Freedom Leaf Magazine - May/June 2016

1 may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com

norml.org

http://trk.as/Women_grow_14

http://trk.as/SSDP_14

2 www.freedomleaf.com may–june 2016

http://34.gs/Hemp_Inc_15


VISIT WWW.CWCBEXPO.COM TO REGISTER

The Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo

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The CWCBExpo is the leading forum for: Dispensary Owners Growers Suppliers Investors

Medical Professionals Government Regulators Legal Counsel Entrepreneurs

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JUNE 15-17, 2016 I JAVITS CENTER, NYCAnd don’t miss CWCBExpo in

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FEATURES

30 35 384345 50 55

NORML’S CONGRESSIONAL SCORECARD

CONGRESS’ TOP 5 ANTI-POT WARRIORSPaul Armentano

FL INTERVIEW: REP. EARL BLUMENAUERSteve Bloom

CORY BOOKER: “WE MUST ACT”United book excerpt

SMOKED DOWN IN PHILADELPHIAChris Goldstein

HEAD TRIPLex Pelger

BUSTED IN CHINAMona Zhang

NEWS & REVIEWS

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D.C. PROTEST AND SUMMIT; MAZE OF POT LAWS IN D.C. AREA

LEGALIZATION PUSH IN MAINE & VERMONTNEW CELEB POT PRODUCTS; MAY EVENTS

GRATEFUL TRIBUTE: DAY OF THE DEAD Roy Trakin

HOW TO SMOKE POT (PROPERLY) Steve BloomHEMP & HONEY + BODY CREAMErin Hiatt



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EDITOR’S NOTESteve Bloom

IT’S TIME TO GO TO CAPITOL HILLKeith Stroup

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SSDP 2016 CONFERENCEFrances Fu

NINE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR CANNABUSINESSJazmin Hupp

LEARNING FROM THE DOT-COM BOOMDavid RheinsMY FAVORITE POT COMICS (INCLUDING ME!)Ngaio Bealum

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HEMP FOOD PRODUCTSDr. Jahan Marcu

DUTCHESS CAPITAL Matt ChelseaWITH DAB NAIL AND IRick Pfrommer

WAKE AND BAKE BRUNCHCheri Sicard

WELCOME TO MY POT-OPIABeth Mann

5may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com

Cover photo by Gabe Kirchheimer


HigH on tHe Hill witH Rep. eaRl BlumenaueR

EDITOR’Snote

“I never used it, and still haven’t,” Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer told me when I interviewed him at the Cannabis Science and Policy Summit in New York in April. He was referring to marijuana. Yet the congressman has become the lead-ing cannabis advocate on Capitol Hill, sponsoring a number of bills that would remove it from the Controlled Substances Act and allow businesses to utilize bank-ing services, among other provisions.

When we mapped out this issue of Freedom Leaf, we decided to seek an interview with a member of Congress. Blumenauer, Jared Polis, Steve Cohen and Dana Rohrabacher all came to mind. But it was Blumenauer—known for his bow ties and green bicycle pins—who accepted our request.

The congressman from Portland has been on the right side of this issue since 1973, when, as a newly elected member of the state House, he voted to decrim-inalize marijuana in Oregon—the first state to do so—signaling the end of the War on Weed. But four decades later, the fight against prohibition goes on.

“I thought we turned the corner,” Blu-menauer observed, minutes before tak-ing the conference stage for a panel dis-cussion. “Oregon was helping to put down the flag and move the progress. I just was not ready for how deeply em-bedded Nixon’s War on Drugs was. And then what happened with the Reagan ad-ministration. It continues to disappoint me to this day—all of the lost lives, the social carnage. But I think we’re turning the corner.”

We are turning the corner. In addition to our interview with Rep. Blumenauer (page 38), this issue features NORML’s Congressional Scorecard (page 30), which grades the members of Congress. Only two senators and 17 representa-tives (including Blumenauer, of course) received an “A” grade. Although this is

not a large number, just a few years ago you could’ve counted the A’s on one hand.

Another favorite of ours in Congress, Sen. Corey Booker, contributes an ex-cerpt from his book, United (page 43), from the chapter “Incarceration Nation.”

And who are the worst members of Congress when it comes to the issue of marijuana legalization? Paul Armentano shines the spotlight on five anti-pot war-riors (page 35).

Twice this month you’ll have the op-portunity to join fellow activists on Cap-itol Hill for Lobby Days—with the NCIA on May 11–12, and with NORML on May 23–24. This is the best way to reach out to your representatives. I recommend going to at least one lobbying event, es-pecially NORML’s, which I attended last year. It was a blast to walk the halls of Congress, knock on doors, speak to con-gresspeople, and drop off business cards and magazines. Just make sure to wear comfortable shoes.

See you high on the Hill!

Steve BloomEditor-in-Chief

Steve Bloom with Rep. Earl Blumenauer at the Cannabis Science and Policy Summit.

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FOUNDERS Richard C. Cowan & Clifford J. Perry PUBLISHER & CEO Clifford J. PerryEDITOR-IN-CHIEF Steve Bloom SENIOR EDITOR Chris GoldsteinEDITORIAL DESIGN Joe GurreriCREATIVE DIRECTOR Dave AzimiCOPY EDITOR G. MosesSENIOR POLICY ADVISOR Paul ArmentanoSCIENCE EDITORDr. Jahan MarcuADVERTISING SALES Ray Medeiros

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONSChris M. SloanNONPROFIT LIASION MANAGERChris ThompsonLEGAL COUNSEL Keith StroupEXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Felipe MenezesCONTRIBUTORSNgaio Bealum, Russ Belville, Matt Chelsea, Frances Fu, Erin Hiatt, Jazmin Hupp, Mitch Mandell, Beth Mann, Valencia Mohammed, Lex Pelger, Rick Pfrommer, Amanda Reiman, David Rheins, Cheri Sicard, Roy Trakin, Mona Zhang

Copyright © 2016 by Freedom Leaf Inc. All rights reserved. Freedom Leaf Inc. assumes no liability for any claims or representations contained in this magazine. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without permission is prohibited.

ISSUE 15 MAY–JUNE 2016

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Inquiry From Freedom Leaf

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On April 2, a pot protest featuring a 51- foot inflatable joint outside the White House earned a pair of activists an invita-tion to what they dubbed the “Bud Sum-mit” three weeks later.

DCMJ, the group behind the success ful ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in the District of Columbia in 2014, staged the march and rally. Adam Eidinger, the owner of Capitol Hemp and a DCMJ co-ordinator, said that the goal was to high-light the fact that President Obama could take executive action to reschedule or even de-schedule cannabis under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Hundreds of participants attended the rally directly in front of the White House, including prominent East Coast voices in the marijuana movement. At 4:20 p.m., after numerous speeches, there was a moment of civil disobedience right in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, with people sparking up joints, blunts, pipes and vape pens. The fragrant smoke rose up on the sunny afternoon, lapping at the sides of the Oval Office.

The inflatable joint, which was briefly detained at the security checkpoint,

somehow made it back to the protest. D.C. Metro Police issued just two cita-tions, for smoking marijuana in public.

Initially, there were rumblings from some marijuana reform nonprofits that the smoke-in stunt was inappropriate. But, as it turned out, the White House reached out to schedule a meeting as a result of the protest.

On April 25, Eidinger and Nikolas Schiller met with two officials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in a building adjacent to the White House. After the meeting, Eidinger told the Washington Post: “They didn’t say a lot. They took notes, maybe four pages’ worth. Why were they invited, what were they asked, what did they talk about? We asked questions, but they didn’t answer. They nodded a lot. I think they understood us.”

DCMJ has requested another meeting in order to have a more mean-ingful exchange with higher-level offi-cials. Eidinger says they will continue to hold marijuana protests in front of the White House until their goals are achieved. — Chris Goldstein

protest Draws invite from white House Drug office

The Washington, D.C. pot protest featured a 51-foot inflatable joint (top left).

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maze of pot laws for Smokers in D.C., maryland and Virginia

While marijuana is legal in the nation’s capital (except on federal property), it is decriminalized in Maryland and fully prohibited in Virginia. If you light a joint in Maryland and then walk across the street to your parked car in Washington, D.C., you could get stopped by police and be fined for public consumption. If you cross the Potomac River from D.C. into Virginia, and are randomly stopped by police while possessing that joint, you could face a year in jail.

Malik Dogan El, 22, lives in South-east D.C. and works for his sister’s clean-ing company in Bowie, Md. Last July, Prince George’s County Police pulled him over in Maryland for a traffic viola-tion (failing to stop long enough at a stop sign), and asked to perform a sobriety test—stand on one leg, walk in a straight line one leg in front of the other, follow a pen and touch his nose.

Despite not being given a breatha-lyzer test or a blood-alcohol test, El was still charged with DWI. No marijuana or paraphernalia was found on him or inside the vehicle. The arresting officer told El he’d been trained to detect when people are under the influence of pot.

“If you can smoke legally in Maryland, why are they bothering people?” El asks. “There’s no machine that cops have to evaluate marijuana toxicity in the same manner as a breathalyzer test does for alcohol. So all that stuff that they made me do was bogus.”

For D.C. resident Tyrone Hammonds, who owns Avid Life Entertainment, “it makes all the sense in the world for mar-ijuana laws to be seamless. Because of the way in which the geography of the region relates to movement of people on a daily basis, and the resulting inconve-nience of having to abide by inconsistent laws throughout the day, the current situ-ation is quite ridiculous.”

The only solution is federal legaliza-tion—although if Virginia’s laws were lib-eralized it would be much less of a prob-lem. But for now, District residents are at the mercy of the patchwork of laws sur-rounding them. — Valencia Mohammed

the legalization law in washington, D.C.

According to NORML, it’s legal in the District of Columbia for “adults 21 years of age or older to pos-sess up to two ounces of marijuana in one’s primary residence without penalty and transfer without pay-ment (but not sell) up to one ounce of marijuana to another person 21 years of age or older. Persons residing in a single house or sin-gle rental unit may not grow more than 12 marijuana plants, with six or fewer being mature, flowering plants.”

Malik Dogan El (right) collecting signatures in 2014 to legalize marijuana in D.C.

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Down east: mainers to Vote on marijuana legalizationOn April 27, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap certified more than 11,000 petition signatures submitted by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol that were initially rejected. With that decision, Maine joins Nevada and Florida as states that will vote on dif-ferent forms of marijuana legalization in November.

“We stood strong for the right of the people to petition their government,” Maine Rep. Diane Russell (D–Portland) tells Freedom Leaf. “We dotted our I’s and crossed our T’s. And our work was clearly vindicated.”

The Maine ballot measure would allow adults to possess 2.5 ounces of marijuana and grow up to six flowering plants. It creates a system of licensed retail stores, and cultivation and test-ing facilities, throughout the state. In a poll conducted by the Maine People’s Resource Center at the end of April, 54% of Mainers supported the proposal. Marijuana is currently decriminalized in Maine, and available at several dispen-saries.

Both the Maine and Nevada cam-paigns are being backed by the Mari-juana Policy Project. The Florida medical marijuana amendment is supported by United for Care.

“It is time to replace the underground market with a regulated system of li-censed marijuana businesses,” says Da-vid Boyer, the Maine initiative’s campaign manager, “to redirect our state’s limited law enforcement resources toward ad-dressing serious crimes instead of en-forcing failed prohibition policies, and to stop punishing adults for using a sub-stance that’s significantly less harmful than alcohol.”

Adds Rep. Russell: “In the middle of a heroin epidemic, we should be focusing our resources toward fighting addiction—not responsible adults who consume marijuana.” — Chris Goldstein

After the Vermont Senate passed a bill to tax and regulate cannabis on Feb. 25, the House decided to make some significant changes. Instead of allowing for commercial sales as called for in the Senate version, the House decided to permit residents to grow two plants at home and set up a commission to inves-tigate a regulation scheme. “This bill does not change current marijuana penalties, but it will move Vermont further toward enacting sensi-ble marijuana regulation laws,” says the MPP’s New England Political Director Matt Simon. So it now appears that Ver-

mont may not become the first state to legislatively legalize marijuana, despite support from Governor Peter Shumlin, who has called on the state to “take a smarter approach on marijuana.” — CG

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Vermont legalization legislation Hits Snag in House

Maine and Nevada residents will have the chance to legalize marijuana in November.

The State Capitol building in Montpelier.


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The Green Rush continues to motivate the entertainment community. First Willie Nelson, Tommy Chong and Marley Nat-ural announced their intentions to enter the market with branded strains of mar-ijuana and other pot-related products, and, in short order, Wiz Khalifa, Melissa Etheridge, Roseanne Barr, B-Real and Woody Harrelson followed with similar proclamations.

The latest celebs to make green moves are Whoopi Goldberg and the band 311. On March 30, The View co-host went public with her new venture, Whoopi & Maya; Goldberg’s partner, Maya Elisabeth, is the founder of Om Ed-ibles, an all-female cannabis product col-lective in Northern California. Whoopi & Maya offers a line of products targeted at women, specifically intended to thwart menstrual cramps.

Former High Times associate pub-lisher Rick Cusick recently departed the magazine to help found the new com-pany. Also on board is NORML board

member Evan Nison and former High Times staffer Craig Coffey.

“Our topical rub is not going to get you high, but it will take your pain level from a 50 down to at least a 20,” says Goldberg, who appeared on the cover of the December 2015 issue of Freedom Leaf.

The products—dubbed “Soak” (for a bath), “Rub” (a topical), “Savor” (a choc-olate drink) and “Relax” (a tincture)—are now available at a number of California dispensaries.

Also available in California is 311’s Grassroots Uplifter stainless steel, dis-posable vape pen. It’s named after the reggae-rock band’s second and ninth albums. — Steve Bloom

new Celeb pot products from whoopi goldberg and 311

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BY KeitH StRoup

noRml is hosting their annual lobby Day in may.

