Freedom Leaf Magazine - June 2015

www.freedomleaf.com 1

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Contents

BUSINESS HEMP TRAVEL

16 28 32

6. Editor’s Note Steve Bloom

8. News

9. Events Calendar

13. The Fourth Way to Legalize Cannabis Allen St. Pierre

16. The Skinny on Pot Stocks Matt Chelsea

20. To Vape or Not to Vape Dr. Jahan Marcu

24. 45 Years of the Controlled Substances Act Paul Armentano

28. Hemp in the Key of Life Lillian Taylor

32. Fear and Loathing in Denver Steve Bloom


40 50 68

INTERVIEW CULTIVATION FOOD

38. How's Colorado Doing? Keith Stroup

40. The Freedom Leaf Interview: Diane Fornbacher Steve Bloom

44. Medical Cannabis Confusion in Canada David Malmo-Levine

50. Introduction to Concentrates Dru West

60. Dealer vs. Dispensary Roy Trakin

64. Stoner Dating Beth Mann

68. The Perfect Pot Picnic Cheri Sicard

72. Reviews

78. Products

The Good News in Marijuana Reform


Editor’s NoteFrom New York to Denver and Back

Freedom Leaf is based in Las Vegas, but I live in New York. Recently I went to Colorado to attend the Cannabis Cup and check out the state’s “Green Rush,” which I write about on page 32.

Denver, of course, is a very different world than New York when it comes to marijuana. Ever since recreational pot sales began, Colorado has been under intense scrutiny. But the good news is that the state’s economy is booming, thanks in large part to $300 million in retail sales in 2014.

New York is undergoing change, as well, just not quite at Colorado’s pace. In fact, it’s not even close. The medical marijuana law, passed last year by the legislature, is just getting started.

Our biggest marijuana issue in New York has been arrests for simple posses-sion, which climbed to more than 50,000 per year during the mayoral reigns of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloom-berg. After many years of political indif-ference, this issue became prominent when it was revealed that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk strat-egy was responsible for the vast majority of marijuana “in public view” arrests—which happen when police coerce people to remove things from their pockets, thus placing them in public view. But in Novem-ber 2013 a federal appeals court affirmed that stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional, and, on the heels of that decision, New York elected its first liberal mayor in 20 years.

In November, Mayor Bill de Blasio instructed the NYPD to not arrest people for small amounts of marijuana (25 grams or less is decriminalized in New York), and instead write tickets. In 2014, pot arrest

totals plunged to 13,000—a 50% decline from the year before, and the lowest total since 1997.

Fortunately, thanks largely to years of diligent activism by the Marijuana Arrest Project, the Drug Policy Alliance and Empire State NORML, the tide has turned in New York. This was quite evident at the May 2 rally in Union Square following the annual NYC Cannabis Parade. In the past, at various rally locations, arrests were common for smoking—as many as 300 arrests were made one year in Battery Park—so New Yorkers know to be very careful if they’re going to light up in public. At 4:20, joints and pipes were ignited and passed around in plain view of the men and women in blue. But this time there were no sudden takedowns, no arrests, no harassment.

Photo by Natalie Shmuel


FOUNDERS Richard C. Cowan &

Clifford J. Perry PUBLISHER & CEO

Clifford J. PerryEDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Steve BloomSENIOR EDITOR Chris Goldstein

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Dave Azimi

EDITORIAL DESIGN Jean Crow

COPY EDITOR G. Moses

SENIOR POLICY ADVISOR Paul ArmentanoSCIENCE EDITOR Dr. Jahan Marcu

FASHION COORDINATOR Lillian Taylor

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Ron Dennis

LEGAL COUNSEL Keith Stroup

PUBLIC RELATIONS Bobbie Katz

CHIEF ACCOUNTING OFFICER Patrick Rhea

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Stephanie Ortiz

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Felipe Menezes

CONTRIBUTORS Erik Altieri, Russ Belville, Matt Chelsea,

Christian Cortes, John Fortunato, Dan Gibson, Ellen Komp, David Malmo-Levine, Beth Mann, Alec

Pearce, Rick Pfrommer, Cheri Sicard, Natalie Shmuel, Allen St. Pierre, Drew

Stromberg, Roy Trakin, Dru WestContent and advertisements in this magazine are for information purposes only and are not representa-tive, in any way, as a recommendation, endorsement or verification of legitimacy of the aforementioned herein. The opinions expressed here are those of the individual writers and may not be those of the pub-lisher or staff of Freedom Leaf Inc. Advertisers and/or their agencies assume responsibility and liability for content within their advertisement. Freedom Leaf Inc. assumes no liability for any claims or representations contained in this magazine. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without written consent is prohibited. Copyright © 2015. Freedom Leaf, Inc. All rights reserved.

While major victories have been won in states like Colorado and Washington, the battles still rage on in New York and the other 45 states without legal marijuana. We need to keep this in mind, in spite of the cannatopia Denver, in particular, has become.

Steve BloomEditor-in-Chief

I ask that Educators for Sensible Drug Policy be included in your list of renowned organizations helping to bring about an end to prohibition (“Cannabis Victory Wall”). We have been proactive in the movement since 2003. For over 12 years we have influenced and supported teach-ers, parents and administrators in the public education system to help provide alternatives to the D.A.R.E. program. We prefer to provide drug education from a health perspective and not a criminal per-spective, taught by qualified educators and healthcare professionals, not law enforcement officers delivering failed drug policies. Please visit the following pages for information:

efsdp.orgfacebook.com/EFSDP

Judith Newbergher-RenaudExecutive Director

Educators for Sensible Drug Policy

Regarding your list of top stoner songs (Issue 3), I’m pretty sure Sir Paul admit-ted that the Beatles song “Got to Get You into My Life” was about weed.

Mark TulkWest New York, N.J.

Send Letters to the Editor to [email protected]

Letters to the Editor


NEWS

Invented nearly a century ago, in 1917, by George Schlichten, the hemp decorticator should have revolutionized the manufac-ture of hemp in America. But marijuana prohibition, enacted two decades later, put an end to that.

Now, nearly 80 years later, Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP) has purchased the nation’s only large-scale decorticator, located in Springfield, N.C. “This is the critical step we needed to take in order for Hemp Inc. to help Americans transition from non-sustainable synthetic solutions to more hemp-based clean, green solutions,” says Hemp Inc. CEO Bruce Perlowin.

Built by the German company Temafa, Alliance One, a tobacco firm based in Raleigh, originally bought the machine for $15 million in 2008. Their initial plan was to grow kenaf, and use the decorticator to separate the fibers from the plant’s stalks.

“They made premium horse bedding. Then they walked off,” explains Hemp Inc. COO David Schmitt.

That’s when Hemp, Inc. stepped in.

The Return of the Hemp Decorticator

Fifteen million pounds of the baled kenaf also came with the deal. The company intends to mill the kenaf and retool the decorticator for hemp use. “Once indus-trial hemp is legal in North Carolina, the company plans to convert its inventory of kenaf to industrial hemp for all products,” Schmitt reports.

Prior to the invention of the decorti-cator, hemp fiber was retted in the field by hand. Workers would break the stalks and leave them to rot or submerge them in water, which separated the fibers from the hurds.

In his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer says the German-born Schlichten spent $400,000 over an 18-year period to invent his decorticator. “With the new machine… hemp is cut with a slightly modified grain binder,” Popular Mechanics noted in their infamous Feb-ruary 1938 article, “New Billion-Dollar Crop.” “It’s delivered to the machine where an automatic chain conveyer feeds it to the breaking arms at the rate of two or three tons per hour. The hurds are


June 11–13: CannaCon, Colorado Con-vention Center, Denver cannacon.org

June 18–19: Cannabis World Con-gress & Business Expo, Javits Convention Center, New York internationalcannabisas-sociation.com/new-york-2015

June 20–21: THC Expo, Los Angeles Coliseum, Los Angeles facebook.com/thethcexpo

June 29–July 1: Cannabis Business Summit & Expo 2015, Colorado Convention Center, Denver cannabisbusinesssum-mit.com/cannabis-business-summit-2015

June 30: Cannabis Carnival, Fill-more Auditorium, Denver thecannabisindus-try.org/events

July 11–12: Indo Expo Trade Show, Denver Mart, Denver indoexpoco.com

July 11–12: The 710 Cup, Denver Mart, the710cup.com

July 11–12: Chalice California, NOS Events Center, San Bernardino, CA chalicecalifornia.com

EVENTSJune

July

broken into fine pieces, which drop into the hopper, from where they’re delivered by blower to a baler or to truck or freight car for loose shipment. The fiber comes from the other end of the machine, ready for baling.”

According to Hemp Inc., there are only five high-capacity decorticator machines in the world: two in South Africa, two in France and the one in North Carolina. Several smaller decorticators exist in Canada.

Schlichten moved to the U.S. in 1917, where he planted a 100-acre hemp crop in Imperial Valley, Calif. But his predic-tion that hemp would replace paper products fell on deaf ears, and soon his “machinery fell into oblivion,” says Don Wirtshafter, who discovered the Schlich-ten Papers, which consists of 24 letters, donated to the Alden Library at Ohio Uni-versity, in Athens.

“None of the later inventors ever cred-ited Schlichten for his early work, and he—and his invention—mysteriously dis-appeared from recorded history without a trace,” Wirtshafter writes. “[He] died a broken man in Solana, California on Feb-ruary 3, 1923.”

Now, thanks to Hemp Inc., the decor-ticator is about to make its rightful return to the American hemp landscape.

— Steve Bloom

Hemp Inc.'s decorticator in North Carolina.


On May 3, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla made the rare move of legalizing medical marijuana by executive order. “We’re taking a significant step in the area of health that is fundamental to our development and quality of life,” he stated.

Puerto Rico Health Secretary Dr. Ana del Carmen Rius now has the job of putting together a program. She has three months to implement the law.

Garcia stated that pain, epilepsy, mul-tiple sclerosis and AIDS would be among the qualifying treatable conditions. The island is currently looking to host a variety of scientific and medical research related to cannabis.

The move was a surprise to many legislators and local marijuana activists. While medical marijuana laws in the U.S. and Guam have been enacted by legis-lation or ballot initiative, this marks the

On May 5, East Lansing, Mich. passed a ballot initiative that removes all crimi-nal penalties for possessing marijuana. More than 65% of voters approved the measure.

Unlike other decriminalization codes, there will be, under specified parameters, no civil fine. This is, essentially, local legalization.

Residents over the age of 21 will be allowed to use, possess and transfer up to one ounce of marijuana while on private property. Public smoking and pos-session on the Michigan State campus remain prohibited.

The new policy closely mirrors what had been in place in Alaska, prior to voter approval in 2014 of the state initiative to create a legal retail market for cannabis (see “Northern Lights: The Winding Trail to Legalization” in Issue 3).

first time the move was made though an executive decision. A bill was debated last year, but never came to a vote.

The new policy could also be a boon to medical marijuana patients in the United States who wish to visit the island. No passport is required for U.S. citizens trav-eling to Puerto Rico. — Chris Goldstein

But some officials are saying that Michigan state law will still be enforced. Local police and the city attorney contend that residents could still be arrested and prosecuted. Still, there were just 23 mari-juana possession citations issued in East Lansing last year.

Michigan has a robust medical can-nabis program with about 100,000 reg-istered patients. Thirteen other cities around the state have voted in favor of decriminalizing marijuana over the last few years. Organizers in the Great Lake State are pushing for a full legalization vote in 2016. — CG

Puerto Rico Legalizes Medical Marijuana

East Lansing Votes for Innovative Pot Policy

Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla.


Freedom Leaf, the “movement market-ing” company devoted to the legalization of marijuana globally, has gone public and is a fully reporting DTC-registered security on the OTCBB:FRLF stock exchange.

“We want to broaden the base of the reform movement and get more people involved,” says company co-founder Richard Cowan about Freedom Leaf going public. “Activism appeals to a limited number of people. So the ques-tion is, how do you change the nature of activism? We feel that it’s through arts, fashion and lifestyle. That gives people more than marijuana to talk about and sell. It’s a way for people to be more effec-tive and involved. The idea is to combine activism with entrepreneurism. The idea of Freedom Leaf is that behind it all are real activists.”

It’s a major part of the company’s strat-egy to ensure that when it comes to the hot-button cannabis issue, the masses

Leaf with Cowan. “We’re the de facto news, editorial, multimedia and entertain-ment company of the Green Rush.”

Both Cowan and Perry have extensive backgrounds in business and manage-ment. After his stint as Executive Direc-tor of NORML (1992–1995), Cowan founded MarijuanaNews.com in 1997 (it’s been called the original marijuana blog). Cowan also pioneered video blog-ging in 2001 on Marc Emery’s Pot TV. In 2008, he co-founded Cannabis Science, the second publicly owned medical mari-juana company, and retired as an officer and director at the end of 2012.

Living by the credo that “what you conceive and believe, you will achieve,” Perry is a successful entrepreneur and business consultant who’s advised and influenced a variety of diverse clients. A gourmet chef and restaurateur, he’s par-ticipated in the conceptualization, startup and ownership of 17 restaurants, includ-ing the Cinnabon master franchise for Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

Marching to the beat of a different drummer, Cowan and Perry are truly two for the road—the one that leads to freedom from marijuana prohibition.

— Bobbie Katz

Taking Stock of Freedom Leaf

“We’re the de facto news, editorial, multimedia and entertainment company

of the Green Rush.”

aren’t subject to a smokescreen, but rather get their desired “buzz,” meaning correct information and education from the most authoritative sources on the debate, be they doctors, lawyers, celebri-ties, businesspeople, patients or Native Americans.

