijuana will be legalized at the federal level
in due time, and when that happens, buyers will become attached to brand
names, expanding the legal market.
In the meantime, Kennedy says Founders Fund’s move will show other
investors they’re already behind the curve.
“They’re going to wake up in a panic and they’re going to say, ‘A bunch
of smart people at Founders Fund have been looking at this industry for
the past year and a half and made this investment,’ “ Kennedy said. “They
will see it as a watershed event on the transition from the state of prohibition
to a state of legalization.”
xxx
Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 Source: North Coast Journal (Arcata,
CA)
Column: The Week in Weed Copyright: 2015 North Coast Journal
Contact: letters@northcoastjournal.com Website: http://www.northcoastjournal.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2833 Author: Linda
Stansberry Note: Linda Stansberry is a freelance journalist
from Honeydew.
WOMEN IN WEED
Trim bitches.
Grow hos. Potstitutes. If you know what those terms mean, you know
that our county’s most prominent industry has what politicians call “a
woman problem.” But it’s probably not the problem you think.
There’s something that raises our collective hackles about a woman
gaining the favor of a rich man by dint of her beauty and youth.
Gold diggers, we call them: scorned bearers of an unearned status,
threats to the basic building block of social harmony that is marriage,
debasers of true affection.
Matrimony, after all, is a calling. Prostitution is a profession. The
gold digger is one of our cherished societal tropes, and it’s little wonder
Humboldt County is awash with lurid stories of women in leather boots and
tight jeans who prowl the hills during the fall, searching for weed-rich
sugar daddies.
When we talk about weed and women we don’t talk about the single mothers
who trim during the fall so they can buy school clothes for their kids.
We don’t talk about the pioneers - grandmothers now - who moved here in
the ‘70s and scratched a living out of the hillside, praying that the sun
would shine and CAMP helicopters wouldn’t darken the skies above their
homesteads. We don’t talk about the fact that grow culture - for all of
its inherent problems - celebrates egalitarian domestic partnerships where
couples share the responsibilities of maintaining both a home and a family
business.
We don’t mention that growing weed is one of the few careers that offer
parents the economic choice of staying home to raise their children. We
don’t talk about the women who are proficient in permaculture, homeopathy
and botany, or the women who work their asses off to run scenes of their
own so they can send their kids to college.
No, we talk about potstitutes, grow hos and trim bitches.
Bitches. Really, bitches?
Bitches are not humans: They’re holes. Bitches are interchangeable.
Bitches do not deserve consideration. Bitches can be bought and sold.
And that is the crux of our actual woman problem.
The majority of women in this underground industry are the mothers,
grandmothers, farmers and college students mentioned above.
And a smaller but not inconsiderable number are being pimped, exploited,
enslaved and raped. Reducing the role of women in weed to a slur - trim
bitches - is really an elaborate system of victim blaming that benefits
no one except predators and pathetic stand-up comedians who can’t write
a set without one hand in their pants.
Because these issues often go unreported and unaddressed, it is impossible
to get accurate numbers, but the exploitation of women in weed is so endemic
that District Attorney Maggie Fleming made it a cornerstone of her election
campaign.
Resources appear to be in even shorter supply than sympathy.
That, combined with the insular nature of grow culture and the remoteness
of many scenes, makes helping victims a challenge.
“We’re not going to be able to go out and pick somebody up,” says Maryann
Hayes Mariani, client services coordinator for the Humboldt Rape Crisis
Center. “It wouldn’t be safe for them or for us. So when they call we often
problem solve with them, and coach them on what to do if they can get to
a more populated area.”
Seasonal workers are also uniquely vulnerable to financial exploitation.
It’s not uncommon to hear stories of a summer’s worth of work gone unpaid,
with no legal recourse for the victim.
If our instinct upon hearing these stories is to scoff and say that
it was a risk they knew they were taking, do we hold the same standards
for victims of sexual exploitation? Mariani says many of her clients feel
as though they have nowhere to turn - and no social support.
While some victims are seasonal workers who ended up in a bad scene,
others are children of grow culture, who were indoctrinated into its code
of silence from a young age. It’s all well and good to say that a victim
of rape, incest or assault should turn his or her assailant in to law enforcement,
but what about when the assailant is a family or community member upon
whom the victim might be financially reliant, in a culture that functions
due to the unspoken agreement that nobody narcs, ever? What then?
“Even after they get them to safety, the terror stays with them for
quite a while,” Mariani says, adding that victims often live in anticipation
of being found and brought back to the scene they escaped. “They might
go back because they can’t deal with the waiting and the fear. We don’t
judge.
We have to respect their choice.”
Human nature dictates that we devote our attention to the visible and
convenient, the small handful of anecdotes that reinforce what we already
believe about the world.
Young men in big trucks, young women in tight jeans.
It’s a story as old as commerce itself.
Victims are often invisible and definitely inconvenient. More often
than not, we mistake their silence for consent.
But the hour is growing too late to do that. Legalization is just around
the corner.
What that really means for our economy and for our culture is a matter
of great debate, but one thing is for certain: When the money and the silence
and the fear are finally drained from grow culture, a lot of ugly things
are going to get dragged out into the sunshine.
In time they’ll be sanitized and repackaged and sold as quaint reminders
of a wilder time. And make no mistake: This wild time, this time of bootstrap
entrepreneurs, modern-day homesteaders, young women in big trucks, young
men staying home to raise their children, this time of heady economic optimism,
is an extraordinary time to experience. We should be grateful we get to
live through it. But none of that matters if we’re allowing the mothers,
grandmothers, daughters, sisters and workers that comprise our beloved
community to be reduced to a slur. None of that matters if we’re complicit
in the exploitation of the powerless.
We say trim bitches, history will say women. We say trimmigrants, history
will say migrant workers.
We say nothing, and history will say we picked the wrong side.
xxx
Pubdate: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Maura Dolan
JUDGE WILL WEIGH POT’S STATUS
For First Time in Years, Federal Jurist Will Rule on Constitutionality
of Classifying Marijuana As a Dangerous Drug.
SAN FRANCISCO - In a rare examination of federal marijuana law, a U.S.
judge in Northern California has decided to rule on the constitutionality
of a 1970 act that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug akin to LSD
and heroin.
U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller took the extraordinary step
of holding a five-day hearing on the question late last year, with final
arguments scheduled for next month. Her ruling, based on testimony and
thousands of pages of briefs, exhibits and declarations, is expected later
this year.
Lawyers say the case out of Sacramento marks the first time in decades
that a judge has agreed to hold a fact-finding hearing on the classification
of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug under the 1970 Controlled Substances
Act. Mueller’s decision came in response to a pretrial defense motion in
a prosecution brought by the federal government against alleged marijuana
growers.
Attorneys for the defendants have argued that the federal marijuana
law violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the
law and a doctrine that gives states equal sovereignty. In addition to
maintaining that marijuana is safer than many non-regulated substances,
the defense contends the federal government enforces marijuana law unevenly,
allowing distribution of cannabis in states where it is legal and regulated
by state law and cracking down elsewhere.