This is truly an exciting time for marijua-na legalization. Four states—Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska—are currently legal and four or five more may get to vote to join them in November.

However, as long as the federal anti- marijuana laws remain in place, these victories are subject to the whims of whomever is president. Thankfully, Presi-dent Obama has had the courage to hold off the Department of Justice and allow the states to implement their new mari-juana laws without federal interference. But a future administration might use cur-rent law to roll back state legalization.

We absolutely must change federal law to protect those states willing to ex-periment with alternatives to prohibition. Today, there are at least 14 marijuana- related bills in Congress to reform or repeal different aspects of federal prohi-bition. These proposals would recognize the medical use of marijuana under federal law; allow legal marijuana busi-nesses in the states to operate like other legal businesses, including accessing banking and financial services; legalize industrial hemp; and remove marijuana altogether from the federal Controlled Substances Act.

But the fact is, none of these bills have even been granted a legislative hearing, nor have any of them been voted on in committee or on the floor of Congress. So we need your help to force Congress to begin to take this issue seriously.

I urge those who are willing to get more personally involved in changing federal law to attend NORML’s Congres-sional Lobby Day event on May 23–24 in Washington, D.C. It’s a terrific opportu-nity to meet like-minded individuals from

across the country and get a glimpse into the Capitol Hill lawmaking process.

On Day One, we’ll brief attendees on pending legislation, and effective arguments to use when visiting your representatives and senators. That eve-ning, we’ll present awards to activists for their valuable work at the Mansion on O Street soiree.

On Day Two, we’ll meet at the Capi-tol. After being welcomed by some of our most fervent congressional supporters, we’ll head out across the Hill to spread the legalization gospel. You’ll spend the day walking the halls of Congress, so dress accordingly (wear comfortable shoes).

Changing federal law is never sim-ple; changing federal marijuana law is especially challenging. But the neces-sary changes will not occur on their own. You can make a real difference and help speed this process along by joining us this month in Washington, D.C. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get involved. Register for the event at norml.org/- conference.

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

Rep. Steve Cohen (second to right) joined NORML brass at the Lobby Day in 2015.

it’s time to go to Capitol Hill

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By Frances Fu

At SSDP 2016 on April 15–17, 550 re-formers from 17 countries convened at the Holiday Inn in Rosslyn, Va., just across the Potomac River from Wash-ington, D.C., for the largest gathering of SSDPers ever in our 18-year history. We learned, connected, celebrated and looked toward a future when drug poli-cies will start making sense.

The conference began with Unbroken Brain author Maia Szalavitz’s keynote, “Why Addiction Is a Learning Disorder and Why It Matters.” During the talk, she challenged the notions that addicts have inherently addictive personalities and that addiction is a function of a brain disorder, and maintained that addiction is a type of learning disorder, affected by variables like timing, history, peers, culture and chemicals.

This year, SSDP’s Diversity Aware-ness Reflection and Education Commit-tee invited J. Miakoda Taylor from Fierce Allies to lead a workshop aimed at em-powering SSDPers with the tools to build resilient relationships across divisions in the social-justice world. Another con-ference highlight was the “Ethical Drug Consumption” all-student panel that dis-cussed whether it’s possible to consume drugs ethically under the paradigm of the War on Drugs.

The idea for the panel was inspired by last year’s “Every Line Counts” cam-paign by England’s National Crime Agen-cy, which shamed casual cocaine users for their drug habit by blaming them for the violence and environmental degrada-tion linked to cocaine production. How-ever, some drug policy reformers felt that the campaign failed to draw attention to the atrocities caused by prohibitionist drug policies.

Students also had the opportunity to develop chapter-building and policy- change skills in such workshops as “When Diplomacy Fails: How to Fight

Back Against a Difficult Administration,” “Pursuing Medical Amnesty & Nalox-one Access on Campus and Beyond,” “Getting the Word Out: Tips for Taking Over Campus Media” and “Ballot Initia-tive and Campaign Basics: How to Utilize Your Skills to Get Involved.”

The conference concluded with SS-DP’s first-ever Lightning Talks session, where five students presented speeches on the theme, “A Vision for a Post-Prohi-bition World.” In true SSDP fashion, the speakers took the theme in vastly dif-ferent directions. The presenters were: Molly Davis (Rocky Mountain College) on “Addiction Is a Health Issue”; Lauren Par-asconda (SUNY Albany) on “A Future of Freedom, Love and Acceptance”; Brett Phelps (University of New Mexico School of Law) on “Making Peace with the Po-lice”; Miranda Gottlieb (University of Ten-nessee) on “Completing the Policy Pro-cess” and Richard Hartnell on “Criteria for a Psychonaut’s License.” The talks all inspired, educated and helped the as-sembled SSDPers reflect on why they joined the movement and why they’re still here today.

With a network of over 4,000 sensible students—and judging from the excite-ment generated at SSDP 2016—our future looks bright indeed.

Frances Fu is SSDP’s Pacific Region Outreach Coordinator.

Highlights from the SSDp 2016 Conference

SSDP hosted reformers from 17 countries at their international conference in April.

Students for SensibleDrug Policy


http://34.gs/SSDP_15

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1 The art of feminine leadership: Most women have only been given the opportunity to lead by imitating

men. Masculine management tends to use force, authority and judgment as core practices. Our feminine community is practicing power, influence and approval as core tools.

2 Check what’s trending: Cannabis, women, small-business owners and local jobs. When you focus on

upward trends, your business has the potential for exponential growth.

3 Connection is the key: Women are looking for a way to authentically connect with other women—not

online, but in person. This is why we now have Signature Networking Events in 45 cities across the U.S. and Canada on the first Thursday of each month—so those authentic connections can be made.

4 Focus is everything: Cut half the stuff you’re trying to do, then polish what’s left until your core business

is purring like a kitten. Then take a vaca-tion. When you return, figure out what you should add.

5 Get expert help: Buy the help you need with consultants and contrac-tors, instead of hiring. Although out-

side expertise can appear more expen-sive at first, adding to your internal head count is a long-term decision that will quickly cost more than any contractor.

6 Change is inevitable: You want to build your organization to smooth-ly allow contributors to enter and

exit. Make sure you focus on creating repeatable processes so you don’t lose momentum when a key member exits the team.

7 Keep local decisions local: Some people are surprised that Women Grow is not a political action group.

We believe local policy decisions should be made locally. We endeavor to educate and share at those meetings, but we don’t make decisions on behalf of our local communities.

8 Banking rules must change: We’ve had multiple payment pro-cessing accounts shut down, which

has removed our ability to offer educa-tional webinars on demand. Our mem-bers have had hundreds of bank ac-counts closed. We need to start to think of banking as a right if it’s being used to control our access to legal goods or free speech. How do you sell something on-line without credit card processing?

9 Pace yourself: As the gathering point for women in a growing indus-try, we see burnout more often than

success. Although the press may have you believe that you’re in a Green Rush, this industry has a long road ahead of it. In the end, being the first to do some-thing will be less important than being the first to do it excellently, sustainably and profitably.

Jazmin Hupp is CEO and co-founder of Women Grow.

9ways to improve Your Cannabusiness Since many of you are on this journey of creating a new business in a new industry with Women Grow, I’d like to share some lessons we’ve learned about our businesses and about ourselves. By Jazmin Hupp

Jazmin Hupp of Women Grow


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Here are four practical lessons that can be applied to the Green Rush from the dot-com boom:

• work together: Before you can effectively build your company’s market share, you have to first create the indus-try. That takes cooperation among competitors. In the dot-com era, we called it “coopetition.” As an SVP at America Online, I was an early partici-pant in the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). We discussed best practices and endorsed standards for the new indus-try, including how to deal with serious issues like privacy protection, spam and e-commerce. The goal was to create a common, level playing field that worked for marketers, agencies, consumers and the media alike.

• Join the mJBa: The Marijuana Business Association (MJBA) hosts reg-ular meetups in Washington State, Ore-gon, Colorado and New York, providing a forum to make and develop valuable business connections. Members have special access to legal, financial and technical thought leaders, and tremen-dous industry resources.

• Stay nimble: In these early days of the legal cannabis industry, we’re still figuring out how to achieve scale and profitability, while maintaining prod-uct quality and company integrity. In a post-prohibition world, we have to deal with taxes and regulations, pesticides, energy usage and a host of other press-ing issues. Remain humble and focus on the needs of your customers, peers and your community. Build your brand and company culture as examples of best practices for the industry to follow.

• learn to share: At the MJBA, we provide members with a platform to build their personal and professional brands by sharing their expertise (through author-ing articles, participating on panels and taking a thought leadership role in the community). At meetups and seminars, and through our social and news media networks, MJBA members freely share their knowledge, and in that way, estab-lish themselves as experts and go-to resources.

David Rheins is Executive Director of the Marijuana Business Association, based in Washington State.

things we Can learn from the Dot-Com Boom By David RheinsThe early days of the legal cannabis industry remind me of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The valuations of startups like Excite, Netscape and MySpace ascended like rockets and soared high, before many companies went public or were acquired for ungodly sums, and then, just as quickly, stalled and returned to Earth.

Unlike today’s marijuana industry, the digital revolution was well funded. Tech startups have access to commercial credit from traditional banks, and the attention of mega-funded venture capitalists.

Many of the entrepreneurs who started these companies are still players in the converged tech/digital/media/cloud economy. They just wear different hats, and put their expertise to work for new entities, but the professional network of peers they developed and the reputations and authority they established continue to serve them nearly two decades later.


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Cannabis and comedy go back at least to the days of Lord Buckley’s retelling of the Jonah and the Whale story. In Buckley’s version, Jonah fires up two joints, which cause the whale to lose control.

That was in the 1950s. Moving ahead to the ’60s and ’70s, comedy legends like George Carlin and Cheech & Chong, and underground heroes like Franklin Ajaye and Rick and Ruby, kept the pot jokes coming. The ’80s weren’t great for ston-er humor (blame the Reagans and “Just Say No”), but the last 20 years have seen an upswing. These days, everyone from Margaret Cho to Whoopi Goldberg is get-ting in on the weed game.

Here are a few of my favorites on the scene right now:

Doug Benson: His act isn’t particularly canna-centric, but Benson’s lifestyle and podcasts have been a huge boon to stoners ev-erywhere. He’s the star of

the documentary Super High Me, and his YouTube show, Getting Doug with High, is very popular with stoners and squares.

Sarah Silverman: She’s another comic that doesn’t do a lot of pot-related mate-rial, but heavily represents the cannabis-user lifestyle. Known for smoking her

concentrate vaporizer at various red car-pet events, Silverman is wickedly funny.

Katt Williams: Troubled comedy genius Williams has some brilliant bits about everything from the bene-fits of regular pot smoking to the ridiculous names of

some weed strains these days. Plus, he’s just funny, in general. Now, if he could just stop getting arrested, and stay out of jail.

Cory Showtime Robinson: This young comic from Monterey, Calif. (he just moved to L.A.) has great jokes about visiting canna-bis clubs and how much he

likes marijuana. If he’s coming to your town, go see him. I highly recommend it.

Ngaio Bealum: One of the reasons I became a stand-up comic is because come-dians always have the best weed. I’ve been an activist for more then 20 years,

and have performed at hundreds of can-nabis-themed events all over the world. Also, I’m a regular guest on Getting Doug With High.

Honorable Mentions: Tommy Chong (left), Michael Calvin Jr., Jasper Redd,

Chris Riggins, Todd Armstrong, Jeffrey Peterson (a.k.a. the 420 Comic), Chris Porter, Ron White (above right, although he’s more of a boozer), Alex “Kool-Aid” Ansel and all the folks on the Sexpot Comedy Tour.

Watching comedy on a screen is cool, but stand-up is best when served live. Get high and support your local comedy scene.

Ngaio Bealum is a Sacramento-based comedian and activist who regularly appears at cannabis events.

MY FAVORITE POT COMICS (INCLUDING ME!)

By Ngaio Bealum


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For millennia, hemp seeds—the byprod-uct of the plant cultivated for fiber—have been used in food products. Hemp seeds and hemp oil are a great source of nutri-tion, and possibly offer therapeutic bene-fits when used in food production.

Somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 metric tons of hemp are pro-duced worldwide each year, with China being the largest producer of hemp seeds. Botanically, hemp seeds are small nuts. They’re rounder and thicker then sunflower seeds. Husks can be removed by processing, and the seeds are used in a variety of products, such as protein powders and bars. The nutmeat contains about 45% fat and 35% protein; the re-maining 20% represents carbohydrates, sugar, ash and moisture content. There are about twice as many carbohydrates in unhulled hemp seeds, versus just the nutmeat.

A lot of interest has focused lately on the use of hemp seeds for their oil, and their use in nutritional products. Most of

the analytical data available about hemp seeds focuses on essential fatty acid content. This composition of fatty acids is largely influenced by the specific variety, cultivar or genetics. Recent research on hemp suggests several things:

Some professional athletes in weight-restriction sports use hemp pro-tein powder. (MMA fighters like Ronda Rousey and Kyle Kingsbury have dis-cussed the role of hemp protein in their regimens). One reason is because hemp protein increases nutritional absorption. In 2015, the Carpathian Journal of Food Science & Technology published a study examining the effect of hemp food con-sumed in the morning and evening. After three weeks, the group receiving hemp protein had significantly higher levels of hemoglobin, serum protein and pre-al-bumin.

Genetics primarily determine oil content, while environmental factors pri-marily determine the antioxidant and fat-ty acid profiles. A 2004 article in Euphyt-

ADVANCED CANNABIS SCIENCE

What You Needto KnowAbout

Hemp Food ProductsBy Dr. JAhAN MArCu



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ica investigated the nutritional content of seeds from 51 varieties of cannabis in 11 countries. “The oil content of hemp seeds may be increased by classical breeding methods, but the antioxidants and fatty acids seem to depend even more on en-vironmental factors than the oil content does,” the authors wrote.