“Although marijuana has been legal-ized in four states and Washington, D.C., until it becomes totally legal for both medicinal and recreational purposes, there is always the chance that the gov-ernment could shut it down,” explains entrepreneur and business consultant Clifford J. Perry, who co-founded Freedom

Cliff Perry Richard Cowan


By Allen St. Pierre

The notion that there is, in fact, a fourth way to legalize marijuana brings to mind the three previous paths taken to legaliza-tion.

What are the three groups behind these efforts, and what now constitutes a fourth way?

1. The Stakeholders

At the start of the social justice move-ment to legalize cannabis in the late 1960s, the organizers could be charac-terized as cannabis law-reform activists and stakeholders. These were the men and women who cultivated, sold and consumed cannabis and wanted to have legal parity with their alcohol-consuming peers. NORML and the now-defunct Can-nabis Action Network (FLCAN still exists in Florida) are prime examples of con-sumer-oriented public-advocacy organiza-tions with lots of enthusiasm, but short on economic resources, that placed a number of unsuccessful ballot initiatives before the public in the ’70s and ’80s.

2. The Do-Gooders

In the mid-’90s, the social “do-good-ers,” depicted by organizations like the Drug Policy Alliance and American Civil Liberties Union, started to have strong

influence over the cannabis law-reform agenda, fueled not by their declared stakeholdership in ending cannabis pro-hibition, but instead by multimillion-dollar donations from elite billionaires (notably George Soros and the late Peter Lewis) as a component of a larger social justice reform agenda.

3. The Ganjapreneurs

After the pro-pot philanthropy of these bil-lionaires started to take hold, with nearly a dozen voter initiatives passing from 1996–2010—creating a gray market of medical cannabis businesses mainly on the West Coast and in Colorado, with new-world “ganjapreneurs” risking their liberty and capital to establish other-wise federally illegal companies—it was wrongly assumed by both stakeholders and do-gooders that an emerging class of “medical marijuana millionaires” was going to become the legalization catalyst, driven by their wish to not get busted and legitimize their—in prosecutor’s par-lance—illegal criminal enterprises.

In 2010, Oakland-based cannabusi-ness owner Richard Lee pledged that if he was successful in selling medical can-nabis and didn’t get busted, he’d donate the lion’s share of his net worth to ending

The Fourth Way to Legalize CannabisFinancial rewards can drive legalization as much as social justice.


MAKE REFORM A REALITYIt’s California’s time to legalize cannabis.

For legalization to win on the ballot in 2016, we need 6 million votes. We’re

building the majority one vote at a time.Join us and let’s Reform California.

REFORMCA.COM /REFORMCAEndorsed by:

cannabis prohibition in California. True to his word, Lee spent millions getting a legalization initiative on the ballot. Unfor-tunately, his effort, Proposition 19, came up just three percentage points short of passage. However, the lessons learned in the campaign were successfully applied toward ballot victories in both Colorado and Washington in 2012.

Ironically, the triumphant ballot initia-tives to legalize ganja in Colorado and Washington were funded by an amalgam of old-guard stakeholders, do-gooders and activists, not the burgeoning cash-heavy cannabis industry.

This leads us to the fourth way that cannabis law reform may come about in the modern era.

4. Politically Connected Interests

Currently, in states such as Michigan and Ohio, political operatives from the two major parties are publicly and actively organizing to place pro-cannabis law-reform initiatives on state ballots, where,

if successful, their clients would receive the first licenses that allow for produc-tion and/or sale of cannabis products—positioning them to enjoy a competitive advantage, take a larger market share early on and create branded products.

In Arizona, public controversy recently erupted because the Marijuana Policy Project chose to work with cannabis industry insiders rather than medical cannabis patients and activists in filing “pro-industry” legalization ballot initiative language.

There are several ways to prepare an egg to eat, and no “proper” or right way to go about the task. Maybe this too can be said for cannabis legalization, where the particular intentions of an effort to legal-ize marijuana are not nearly as important as succeeding in ending cannabis prohibi-tion, and replacing this long-failed public policy with free-market and constitution-ally friendly alternatives.

Allen St. Pierre is Executive Director of NORML.


By Matt Chelsea

It’s been fascinating to watch the swell of interest around investing in medical and recreational cannabis and related services, as people try to cash in on one of the few new growth industries to recently emerge in the U.S. But pickings still remain slim for individual investors looking to find a winning stock that will deliver fat returns.

You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard to find a bevy of great pot stocks, but that’s not the case; it’s still too early in the busi-ness. The best options available fall into two basic groups: super-small micro-cap stocks fraught with risk; and stocks of huge conglomerates with a tiny dash of exposure to cannabis.

If you’re brave, there’s a small uni-verse of penny stocks out there tied to the cannabusiness. Usually traded on the OTC market or the Pink Sheets, this type of stock remains barely regulated and subject to pump-and-dump schemes that go like this: Someone buys 1,000 shares of a penny stock for less than $500 and then goes around posting positive comments on blogs and chat rooms fre-quented by stock market investors. Some of these folks get caught up and decide to buy. These stocks are so thinly traded that even just a few purchases may drive up the price sharply. It’s not unusual for these issues to double or triple in price just long enough for the 1,000-share owner who started the rumor to walk away with a profit of $500 or $1,000—or maybe 10 to 100 times that.

This type of activity has been rampant in penny stocks forever, as depicted in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. And

cannabis penny stocks reside in the same bucket. To be sure, plenty of the companies listed represent legitimate businesses, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be used as fodder by penny stock day traders.

The reason why these stocks aren’t traded on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange is because they’re issued by tiny companies, typically with 50 people or less. They may be overly reliant on one line of business, or maybe haven’t even commercially launched a product yet. No doubt, a small percent-age of them may move up to the big time, but most never do.

Nevertheless, some penny stocks have drawn strong attention from inves-tors and the media. Bloomberg recently issued a list of 55 public companies with share prices of 10 cents or more tied to the legal marijuana business, including Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARNA) and CannaVest (OTC: CANV). The com-bined market value of all 55 stocks on the Bloomberg list spiked to about $7 billion in 2014, but fell back to below $4 billion as of press time. An earlier surge came in 2012 when voters approved recreational cannabis sales in Washington State and Colorado, only to fall back sharply.

Alan Brochstein, a financial analyst who runs 420 Investor, tracks about 280 names in the penny stock universe. Of that group, only about 10 may someday have actual businesses that match their relatively lofty stock market valuations. Among them, NASDAQ-listed GW Phar-maceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH)—which is conducting trials for Epidiolex, a medicine

The Skinny on Pot Stocks Everyone wants a piece of the cannabis action these days. Here’s our advice on where to put your money, and where not to.


derived from cannabis, and already has another, Sativex, available in Europe and Canada—may offer some promise. But pretty much all of them are overvalued. “They’re not cheap,” Brochstein says. “They’ll have to grow into their market caps.”

Overall, cannabis and other penny stocks are risky. One example: Medbox (OTC: MDBX), a maker of marijuana vending machines, traded at $20 a year ago and now sits at around $1 a share. They’re still conducting an internal review of nearly three years of financial state-ments following the resignation of their CEO. That’s not exactly something that builds investor confidence.

On the big side, a number of corporate stocks carry super-tiny exposure to can-nabis. Remember, one of the strengths of these publicly traded behemoths with billions in sales is the diversity of their revenue base. They’re not just relying on one or two or even a dozen different prod-ucts to maintain their financial strength.

Still, some big-cap names like Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG) could be a pretty solid candidate for a pot-stock buy: Its fertilizer products have been used for years by growers. And on top of that, the company’s Hawthorne Gardening Co. unit recently paid an undisclosed sum to acquire General Hydroponics Inc., a maker of equipment widely used by growers. It’s not a big chunk of their overall business, but it is something that could get baked into their stock price if the hydroponics business takes off.

Many small and midsize companies in the marijuana sphere will no doubt get bought up by large conglomerates, not unlike Ben & Jerry’s getting absorbed by Unilever, or Coca-Cola buying Odwalla. It happens.

Billionaire Warren Buffett has been known to tell Main Street investors to buy shares in companies with products they like. If you don’t eat at McDonald’s,

continued on page 66


Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI): Large video game maker.Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARNA): Player in the medical marijuana sector.Cannabis Sativa Inc. (OTC: CBDS): Named two-time New Mexico governor Gary Johnson as its CEO in 2014. Markets CBD products.Cannabis Science Inc. (OTC: CBIS): Developing cannabinoid pharmaceuticals.Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA): Maker of NFL, Medal of Honor and Star Wars video games.Freedom Leaf (OTC: FRLF): Publishes this magazine. Also brands products for NORML.GW Pharmaceuticals (NADAQ: GWPH): Conducting U.S. trials for Epidiolex, a whole-plant medicine for the treatment of epilepsy and other seizure disorders. Also known for Sativex.Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP): Industrial hemp processor (see “The Return of the Hemp Decorticator” on page 8).Lionsgate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF): Producer of stoner-friendly TV shows like Weeds and Mad Men.MassRoots (OTC: MSRP): Runs social networks for the cannabis community.Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT): Maker of Xbox video game platform. Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG): Sells fertilizer often used for cannabis cultivation; it’s also expanding into hydroponic growing equipment through its Hawthorne Gardening Co. and Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC units.Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL): Provider of electric power in Colorado.PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP): Maker of Doritos and soft drinks.Yum Brands (NYSE: YUM): Operates Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut brands.

15 Pot Stocks to Watch

CannabisScience

Here is a list of penny stocks focusing on marijuana, as well as stocks of some conglomerates with exposure to services, materials and life-style around the cannabis trade:

pharmaceuticals


By Dr. Jahan Marcu

Portable electronic devices for inhal-ing substances, such as the vaporizers used for tobacco and cannabis, have lately come under scrutiny by healthcare professionals, regulators, the public and even by the companies distributing such products. There’s a great deal of concern regarding questionable heating elements, and the combustion generated by e-ciga-rettes and vape pens as they heat canna-bis oil containing propylene glycol (PEG) and other additives. Currently, such de-vices are manufactured under a complete lack of regulatory controls or guidelines.

E-cigs, vape pens and other portable electronic devices purport to be safe items that actually vaporize the active ingredients in marijuana, but many of these products fall short of the mark. The products this article is focused on are vape pens with a vial or cartridge, or a

ceramic bowl with a heating element that may screw into place on top of a battery. These devices are sold as disposable units or as individual parts (i.e., battery, heating element) for customizing person-al devices.

The vials or cartridges that screw onto a battery often contain a liquid concoc-tion comprising hash oil, perhaps a car-rier agent or excipient (PEG, glycerin, ethanol or solvents) to reduce viscosity and perhaps food-grade flavoring agents. The oil is heated inside these battery-op-erated devices, which come in a myriad of designs, sizes, materials, colors and themes. A button is pressed to turn on the heating element, and the cannabi-noids, flavoring agents and any solvents or excipients present become aerosolized and inhaled by the user.

When PEG is present in an oil mixture,

To Vape or Not to VapeChoosing not to combust cannabis is at the root of the vaporizer revolution. But vape pens that smolder when heating oil cartridges may not be the healthiest alternative.


these electronic devices produce form-aldehyde and other carbonyls when the mixture is heated. Formaldehyde is a well-known breakdown product of PEG; and when heated, PEG and glycerin react to make “formaldehyde-releasing agents.” While there’s presently no hard evidence that users will develop cancer from these products, formaldehyde is an Internation-al Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Group 1 carcinogen.

The scientific debate on these devices is just beginning. The biggest variable is the devices themselves, as performance varies between different devices, and even between the same devices. There’s scant information on when and for how long the average user should push the button; how long it takes for the coils in different devices to heat up; the amount of inhalation by users; or the voltage used (the five-volt setting on some va-porizers is associated with higher levels of formaldehyde in controlled studies).

Generally, pre-filled cartridges for vaporizers come with little to no mean-ingful or useful information on their con-tents. In the case of vape pens, there’s a great need for specific studies on how people use these products in the real world, in order to understand potential benefits or harms.

Scientists may agree in principle that e-cigs and vape pens may be safer than smoking, as they would appear to pro-duce fewer carcinogens, but the data is sparse and contradictory. What we do know is that a true vaporizer differs from an e-cig or average vape pen in several ways. When the heating element gets red hot in a vape pen, most of the material is actually burning; technically it undergoes the process called “smoldering.” In addi-tion to the pyrolysis, or burning, of can-nabinoids during smoldering, some of the same material does become vaporized and atomized.

There’s growing evidence that most


vape pens on the commercial market may not be true vaporizers. These products can sometimes confound regulators, and perhaps contribute indirectly to the adop-tion of legislation based on fears that come from the mislabeling of products, a lack of disclosure about what is actually in the oil and the absence of data about the safety of the additives when they are inhaled.

Most flavoring compounds are ap-proved by the FDA. People eat complex mixtures of these compounds every day, but science doesn’t know what the health effects are when many of these compounds are inhaled. Two chemicals currently approved as flavoring additives are associated with respiratory disease when inhaled in tobacco e-cig devices: diacetyl and acetyl propionyl. According to Chemical and Engineering News, these compounds were found in 72% of nicotine e-cig products (and they can also be found in flavored cannabis oil used in vape pen cartridges). Another potentially hazardous-when-inhaled com-pound is cinnamon ceylon, which appears to be one of the more cytotoxic additives when aerosolized.

In stark contrast to vape pens, herbal vaporizers for cannabis, such as the Vol-cano, have been used in clinical studies and tested for safety and pharmacokinet-ics (measuring how drugs move through the body). Collectively, the data suggest that vaporizing whole-plant cannabis produces lower amounts of carcinogens compared to smoking, as well as de-creased side effects, such as reactions to the harshness of smoke. States with new medical marijuana laws are unneces-sarily cautious about herbal vaporizers.