Prosecutors, who unsuccessfully opposed the factfinding hearing, have
countered that Congress legally placed marijuana in Schedule 1, a classification
used for drugs that have no medicinal purpose, are unsafe even under medical
supervision and contain a high potential for abuse. In addition to marijuana,
heroin and LSD, other Schedule 1 drugs include Ecstasy and Mescaline. Because
of marijuana’s Schedule 1 status, federal restrictions make it difficult
for researchers to obtain legal cannabis for study.
Zenia K. Gilg, a lawyer for the growers, said scientific understanding
and public acceptance of marijuana have grown substantially since courts
last examined the federal classification. She cited the November
election, when voters in Alaska and Oregon decided to join Colorado and
Washington in making cannabis legal for recreational use. Most states already
provide some legal protection for its use as medicine.
“It just shows that this country has recognized that marijuana is less
harmful than, I would say, alcohol, and the law prohibiting it is absurd,
particularly as it related to being up there with heroin and LSD,” said
Gilg, a member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws.
She and other lawyers also have pointed to a provision in a spending
bill signed by President Obama in December that bars the Department of
Justice from funding actions that prevent states from enforcing their own
laws on medicinal marijuana. Lawyers for the growers questioned in court
documents how Congress could justify a law that says marijuana has no medicinal
value while demanding that its distribution be free of federal interference.
But legal analysts said the court challenge remains a long shot. Efforts
to remove marijuana from Schedule 1 have consistently failed. A ruling
against federal marijuana law would apply only to the defendants in the
case and almost certainly would be appealed. If the U.S. 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals determined the law was unconstitutional, all the Western states
would be affected.
Prosecutors said in a brief filed Wednesday that the evidence presented
in the hearing at most “established that there is some dispute among doctors
as to whether marijuana is medicine.”
Mueller, a Clinton appointee, has given few indications of how she
might rule. Lawyers said the fact that she agreed to hold a fact-finding
hearing was itself a victory for marijuana activists.
Despite the possible consequences and rarity of such a hearing, the
challenge has received little public attention. A lawyer who writes a blog
for the federal court’s Eastern District of California posted links to
daily coverage of the testimony by theleafonline.com, a digital newspaper
for “the cannabis community.” Reports by the pro-marijuana website portrayed
the prosecution as having faltered.
Alex Kreit, a Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor who specializes
in drug issues, said a ruling overturning the federal classification of
marijuana would be a “surprise at the least.”
“But the fact that there was a hearing tells me there is some chance
of this succeeding,” Kreit said. “It is just exceedingly unlikely that
a federal judge would set aside several days for a hearing on a question
they thought was open and shut.”
Santa Clara University Law Professor Gerald Uelmen, who has defended
medical marijuana defendants, also expressed surprise that a judge agreed
to hold an evidentiary hearing on the question. He said courts have routinely
ruled against such challenges.
Marijuana activists noted that federal judges, appointed for life,
often take bold stands. They point to a decision by an Orange County federal
judge last summer declaring California’s death penalty system unconstitutional.
The jurist’s ruling is now on appeal. A federal district judge’s ruling
also led to the demise of California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Even if
the defendants in Sacramento lose, a ruling that was critical of the government’s
classification of marijuana could become ammunition for future battles.
During the October hearing, witnesses for the defense testified that
marijuana has many medical benefits and less potential for harm than alcohol,
tobacco and many prescription drugs. Declarations by defense witnesses
said anti-marijuana laws were spurred by racism and that marijuana law
continues to be enforced disproportionately against African Americans.
An expert for the prosecution testified that marijuana use as a teenager
has been linked to cognitive changes and that cannabis is associated with
psychotic disorders.
In written arguments summarizing the hearing, the defense said the
“critical inquiry” for the court was whether marijuana has any medical
benefits.
“The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable, cannabis has remarkable
medicinal qualities which have been known and applied throughout history,”
Gilg and co-counsel Heather L. Burke wrote for the defendants.
The prosecution, citing 40 years of court rulings, countered that the
law must be upheld as long as it has some justification. The only question
before the court is whether the Controlled Substances Act was a rational
means of addressing a legitimate government interest, the prosecution said.
“In 2013 alone, more than 29,000 people checked themselves in for marijuana
substance abuse treatment just in California, and more than half of them
were teenagers,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Gregory T. Broderick said in
the brief filed Wednesday.
“Given the state of the science, it is clear that treating marijuana
as a controlled substance is rationally related to legitimate public health
objectives.”
xxx
Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 Source: Press Democrat, The (Santa
Rosa, CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Press Democrat Contact: letters@pressdemocrat.com
Website: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/348
Author: Glenda Anderson
MENDOCINO COUNTY OFFICIALS SURPRISED BY TRIBE’S PLANS FOR POT FARM
News that a Mendocino County Pomo tribe is building a $10 million indoor
marijuana-cultivation facility on its rancheria just north of Ukiah has
been met with a mix of surprise, concern and a sense it was inevitable
as pot growing becomes increasingly common and legal.
“The tribes are just getting out ahead of the game” in preparation
for the eventual legalization of marijuana for all uses in California,
Mendocino County Supervisor Dan Hamburg said.
“Legalization is coming. That’s where we’re headed,” said Dale Gieringer,
state coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws. Medical marijuana has been legal in California for 18 years and,
after several failed attempts, a ballot measure aimed at legalizing recreational
use is widely expected to pass in 2016. About two dozen states have decriminalized
or legalized marijuana in some manner.
Many thought American tobacco companies would take the lead with large-scale
operations and attempt to monopolize the cannabis business, Hamburg said.
“It looks like it’ll be the tribes,” he said.
The Pinoleville Pomo Nation has contracted with Colorado-based United
Cannabis and Kansas-based FoxBarry Farms to grow thousands of marijuana
plants in greenhouses on its 99-acre rancheria. FoxBarry, which also invests
in tribal casinos, is financing and managing the project.
Other venture capitalists are getting into the pot business. Founders
Fund, a firm known for backing companies like Facebook, has invested undisclosed
millions in Privateer Holdings, a Seattle private equity firm focused on
marijuana.
Pinoleville is believed to be the first California tribe to build a
large cannabis-growing facility, but at least two more are planned elsewhere
in the state by the same corporations responsible for the Ukiah operation.
They have not divulged the locations, other than they would be in Central
and Southern California.
The Ukiah operation, which will feature a 110,000-square-foot facility
on nearly 2.5 acres, is scheduled to open in February, representatives
of the groups said. They did not say exactly where the greenhouses would
be, but only about a third of the rancheria is held in federal trust, which
frees the companies from following all local and most state regulations.
The lack of accountability is what concerns Mendocino County officials.