Hemp oil doesn’t form trans-fatty acids when cooked. A 1999 article in the Journal of the International Hemp Asso-ciation compared the effect of cooking temperatures (175C–250C) on trans-fatty acid formation in hemp cooking oil. Con-trary to popular belief, hemp cooking oil does not form trans-fatty acids under nor-mal cooking temperatures. The authors speculated that this is due to the high vitamin E content of the oil.

THC and other cannabinoids are not present in hemp seeds, but trace amounts of cannabinoids can find their way into hemp seed products acciden-tally during processing, such as when

seeds are separated from the flowers, which produce the cannabinoids. Federal and international regulations prohibit cannabis resin, such as THC, from being contained in hemp products by setting strict limits (see deadiversion.usdoj.gov for more info)

Dust at hemp processing plants contains many valuable substances, such as rare fatty acids and cannabidiol (CBD), the American Chemical Society determined in 2015. These waste prod-ucts could be processed, salvaging nu-merous compounds for use in research.

Hemp proteins contain a high amount of the amino acid arginine (94–128 mg/g protein) compared to other food proteins, such as whole wheat (48 mg/g protein). Arginine serves as a di-etary precursor for the formation of nitric oxide (NO), a potent mediator of the vas-cular system and thus important for heart health. Additionally, NO production has been linked to optimal immune function and muscle repair. The Journal of Agri-cultural and Food Chemistry published a study in 2010 that recommended hemp protein as a dietary source of arginine.

Hemp seeds and their hulled nut-meats are established as important in-gredients in the natural foods market. However, formulating hemp seeds into a protein bar or fancy treat is difficult, and scientists are still working to solve some of the stability, storage and shipping is-sues.

This year, researchers in Canada, at the University of Manitoba, published their work on an industrially scalable method that uses food-grade enzymes to digest most of the polysaccharides in a defatted low-protein hemp seed meal—allowing greater stability and flexibility in formulating hemp products. Hemp seeds and oil offer balanced nutrition, savory taste and great versatility as raw materials. As farming hemp becomes more common and technologies improve, hemp will become an even more valuable food source in the future.

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

MMA champion Ronda Rousey and other athletes likes to bulk up on hemp protein.


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StockS & BUDS

By Matt Chelsea

“We’re into the active, healthy stoner,” says Douglas Leighton, a hedge fund manager at Boston-based Dutchess Capital. “I don’t even like using the word ‘stoner’,” he corrects himself. “The active, healthy consumer.”

A global investment fund, Dutchess Capital is dipping its big toe in the bur-geoning legal cannabis space. It all start-ed in 2012, after Colorado and Washing-ton both voted for adult use.

But they’ve had trouble tracking down good stocks in the public equities market. Big-cap stocks offered a few possibilities, like fertilizer maker Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: GRO) and equipment company Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT). Both contain tiny slices of cannabis exposure, but not enough to really benefit greatly from growth in the industry.

Leighton looked at these and other large companies, but “we panned most of them because they were too far re-moved from cannabis growth,” he tells Freedom Leaf.

While investments in tech or pharma typically run well into the millions, Dutch- ess Capital writes checks of $50,000–$250,000 to private companies in return for an ownership stake. Leighton invests from an internal fund earmarked for cannabis companies. In the past three years, he’s pivoted to spend about 90% of his time on the cannabis fund.

Dutchess Capital originally employed data from the National Institute for Oc-cupational Safety and Health, and then began compiling its own projections by

conducting interviews with dispensary operators in Colorado. “The numbers were staggering on how many more peo-ple actually consume cannabis versus what we initially thought, and how much they spend,” he says. “We had a lightbulb moment after a month of research.”

Nowadays, Dutchess Capital sifts through about 20 proposals for invest-ments each week. Most of these are “me-too products sold by people trying to make whatever mousetrap,” Leighton explains. “On the plus side, the deal environment resembles the dot-com era of Internet startups of the late 1990s. A year ago, there were a lot of people getting into the space, and now it’s very crowded. That’s good. It’s created a lot of innovation.”

Leighton would like to see more pay-

The investment fund is looking for a few good cannabis companies.

Goes Green

Dutchess Capital’s Douglas Leighton: “The first issue that has to be fixed is banking.”



tel:+18187198621


ment transaction and cap-ital-raising options for le-gal cannabis operations now forced to use piles of cash for their businesses. “The first issue that really has to be fixed is banking,” he declares. “It’s a safe-ty issue at this point. Some of these dispensaries are spitting out $50,000 or $100,000 a day. They don’t allow you to transport it in traditional armored cars, either.”

Leighton is bullish on legalization, as canna-bis continues to win sup-port from millennials who favor it over exces-sive drinking and harm-ful pharmaceuticals. “Peo-ple have figured out in their own minds—forget what the government data or any data says—that can-nabis is safer than alco-hol,” he observes. “When I go out in Denver, it’s not about drinking all night. It’s about socializing, doing something active, enjoying cannabis throughout and being able to get up at 7 a.m. the next morning.”

Looking ahead, Leigh-ton expects more institu-tional money to provide growth capital to the can-nabis space, which will lead to more choices for stock market investors down the road.

“A lot of institutional investors are still doing their due diligence on the business,” he says. “As it goes on, it will con-tinue to get bigger and more reputable.”

DUtcHESS cAPItAL’S cANNA-INVEStMENtS

Plenty of names from the penny stock universe beckon, but many cannabis-focused companies in that arena remain volatile. So, in 2013, Douglas Leighton turned to private markets to invest in startups. Out of the 20-plus com-panies backed by the Boston firm, two now trade in the public OTC stock market as microcaps:

• MassRoots Inc. (OTC: MSRT): The cannabis social media company has a market cap of $70 million, and posted a net loss of $8.5 million for fiscal 2015 as it invested in growth. It plans to move onto the NASDAQ this year, as reported in Freedom Leaf (“MassRoots Growing,” Issue 14). This was Dutchess Capital’s first move into the industry.

• American Cannabis Company (OTC: AMMJ): They help growers get their state licenses, and have a market cap of $13 mil-lion, with a net loss of $515,653 in fiscal 2015.

Other Dutchess Capital investments that are currently private could soon join the ranks of publicly traded stocks. They include:

• Roll-uh-Bowl: Maker of foldable bongs en-dorsed by ultra-marathon runner Avery Collins.

• Dixie Elixirs: Denver-based edible cannabis products company.

• Foria: Manufacturer of a THC-infused personal lubricant designed to improve orgasms for women.

StockS & BUDS


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ow more than ever, there exists majority public support for ending America’s nearly century-long experiment with cannabis prohi-

bition and replacing it with a taxed and regulated adult marketplace. Sixty-one percent of American adults believe that “the use of marijuana should be made legal,” according to nationwide polling data provided by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Four in five U.S. adults (81%) favor legalizing cannabis as a therapeutic treatment option, according to a 2015 nationwide Harris Poll, and 67% of voters believe that states, not the federal gov-ernment, should be the ultimate arbiters of marijuana regulatory policy.

A majority of states have now parted ways with the federal government on marijuana policy. Twenty-six states clas-sify low-THC strains of cannabis (hemp) as an agricultural crop, not as a con-trolled substance. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia permit the physi-cian-supervised use of cannabis therapy for qualified patients. Sixteen states exempt the marijuana plant constituent cannabidiol (CBD) from the definition of cannabis, and permit its use among qualified patients. Four states—Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington—

have enacted regulations legalizing the adult use of cannabis, and permitting the plant’s commercial production and retail sale. This November, voters in at least five states are anticipated to decide on similar legalization measures, while voters in other states will decide on medicinal marijuana ballot initiatives.

Members of Congress are increas-ingly aware of this changing public and political sentiment. Over a dozen pieces of federal legislation are pending in Con-gress to amend federal marijuana policy. These include proposals to reclassify cannabis as a Schedule II controlled sub-stance; to limit the government’s ability to interfere in the implementation of state marijuana laws; and to expand cannabis commerce. Nonetheless, federal leader-ship on the issue of marijuana law reform is sorely lacking. While states continue to move forward and pioneer reforms, the federal government largely remains an obstruction to progress. The ongoing conflict between state and federal can-nabis policy continues to be an unnec-essary impediment to those jurisdictions wishing to fully explore the wide range of regulatory options before them. Ulti-mately, this is a conflict that can only be resolved by Congress, which possesses the authority to amend federal law.

Which elected officials on capitol hill most favor marijuana legalization? norml grades the 535 members of the senate and house.


31 may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com 31 may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com

The Congressional Scorecard grades members of the United States House and Senate on an A to F scale.

Grading is based upon members’ 2015 voting records; whether or not a member has sponsored or cosponsored legislation specific to federal marijuana law reform; whether or not a member has sponsored mari-juana-related amendments; and/or their public statements or testimony. Members with no voting record or comments on the topic received no grade. Despite a number of marijuana-related measures pending before the 114th Congress, no such bill has yet received a vote in committee or on the floor. By contrast, members of both chambers have decided on several cannabis-specific amendments attached to various appropria-tions bills. NORML weighed the following amendment votes when deter-mining grades for U.S. Representatives:

• The 2015 McClintock/Polis Amend-ment: This language, which was defeated by the House, sought to pro-hibit the Department of Justice from interfering with state-specific, adult-use marijuana laws.

• The 2015 Rohrabacher/Farr Amend-ment: This language, which was passed by the House, prohibits the Department of Justice from interfer-ing with state-specific medical mari-juana programs that license the pro-duction and dispensing of cannabis to qualified patients.

• The 2015 Merkley Amendment: This language, which was passed by the Senate but later defeated in confer-ence with the House, sought to pro-hibit the Treasury Department from using federal funds to take punitive actions against banks and other fi-nancial institutions that provide ser-vices to marijuana-related business-es that are operating legally under state laws.

• The 2015 Blumenauer Amendment: This language, which was defeated by the House, sought to permit phy-sicians affiliated with the Depart-ment of Veterans Affairs to recom-mend cannabis therapy to veterans in states that allow for its therapeutic use.

• The 2015 Daines/Merkley Amend-ment: This language, which was passed by the Senate but later de feated in conference with the House, sought to permit physicians affiliated with the Department of Veterans Af fairs to recommend cannabis therapy to veterans in states that allow for its therapeutic use.

• The 2015 Mikulski Amendment: This language, which was passed by the Senate, prohibits the Depart-ment of Justice from interfering with state-specific medical marijuana pro-grams that license the production and dispensing of cannabis to qualified patients.

how the scorecard Was calculated

• An A grade indicates that this mem-ber has publicly declared their sup-port for the legalization and regulation of marijuana for adults.

• A B grade indicates that this mem-ber has publicly declared their

support for the ability of a state to move forward with cannabis law

reform policies free from federal interference.

• A C grade indicates that this member supports policies specific to the legal-ization of medical cannabis and/or the decriminalization of cannabis.

• A D grade indicates that this member has expressed no support for any significant marijuana law reform.

• An F grade indicates that this mem-ber expresses significant and vocal opposition to marijuana law reform.


Key findings and What’s next Among the 535 members of the 114th Congress:

• 312 members (58%) received a passing C grade or higher (258 rep-resentatives and 54 senators). Of these:

• 19 members (3.6%) received an A grade (17 representatives and 2 senators);

• 220 members (41%) received a B grade (192 representatives and 28 senators);

• 73 members (13.6%) received a C grade (49 representatives and 24 senators).

• 170 members (31.8%) received a D grade (150 representatives and 20 senators).

• 37 members (6.9%) received a fail-ing F grade (20 representatives and 17 senators).

• 54 senators (54%) received a pass-ing C grade or higher (two A grades, 28 B grades and 24 C grades).

• 258 representatives (59%) received a passing C grade or higher (17 A grades, 192 B grades and 49 C grades).

• Of the 233 Democrats in Congress, 208 members (89.3%) received a passing C grade or higher.

• Become an engaged voter. Know who your federally elected officials are and where they stand on the issue of marijuana law reform. Urge your elected officials to take action. Use NORML’s #TakeAction Center to stay up to date on pending federal legislation, and use pre-written letters to contact your members and urge their support. Visitors to NORML’s #TakeAction Center have sent over 47,000 letters to members of Congress in the past year.

• Team up with other advocates. Coordinating with local advocates through a NORML chapter makes federally elected officials aware that voters are organizing in their district. Organizing locally also helps advocates build a consistent message.

• Stay up to date on national lobbying events. NORML’s 2016 Congressional Lobby Day is scheduled for May 23–24. Consider going to Washington D.C. to meet ad-vocates from across the country and lobby Capitol Hill to-gether (turn to page 12 for more information).

It’s clear from this analysis that support for substantive marijuana law re-form is far less pronounced among elected officials than it is among the voters they represent. While greater than six in 10 American adults believe that “the use of marijuana should be made legal,” only 3.6% of congressional members received an A grade based on their voting records and/or public statements. Similarly, while 67% of voters believe Congress should act to provide “a safe haven from federal marijuana laws” for states that have legalized marijuana, fewer than 45% of congressional members es-pouse this position. Regionally, it’s clear that the Southern United States possesses the least amount of support for marijuana law reform among federally elected officials. Of the 37 members who received an F grade, 17 (about 46%) represent states in the Southern region.

Voters’ opinions with regard to cannabis policy are well ahead of those of their elected officials. While many advo-cates have been working tireless-ly to amend their local and state marijuana laws, proponents must also engage in concerted efforts to educate feder-ally elected offi-cials. Here’s how:

The information provided in the Scorecard will periodically be updated as needed. Any questions, comments or concerns specific to the scorecard are welcome and can be sent to [email protected]. For more information about joining NORML or making a donation, please visit norml.org/support.

