DOPE MAGAZINE WA ISSUE #51 NOVEMBER 2015 "THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE" by DOPE Magazine

WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 2015 | ISSUE #51 | THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE | FREE

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KAYA’S KOFFEE & SUPER LEMON HAZE

BRANDING BUD The National Brands Emerge

CONCENTRATE LEBANESE GOLD HASHISH

EDIBLES CRAFT ELIXERS

MEDICAL COOP CANNAPI & THE EVERGREEN MARKET

RACIAL DISPARITY IN THE AGE OF LEGALIZATION

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 51 | NOVEMBER 2015 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE

14 MEDICAL STRAIN KAYA’S KOFFEE

BRANDING BUD CONSISTENCY ACROSS STATE LINES

REC STORE

THE EVERGREEN MARKET

EDITOR’S NOTE

16 RECREATIONAL STRAIN

EDIBLE

SUPER LEMON HAZE

DOPE NEWS

CANNABIS WORLD NEWS

CRAFT ELIXIRS

CANNA-NEWS

IN FOCUS: MIKE SMIGIEL

CONCENTRATE

LEBANESE GOLD HASHISH

MED CO-OP CANNA PI

56 CANNA-NEWS RACIAL DISPARITY

SOCIAL CAUSE CAMPAIGN ZERO

70 GARDEN

ELEV8 SEEDS

52 FEATURE

PIECES

DR. CARL HART

OLDSCOOL GLASS

CANNA-NEWS CHARLO GREENE

BUSINESS ZOOTS

100

114

CANNA-NEWS

CANNABIS AND RACE

ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE dopemagazine.com

124 CANNA-NEWS

BLACK LIVES MATTER

This November marks a historic and long overdue move by the Justice Department with the freeing of approximately 6,000 non-violent drug offenders from federal prison. Here, the retroactive application of new policy set by the U.S. Sentencing Commission leaves the once upon a time approach of severe mandatory minimums and mass incarceration appearing not just obviously ineffective, but undoubtedly out of touch, with federal judges reducing sentences by as many as 70 per week nationwide. Position this alongside the growing cannabis legalization movement and we find an evolving dialogue poised to drastically alter the way in which we view the term ‘criminal’ and apply the term ‘drugs’ in our society. In our feature interview with Dr. Carl Hart, we explore his valuable perspective on the timely issues of the failed War on Drugs and continued pursuit of racial equality in our country. We cannot deny the egregiously disproportionate number of minorities who’ve found themselves incarcerated and under attack by our dilapidated systems of justice. And while we should all appreciate that all lives matter, it is irresponsible to overshadow the black lives matter movement with such an all-encompassing notion of equality—especially when it is these roots of inequality in our nation that’ve led to these unfortunate discrepancies in our supposed systems of justice. And the blue lives matter billboards that’ve been cropping up in the name of highlighting violence against police only furthers a vicious scenario of black versus blue that leaves our nation literally bruised by beating itself up. As this is the Past to Present issue of DOPE Magazine, we encourage our readership to appreciate just how far we’ve come across the many social justice movements, but never losing sight of the ground we’ve yet to cover. In many ways, we are a nation at war with itself. From the past to the present to the new age, our work has only just begun. Stay DOPE.

PRESIDENT EVAN CARTER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JAMES ZACHODNI STATE DIRECTOR JESUS DIAZ

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS SHARON LETTS R.Z. HUGHES MEGHAN RIDLEY DAVID BAILEY JOHNNY HALFHAND ABIGAIL ROSS JESSICA ZIMMER

ART DIRECTOR

DAVE HODES

BRANDON PALMA

STEVE ELLIOTT MELANIE BIGALKE

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

BRITTANY DRIVER

CHARM DOMACENA

DEBBY GOLDSBERRY

AD DESIGN

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

DOPE DESIGN AGENCY LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER ALLIE BECKETT MANAGING EDITOR/COPY EDITOR ALISON BAIRD

TINA BALLEW MARK COFFIN

DOPE is a free publication dedicated to providing an informative and wellness-minded voice to the cannabis movement. While our foundation is the medical cannabis industry, it is our intent to provide ethical and researchbased articles that address the many facets of the war on drugs, from politics to lifestyle and beyond. We believe that through education and honest discourse, accurate policy and understanding can emerge. DOPE Magazine is focused on defending both our patients and our plant, and to being an unceasing force for revolutionary change.

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OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

OPERATIONS ASSOCIATE

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SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

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DALLAS KEEFE

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

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COVER PHOTO:

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MED STRAIN

KAYA’S

KOFFEE WRITER •R.Z. HUGHES

| PHOTOS • ALLIE BECKETT

PROVIDED BY: THE BAKEREE

GENETICS Legendary local breeder Kaya paired two otherworldly strains, Alien OG and Alien Kush(f2), combining their interstellar powers to create some of the most potent pot on the planet. Alien OG is a Cali favorite that routinely tests above 25% THC while Alien Kush(f2) is a strain of mythic proportions, reportedly fetching $1500 for ten seeds.

THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS As a pleasantly balanced hybrid, this strain has been said to offer relief for many ailments cannabis helps to alleviate. This cultivar is extremely high in THC and once tested in at 31% at Steep Hill Labs, making it a stellar candidate for those suffering from nerve damage, muscular distress, and intense chronic pain. Great for relaxing after a rough week.

LOOKS These gorgeous buds are absolutely dripping in resin – there is trichome coverage down to the stem! They are chunky and firm with an ideal conical structure. Looking like snow-capped evergreens, Kaya’s Koffee catches the eye from any angle and its some of the most photogenic, visually appealing bud we’ve seen.

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TESTED BY: STEEP HILL LABS

22.29% THC 0.02% CBD

FLAVOR This stuff has some serious staying power. Over fifteen minutes after indulging in the chicory essence of Kaya’s Koffee, the bold taste still lingers on the tongue. A sour, kush-like flavor comes through as well, adding an enjoyable floral kick to the robust body of roasted coffee. A truly unique taste and a must-try for any cannabis connoisseur.

AROMA The initial whiff is full of lemon zest and spices; unexpected given its name, buy after cracking a cola and inhaling deeply, it becomes immediately clear where the moniker comes from. The rich and earthy smells of coffee grounds mingle with dark chocolate creating the perfect cannaccino scent for java and ganja enthusiasts alike.

EFFECT Heady and relaxing it washes over the body in stages. While clear-headed at first and nearly as stimulating as a morning cup of joe – after a few minutes the excitement turns to a kind of delirium, complete with laugh attacks and compromised motor skills. This is an incredibly strong strain, not for the faint of heart.

ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE dopemagazine.com

WRITER • R.Z. HUGHES

REC STRAIN

PHOTOS •ANGELA BOGSCH

SUPER LEMON HAZE GENETICS When your parents are both all-stars, there is bound to be a lot of pressure growing up. Super Lemon Haze is the offspring of Super Silver Haze and Lemon Skunk, both prized strains that have been winning awards for decades. SLH takes the terpene profile from the Lemon Skunk, blending it with the heavily psychotropic Super Silver Haze.

THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS

With such a powerful fragrance, it’s no wonder that the flavor profile is equally complex and alluring. The lemon is at the forefront of the taste, refreshing the palate. It has a piney, eucalyptus essence that cools the throat with an icy vapor, making it a possible good choice for those dealing with respiratory issues.

PROVIDED BY: NORTHWEST CANNABIS SOLUTIONS TESTED BY: STEEP HILL LABS

This is a great strain for those looking for an easy laugh. It has been reported to provide stress relief and energy to those feeling lethargic or frazzled as well as clear the mind of any cobwebs. As a heady sativa, Super Lemon Haze may ease ocular pressure from glaucoma and help stop migraines before they start.

LOOKS The flowers are chunky and bulbous; and similar in size and shape to golf balls. A lavender hue is carried throughout, highlighting the light greens and vibrant oranges of the bud and pistils. If the sugar leaf is any indication, this stuff is loaded with resin heads as the purple is barely visible through the dense cake of crystals.

EFFECT Heady and cerebral, its fast acting jolt to the brain is said to greatly enhance creativity and mood, while easing anxieties. This strain has a great way of making people want to get up and go somewhere, do something, and simply enjoy life. An inspirational experience.

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AROMA

FLAVOR

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15.68% THC

A mixture of lemongrass, menthol, and candy, Super Lemon Haze’s citrusy smell is so strong it almost tingles the nose. Its a sharp scent that fills the room with a wonderfully complex, calming aroma. Breathe deeply as the most prominent terpene in this strain, Limonene, has been known to elevate the mood and relax the mind.

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This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination, and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. For use only by adults twenty‑one and older. Keep out of the reach of children.

EDIBLES

WRITER • R.Z. HUGHES

PHOTOS • ALLIE BECKETT

SIMPLY SUBLIME SYRUPS MARY JANE’S MULE

WALLINGFORD EDIBLES producer is making sweet, sticky waves with their line of all-natural, organic mixers. Craft Elixirs, found in over seventy recreational stores around the state, have been wowing consumers with their versatile syrups. Used to tweak virtually any dish with a manageable kick of cannabis. The hometown pride at the Craft Elixirs’ headquarters is palpable, with Seahawks 12th Man flags draped across the windows and walls. They have over ten offerings that pay homage to the 206 with names like Seattle Simple, Capitol Hill Heat, Ballard Beat, and even a product called Fremont Freaks, a .5mg dehydrated fruit chew that tastes out of this world. Owner Jamie Hoffman keeps it lean and mean with a close-knit crew that produces small-batch, artisan-grade edibles of with high standards for quality and consistency. Hoffman is a regular at farmer’s markets, picking out the most flavorful berries from local organic produvcers. Keep an eye out for new concoctions as the changing seasons give the team at Craft Elixirs an opportunity to play with different farm-fresh ingredients and flavors. We were lucky enough to try the newest mixer from Craft Elixirs, Ginger Grass, before it hit the shelves this month. Made with organic fair-trade cane sugar (as with the rest of their products), organic ginger root, and organic lemongrass, this flavor is awesome in drinks, marinades, or even on top of yogurt. They come in 10mg singles, 60mg bottles, and there is talk of a 100mg CBD infused syrup coming soon. We can’t ® wait!

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• Squeeze half of a lime into a glass filled with ice. • Add two capfuls of Craft Elixirs Ginger Grass syrup. • Toss in 1.5 ounces of vodka. • Fill the rest of the cup with sparkling water. • Garnish with a lime and serve!

MAGICAL MARINADE • 4-6 capfuls of Craft Elixers Ginger Grass • 1 minced garlic • ¼ cup olive or sesame oil • 1 small diced shallot • 2 tbsp each soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, water • ½ tsp pineapple juice • ¼ tsp black pepper

A great marinade for any protein, this stuff will spice up any barbecue.