“They can do whatever they want,” Mendocino County Chief Executive
Officer Carmel Angelo said. The tribe will be exempt from the county’s
zoning ordinance aimed at controlling the number and locations of marijuana
plants grown for medical use. In addition to the rancheria property, the
tribe also owns 100 acres near Ukiah High School, for which it is seeking
trust status.
The tribe did not notify county officials of its plans, so news of
the pot-growing facility caught them off guard.
“I’m a bit taken aback,” said county Supervisor Carre Brown. She noted
that many of the tribes consult with the county about development projects
as a courtesy, even though they’re exempt from its planning process.
Hamburg said he also didn’t know about the project but has expected
something like it to eventually happen.
“None of this really surprises me,” he said. “I just wish there was
more we could do about it.”
Hamburg said he’d prefer that the county have some control over marijuana
production and the ability to collect taxes on the product. He’d
also prefer to see smaller, outdoor growing operations.
“My heart is really with the small grower community,” Hamburg said.
He also believes that outdoor gardens create fewer environmental impacts
than indoor farms.
“From an ecological perspective, that does not sit well with me,” Hamburg
said of the tribe’s operation.
County officials also worry that other tribes will follow suit and
cannabis-growing operations will proliferate, much as casinos have.
But it’s still too soon to tell whether federal officials - who continue
to consider marijuana illegal - will allow such large-scale production
to take place, even though they appeared last month to give the tribes
the green light, Gieringer said.
In a memorandum produced at the request of tribes seeking clarification
on the marijuana issue, the U.S. Department of Justice essentially said
it’s up to tribes, as sovereign nations, to decide whether marijuana is
legal or not on their lands.
But the memorandum also states that there’s nothing preventing U.S.
authorities from enforcing federal law in “Indian Country.” And, in recent
years, federal agencies have cracked down on large-scale pot production
operations in the Bay Area.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Department of Justice took an interest”
in the tribe’s operation, Gieringer said.
Neither state nor U.S. Department of Justice officials could be reached
for comment Friday.
xxx
Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2015 Boulder Weekly Contact: letters@boulderweekly.com
Website: http://www.boulderweekly.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker
HONORING COLORADO’S EARLY CANNABIS ENTREPRENEURS
There’s a lot of talk these days about cannabis and big business.
Corporate entities, cigarette companies and other greedy, moneyed interests,
the reasoning goes, are poised to swoop in and kill off the local folks
who built the cannabis industry and turn it into just another corporate
product. The Walmartization of Cannabis.
It’s something that Tim Opsal, one-third of a cannabis mobile app company
called BestBuds, has been thinking about as Colorado begins its second
year of retail cannabis sales for adults. Opsal has just published Best
Buds of Colorado 2014: Pioneers of Legalization, which casts an already
somewhat historic light on some of Colorado’s cannabis pioneers.
The book includes interviews and stories about some of the early dispensaries
that opened in Denver as legalization became reality, why the owners got
into the business, how they developed their companies and built their product
lines, their dreams, failures and successes. Growers talk about how and
why they come up with new strains and why they love the business they’re
in. There are plenty of color photos of many of the state’s popular strains,
a wealth of information about the state’s legalization efforts as well
as an appreciation for those who were there at the beginning.
“The real inspiration behind the book was to honor the dispensaries
that have brought about legalization from a recreational standpoint,” Opsal
says. “They are folks we really felt encapsulated the entrepreneurial spirit
that the marijuana industry was built on. As we got to know them better,
we learned their stories and wanted to share them in a physical format
rather than a digital platform.”
What Opsal realized was that the Colorado cannabis business was started
mostly by small mom-and-pop entrepreneurs.
“They have a passion for the plant and wanted to see it happen here,”
Opsal says. “They go through constant changes and are taking the lumps
in what is still an experimental market. Without these folks making the
effort and paving the way, there would be no industry. We thought we’d
give them a little honor and tribute. If it does go to big business, I
don’t want them to be forgotten.”
Opsal started the BestBuds digital platform on Jan. 1, 2014, with partners
Ronnie Wagman and Jordan McHugh. Opsal and Wagman had been friends in high
school before moving here from Madison, Wis. “I wanted to work with websites
and with maps,” Opsal says. “We enjoyed marijuana, and we saw this as an
opportunity.”
The BestBuds app uses a mapping system with picture-based menus that
allows users to find dispensaries based on the quality of their product,
with a couple of features that distinguish it from Weedmaps or Leafly,
the two most popular national mobile cannabis apps.
“We learned from users, and we found that most were connoisseurs and
wanted the best rather than the cheapest marijuana,” he says.
Anyone can access BestBuds at bestbudsapp. com, which allows users
to search by specific strains or products and find dispensaries that carry
those products. The iPhone app offers picturebased menus and allows for
a rewards system. It’s much like a coffee-shop punch card, only this one
resides inside your phone.
The BestBuds app also offers a “Be Our Bud” program, which allows dispensary
users and owners to send and receive direct personal messages.
“Many of our customers use this direct messaging system to send out
menu updates and deals to their customers,” Opsal says. “We are currently
the only mobile app on any platform that allows for two-way communication
between dispensaries and their customers.”
Every dispensary in Colorado is listed on the website, but only the
50 signed up with the service have full profiles with menu items that are
searchable. And BestBuds recently partnered with The Cannabist, which now
uses the BestBuds map on its website of Colorado dispensaries.
Opsal expects 2015 to be busy: “We will bring on more support help
to assist us with customer service and maintenance of customer accounts.
From a technology standpoint, we plan to release an Android version and
a new version of the iPhone app optimistically in the second quarter of
this year.”
Opsal is working on an e-book version, but Best Buds of Colorado 2014
is currently available as a hard-cover book.
“We only have hard copies available online and on Amazon,” he says.
“It is also retailed at all dispensaries and some record stores. The Boulder
Book Store picked up a few copies.”
Opsal says current plans are to continue expanding throughout Colorado.
“We’re starting in Denver and looking to Colorado Springs, Boulder
and Fort Collins. We are slowly expanding, but we’re a three-man band.
Scalability and remaining customer-centric is a concern. But we really
have our eyes and hearts set on continuing to support our Colorado dispensary
clients. We have found success in that we’re a Colorado company.
Our customers have a face to go with the service. At the end of day,
people want good service.”
You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column and Colorado cannabis
issues each Thursday morning on KGNU.
http://news.kgnu.org/category/features/ weed-between-the-lines/
xxx
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Contact:
wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Website: http://www.wsj.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Dan Frosch
IN COLORADO, POT LEGALIZATION FAILS TO MATCH PREDICTIONS OF SUPPORTERS
Forecasts of Big Tax Windfall, Dire Social Consequences Don’t Prove
Entirely True
DENVER - Before Colorado became the first state to allow marijuana
for recreational purposes, supporters boasted that legalization would generate
a sizable tax windfall, while opponents warned it could have serious social
consequences.
Just over a year into the state’s experiment with sanctioning pot sales
to adults 21 and over, neither prediction is proving entirely true. Marijuana
so far hasn’t been the boon or bane that many expected, offering potential
lessons to other states considering legalization.