Non-portable vaporizers like the Vol-cano, which uses cannabis flowers, may still pose health concerns if the cannabis used is below acceptable botanical safety standards. A recent article in the Journal of Analytical Methods notes the levels of

ammonia produced when vaporizing can-nabis that was grown incorrectly—per-haps due to not adequately flushing fertil-izer residue during hydroponic cultivation. There’s a growing body of data suggest-ing that many chemicals used to push the plant toward unnaturally high THC concen-trations stay in the finished product.

Here’s how to protect yourself or your patients from vape pens that utilize pro-pylene glycol:

◆ Use a lower voltage setting on the battery: 3.3 volts did not produce any formaldehyde in a recent published study. However, the surface area of the heating element and its electrical resistance also play a large role.

◆ Discontinue use if you experience a “dry puff” with an exceedingly unpleas-ant taste, or, alternatively, reduce in-halation duration while increasing the length between inhalations from the device.

◆ An easy way to protect yourself is to not use these products unless from a trusted or properly certified source.

◆ Ask the manufacturer to provide evi-dence that it tests each batch of PEG it receives for purity and safety.

Dr. Jahan Marcu is the Director of R&D for Green Standard Diagnostics and Freedom Leaf’s Science Editor.


By Paul Armentano

On April 15, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller denied a motion challenging the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug under the U.S. Controlled Sub-stances Act. Specifically, the judge held: “In view of the principled disagreements among reputable scientists and practi-tioners regarding the potential benefits and detrimental effects of marijuana, this court cannot say that its placement on Schedule I is so arbitrary or unreasonable as to render it unconstitutional. Congress still could rationally choose one side of the debate over the other.”

Judge Mueller’s determination—that it is the responsibility of Congress, not the courts, to amend federal pot policy—was disappointing, but not wholly unexpected. Her ruling was the latest in a long line of unsuccessful legal challenges initiated by

marijuana law-reform advocates seeking to amend marijuana’s Schedule I sta-tus—a classification that has existed since 1970 that defines the plant and all of its organic compounds as meeting each of the following criteria:

A “The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.”

B “The drug or other substance has

no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

C “There is a lack of accepted safety

for the use of the drug or other sub-stance under medical supervision.”

Origins of the Controlled Substances Act

While many trace the origins of federal pot prohibition to the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, marijuana’s present-day illicit status is a conse-quence of its Schedule I categorization in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA). This comprehensive legislation eliminated mandatory-minimum drug sentences (though Congress eventually reinstated them in the 1980s), reduced certain pot penalties (which were mostly classified as felonies) and established federal “scheduling” criteria for illicit and licit substances.

and COUNTINGA brief history of marijuana’s Schedule I prohibitive status under federal law, dating back to 1970.

YEARS


Of the five schedules established under the CSA, members of Congress placed cannabis in the most prohibitive category, with heroin and LSD. Yet many at the time believed this decision was only meant to be temporary, because the act also called for the creation of a special federal commission to study all aspects of the cannabis plant, its use and its con-sumers. Notably, when Congress initially classified cannabis as a Schedule I drug, fewer than 400 published papers existed in the scientific literature concerning the plant’s botany, its active components or its biological effects; today, a keyword search on the scientific search engine PubMed shows that more than 20,000 scientific papers concerning cannabis exist. The presumption was that lawmak-ers would revisit pot’s Schedule I status once this blue-ribbon commission com-pleted its work and reported its findings back to Congress.

But things didn’t exactly work out as planned.

The Shafer Report

After nearly two years of scientific study, Congress’ marijuana commission–—known as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (a.k.a. the Shafer Commission, named after its chairperson, Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer)—completed its investiga-tion. The multimillion-dollar fact-finding mission was trumpeted upon its comple-tion as “the most comprehensive study of marihuana ever made in the United States.”

The commission’s report, “Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” was issued to Congress and President Richard Nixon on March 22, 1972. In clear and unam-biguous language, it rebutted virtually every negative claim that politicians and members of law enforcement had made about marijuana’s alleged dangers. Spe-cifically, the commission concluded that

pot was not a so-called “gateway drug,” that its use was not associated with vio-lence or aggressive activity and that its consumption was not physiologically or psychologically detrimental to health.

The commission’s findings should have triggered the immediate removal of cannabis from Schedule I. But nobody in the federal government bothered to listen. Instead, the Feds doubled down on demonizing the illicit weed. In the months following the publication of the Shafer report, Nixon and Congress did the exact opposite of what the commission had rec-ommended. Flexing the federal muscle of the newly formed anti-crime “super-agency”—the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—Nixon announced that his administration was launching the first official “war” on drugs, and that Public Enemy No. 1 was marijuana.

NORML vs. DEA

In late 1972, the newly formed National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) filed an administrative peti-tion with the DEA, calling on the federal government to reclassify marijuana under the CSA so that the law would recognize the plant’s growing acceptance as a medi-cine. Federal authorities initially refused to accept the petition, until mandated to

Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs.


do so by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1974. Federal bureaucrats then refused to properly process the peti-tion, until again ordered by the court, in 1982, to do so.

In 1986, 14 years after NORML ini-tially filed its petition, the DEA finally held public hearings on the issue. Two years later, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young determined that a respected minority of the medical com-munity recognized the therapeutic use of marijuana, and that it therefore met the standards of other legal medica-tions. “Marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision,” he wrote. “It would be unreasonable, arbi-trary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record.”

Young recommended transferring “marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II, to make it available as a legal medi-cine.” That should’ve been the end of the issue, but it wasn’t.

In 1990, then-DEA Administrator John Lawn set aside the decision, choosing instead to invoke a different set of cri-teria than those used by Judge Young. Specifically, the DEA argued that a sub-stance must possess reproducible drug chemistry, be subject to adequate safety

studies and be accepted as efficacious by a majority of qualified experts before it can be rescheduled. In 1994, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allowed Lawn’s reversal to stand, effectively con-tinuing the federal ban that remains in place to this day.

ASA vs. DEA

In 2002, the Coalition to Reschedule Cannabis—a collection of reform organi-zations that included NORML, Americans for Safe Access, Patients Out of Time and High Times, among others—once again petitioned the DEA to reschedule mari-juana as a Schedule III, IV or V drug. In 2011, following years of administrative delay, the DEA denied the petition, claim-ing that “there is no currently accepted medical use for marijuana in the United States,” and, “The limited existing clini-cal evidence is not adequate to warrant rescheduling of marijuana under the CSA.” Conveniently, the agency neglected to acknowledge that the reason clini-cal evidence of the plant’s efficacy is “limited” is because marijuana’s Sched-ule I status prohibits large-scale clinical trials from taking place.

Petitioners asked the federal Court of Appeals to find the DEA’s rejection of the petition to be arbitrary and capri-cious. But the D.C. Court of Appeals was not persuaded, ruling in 2013: “We defer to the agency’s interpretation of these regulations and find that substantial evi-dence supports its determination that such studies do not exist… We will not disturb the decision of an agency that has ‘examine[d] the relevant data and articulate[d] a satisfactory explanation for its action, including a rational con-nection between the facts found and the choice made.’” Petitioners attempted to appeal the appellate court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it refused to take the case.

Judge Mueller’s ruling was the latest in a long

line of unsuccessful legal challenges initiated by marijuana law-reform advocates seeking to amend marijuana’s Schedule I status.


The California Challenge

In April 2014, Judge Mueller of the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Calif. granted a motion brought by members of the NORML Legal Committee challenging the placement of cannabis in Schedule I. For a week last October, counsel and experts presented evidence that the sci-entific literature does not support the plants's present categorization. Lawyers for the government countered that it’s rational for the Feds to maintain the plant’s prohibitive status as long as there remains any dispute among experts in regard to its safety and efficacy, arguing: “Congress is not required to be ‘right,’ nor does it matter if the basis on which Congress made its decision turns out to be ‘wrong’… Because qualified experts disagree, it is not for the Courts to decide the issue and the statute must be upheld.” A year after taking on the case, Judge Mueller sided with the government, ruling that it’s the responsibility of law-makers, not the federal courts, to revise the statute.

“[T]he question before the court is a narrow one: whether Congress acted rationally in classifying marijuana as a Schedule I substance in light of the record created before this court,” she ruled. “To ask that question in this case, under rational basis review, is to answer it. This court cannot say that Congress could not reasonably have decided that marijuana belongs and continues to belong on Schedule I of the CSA… the record here does not demonstrate there is only one supportable point of view about marijuana’s safe, medical value or abuse potential.”

What’s Next?

Speaking recently with Katie Couric, out-going U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly called into question America’s longstanding classification of cannabis as a Schedule I prohibited substance.

“I think it’s certainly a question that we need to ask ourselves—whether or not marijuana is as serious a drug as is heroin,” Holder commented. “[T]he ques-tion of whether or not they should be in the same category is something that I think we need to ask ourselves, and use science as the basis for making that determination.”

Holder’s acknowledgment, while mildly encouraging, shouldn’t be interpreted as an indication that the administration intends to address the issue of cannabis’ classification before President Obama leaves the White House. The President and the Office of the Attorney General,

which both possess the authority to uni-laterally reschedule pot, have made it clear that they don’t intend to do so any time soon. That leaves the issue squarely in the hands of Congress.

Although it has yet to seriously debate the issue of marijuana’s Schedule I status, Congress possesses the legal authority to reschedule, or even deschedule, the plant. In fact, Judge Mueller’s decision reads as if she’s encouraging them to do just that: “To say the landscape with respect to marijuana has changed sig-nificantly since 1970, in many ways, is an understatement,” she opined.

Earlier this year, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Corey Booker (D-NJ) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the Compas-sionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States Act, which amends the federal classification of cannabis and

In 1988, DEA Judge Francis Young recommended transferring marijuana

from Schedule I to Schedule II. That should’ve

been the end of the issue, but it wasn’t.



By Lillian Taylor

In 1875, that innovative spirit we Ameri-cans so proudly claim as our own was expressed in U.S. patent RE6708 E—an Improvement in Processes for Forming Artificial Caoutchouc, a hemp compound purposed as a substitute for crude rubber. Almost 150 years later, we’re still mixing and blending hemp with various organic matter, chemicals and binders to create industrial forms and structures as replace-ments for or enhancements to goods pre-viously made from other materials.

Almost a century ago, the enigmatic Henry Ford, who believed that mass pro-duction of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages was the key to world peace, drove America’s innovative spirit forward by leaps and bounds. Ford’s inventions and tenacity resulted in the busting of a patent monopoly on gasoline-powered vehicles and the introduction of the Model T, the first affordable automobile for the middle class, originally designed to run on ethanol. For Ford, affordable cars also meant powering them with hemp ethanol for the benefit of farmers just before the Great Depression, and using hemp-strengthened resin in the construction of the vehicles.

Welcome to the world of hemp com-posites. Let’s peer into the industrial inno-vations in hemp today, purposed, as then, as substitutes for other resources—as much for hemp’s special properties as for the benefit of human health and the environment.

A hemp-powered car is just as eco-nomically viable and ecologically sensible today as it was 90 years ago. In Canada,

Hemp in the Key of LifeSo much more than just paper and clothes can be made from hemp. How about cars and guitars, and cool-looking shades?

Motive Industries of Alberta designed the Kestrel EV (electric vehicle) in 2010. This three-door hatchback boasts a hemp polymer composite body as strong as fiberglass, and the vehicle is slated to be more fuel-efficient than its battery-powered competitors. The Kestrel EV pro-totype has exceeded expectations, with

From top: Hemp Eyewear’s John Lennon-style shades, and Norwood’s Stone Series and Wood Series sunglasses.


material of cotton, hemp, flax and wood fibers for use in building interiors and—echoing Ford—automobile bodies. The strength of the respective fibers is lev-eraged in a plastic matrix that can with-stand intense mechanical stress for its weight, allowing for cost-effective and environmentally friendly manufacture of parts with a very high degree of durability, and fabrication of components with excel-lent acoustic properties. The production chain is so low-impact that the fiber waste can be incinerated for the production of energy with virtually no residue, and the company is researching how to properly dispose of this hybrid material.

The folks at Canadian Hemp Guitars (canadianhempguitars.com), established in 2012, are rocking and rolling right now. While guitar makers Gibson, Martin, Taylor, Fender, Guild, Yamaha and Walden have all pledged to transition to eco-friendly materials, master luthier Boyd Pellow got way out in front by creating a sustainable hemp alternative to wood guitar bodies. Teaming up with musician Stewart Burrows, the company launched a line of electric guitars, starting with the Lowryder, made of a patented hemp com-posite body said to acoustically sparkle with a clean resonance. Their best-selling model, the Soul Shine, can be custom finished; and at the high end, the North-ern Lights model features a hand-carved hardwood neck, and is available in a host of finishes, and with custom electronics.

MADA (madaguitars.com) is another source of eco-friendly guitars, producing semi-acoustic electric concept guitars made of hemp pulp with no plastics, molded rather than carved. MADA guitars are made to order in Germany by Neu-bauer Guitars, in three styles (sound files can be heard on the company’s website).

Another Canadian company, North-wood, is making sunglasses using com-posites of hemp, stone and sustainable woods—including recycled wood from

a top speed of over 80 mph and about 100 miles of drive time between charges, although it is unclear if it will enter pro-duction.

In the construction sphere, Germa-ny’s Fraunhofer-Gessellschaft Institute for Wood Research (wki.fraunhofer.de/en.html) has developed a composite

Werner Aisslinger holds his hemp chair, made in Germany. Photo by Michel Bonwin


skateboard manufacturing, and veneers of plantation trees (no old-growth)—to create way-cool style options that are also waterproof; in fact, they float. North-wood is looking to partner with new retail-ers for summer 2015 distribution, and is currently accepting direct orders at north-woodproject.ca. A pair of these specs will set you back $90.