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WRITER•DAVE HODES

CANNANEWS

DESIGN•BRANDON PALMA

S THE steady march toward full cannabis legalization rumbles across the country, the buzz grows stonger among entrepreneurs, who now reach to seize every opportunity in a new American industry. Accelerating spurts of development continue to occur at an increasing frequency and pace. It’s not only that a substance previously illegal is now legal in four states and D.C., the very heart of our nation. This social change extends deeper into the American psyche. This whole new legal cash crop carries with it an unprecedented level of social change. It’s reaching into the very roots of the failed war on drugs, into sentencing reform for non-violent offenders and most importantly, into what it means to be a criminal, and who the criminal element really is. For centuries in this country, and continuing today, that criminal element often assumed to be a black man. In 1808 in Washington, D.C., where nearly 1,000 free slaves lived, and hundreds of other owned slaves were helping to build the federal buildings, a city ordinance stipulated that “No black person, or person of color, shall be allowed to walk about or assemble after ten o’clock at night.” Part of the “black code” set of laws that continued through the 1800s in various cities in the south, is was designed to control the growing black population. This began with a long cycle of unjust incarcerations and arrests that continue today. The US incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world. According to the Drug Policy Alliance (a national organization that promotes drug policies based on health and human rights), in 2014 there were 700,993 arrests for marijuana possession. Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, points to the massive racial disparity in these arrests, “In New York, young white people are actually more likely than African Americans to use marijuana, but African Americans compose 85% of those arrested for marijuana possession.” He says the war on cannabis creates a climate of fear and oppression in communities of color. “The reality is that for many Americans, particularly young men of color, a minor cannabis offense, no matter how it is dealt with, is a gateway to a lifetime of civil and criminal punishment, discrimination, fines, debt, unemployment and constant harassment by the police. The only way to close this gateway is with legalization. It is the only way to stop people from entering

black codes in the 1800s, and largely ended this punitive, unjust and racist system.” in the mid-1960s. “You now have millions To some African American youth today, of people, largely people of color and mostly feeling controlled by law enforcement is often young black men, who now can be legally disnothing new. The evidence of that control is criminated against in employment becoming more availand in housing,” says Piper. “They able to everyone, as can be denied the right to vote, and ever-present phone be denied welfare benefits and cameras reveal deeper, public housing. Those were all sometimes disturbing of the things that the civil rights truths about a larger movement was fighting for.” problem. Videos of As more states legalize, there Freddie Gray being has been an increase in commuting treated like a sack of sentences for those doing time for trash before his death cannabis arrests. “Commutations following a rough ride are starting to become more of an in a police van, or the issue in states that have legalized footage of Eric Garner, cannabis. You have that juxtaposichoked to death on tion between people who are now the streets of New making money selling cannabis, York raise new pro- B I L L P I P ER , D I R EC TOR OF NATIONA L while there are people in prison for found questions. AF FA I RS FOR THE having done the same thing,” Piper “The primary says. “So I think we are going to relationship, that most D RU G POL IC Y A L L I A NC E see a greater effort to get people African American who are in prison out of prison.” people have with this The change in drug policies country for the majormay be slow to come and Piper ity of our lives, is one points out the obvious, “We are up of confinement and against a lot of vested interests in the drug war. containment,” Asha Bandele, the Director of The private prison industry, the drug testing the Advocacy Grants Program for the Drug industry, the pharmaceutical companies that Policy Alliance. “The marijuana laws and give money to the legalization opponents. The other drug laws are just the most recent manistruggle is really between the social justice festation of that.” advocates on one hand, and the drug war profiAs legalization grows and the cannabis teers on the other. It’s between those who want movement spreads, discussions mainly focus on the disparity between cannabis, race and ar- to reduce incarceration and misery, and those who seek to profit off it. I think we will win rests. “I think linking arms and aims with other that battle slowly.” social justice issues is equally as important There has been talk that as he exits office as is the work on the reform of the marijuana next year President Obama may reschedule laws,” Bandele says. “You can reform that and marijuana (not deschedule – that would take something else will pop up. So as much as this an act of Congress). Perhaps he may also paris an effort to shift policy, it is also an effort don some non-violent offenders. Piper clarifies to shift the hearts and minds about how Black the situation stating “Even if the president people are viewed in America.” pardons thousands of cannabis offenders, She says cannabis arrests and other drug they’ll have the offenses on their records, and policies decimate communities because it there would be a news story with their names isn’t just the people in prison this effects, it’s in it, but one step at a time.” the people left behind. “You don’t just take Bandele believes the legalization of one person out of the community and make it safer.” That is not what happened. Whole fam- cannabis can boost small towns where the economy has been decimated by the cycle of ilies were destroyed. Children are less likely incarcerations. “Let’s make the country whole to have two parents around now than they did again.” during slavery.” Piper says cannabis arrests have created a new sort of Jim Crow environment. He refers to a set of segregation laws that followed the

I THINK WE ARE GOING TO SEE A GREATER EFFORT TO GET PEOPLE WHO ARE IN PRISON OUT OF PRISON.

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Aroma and Resin Enricher

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WRITER•DAVID PALESCHUCK, PRESIDENT, NEW LEAF LICENSING

DESIGN•BRANDON PALMA

BRANDING BUD

MANY ANALYSTS BELIEVE IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE MORE STATES REFORM. THE SPREAD OF LEGALIZATION WILL OPEN UP NEW MARKETS UNTIL THERE’S A REGULATED OPEN MARKET AND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. David Paleschuck

TTITUDES surrounding cannabis

STEREOTYPES Who is the cannabis consumer and what is their lifestyle? Is there just one type of cannabis consumer? Are images of Cheech & Chong, Harold & Kumar, Willy Nelson & Snoop Dog all stereotypes of cannabis smokers? To push it further, is “smoking” itself a stereotype of cannabis consumption?

are undergoing a shift in American public opinion. A report by Pew Research Center released in 2014 demonstrates widespread support for legalization, and also shows support for cannabis jumping from 30% at the start of the millennium to 52% at the time of the study. As voters and lawmakers seek to reform laws, policy makers will have to address many difficult questions about regulation, production, sales, distribution and consumption.

There are generally two types of cannabis consumers: MEDICAL CANNABIS: Those with a state issued license to consume cannabis to reduce

INDUSTRY ACTIVITY

PRODUCTS & USAGE

Recent articles from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times, among others include promising statements like “23 states have legalized medically,” “Colorado sales totalled $700 million in 2014,” “three states plus Washington D.C. have legalized recreationally” and “Cannabis Basics™ (and other cannabis brands) have received their trademarks from the US Trademark Office” Founders Fund, run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, has invested millions into the industry, as has Y-Combinator, a business accelerator that helped get Reddit, Airbnb and Dropbox off the ground. At the entrepreneur level, business owners are creating many new products and most seek clarity on how to market & protect their brands legally and ethically, especially when particular legalities must be handled on a state-by-state basis.

LET’S LOOK AT THE FACTS…

With two specific segments, one can see the need for two distinct product strategies. “Medical cannabis”, with its need for ailment specific cannabis therapies, and “Recreational cannabis”, where the plant is considered an “adult substance” and marketed like alcohol and tobacco to 21+. Each serves a distinctly different demographic, when most brands tend to focus on one or the other. Josh Kirby, President of Oakor,™ and maker of cannabis sublingual breath strips says, “Due to federal policy surrounding interstate commerce with infused cannabis products, our strategy is two-fold: formulate consistent cannabis products; and license those formulas and our brand to reliable licensees...because of regulations, brand & product licensing allows us to minimize parallel processing, reduce risk, and leverage local talent and knowledge within each market.” Other notable cannabis licensing deals in the recreational market include Privateer Holdings, a multi-million dollar “cannabis fund” now aligned with the Marley Family for a new cannabis product brand called Marley Natu-

pain or symptoms of an ailment such as cancer, arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc. They typically consume edibles, and sub-lingual tinctures and use topical lotions, oils and they may avoid smoking cannabis due to their ailments. Often they choose cannabis products that have had their psychotropic component (THC) removed, while maintaining the pain-relieving cannabidiol (CBD) component. RECREATIONAL CANNABIS: Those that are 21+ without a state issued license. They typically consume cannabis through smoking, vaporizing, and may often be seeking a ‘high’.

rals.™ It’s a full line of products, ranging from cannabis flower to infused topical lotions and oils, and it’s launch is on track for year’s end. Many analysts believe it’s just a matter of time before more states reform. The spread of legalization will continue to open up new markets, until there’s a regulated open market and level playing field that will contain a whole new generation of brands. We’re sure to see an increase in the number of strong brands very soon across product categories, ranging from pre-rolled cannabis cigarettes to infused topical body lotions. That being said, as public awareness & acceptance of the plant ramps up, we could see a surge of well established brands developing cannabis products of their own. So is Bob Marley the next Marlboro Man? Will there be a ‘cannabis section’ at Whole Foods,® where high profile companies like Aveda® and Dr. Bronners® create entire lines of relaxing infused body lotions? Although these questions can’t be answered now, it’s clear the public will seek consistency in the quality of cannabis products, just as they would with any other consumable good.

[As business owners and entrepreneurs protecting our intellectual property is paramount. The August 25th 2015 Federal Trade Mark Registration granted to Cannabis Basics by the USPTO is quite a beautiful sign of the times!” Ah Warner, CEO/Founder of Cannabis Basics ] dopemagazine.com ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE

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CANNABIS CONCENTRATES Past, Present & Future WRITER•DUTCH MASTER DESIGN•BRANDON PALMA

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MOROCCO, LEBANON, INDIA – THESE REGIONS HAVE BEEN NOTORIOUS FOR ANCIENT HASHISH PREPARATORY TECHNIQUES RANGING FROM THE SCREENBEATING/ SIFTING OF DRY PLANTS TO HAND RUBBED CHARAS OBTAINED FROM LIVE PLANTS, THE LATTER BEING HIGHLY-PRIZED.

[A Brick of Hashish]

the cannabis community many are under the false assumption cannabis in its concentrated form is a recent development. Popular media outlets regurgitate “facts” about the sudden upsurge in THC content – perpetuating a modern reefer madness. They claim that never before in history have humans seen the high THC levels we are currently witnessing in today’s concentrates. Any cannabis-consuming historian will say though, that this is far from the truth, as humans have been interacting with this plant for over 10,000 years, and often in its extracted, concentrated form. While ancient techniques have a difficult time achieving lab-grade purity, there is extremely strong (60%+ THC) hashish and concentrated forms of cannabis currently produced around the world via methods handed down for generations. Given humanity’s rich history and understanding of ancient cannabis extraction techniques where is extraction headed? By exploring a bit of the past and a tad of the present, we will hopefully be afforded a glimpse into the future of cannabis concentrates. Morocco, Lebanon, India – these regions have been notorious for ancient hashish preparatory techniques ranging from the screen-beating/ sifting of dry plants to hand rubbed charas obtained from live plants, the latter being highlyprized. Many of these very techniques were utilized in these regions hundreds (if not thousands) of years prior, with the tradition being handed down to younger successive generations. These areas are no stranger to cannabis concentrates – with cultural traditions rich in cannabis history. It is important to note, up until the 1970’s these areas (India, in particular) allowed and tolerated cannabis use for medicinal and religious purposes – even allowing it to be sold in government shops. While officially these areas have criminalized cannabis use, after bowing to international pressure, cannabis consumption is still quite common and moderately tolerated, with regions of Northern India still serving the popular beverage bhang, a cannabis-infused lassi-type drink. Unfortunately, many of these ancient techniques have become rather endangered due to draconian anti-drug policies. In the 1960s Western Culture begins to see mass consciousness experimentation and with it, the widespread consumption of cannabis. Academia became a hotbed for radically new ideas and the molecular pursuit for the elusive psychoactive constituents in cannabis, named cannabinoids, began. Although Roger Adams discovered THC in 1940, it was not popularized until Raphael Mechoulam’s THC synthesis in

GROW

[ A man smoking hookah ]

1964. With this came greater inquiries into the possible potentiation of CBD and THC, the two primary active cannabinoids found in cannabis. Readers of popularized cannabis publications of the time became bombarded with all sorts of odd gizmos and gadgets claiming to do just the sort – performing various reactions such as the ISO2 by Thai Power, an “at-home isomerizer,” which allows the user to isomerize CBD to Δ9THC. With greater acceptance and tolerance to cannabis consumption beginning to permeate throughout The West, a greater understanding of the plant as a whole rapidly becomes a reality. Cannabis concentrates finally emerge in the form of Honey Oil, with manufacturing brought up to quazi-laboratory standards. What we begin to see at this moment in history is an exponential increase in the knowledge about cannabis due to mass collaboration, albeit rather clandestine. Today, in a world of legal cannabis consumption we are seeing the emergence of a “concentrate culture” – aficionados whose primary method of consumption is with cannabis concentrates. Illustrious $3,000+ dab rigs, electric nails, rosin presses, the countless novel inventions abound. In Washington State, new regulations have effectively ushered the extraction scene into focusing on new “solventless” extraction methods. Also, mega-conglomerate extraction companies are beginning to dominate due to legislation that eliminates the cottage-industry aspect. With other “green” states choosing to take a different approach to cannabis extraction regulation, it will be interesting to see how Washington State fares on the national level.