32 www.freedomleaf.com may 2016


BA

Cory Booker (D–NJ)

Maria Cantwell (D–WA)Ben Cardin (D–MD)Ted Cruz (R–TX)Steve Daines (R–MT)Jeff Flake (R–AZ)Cory Gardner (R–CO)Kristen Gillibrand (D–NY)Ron Johnson (R–WI)Patrick Leahy (D–VT)John McCain (R–AZ)Barbara Mikulski (D–MD)Patty Murray (D–OR)Chris Murphy (D–CT)Rand Paul (R–KY)Jack Reed (D–RI)Pat Roberts (R–KS)Ben Sasse (R–NE)Brian Schatz (D–HI)Chuck Schumer (D–NY)Jean Shaheen (D–NH)Dan Sullivan (R–AK)John Tester (D–MT)Tom Udall (D–NM)Elizabeth Warren (D–MA)Ron Wyden (D–OR)

Tammy Baldwin (D–WI)

Richard Blumenthal (D–CT)

Roy Blunt (R–MO)Barbara Boxer (D–CA)Shelley Moore Capito

(R–WV)Bill Cassidy (R–LA)Susan Collins (R–ME)Chris Coons (D–DE)Dick Durbin (D–IL)Orrin Hatch (R–UT)Martin Heinrich (D–NM)Dean Heller (R–NV)Mazie Hirono (D–HI)Johnny Isakson (R–GA)Angus King (I–ME)Mike Lee (R–UT)Ed Markey (D–MA)Clare McCaskill (D–MO)Lisa Murkowski (R–AK)Bill Nelson (D-FL)David Perdue (R–GA)Harry Reid (D–NV)Mark Warner (D–VA)Sheldon Whitehouse

(D–RI)

Jeff Merkley (D–OR)

Bernie Sanders (I–VT)

CU.S.Senate

CONGRESSIONAL GRADES


Sherrod Brown (D–OH)Richard Burr (R–NC)Thad Cochran (R–MS)Mike Crapo (R–ID)Joni Ernst (R–IA)Mike Enzi (R–WY)Diane Feinstein (D–CA)Al Franken (D–MN)Lindsey Graham (R–SC)Heidi Heitkamp (D–ND)John Hoeven (R–NC)Amy Klobuchar (D–MN)Joe Manchin (D–WV)Bob Menendez (D–NJ)Jerry Moran (D–KS)Gary Peters (D–MI)Debbie Stabenow (D–MI)Thom Tillis (R–NC)Pat Toomey (R–PA)Roger Wicker (R–MS)

Kelly Ayotte (R–NH)John Barrasso (R–WY)John Boozman (R–AR)John Cornyn (R–TX)Deb Fischer (R–NE)Chuck Grassley (R–IA)Mark Kirk (R–IL)James Lankford (R–OK)Mitch McConnell (R–KY)Rob Portman (R–OH)Mike Rounds (R–SD)Marco Rubio (R–FL)Jeff Sessions (R–AL)Richard Shelby (R–AL)John Thune (R–SD)

House of

Reps

Earl Blumenauer

(D–OR)Mike Capuano (D–MA)Steve Cohen (D–TN)Ruben Gallego (D–AZ)Mike Honda (D–CA)Jared Huffman (D–CA)Barbara Lee (D–CA)Ted Lieu (D–CA)Alan Lowenthal (D–CA)Eleanor Holmes Norton

(D–DC)Ed Perlmutter (D–CO)Chellie Pingree (D–ME)Jared Polis (D–CO)Dana Rohrabacher

(R–CA)Jan Schakowsky (D–CA)Eric Swalwell (D–CA)

Steve Chabot (R–OH)

Doug Collins (R–GA)Ander Crenshaw (R–FL)Jeff Denham (R–CA)Sean Duffy (R–WI)Randy Forbes (R–VA)Trent Franks (R–AZ)Paul Gosar (R–AZ)Andy Harris (R–MD)Bob Gibbs (R–OH)Dave Jolly (R–FL)Steve King (R–IA)Doug LaMalfa (R–CA)Sandy Levin (D–MI)Candice Miller (R–MI)Debbie Wasserman

Schultz (D–FL)Pete Sessions (R–TX)

Lamar Smith (R–TX)

D

F

AF

To see the state-by-state list of grades, go to norml.org/congressional-scorecard.


35 may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com 35 may–june 2016 www.freedomleaf.com

The views of Americans regarding cannabis have evolved significantly over the past two decades, with more than 80% of voters now endorsing its use as a medicine, and some six in 10 Americans supporting its broader le-galization. But the opinions of many federal politicians have not changed with the times. Here are the five worst offenders.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA)

As one of the few members of Congress to possess a degree in medicine, you might presume that Louisiana Rep. John Fleming would be among the more en-lightened federal politicians on the sub-ject of medical marijuana. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even among prohibitionists, Rep. Fleming stands alone in his anti-pot zealotry.

Permitting physicians to recommend cannabis therapy to war veterans would cause “death and destruction,” he al-leged after voting against an amendment to expand patients’ access. “It’s like add-ing gasoline to a fire.”

Rep. Fleming is also an outspoken critic of the emerging cannabis industry. “Look at the downstream cost to society when you have all of these [people] who are going to have lung cancer, emphy-

sema, brain damage and heart disease as a result of [marijuana legalization],” he contends. “So what we’re doing really is putting money in the pockets of some very greedy people out there who are taking advantage of this.”

Predictably, Rep. Fleming takes no issue with Big Pharma profiting from the cannabis plant. While publicly opposing the use of herbal cannabis for the treat-ment of pediatric epilepsy, he’s endorsed Epidiolex—GW Pharmaceuticals’ patent-ed high-CBD product—for treating sei-zures.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA)

Few prohibitionists have been in Con-gress longer than Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley. He chairs the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control—a fear-mongering committee whose con-gressional hearings closely resemble prohibitionist dog-and-pony shows—and, more significantly, the Senate Judiciary Committee, assigned to deliberate over all of the marijuana law reform measures pending before the Senate, such as S. 2237, the Ending Federal Marijuana Pro-hibition Act, and S. 683, the Compassion-ate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act.

Because he unabashedly oppos-es any change to federal marijuana poli-cy, Sen. Grassley has made it clear that none of these measures will ever be heard or voted upon by his committee; without a Senate Judiciary vote, the bills possess no chance of passage in the 114th Congress.

“I oppose moving marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II drug, based on the current science on the risks and benefits,” he stated shortly after the intro-duction of the CARERS Act, which, if en-acted, would reschedule cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II under the fed-eral Controlled Substances Act, and re-move CBD from the act entirely.


Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD)

In 2014, when Washington, D.C. voters decided in favor of Initiative 71, a munic-ipal measure legalizing marijuana pos-session and cultivation in the city, no one in Congress was more outraged than Maryland Republican Andy Harris, who claimed that the implementation of the voter-approved measure “would create legal chaos” and spike unemployment rates in the nation’s capital.

After the legalization vote, Harris filed a budgetary amendment to “prohibit both federal and local funds from being used to implement a referendum legalizing rec-reational marijuana use in the District.” Although Congress passed the restric-tion, local politicians refused to kowtow to Rep. Harris’ demands, and in 2015, city officials codified I-71 into law. Within months, marijuana-related arrests in the District fell 99% from the previous year.

While marijuana law reform advo-cates rejoiced, Rep. Harris steamed, calling on the U.S. Attorney General to criminally prosecute D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for defying his amendment.

Rep. Debbie W. Schultz (D-FL)

The Republicans aren’t the only party susceptible to reefer madness. Some Democrats have caught the bug, as well—none more so than Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The Democrat Party Chair’s anti-pot bigotry is well documented. She was one of only eight Democrats who voted in 2015 against allowing medical cannabis access to veterans. (The measure was defeated in the House.) Schultz is also among the minority of U.S. Representa-tives in recent years to vote against the Rohrabacher/Farr amendment, a provi-

sion passed by Congress two years in a row to halt the Department of Justice from interfering in state-sanctioned med-ical cannabis programs. In addition, in 2014 she spoke out against the passage of Florida’s Amendment 2, a medical marijuana legalization initiative that lost by a narrow margin.

More recently, Rep. Schultz expressed the long-rejected opinion that can-nabis is a “gateway” drug, alleging that those who experiment with it are likely to “travel down the path toward using more drugs.” Not surprisingly, the beer and alcohol industry is the fifth-largest con-tributor to her 2016 reelection campaign.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Speaking at a recent Senate hearing, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions made it per-fectly clear what he thinks about pot: “It’s dangerous. It cannot be played with. It’s not funny. It’s not something to laugh about. Good people don’t smoke mari-juana.”

A former U.S. Attorney during the Reagan administration, he’s frequently chastised the Obama administration for abandoning the oversimplified tactics of “Just Say No,” and for acknowledg-ing that pot is less harmful to health than booze. “This is just difficult for me to con-ceive how the President of the United States could make such a statement as that,” Sen. Sessions remarked in 2014, adding: “Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.”

For more information on the voting records of the members of the 114th Congress, go to norml.org/congressio-nal-scorecard.

Paul Armentano is Deputy Director of NORML and Freedom Leaf’s Senior Policy Advisor, and the author of The Citizen’s Guide to State-By-State Marijuana Laws.



freedomleaf.com

mailto:[email protected]


Rep. Earl Blumenauer, 67, is the eight-term con-gressman from Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes most of Portland. After graduat- ing from Lewis & Clark College, he was elected to the Oregon House in 1972 and served three terms. He grad-uated from North-western School of Law in 1976, and served on the

Portland City Council from 1987–1996. Blumen-

auer continues to be one of the

most pro-mari-juana represen-tatives in Con-

gress, with his name attached to several

dozen bills. We caught up

with the con-gressman at the Cannabis Science & Policy Summit

in New York on April 18.

Freedom LeaFINTERVIEW

earl Blumenauer Interview by Steve Bloom

GA

BE

KIR

CH

HEI

MER


You voted for marijuana decriminal-ization in 1973 as a member of the Oregon House. Oregon was the first state to decriminalize marijuana. Take us back to those heady days and that historic vote.

We had just swept into power in the Ore-gon legislature—a bunch of young Dem-ocrats. When I won my first election I was 23 years old. We had a number of people in their twenties and thirties. Reform was in the air. We focused on transportation, healthcare and dealing with the de-insti-tutionalization of the mentally ill. We had just finished, in our city [Portland], chang-ing how we treated chronic late-stage alcoholics, by not putting them in jail because of their disease. The marijuana legislation just flowed from that. There was compelling evidence that we were criminalizing something that was less dangerous than things that were perfectly legal, and it wasn’t effective and didn’t seem fair.

As near as I can tell, it was the first vote to legalize adult use in the country. It was carried by an older conservative Republican pig farmer from Eastern Ore-gon. This old guy didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t use foul language. If the 19 of us who voted yes were joined by the people who voted no but smoked dope, we would’ve been the first state to legal-ize adult use. Decriminalization was a very small, natural step.

At the time, I thought we turned the corner. Oregon was helping to put down the flag and move the progress. I just was not ready for how deeply embedded Nixon’s War on Drugs was. And then what happened with the Reagan admin-istration. It continues to disappoint me to this day—all of the lost lives, the social carnage. But I think we’re turning the corner.

You thought things were going to change much faster? It’s almost 50 years later, and we’re still talking about marijuana law reform.

Yes, much faster. There was this great

Life magazine cover in 1969 with a mar-ijuana cigarette on it that gave a pretty objective appraisal; and the Shafer Com-mission for Nixon. It was clearly moving in that direction. It’s taken a while to get our footing.

Why is the issue of marijuana reform so important to you?

I guess it was in the formative stage of my political career. I was young. This seemed to be such a cut-and-dried public policy issue. Literally, at that time, I didn’t know people who smoked marijuana. I never used it, and still haven’t. It was just clear that it wasn’t justified to have criminal penalties. It made no sense to disrupt people’s lives; and what a waste of resources. And over time I’ve come to believe that even more fervently. I think this misguided War on Drugs has been so destructive. Look what’s happened in terms of the racial disparities in the criminal justice system—this has really been a tool to oppress young black men. They’ve borne the brunt of it.

Plus, it’s been tied to the pathology of really dangerous drugs. It’s complete-ly unwarranted as a Schedule I drug [as designated in the federal Controlled Sub-stances Act]. How do we expect people to take any other warnings or admoni-tions seriously? We waste all this money on a failed program of prohibitions, and we can’t give treatment to people who want it. I see this as a problem in terms of international affairs; misguided mili-tarization and zero tolerance are inflicted upon the lowest common de-nominator in society in Latin America. Those poor farmers literally get caught in the crossfire.

This has all resulted in mass incar-ceration. What better place to learn to be a drug dealer or move up the supply chain than the university of the state penitentiary? What better place to recruit disaffected youth? And there are the problems of gang violence. I see it touch-ing so many things that are a concern of mine and of my constituents. So having a more rational set of policies regarding


marijuana—legalize it, regulate it, tax it—I think is going to lead to a number of positive outcomes.

The Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act [H.R. 1013] calls for removing mar-ijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. The DEA says that they will issue their latest decision about marijuana scheduling by the end of June. What are you expecting the DEA to do?

You know, I’m clueless. That agency sort of defies description. It’s frustrating that you can have a federal agency that’s so out of step with the Chief Executive. So I don’t know. Maybe they’ll feel com-pelled to do something because the cur-rent scheduling is so ludicrous. It’s only recently that they admitted the schedul-ing is a lie—that marijuana is not more dangerous than cocaine, is not more subject to abuse and does have medici-nal value.

How do you think President Obama has done on this issue?

The president has been quite helpful. I think he’s been the most honest presi-dent we’ve had. The Cole Memo [which in 2013 updated guidance to U.S. Attor-neys regarding federal marijuana policy] helped. I think he may not be done. He just may be playing it out, I don’t know. These are mysterious workings—but there’s no question in my mind that it should not be scheduled at all. I think this is something that’s going to be accom-plished over the course of the next five years, there’s no doubt in my mind.