The office of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper last February estimated
the state would haul in nearly $100 million in revenue from recreational
marijuana taxes in the fiscal year that began in July. But sales
have been slower than expected””due in part to a 25% tax rate that experts
say has steered potential users toward medical marijuana, which is cheaper.
State economists revised their own, separate forecast on Dec. 22, estimating
that recreational pot sales would generate $58.7 million in tax revenue
for the fiscal year, down from $67 million.
“It was an educated guess, because we were dealing with a federally
illicit product,” said Larson Silbaugh, a senior economist with the
Colorado Legislative Council.
Meanwhile, fears that legalization would trigger a marked jump in teen
drug use also don’t seem to have been realized. Fewer high-school students
reported using marijuana in 2013 than 2011, according to a survey released
in August by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
After Colorado voters approved a landmark measure legalizing pot in
2012, the drug became legal for adults in the state to possess and grow
in 2013, though retail sales didn’t begin until the start of 2014.
“All of the concerns you had about kids and spikes in uses, none of
that materialized,” said Christian Sederberg, a partner with Vicente
Sederberg, LLC, a Denver law firm that represents the marijuana industry.
Washington became the second state to allow recreational pot sales
last summer, and Oregon and Alaska approved legalization measures in November.
Activists are pushing legalization in several other states, including California,
where they aim to put a measure on the ballot in 2016.
To be sure, there have been problems with marijuana safety in Colorado,
especially with edible forms of the drug, which the state is struggling
to regulate.
As of Nov. 30, the number of calls to the state’s Rocky Mountain Poison
and Drug Center by people experiencing adverse effects from marijuana nearly
doubled, to 202, compared with the whole of 2013, according to the latest
available data.
Several Colorado doctors recently reported in the Journal of the American
Medical Association that local hospitals had seen an uptick in patients
who became sick from ingesting too much marijuana, particularly children.
According to a recent federal survey, marijuana use among Coloradans
age 12 and over went up slightly between 2011 and 2013, to 12.7% from 10.4%.
“oeThis is exactly what we were worried about,” said Kevin Sabet,
director of the drug policy institute at the University of Florida, and
co-founder of a group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, that opposes legalization.
Neighboring states are also complaining that Colorado marijuana is
flooding their jurisdictions. Nebraska and Oklahoma last month sued Colorado
in the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that legalization has resulted in more
interstate drug trafficking and violates federal law.
In some ways, however, marijuana has been woven into everyday life
in Colorado, as more than 200 highly regulated retail businesses sell their
wares around the state.
State lawmakers and economists say pot is indeed contributing to Colorado’s
economy, spurring tourism and the conversion of blighted warehouses into
marijuana grow-houses.
According to state figures, nearly 16,000 people are now licensed to
work in the marijuana industry in Colorado. And a study conducted last
year for the state by the Marijuana Policy Group, a Colorado research firm,
found that tourists accounted for nearly half of recreational sales in
the Denver area and 90% in popular mountain communities.
Warehouses in Denver are now selling for $75-$100 a foot, up from $40-$60
a foot last year, according to Tim Shay, a senior vice president at Colliers
International brokerage firm, who noted that the pot industry was the driving
force behind the price surge.
On a recent day in the Denver suburb of Edgewater, several customers
milled about Live Green Cannabis, eying an expansive display of pot strains
like “Star Nebula” and “Sour OG.”
“As an industry, we’re excited that we’re setting a model for the rest
of country,” said Brooke Gehring, a former commercial banker who
owns Live Green and several other pot stores around Colorado. She noted
that since recreational marijuana sales began Jan. 1, 2014, Live
Green has seen up to a tenfold increase in daily customers, with sometimes
as many as 500 a day.
While tax revenues may have been less than originally forecast, experts
note that a number of municipalities chose to wait before allowing recreational
sales, or banned them outright, which ended up affecting tax collections.
Collections have generally been increasing since last January, according
to the state’s department of revenue.
Some lawmakers initially against legalization have since committed
themselves to making it work, including state Sen. David Balmer. The Republican
from Arapahoe County said many of the concerns voiced by critics of marijuana
legalization haven’t been realized, and the drug is proving to be a viable
economic contributor.
“I just had the same knee-jerk opinion as all of the other elected
officials,” he said. “But once I toured the dispensaries and the
warehouses, and I saw the dramatic regulatory framework that has been set
up, I wanted to help the business community succeed.”
xxx
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 Source: Denver Post (CO)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/D02nYJAc Copyright: 2015
The Denver Post Corp
Contact: openforum@denverpost.com Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122 Author: Steve
Raabe
MARIJUANA EXPERTISE FOR SALE
United Cannabis Signs Consulting Deal to Grow Medical Pot on Tribal
Lands.
Denver-based United Cannabis Corp. is proposing to team with Native
American tribes in California to grow and manufacture medical marijuana
products.
United Cannabis has signed a consulting and licensing deal with a company
that will build up to three cultivation and processing facilities on tribal
lands.
Fox Barry Cos. LLC, a firm that helps tribes with economic development
projects such as farms and casinos, has pledged $ 30 million to develop
the facilities. Fox Barry, in turn, will have exclusive distribution rights
for United Cannabis products in California.
“We will bring our proprietary products and consulting expertise out
to the tribes in California,” said Chad Ruby, chief operating officer of
United Cannabis.
Among other products, United develops pot strains with varying ratios
of THC - the psychoactive ingredient that makes users high- and non- psychoactive
cannabidiol, or CBD, which has purported medical benefits.
Ruby said that “active” and “inactive” products would be developed
at the tribal facilities. Products would be shipped to and sold at licensed
medical marijuana dispensaries in California.
The first proposed grow and manufacturing facility under the United
Fox Barry deal would be on Pinoleville Pomo tribal land in northern California’s
Mendocino County. Future facilities would be built in central and southern
California.
The licensing agreement calls for United to receive $ 200,000 in prepaid
royalties and 15 percent of net sales.
The U. S. Justice Department said last month that Indian tribes can
grow and sell marijuana on their lands as long as they follow the same
federal conditions laid out for states that have legalized the drug.
Ruby said the new venture was not a direct result of the DOJ ruling.
However, he said that federal approval gives the project a measure of protection
in a state where some dispensaries and grows have been raided and where
regulations vary from community to community.
United last year announced the creation of the Jamaica-based Cannabinoid
Research & Development Co. Ltd. with a mission to “help restore the
purity of ( Jamaican marijuana) strains and standardize the breeding process.”
Jamaica has drafted legislation to decriminalize marijuana, a cultural
icon of the Caribbean island, even though its use and cultivation is illegal.
In a recent filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
publicly traded United reported that in the first nine months of 2014 it
had revenue of $ 91,113 and expenses of $ 1.2 million, resulting in a loss
from operations of $ 1.1 million.