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[ PHOTO BY • Kdaniel Ellis ] >

ITH DAB culture pervading

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WRITER•R.Z. HUGHES

Incoming! Airmail Cannabis A family of five living in Nogales, Arizona, less than a mile from the Mexico border, had an unexpected delivery through the roof of their carport. A 23-pound brick of cannabis, presumably dropped by an ultralight aircraft, missed it’s attempted target and came hurdling through the night sky to land with a crash on top of the family’s dog house. While it is not uncommon for smugglers to drop their illicit loads in the desert, this egregious error by the pilot marked the first time it came in such close proximity to a residence.

Deputies Target Okra Farmer In Georgia A man in Cartersville, Georgia got a rude awakening last month when the Governor’s Task Force for Drug Suppression showed up on his front porch armed to the hilt with a chopper hovering over his house. Retired Dwayne Perry happens to enjoy growing okra in his backyard with his much-deserved free time. This innocuous act caught the eye of overzealous, undertrained officers doing aerial sweeps of the area. While he wasn’t detained, and they apologized, Perry is rightfully upset with the Georgia State Patrol as this type of irresponsible raid has led to much grislier ends under different circumstances.

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Indiana Tries On Goofy Anti-Ganja Goggles When the powers that be attempt to educate our youth about drugs, illegitimate fearmongering and scare tactics is commonly the main approach. Hancock County, Indiana, has purchased a new technology for their Youth Council designed to mimic the cognitive impairment after smoking cannabis. In reality, a green lens makes it nearly impossible to see the color red, which in a driving simulation makes red lights, stop signs, and inexplicable urban lasers invisible. While cannabis has never produced color-blindness in users, this brazen lie may no doubt stick with these kids, promoting less-than-educated decisions in their futures.

GRAPHICS •BRANDON PALMA

Baked In The Balkans?

Something is in the air over southeastern Europe and it smells like a big bag of sticky reefer. Within the last few months there have been moves to adopt medical cannabis in both Bulgaria and Croatia, with neighboring country Serbia hosting a massive protest in the name of MaryJane. This news comes at a time when Albania, a nation that shares borders with Serbia and is quite near to Croatia, claims to have eradicated 99% of cannabis within their borders. Croatia had the groundwork to theoretically begin prescribing medicinal cannabis last month, and a Bulgarian MP recently brought a bill that legalizes cannabis for patients to the parliament.

Karachi’s Cop-On-Cop Crime There is serious tension between law enforcement agencies in Pakistan as the AntiNarcotics Force (ANF) has twice raided the offices of the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC), seizing over 200 kilos of hashish and a couple kilos of heroin. Officials in the port city of Karachi have been cracking down on “the local drug mafia,” said to include members of their elite police force. While it looks like the AVCC is caught red-handed, it could very well be that the AVCC originally confiscated the hash because the ANF was engaged in illegal activity, but from this far away it’s difficult to tell which group has its hands in the international hash trade.

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CANNANEWS

WRITER•DAVE HODES

IN FOCUS: MIKE SMIGIEL

[ PHOTO • MICHAEL D. SMIGIEL JR. ELKTON, MARYLAND ]

EPUBLICAN PARTY member, lawyer and former Marine Mike Smigiel is on mission. He wants to honor the Constitution and the will of the people. He considers himself a libertarian, a conservative on fiscal issues and a champion of the fourth and tenth amendments stating “I am as liberal as the constitution says I can be, and as conservative as the constitution says I can be.” As a former delegate in the Maryland legislature, where he spent a dozen years, Smigiel worked across party lines to pass more bipartisan legislation than any other Republican in the Maryland legislature. Some of that work resulted in the passage of a cannabis decriminalization bill in Maryland that he co-sponsored, one of just two Republicans from a list of fourty co-sponsors. The bill was introduced in February, 2014 by Heather Mizeur, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Maryland at that time. Mizeur lost the election but is steadfast in her support of cannabis legalization. Smigiel is running for Maryland’s 1st Congressional district seat in 2016 against Maryland Republican Representative Andy Harris. Harris,

a three-term congressman, gained notoriety in the legalization community in D.C. for his attempts to block the legalization effort in the district by inserting a rider into a congressional omnibus spending bill that passed in December, 2014. The rider barred the district from legalizing and regulating cannabis, and nullified the legalization initiative that had been approved by 70% of the district voters. The initiative remained in place after a review period elapsed with no additional action, and legalization began on February 26, 2015, with a tax and regulating structure still to be determined as a result of the ongoing interpretation about what the rider really means. As a consequence, Harris has quickly become a target of what’s wrong with politicians when it comes to legalization efforts, their interpretation of the constitution, and their push back against the will of the people.

Q DOPE: You are working now

Q DOPE: You would think that

on getting into the primary to run against Andy Harris, who has been very vocal about his position on both medical and recreational marijuana. Why are you looking to get back into the fray of rule making?

the positive things that have happened in Colorado – especially the reported tax revenue in 2014 ($70 million in taxes and licensing fees), would change politician’s opinions. It seems like the discussion about what works is already over.

MIKE SMIGIEL: I think that the federal government has absolutely no right whatsoever in being involved in the issues of medical and recreational marijuana. I try to explain to every Republican that you can’t say that you stand for the tenth amendment, and you can’t stand up for individual state’s rights while you support the law enforcement, or the establishment position, against the legalization of marijuana or against the state deciding that they want to either legalize or decriminalize or accept medical marijuana. These states should go through the process.

Q DOPE: What is the source of your beef with Harris?

MS: Andy Harris clearly showed that he thinks he knows better than the people. The people of D.C. said that this is what we want to do – legalize cannabis, but then Harris interjects his views [that legalization leads to increased teen drug use.] If he is a conservative and he thinks it’s so important that he interjects those views, why won’t he then say, “OK, this is so important. We are going to make sure that the tenth amendment is supported,” but he decides that he is going to override the vote of the people over the legalization in D.C., and interject his own point of view there. Then he goes on the radio and makes the statement that they are also going to take a look at what they are doing in Colorado and California and Texas and Washington, and that they are going to take a look federally at trying to have the feds come in and stop it. That is absolutely anathema to everything that I believe in, in the individual state’s rights. If you have that experimentation with the policies in other states, you can adapt that which works and reject that which doesn’t work.

MS: Well Harris is being disingenuous now. He said let’s forget everything I said before and now, instead of being against cannabis, I am now going to the forefront of saying that we need to do a study. He says that we have to put the pharmaceutical companies in charge of the study, and that is absolutely wrong. They can now make certain plants that are tailored with the THC content and the cannabinoid content so that you can direct it towards a specific ailment, like a child with epilepsy. [ PHOTO • ANDI MORONY, ANNAPOLIS MARYLAND ]

SMIGIEL IS RUNNING FOR MARYLAND’S 1St CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT SEAT IN 2016 AGAINST MARYLAND REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVE ANDY HARRIS.

We are able to do this without the help of the pharmaceutical company coming in and saying that you have to have it in pill form – which is everything that they can control and from which they make a profit. So it’s disingenuous for him to take this position that he is now somehow procannabis, when in fact he is pro-pharma.

Q DOPE: What is your

plan of attack for the upcoming elections? MS: Support the idea of state’s rights. No matter what state you are in, turn your eyes away from your state border and look to D.C. Take out Andy Harris. If that message goes to every senator, to every congressman in every state that you are next if you don’t adhere to those constitutional protections of the people and you don’t stand up for them, you are next. Congressmen want one thing: to be reelected. If they realize when speaking out against the marijuana industry, that they lose the ability to enjoy all of those benefits of being a congressman, they will stop attacking the industry.

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CANNAPI Wh ere Cann a bis Meets Com pa ssion WRITER• MEGHAN RIDLEY

PHOTOS• KENTON BRADLEY

THE PLACE CannaPi has been serving the Seattle medical cannabis community since 2011. Back then, finding a location and getting it approved was a bit of a conundrum, but their diligence and dedication to the movement landed them in the heart of the Emerald City’s Georgetown district. Once inside the facility, patients are invited into a private office environment, rather than the typical waiting room/bud room set-up synonymous with the medical cannabis scene. The one-on-one patient consultation experience is a staple there. A true commitment to discretion, knowledge, family, empathy and compassion guide Canna Pi’s method for providing high quality cannabis.

THE PEOPLE CannaPi is run by the sibling team of Christopher Guthrie, Abigail Livingston and Sean Collins. Together with an additional staff of five, they take cannabis consultation to the next level. While they specialize in cancer care and pain relief, serving a slightly older clientele, they also aim to de-mystify and deconstruct the long held, manufactured stigma that surrounds cannabis. They serve between 25-40 patients per day, who travel from all corners of Washington State to receive the top notch care and education that both they, and the plant, deserve.

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A TRUE COMMTMENT TO DISCRETION, KNOWLEDGE, FAMILY, EMPATHY AND COMPASSION GUIDE CANNA PI’S METHOD FOR PROVIDING HIGH QUALITY CANNABIS.

THE PLANT You’ll find a diverse selection of concentrates and topical cannabis products available at CannaPi, as well as some of the more beautiful and consistently available CBD strains in the Seattle area. The team here spent much of 2013 and 2014 pheno-hunting CBD genetics, making them a leader in the wellness-based arena. They also offer specialty capsules, which are getting harder and harder to find as the patient-centric medical cannabis system is phased out during Washington’s cannabis market transition. As expected, you’ll also find the fire here, as in the White Fire Alien OG, Black Cherry Soda and Grand Daddy Purple flowers, so come and en® joy.

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EDUCATE, CELEBRATE, ELEVATE

THE PLACE One step inside of Evergreen Market will leave one fully appreciating the alignment with theivr brand ethic of “educate, celebrate and elevate.” Here, they educate their customers via a knowledge bar, celebrating cannabis through their impeccable store with an open environment. They help to elevate industry standards at every turn, setting a new bar for the cannabis consumer shopping experience. Evergreen Market is equal parts eco-friendly and edgy,

resulting in a look and vibe that will appeal to old school tokers, people new to the plant, and dedicated cannabis enthusiasts. The interior is constructed of an eclectic mix of reclaimed barn wood and recycled industrial materials, making for a undeniably unique feel to the storefront. And if you happen to be in a hurry and not in the mood to peruse this beautiful store, feel free to hit the express window and quickly pick up your cannabis essentials.