Can the president reschedule or de-schedule marijuana? Obama says it’s up to Congress. Who, ultimately, has the power?

Congress can do it. This Controlled Sub-stances Act, for the Nixon administration, was passed by Congress. The adminis-tration can unilaterally do this through the Attorney General. Presumably, if Pres-ident Obama told his Attorney General [Loretta E. Lynch] what to do, she would

do it. It could be through the healthcare agencies, like the Surgeon General. There are lots of different hooks you could have to trigger rescheduling. The Attorney General can do it. Congress should do it. Within the next five years it will either be Congress or the president.

So you think Obama might reschedule marijuana before he leaves office?

I had a meeting with the president in the Oval Office. You don’t get those very often, so I was going to take advantage of it. The final point that I made to him was what I just said. An important part of his legacy is that he’s been honest about marijuana. He’s helped facilitate this change. I said, “You’ve got another year. I hope there are things you can add on that legacy.”

An important part of

President Obama’s legacy is that he’s been

honest about marijuana. He’s helped facilitate

this change.

“

”


What did he say to that?

That’s not how he operates, and he wouldn’t say anything even if he was [going to do something]. I got the impres-sion that he’s not through with it. I don’t know what that is, but I do think this is something that he does regard as part of his legacy. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Whether it’s banking or what-ever, I think there’s a good chance that something may happen.

You’ve sponsored a number of mari-juana bills over the last few years. Can you explain what’s happening with them, and rank them in importance?

We’ve got more than two dozen bills in the House and Senate, almost all

bipartisan, that are moving in the right direction. After having worked on this, getting my hopes up early and being sort of frustrated for a couple of decades, that is an astounding development. If I were to pick two that I think are the most important, one [H.R. 2076] is just to take care of the banking situation—if you care about money laundering, tax evasion or theft. It’s extraordinarily difficult for this industry to have bank accounts, which is outrageous. People have to pay their tax bills with shopping bags full of $20 bills. This is a public-safety time bomb. There are thousands of businesses that are trying to do it right, who are handicapped because they can’t deal with a normal flow of commerce in banking. It’s an arti-ficial and dangerous restraint.

The other is the research bill that

” Rep. Blumenauer received an A grade from NORML for his canna-activism on Capitol Hill.

LANCE CHEUNG VIA FLIKR


we’re going to be moving forward that opens up this area, so there shouldn’t be conjecture, there shouldn’t be a debate about the impacts of marijuana. Doctors should be able to find out what it is that provides the relief to babies who are suf-fering extreme epileptic seizures. That will help make this long-term debate work much smoother, and hasten the day that we are doing it right.

There four states that are legal, includ-ing your home state, and Washington, D.C. How is legalization going, so far, in Oregon?

I can testify that in Oregon we’ve opened up this process. It’s been a year and a half since the legalization vote. We started going live with some of the mar-ket last fall. There have been no big cracks that have appeared in the Earth; rocks haven’t fallen down; the sun rises and sets. There hasn’t been an uptick in use by young people. What we’ve seen, if anything, is there’s greater acceptance of the role that this may play in Oregon. The state is trying to get the regulatory framework right. The industry is moving forward and developing. It’s going to be a fact of life [in Oregon]. It’s starting to have this awareness. It’s also promoting more honest and widespread conversa-tions about marijuana. We’re learning to adapt. Public support has been building.

Some patients worry that they’re being marginalized in the brave new world of adult-use cannabis. What can be done to protect patients’ rights and access in states like Oregon?

There’s a lot of concern about that. People are working to try and get it right. Our initiative was clear: The intent was not to deny people’s access to medical marijuana. Part of what needs to happen is for us to have a better understanding of the standards and framework for dealing with medical marijuana. Most of what’s happened in the states is that these [bills] just sprung up. They weren’t maybe all the most carefully thought-out and drafted pieces of legislation. These

were advocates that were going to make something happen. They were activists! So there have been challenges adminis-tering the medical marijuana statutes that we have. I think we’ll be revisiting, and I think there’s a way to try to get it right and balance the interest.

It’s Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Who are you supporting?

A year ago I endorsed Secretary Clinton. I did so, by the way, after having an ex-tensive conversation with her about things I care about, including cannabis. We had her in Oregon where she had an opportunity to interact with some people in the industry. She thinks the banking problem, for example, should be fixed. I’m confident that a Clinton administration would go at least as far as the Obama administration, maybe further, particularly if there’s a better Congress, which I think we’ll have. I think Bernie and Hillary will essentially be in the same spot. I think because Hillary’s a more accomplished politician, she’d be able to help us move stuff through Congress. Bernie’s a great spokesperson. I’ve worked around him for 20 years. But he actually hasn’t en-acted much of what he talks about. I think Secretary Clinton would be in a position to help us move it along further. Either would be fine. I think within five years, as I say, we’re going to be where we need to be. But I hope it’s sooner than that.

Rep. Blumenauer is supporting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination over Bernie Sanders.

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Now, whenever possible, I lend my voice to the growing chorus of Americans who want to confront the fact that though we speak about our principles as a nation, we are not, in fact, living our truth as a nation—not when it comes to our broken criminal justice system. Our failure to address this problem diminishes us all. It imperils the common ideals we cherish as a country: freedom and fairness, jus-tice and redemption.

This issue is not a divisive one. In recent years it has become clear that reducing the burden of mass incarcer-ation appeals to people of all back-grounds and ideologies: liberals, con-servatives, Democrats, Republicans. Those who want a smaller government and lower taxes, those who want safer streets, those who care about racial and socio-economic justice, and those who want our policies to reflect the values of compassion and forgiveness so funda-mental to their religion.

In this fight I’ve found allies in the Koch brothers as well as the Clintons; I’ve partnered with Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, John Cornyn, Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley, as well as Democratic senators Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Al Franken, Chuck Schumer, Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Murphy; I’ve worked not only across the aisle but across the Capitol with Republi-can House member Jim Sensenbrenner and Democratic House member Elijah Cummings, Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee; I’ve con-nected with John Legend and Grover Norquist, Alicia Keys and Newt Gingrich. Indeed, this issue stands out to me as

one on which the people of our nation are increasingly aligned. Which only makes inaction all the more inexcusable.

We must act. We must end this legal, fiscal, public safety and moral nightmare. We are implicated, we are responsible: all of us, together. We must change and work toward a criminal justice system that demonstrates our collective values. As Langston Hughes wrote: “To save the dream for one/It must be saved for ALL.”

From United by Cory Booker, published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Ran-dom House, a division of Penguin Ran-dom House LLC. Copyright © 2016 by Cory Booker.

In this excerpt from his new book, United, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker tackles the issue of mass incarceration.

Cory Booker: “We Must Act”


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F ederal criminal. That’s my permanent, official title—unless a sitting president one day grants me a pardon. Still, it’s better than Under Supervision, words that were stamped next to my name from February 2014 to March 2016, when I served 25

months on parole for smoking pot on fed-eral property.

My case was serious enough to jus-tify spending thousands of dollars on apprehending me in the act, then tens of thousands more on prosecution and court costs. My heinous crime? Having less than 0.5 grams of marijuana—a half-smoked joint—at Independence National Historic Park, on an outdoor patio reserved for First Amendment free-

speech activity, twice over a period of two months in 2013.

I was part of a passionate group of Philadelphia marijuana activists who committed to one year of monthly pro-tests at the Liberty Bell, starting in December 2012. We held signs and made speeches, and at 4:20 p.m., partic-ipants engaged in civil disobedience by lighting up joints and pipes. Our message was simple and amazingly prescient: We wanted marijuana to be removed from the Controlled Substances Act.

We named the events “Smoke Down Prohibition,” and were feeling pretty good about the protests. It wasn’t until the fifth event that we encountered any police action... and it was big. Hun-dreds of armed law enforcement offi-

How I Survived Two Years of Federal Marijuana Probation.

SMOKED DOWN INPHILADELPHIA

By Chris Goldstein


cers appeared at the May, 18, 2013 ses-sion. Tactically armed Department of Homeland Security and Federal Protec-tive Service agents backed up National Park Service Rangers wearing green riot gear, and Philadelphia Police, Civil Affairs officers and SEPTA Transit Police were there in droves. The U.S. Attorney’s office set up a processing tent nearby.

It was an army of cops. They were all there, carefully assembled and collect-ing weekend overtime, because we had promised to bring some marijuana onto federal land. These were the extraordi-nary lengths that the gov-ernment was willing to go to in order to pre-vent individual Americans from possessing or consuming small amounts of cannabis.

The first incident that day was dra-matic. N.A. Poe, a skinny comic who resembles a young Al Pacino, was tackled at 4:20 on the granite First Amend-ment monu-ment with a lit joint in his mouth. It wasn’t gentle. He was held at the Fed-eral Detention Center in Philadelphia on trumped-up felony charges for five days. Poe would eventually plead guilty to mar-ijuana possession and interfering with a federal officer, both misdemeanors. On Dec. 13, he was sentenced to eight months of probation and an $800 fine.

At this point, we didn’t expect the au-thorities to ease up, so with great cama-raderie, biting humor and a resolute de-termination we pressed on. When we ar-

rived on June 30, a portable metal fence surrounded the First Amendment area, and numerous police were stationed nearby. We entered the cage and com-menced our free speaking. I was wear-ing a black Calvin Klein suit adorned with various marijuana-leaf buttons, and held a bullhorn. Mike Whiter, a U.S. Marine Corps vet, stood by my side.

We counted down to 4:20 and I lit my joint. Immediately, the Rangers and other law enforcement stormed into the crowd. Over the bullhorn, I encouraged partic-ipants to remain calm and not resist.

A Ranger approached me and asked if I was hold-ing mari-juana. I smiled and affably answered, “Yes, of course!” I handed him the joint. He put a firm hand on my elbow and escorted me to the process-ing tent. I had it easy; other participants were manhan-dled and taken to the ground.

Inside the tent, another set of Park Rangers and employees of the U.S. Attorney’s

office took my identification. I was fin-gerprinted, photographed, given a ticket and released. Akin to a speeding ticket, I pled guilty and paid $175 online several days later.

Two months hence, on Aug. 30, I was arrested again for sparking another joint at the Liberty Bell. This time, Deputy U.S. Attorney Richard Goldberg had me remanded into court. Thankfully, I had a great lawyer—civil rights attorney and

Chris Goldstein on smoking his first joint in two years: “The crisp scent and uplifting high were everything I wanted to experience again.”


longtime NORML Legal Committee member William Buckman (sadly, he passed away in 2014). Large but grace-ful, and a brilliant trial tactician, Bill always had my back. Bespeckled, with wispy gray hair, he looked like Ben Franklin in a modern suit. Bill took my case pro bono.

This time it wasn’t going to be as sim-ple as paying a minimal fine; I faced a maximum penalty of up to six months in prison along with a fine of up to $5,000, plus probation for up to five years. Because of the low-level charge, a mag-istrate judge handled the case and no jury was called.

While we kept the monthly pro-tests going, Bill advised me against risk-ing any addi-tional charges. I hosted the next few events without com-mitting civil disobedience. Eventually, just a handful of folks lit up at the Smoke Downs (some ate brownies instead). The police presence thinned a bit, but remained.

On March 24, 2014, after six months of motions and hearings, my sentence was handed down by Judge Jacob Hart in U.S. District Court: Two years of probation and a $3,000 fine to be paid in full within 30 days.

I was assigned a parole officer (PO) by the U.S. Probation Office. Obviously, I couldn’t smoke marijuana for the dura-tion, and I was drug-tested regularly. The PO dutifully came to my home 20 times in 24 months. Approaching 50, he had

an eternal five o’clock shadow. He wasn’t mean, just officious.

He’d show up anytime he felt like it, and often went through the various rooms of my house, just looking around. There was nothing to find. But it was unnerving, nonetheless; he could send me to prison at the snap of his fingers. Seven times I was asked to visit the pro-bation office in the local federal court-house. During 19 of my PO encounters, I was required to provide urine for a drug screen. After my first test came back positive for THC, they made me undergo

a substance abuse evalu-ation.

Giving up marijuana was annoying, but not exceed-ingly difficult. My intake of cigarettes increased steadily, as did my weight. (I would eventu-ally gain almost 50 pounds.) After more than a year of com-plete canna-bis sobriety, I began to dab-ble in alcohol for the first time in my life. Beer just isn’t palatable to me. The sen-sation of wine is too foggy.

After taking tentative sips of all kinds of concoctions, one thing finally tasted OK: bourbon, on the rocks. But, let’s face it, alcohol is a hollow recreational intoxi-cant, and is no replacement for the joy of cannabis.

My lawyers often remarked that this was the most intense supervision they’d encountered in years of representing clients in serious trouble. Perhaps the most difficult condition was the travel re-

The author in action at Smoke Down Prohibition events in Philadelphia, where he was arrested twice in 2013 for lighting up on federal property.


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striction. I couldn’t leave the borders of the State of New Jersey (where I live) without specific permission from my PO. Even for an overnight trip, I was required to file an official travel request. Just to cross one of the bridges to Philadelphia, I needed to make a phone call, every time, for two years.

Many of those travel requests were denied. I wasn’t allowed to go to the Bos-ton Freedom Rally or events in Washing-ton D.C., California and Colorado. Even requests to visit the Philadelphia City Council became a fight.

Being around people gleefully smok-ing gorgeously fragrant weed was trying at times, so I became a little less social and took up fishing as a hobby. Supervi-sion was a constant low throb of stress and, somewhat less actively, a burden. My last drug test was in February and at midnight on March 26, my legal ordeal was finally over.