United’s stock closed Thursday at 70 cents. In the past year, it has
traded in a range of 6 cents to $ 10.50.
xxxc
Pubdate: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 Source: San Francisco Chronicle
(CA)
Webpage: http://drugsense.org/url/D16BISP1 Copyright: 2015
Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 Author: Brooks
Mencher
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hemp.htm (Hemp)
MALIGNED AND BANNED
The American Comeback of Industrial Hemp
After serving nearly 80 years on narcotics charges, hemp is back, semi-legalized
in the 2014 Farm Bill.
Its new age is a chemical renaissance. Experimental medicines extracted
from hemp seed oil will treat epilepsy, migraine headaches, glaucoma, and
diabetic and other nerve pain; there may even be applications for multiple
sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. The plant’s rough outer bast fibers,
formerly waste, can be used in super-capacitors to store energy for electronic
devices; these cooked carbon nanosheets, at least as efficient as current
materials including graphene, were unveiled at the annual exposition of
the American Chemical Society, held last summer in San Francisco.
More, its fibers and the cellulose-rich stem core are already producing
high-impact car doors, higher-efficiency housing insulation and other building
materials. And then there are cosmetics, soaps, oils, high-protein food
and high omega-3 dietary supplements.
But as brilliant and economically viable as its future might be, humankind’s
most ancient cultivated plant has never had an easy time in America, and
there’s no reason to believe that its return is going to be accompanied
by a red carpet. It’s back and it’s legal, but chances are, as in Colorado,
farmers can’t legally get the seeds. You, as a citizen, can’t legally
grow it. It would be easier to grow medical marijuana, hemp’s twin (same
species, Cannabis sativa linnaeus).
The Drug Enforcement Agency, a policing arm of the U.S. Department
of Justice, remains an anti-hemp force to be reckoned with - despite federal
rules (in the Farm Bill and the Dec. 9 Congressional budget bill that cut
DOJ enforcement funding) that have purportedly removed it from hemp oversight.
Nineteen states have declared hemp farming to be legal, but state officials
can’t guarantee there will be no federal raids. These contradictions are
part of hemp’s new world: The promise of a brilliant future amid political
and regulatory uncertainty.
Re-establishing hemp as a viable American industry will take
rebuilding, piece by piece, a working infrastructure that would include
contract farming, growers’ associations, trade lines, material transportation,
research and development and niche manufacturing, and, more importantly,
further legislation fully guaranteeing its legal status as a non-narcotic.
Legality and reality
How could a plant, whose use and cultivation dates back more than 12,000
years, be so heedlessly shelved in the first place? The answer: A bad rap
as a perceived narcotic. Hemp’s role as an American pariah has roots far
deeper than the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which listed it, with
marijuana, as a Schedule I narcotic in the company of heroin, crack and
meth. It predates the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which defined hemp and
marijuana as the same plant (this iron link was only broken in February
last year, in the Farm Bill).
Hemp was the victim of anti-drug sentiments dating back more than 150
years. Its untouchable status derives from the fallout of the Civil War,
when an estimated 400,000 maimed soldiers returned home addicted to a new
wonder drug, injectable morphine. Soon, opiates became the American physician’s
panacea. Abuse spread, and it became America’s new bogey man. Opium dens
were banned in San Francisco, smoking-grade opium was banned nationally
by an act of Congress, and the Harrison Anti-Narcotics Act of 1914 restricted
what was left. Soon the Temperance Movement became active, applying to
liquor the same strategy of fear that had followed opium, and Prohibition
was realized in 1920. Successful anti-liquor evangelicals then turned their
efforts to a great new evil, “marihuana,” and ushered in hemp’s narcotic
age. The anti-cannabis, often-racist propaganda (targeting Hispanics and
urban blacks) that began in the 1930s is unparalleled in America for its
duration, orchestration and intensity. Hemp didn’t have a chance.
Alex White Plume
But by the 1990s, American consumers began buying imported hemp seed
and oil products such as soap, cosmetics and food additives. Perhaps the
most prominent are Dr. Bronner’s soap products, made in America from imported,
processed hemp. There was a market, after all; there was a demand. But
there was no domestic farming or raw processing because of the Controlled
Substances Act. Hemp cloth and fiber were imported from China and Europe,
and Canada supplied the seed and oil products, already processed.
By 1998, the potential market seemed attractive to Alex White Plume
and the Lakota tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
After two false starts, their 2000 crop was planted on the 132nd anniversary
of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which guaranteed Lakota sovereignty, farming,
crop choice, and, in White Plume’s mind, the right to grow super-low THC
industrial hemp without Drug Enforcement Administration approval. A harvest
ceremony was planned, handwritten invitations were written and mailed,
including to the U.S. attorney. And on Aug. 24 that year, Alex White
Plume watched, with an M-16 to his head, as 30 agents from the DEA, FBI
and U.S. Marshals Service ripped out four months of his work - an acre
and a half of industrial hemp. “They came and stole it,” he said.
In 2001 no one on Pine Ridge had to plant hemp. The DEA’s eradication
technique had spread enough seed for a crop. This time, White Plume’s little
brother, Percy, supervised the farming. And this time, again, the DEA swept
in and cut and took the crop.
And they scattered seed in doing so. The third year, White Plume’s
sister, Ramona, supervised. It grew well and 3 acres were harvested.
And then the DEA seized the yield. The crop was valued by Alex White Plume
at about $20,000, a very large sum in one of America’s highest poverty
regions.
The White Plumes were tried in civil, not criminal, court. In 2006
the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against them. A federal injunction
bans all three siblings from ever growing any kind of cannabis again. Can
the ban be lifted?
“I think I used up all those attorneys,” Alex White Plume said.
State sovereignty
But the decision against the White Plumes also signaled the dawn of
sovereignty efforts by states. By 2013, nine states had approved their
own version of law and declared hemp to be separate from marijuana - and
legal - despite the federal Controlled Substances Act. Their rule was this:
Hemp, with a THC level of 0.3 percent or less, was legal. Marijuana, with
a THC level above that, would still be under the Controlled Substances
Act. It was mutinous. Eleven other states passed legislation to lay the
groundwork for a new hemp industry that could not yet legally exist.
As public sentiment grew, the federal government slowly took notice.
On Feb. 7, 2014, hemp emerged from the shadow of its narcotic exile and
became legal once again, albeit with significant restrictions. The
Farm Bill, signed by President Obama, supplanted the Controlled Substances
Act and separated hemp from marijuana for the first time since the Marihuana
Tax Act of 1937 - though only under the auspices of state-run pilot programs.
The critical 0.3 percent THC level adopted by mutinous states was now the
federal threshold. But for any non-sanctioned farming, hemp remains a Schedule
I drug, and growing it is still a federal offense.
By the time the landmark Farm Bill was signed, 18 states had declared
hemp legal, 33 states had introduced hemp farming legislation and 22 had
passed other various pro-hemp bills.
The other cannabis, marijuana, also made enormous strides: It is considered
medically legal in 23 states, including California, plus the District of
Columbia; Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia
have legalized its recreational use.