Also true to the cause is UK-based Hemp Eyewear (hempeyewear.com). Origi-nally designed and produced by hand by Sam Whitten, they’re now mass-produced thanks to being Kickstarted out of the nest with over $55,000. Recyclable, bio-degradable and waterproof, these shades are currently available in a John Lennon-esque style, and coated in an eco-friendly resin that adds strength. Featuring polar-ized lenses and spring hinges of nickel, Hemp Eyewear specs are just about ready to ship, at $130 for a pair.

Wearing your smart hemp shades, strike a pose in an Aisslinger chair (aisslinger.de) made from 70% hemp and kenaf, combined with Acrodur, a water-based acrylic resin that does not off-gas. German furniture designer Werner

Aisslinger has taken on the concept of monobloc stackable chairs using low-cost molded manufacturing, and steps it up with soft curves emboldened with modern architectural style.

A perfect complement to the Fraunhofer fabric matrix, Zeoform (www.zeoform.com), an industrial-strength molding material, is composed of only water and cellulose from various feed-stocks, including hemp. The versatile material made in Australia requires no added glue or bonding agent, as water mixed with cellulose creates a naturally strong bond that can be strengthened with additional plant fibers of any sort. Fire-resistant extrusions of Zeoform, which is made in various densities, are strong enough to be cut, routed, machined, drilled, screwed, nailed or glued, and can be colored and dyed just like any quality composite molded chairs are just one of many items made from Zeoform.

Move over toxicity. Beat it, petrol pol-lution. You can now make it like you want it, out of hemp.

Lillian Taylor is Freedom Leaf’s Fashion Coordinator and resident hemp expert.

Photo by Michel Bonwin


By Steve Bloom

“Here I was in Denver… I stumbled along with the most wicked grin of joy in the world, among the bums and beat cowboys of Larimer Street.” — Jack Kerouac in On the Road, 1957

Kerouac liked Denver’s Five Points section, known in the 1940s and ’50s as the “Harlem of the West” due to its African-American residents and many jazz clubs. He used to hang out at the Casino Cabaret at 27th and Welton, which some seven decades later is still standing, though it’s been rechristened

Fear and

Loathing in Denver

Fear and

Loathing in Denver

Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, a live music venue.

That’s where I find myself with my trusty photog sidekick 622 (his preferred handle) on 4/20 Eve. I arrived in Denver the night before to attend the three-day High Times Cannabis Cup taking place at the Denver Mart convention center, about five miles north of downtown. After Day 2 at the Cup, we hop a cab (no, not a freight train, Kerouac/Neal Cassady-style) to Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ball-room, where Cypress Hill, Method Man

Welcome to Colorado—ground zero for marijuana legalization.


and Redman, and Collie Buddz are on the bill.

“We ain’t going out like that,” Cypress Hill’s frontman B-Real boasts as he races around the stage while toking a foot-long spliff.

“Ain’t motherfucking going out!” his partner Sen Dog chimes in, as the huge spliff continues to burn.

It was a more than appropriate lineup, as hordes of stoners arrived in the Mile High City for 4/20 weekend. Denver has naturally become the nexus of 4/20 activ-ities in Colorado. This year, 4/20 fell on a Monday, necessitating a slew of events from Friday to Sunday leading up to the ultimate pothead celebration.

Steven Hager told the story of 420 in our April issue, so I won’t repeat the history lesson. Suffice to say, 4/20 has become the unofficial holiday for marijuana enthu-siasts the world over. What began as an effort to inspire stoners to commune with cannabis and each other at the same time of day (4:20 p.m.) has expanded to daylong (or in this case, weekend-long) events each April 20.

Boulder, home of the University of Colorado some 30 miles northwest of Denver in the Rocky Mountain foothills, used to be the cultural epicenter for 4/20 until several years ago, when the school shut down the large annual smoke-out on

campus. Ironically, now that marijuana is legal in Colorado, some rules have actu-ally stiffened, such as those concerning public smoking. Even though the laws have dramatically changed regarding the possession of small amounts of can-nabis, and the state’s landscape is now dotted with recreational pot stores, stu-dents, in particular, face penalties if they participate. So 4/20 activities shifted to Denver, the true heart of Colorado’s mari-juana legalization “experiment,” which it’s routinely called by everyone from Presi-dent Obama to Hillary Clinton.

Outdoor rallies are on tap for all three days of Denver’s 4/20 schedule. Rather than head to the Cup for Day 1, we stay in town and go over to Civic Center to hear some music and speeches. It’s a hip-hop event, with rappers and DJs entertain-ing the sparse crowd. We climb up the three-story MassRoots tent, which offers a clear view of the stage. I run into one of the main players on the Colorado scene,

Freedom Leaf editor Steve Bloom surveys the Denver skyline. Photos (except for the skyline and Denver Mart), by 622


Tripp Keber, CEO of Dixie Elixirs, who you may have seen on MSNBC’s Pot Barons. It’s too loud to talk, so we move on.

Besides the light crowd, what is curious about this event is the lack of messaging from the stage. Unlike other rally events, there are no inspirational speakers, just a parade of performers.

I’m with 622 and a group of his friends that includes Chris Chiari, who’s running for a District 10 City Council seat. We head up to the stage, hoping that they’ll give Chris an opportunity to speak to the crowd. They tell him, like in The Wizard of Oz, to go away and come back tomorrow.

We leave Civic Center with a nice buzz on and head east on Colfax, one of Den-ver’s oldest commercial strips. We pass a wall that notes the former location of The Oasis at 1729 E. Colfax, where Kerouac’s Denver connection Cassady used to hang out. Kerouac called Colfax “the longest, wickedest street in America.”

Just a few blocks further, at 2209 E. Colfax, we stop and stare at a gleaming new Cheba Hut store. Little do we know, as we enter, that this is its first day of operation, fulfilling Cheba Hut’s plan to open this second Denver location on 4/20 weekend. It’s a moment of kismet as we

order our super-fresh hero sandwiches (I choose the guac-filled Humboldt, while 622 opts for the Magic Mushroom).

There are currently 16 Cheba Hut shops in six states featuring a stoner-friendly menu of “toasted” subs and desserts. Their sandwiches aren’t actu-ally infused, and you can’t light up in the store, but it is the perfect munchies stop.

To my surprise, Cheba Hut founder Scott Jennings is in the house. I’ve known him for several years, and he comes by for a brief chat. Like so many others in Colorado, Jennings is part of the state’s ganja boom.

The “Green Rush” is the operative term for Colorado’s bold push into the brave new world of cannabusiness. It’s appropriate for a city with Denver’s history, which started in the 1850s with a gold rush. Denver became a boomtown back then, though little of the precious metal was found in the nearby mountains.

“It began as a little city in the middle of nowhere, with no obvious reason to be there,” historian Tom Noel explains. “Denver was a pretty bleak Wild West-looking settlement early on. It was filled with a lot of shacks and shanties, and log cabins and teepees too, where the Arapaho tribe, led by Chief Little Raven, lived…. Gamblers, prostitutes and saloon- keepers all arrived in Denver in order to

The crowd at the Civic Center rally on April 18.


‘mine’ the miners. Denver was a rough-and-tumble place then.”

General William H. Larimer named the burgeoning metropolis after Kansas Ter-ritorial Governor James Denver. (Larimer laid out the city and a lengthy street bears his name.) Denver had to survive the Great Fire of 1863, the Cherry Creek flood of 1864 and a subsequent war with the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes that left the boomtown with just six weeks of pro-visions.

“Denver was not a sure thing,” Noel says. “It easily could have died like so many cities in Colorado.”

Things changed for the better when a rich lode of gold and silver was struck in nearby Leadville, and the Kansas Pacific Railroad cut a path clear to Denver.

On April 19, I take a walk from my hotel on 17th Street to a luncheon, about two miles away in North Denver, to promote another expo, CannaCon. Along the way I pass Coors Field (home of the Rockies), the South Platte River and a cool skate park, and I ascend the neighborhood, which combines traditional ranch houses with new box-style architecture. This is where the new and old Denver meet.

The luncheon is a disappointment. The food is strictly Costco, and the taps at

the defunct meeting hall are closed. The meager offerings include water, cheese and crackers, and a fruit plate.

CannaCon is a Seattle-based expo company that’s making its move into Denver, with their June event, billed as the “nation’s largest cannabusiness mar-ketplace,” scheduled at the Colorado Con-vention Center. Owner and CEO Robert Smart notes that they have a better seminar program than similar canna-con-fabs, plus a golf tourney, to boot.

After the presentation, I have a brief chat with CannaCon team member Mario Hope, who detours into a discussion about dabbing— the most popular means of weed delivery to the brain and lungs in legal states like Colorado and Washington. For the uninitiated, dabbing is the method of vaporizing concentrated hash oil (or wax, butter or shatter) on a titanium nail, which, when heated with a blowtorch, pro-vides a max THC high for users. It’s a con-troversial method of inhalation because of the strength of dab hits, the use of torches and the danger involved in producing the concentrate using butane (hence the acronym BHO, for butane honey oil).

Hope is convinced that dabbing is creating a new generation of addled stoners. He tells me about people he knows who’ve gotten hooked on the stuff like crack addicts. Hope


encourages me to tell the real story about the dabbing phenomenon.

Being a New Yorker, where dabs are not yet part of the pot culture, I haven’t seen the damages to users he describes. Back home, we’re lucky to scrape together a little oil and pop it in our vape pens.

Just that morning, a friend stopped by my hotel with his rig and bagful of concen-trate options. I call him Dr. Dab. We sat and tried everything, which is the way to dab. No standing, because you just may tumble over from all the high-THC excite-ment.

Thankfully, two friends from the hemp industry—Hemp Industries Asso-ciation President Anndrea Hermann and Hemp Ace International’s Joy Beckerman Maher—offer me a ride to the Cup.

As I’ve noted before in these pages, I used to work for High Times magazine, and I attended and worked at many Can-nabis Cups in Amsterdam—an event founded in 1988 by then editor-in-chief Steven Hager.

After I left High Times in 2007, the parent company, Trans-High Corp., began to branch out and hold Cup events in the States, starting in San Francisco. I went to their first U.S. Medical Cup there, which

was pretty small by today’s standards. In 2013, the year marijuana became legal in Colorado, High Times expanded to Denver, and the event at the EXDO Event Center, on 35th St. in the River North Art District, was seriously overcrowded.

Last year High Times moved the Cup to the Denver Mart, just north of down-town on I-25 near I-70. It’s a sprawling low-level building that looks, with its beige exterior, more like an industrial plant than a meeting center. The Denver Gift Show and the Denver Apparel & Acces-sory Markets convene here. At more than 800,000 square feet, it’s described on their website as “the largest mart, exhi-bition, conference and meeting facility in the 14-state region.”

More then 700 marijuana-related com-panies of varying sizes set up shop inside and outside the Mart at the Denver Cup April 18–20. Last year, 40,000 people attended; although High Times has not announced a figure for 2015, one staffer told me attendance exceeded 50,000.

Unlike EXDO, the Mart can handle large crowds with ease. There are no on-site traffic jams, and Cup attendees are on best behavior, as is usually the case at pot conventions. Certainly, the crowd is not as young as the celebrants at Civic Center: At $175 for a three-day Cup pass, plus an additional concert

The sprawling Denver Mart, located five miles north of downtown Denver.


ticket to see Snoop Dogg or Nas and SOJA at separate venues, it makes for a more adult clientele.

Freedom Leaf is sharing a booth with Colorado NORML, side by side with National NORML, in a high-traffic indoor location. Most of the main action takes place in the so-called “medication area” outside the main pavilion. In the week leading up to the Cup, word went out that the authorities intended to prevent com-panies from offering samples. There’d be no mass dabbing like in previous years, they warned. But that is hardly the case: The medication area is a virtual Dab City, with booth after booth providing hits of top-shelf concentrates. Though I don’t see any casualties, I do hear about several people needing medical attention.

Inside, Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann gives a keynote address, and panel discussions touch on a variety of subjects, including “The World of Can-nabis Concentrates,” led by Bobby Black. The next day—4/20—the stoner movie classic Super Troopers will be screened.

One highlight of the Amsterdam

Cannabis Cup is that attendees get to judge the main Cup, known as the Peo-ple’s Cup, by visiting coffeeshops, sam-pling their entries and voting. (The other major categories—such as Best Indica Flower and Best Sativa Concentrate—are voted on by panels of preselected expert judges.) In Denver this year, People’s Choice awards were given in two catego-ries: flowers and concentrates. The idea of these awards is to encourage attend-ees to visit local competing shops, such as 2015 People’s Choice winners Green Solution, Native Roots and The Clinic Colorado, which split the six awards (first, second and third place). But with the Mart so far away from downtown, and with all the traffic in and out, I doubt there were many voters.

Unlike in Amsterdam, the Denver Cup is really spread out. The two concert events, at Fiddler’s Green in Greenwood Village and Red Rocks in Morrison, are both at least an hour away from the Mart and not easily accessible without a car; on the other hand, the show at Cervantes’


The “Green Rush” is the operative term for Colorado’s bold push into the brave new world of cannabusiness.

It’s appropriate for a city with Denver’s history, which started in the 1850s with a gold rush.


By Keith Stroup

Colorado, as the first state to fully imple-ment marijuana legalization, is under intense scrutiny from supporters and detractors alike, all looking to find evi-dence of whether the system is working as intended.

Since the first recreational marijuana dispensaries opened on Jan. 1, 2014, the state has benefited from a significant rise in economic growth and tax revenue from retail marijuana sales, and an increase in jobs. Thanks to legal marijuana, Colo-rado’s economy is booming.