That night, many of my friends who’d been at every protest met me at Phila-delphia City Hall. On a beautiful, warm spring night, I lit my first joint in two years; it was stuffed with Blue Dream, my favorite strain. The crisp scent and uplift-ing high were everything I wanted to ex-perience again. I smoked the whole joint by myself, and then talked and laughed for about an hour. It was deep, repetitive laughter. Eventually, I had a thought-ful spell, and then began to laugh even harder, this time at the sheer and abso-lute irony of what we’d just done.

In 2013, when our group called for de-scheduling cannabis, it was seen as somewhat radical. Today, the same mes-sage we used at Smoke Down Prohibi-tion is literally the marijuana platform for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Our momentum in Philadelphia helped lead to decriminalization in the city, which went into effect Oct. 14, 2014 and has since tremendously reduced pot arrests. In the face of a gross overreac-tion by the government, our local reform movement didn’t just survive, but tru-ly thrived.

I’m rediscovering cannabis. Returning to the culture has been a welcome shift,

but it’s come with some surprises. Now, everyone seems to be into dabbing hash-oil concoctions and puffing vape pens. All this stuff is really expensive. Shatter, wax and oil at $30–$50 per gram? Forty-dol-lar vape cartridges? Too rich for this writ-er’s paycheck.

Edibles are also becoming huge ev-erywhere. Passionate foodies combined with an emerging market for infused can-nabis make for delectable items. I recent-ly ate a chocolate Whoopie Pie, where the generous filling was cannabis butter and marshmallow fluff. I’ve seen peanut butter and chocolate cups filled with jelly, grape lollipops loaded with 50 milligrams of THC and the piece de resistance, for me: cannabis butter-infused bacon slices topped with raw sugar and packed with 100 milligrams of THC. That’s seriously off the hook.

Old-school flowers are still what I en-joy the most. But I have to admit that the pen trend is big, with their glowing lights and frequently failing batteries.

On April 20, of all days, a letter from the U.S. District Court arrived official-ly informing me of the termination of my supervision. It was bittersweet watching marijuana law reform evolve over the last two years while I could hardly participate. Fortunately, Freedom Leaf was founded in late 2014 and I was offered an editorial job. Even though I couldn’t imbibe or at-tend many events, I was able to stay in-volved with activism through my writing.

My next step is to seek a presidential pardon—not just for myself, but for every American with a federal marijuana re-cord. Getting pot offenders out of prison and off of supervision, and having their records cleared, used to be a peripheral issue for me, even as a seasoned advo-cate, but it’s become one of my central focuses. Going from mass incarceration to mass clemency is a crucial factor in the future of cannabis legalization.

For me, the fight is more personal now. I’ll only win my freedom when prohi-bition ends and restoration begins for all cannabis criminals.

Chris Goldstein is Senior Editor of Free-dom Leaf.


red carpet full of esteemed researchers converged on

the Marijuana & Canna-binoids Neuroscience Research Summit at the

National Institutes of Health (NIH) cam-pus in Bethesda, Md. on March 22–23. The event was organized by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a research agency under the NIH umbrella.

As they walked into the Natcher Conference Center, younger scientists looked to the door, eyeing luminaries like Ethan Russo from Phytecs, Lumír Ondřej Hanuš from the Czech Republic, Cecilia Hillard from the Medical College of Wisconsin and Alexandros Makriyan-nis from Northeastern University as they made their entrances. Clean-cut medical doctors from around the country sat with notebooks ready. Activists occupied the balcony.

Mexican-born NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow presided over the two-day con-fab, maintaining that the goal was “to bring together the science of cannabis.”

Derided for their monopoly on marijuana for U.S. clinical research, NIDA is gen-erally portrayed by the pot press as an agency of abject prohibitionism, carefully cooking their facts to suit the drug war-riors holding the federal purse strings. But this isn’t your father’s NIDA; the con-ference press packets contained no ref-erences to Reefer Madness.

With no surprises from the stage over the weekend for anyone even vaguely following the science of potential harms from cannabis, many veteran research-ers privately muttered about having to listen to the same old downsides. It’s the activists who needed to pay attention to the evidence from the other side; only a prejudiced amateur drug researcher ig-nores the NIDA monographs.

In her opening comments on March 22, Dr. Volkow laid out the reasonable harms of cannabis, and also some of its more obvious therapeutic potentialities. For an agency officially directed by its charter (written by Vice President Joe Biden, when he was in the Senate) to fo-

HEAD At NIDA’s Neuroscience Summit for

cannabis researchers, marijuana’s benefits were mixed with a strong

dose of its potential harms.

BY LEX PELGER

A



cus on abuse, this was a sign of flexibility. She even let an unabashed legaliz-er, BOTEC’s Mark Kleiman, on the stage near the end of Day 2.

During the open-ing sessions briefly outlining the endocan-nabinoid system (ECS), you could feel the drifting eyes of biochemists that would learn nothing new from 20-minute sum-maries of the research they’ve been patiently studying for more than two de-cades. Still, ignorance of the ECS runs deep.

Dr. David Cravatt from the Scripps Research Institute described anandamide’s complexity as a control system, and the power of its sister molecule, the workhorse 2-AG—the only other well-characterized endocannabinoid. Dr. Ken Mackie from Indiana University’s Gill Center for Biomolecular Research dis-cussed the “very interesting distribution” of CB1 receptors across many areas of the brain; their density is so great that it’s rumored that when they first stained a brain with a radioactive probe for CB1, the researchers thought the probe must be unspecific because it lit up like an in-verse Christmas tree.

Dr. Daniele Piomelli from UC Irvine poetically characterized the CB2 recep-tor as “a Sphinx wrapped in a mystery,”

lamenting a dearth of good probes to help figure out how this receptor ties the im-mune system into the organs. He was the only presenter to mention the ele-phant looming in the

room: The Phase 1 drug trial in France of

BIA 10-2474—an inhib-itor of the fatty acid amide

hydrolase (FAAH) molecule that breaks down anandamide—where one patient died and five others were hospitalized with neurological damage in January. The death of French artist Guil-laume Molinet represented another blow to the pharmaceutical interest in com-pounds that manipulate the ECS.

This follows the Rimonabant de-bacle almost a decade ago, when this inverse agonist of the CB1 receptor was approved in Europe in 2006 for treating obesity, but then was suspended two years later after reports of severe psychi-atric side effects. This slowed down the pipelines of the highly conservative phar-ma companies. The BIA 10-2474 con-troversy surely won’t help many in the room with ties to the industry. To rally the troops, Piomelli contended that the ma-nipulation of FAAH could still bear fruit. “Guilt by association,” he concluded, “is not sound legal doctrine.”

Dr. Susan Tapert from UC San Diego zeroed in on brain changes in adoles-


(Clockwise from left) Drug czar Michael Botticelli,

NIDA chief Dr. Nora Volkow and Dr. Susan Tapert.


cent cannabis users. A three-year study reported by Dr. Joanna Jacobus in 2015 saw worsening memory, attention and processing speed among teenaged pot smokers. To vastly stimulate the CB1 receptors during this essential time of synaptic pruning seems to clearly contain measurable downstream consequences. But no study is perfect; one of the areas hardest to examine and most open to accusations of bias is longitudinal studies that follow people for long periods of time searching for subtle alterations.

Along these lines, Dr. Madeline Meier from Duke University shared her work on cognitive impairment caused by long-term cannabis use. She used data pro-vided by New Zealand’s Dunedin Study,

a 40-year birth cohort longitudinal study that tracked more than 1,000 people from birth and demonstrated a gener-al neuropsychological decline across a broad range of spectra. The moderate negatives correlated to an earlier age of onset of impairment. Opponents find this study easy to argue against, because of the difficulty of controlling for factors of socioeconomics, parenting and other complicating data.

During lunch breaks, the real action took place by the posters—glossy sum-maries of new work perused by the at-tendees while the researchers stood by with nervous smiles. The posters had

long titles, like Dr. Randy Schuster’s “Re-covery of Attention and Executive Func-tion Deficits with 30 Days of Canna-bis Abstinence Among Young Adults.” Many researchers who usually get prime speaking spots at medical cannabis gath-erings were happy just to have a poster displayed at the NIDA conference.

Among the neuroscience all-stars on hand, Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, the Univer-sity of Mississippi professor who runs the federal pot farm in Oxford, was happy to talk cannabinoid chemistry with research-ers and reporters. At one point, he and Rick Doblin, Executive Director of MAPS, could be seen talking, despite Doblin’s lawsuit to break the NIDA stranglehold on marijuana research.

During Michael Botticelli’s 10-minute slot after the break, the White House Drug Czar ran down the usual harms at-tributed to cannabis. Still, his comments were remarkably rational compared to the days when William Bennett ran the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Botticelli cited the famous Harry Truman quote on the NIH providing public health for all, and stated, “Drug policy needs to be dictated by the science—imagine that,” eliciting a laugh from the crowd. He encouraged the scientists in the room to find new medicines for pain and more ways to lessen any harms.

Also on hand was NIH director Fran-

DERIDED foR tHEIR moNoPoLY on marijuana for u.S.

cLINIcAL RESEARcH, NIDA IS GENERALLY PoRtRAYED BY tHE

Pot PRESS AS AN AGENcY of abject prohibitioniSm.



cis Collins, who stressed the amount of money that NIDA spends on this work—$111 million across 289 grants. But he still stated the greatest fallacy held by NIDA, and one of the great hampering untruths of this last half-century of sci-ence: “The plural of anecdotes isn’t data.”

Out of the dozens of diseases that can be eased by cannabis, the obvious syndromes with the most overwhelming evidence are epilepsy and multiple scle-rosis. Harvard’s Dr. Ivan Soltesz covered the treatment of epilepsy with CBD, the nonpsychoactive molecule of cannabis; and Dr. David Gloss from CAMC in West Virginia shared the wealth of good data on treating multiple sclerosis, a disease at the intersection of cannabinoids’ two

greatest areas of healing potential: neu-rodegeneration and autoimmune disor-ders. Also, Dr. Andrea Hohmann from Indiana University and Dr. Barth Wilsey from UC San Diego noted cannabis’ abil-ity to reduce pain in almost every animal model and type of pain ever examined.

Noting that the Walter Reed National Military Center was just across the street, Dr. John Williamson from the National Center for Complementary and Integra-tive Health spoke about treating PTSD and reducing anxiety with cannabis. Its ability to lessen pain and lower opiate-re-lated deaths is proven by a recent study that found a 25% drop in such fatalities in

states with medical marijuana. In his presentation, Mark Kleiman,

the noted NYU professor of drug policy who heads up BOTEC Analysis, steered away from the standard recitation of re-search that preceded him. “Who has too much euphoria in their life?” he asked. “You’ll notice I didn’t use the word neuron in my talk. These discoveries are spec-tacular, but they affect none of the policy. You can’t bury your heads in the sand and not realize the other effects of pro-hibition, like arrests and DUIs that keep people out of jobs. We ought to know as much about cannabis as Pillsbury knows about brownies.”

At the summit, NIDA shared the mod-erate harms of cannabis they found with

their pipeline of federal research money, and admirably demonstrated enough flexibility to admit to the obvious areas of cannabis’ therapeutic potential. Even though more cannabis data exists than any one person can grasp in their life-time, more research is needed, and this conference showed some hope that the federal research powers are moving their gaze beyond the level of neurochemical cannabinoid effects to the clinical levels that will ultimately benefit patients.

Lex Pelger is a writer and scientist, and hosts the Psymposia drug conference and “Psychoactive Storytelling” events.


Experts gathered at NIDA’s two-day Neuroscience Summit in Bethesda, Md. on March 22–23.


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“The package is going to be here tomorrow, for sure,” Michael Manning told his friends one night in Beijing in 2009. The American expat was playing a game of pool before heading off to the night shift at his job at a TV station. “At this time tomorrow, we’ll be smoking a lot of hash, or I’ll be in jail!” he joked.

It was not the first time Manning had shipped hash from Xinjiang, a semiautonomous region in northwest China. The area has become known as China’s troubled Muslim region, where protests turn violent and government crackdowns target Uy-ghurs, the Muslim ethnic minority, for “separatist terrorism.” But the area, which shares borders with Kazakhstan, India and Tibet, is also known for its hash.

Manning had spent three years (2005–2008) teaching English in Korla, a city of about 400,000 in the desert of central Xin-jiang. In his time there, he befriended local Uyghurs who hooked him up with the hash. But after years of living in a small city with few options for entertainment and even

BustediNChiNaIBy MoNa ZhaNg

The original cannabis crops were grown in China. These days, marijuana is still available there—but be careful to not get busted in one of the world’s most notorious anti-drug nations.


fewer Western goods, Manning decided to move to Beijing in 2008. He brought a softball-size chunk of hash with him.

One of the first places he went was 2 Kolegas, a now-defunct bar and music venue in Beijing that, six years later, in 2014, was the site of a drug raid; before then, authorities didn’t randomly drug-test people who were out on the town. Man-ning would light up at 2 Kolegas, where he met friends who wanted to puff.

“Oh my god, where’d you get this hash?” people would ask. “This is a million times better than what we get.” Indeed, the hash sold on the streets of Beijing was pressed—a dark, brownish color or the black, sticky variety—and less potent. The hash Manning got from his Uyghur buddies was clean, blond and smelled like flowers.

“Let me buy some,” his friends would offer, and he would oblige. “I had plenty,” Manning tells Freedom Leaf.

Manning started arranging bigger buys from his Uyghur connection. “I’d bring it back to Beijing, and everyone was loving it,” he recalls. It’s not that Manning needed the money; he had a plum job at CCTV-9, the documentary channel of China’s state broadcaster.

But eventually, Manning’s connection stopped responding to texts and calls, so he decided to fly to Korla, where he bought two kilos of hash from a man in a Uyghur village. Manning had it shipped to Beijing in a set of computer speakers, with the hash hidden in the subwoofer.

The Ancient Chinese Stash

About a four-hour drive northeast of Korla lies Turpan, home to an ancient cemetery, the Yanghai Tombs. In 2008, archeologists excavating the site dis-covered 789 grams of cannabis in the 2,700-year-old grave of a shaman.