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THE PEOPLE

THE STAFF IS EQUAL PARTS BOTH KNOWLEDGEABLE AND PASSIONATE ABOUT THE PLANT, WITH A CLOSE-KNIT VIBE THAT LEAVES PATRONS EAGER TO CONVERSE

Evergreen is owned and operated by three fathers from the Issaquah area. While they’ve all come from different walks of life, tvhey all agree on this one fact - they’ve been “blessed by the opportunity to participate in a magical transformation - creating a new norm

and manifesting a new paradigm.” The staff is equal parts knowledgeable and passionate about the plant, with a close-knit vibe that will leaves patrons eager to converse with them ® about cannabis.

THE PLANTS One of the main partnerships Evergreen Market nurtures is with Master Grown. There’s a multitude of strains and competitive price points available—from hardhitting indicas to uplifting sativas and all the hybrids in-between. If you’re in need of an ounce, Evergreen Market stocks their shelves deep in that department and manages to keep most under the $300 range. There’s also a vast selection of half gram and full gram pre rolls, and top shelf chronic from brands such as Phat Panda and Fire Line.

409 RAINIER AVE NORTH RENTON, WA 98057 (425) 318-8898

theevergreenmarket.com

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LEBANESE HASHISH BY SITKA GENETICS

FLAVOR

In the coffee shops of Amsterdam, Lebanese Gold reigns supreme alongside its coveted cousin, Lebanese Red. Made entirely by hand, the Middle Eastern style of hash making doesn’t involve any solvents or ice water, leaving the finished product pure and full of cannabinoids. The Gold is more sativa, while the Leb-Red is traditionally made from mature indica flowers.

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The thick, rich smoke is layered with sweet lemon, incense, and spices. It has the classic hash taste that proves this stuff is authentic, hand-made goodness rather than the over-heated pressed kief that is routinely passed off as hashish in the states. There are slight hints of chocolate as well as hazelnut making for a tasty treat.

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THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS As the days get steadily shorter and more wet in the Pacific Northwest, Sitka’s Leb-Gold offers a respite from the rainy day blues. It may help with easing depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder as it is potent and inspiring but not overwhelmingly psychoactive. It has also been known to relax stiff joints and knead out deep muscle aches.

EFFECT

A strong fragrance of lemon is immediately noticeable. The blonde hashish has a much brighter scent, perfumed with the blossoms of citrus trees, while the red is earthier, with a complex body of fertile soil and spicy herbs. A subtle lavender quality slips in after a couple big whiffs, ending the experience on a floral note.

Sitka’s Lebanese Gold is cheerful and upbeat with a calming feeling of overall comfort. With its heady euphoria and stimulating energy, it’s easy to see why this type of hashish has gained such high favor throughout Europe. The Leb-Red is much more narcotic and generally contains more THC, producing a heavily sedative bodily relaxation.

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FEATURE

B L ACK L I VE S M ATT E R

ONE NEU ROSCIENTIST’S MISSION TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD

AS THE STORY GOES, Dr. Carl Hart was living a good life as a successful black man when his past came back to haunt him, and that’s where this story begins. Why did I use the descriptor “black” when he is clearly a successful man? In more than one story researched online his tag line came with the color of his skin. One can easily speculate it’s the very same reason our prisons are lopsided with black non-violent offenders. Statistics show the same amount of people, white or black, consume and sell the same amount of drugs and the failed War on Drugs isn’t changing the discrepancy many simply call discrimination.

ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE dopemagazine.com

WRITER•SHARON LETTS

PHOTOS•EILEEN BARROSO

To begin again, Dr. Carl Hart is a neuroscientist, a best-selling author, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Columbia University. His first effort to explain the failed War on Drugs and the misinformation surrounding it, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of SelfDiscovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, is at once a memoir, a book on drug policy, and a primer on the science of drugs. The work also won him a PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award – one of the most prestigious awards given for physical and biological sciences today. John Tierney of the New York Times called High Price, “A fascinating combination of memoir and social science. Wrenching scenes of deprivation and violence accompanied by calm analysis of historical data and laboratory results.” Hart compiles the painful facts from his own life, but it’s to explain the failed War on Drugs from the black perspective, coming himself from a poor neighborhood of color in South Florida. The work’s accolades focused on his “empirical evidence,” impossible to deny, ripping U.S. policy public perceptions to shreds in the process. “High Price reminded readers that some of our most respected members of society were (and perhaps still are) pot smokers, including the last three occupants of the White House,” Hart says from his home in New York. This, and other data, is helping to change the perception of the typical pot smoker from the ‘Doritos-eating’, lazy, couch potato – to you and me, responsible citizens.” His memoir recounted the morning he was presented with a paternity suit by a woman he had fathered her 17 year-old son with, now leading the troubled life he once fled from in his old neighborhood. It had been a one-night stand and he remembered the young woman sneaking him in through her bedroom window, in lieu of her mother’s watchful eye. He had been studying drug addiction from a neuroscientist’s perspective from his seat at Columbia, and was now facing that world in a very personal way. He learned his son had dropped out of high school, fathered several children with different women, sold drugs, and allegedly shot someone. With two small children already at home, the newly appointed Associate Professor at Columbia had his parenting

THE STATISTICS IN BLACK & WHITE • 2001-2010: 8 Million Arrests • 88% for possession of drugs • Cannabis arrests, 52% of arrests • Cannabis possession, 46% of arrests • 2010, one cannabis arrest every 37 seconds • States spent over 3.6 billion on enforcement of possession • Blacks are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested in every region • Blacks & Whites use cannabis in similar rates, wealthy or poor • In more than 96% of counties with more than 30K people where only 2% are black residents, arrests are higher for blacks From the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) report, “The War on Marijuana in Black & White” June, 2013 work cut out for him. From his website he writes, “I’d wanted to teach my children everything I hadn’t known as I grew up with a struggling single mother, surrounded by people whose lives were limited by their own lack of knowledge. I wanted them to go to good schools, to know how to negotiate the potential pitfalls of being black in the United States, to not have to live and die by whether they were considered ‘man’ enough on the street. I also wanted to illustrate by my own example that bad experiences, like those I had as a child, aren’t the defining factor in being authentically black.” He began questioning his own path. How did he go from a black kid on the street with “learning difficulties” in elementary school, to an Ivy League professor? He admits to doing all the wrong things he barely studied but to pass high school; he carried guns, and deejayed in Miami within the ranks of Run-DMC and Luther Campbell, dodging bullets with the best of them; he witnessed “drug related homicides” at 12, losing a friend to gun violence; he witnessed his cousins stealing from their mother for crack – watching his neighborhood fall to addiction in the early 80s. How did he make it out? “I had five sisters – all older than me and they functioned as surrogate mothers,” he explained while on PBS’s The Tavis Smiley Show. “I had a grandmother that was really strong who doted on me, who wanted to make sure I didn’t go off the beaten path – even though I did, I didn’t want to disappoint my grandmother or my sisters in any major way.” Sports also played a role, not via a scholarship, but with the added incentive of keep-

ing up at least a 2.0 GPA, enabling him to play basketball, and subsequently allowing him to graduate. Hart said mentors were everywhere, but a supportive counselor in high school saw his potential and encouraged him to join the Air Force. “In the Air Force I served all my time overseas in Japan and England,” he shares. “Being in England was critical because it was an English speaking country with a social critique of the U.S., particularly regarding race issues. I had to go to England to learn about race relations in the U.S.” Empirical evidence points the longest finger at the discrimination that follows the failed War on Drugs, with the only winners in the war being law enforcement budgets and privatized prison profits, according to Hart, with poor neighborhoods suffering and wealthy ones seemingly left alone. Former U.S. Marshall and Drug Enforcement Agent (DEA) Matthew Fogg infamously appeared in a video clip produced by documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, stating the wealthier demographics of most raids are purposefully avoided. “I started noticing that most of the time we were hitting urban areas,” Fogg explained. “I would ask, ‘Well, don’t they sell drugs in Springfield and places like that?’ Statistics show they use more drugs out there than anywhere. He said, ‘You know, if we start messing with them we’d be in real trouble – those are doctors and lawyers, they know people. If we start locking up their kids they’ll start jerking our chain.’ He said, ‘they are going to call us on that, they are going to start shutting us down, and there goes your overtime.’”

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OBAMA’S VISIT WAS LARGELY SYMBOLIC. YOU CAN’T EAT SYMBOLISM, NOR CAN YOU MAKE LOVE TO IT. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF SYMBOLISM. IT’S TIME FOR SUBSTANCE.

One strong piece of evidence that the failed War on Drugs targets those less fortunate is the very law supporting the convictions of both crack cocaine and powdered cocaine. As a scientist, Hart says the two substances are the same, yet penalties are much harsher for crack, found in lower income neighborhoods. Tavis Smiley offered up the adage, “Crack on

the streets, cocaine in the suites.” A vast majority of arrests for crack cocaine involve African Americans, and Hart wisely theorizes that if a vast majority of cocaine users who look like members of congress started getting arrested for cocaine, the laws would change. “The law itself isn’t racist, the enforcement of the law is,” Hart continues. “If we place law enforcement in neighborhoods of color you are going to catch people committing crimes. I live in a relatively upscale neighborhood in New York. If you place law enforcement in my community, particularly when it’s time to take the kids to school, you’ll catch them breaking the law every time – they speed, they sell drugs, but they aren’t getting caught because law enforcement is not there.” The crux of the problem, Hart clarifies, is not in the drug use itself, or even in the manufacturing and selling of it. “In this country we are led to believe it’s the drugs that cause communities to be how they are. The vast majority of people who use crack cocaine – something like 80-90% of them - do so without any problems. They work, they pay taxes. So when you have this small percentage of people who have problems, you can’t blame the drugs.” So what’s the problem, you ask? Why the disparities between crack and coke? Why are there more black men behind bars for pot than white men? If it’s not the drugs, what is it? “As a scientist, you are asking me to think like an idiot,” Hart laughs at the ridiculous prospect of even trying to answer the question intelligently. The disparities are as glaring as the discrimination, from a scientific view point. “The War on Drugs has not failed. The U.S. would not have stayed with a policy for more than 40 years if it was a failure. The policy has been hugely successful because law enforcement has, and continues to, benefit handsomely. Each year we spend more than $25 billion in the effort and most of it goes to law enforcement.” The same can be said for the privatized prisons, prosecutors, and drug treatment providers, with Hart adding media, researchers, politicians, filmmakers, and even comedians to the mix of those benefiting from the war on drugs. “The only groups not benefiting are drug users – especially if they are black – and the people who love them,” Hart concludes. Currently the professor is on sabbatical from Columbia working on his second effort, a book on decriminalizing and managing drug

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use, rather than incarceration. Programs that register and manage heroin addiction have been running with great success in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. With more than 20,000 people a year dying of opiate overdoses alone in the U.S. each year, something has to give. When asked if he feels President Obama’s recent visit to a privatized prison will make a difference in drug policy, he didn’t even have to think about it. “Emphatically, no,” he says. “This visit was largely symbolic. You can’t eat symbolism, nor can you make love to it. We have had enough of symbolism. It’s time for substance. It would be more beneficial – more substantial – if the president pushes for federal legislation decriminalizing the possession of all drugs, as they’ve done in Portugal and the Czech Republic. In this way, we would immediately decrease 1.2 million arrests each year – or the total amount of people who are arrested for simple possessing a drug.” While Hart feels some may be hopeful about President Obama’s recent visit to a Federal prison, and the subsequent release of approximately 6,000 nonviolent drug offenders, who had sentences reduced by an average of two years, he advises we still have a long way to go. “While this is a step in the right direction, I would remind people that we have more than 2.3 million of our citizens behind bars and that we already without this recent move - release more than 10,000 prisoners every week in this country. In short, the recent release of the 6,000 prisoners is a small – very small – step. Giant steps are needed.”