Two and a half years after voters approved legalization via a voter initia-tive, the state has embraced the respon-sible use of marijuana both legally and culturally, and moved forward to identify areas where the system can be further improved. According to a recent survey conducted by Quinnipiac University, 58% of Coloradans favor keeping pot legal, while 38% are opposed to the new law.

While a black market in marijuana con-tinues to exist in Colorado, it’s becoming more and more marginalized. Forty-five percent of current users say they obtain their marijuana from a recreational store-front; 24% from a medical dispensary; 18% rely on a friend; 7% grow their own;

and only 6% say they still buy from black-market dealers.

However, examples of greed and avarice have surfaced in the much-her-alded “green rush” economy, where indi-vidual players sometimes allow the attrac-tion of profits to overwhelm their good sense and ethics. Many of these new entrepreneurs have no history or involve-ment in the long struggle to end mari-juana prohibition, and have no personal connection with the issue. They simply see this as an enormous opportunity for personal gain. But so long as those jumping in are responsible capitalists,

How’s Colorado Doing?Colorado is among the first states—known as “laboratories of democracy”—to push the pot-legalization envelope.

Keith Stroup in Denver. Photo by Alec Pearce


and provide high-quality products that are safe and appeal to consumers, we should welcome the enhanced political power that necessarily comes with having this newly expanded industry as an ally.

The growth and energy in Colorado is almost palpable; you can see it and feel it everywhere you look. And many movers and shakers in the state who were not ini-tially pro-legalization (including Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock) have now acknowledged the

obvious economic benefits of this “labo-ratory in democracy,” as it has been called by Hillary Clinton, among others—a phrase first popularized by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1932.

Problems such as the edibles issue—inexperienced users eating too much of a cannabis-infused product—have been addressed by the state Department of Public Health and Environment, which has tweaked the regulations to require only single-dose servings and clear label-ing to avoid confusing edible marijuana products with candy.

Despite fears that legalization would damage the state’s reputation, harm children and lead to a spike in impaired drivers on the highway, none of these have materialized. In fact, Colorado is now enjoying its reputation as an innova-tive state, and is benefiting greatly from upticks in job creation, tourism and tax revenues.

The most obvious cannabis need that remains unmet in Colorado (and in the three other legalization states) is the allowance of social clubs or Amsterdam-style “coffeeshops” where marijuana

smokers can gather with friends and col-leagues, just as drinkers do in bars. While the state encourages and welcomes marijuana tourism, the vast majority of those tourists stay in hotels that don’t allow any form of smoking, leaving them without a legal place to light up. Colora-dans don’t always want to limit their mari-juana smoking to their homes or friends’ homes. Plus, those who live in apart-ments may be banned from any form of smoking by the terms of their lease.

One of the primary purposes of legal-ization is to bring the culture aboveground and regulate it, and smoking venues will certainly need to be part of the future of legalization in Colorado and elsewhere. Smoking clubs already do exist in Colo-rado—several were busted over the 4/20 weekend—but they remain illegal, and therefore uncontrolled.

Colorado is demonstrating that legal-ization, regulation and control of mari-juana is a realistic alternative to pro-hibition, and they’re doing it with few unintended consequences. So far, it’s been a resounding success.

Keith Stroup founded NORML in 1970 and currently serves as Legal Counsel for NORML as well as for Freedom Leaf.

Smoking venues will certainly need to be part of the future of legalization in Colorado and elsewhere.


Photo by Terry Wall


By Steve Bloom

Diane Fornbacher wears a lot of hats. She publishes the popular woman’s website Ladybud.com, and is on the boards of NORML, the Family Law & Can-nabis Alliance and Parents 4 Pot. She’s also the mother of two boys, and recently relocated from New Jersey to Colorado with her husband Terry Wall. We caught up with her during Freedom Leaf’s recent visit to Denver.

What spurred you to make the move to Colorado?

We moved primarily because my oldest son mentioned hemp at school. A teacher at his school contacted the New Jersey Department of Children and Family Ser-vices, which is also known in some states as Child Protective Services. Thankfully, we were able to assert our rights when they came to the house, and provide ample reason why they ought not pursue us. Having noted civil rights attorney William Buckman likely had a great deal to do with the quick culmination of the case before it got more invasive.

In addition to trying to provide a safe place for our children, we also moved because I have a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, and, while New Jersey on paper has a medical cannabis program, Gov. Chris Christie has seen fit to stifle access as best he can. We thought it was better to seek access in Colorado, even though it’s still not a qualifying condition here either. In the meantime, I use the recreational system to access cannabis, until the day I can get a medical card for it.

You’ve been in Colorado for over a year now. What do you think of the scene?

It’s definitely savvy and motivated. How-ever, there is some very aggressive and

nonsensical opposition to recreational and medical marijuana by the half of the state that didn’t vote in favor of either. Most people think Colorado is super pot-friendly, that it’s filled with happy-go-lucky snowboarders with ounces tumbling out of their pockets. That’s so not the case. My experience here is that it’s not OK to consume cannabis publicly; and it’s still frowned on or misunderstood by many people in the state. That’s not for lack of effort on the part of activists here, however. It’s a weird determination to not open to the truth of cannabis as a safer recreational substance than alcohol, or as an effective alternative to a lot of prescription pain medications. I attribute this not only to the long-term and damag-ing rhetoric against cannabis, but also to Colorado’s history of being a very alcohol-friendly state.

What can cannabusinesses in Colorado do to help the legalization and medical marijuana causes in other states?

Invest in activists as well as organiza-tions in difficult states. Many of them need legal merchandise from Colorado and other legal cannabis states for their fundraising events. They also need those who are financially benefiting from the efforts of activists to help with travel and education on the ground in states that are moving more quickly ahead with state legalization. Many activists cannot afford to come here, and they need to see what the system looks like in person.

My interns and I collect literature, empty dispensary canisters and enve- lopes from legal sales, clean them out and send them to various organizations with which I am directly involved to give them a better picture of what we see here

Freedom Leaf Interview: Diane Fornbacher


with labels, and the compliance language on them.

How’s Ladybud doing?

It’s going great. It’s a bit overwhelming, with me traveling a lot, doing media spots and trying to keep up with the deluge of daily developments of legalization in various incarnations, but it’s all very excit-ing and exhausting. We’re as dedicated as ever to ending the War on Drugs, while trying to retain a modicum of good humor despite some of the agonizing news we cover and share with our readers.

You recently took a hiatus and relaunched the site in April. Why did you take that course?

For a lot of different reasons. My kids started saying they missed me, even when I was home, because I was con-stantly trying to play catch-up with work and raise funds so we could continue our publication’s important work. At the same time, I’ve been struggling with a mystery illness that’s plagued me for years, which turned out to be endometriosis. It’s a terribly painful disease that affects the

reproductive system and can contribute to premenstrual dysphoric disorder, as well. It left me in agony about 15 days out of every month. I had to get my physical issues sorted out. Thankfully, because I’m in a legal cannabis state, I was able to increase my intake. While I still experi-ence some severe symptoms, it’s mostly manageable.

What’s the mission of Ladybud?

We want to end the war on cannabis, but we also want our readers to under-stand the bigger picture of the entire War on Drugs—how it affects every part of our lives, whether we’re U.S. citizens or farmers in Colombia. Our readers are multifaceted modern women who believe the Drug War is one of the greatest social and civil rights issues facing our nation and the world today.

We create content that doesn’t fall into the trap of the journalistic illusion of “non-bias.” We’re trailblazers and pio-neers with a respected brand and the ability to shape opinion on major issues. We want to provide a broad spectrum of


From left: Christie Lunsford, Toni Fox and Diane Forbacher at the opening of the 3D Cannabis Center in Salida.


By David Malmo-Levine

One of Canada’s 17 licensed medical marijuana producers (LPs), Tilray, has a massive 60,000-square-foot facility in Nanaimo, B.C., where they grow medici-nal weed for as many as 4,000 patients.

On March 20, Tilray had to recall batches of their “house blend” canna-bis strains after some tested positive for bacteria. Ironically, this occurred just 10 days after Tilray CEO Greg Engel accused home growers of being unsanitary.

“Under the old regulatory system, more often than not, medical cannabis was grown in dangerous and unsanitary conditions without any form of oversight or standards to ensure consistency, quality, safety and integrity,” Engel con-tended on March 10, just days earlier, in an op-ed on the Huffington Post Blog. “That’s changed under the new system, as we are transforming the industry to be more like the pharmaceutical industry.”

Tilray is owned by Seattle-based Privateer Holdings. On the day of the

recall, Privateer CEO Brendan Kennedy took CNBC on a tour of the grow facility. Known for his broadsides directed at the cannabis industry, he discussed how pris-tine and clean Tilray is. “You go to these places in Colorado, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable eating a Subway sandwich from there,” Kennedy snickered.

Little did he know that three batches of Tilray-grown cannabis, sold between March 3 and March 18, would test posi-tive for bacteria. In response to the recall, Tilray issued the following statement:

“The lots are being recalled due to microbial levels outside of acceptable limits found in a sample taken during a routine inspection by Health Canada. Every product lot Tilray sells undergoes rigorous independent third-party testing prior to being released for sale. When tested prior to being released for sale, these product lots did not show any indi-cation of having microbial levels outside of acceptable limits. Tilray has not

Medical Cannabis Confusion in Canada

Seventeen companies now control all the legal medical mar-ijuana for sale in Canada. Patients can’t grow, but there are plenty of unregulated dispensaries. What the hell’s going on in the Great White North?


received reports of any adverse events or complaints associated with the use of these products, nor has Health Canada received any reports of adverse reactions. Immediately upon learning of Health Can-ada’s test results, we discontinued sale of the affected product lots and modified our operating procedures to ensure the utmost integrity and quality in how we process and package milled product.”

Tilray declined to be interviewed for this article.

Canadian Medical Marijuana Backstory

Canada once had a semi-functional medical marijuana program called the “MMAR”—the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations—that arose out of several court cases.

In 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeal (in Hitzig v. Canada) ordered the Cana-dian government to come up with some way for sick Canadians to get cannabis without growing it. The government hired Prairie Plant Systems (PPS) to cultivate medical cannabis for patients. But their product was high in metals and microbes, low in THC and irradiated to deal with the microbes.

In 2008, following Sfetkopoulos v. Canada in the Federal Court of Canada, the government decided patients could grow their own cannabis or have a des-ignated grower (who could grow for up to four people), or they could order some schwag from PPS. Most people opted to grow their own or have a friend grow for them, or buy cannabis from an illegal but tolerated dispensary or the black market.

Then came the “MMPR”—the Mari-huana for Medical Purposes Regula-tions—that went into effect in October of 2013. The government hailed it as a “free market” in the newspapers, but called it a “captive market” in court. Basically, they switched the supply duties to millionaire growers (the LPs) who could afford all the extra security and accounting regulations,

and phased out personal cultivation and designated production licenses.

Med-pot patients are fighting for the right to keep their gardens in a class action lawsuit before Vancouver’s Federal Court. Four “representative plaintiffs” (Neil Allard, Tanya Beemish, David Herbert and a person identified only as “J.M.”) were chosen as examples of those who benefited from the home-growing gardens allowed under the MMAR. Though it’s referred to as the “Allard trial” (strictly for alphabetical reasons), the case actually involves about 40,000 Canadians who believe they have the right to possess and produce cannabis in their own gardens.

The Canadian government is doing its best to take those gardens away. They contend that home growing leads to crime (thefts and diversions to the black market), fires and mold, and is a threat to all those who live near such gardens. The trial ended in March; if the court rules in favor of Allard and the other plaintiffs, home growing will once again be allowed, denying the LPs the captive market they were promised.

Dispensaries to the Rescue?

According to an April story in The Cana-dian Press, there are now 80 dispen-saries in Vancouver (20 have opened since the beginning of the year) and another 35 in the rest of British Colum-bia. (In the rest of Canada, there are two in Alberta, one in Manitoba, 13 in Ontario and four in Quebec.) None of the dispensaries are legal.

“The lack of standardization of cannabis is one of the

biggest barriers to acceptance from the mainstream medical community.”


In April, Vancouver officials announced that rather than shutting down the stores, they’d be regulated. The license fee to operate would increase from $12,000 to $30,000, and stores could not be located within 1,000 feet of schools, community centers and other similar facilities. A large group of Vancouver dispensaries appear poised to start their own trade organiza-tion to speak with one voice against the many discriminatory elements of the pro-posed regulations.

But LPs like Tweed, in Smiths Falls, Ont., are opposed to regulating dispen-saries in Canada. In a column posted at theprovince.com, Executive Vice President Mark Zekulin wrote: “Make no mistake, these operations are criminal. It is illegal to provide cannabis to a dispen-sary, it is illegal for a dispensary to sell cannabis to the public and it is illegal for Canadians to possess cannabis obtained from a dispensary. By offering a veil of legitimacy to these unregulated, orga-nized criminal activities, the proposal before Vancouver City Council is helping neither patients nor its community, and instead will create more illegal product that is not systematically tested for pesti-cides or contaminants.”

Unlike the dispensaries, the LPs provide very little in the way of education or advocacy, not to mention socialization (they don’t have storefronts, smoke-eas-ies or vapor lounges). Sick people are often lonely, and the social element of the dispensary is an important factor in the healing process.

(Disclaimer: On March 2, I opened the Stressed and Depressed Association on 41st Ave. in Vancouver, a few doors west of Knight St., behind the 24-hour Duffin’s Donuts. It’s designed to sell cannabis to the healthy, in the form of preventive med-icine as a relaxant and anti-depressant. We’re open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.)