Though hemp’s path to legalization is the result of a successful popular
uprising that gained the support of key senators and congressmen, it was
very likely pushed along by the simple passage of time: The dying out of
the World War II generation, influenced by waves of anti-cannabis propaganda
book-ended by the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and the Controlled Substances
Act of 1970; and the coming into power of Generation X (President Obama),
the Millennial generation (his voting bloc) and Baby Boomers (his Cabinet).
Hemp’s detractors
While hemp’s new American future is bright, its political life remains
chaotic. Not everyone, it appears, is on board. Its rocky road back into
American culture was apparent, and confidence in the new hemp law was so
tentative that on the eve of the Farm Bill’s passage, the Colorado Agriculture
Department warned potential pilot-program farmers of the uncertainties
they would face. The agency said that: Although state research, according
to the Farm Bill, isn’t subject to the Controlled Substance Act or the
DEA, hemp seed could not be imported across state lines without violating
the act; federally managed hemp crop insurance could endanger existing
farm loans; and banks may be hesitant to get involved in hemp-farming loans
(much as they fear handling the business accounts of growers of state-legal
medical marijuana) for fear of federal raids, audits and shutdowns.
The Farm Bill passed after years of discussion and failure. But where
was the USDA, its most likely proponent? In 2000, when Alex White Plume
planted his first successful hemp crop, the USDA’s research branch issued
its notorious hemp-damning report, “Industrial Hemp in the United States:
Status and Market Potential.” In it, the USDA concluded there was little
or no viability in a U.S. hemp industry. Among a handful of death-knell
challenges that hemp would find in the United States, hemp markets here
“are and will likely remain small, thin markets. ... Uncertainty about
the longrun demand for hemp products and the potential for oversupply discounts
the prospects for hemp as an economically viable alternative crop for American
farmers.”
The study was made at the request of then-drug czar Army Gen. Barry
McCaffrey of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
This is quite the opposite of current thinking, expressed by Hemp Industries
Association Executive Director Eric Steenstra: “We see hemp becoming a
standard rotation crop, for example in Kentucky.” Hemp Inc., a leading
force in the nascent industry, expects a 50,000acre North Carolina crop
in 2015.
The study faded into obscurity, and the USDA hasn’t tackled the issue
again. Nevertheless, it’s Steenstra’s belief that the agency is “coming
around on this topic.”
“The report has been long discredited ... and the USDA appears open
to hemp, supportive, and there may be ways (it will become involved) in
the future.” Very likely, financially.
The DEA
Still missing from hemp’s fan list is the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Kentucky, anxious to start its hemp research program as authorized by the
Farm Bill, ordered 250 pounds of certified hemp seed from Italy shortly
after Obama signed the bill. The Drug Enforcement Agency claimed that a
DEA application was required, and promptly seized the seeds en route. Kentucky
challenged the issue in court.
“The federal judge started as a sort of mediator,” said Patrick Goggin,
co-counsel for Hemp Industries Association, which was involved in the case.
“Finally, the DEA capitulated on the permit to farm hemp, but maintained
authority over the importation of seed.” The agreement isn’t formal, but
it will provide a working structure for control during hemp’s initial reintroduction.
But does the DEA have legal jurisdiction at all? The Farm Bill places
pilot program policing in the hands of state departments of agriculture
or state university systems, and the DEA’s parent, the Department of Justice,
has had its hemp and medical marijuana policing funds restricted by Congress.
“It’s our position that the DEA has no authority,” Goggin said, “but
the object was to get the seed in the ground” in time for the growing season.
The bargain was struck. The seeds were released after the agreement, but
Goggin noted, “I do not feel confident in the DEA.”
The following month, the DEA again seized hemp seed bound for the newly
legalized pilot programs; this time it was bound for Colorado from Canada,
where supervised hemp farming has been legal since 1998, after four years
of pilot programs. Colorado’s law encourages hemp farming under state license,
and the state issues research and development permits to individuals. No
problem there, but farmers have to get seed and there’s no seed in the
state. The import question has been skirted there by working under a sort
of “don’t ask, don’t tell” system: If farmers can get seed, they can grow
it under the program. The DEA, however, is like the fox outside the fence.
As it stands, the federal agency will be working with Colorado, California
(this year) and other states regarding seed acquisition.
After the seizures, the association attorney Goggin said, “We want
to remove jurisdiction from the DEA; it inhibits investment for fear of
prosecution.”
After two-handed dealing for more than a decade, and apropos to the
White Plume family’s efforts to grow hemp in defiance of federal control
efforts, who can wholly trust the Department of Justice’s announcement
in December, declaring that Indian tribes located in marijuana-legal states
can now grow and sell marijuana on their lands while warning, in the same
breath, that marijuana remains illegal under federal law? The writ is the
second rehash of the “Cole memo,” an August 2013 advisory to U.S. attorneys
on pot enforcement in light of new state laws. Deputy Attorney General
James Cole pushed for enforcement that focused on cases involving minors,
gangs, guns, interstate commerce, piggybacking other drugs in marijuana
dealing, drugged driving and possession or growing marijuana on federal
land. The inference is that other cases of general use could slide,
though nothing “precludes investigation or prosecution.”
However, a rehash of the memo in February 2014, cautions at length about
money laundering and banking - a chilling effect already noted by those
involved in hemp pilot programs.
Alex White Plume, whose dealings with federal authorities cost him
his ranching livelihood half a generation ago, sees progress in the decree,
though at present it won’t apply to South Dakota, which has no state law
legalizing marijuana.
“For the Native Americans, it has always been an issue of tribal sovereignty,”
he said. “They (Congress and the Department of Justice) are trying to acknowledge
the treaties, and I appreciate the attorney general in this. We feel that
marijuana could be used medically to address alcoholism, for example, brought
on by conditions of poverty.”
Unlike White Plume (and unlike the Pinoleville Pomo tribe near Ukiah,
who last week announced a large indoor medical marijuana project), Oglala
Sioux Tribal President John YellowBird-Steele sees no benefit in growing
marijuana. He was involved in passing an ordinance declaring hemp legal
on Pine Ridge in 2000 - an ordinance that was key to White Plume’s federal
disobedience that year - and said earlier this month that hemp still has
a viable future at Pine Ridge.
Hemp has a viable future nationwide as well, including California.
The ancient plant can adapt, through selective breeding, to many environments;
this is part of its history with humankind. As the Marihuana Tax of 1937
and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 fade into history, and legal
inconsistencies are overcome through new legislation if not outright disobedience,
Cannabis sativa linnaeus is poised, once again, to become America’s “billion-dollar
crop” - a crop in need of an industry.
HEMP’S AMERICAN CENTURY
1914: The Harrison Anti-Narcotics Act is passed. Mandated transporters,
sellers and possessors of narcotics to pay a tax and keep records for the
Internal Revenue Service of the Treasury Department. The first restriction-by-taxation
act.