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CANNANEWS

WRITER•SHARON LETTS

CAMPAIGN ZERO Ending Police Violence in America BLACK LIVES MATTER, NOT A MOMENT, A MOVEMENT “Moving the hashtag to the streets”

HE CRUSADE to end police violence against people of color in America begins with statistics, or what Dr. Carl Hart refers to as, “Empirical evidence. More than one thousand people are killed by police every year in America,” he states, “Nearly 60 percent of victims did not have a gun, or were involved in activities that should not require police intervention, such as harmless ‘quality of life’ behaviors or mental health crisis.” Campaign Zero was launched by Black Lives Matter activists Samuel Sinyangwe, Brittany Packnett, DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie. The organization’s website displays a graphic of the current 2015 calendar year, January through September, stating there has only been nine days that the police have not killed someone. The stats on police killings in other countries pale next to the U.S., with a reported 1,100 people killed at the hands of those enlisted to “Protect & Serve,” compared to six in Germany, two in the UK, six in Australia, and zero in Japan. Some ways to encourage transparency and accountability within law enforcement in your community:

SOME WAYS TO ENCOURAGE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY WITHIN LAW ENFORCEMENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY: End “broken windows policing,” for minor crimes or activities that can lead to overpolicing. Community oversight, where residents hold officers accountable via a civilian oversight structure. Establish standards for reporting police use of deadly force, revise and strengthen policies. Monitor how police use force and hold them accountable. Independent Investigations of police violence, and mandatory body cams. Community Representation: increase the number of officers who reflect the communities they serve. Training in interacting with communities that preserve life. End for Profit Policing via quotas for tickets and arrests, and end high-speed chases. Demilitarization, ending the war zone at civil protests. Fair Police Contracts, remove barriers to effective misconduct investigations, with civil oversight.

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The movement, spurned by often unexplained and harsh abuse of people of color by law enforcement, began after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood patrolling volunteer, George Zimmerman. What began as an online connection-building forum by three women, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, turned into a platform for empowerment. According to its website the three women wanted to “spark dialogue among black people, and to facilitate the types of connections necessary to encourage social action and engagement.” Co-founder Garza writes, “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” The founders created the movement in an effort to “rebuild the Black liberation movement,” and reinstate the basic human rights and dignity so many blacks in this country are deprived of. It’s an acknowledgement that black poverty and genocide is a state violence, and that “one million black people are locked in cages in this country – one half of all people in prisons

or jails – is an act of state violence.” The list of “state violence” against blacks in America is a long one, and the organizers surmise, “#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that black lives, which are seen as without value within white supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on black lives, we understand that when black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide reaching and transformative for society as a whole. When we are able to end hyper-criminalization and sexualization of black people and end the poverty, control, and surveillance of black people, every single person in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free. When black people get free, everybody gets free.” Funny man Ngaio Bealum has graced the stages of weed festivals and cannabis cups coast to coast, appearing in television shows, such as Doug Benson’s “Getting Doug with High,” “The Sarah Silverman Program,” and recording “Weed & Sex,” a comedic CD that needs no explanation.

and plenty of jokes to follow. “Working weed into my routine happened organically,” says Ngaio. “They tell you to talk about what you know. I know weed, and the history of weed, and what it’s like to lead a cannacentric lifestyle.” Though he’d like to see more of the African American community at cannabis events, he says it is happening slowly. “I just joined the Minority Cannabis Business Association. Our goal is to get more women and people of color involved in cannabusiness.” A common belief throughout the cannabis community is the feeling that the War on Drugs is actually a war on its people, and Bealum agrees. “The private prison industry is unconstitutional and un-American,” he says. “No one should make money from human suffering, and folks deprived of their freedom. Private prisons lead to more prohibitions and longer sentences – just to increase the bottom line – and that should be abhorrent to any right thinking person. Decriminalization [of cannabis] would go a long way toward decreasing the systemic racism and abuses of authority we have in this country.”

NGAIO BEALUM Comedian, Activist, Writer, Chronnisseur

KYNDRA MILLER Attorney, CannaBusiness Law, Inc.

The son of hippie parents, Bealum gathered a lifetime of comedic material growing up on the culturally diverse streets of San Francisco – but it wasn’t all fun and games. “ My neighborhood was racially mixed and pretty cool, but there were some ass hats,” he shares. “My sixth grade teacher told me, ‘nigger kids don’t belong in the gifted program,’ but overall I had a good time.” Bealum says while all black people are his role models, there have been a few white folks in the mix. “Langston Hughes, Sherlock Holmes, Fred Hampton, Lee Morgan, and Moms Mabley, come to mind.” Weed didn’t enter into the equation until college, with burning joints a favorite method of delivery

Kyndra Miller was born in Rochester, New York, but raised by a single mother in Palo Alto, California. A predominantly white community in the late 1970s and 80s, Miller says the climate of the Stanford University town was liberal and culturally diverse. “Growing up in a predominately white, financially wealthy neighborhood provided me with an opportunity to obtain a top-notch public education at the primary and secondary levels,” she explains. “It also gave me an academic advantage when I matriculated to the University of California, San Diego.” From a social perspective, Miller says all of her friends growing up were white. “I learned to love and trust people that looked

THESE AND OTHER RACIAL HEALTH DISPARITIES ARE NOT THE RESULT OF SOME UNIQUE DEFECT OF MELANIN CONTENT.

different from me at a very young age,” she continues. “In hindsight, I realize that this ability is why I’m successful today.” The only black role model Miller said she had was her mother, Deidre Miller. “This woman is fierce!” Miller shares. “She started a Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology at the University of San Francisco as a single mom. She is my first love, my first BFF and my primary role model. My mother taught me to love all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic status. She set me up for success from the very beginning.” Miller began practicing law in Los Angeles in the entertainment industry, but soon moved into cannabis business law, with two offices, representing clients in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She’s been a patient out of necessity since a teenager. “My consumption was medicinal from the very beginning, as I faced some challenges with eating properly. Smoking cannabis works best for me, though I am excited to learn about alternative consumption methods, like vaporizing and eating edibles.” Miller’s activism to end the prohibition of the plant began in 2009, first with NORML, then the NORML Women’s Alliance (NWA). Since she grew up in a white demographic, she was undaunted by the predominately white cannabis community. The women’s groups are appearing to make more headway with minority communities, and Miller says the NWA’s logo features a woman of color. “I think the solution is rather simple. The more people of color that speak out publically about cannabis prohibition, and occupy seats in the board rooms and executive offices of cannabis businesses and organizations, the more we will see them participating in the industry,” Miller says. “I’ve seen more women and people of color participating in cannabis cups and rallies,

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but I wish there were more black speakers on the circuit. I’d like to see more successful black entrepreneurs – the fact that anyone can still count on one hand the number of ‘black’ cannabusinesses is just sad, but that’s true for most industries.”

DR. CARL HART Author, Professor & Neuropsychopharamacologist Columbia University, New York

Dr. Hart’s past was made public after penning his best-selling book High Price. Brought up by a single mother with eight kids in a predominantly black and poor south Florida neighborhood, Hart’s work includes personal stories from his past, with critics applauding him for his honesty. “I didn’t want young black men and women thinking they had to be perfect to get where I’m at, because I’m by no means perfect.” PBS Talk show host Tavis Smiley questioned the professor on his appearance, stating he would never guess by looking at him he was a professor at Columbia, to which Hart replied, “You have to be the best at what you do. If you aren’t the best, you aren’t getting away with it. I work at being the best that I can, in order to be myself.” Hart says his dreads are also a nod to the Rastafarian movement, where he explains he initially learned to question authority, something he’s grateful for now.

“If all the young brothers understood what dreadlocks were about, why we wear them – they would begin to think critically. Politics of respectability has done so much harm. There’s this notion that black people have to be so much better than white people. If we paid more attention to how black people think and not how they look, when faced with a potentially dangerous situation, they might have better people skills.” Smiley posed the question, “Why should people listen to you if you look like a drug dealer?” To which Hart replies, “I encourage people to be smart and think for themselves. I don’t feel the need to physically smack someone down for disagreeing with me, I’ll smack them intellectually.” The Black Lives Matter campaign, he says, brought up some valid albeit, painful realities. “The facts are black women can live three years less than white women; the difference between black and white men is nearly five years. In the United States, being black can be bad for your health. This is an inescapable fact, especially when you consider the following people and circumstances surrounding their deaths: Kathryn Johnston, Tarika Wilson, Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray. These and other racial health disparities are not the result of some unique defect of melanin content. They are the result of the racial discrimination that operates dayin and day-out, hour-by-hour, in this country.

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DRUG WAR FACTS sixth edition, by Douglas A. McVay

Cannabis activist, journalist, and executive director of the non-profit Common Sense for Drug Policy Doug McVay created the “Drug War Facts” website in 1998 in an effort to provide evidence from government and other accredited sources on the failed War on Drugs in the U.S. Its mission is to debunk myths and misinformation surrounding the failed policies plaguing its people for decades. It also advocates drug management policies rather than incarceration. According to drugwarfacts.org, “Black males had higher imprisonment rates across all age groups than all other races and Hispanic males. In the age range with the highest imprisonment rates for males (ages 25 to 39), black males were imprisoned at rates at least 2.5 times greater than Hispanic males and 6 times greater than white males. For males ages 18 to 19 - the age range with the greatest difference in imprisonment rates between whites and blacks - black males (1,092 inmates per 100,000 black males) were more than 9x more likely to be imprisoned than white males (115 inmates per 100,000 white males). The difference between black and white female inmates of the same age was smaller, but still substantial. Black females ages 18 to 19 (33 inmates per 100,000) were almost 5x more likely to be imprisoned than white females (7 inmates per 100,000).”

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CANNANEWS

WRITER•JESSICA ZIMMER DESIGN•BRANDON PALMA

TIPPED SCALES RACIAL DISPARITY WITHIN THE WAR ON DRUGS

OR DECADES America’s war on cannabis has disproportionately affected African Americans. Politicians, professors, law enforcement officers, and drug policy reform lobbyists agree that change will require the improvement of police practices, at least partial legalization for medical use, and the modification of laws and regulations regarding a wide variety of subjects like immigration, driving and voting privileges, child custody, employment, housing, student loans, and the sealing of criminal records. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s 2013 report on cannabis enforcement, The War on Marijuana in Black and White, African Americans were 3.73x more than likely than whites to be arrested for cannabis possession. This is true even though both blacks and whites use cannabis at similar rates. The data that formed the basis for the report was collected between 2001 and 2010. Jon Gettman, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Shenandoah University who collected a considerable amount of the data, says a primary cause for the disparity in arrests is a style of policing called ‘broken windows’. It involves aggressively responding to small problems in a neighborhood to show that people care about the neighborhood,” Gettman explains. “The policing helps deter more serious crimes. If there’s a broken window and no one fixes that window, people will throw rocks

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and break other windows. The idea is that you create a more civil, more orderly community.” Gettman says across the country, law enforcement officers have “prioritized” areas for broken windows policing where members of the African American community live and work. “Marijuana possession arrests have no impact on the drug trade, and they’re a bad habit on the part of police officers,” he says. “Legalization removes the temptation to indulge in that bad habit, and will reduce tension, friction, and hostilities between police officers and residents of various communities.” Danielle Keane, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says legalization is key. “If people were not considered criminals for possessing cannabis, the police wouldn’t be in these neighborhoods.” She also suggests that retroactive expungement of criminal records, for individuals convicted of cannabis possession, should be adopted in states that have legalized the plant. This will ensure that these individuals will not be monitored by probation officers for cannabis-related offenses, or have cannabis possession used as a reason to deprive them of the custody of a child, OR have cannabis possession used to strip them of their voting and driving privileges. These individuals will also become more eligible for student loans, housing, and employment.”