The Fight for Standardization

On the other side of the country, in Toronto, another licensed producer is working hard to prevent recalls of its cannabis. Bedrocan Canada is a Dutch-owned medical marijuana producer that won a Canadian license.

In March, they hired Canadian med-pot pioneer and BC Compassion Club Society founder Hilary Black as Director of Patient and Community Services. “The medici-nal cannabis system in Canada was

David Malmo-Levine's Vancouver dispensary, Stressed and Depressed, may be subject to new regulations.


evolving, creating the potential for a lot more patients and health professionals to participate,” she tells Freedom Leaf. “I watched the key licensed producer com-panies closely, and in my view, Bedrocan emerged as the clear leader in terms of experience, ethics and education.”

The price of cannabis from the LPs ranges from $5 to $15 per gram, com-pared to generally lower dispensary prices ($2 to $12 dollars per gram). Dispensa-ries allow a user to smell and inspect before they buy, and some do mail orders; LPs are mail-order only.

Reports on the quality of LP weed have been mixed. Since LPs require exclusive relationships and don’t offer free samples, there’s no way for the client to find out ahead of time if their LP will be providing quality cannabis. It’s very hit-or-miss.

“There are some limitations and chal-lenges associated with the regulatory system as it exists today,” Black admits. “But I’m willing to work within it—and also to advocate for its continued evolution—in order to continue creating access for patients across the country, and to con-tinue de-stigmatizing patients’ use of can-nabis as real medicine. I’m really proud of the medicine we produce, which is stan-dardized, consistent, reliable and has a 13-year track record of purity and quality treating patients in the Netherlands and other European countries.”

Bedrocan’s focus is standardization, which Black says “gives confidence to patients and doctors that the product they use will be the same today, tomorrow and into the future. We’re trying hard to bridge the gap between patients’ needs and the quality standards of modern medicine. The lack of standardization of cannabis is one of the biggest barriers to acceptance from the mainstream medical community. That’s a problem we think we can help solve.”

There are certainly advantages to

standardized cannabis, in providing doctors, patients and the public with added confidence when dosing, but there are related drawbacks, as well: downplay-ing the benefits of self-titration; painting un-standardized cannabis as “less safe”; assuming standardization is a higher-pri-ority consideration than cost or potency; and using standardization as an excuse to set up exclusive legalization models.

Bedrocan doesn’t use any pesticides, but they do irradiate their crops. “There’s very extensive literature on the safety of gamma irradiation on produce and herbs—literally hundreds of independent studies,” Black contends. “This is why it’s approved by just about every developed country in the world.”

Still, she admits that, in Canada, “requirements on microbial contamina-tion are less strict [than in Europe]. But according to media reports, and based on a number of Health Canada recalls, some Canadian producers are struggling to meet even these lower standards. So, many producers choose gamma irradia-tion.”

Epilogue

No matter how the Allard trial winds up, there seems to be hope on the horizon for total cannabis legalization for all adult users in Canada. Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party (Canada’s third-largest party in number of seated repre-sentatives), has promised to legalize rec-reational cannabis if Trudeau is elected in October. The pro-pot Liberals and the anti-cannabis Conservatives are more or less tied in the opinion polls. Who will win the election is anyone’s guess, but clearly the outcome will have a big impact on the MMPR.

David Malmo-Levine is a cannabis activist based in Vancouver, B.C. His websites are potshot.ca, herbmuseum.ca and stresse-danddepressed.ca.


solutions and compelling personal testi-monies. By explicitly presenting content from credible sources with an activist purpose and function, we create respon-sible dialogue surrounding critical issues.

What’s your advice to Web publishers and bloggers who want to get into the media business?

Don’t plagiarize. It’s annoying and wrong, and it happens way too often.

What are the stories about marijuana that you think deserve more attention?

I’d really like the media to focus more on the for-profit prison industry, specifically juvenile detention. I’ve started to see the mainstream waking up to the horrors that the Drug War wreaks upon families, but more coverage is needed focusing on the injustices that pregnant women face if they test positive or get a false positive for cannabis, which often results in their newborns being taken, and the mothers being treated like pariahs and the scum of the Earth because of it. Similarly, I want more investigative reporting done

on Child Protective Services and what I believe is the unlawful seizure of children, and the breaking up of caring families under the guise of “protecting” them, when there are actually children who need the help and don’t get it.

How have things changed for women in the marijuana industry over the last few years?

While women have always been part of the cannabis world even during ancient times, more women are beginning to come out of the “cannabis closet” as the para-digm shifts from prohibition into an era of nascent legalization. We see more mothers fighting back against antiquated drug edu-cation in schools. Further, I also see many women heading legal cannabis grows, dis-pensaries and drug policy reform organiza-tions. Right now, women in cannabis is one of the hottest topics in mainstream and traditionally counterculture news. It’s been like this for the last six years or so, and the public’s appetite for it doesn’t seem like it will decrease anytime soon.

Diane Fornbacher continued from page 42

Photo by Terry Wall


Introduction to ConcentratesIt’s a brave new world of cannabis consumption, with marijuana being engineered into highly potent forms of hash known as wax and shatter, and inhaled via oil rigs and vape pens.

By Dru West

The legalization and rising acceptance of medical marijuana and its benefits has led to a significant increase in demand from patients. To meet this demand, growers and dispensaries are popping up everywhere, creating a much more competitive supply envi-ronment than ever experienced in the past—and decreasing the prices for patients.

In order to continue covering their costs during this economic transition, many growers started utilizing their trim to produce concentrates. What was once just a secret of a few master growers has now become one of the biggest developments in the history of the cannabis industry. Today, it’s esti-mated that concentrates constitute up to 50% of the medicine provided through West Coast dispensaries.

Many enthusiasts believe vaporiz-ing or dabbing concentrates is a better choice than smoking cannabis flowers. It’s quicker, in the sense that it takes much less preparation than rolling a joint or breaking up flowers for a bowl, the effects are immediate and the dosage can be adjusted according to

one’s needs. The vaporization of con-centrates leaves much less of a trace than smoking the flowers—no ashes, no mess and a much milder odor.

Hype surrounding “dab culture” has inspired new niche markets across the world, anywhere fine cannabis is grown. Competitions like the Secret Cup, where extraction artists are judged by groups of connoisseur dabbers, have become a staple in the industry over the last couple of years. Europe is joining the concentrate game, as well, with award-winning hash artists like Nerd Extracts, from Barcelona, leading the way.

Even the High Times Cannabis Cup franchise, known for judging the world’s best buds, had to introduce separate categories for concentrates at the 2015 SoCal Cup, due to the massive increase in entries. These categories included Indica, Sativa, Hybrid, CBD-Dominant and Solvent-less Hash.

How Are Concentrates Made?

Concentrates can be extracted from buds, trim or a combination of both. When extracted properly, one can



expect yields equal to the cannabinoid percentage of the starting material. In other words, if your flowers test at 25% THC, you should be able to yield 25 grams of concentrate from 100 grams of material, provided you know what you’re doing and are using a proper closed-loop system (CLS).

The CLS is a machine designed to contain a high-pressure solvent used to extract the concentrate, while recov-ering all the solvent in order to be used again. Perhaps the greatest benefit of using a CLS is the ability to distill the solvent before using it. Store-bought cans of butane, one of the most com-monly used solvents, contain large amounts of contaminants in the form of hydraulic and machine lubricants. They’re added to help the can function and dispense properly. If non-distilled butane is used to extract concen-trates, these contaminants will end up in the oil, making it very unsafe for consumption.

Using a reliable closed-loop system built by a reputable company, like our friends at Subzero Scientific, is consid-ered the safest and most efficient way

of extracting cannabis into various concentrates.

However, if a CLS is misused it can be extremely dangerous. Only licensed professionals using state-certified machines and techniques should perform extraction, and it should never be performed indoors.

Once extracted, the concentrate must be purged of residual solvents using a vacuum oven. The vacuum oven assists in the degassing or “purging” process by heating the material to the temperature necessary to evaporate the residual solvent, while ultimately removing all the gasses through the use of a vacuum pump. In general, approximately 72 hours in the oven will purge most of the residual solvents in the cannabis concentrate.

Much of what we now know about making concentrates is thanks to the forward-thinking pioneers of the canna-bis testing and analysis laboratories. Without the groundbreaking research performed by these labs, we wouldn’t have the insights we have today about purging times, residual solvents or ter-penoid retention.

A collection of concentrated hashes.



Different Kinds of Concentrates

The variety of cannabis concentrates is as diverse as the strains from which they are processed. Concentrates come in all sorts of colors, textures and con-sistencies, with names like Shatter, Wax, Honeycomb, Crumble, Snap-n-Pull, Sugar Wax, Holy Water, Clear and Budder, just to name a few.

The final consistency of a concentrate depends on the starting material, the type of solvent used and the methods employed during the purging process. A skilled extraction artist should be able to produce any of the above varieties on demand.

There are many variables that come into play when extracting concentrates, and one of the most influential is the starting material. For instance, the age of the material can affect the final color and flavor, and buds tend to make waxier concentrates than trim does. If chemical nutrients were used to grow the plant, or if the plant was not properly flushed, the flavor and smokeability of the oil will be greatly compromised, just like the bud would be. If pesticides were used on the buds, they’ll be present in the con-centrate, as well. As a result, you should always get your concentrates from a reliable and trusted source in order to ensure quality.

Butane is the most common solvent used for extracting cannabinoids, simply because it’s more widely available than medical-grade propane or hexane, which

are commonly used for the industrial extraction of essential oils and essences. CO2 can also be used to extract concen-trates if it’s brought up to super-critical pressures of 1,500 psi and above. The resulting oil will be considered non-sol-vent, due to the fact that CO2 is just a gas. Hash made with water extraction is also considered non-solvent.

After the concentrate has been intro-duced into the vacuum oven, a number of different methods can be used to manipu-late the final texture of the concentrate. Different combinations of temperatures and pressures will produce an array of finished products. For example, regularly flipping the slab at low temperatures will result in a more glass-like shatter, while agitating the oil at higher temperatures will produce waxes and crumbles. What-ever the method, the ultimate goal should always be to produce the cleanest medi-cine with the least residual solvent. Cur-rently, the “crumble” texture has been shown to consistently contain the lowest residual solvent count.

How Are Concentrates Used?

The popularity and widespread use of con-centrates inspired forward-thinking glass artists to design a new style of pipe, spe-cifically for vaporizing concentrates. This has become known as an oil rig or simply a rig. A concentrates rig is designed to hold either a titanium, quartz or ceramic implement, called a nail, that is heated by flame or electronically to a range of 500°F–800°F (260°C–426°C). We prefer titanium due to its durability, and the fact it doesn’t off-gas harmful chemicals when heated.

When the concentrate is touched to the superheated nail using a dabber, it’s immediately turned to vapor. This vapor is then drawn through the water contained in the rig before it’s inhaled, making it cooler, smoother and more flavorful for the patient. Another implement known as

What was once just a secret of a few master

growers has now become one of the biggest

developments in the history of the cannabis industry.



a carb-cap is used to preserve flavors and prevent any loss of the valuable vapor.

Who May Benefit from Using Concen-trates?

Many patients are drawn to concentrates because of the ease with which they are consumed. They don’t require the skill and dexterity necessary to roll a joint or even operate a lighter. The introduction of the electronic nail has made dabbing the quickest, and most efficient, way to medi-cate. Patients with severe pain benefit greatly from the near-immediate relief brought on by the accelerated potency and delivery of concentrates. Once vapor-ized, there’s no ash and the odor is not nearly as offensive to others as that of the smoked flower.

Through the use of vapor pens, patients are able to medicate on the go, privately and inconspicuously. Vapor pen technology has come a long way in the past couple of years. Pens are now capable of delivering hits comparable to an average-sized oil rig. It seems that everywhere you go, you now see someone puffing on a vapor (or vape) pen.

As concentrates have become more refined, they’ve also had a significant impact on the marijuana edibles industry. The traditional method of infusing foods with flowers often resulted in products that tasted unpleasant, and many did not consider them very effective for medici-nal purposes. With the introduction of

Crumble

Budder

Clear

Patients with severe pain benefit greatly from

the near-immediate relief brought on by the accelerated potency and delivery of concentrates.



concentrates, however, edible makers are now able to accurately dose each portion in order to meet the demands of their patients.

New methods of infusing edibles with concentrates have made it possible for regulations to be established regarding edibles and their distribution. As a result, patients now have easier and safer access to medicinal edibles, or medibles.

Outlook for Concentrates

As the legalization of cannabis for medical and recreational purposes con-tinues around the world, and production increases as a result, it’s anticipated that concentrates will command a majority of the world’s consumption. As we grow to understand how to safely produce them, concentrates will become the preferred product in the mass cannabis market for all intents and purposes. It’s easier to transport, package, display, store and

consume, and could be a healthier option than smoking cannabis flowers.

Although all signs are pointing toward cannabis concentrates being a good thing, they’re still largely untested in the area of long-term effects on regular users. We’re experiencing a revolution in the way people are consuming cannabis—something that’s gone on unchanged for over 10,000 years—and more time and research is required before we can say anything conclusively. As prohibition laws ease up and more laboratories get involved, we’ll develop a greater under-standing of this magical plant’s capabili-ties and benefits.

Excerpted from the book The Secrets of the West Coast Masters: Uncover the Ultimate Techniques for Growing Medical Marijuana (Revised Edition) by Dru West. Copyright 2015 by Dru West. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

The Dabwiser Oracle rig.

Two kinds of shatter.



NUTRITIONALS


Masterpiece is just a reasonable cab ride away.