1916: USDA Bulletin 404 urges use of hemp paper due to the rapid cutting
of U.S. forests for pulp.
June, 1930: Federal Bureau of Narcotics established within the Department
of the Treasury; tasked with drug enforcement. Prohibition enforcer Harry
J. Anslinger appointed director; he initiates a lifelong battle against
marijuana and hemp: “To legalize marijuana would be to legalize slaughter
on the highway,”
1937: Marihuana Tax Act, restricting cannabis through taxation and
IRS (Treasury) mandated record-keeping, using 1914 Harrison Act
strategy of restriction through taxation
1937: Anslinger’s “Marijuana, Assassin of Youth” published
1938: Canada bans hemp production
1941: Henry Ford unveils a car with parts made from hemp that runs
on hemp ethanol
1942-1945: Hemp for Victory campaign, in which U.S. overlooks
anti-hemp laws to produce rope for the war effort
1957: America’s last hemp producer, Rens Hemp Company of Wisconsin,
shuttered: oppressive operating regulations
1967: Senate approves international treaty ratifying the Single Convention
on Narcotics, forcing a ban on marijuana.
1968: Federal Bureau of Narcotics, in the Treasury Department, is absorbed
by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, part of the Department
of Justice
1970: Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act of 1970 becomes law,
Nixon administration. Expanded federal law (1937 Act), keeping hemp within
the legal definition of marijuana, making both Schedule I narcotics
1971: President Nixon declares “war on drugs,” June 17, creates drug
abuse prevention office
1973: Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is absorbed along with
five other drug-related federal agencies or departments into the DEA,
Drug Enforcement Administration, under the DOJ
1996: California approves Prop. 215 legalizing, regulating medical
marijuana
1998: Canada legalizes controlled hemp cultivation
1999: North Dakota becomes first state since 1937 to legalize and set
regulations for cultivating hemp
2000: DEA wins case against New Hampshire Hemp Council, can still
prosecute hemp producers, hemp remains Schedule I narcotic
2004: DEA loses case against Canadian hemp imports to U.S., which it
seized in 1999, claiming that trace amounts of THC made hemp-food imports
narcotic
2002: California Gov. Gray Davis vetoes state hemp farming bill
2006, 2007, 2008, 2011: California hemp farming act vetoed by Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sept. 27, 2013: Gov. Jerry Brown signs California bill by state Sen.
Mark Leno allowing farmers to grow hemp when the federal government finally
gives the green light
2014: Obama signs the Farm Bill
Hemp isn’t marijuana
Hemp and marijuana are cultivars, or selectively bred variations of
the same species, Cannabis sativa linnaeus. They are visually indistinguishable,
hence their dual listing in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and their definition
as a Schedule I narcotic in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
The only difference between the two is the level of the active psychotropic
chemical delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. In industrial hemp, it is
usually (and now, legally) 0.3 percent or less. In marijuana, it ranges
between 10 and 30 percent. A second cannabinoid, cannabidiol or CBD, is
also produced in both variants, and it counteracts the effects of THC.
CBD has potential medical applications, especially regarding epileptic
seizures. Cannabinoids, unique to cannabis plants, may number 60 or more,
but THC and CBD are the major players.
xxx
Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 Source: Virgin Islands Daily
News, The (VI)
Copyright: 2015 Virgin Islands Daily News Contact: dailynews@vipowernet.net
Website: http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/ Details:
http://www.mapinc.org/media/3486
Author: Jeffrey Stinson, Stateline.org
STATES FIND YOU CAN’T TAKE LEGAL POT MONEY TO THE BANK
WASHINGTON - The nation’s rapidly expanding legal marijuana industry,
which operates in 23 states and the District of Columbia, enters a new
year facing a multibillion-dollar question: What to do with all the millions
in cash it collects each week?
Nearly all of the nation’s banks refuse to take money from marijuana
sales or offer basic checking or credit card services to the industry for
fear they’ll be shut down by federal authorities, for whom marijuana remains
an illegal narcotic. The banks won’t do business with growers, processors,
retail shops and medical dispensaries, or with their employees and contractors.
“It’s the biggest problem we have,” said Taylor West, deputy director
of the National Cannabis Industry Association, many of whose 800 members
are awash in $5, $10 and $20 bills and change with no bank to put them
in.
The abundance of cash makes the country’s 2,000 retail shops and medical
dispensaries tantalizing targets for criminals. Without bank accounts,
legal marijuana businesses have a hard time paying their employees and
vendors. Relying solely on cash leads to a lack of transparency in accounting
and auditing, and it complicates paying the taxes that states impose on
cannabis.
The problems caused by a cash-and-carry retail business likely will
grow as more states move to legalize pot for medical or recreational use,
unless Congress steps in and changes federal drug and drug-trafficking
laws.
Voters in Alaska and Oregon approved legal marijuana sales for recreational
use on Nov. 4, joining Colorado and Washington state, which opened retail
recreational sales last year. Residents of the District of Columbia also
voted to legalize possession and transfer of small amounts of marijuana,
and city officials think they can get around a congressional effort to
block the new law.
Pro-pot organizers are eyeing the 2016 ballots in Arizona, California,
Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada for initiatives to legalize recreational
use.
Meanwhile, medical marijuana use continues to expand. Although Florida
voters fell just shy of approving medical marijuana in November, it is
allowed it 23 states and D.C. Eleven other states, including Florida, have
approved legislation for cannabis research and treatment of disorders that
can cause seizures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures
(NCSL).
Because the legal marijuana industry is expanding so rapidly, it is
difficult to get firm figures on how big it is. West estimates it at between
a $2 billion and $3 billion annually, and she and others expect the legalization
trend to continue, which means significantly more growth.
“I think this horse is out of the barn,” said Scott Jarvis, director
of the Department of Financial Institutions for Washington state, where
medical and recreational marijuana is legal.
What’s needed now, Jarvis said, is for banks and credit unions to be
freed from the prospect that federal bank regulators will shut them down
for doing business with legitimate marijuana enterprises.
If that happens, he said, retailers won’t have to worry so much about
being robbed, and businesses won’t have to show up at the Washington State
Department of Revenue with “boxes and suitcases” stuffed with bills to
pay their taxes.
Under federal law, marijuana remains a federal Schedule I drug, in
the same class as harder drugs such as heroin. That has been the case since
1970, when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, making it illegal
to manufacture, possess or distribute it. The law also makes it illegal
for financial institutions that depend on the Federal Reserve System’s
money transfer system to take any proceeds from marijuana sales.
At an NCSL conference last month, Megan Michiels, senior counsel with
the American Bankers Association, said most banks don’t want to put themselves
in jeopardy by opening accounts or receiving any money - even indirectly
- from the sale of marijuana for fear of violating drug laundering laws
and being shut down.
“There’s just too many risks,” she said.