WE NEED TO EXEMPLIFY BASIC PRINCIPLES. OUR POLICE DEPARTMENTS SHOULD BE BOTH REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMUNITIES THEY SERVE, AS WELL AS KNOW THE PEOPLE THEY SERVE.

She clarifies the organization’s intent stating, “NORML is based on huge, extensive grassroots networks throughout the country. We see how important it is to have these conversations about racial disparity.” In Florida, Michigan State Senator Vincent Gregory (D-District 11) says there is no question that legalization would reduce the number of arrests in the African American community, but despite this, some residents in those communities do not support legalization. Gregory served as a law enforcement officer in southeast Michigan for 29 years. He says it is important to remember that these communities have been “hit hard by drug use,” and explains, “There is a fear in communities that drug use may become even more prevalent if we legalize cannabis. Many ask ‘How is it going to help us?’” He suggests other steps that can be taken that include requiring law enforcement officers to issue warnings, instead of conducting arrests. Law enforcement officers can also be trained to form good relationships with residents and business owners. Maintaining ongoing conversations between proponents and opponents of legalization allow everyone to share concerns. Gregory is motivated by America’s shifting attitude toward legalization. Change has built bridges between Republicans and Democrats. In the past, Michigan Republicans were staunchly opposed to cannabis. Now numerous Republicans, including Michigan State Representative Michael Callton (R-District 87), support legislation to improve access and regulation of therapeutic cannabis. He suggests improving police practices may prove to be a greater challenge. Traditionally, law enforcement agencies are given great autonomy in terms of deciding what changes they will make. They are also given the power to decide how they will enforce local laws and regulations. Carlyle Holder, president of the National Association of Blacks in

Criminal Justice (NABCJ), shares some of Gregory’s views. The NABCJ is primarily composed of black professionals in the field of criminal justice. He lives in central Florida and served 27 ½ years with the Federal Bureau of Prisons of the U.S. Department of Justice.Holder says the NABCJ is opposed to legalization. “As long as people continue to be incarcerated for cannabis, I cannot even begin to consider the topic of legalization. The federal government, which trumps state law, hasn’t even made an attempt to address the legalization of cannabis.” Holder also says the NABCJ sees medicinally used cannabis as a different issue, one on which the organization has yet to formalize an opinion. “I think medical marijuana is a nexus to legalization.” In November 2016, Florida voters may again consider legalizing more strains of cannabis for therapeutic use other than just Charlotte’s Web. Holder says much of the “over-policing” of lower-class neighborhoods with regard to cannabis possession has to do with economics. “In middle-class communities, we see less enforcement. In higher-end communities, the residents will not let the police patrol and harass them.” He explains that changing the quality of life in lower-class urban neighborhoods will reduce the number of cannabis possession arrests. “In these neighborhoods, black men from the ages of 18 to 24 are on the street, because there’s nothing else for them to do. Schools in these areas are underfunded. America has to make a massive investment in these neighborhoods.” He also suggests police practices need to improve, and that they should implement the recommendations of The Final Report on The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. This document, published in May 2015, sets out recommendations for law enforcement agencies organized around six main topics: Building Trust and Legitimacy, Policy and Oversight, Technology and Social dopemagazine.com ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE

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Media, Community Policing and Crime Reduction, Officer Training and Education, and Officer Safety and Wellness. “We don’t want police departments like the one in Ferguson; the lack of diversity in that department was clearly a recipe for disaster. We need to exemplify basic principles. Our police departments should be both representative of the communities they serve, as well as know the people they serve,” says Holder. “We want the law to be fairly and consistently applied. The quality of justice should be equal across the board.” New York City, which in the past three decades was notorious for having disproportionately high numbers for Black and Latino cannabis possession arrests, is seeing change because of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2014 decriminalization of possession. In November 2014, De Blasio began requiring police officers to issue a person in possession of 25 grams or less of cannabis a summons, rather than arrest them, provided the person has no warrant and has identification. The number of misdemeanor cannabis possession arrests dropped from 7,110 between January and March 2014 to 2,960 between January and March 2015. Unfortunately, the racial disparity for possession arrests has persisted. In the first quarter of 2015, the statistics for arrests were as follows: 1,494 Blacks (50.47% of the total); 1,130 Latinos (38.18 percent of the total); and 228 Whites (7.70 percent of the total). Kassandra Frederique, New York policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), a national nonprofit organization that supports drug policy reform says “We can’t just move arrests to tickets and think that the problem will be addressed.” Frederique points out that New York City

police officers have a history of not obeying directives related to arrests in Black and Latino communities and comments that “Creating different accountability structures for law enforcement is essential.” She also says it is important for Black and Latino communities to discuss how to monitor law enforcement officers. The DPA’s long-range goal is to see cannabis legalized at the state level, “with an economic justice perspective.” The organization has lobbied for The Fairness and Equity Act, a comprehensive piece of legislation that will change many ways that New York State treats individuals with cannabis possession convictions. “People remain incarcerated for past cannabis possession offenses. They are not able to get public housing. They can lose custody of their children. They are denied certain statuses as immigrants. They can’t pass employment security checks. They are denied student loans,” she explains.“Republicans in the New York State Senate are [being] really dense about this issue. They have not been interested in acknowledging the impact of cannabis-related arrests, especially on young people. If we don’t deal with the past and change the laws, we will not be acknowledging the impact that cannabis prohibition has had on people of color,” says Frederique. Alyssa Aguilera, political director of Vocal NY, a nonprofit organization that does community organizing in low-income neighborhoods in New York City, says her organization has partnered with the DPA to advocate for legalization and The Fairness and Equity Act. “The end goal is to end the war on cannabis so no one is arrested for having small amounts for personal use,” Aguilera says. “In the meantime, we are making ef-

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forts to [encourage] the de-prioritization of those arrests. In a lot of places, cannabis possession means a ticket, or fine, or summons rather than being pulled through the entire criminal justice system.” Aguilera suggests changing police practices will help with lowering the number of African and Latino arrests. “Still, I think there’s a lot of animosity and distrust; it will take time to repair relationships. The police are literally in watchtowers over communities, and they still engage in aggressive behavior.”

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ROAD TRIP

WRITER•SHARON LETTS

VIRTUAL ROAD TRIP: Garden City, Kansas The Shon a Banda Story LTHOUGH seventy percent of residents in the mid-western State of Kansas support cannabis as medicine, two bills presented this past year still failed to win approval in the state’s legislative session. The Marijuana Policy Project (MMP) calls Kansas’ cannabis laws “Draconian,” with the smallest spec of pot landing its residents in jail for up to a year with a thousand dollar fine. A second offense with another crumb and you could face felony charges and up to three years in the pen, drained of one hundred thousand dollars in fines. According to the Rand Corporation, studies have found harsh penalties do not reduce drug usage, and all the money in the world thrown at the miserably failed War on Drugs won’t deter humans from partaking. What if you are in an illegal state such as Kansas, though, and you have been enlightened to plant-based medicines, specifically cannabis, where other traditional meds have failed? What if it was the

only thing that helped? Would you do it anyway? A recent interview with rocker Melissa Etheridge (Dope Magazine, October 2015) found the artist’s only hesitancy in using cannabis for cancer symptoms was the fear of losing her children. Even though she was in a legal state to do so, the real fear was there. She had heard the horror stories of Child Protective Services taking children away from legitimate patients in legal states, let alone states like Kansas. “That part was scary,” Etheridge said. “I was being helped by this plant, and I was in a legal state, but I still had that fear that they could come and take my kids.” Kansas born Shona Banda was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 2002. Also suffering from autoimmune deficiency, she said took every medication they gave her. When the meds stopped working, she tried another, then another, until multiple gastrointestinal surgeries became her only option.

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According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America, there is no known cause of the chronic ailment that affects more than 700,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 35. While family history plays a part in contracting Crohn’s, environment and diet seem to also play a role, with it appearing most frequently in developed countries. Similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s suffers present with persistent diarrhea, rectal bleeding, urgent needs for bowel movements, abdominal cramps and pain, sensations of incomplete evacuation, and constipation (obstruction). Daily symptoms can include fever, loss of appetite, weight loss, fatigue, night sweats, and the loss of a normal menstrual cycle. While diet and stress can aggravate symptoms, irritants are not thought to be the cause of the disease. Crohn’s appears to weaken the immune system, with the patient unable to fight off the mildest of inflammation and infections. A cocktail of prescription meds is often needed to quell myriad symptoms. The good news is cannabis helps. In a placebo-controlled study, published by the American Gastroenterological Association, researchers found patients who were administered cannabis (via smoking only) went into “complete remission” from all symptoms of Crohn’s disease. Three patients were weaned from steroid dependency, with all reporting improved appetite and sleep, and no significant side effects. Numerous patients are now on the green

THEN BANDA’S HUSBAND BEGGED HER TO TRY CANNABIS, AND THE CHILDREN SAW HER BEING HELPED BY A PLANT THEY WERE ALL TOLD WAS DANGEROUS.

train of wellness, traveling to legal states for healing. Many stay in their home states however, preferring to be surrounding by family, and taking their chances with persecution if caught. Shona Banda tried to stay put initially, but the plant material in her home state was not inspiring, to say the least. “When I first started to smoke for pain it was around 2003,” Banda shares. “Finding cannabis was hard at times, however, even ten years ago it was possible. Everyone knows someone, no matter the geographical location you live in. The quality wasn’t always great, but I had been in pain for so long I was praying for sleep or death at that point.” Her two kids watched her go through eleven surgeries in seven years. At one point she was taking 52 pills a day, including Remicade, at a cost of one thousand dollars a month. The lengthy warning list on the FDA approved drug states a possible side effect of “spontaneous pneumothorax,” or partial lung collapse, which sent Banda to the hospital for nearly two months. Most of her kid’s young lives were spent watching their mom suffer greatly. Then Banda’s husband begged her to try cannabis, and the children saw he being helped by a plant they were all told was dangerous. “I was a D.A.R.E. child and would have nothing to do with it,” she explained. “One day I was puking in the toilet and my husband was holding my hair back for me, saying he had brought me a joint to smoke. He pleaded with me to understand that this helped cancer patients, and if I had those same symptoms I should