Of course, the Denver Cup’s scale is quite a bit different than in Amsterdam, where 3,000 attendees was the average, not 50,000. With a more manageable crowd, you can get a message across and make time for ceremony. But at the aesthetically bland Denver Mart, the Cup devolves into just another trade show, albeit a stony one.

It’s my last day in Denver and I’ve yet to make a legal pot purchase. It also happens to be 4/20.

I check out of my hotel and head over to Native Roots at Champa and 16th. There’s a line out the door, and most of the crowd is pretty young. Even though it’s Monday and people should be at work, they’re on line; maybe they’ve taken the day off, work nights or are unemployed. A female staffer comes by and checks IDs. She tells us the wait should be about 45 minutes.

There are two lines: one for recreational sales (the bulk of the crowd), the other for medical. During my wait, only one person goes through the medical entrance. We’re given menus to peruse. “Flower” prices are broken down into two categories: Top Shelf and Exclusive (more expensive). The prices range from $17–$20 (per gram) to

$325–$375 (per ounce). There are seven choices: three sativas (Star Dawg Guava, Blueberry Diesel and Golden Goat), two indicas (Bubba Kush and Fall ’97) and two hybrids (Cherry Pie and Platinum Girl Scout Cookies).

The extracts are a lot pricier. Grams of shatter and wax cost $60–$70, and Rasta Bubble Hash goes for $45. The rest of the menu is devoted to edibles from Edipure, Sweet Grass Kitchen and Canna Punch, and topicals from Apoth-ecanna and Mary’s Medicinals.

Once inside the recreational sales room, which looks like a cross between a chic boutique and a classic head shop, I inquire about the concentrates on the menu, since they’re hard to get in New York. My budtender recommends the Lemon Kush Shatter. I take that and a gram of Girl Scout Cookies. With a $10 discount, my bill is $80, plus $14.81 sales tax.

It’s a pleasant, albeit expensive, expe-rience. If I lived in Denver, I’m sure I’d shop around and search for good deals. But it’s 4/20 and there’s no time for that. In fact, it’s just after 3 p.m. I grab a cab and race over to the Mart to celebrate 4:20 on 4/20 with the masses, arriving with about 20 minutes to spare. I break up the gram of Girl Scout Cookies and roll it all into one huge cone-style joint. I find 622 just moments before the holy hemp moment. We walk outside as the seconds

Denver continued from page 37


tick away. There’s no fanfare, no count-down, just a few cheers and yips, and increasing clouds of smoke. Four-twenty on 4/20 passes without much excite-ment; perhaps everyone’s too stoned to notice.

Colorado often gets caught in the cross-hairs of activists who think that many of the new businesses here are run by “cannabaggers”—people with little con-nection to the industry who’ve seized a great opportunity. They eschew terms like “stoner” and consider “marijuana” a dirty word. One transplant says the cannabag-gers don’t even like the stuff.

That’s an odd thing to say in this land of legal weed. Colorado has always had a soft spot for pot, but it’s no Califor-nia. It’s bordered by conservative states like Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming, several of which are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the law passed in 2012.

Whether Colorado wants to be the “laboratory of democracy” is unclear; Gov. John Hickenlooper opposed Amend-ment 64, but has slowly come around as a reluctant supporter of legal marijuana. This most likely has to do with the $53 million in taxes raised in 2014.

Thanks to a state regulatory system set up for dispensaries when only medical marijuana was legal (that law

passed in 2001), Colorado was primed to sell rec-pot once it was approved by voters, and stores were given the option to transition into rec shops. On Jan. 1, 2014, doors opened to the public, making history in the process. All eyes continue to be on Colorado, along with Washing-ton State, and soon Oregon and Alaska. But since Colorado got there first, they’ve received the lion’s share of media atten-tion, including one TV news report after another about the “Green Rush” and “Pot Barons” now dominating the state.

But marijuana still has second-class status. As Keith Stroup explains in his article on page 38, residents can only smoke, vape or dab in the privacy of their homes. Drinkers can socialize in bars, but potheads have to stay in their closets. Prejudice takes a long time to dissipate.

Still, Jack Kerouac and his Beat Gen-eration pals surely would have approved. They liked to smoke tea and dig jazz in stoner-friendly cities like New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Denver.

As Beat poet laureate Allen Ginsberg wrote in Howl (1955), “Who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes…”

From the Gold Rush to the Green Rush, Denver is certainly a mile high.


By Roy Trakin

A lifelong stoner—at least since 11th grade—my experience buying weed has always been socio-cultural. I have pur-chased it from friends, fellow stoners, who I assumed marked it up in price to allow them to smoke for free, or at least for less. That was always my understanding: We weren’t dealers; we were members of a communal society that kept the grass flowing within the ecosystem.

That is, until the advent of medical marijuana. Seemingly overnight, Ventura Boulevard in Southern California, which—at least since the 1994 Northridge Earth-quake—had suffered a number of store vacancies from Studio City to Woodland Hills, began sprouting newfangled dispen-saries like, well, weeds, the distinctive neon green crosses out front hinting at the pleasures within, like some 21st-cen-tury speakeasy.

Still, I resisted the lure of legal herb for a relatively long time, perhaps stub-bornly sticking to my baby-boomer ideals that pot should somehow remain part of the underground economy, separate from Babylon’s normal commerce.

Back in the day, your dealer was part of the family, a trusted friend, as neces-sary as your shrink would soon become. In the beginning, we bought only from people we knew, as much out of paranoia as anything, and you cultivated a rela-tionship with your dealer, much like pot farmers nurture their crop.

One of my first dealers was a long-haired fellow film student who would deliver his goods in glass Ball jars, the

Nowadays there are many ways to acquire your weed. In California and other legal medical states, you can go to a dispensary—or rely on your old black-market connection.

Dealer vs. Dispensary

bright green buds carefully groomed for maximum appeal. Then there was my college friend who smuggled Lamb’s Bread from Jamaica by boat, and the ex-music publisher who brought his goods from Northern California. And while they didn’t offer the wide range of alternatives on display at your local dispensary, they were usually reliable, and some dealers even came to you—a harbinger of today’s modern marijuana delivery services.

What spurred me on, finally, was leaving my longtime job as Senior Editor at music trade magazine HITS and going freelance, which is, by its nature, a more isolating situation. Realizing I would be less a part of a community, I finally decided to spend the $75 to get a medical marijuana card from CannaMed in Thousand Oaks, where I was ushered into an office occupied by


Dr. Bernard A. Smyle, M.D. He barely looked up as I recited my litany of medical issues that necessitated my visit.

I was having trouble sleeping (true), was anxious (true), it stimulated my appetite (mmmm, very true) and I suf-fered from migraines (OK, that one was made up). Dr. Smyle (what a great name for someone who prescribes marijuana) was more of a stand-up comic than any medical practitioner I’ve encountered. He had some cursory questions about what my regular doctor thought (which I admittedly hedged), and he then signed

the document and presented me with a photo ID card (worthless without the accompanying paper), which allows me to “possess eight (8) oz. of dried marijuana and to maintain no more than six (6) mature or twelve (12) immature plants.” The card is good for 12 months, at which time I’ll have to renew for another $75.

Now that I had the card, it was time to visit an actual dispensary. Mother Nature’s Remedy, at 22831 Ventura Blvd. in Woodland Hills, is on the Valley’s main drag, nestled between a Thai foot-mas-sage parlor and a classic ’50s greasy spoon, Bobby’s Diner. MNR is like the THC-instead-of-booze version of Cheers, a place where everybody eventually knows your name. Vinny, a genial giant with tattoos who greets me, is a benign presence who checks your card (backed by your signed authorization) against your driver’s license, and buzzes you in to the back, where all the goods are displayed.

It takes a while to get used to buying marijuana over the counter as you would aspirin, but the budtenders are all very helpful and pleasant as they weigh out eighths of OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookies, Sweet Tooth and Blue Dream, which range

Mother Nature’s Remedy in Woodland Hills, Calif. Photo by Dave Azimi


from $35 to $50 per eighth to $300–$400 per ounce available in hybrid, sativa and indica categories. There’s also a full selection of edibles, from THC capsules, ready-to-heat pizzas and spiked Gummy Bears to popcorn, chocolate and honey. The workers are the stoner equivalent of Subway sandwich artists, and take pride in their ability to describe the effects of their wares.

My latest dispensary obsession is the vaporizer pen, which comes with a screw-in top of flavored liquid pot extract; the current brand of choice is Gold Card, $70 for several milligrams that last me two weeks, in flavors ranging from crème brûlée to spearmint. It’s not as potent as smoking a blunt or taking a bong hit, but more of a maintenance high.

The dispensaries are certainly a step in the right direction, but the fact that no smoking is allowed on the premises, and the actual purchase is rather perfunctory, means we’re still a ways from Amsterdam-style cafes, where you can while away the day ripped to the gills on a potpourri of the shop’s top blends. That’s where states like Colorado and Washington are pointing the way, with complete legaliza-tion in full swing.

Still, Mother Nature’s Remedy is con-sumer-friendly. There are “buy one joint, get another free” Tuesdays and $5 Shat-terdays (with discounts on concentrates for vaporizers and dab rigs), and every Sunday is Customer Appreciation Day: a

free eighth to anyone who spends $20, plus a free coupon to a food truck conve-niently parked outside.

Yes, pot is becoming big business, and we’re still in the early stages, where mom-and-pop entrepreneurs can open independent facilities—despite a lottery to get the license, and restrictive regula-tions—without worrying about Big Alcohol or Big Tobacco homing in. Cypress Hill’s B-Real recently won the right to open a dispensary in Santa Ana, Calif.; with some celebrity power, perhaps the aesthetic of newer dispensaries will rise above a row of jars in a glass case and a whiteboard with daily specials.

While that personal touch of buying from your dealer may be going the way of roach clips, the convenience of copping pot as easily as you might grab a Slurpee at the local 7-Eleven has more than made up for any loss of intimacy. Whether current mom-and-pop dispensaries will eventually give way to mega-corporations, with stoner versions of Starbucks in every strip mall and on every major thorough-fare, is another issue entirely, but for this longtime partaker, even quasi-legalization is a dream come true. Two years after getting my first card, I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

Roy Trakin is a longtime music journalist. He writes the weekly column Trakin Care of Business. To join his email list, write to [email protected].

Photo by Dave Azimi


By Beth Mann

Dave and Penelope are on a date. After a nice Italian dinner, they go back to Dave’s place, settle into his faux-suede sofa and clink glasses of cheap Merlot.

A successful date overall. But then Dave reaches under his sofa and pulls a pre-rolled joint out of his stash box.

Penelope: And what is… that?Dave: A joint. An after-dinner joint. Penelope: A joint of what? Dave: Um… mari… marijuana.Penelope (dramatic look away): I

didn’t know… you were a pothead.Dave: Well, I don’t really consider

myself a pothead, more of a casual…Penelope (flustered and angry): A

stoner! A weedhead! A red eye! An iron lung!

Dave: An iron what?Penelope: Don’t act clueless, Dave.

It doesn’t suit you. Had I known you were nothing but a Johnny Blaze, I never would have dated you.

David: But I said I’m 420-friendly on my Match.com profile!

Penelope: Who the hell reads those? I just liked the pictures of you bungee-jumping with your friends! You looked so… clean and innocent!

David: We were really stoned when we did that.

Penelope: Ugh… I’m so disappoin-ted. Well, good luck finding a woman who smokes the Devil’s lettuce with you.

David: The Devil’s what?Penelope swigs down her remain-

ing wine, grabs her coat and leaves in a huff.

Dave (smoking a joint, alone, thinking to himself): Boy, I wish there was a dating site where all the members smoked ganja. I’m tired of feeling like an outcast just because I like to toke! What’s a guy to do?

Luckily for lonely tokers like Dave, there are several 420-friendly sites where weed lovers can meet their smoky mates, including 420Singles.com, HighThere.com, My420Mate.com, StonerSingles.net and Date420Friendly.com.

These sites proudly promote more than just a shared habit, but a lifestyle. The members are portrayed as mellow, easygoing and bringing no drama, implying friendliness and honesty (or at least open-mindedness).

But clearly, not all pot smokers are mellow (including yours truly). So do these sites promote a stereotype that only a portion of smokers relate to? This begs the question: Since pot culture varies so greatly, why would the love of weed make us more compatible? One could argue that you might stand a better chance comparing your dream salad ingredients with those of another suitor.

Looking through these stoner match-making sites, I asked myself: Would I want to date someone who considers smoking pot a primary identifier?

Most people I know, even if they don’t partake, aren’t horribly put off by those who do. In addition, most of the bigger dating sites (Match.com, OKCupid.com) allow members to find fellow smokers, yet draw from a much larger pool of people than many of these newer and often

Stoner DatingA slew of sites promise to connect potheads romantically. But is having too much in common a good thing?



underpopulated niche dating sites.But hey, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?

420Singles.com is for pot people who want “fun dating, fun times and fun people.” Damn, that’s a lot of fun to be had. Who could pass that up?

“I was new to Cali and wanted to find someone with similar interests as me,” writes Jules T., a satisfied customer at My420Mate.com. “[It] helped me find my love, and now we burn together every day!”

Sounds like a match made in stoner heaven, at least for a month or two.

For something longer-term, people like Jules T. and Dave might be better served dating someone unlike them. Shouldn’t we be more open to people different from us?

In The Daily Show segment “Inter-Polit-ical Dating,” a Republican and Democrat are placed on a blind date, even though both vowed they’d never date across party lines. And while correspondent Jessica Williams tries to incite an argu-ment between the two over dinner, the couple gets along reasonably well.

Another inter-political couple high-

lighted in the segment is asked to discuss how they manage their longstanding mar-riage, as one is a Democrat and the other a Republican. Since both had suffered from cancer in the past, Williams asked the couple if they argued about Oba-macare. “No,” the husband answered, “we were trying not to die.”