While researchers have long known that ancient peoples used industrial hemp, this discovery suggested they also got high. Their tests showed the plant matter contained significant levels of THC, CBD and other cannabinoids. A genetic analysis concluded that the plant material was cultivated, not found in the wild. “The cannabis was presumably em-ployed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divina-tion,” Ethan Russo and his team wrote in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

Prior to this important finding, most cannabis research in China had focused on hemp, which was used to make ev-erything from rope to shoes to clothes. Hemp cultivation in China dates back to the Western Zhou period, 1046 BC to 771 BC, and it eventually became a widely grown crop for that agricultural society—a hardy plant that supplied sturdy fibers from its stalks and nutritious oil from its seeds. Peasants submerged bundles of hemp stalks in water to


I“Malen” (Chinese for cannabis) and a local bong in Korla, Xinjiang next to a map of China.


separate the fibers from the stems; the retting water would then be used as an insecticide.

Hemp was also used to make mourn-ing robes, created according to tradition. When mourning the death of grand-parents or great-grandparents, people wore robes made of the thin fibers of male hemp plants; when mourning the death of parents, robes made of female hemp plants were worn. Normally used for making rope, female plants produce courser fabric, which was intended to in-dicate the distress of the mourner.

What About Getting High?

While hemp and marijuana have a long, storied history in China, there’s little in-formation about its psychoactive uses. While recent science supports the theory that the plant was used to pursue altered states, few specifics are known.

Many point to Shennong as the first to write about cannabis as medicine in early China. “Shennong’s Materia Med-ica is from the Eastern Han Dynasty, and is only pseudonymously written by Shennong,” Jiakui Wang, professor at the Chengdu University of Traditional Chi-nese Medicine, informs Freedom Leaf.. “To say that Shennong was the first per-son in China to record the medical uses of cannabis is not accurate.”

But the Shennong’s Materia Medica text contains many references to the psy-choactivity of cannabis and other plants, such as, “Consuming a lot of mafen [can-nabis flowers] makes people see ghosts and run wild.”

Wang further explains: “What [the writer] describes probably refers to med-icating with mafen that had THC, which produced hallucinations and other psy-choactive effects. Shennong’s Materia Medica not only brought up mafen’s psy-choactive properties, but also mentions the poisonous, hallucinogenic black hen-bane. These entries all refer to the psy-choactive effects of medicines, so it can

be said that people in those times had an understanding of the psychoactivity of certain medicines.”

Early populations in China may have incorporated the mind-altering effects of some plants in treatments, but “the med-ical books that came after Shennong’s Materia Medica rarely used these ‘people running wild’ psychoactive effects to talk about treating illnesses,” Wang adds.

While ethnic minority groups like the Uyghurs and Hui (another Muslim pop-ulation in Xinjiang) have long traditions of using psychoactive cannabis, the Han (China’s majority ethnic group) have historically turned to opium as their drug of choice.

Many blame Great Britain for intro-ducing opium to China, but it actually appeared in the early 18th century, well over 100 years before the Opium Wars. High-quality opium from India fueled the rise of wealthy connoisseurs, who devel-oped complex rituals and fancy smoking utensils for consuming it. Foreign visitors were surprised by the absence of “dope fiends” in opium houses; the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal described one foreigner’s visit to a clean and bright opium den as like “the little intimate beer-house of Berlin where the tired working men could go in the evening and spend a peaceful hour.”

China’s War on Drugs

Despite China’s long history with various psychoactive substances, the govern-ment today maintains a strong prohibi-tionist stance. The country still has the death penalty for some drug trafficking crimes.

When Michael Manning’s two-kilo package arrived in Beijing in March 2009, a dozen or so police officers stormed his apartment. A lab report determined the package contained 1,992 grams of hash—just eight grams shy of a distribu-tion charge. Chinese law doesn’t have a charge for possession with intent to


II


distribute, and getting caught with more than 2,000 grams of cannabis means an automatic distribution charge. Those suspected of such crimes can be held in jail for up to seven months and seven days while a case is being built against them.

Manning was sent to Beijing’s No. 1 Detention Center—home to the city’s worst offenders (“psychos, murderers, cannibals and weirdos”), white-collar criminals (“Bernie Madoff types, scam artists and financial people who swindled companies”) and foreigners. Day-to-day existence was “boring, and the rules were strict,” Manning wrote in a letter published at Danwai.org shortly after his release. “No torture, not rape in the shower, just good ol’ psychological tor-ture of close confinement from everyone and everything I ever had known one mil-lisecond before I was taken into custody.”

While China’s laws against harder drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and MDMA are pretty clear, the laws surrounding cannabis are a bit murkier. “I believe the unofficial Chinese govern-ment policy is to not bother the Uyghurs about smoking hash, except for when it suits them,” Manning says. “I’m sure they use it as a pretext or something in regards to terrorism. But people aren’t getting arrested smoking hash in Uyghur villages.”

As far as his bust, Manning observes: “It’s pretty awful to get arrested in a for-

eign country, especially one where you don’t have any rights. China has a 99.9% conviction rate, so it’s not like you have much hope.”

China has built a reputation for being tough on drugs. In 2008, they executed three drug offenders “to mark Interna-tional Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking,” according to Reuters, and in 2014, Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee, spent six months in jail on a marijuana charge.

On an October day in 2009, seven months after Manning was dispatched to the No. 1 Detention Center, a voice came over the loudspeaker while he was eating lunch. “Jinggubang!”—Manning’s Chinese name—the voice barked. “Gather your things!”

“What do they want me to do?” Man-ning wondered. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t believe it,” exclaimed one of his prison friends. “You’re going home!” His cellmates slapped him on the back and scrambled to write messages to their wives for him to smuggle out.

“I was laughing and feeling awesome, and uncontrollably blubbering and crying, all at the same time,” he says about that moment.

Chinese authorities promptly deport-ed Manning back to America.

Mona Zhang is a New York-based writer who edits the cannabis newsletter Word on the Tree. Follow her on Twitter @ZhangMona.


Michael Manning with the Red Guard in Beijing in 2005.


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A s the phenom-enon of dab-bing—where a small amount

of concentrated canna-bis, often butane hash oil (BHO), is placed on a superheated surface and then inhaled—spreads from its roots in California

to the rest of the country, so does the storm surrounding this form of marijuana use.

It started about six years ago on the West Coast, when people began firing up blow-

torches to heat a flat “skillet” or “nail”—usually made of titanium, quartz or ceramic—attached to a bong-like device known as a “dab rig.” The BHO or other can-

nabis concentrate is spotted on the end of a dab wand or straightened paper clip, and then touched to the red-hot nail surface while a person inhales, resulting in an extremely powerful hit.

Imbibing this much THC and smoke at once is intense, to say the least—as intense as people’s first reac-tions to seeing blowtorches and dab glassware being used to smoke canna-bis concentrates; many people still asso-ciate this type of paraphernalia with crack or crystal meth. The rapid THC intake can cause a range of negative reac-tions among novice dabbers, including

falling over, vomiting and freaking out. The early users were mostly young people, and that’s led many older users to dismiss dabbing as a youth trend that would quickly pass. The opposite has happened: Dabs are now becoming popular nationwide, as the rest of the U.S. catches up to what’s happening in California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

The media, in their never-ending quest for controversial stories, has jumped on the anti-dabbing bandwagon. Some outlets, especially in Southern California, have even gone so far as to describe dabbing as a completely new type of cannabis use more akin to smoking crack than a joint. Such stories have now reached the East Coast; the Boston Globe recently published a dab-scare article in which Director of Cali-fornia NORML Dale Gieringer weighed in and described seeing people keel over and break their teeth after ingesting pow-erful dab hits.

One of the mains reasons for the firestorm of negative press is the fact that BHO production is dangerous; it’s made with butane, which can explode during the production process. Early and inexperienced manufacturers frequently did blow themselves up, and the hazards remain. Butane is heavier than air and therefore collects at ground level, where a single spark from a pilot light, or even a cellphone, can ignite it. Several years ago, the media in California regularly

with Nail and I

Dabbing sparks controversy. By Rick Pfrommer


with Nail and I

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featured horrific images of torched butane labs.

Colorado and Washington have wisely regulated BHO production; the le-gal facilities there undergo a rigorous in-spection process, and are required to use closed-loop extraction machines, which cost $50,000 and up, to recycle the butane. California took the opposite approach five years ago, when the state legislature passed a law that makes pro-ducing BHO, or “blasting,” in their par-lance, a crime on par with manufactur-ing methamphetamine. Despite this law, much of the BHO production in Califor-nia has moved from small amateur labs to larger, more professionally run opera-tions employing the closed-loop technol-ogy. As a result, the number of home ex-plosions has decreased significantly.

As dabbing gained in popularity, arti-cles began to appear in cannabis publi-cations questioning the safety of the production method, as well as the safety of the final product. BHO must be purged of any residual solvents; early on, butane purging was accomplished with a heated water bath, but now vacuum ovens from the lab industry do a far better job. (Crit-ics contend that trace amounts persist in BHO concentrate nonetheless, and point to CO2 extractions as a solvent-free alternative.) Many of these early articles were critical of the entire BHO phenomenon, and negatively

influenced the national dialogue about dabbing.

Then, a new wave of people got turned onto dabbing: chronic, intractable pain sufferers. Far from being young folks looking to get as high as possible, some medical users started reporting that dabbing with highly concentrated cannabis is the only way they can relieve their pain. Rather than having to smoke several joints a day, with all the accom-panying smoke and tar, they’re able to take a few hits and find relief. This benefit began to change the perception of dabbing, at least in states where the population had access to concentrates.

The markets for dabs in California, Washington, Colorado and Oregon are still dominated by younger users, but, increasingly, people with serious medical conditions and folks that want to ingest the least amount of material for maximum effect are jumping on the dabwagon. As the availability of cannabis concen-trates and dab rigs expands, and the use of electronic nails (“e-nails”) instead of blowtorches also grows, people will increasingly understand that dabbing isn’t the dangerous monster it’s been made out to be.

Rick Pfrommer is the former director of education at Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif., and is the Principal Consultant at PfrommerNow.

Dabbing isn’t the dangerous monster

it’s been made out to be.


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Brunch PrepDo as much as you can the night or days before, such as:

Have peeled bananas in the freezer for smoothies.

Make granola and store it in an airtight container.

Set up a coffee station. Heat milk, chocolate and kief mixture

ahead of time and keep in a large insu-lated thermos next to the coffee pot.

Measure out ingredients for hollandaise sauce so you

can quickly prepare the eggs Benedict while guests are enjoying smoothies, granola and coffee.

Recipes by cheRi sicaRd • photos by Mitch Mandell There’s nothing quite so relaxing and purely indulgent as a leisurely Sunday brunch spent with good friends. Breakfast parties lack the pretentiousness of evening affairs—you don’t have to dress to impress, and they’re usually less structured. As the host or hostess, you’ll find a brunch party a breeze. You can do a lot of the prep work the night before, and since a cup of coffee and a piece of toast usually suffice as breakfast for most people, it’s easy to impress. While brunch usually comes with traditional mimosas and Bloody Marys, this one is alcohol-free. However, I’ve added cannabis to the mix for a wake-and-bake party that will surely leave everyone feeling festive.



Strawberry Cough Banana Smoothies Smoothies make a great breakfast starter and are easy to medicate with decarbox-ylated kief. Frozen berries and bananas give them a thick, frosty consistency. Anytime you have bananas that are getting too ripe, peel, place in a plastic bag and freeze. You’ll always be ready to make a smoothie and will never have to throw out a banana again.

• 1 ripe banana, frozen • 1–1/4 cups frozen strawberries• 1/4 gram decarboxylated kief • 1/2 cup plain yogurt • 1/2 cup orange juice Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Add more or less orange juice to achieve the consistency you prefer. Serves 2.

Homemade Hempy GranolaOnce you see how easy it is to make granola, you’ll never buy the sugar-laden store-bought version again. This recipe provides healthy fortification and flavor from the addition of both cannabis oil and hulled hemp seeds. I like to use canna-bis-infused coconut oil in this recipe, for both its flavor and its health benefits, but any vegetable oil, even olive oil, will do.

• 3 cups rolled oats • 3/4 cup sliced almonds • 1/2 cup hulled hemp seeds • 1–1/2 cup raisins and/or dried cranberries • 3/4 cup sweetened coconut flakes • 1/2 cup cannabis-infused oil, melted if using coconut oil • 1/2 cup agave nectar or honey • 1 egg white • 1/4 tsp. salt • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking mats. In a large bowl, mix together oats, almonds, hemp

seeds, coconut and raisins and/or cran-berries. In a separate small bowl, whisk together cannabis oil, agave nectar, egg white, salt and cinnamon. Pour liquid over the oat mixture and stir until well combined. Spread in a thin layer on bak-ing sheets. Bake until browned to your liking, about 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. Remove from oven and cool completely. Store in an airtight con-tainer. Serves 12.



Buzzy Eggs Benedict This popular brunch item—poached eggs and smoky Canadian bacon atop a toast-ed English muffin drizzled in rich, lemony hollandaise sauce—isn’t as difficult and time-consuming as it sounds to make. I like using kief or hash with this recipe because the flavor is substantially better, but feel free to forego the concentrates and use two tablespoons of cannabis-in-fused butter and six tablespoons of un-salted butter instead.

Hollandaise SauceUse this versatile, medicated sauce for lots of other foods, too. Try it on simple steamed, poached or grilled fish dishes or steamed veggies. Store leftover hol-landaise sauce in a tightly covered con-tainer in the refrigerator for up three days. Reheat in the top of a double boiler or in a metal bowl suspended over barely simmering water, stirring constantly, until just heated; it’s a delicate sauce that will break down in the microwave or over di-rect heat.