About that same time the feel the same relief.” Stanley brothers were growing Banda said she reluctantly what would become Charlotte’s took the offer out of sheer desperation, and as the pain left Web, a CBD strain used to make oil for kids with epilepsy, her body after just smoking a but Banda was just slightly small amount, she literally fell ahead of her time. to the ground sobbing in relief, Her husband’s infidelity and disbelief. and subsequent separation had “Cannabis had taken my Banda struggling to survive pain away better than anything in the high priced state, and I had ever been given by a she was forced to pack up and physician,” she explained with go back home to Garden City, enthusiasm. “It was like finding Kansas. out Santa was not real as an “I just want to survive, I adult. This green cigarette had want to provide, and I want to done so much for my cramping grow and live with my children,” and pain, my thoughts were she says. “That is no crime. spinning in my head as I That is sheer will. That is what realized I had been lied to my love is, to do whatever it takes entire life. This was the best to stay alive and provide for thing for me and it was illegal.” your children. The only crime Soon she was vaporizing here was forcefully taking a to get cleaner medicine into child from his mother. her weakened lungs, and began The story in the media making medicine via oil to said that her 11 year-old-son ingest, putting her condition spoke up during a D.A.R.E. into complete remission. event or anti-drug rally at “I had seen the movie, Run school. The truth is it was from the Cure, and I knew I a mock counseling session needed to eat this in a pill, just involving the entire class with like real medication.” many different topics. Her Run from the Cure is Rick son’s responses were directed Simpson’s story - re-creator at teaching the counselor why of the strong cannabis oil that his mother did not believe puts cancer and other serious “marijuana” was bad. He also let ailments into remission (Dope, the counselor know that in the July 2015). family home they referred to In 2010 she penned the plant as “cannabis.” Live Free or Die detailing her It was a bold move by struggles and how cannabis a naive child to defend his helped her with Crohn’s mother, her health, and her disease. She and husband medicine. What followed was moved the family to Colorado, anything but civil. Her son and Banda soon became an was taken from the class, Child advocate for legalization. An Protective Services (CPS) was association with Rick Simpson called, and he was questioned and the Phoenix Tears extensively by the Garden City Foundation began, and Banda Police Department about the worked on the second version processes of medicating. The of his story with Run from the only problem was the substance Cure II. was not considered to be “My oil was the first ever medicine by the interrogators, tested for CBD in Colorado, and his mother was being and I have been the only oil accused of being a dealer, not maker Rick Simpson himself the healer she was. has ever endorsed,” she shares. Banda says that what “However, while there, no one was interested in CBD only oil.” became an “interrogation” of dopemagazine.com ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE

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her son without her or the father’s knowledge by the Garden City Police Department was leaked to the press by the department itself. “It would not be farfetched of me to say that law enforcement will lie,” she continues. “It would not be farfetched of me to say that law enforcement in Garden City acts routinely in favor of the State, or as in my particular case, they were simply ‘enforcing law.’ We do not see civil servants; we do not see protectors of oath.” “To Protect & Serve” was thrown out the proverbial window as her son was taken from her and her medicine was confiscated. Banda was put in jail with bail set at $50,000, the State of Kansas moved forward with criminal charges of “manufacturing, distributing and processing marijuana,” and her parenting skills became in question. Banda says the “blatant police force on

behalf of the state has become rampant across the nation,” and she hopes her case will bring some much needed attention to the more human side of medicating with cannabis for severe illness. The report derived from the interrogation of the child claimed he was subjected to abuse and neglect in the home by having to watch people process or trim cannabis, his mother and others using it as medicine, and having to observe the making of the medicine. In the context of Kansas law, where fines and jail time are levied for having a seed in your pocket lining, perspectives on cannabis healing get a bit muddled. Hope came via the receipt of a Child In Need of Care (CINC) request September 30th, with charges being dismissed and the minor child returning to his mother’s care. The state’s criminal preliminary hearing is now set for November 17th of this year, with politician Ron Paul defending Banda on the Ron Paul Institute’s website, stating “If there ever was a ‘poster child’ for the absurdity of the drug war, the case of Shona Banda must be it.” Looking at upwards of thirty years in prison for pot in the Draconian State of Kansas, Banda is countering with attorney Matt Pappas, filing a federal suit against everyone involved in the questioning of her son or in taking him away, and those who chastised her for “manufacturing and processing” the good medicine that saved her life. Those named in the suit are, the State of Kansas; Govenor Sam Brownback; Kansas Department of Children and Families

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Department (KDCFD); Phyllis Gilmore (KDCFD); Garden City Police Department (GDPD); James R. Hawkins (GDPD); Garden City USD 457 (GC Unified School District); Tyler Stubenhoffer (GCUSD); “DOES 1 to 10 (defendants not yet named). Among the many infractions Banda is siting as a parent, is the fundamental right to make parenting decisions even when the court may be forced to disagree based on State law, citing Troxel (530 U.S. at 65, 72-73) “… Due Process Clause does not permit a state to infringe on a fit parent’s fundamental right to make child rearing decisions simply because a court disagrees with the parent or believes a better decision could be made.” (Rogers v. Rogers, 2007 WI App 50, 300 Wis.2d 532, 731 N.W.2d 347 ¶ 18.) For this writer, whose work focuses on cannabis medicine and healing, it’s painful to watch legitimate patients getting lifesaving help from cannabis in illegal states, only to become persecuted for finding relief where traditional treatments have failed them. Cannabis is now believed by many to be the most proactive medicine anyone can use today, and Banda’s message that self-taught knowledge is crucial to being healed is more relevant than ever. On a personal note, after doing away with breast cancer and ten prescription meds for multiple thyroid disease and menopausal symptoms, would I – could I - ever live in an illegal state? Realistically, I could, as the medicine is there. Would I be taking a chance of being persecuted for my good medicine? Yes, I would, as many are. “Cannabis is the safest, most non-toxic substance on the planet, period,” Banda says emphatically. “It puts cancer into remission, cures disease and illness and stops pain. It’s an essential nutrient for the human body and our endocannabinoid system – it is food. All plants have cannabinoids or CBD-type compounds, it just so happens that in cannabis they are most abundant. We just need to let our people grow. Live free always!”

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As Matt—the mad scientist of Mary Jane behind the increasingly flavorful seed options coming out of Elev8 put it “Some people breed strictly for yield. Others cross strains just because. We research the flavor and the high, we read forums and grow reports. When I have the idea that two strains will complement one another well, I try and locate the strains; I want to breed something that I’m excited about that I’ll enjoy smoking.”

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At Elev8, their seed game is based upon the proper selection of traits to blend the best genetics possible. The team at Elev8 is a two man operation comprised of the aforementioned Matt and his business partner Tom. They entered into the cannabis genetics arena after finding it difficult to locate strong genetics, and experiencing too many run-ins with substandard seeds producing a weak end product. Then came their entrance into the science heavy world of pheno-hunting, and the intricate world of recessive and dominant traits of each individual strain. Matt’s first breeding project included cannabis heavyweights Grand Daddy Purple and Shishkaberry. Producing offspring far superior than the original parental units, he took his huge yield and frosty green into the breeding business.

THE PLANTS

The collection of elite genetics at Elev8 leaves growers with a multitude of options, and some are seeds many growers may think they’d never see produced, unless they dared to do it themselves. These include quality options like Strawberry Cough crossed with Sour Diesel, resulting in a whole flowering room smelling of sour strawberries from the appropriately named Strawberry Diesel. By crossing Strawberry Diesel by Shishkaberry, Elev8 produces seeds certain to deliver that rare connoisseur quality frost.

One of the latest and greatest strains to spring from the Elev8 gardens is Sour Patch Kiss. This cross of Sour Kush and Kimbo Kush comes complete with eye-popping jar appeal and a loud as hell odor pouring off of every piece of this primo plant specimen. A staple of their genetics is Blackberry Dream—a cross of the award-winning Kimbo Kush from Exotic Genetic and Super Silver Haze. By injecting some sativa into this equation, the end result is an effect Matt describes as “euphoric and almost opiate like. . .unlike anything ® I’ve smoked before.”

“ELEV8 PRODUCES SEEDS CERTAIN TO DELIVER THAT RARE CONNOISSEUR QUALITY FROST.”

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WRITER • LAEL HENTERLY

PRISON PROFITEERS The Lobby Against Legalization REPORT BY “THEA 2006 BUREAU OF JUSTICE

STATISTICS ESTIMATED THAT 13% OF STATE INMATES AND 12% OF FEDERAL INMATES ARE SERVING TIME FOR CANNABIS VIOLATIONS. “THAT’S UPWARDS OF 50,000 AMERICANS BEHIND BARS FOR VIOLATING MARIJUANA LAWS,” SAYS ARMENTANO. NORML CALCULATES THE ANNUAL COST TO INCARCERATE THOSE CANNABIS-CAPTIVES AT MORE THAN $1 BILLION.

”

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HE WAR ON DRUGS allowed the for-profit prison industry to flourish; now the private-prison companies’ lobbyists want to keep tough-on-crime laws in place — and cannabis offenders behind bars. In the 1970s John Knock helped import a lot of cannabis into Canada. The money was good and the risk moderate: it was cannabis, not cocaine, and he was moving it into Canada, not the United States, where the War on Drugs was quickly picking up steam. But when President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law, mandating mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, Knock saw the writing on the wall. By 1987, he was out of the business. In 1994 the drug game was far behind John; he was living in Hawaii and taking care of his young son while his wife completed her PHd. Then the indictment came down: Knock had been fingered as a weed importer in a conspiracy case unfolding in Florida. He fled to Europe where he was arrested in 1996 and fought extradition until 1999. In 2000 he was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic marijuana in a jury trial. The sentence: two life sentences plus an additional 20 years. Knock had no prior convictions; no history of violence. “They even stated at sentencing that there were no victims,” says Knock’s sister Beth Curtis. Knock is far from the only person stuck behind bars for committing a cannabis crime. There’s no exact count because, “annual data does not break down drug sentences by type of drug,” says Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of NORML, a marijuana reform lobbying group. A 2006 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 13% of state inmates and 12% of federal inmates are serving time for cannabis violations. “That’s upwards of 50,000 Americans behind bars for violating marijuana laws,” says Armentano. NORML calculates the annual cost to incarcerate those cannabis-captives at more than

$1 billion. As prisons filled with non-violent drug offenders, the number of people locked up in the US grew from 196,429 in 1970 to more than 1.6 million in 2009, according to a 2011 report from the Justice Policy Institute. As the prison population ballooned, governments turned to nascent for-profit prison companies to house the overflow, and house they did. In 1980 private prisons hardly existed; by 1990 the US had 7,000 inmates locked up in forprofit facilities; by 2009 that number had climbed to 129,000. The War on Drugs, and its resulting incarceration boom, hasn’t effected all equally. Minority communities have borne the brunt of the burden. Numbers released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 indicate that a black man in the US has a one-in-three chance of incarceration within his lifetime. For white men the odds are one-in-seventeen. In the same year minorities made up a whopping 60% of the prison population, and although a 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that black and white people use cannabis at similar rates, and an ACLU analysis revealed that black people were nearly four times as likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than their white peers. The two main private prison corporations — the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America — have benefited immensely from draconian drug policies and the resulting prison population boom, and if drug or sentencing laws change it could hurt their bottom line. “Changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them,” writes the GEO Group in a 2010 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. “Our company does not lobby for or against, or take any position on, policies or

legislation that would determine the basis for, or duration of, an individual’s incarceration or detention,” says CCA spokesman Jonathan Burns. GEO Group’s Executive Director Pablo Paez says his company also doesn’t take a position on criminal justice policies. The numbers tell a different story, though. In April the Washington Post reported that since 1989 GEO and CCA have contributed more than $10 million to political candidates and spent almost $25 million lobbying the government. A 2011 Justice Policy Institute report found that private prison companies have influenced and helped draft tough on crime laws like “three-strikes” and “truth-insentencing”. The private prison lobby is also one of the main players in the anti-legalization movement, according to research by opensecrets.org. “They lobby on sentencing reform, crime and justice issues, and immigration,” says Paul Wright, director of the Human Rights Defense Center. Lately the tide has been turning against private prisons. In September, US Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders introduced legislation geared at ending all government contracts with private prisons within two years. “We have got to end the private prison racket in America,” said Sanders during a press call announcing the Justice is Not for Sale Act. With recreational cannabis shops now nearly as ubiquitous as coffeeshops in Washington and Colorado, it’s easy to forget that tens of thousands of people are still serving time for cannabis violations— many in forprofit prisons. As attitudes towards the plant change in the US, Curtis says she remains hopeful that Knock— and the other cannabis convicts — will be released some day. “We just visited him for his 68th birthday,” says Curtis. “He’s not violent, he’s not dangerous, and ® he doesn’t need to be in there.”