Bottom line: There’s a common and more essential tie that attracts and binds us regardless of our personal predilec-tions. The need to genuinely connect with our fellow humans trumps the desire to date a fellow farmer—or stoner.

Niche dating sites potentially risk locking us in a perpetual state of petty selectivity, like a child who’ll only eat the green M&M’s. When we interact with those who don’t neatly adhere to our lifestyle, and venture beyond our imme-diate comfort zone, we grow as humans. These sites may narrow the playing field, but they may narrow our minds a little, as well.

Beth Mann is President of Hot But-tered Media and a regular contributor to Freedom Leaf.


limits the Feds from interfering in state-sanctioned pot policies. The legislation marks the first time in modern history that the Senate has taken up the issue of rescheduling. Separate House legis-lation—HR 1774: The Compassionate Access Act—is also pending.

So will this be the year Congress finally moves on the issue? It’s possible, though unlikely. That said, four decades of legal

precedent make it clear that advocates can no longer look to the courts to do Congress’ work for them. It’s Congress who placed marijuana in Schedule I, and, ultimately, it’s Congress who must correct this injustice.

Paul Armentano is Deputy Director of NORML and Freedom Leaf’s Senior Policy Advisor.

for example, don’t buy their stock. Rec-reational cannabis users who love a par-ticular video game or food may want to invest in the company that owns it, if it’s publicly traded.

Cannabis investing has been thwarted somewhat by a larger trend of fewer publicly traded companies overall. The NASDAQ and NYSE used to have about 9,000 listings combined, and that number has fallen to roughly 5,000 over

the past decade or so, for a variety of reasons. Basically, it’s harder than ever for any company to become public on a major stock exchange.

But the smart people in corporate America are well aware of the potential billions to be made in legal cannabis. And more stocks will be coming—just don’t bet too much, too soon. Some of them may be the big thing on Wall Street in the next few years.

45 Years and Counting continued from page 27

The Skinny Pot on Stocks continued from page 17


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The Perfect Pot PicnicBy Cheri Sicard

Hosting a picnic is a wonderful warm-weather way to entertain. Whether it’s a casual get-together of friends in the park, or a romantic sunset dinner for two alfresco, a picnic always makes the day more festive and memorable.

Savvy hosts and hostesses also know that picnics offer lots of advantages over entertaining at home:◆ Picnics provide the perfect entertain-

ing venue when your home might be less than ideal, i.e., you live with your mother or in a dorm, or your eight roommates own five Rottweilers.

◆ You don’t have to go crazy cleaning the house, because no one will ever see the house. There won’t be any post-party mess to clean up, either.

◆ Nothing at your home will get broken and the carpet won’t get stained.

◆ You don’t have to worry about how to get those last straggling guests to finally go home so you can go to bed.

◆ It’s generally less expensive to have a picnic than eat out in a restaurant. Picnics can also make for a cheap date that comes off as anything but.

The recipes in this article pack well,

but you’ll want to keep them cool until it’s time to eat, so plan to pack them in a cooler bag or chest. While I’ve medicated each recipe, in practice you will probably only want to medicate one of your picnic dishes per meal; just leave out the can-nabis in the others.

Instead of buying ice, I like to fill drink-ing bottles three-quarters full of water, lemonade or iced tea, and freeze them. Pack these frozen bottles around the well-wrapped foods in your cooler, and you’ll have ice-cold drinks with your meal at picnic time.

Be sure to seal lids on liquids well, and make sure containers are leak-proof. Likewise, wrap foods in plastic or use plastic food storage containers to keep them dry. Pack liquids and heavier items at the bottom of the cooler, and more del-icate items, like the Chocolate-Covered Strawberries in this article, or chips and pastries, near the top.

Other things to pack for the perfect pot picnic: napkins, utensils for serving and eating, plates, trash bags, salt and pepper, condiments, hand sanitizer and/or moist towelettes, sunscreen—and a vape pen.



OG Hummus

This healthy Mediterranean dip is wonder-ful served with raw vegetables or triangles of pita bread. Tahini is a paste made from sesame seeds, available in natural food stores, Middle Eastern markets and most supermarkets. Don’t be confused—gar-banzo beans and chickpeas are different names for the same legume.

15 oz. can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

6 tbsp. tahini1-1/2 gm. decarboxylated kief of

finely ground hash*1 tsp. minced garlic2 tbsp. minced fresh Italian parsley3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice (juice

of 1 large lemon)3/4 tsp. salt, or to taste1/2 tsp. black pepper, or to taste1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, or

to taste (optional)1/4 tsp. paprika (optional)1 tbsp. olive oil (optional)assorted raw veggies for dipping

*Directions for making decarboxylated kief can be found in the May 2015 issue of Freedom Leaf.

In the bowl of a food processor combine garbanzo beans, tahini, kief or hash, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne. Process until smooth. If mixture is too thick, add a small amount of water one tablespoon at a time, until the consistency is to your liking. Transfer to a serving bowl. If desired, make a small well in center of the dip and pour in olive oil and sprinkle with paprika.

Yield: 1-1/2 cupsServing Size: 1/4 cup

Tuscan Tuna Salad

Combine canned tuna fish with white beans in this fiber-rich salad. Serve as an entrée salad, or stuff into a pita pocket or crusty roll for a Tuscan tuna sandwich.

5 oz. can tuna, preferably in olive oil, drained

15 oz. can white beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 cup minced yellow onion1/4 cup minced celery3 tbsp. minced fresh Italian parsley1 tbsp. lemon juice2 tbsp. cannabis-infused olive oil*1/2 tsp. minced garlic salt and pepper to taste2 cups salad greens for

serving (optional)bread for sandwich (optional)

*Directions for making cannabis-infused oil can be found in the March 2015 issue of Freedom Leaf.

In a large bowl, toss together drained tuna and beans, onion, celery and parsley until well mixed. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, canna-olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Toss dressing with tuna mixture until all ingredients are well combined.

Yield: 2 cups Serving Size: 1 cup



Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

3 oz. dark or milk chocolate1 oz. white chocolate (optional)6 extra-large strawberries1-1/2 gm. decarboxylated kief of

finely ground hash

Melt chocolate in your microwave oven. Take care when melting or you can easily end up with a grainy mess. The lighter the chocolate, the greater the chance of this happening. Different ovens cook at different levels, so experiment with yours, checking the chocolate and stir-ring very frequently—every 10 seconds or less. The most important thing to remember is that chocolate melts better and faster at lower temperatures. Cook just until dark chocolate is melted and completely liquid. Once it’s melted, stir in the kief or hash. Dip dry strawber-ries in chocolate, using a spoon to help cover the berries. Place coated berries on waxed paper to set. (If you want to speed the process, set in the freezer for a minute.) To decorative with white chocolate as seen in the photo, melt it, then dip a fork into the chocolate and drizzle it over the dipped and set berries. Let set. Store in the fridge until ready to serve.

Yield: 6 Serving

Cheri Sicard is author of The Cannabis Gourmet Cookbook and Mary Jane: The Complete Marijuana Handbook for Women.


Photos by Mitch Mandell


REVIEWSBOOK

By Ellen Komp

Looking for a good book for your summer reading list? Check out Marijuana for Everybody! The Definitive Guide to Getting High, Feeling Good, and Having Fun by Elise McDonough (Chronicle Books, $11.95).

The book begins with an entertain-ing and nicely illustrated history of can-nabis use, presenting all the latest finds in a digestible form that you might want to share with the less informed people in your life. “Was Jesus a Stoner?” is tackled along with “Rescheduling and Descheduling” and “The New Jim Crow,” and the section ends with the successful efforts to legalize both medical and recre-ational marijuana.

McDonough, a longtime High Times employee, includes an extensive and up-to-date section on strains, and tips for Cannabis Cup judges on accurately ranking weed based on appearance, aroma, burnability, taste and potency. An informative Marijuana FAQ from Dr. Mitch Earleywine, Chair of NORML’s Board of Directors, answers questions about pot’s effects on driving, memory, meditation and more with concise summaries of the latest research. The science of cannabis gets its own section, starting with “How Does Getting High Work?” and “What’s a Cannabinoid?”

In the “Smoke It, Eat It, Wear It, Be It!” chapter, those with “joint-rolling disorder” are offered illustrated tips on how to roll several styles of joints, like the Cali-Can-non, in a section peppered with quotes from Martha Stewart and Steve Martin, alongside sidebars on storing your stash,

Marijuana for Everybody!

Elise McDonough is also the author of The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook.


ALBUM

trimming weed and muting the smell. A section on glass answers the question, “Where Do Bongs Come From?” and brings the reader up to date on cannabis oil rigs and vape pens, complete with a glossary, plus a chart comparing differ-ent types of smoking gear based on how discreet, effective and portable they are. Tips on building your own bongs and even a vaporizer are also fully illustrated.

Particularly enlightening is the section on the rise of BHO (butane honey oil). Such questions as “Is BHO Safe to Make?” and “Are Dabs Safe to Smoke?” tackle some of the most burning canna-bis issues by quoting experts and scien-tific studies.

McDonough, also the author of The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook, covers “magically delicious” edibles, along with warnings about knowing your dose, and considering your weight and metabolism before you indulge; a sidebar provides tips on what to do if you over-dose. Basic recipes for cannabis butter

and coconut oil are specific down to the temperatures for slow or fast process-ing, with the decarboxylation process that potentiates cannabis explained and examined. An interesting section explores complementing cannabis with flavors and textures like orange, cinnamon, rosemary, coconut and pistachio. One result is a gourmet recipe for Alaskan King Crab with Tinctured Cantaloupe, Avocado Puree and Cilantro Brown Butter. Cannabis topicals and creams are also covered, along with hemp superfoods.

The chapter “I’m High, Now What?” offers games you can play while stoned, like Bong Pong and Stoner Chess. Side-bars on becoming an activist and getting started in the marijuana industry suggest weightier activities. However you enjoy your summer, Marijuana for Everybody! provides a road map.

Ellen Komp is the Deputy Director of Cali-fornia NORML. She blogs at TokinWoman.blogspot.com.

Are they a reggae band or a country-style band? Judging by Bright Days, a nine-song set by Rochester, N.Y.’s Giant Panda Gue-rilla Dub Squad, the answer would appear to be the latter. Last time we heard from GPGDS, they had a hit reggae album, 2014’s Steady. Not content to be pigeon-holed, they’ve steered back in the direc-tion of their 2012 album, Country.

Giant Panda’s directional shift profits from an instinctive understanding of blues, folk and bluegrass. Using the Grateful Dead classic American Beauty as their muse, they create a relaxing acous-tic vibe with an expanded instrumental

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad: "Bright Days"


lineup. Fronted by singer/bassist James Searl, the ambitious quartet is joined by Boston-based guitarist Milt Reder, Berk-lee-trained mandolinist Eric Robertson and G. Love (of Special Sauce fame).

A breezy, blues-influenced slide-guitar rambler, “Trust in Time,” opens the set with a familiar “Dust My Broom” riff. Tender acoustic guitar/mandolin interplay sets a mellow mood for the percussively picked “Atabey.” Fiddle and banjo perk up the serious-minded “Nothing Comes Easy.” An endearing and sentimental love ballad, “It Won’t Be Long,” is earnest without getting unctuously sappy.

Giant Panda revisit their reggae roots on the sociopolitical “War Machine.” Seeking peace in a confrontational

universe, Searl’s airy baritone emotes the provocative warning: “I don’t want blood on my hands/I need bread on my table.”

Closing out the program, the Dead-like title track is a hopeful respite that elevates the overall positive mood.

There’s one stoner-centric track: the wake-n-bake salutation “Humboldt County Gold,” featuring G. Love on harmonica. Silken slide guitar subtly backs up the simmering, soulful organ groove, provid-ing a meandering, soft-toned drowsiness well suited for this cannabis-fueled high time.

Though they step completely outside the boundaries of reggae on Bright Days, the result is a fascinating journey. Dead-heads, take note. — John Fortunato

REVIEWS


Chongwater from Angel Fire Hemp CompanyWhat has long been an inside joke is now an actual product. Chongwater—not to be confused with stinky bongwater—has Tommy Chong’s face right on the bottle. The ingredients include organic hemp seed (from Canada), honey, vitamin C and citric acid. It comes in two flavors: Hemp & Honey; and Hemp & Mint-Lime, with lime juice, spearmint and peppermint.$3.99 per bottletommychongwater.com

Mystabis InhalerPopular in Northern California, Mystabis’ inhaler shoots a fine mist into your mouth, similar to an asthma inhaler. But there’s one big difference: The mist contains cannabis. According to the company, “3 mg of cannabis concentrate is dispensed with each puff,” and, they say, three puffs equals a joint. Each inhaler provides 50 to 100 puffs. Mystabis is only for quali-fied medical patients.$100 per inhalermystabis.com

Hippo-TeesHip-O-Potamus Tees are back. Famous for its concert T-shirts dating back to the ’70s, the company has been revived by Jeffrey Axelrod, and, in association with Freedom Leaf, will be producing new designs. Right now, there are seven clas-sics for sale on their site, all of them mar-ijuana-related, including one they did for the 4th of July Smoke-In in 1979.$21 per shirthippo-tees.com

PRODUCTS


Download Willie’s original song “It’s a Long Story” at www.myredmusic.com/willienelson Free with proof of purchase.

At last, Willie tells the whole story.

Songwriter. Outlaw. Legend.

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

On sale now in hardcover, ebook, audio, and large print wherever books are sold

l i t t lebrown.comHachette Book Group

Freedom Leaf Magazine - June 2015

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