States had hoped new rules issued last year by the U.S. Department
of the Treasury would reassure banks that they can do business with the
industry. The rules required banks to report their state-licensed marijuana
customers and ensure they are following state law and don’t violate Justice
Department guidelines, such not selling to minors. In a separate memo,
the Justice Department directed U.S. attorneys not to pursue banks as long
as they adhere to guidelines.
That didn’t allay bankers’ fears, however. Nor has a provision of the
broad spending bill passed by Congress last month, which said that the
Justice Department cannot spend any money to prosecute medical marijuana
patients or dispensaries if they’re acting in accordance with state laws.
A bill by Rep. Ed Perlmutter, DColo., would explicitly allow banks
and credit unions to provide banking services to legal marijuana businesses.
But it died in the last session of Congress.
Others say nothing short of Congress removing marijuana from the controlled
substances list or providing states a safe haven from the Controlled Substances
Act will remove bankers’ fears.
“Until federal law is changed, we just don’t see any way to go forward,”
Michiels of the bankers association said.
In the absence of congressional action, some states, along with businesses,
banks and credit unions, are trying to solve the problem on their own.
Jennifer Calvery, director of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network, said in August that only 105 banks and credit unions - a tiny
fraction of the more than 100,000 in the U.S. - take money from legal marijuana
businesses.
The Salal Credit Union in Washington state is one. Bob Schweigert,
Salal’s senior vice president and chief lending officer, said the credit
union began a pilot program in the spring when the state began licensing
producers and retail sellers to open accounts for them.
Working with the industry requires more due diligence to ensure the
businesses meet state law and federal guidelines, which includes monitoring
of the accounts for anomalies, he said. It also includes armored car pickups
of the cash from retail outlets because, he said, “we don’t want large
amounts of cashing coming into our branches; we don’t want to put our staff
at risk.”
The program is working well and the credit union plans to expand its
customers up to 25 in coming weeks and then venture into loans for them,
Schweigert said. “It really comes down to knowing your customers,” he said.
“Many of them are established business people.”
xxx
Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: David Pierson
VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM INVESTS IN POT
Founders Fund Puts Millions into a Cannabis-Focused Private Equity
Group.
Despite growing momentum toward marijuana legalization, big-name investors
have largely stayed on the sidelines of the budding industry, content to
hold out until federal prohibition is one day repealed.
But legal cannabis now has the backing of a major tech investor - one
that could inspire other established financial players to join the green
rush.
Founders Fund, a leading San Francisco venture capital firm partly
run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, said Thursday that it was making
a multimillion-dollar investment in a cannabis-focused private equity firm
called Privateer Holdings.
The announcement gives the legal pot sector a shot of credibility as
it continues to grapple with conflicting state and federal laws, limited
access to banks and no shortage of fly-by-night investors who have sullied
the industry with pump-and-dump schemes.
“This is a milestone,” said Taylor West, deputy director of the National
Cannabis Industry Assn. in Denver. “It says there are real opportunities
within this industry for outsiders to benefit, and it shows the industry
is solid enough that an investment firm like this is comfortable stepping
in.”
Founders Fund is a heavyweight in Silicon Valley circles. The firm’s
$2-billion portfolio includes Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify. It’s known for
its moonshot investments - it backs SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private spaceflight
company. Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis said Privateer was chosen because
it had broad, long-term ambitions and owned vertically integrated brands
that handled many aspects of the business, including growing marijuana
and reviewing strains.
“Privateer Holdings has emerged as the market leader in legal cannabis,
which we believe will become a massive industry within the next decade,”
Lewis said. “We’ve been evaluating the cannabis industry for several years,
and we haven’t seen another company that comes close to Privateer Holdings
in terms of strategy, professionalism, talent, expertise and potential
for growth.”
Privateer’s chief brand is Leafly, a website that operates much like
Yelp by reviewing dispensaries, strains and doctors. Site visitors contribute
to a valuable trove of growing user data that could help market cannabis
products down the road.
Privateer, a Seattle company run by three business school graduates
(two from Yale), has also invested in Marley Natural, a premium cannabis
brand founded by family of the late reggae legend Bob Marley, and Tilray,
a Canadian grower, processor and distributor of medical marijuana.
Privateer hopes to accumulate more cannabis brands and position itself
as a market leader if federal prohibition is lifted - exactly the kind
of gamechanging gamble Founders Fund is banking on.
“The investment into Privateer actually fits pretty closely with Founders
Fund’s M.O.,” said Mike Dempsey, an analyst at CB Insights. “They
used to have a quote on their website that read, ‘We wanted flying cars,
instead we got 140 characters’ [a reference to the maximum number of characters
permitted in a tweet]. That spoke pretty well to their penchant for bold
investments and disdain for the average tech companies of today.”
Tech industry expert Jonathan Roubini said Founders Fund typically
likes to invest in sectors in which there’s little established knowledge
and the regulatory environment is evolving, such as Airbnb and Lyft.
“They invest in companies that are not popular and are difficult to
assess,” he said. “Privateer hasn’t been a popular investment among large
VCs because of marijuana’s bad image as well as the difficulty in assessing
an industry that has been recently legalized in a handful of states,” he
said.
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have some form of
legalized marijuana or have decriminalized marijuana possession.
Privateer’s chief executive, Brendan Kennedy, said momentum has shifted
toward legalization, and the investment by Founders Fund signals greater
acceptance of cannabis in the financial sector.
“Six to 12 months from now there will be investment banks who will
have analysts following cannabis like they follow healthcare or agricultural
commodities,” Kennedy said.
Legal marijuana sales reached $2.6 billion last year, a 68% increase
from 2013, according to the ArcView Group, an Oakland marijuana investment
and research group.
By 2018, sales could reach $10.2 billion.
Founders Fund began courting Privateer in 2013 after a friend of Lewis’
used Leafly to fulfill her doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana.
The two firms met for 18 months before deciding to go through with
the investment. Lewis said there was serious but brief soul-searching
about the morality of investing in a cannabis firm. But he and his colleagues
ultimately decided throwing their weight behind the professionalization
of the industry was a positive gesture.
“Ending prohibition is a moral imperative for the U.S.,” said Lewis,
who objects to drug laws that crowd prisons and favors legalization that
creates regulations, labeling and greater tax revenue.
Both Privateer and Founders Fund declined to provide details on the
investment amount.
Privateer has raised $50 million in its Series-B round so far and is
aiming for $75 million. The firm previously raised $22 million in Series-A
fundraising and a convertible bridge note, a type of loan.
Until now, cannabis investors were largely wealthy individuals, friends
and family.
Troy Dayton, CEO of the ArcView Group, said Founders Fund “is the first
really high-profile, decent-sized fund to come in.” Large, institutional
funds and investors won’t risk putting money into pot companies until such
firms are safe to list shares publicly - something that likely requires
federal legalization, Dayton said.
“When it comes to getting the industry to the next phase, you need
to get out of the private market,” he said. “Right now, all the good opportunities
exist in smaller seed-stage companies that are private. There still
needs to be some maturation to take place before we see Wall Street money.”
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