• 1/2 cup butter • 1/2 gram kief or hash• 3 egg yolks • 2 tbsp. lemon juice, freshly squeezed • 1/4 tsp. salt • 1/4 tsp. pepper • 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

Eggs• 1 tsp. white vinegar • 8 large eggs • 8 slices Canadian bacon • 4 English muffins, split into halves • Paprika or dried parsley for garnish

Prepare hollandaise sauce by heating butter and kief or hash together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until the cannabis is dissolved in the but-ter and the butter is bubbly, but do not brown. Place egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne in food processor or blender, and process at high speed. Driz-zle in melted butter in a slow, steady, thin stream. Split English muffins and toast while preparing the eggs. Cook eggs in two batches (or use two pans). Fill a large skillet with about three inches of water and bring to a simmer. Add vinegar to the water. Carefully break an egg in a small ramekin or cup. Slip egg into sim-mering water. Quickly repeat with three more eggs. Cook until whites are set, but yolks are soft, about 2–3 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove each egg from the pan, letting excess water drip off. To assemble, place two toasted muf-fin halves on each plate. Top each muf-fin half with a slice of bacon, then place a poached egg on top. Cook the remaining eggs and repeat. Divide the sauce over the muffin halves. Garnish with a sprin-kling of paprika or dried parsley, if de-sired. Serves 4.



DIY Frozen Hash BrownsMaking hash brown potatoes is less expensive than the store-bought variety and allows you to use organic potatoes. Blanch these well in advance of your brunch party, then remove from the freezer and fry when you need them. Use a coarse grater to shred peeled russet potatoes. Keep the shredded potatoes in a large bowl of ice water while you work until all potatoes are shredded. Bring a large pot of wa-ter to a boil. Drain the potatoes from the ice water, then blanch in boiling water for two minutes. Drain, rinse in cold water, drain again and pat dry with paper towels. Pack prepared potatoes into resealable bags and store in the freezer until ready to use. These will keep for up to a year.

To Prepare Heat about two tablespoons of canola oil over medium-high heat in a large, prefer-ably cast-iron, skillet. Add frozen shredded potatoes and fry until light brown on the bottom, about five minutes. Turn and brown the other side until crisp and golden. Season them with salt and pepper. If you want to medicate your hash browns, drizzle with cannabis oil (one tsp. per serving) about two minutes before the end of cooking time, just before seasoning. Stir to mix the hash browns, and serve.


Hot Mota MochaThis is so easy to make, you’ll never go to a coffee shop again (plus the coffee shop never adds our secret ingredient).

• 3/4 cup whole milk or almond milk• 1/8 gram decarboxylated kief • 2 tbsp. chocolate syrup• 3/4 cup strongly brewed coffee or espresso• Whipped cream and additional chocolate syrup for garnish

Heat milk in a small saucepan over low heat. Make sure not to boil. Add kief or hash to milk and stir until dissolved. Add milk mixture and chocolate syrup to a large coffee mug and stir until well combined. Add hot coffee and stir to combine. Garnish with whipped cream and additional chocolate syrup, if desired.

Cheri Sicard is author of The Cannabis Gourmet Cookbook and Mary Jane: The Complete Marijuana Handbook for Women. Visit her blog at CannabisCheri.com.


Take a magical journey to a world where cannabis is legal and the leaders are benevolent.

By Beth MannIn my imaginary Pot-opia, you’re free to get high with anyone you please, from Margaret Thatcher (who drinks canna-bis-infused tea with biscuits) to Attila the Hun (who sucks down massive bong hits). Obama rolls the finest fatties with James Monroe, who gets to say, “I told you so” (since, in the real world, he smoked hashish as U.S. Ambassador to France, and puffed away until his death at 73).

The prisons are almost empty and are instead used as cannabis reform camps for drug warriors, like Richard Nixon, who’s forced to smoke pot with a team of young black men he put behind bars, and the Reagans, who must regu-larly consume an entire table full of bird-shaped marijuana-infused cookies, giving a whole new meaning to “eating crow.” And Harry J. Anslinger permanently occupies a dunk tank full of used bong water, where the newly reformed get to take their best shot at the architect of 1930s Reefer Madness.

It’s a really peaceful place where cool heads prevail. Ben Franklin holds the most outra-geous hash parties. Cleopatra can frequently be seen with

her elegant Armani vape pen chat-

ting it up with an uncomfortably

high Napoleon. King Charlemagne and Louis XIV like to discuss the latest trends in interior design while clinking crystal glasses of marijuana-infused “mocktails.” Meanwhile, Abe Lincoln rocks in his chair on the sidelines, contemplatively toking on his freshly packed corncob pipe.

On this particular day in paradise, William the Conqueror takes over the dance floor (yet again), and Eleanor Roo-sevelt and Eva Peron smoke a fat-ass blunt and try to out-stare each another, but keep bursting into laughter. Thomas Jefferson and a couple of Egyptian pha-raohs toke homegrown and talk pyramids and papyrus. Jimmy Carter rolls up in his blue hemp-fueled Ford truck with peanut butter snacks for all.

Cory Booker, Mother Theresa and Richard the Lionhearted keep it real in the backyard, where they throw a canna-bis-infused vegan meal for the homeless. And Gandhi sits atop a high hill a mile away, meditating on it all, after a seri-ously big dab hit.

When the party dies down, the world leaders go back to their respective places and times, open-minded, relaxed and prepared to make wiser decisions for all. War is far too energy-consuming. Putin thinks less about Syria and more about Sour Diesel. Kim Jong-un shifts his focus from Korea to kombucha. The ecology improves greatly as the world becomes naturally greener in thought and action. And the people, plants and animals of Pot-opia live happily ever after.

Beth Mann is Presi-dent of Hot But-tered Media and a regu-lar contrib-utor to Free-dom Leaf.

Pot-opiaWelcome to MyWelcome to My

POT-OP I A


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ALBUM REVIEW

Grateful Tribute: Day of the Dead For those who thought the Grateful Dead would fade into irrelevance after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, last year served as a wake-up call. The “Core Four”—co-founders Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart—performed five sold-out Fare Thee Well shows celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary, with certified Deadheads Trey Anastasio and Bruce Hornsby rounding out the lineup.

After two decades of performances by Weir-Lesh bands like Furthur, RatDog and The Other Ones, this musical iter-ation gave fans a chance for closure, and was supposed to mark the end of the Dead’s long, strange trip. But shortly thereafter, Dead & Company, with John Mayer filling the big shoes of Captain Trips, hit the road. It turned out Fare Thee Well wasn’t quite the end of the road after all.

Now arrives Day of the Dead, an epic 59-track Grateful Dead tribute album conceived as a fundraiser for the non-profit Red Hot Organization’s ongoing

fight against AIDS/HIV. The album, dog-gedly curated by brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner (of The National) over a four-year period, offers a dizzying array of Dead interpretations by alterna-tive-leaning groups you’d more likely find at Coachella than at a jamband fest.

While song versions by The War on Drugs (“Touch of Grey”), Courtney Barnett (“New Speedway Boogie”), My Morning Jacket’s Jim James (“Candy-man”), Mumford & Sons (“Friend of the Devil”) and The National (“Morning Dew”) are predictable, many other tracks push the envelope, such as transgender singer Anohni and yMusic’s shimmering “Black Peter,” Perfume Genius and Sharon Van Etten’s yearning “To Lay Me Down,” Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s funk-driven “Shakedown Street,” electronic noise band Marijuana Deathsquads’ hemp-fu-eled “Truckin’,” Tal National’s lilting “Eyes of the World,” s t a r g a z e’s avant-clas-sical exploration of “What’s Become of the Baby,” Vijay Iyer’s ivory-tickling “King Solomon’s Marbles” and Bill Callahan’s spooky, spectral “Easy Wind.”

Like the Fare Thee Well concerts, which meticulously avoided repetition in the set lists, Day of the Dead has only a few repeated songs, with two very dis-tinct versions of “Dark Star” (one by the Flaming Lips, the other courtesy of Cass McCombs and Joe Russo) and a couple of “I Know You Rider” covers (Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ version starts with “China Cat Sunflower” and segues into “Rider”).

As befits the band’s legacy of ex-tended jams, acid-soaked sonic explora-tions include “Terrapin Station,” by Griz-zly Bear’s Daniel Rossen and Chris-topher Bear with The National and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; a delicate, low-register “Wharf Rat,” by Yo La Ten-go’s Ira Kaplan; and even a meditation on Kreutzmann and Hart’s psychedelic “Drums-Space,” by instrumentalist John “Kid Millions” Colpitts and his experimen-tal percussion project Man Forever along with So Percussion and Oneida. On Bryce Dessner’s “Garcia Counterpoint” instrumental meditation and soundscape artist Tim Hecker’s “Transitive Refraction


Axis,” Day of the Dead pays homage to the band’s penchant for the far-out.

The Dead’s underrated gift for indeli-ble melodies and genre-blending hybrids is represented by Hornsby and DeYar-mond Edison on “Black Muddy River”; by TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo on “Playing in the Band”; by Béla Fleck on “Help on the Way”; by Charles Bradley on “Cumber-land Blues”; and by Lucinda Williams on “Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.”

If there are any real clunkers in this set, I’d have to point to the Flaming Lips’

aforementioned “Dark Star,” which is more about their studied wackiness than the Dead’s; and the Rileys’ quirky, med-itative “Estimated Prophet” that never quite coalesces. Two duds out of 59 tracks is a pretty impressive percentage.

It’s somehow ironically fitting that pro-ceeds from this Grateful Dead tribute album are earmarked for research into preventing a disease that was once a death sentence. Like the band’s own leg-acy, it offers a hopeful sign for the future, rather than a eulogy for the past.

— Roy Trakin

Last year, it was Fare Thee Well for the Dead, with Trey Anastasio filling the Jerry Garcia role.

J. GURRERI

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BOOK REVIEW

David Bienenstock is a true believer. Work-ing in the marijuana media—for High Times and Vice—for 15 years will do that to you. His follow-up to 2008’s The Official High Times Pot

Smoker’s Handbook is a much more per-sonal book that’s something between a polemic and a primer.

In How to Smoke Pot (Properly), Bienenstock (or “Bean” to his friends—note: I worked with him at High Times) covers a lot of cannabis territory—from how to roll (“My first three years at High Times, I couldn’t roll a decent joint,” he admits) to his stand against the corporate Green Rush and in favor of smaller busi-nesses dominating the legal marijuana landscape.

Bienenstock aims to inform, with his-torical data and a firm grasp of American drug policy through the years; but he also wants to help newbies with nuts-and-bolts information about cannabis, cannabinoids, strains, edibles, activism, travel and finding a job in the new weed economy.

Bienenstock’s fascination with food is one of the stronger aspects of the book; after all, he’s Vice’s ganja gour-mand—he produces their “Bong Appetit” series—and his wife, Elise McDonough, is the author of The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook. Several recipes are included, and his restaurant recommen-dations in the travel chapter, “The High Road,” are spot-on.

But it’s Bienenstock’s deep commit-ment to the cause of ending marijuana prohibition that registers most when read-ing through this 276-page paperback. In the chapter “The New Green Economy,” he takes on the venture capitalists and speculators looking to cash in on legal pot—in particular, Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings, which is bringing the Marley Natural brand to the

market. “I do think [Bob Marley] would plant his seeds elsewhere, were he still alive to tend to the family’s interests,” he writes.

Bienenstock calls out Kennedy for criticizing websites “plastered with pot leaves or pictures of Bob Marley,” while subsequently forming a business rela-tionship with the Marley estate to capi-talize on the late reggae legend’s status among devoted stoners with a new line of tantalizing pot products. Profoundly leery of corporate entities taking control of cannabusiness, he offers a Bill of Rights of sorts that would protect smaller companies and local growers from being swept away, in the march toward mari-juana legitimacy, by what he calls the “greed heads.”

In How to Smoke Pot (Properly), Bienenstock combines previously pub-lished High Times and Vice material with detailed research and a few fresh inter-views. The writing is pun-filled, alternat-ing between light humor and deadly seri-ous tones. With plenty of sidebars and illustrations breaking up the main text, it’s a breeze to read. — Steve Bloom

How to Smoke Pot (Properly)

David Bienenstock says he “couldn’t roll a joint” when he began working at High Times.


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InnovaTIve ITemsFor the cannabis consumer

Hemp & Honey Plus Body CreamHemp & Honey Plus founders Scott Sondles and Mike Bumgarner take their hemp seriously. Sondles wrote the 2013 book Hemponomics, and their attention to detail shows. Their Vanilla and Matcha Green Tea Body Cream, containing hemp seed oil (a moisturizing powerhouse), coconut oil, aloe leaf juice and grape-seed oil, absorbs quickly into the skin.

Hemp seed oil conquers dry skin be-cause it contains phospholipids that keep moisture in our skin’s cells, and coconut, grapeseed and aloe vera are all excel-lent hydrators. The cream also contains manuka honey, famous for its antibacte-rial and antioxidant properties. Grapefruit seed extract and matcha green tea pow-

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Packaged in a simple jar with a clean look, the cream has a nice texture, whipped into something between pud-ding and mousse. One drawback is the vanilla scent, which lingers a little too long and doesn’t smell as natural as the rest of the cream feels. The application is smooth and non-greasy, and the mois-ture benefits persist even after a couple of handwashes.

Keep an eye out for Hemp & Honey’s new recovery line featuring CBD.

— Erin Hiatt$12 for 2.5 oz.hempbox.com/product/hemp-honey-plus-body-cream


THE RAPID GROWTH OF THE LEGALIZED CANNABIS INDUSTRY HAS MADE IT ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING SECTORS OF THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY, SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTING NEARLY EVERY INDUSTRY.

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BOOK REVIEW

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

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Freedom Leaf Magazine - May/June 2016

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Transcript of Freedom Leaf Magazine - May/June 2016