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TECHNOLOGY

WRITER • HEATHER COONS

TREE’S DELIVERY Cannabis Deliver y Meets Drone Technology ACK IN August, a San Francisco-based start up company announced that they had come up with a whole new way to incorporate the latest in technology with their local deliveries. By outfitting drones with mechanical arms, Trees Delivery, the “original craft cannabis in a box,” stated that customers could potentially receive their products within the hour, instead of waiting for same-day, or even next-day, delivery. Customers can go online and place an order from their laptops or smart-phones and receive their purchases quickly without ever coming in contact with a soul. And to make payments as easy as possible, Trees Delivery does accept a variety of payment options, including Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer online currency that bypasses central authorities and banking institutions. “This is the most fun thing I’ve ever worked on in my life,” stated Trees Delivery CEO Marshall Hayner. “We see drones as an amazing tool for delivery. A drone will never be late.” There are some very obvious pros associated with cannabis delivery via drones. Unlike other products, cannabis is extremely lightweight, making it the perfect item for small commercial and/or private drones to carry. It’s certainly more eco-friendly than the traditional delivery by car, and as Hayner stated, deliveries can be done in record times. The most common argument against cannabis delivery by drone is the obvious: robberies. Opponents claim that thieves will be lurking around in the shadows just waiting for the opportunity to shoot the cannabis-carrying drones out of the sky. But the truth of the matter is that robbing deliveries is not a new concept. Just ask the pizza delivery guy. While the whole cannabis-carrying drone is new, the idea of using drones for commercial deliveries is not. In 2013, Amazon introduced their new robotic delivery drones on 60 Minutes. The service, called Amazon Prime Air, was slotted to begin this year. And in 2014, QuiQui, another San Francisco based start-up company, announced that they had developed the capability to start delivering prescription medications via their drones. However, QuiQui’s founder Joshua Ziering stated emphatically that cannabis would not be included in their delivery offer. So if the technology has been in place for at least the last two years, why are commercial drone deliveries still grounded? The answer lies with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the privacy lawsuit filed against them. The FAA currently has a blanket ban on all commercial drones. In March 2014, a judge ruled that the FAA did not have the authority to impose this ban, and for a short time, it looked as if it would be lifted. But the FAA appealed the ruling under the concern that commercial drone deliveries “could impact the safe operation of the national airspace system and the safety of people and property on the ground.” According to the current ban, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) cannot be flown above 400 feet, or operated near people, private prop-

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PHOTOS • COURTESY OF TREES DELIVERY

erty, stadiums or airports. The controller must remain in the visual line of sight of the USA at all times, and any use of a USA in which the controller receives compensation is expressly prohibited. Obviously, these laws do not apply to law enforcement or military, and special exemptions can be made for the purposes of research and development, crew training and market surveys. Major American corporations like Amazon and Verizon, along with the Aerospace Industries Association, have been applying pressure on the FAA in an attempt to get them to remove these restrictions. And the FAA will be the first to admit that they won’t be able to keep them in place forever.

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PIECES

PIECE OF MIND GALLERY EVENT:

OldsCool

WRITER •R.Z. HUGHES PHOTOS • JAMIE ZILL

Showcasing An Exquisite Evolution of Classic Technique

HE PACIFIC NORTHWEST has some of the the most talented glassblowers around; artists that are known worldwide for their incredible technique and insane designs that constantly push the envelope of functional glass. Piece of Mind opened it’s doors in Spokane in 1997, and has since grown to eleven stores from Portland to Anchorage, stocking pieces that have to be seen to be believed. This summer, at the U-District location, Piece of Mind hosted their first ever gallery event ‘OldsCool’. Put together with the idea that “Old is cool,” the event brought together four OG local artists Dosher, Royal, Eli, and Ease, all of whom have been in the game for over a decade. The idea behind it was to celebrate the techniques they learned when first getting started, finding a new appreciation for the oldschool aesthetic.

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Fumed glass, the type that changes color when smoked out of, was in high favor, with many of the pieces from Ease and Royal shimmering with a cloudy bluish orange tint. The vibrant colors on display seemed to shift and change from different angles, a fleeting mirage of glasswork and a true feast for the eyes. It is clearly a tight-knight community as collaborations were king, with most of the pieces featuring two or more different artists. Piece of Mind is in the works for another gallery show coming soon, perhaps in December, so keep your eyes peeled as these events are for any true collectors of art, functional or otherwise. Don’t miss the next opportunity to view the new offerings from decorated artists, as well as rub elbows with some of the most vaunted torch-wielders in ® the game.

WRITER •R.Z. HUGHES

ART/ MUSIC

PHOTOS •SEAN CORBOY

C-LEB & THE KETTLE BLACK

Seattle-Raised Southern Rock When we met these guys for the first time after a raucous show at the Tin Lizzy on Lower Queen Anne, we knew we had to get to the bottom of their huge sound, and figure out what inspires their high-energy antics. With a reputation for bringing down the house with their hard-driving blend of Southern Blues, Classic Rock, and foreign substances, C-Leb & The Kettle Black are an exciting band of incredible musicians.

With C-Leb on vocals and harmonica, Jesse ‘The Hound Dog’ on guitar, Sunny on bass, and Mr. James Squires banging the drums, these guys keep it tight and loud – no easy feat. They have only been playing together for a few years, but C-Leb & The Kettle Black have already put together an impressive resume. With two records, billing alongside global stars, shows at Safeco Field, and appearances at the Fremont Solstice festival they’re poised to take Seattle by storm in 2016. The enthusiasm is infectious when talking about their influences; citing Creedence, Zeppelin, Morphine, Elmore James, and the incessant Seattle traffic as wells of inspiration. Their last album, Flat Back, was entirely crowdsourced, with funding coming from a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. It was recorded live to tape to vinyl – the old school way, giving it a gritty classic vibe. Their songs have a palpable chemistry and they clearly enjoy playing together. Jesse acknowledged their musical bond, “There’s been a few shows where we were on and it’s the greatest feeling in the world.” It’s obvious these guys like to have fun but the elephant in the hazy, beer-soaked practice room, is whether cannabis plays a part in their creative process. This was quickly answered when Sunny produced a pipe loaded with something called ‘Frosted Blue Cookies’ as James proclaimed “Oh yeah, we take pot. It’s a great tool for staying in the moment.” With a couple of daily tokers in the group, it’s part of the routine before, during, and after practice. C-Leb has passionate views about the politics behind both the plant and the criminal justice system. “Recreational [cannabis] is wonderful but how about the decriminalization of all low-level drug offenses?” Discussing Washington State’s implementation of i-502, he strongly believes “we didn’t take care of the people who needed it and that was always the caveat – protect the patients.”

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This is a group of four hardworking musicians who are intensely dedicated to their art. Their unique, unapologetic approach to rock ‘n’ roll has earned them high praise within the local music scene, and people are taking notice. After a busy summer, the band is planning on taking it easy for the holidays while they take some time to work on material for the new album, but look for some shows to be announced for February. In the meantime, you can hear their tunes online at www.c-lebsounds.com or ® www.c-lebsounds.bandcamp.com.

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CANNANEWS

“GREENE HAD A CHARACTERISTIC NOT OFTEN FOUND AMONG THE 15-MINUTES-OFFAME SET. SHE HAD FOLLOW THROUGH.”

WRITER •STEVE ELLIOTT

PHOTO • JONATHAN CHA

CHARLO GREENE 2.0 ONE YEAR AFTER ‘ FUCK IT, I QUIT ’

Marijuana activist Charlo Greene, who famously quit her job as a reporter on live television with the words “Fuck it, I quit!” last year, gave herself a hard act to follow. After all, going as viral as the clip went is like a bolt of lightning — it rarely strikes twice in the same place. But Greene had a characteristic not often found among the 15-minutes-of-fame set — she had follow-through. Charlo is now working to increase diversity in the legal cannabis industry. “To be a true activist you have to know the cause you’re fighting for and its history,” Greene says ending bluntly, “All real cannabis activists know our drug policy is racist as fuck.” Greene has founded GoGreene. org, a nonprofit intended to encourage diversity via education, networking and empowerment. DOPE recently had a chance to sit down and catch up with Charlo. DOPE: A lot of people remember the “Fuck it, I quit” moment from last year, but you’ve taken it well beyond that. I understand you are working hard to protect medical marijuana patients in Alaska? CHARLO GREENE: Absolutely! We still run the Alaska Cannabis Club, which I started while I was still a journalist. I was the reporter by day and the weed lady by night. Until I quit, that was taking up so, so much more of my time and energy than I guess a side-thingy should have — but it’s my first priority. DOPE: Here in Washington State, patients have feared their access may be threatened, ironically, by recreational legalization. Have

you seen any hint of that in Alaska since the people voted to legalize? GREENE: What the head of the Marijuana Control Board stated outright, is that medical marijuana doesn’t exist in Alaska. If we wanted it to, then we would have given you a system that works — but this is recreational. So we’re not going to deal with it, we’re not going to ever regulate [medical marijuana]; it’s a non-issue for us. That would just be too much work and too much confusion to give the patients the medicine that they’ve been fighting for. DOPE: I guess that shows us just how far we have to go — because even after legalization passes, that presents a whole new set of challenges. GREENE: Now it looks like they want to make someone who grows at home get a personal grow license, which is absurd, seeing as our [state] Constitution has guaranteed our right to grow in the home since 1975, without any government intervention or oversight, up to 24 plants. They’re trying to limit that to 6 plants per household; any more than that, and it’s a felony. [Rueful laughter] DOPE: As we watch the dynamically evolving cannabis industry, there are some issues as it grows. One of those, of course, is a lack of diversity, and you have taken that on with GoGreene.org. Can you tell us a little about that? GREENE: Go Greene is the evolution of “Fuck it, I quit.” So it’s that same energy, that same refusal to make concessions for what we know is right. It’s the will of the people that are strong enough to fight for those who aren’t. What it’s all about is cultivating diversity in cannabis activism and in the industry to help those communities that are hurt by cannabis prohibition the most — communities of color. So we will reconnect with faith leaders,

community leaders, having community block parties, community barbecues, feeding the community and helping [others] find job and employment opportunities.We’ll be speaking in as many cities as possible, finding the leaders there, and giving them the tools, education and community backing of the Go Greene network to do whatever it is that they need, drive them to the polls, and keep watch over what happens afterward. DOPE: I love that you are portraying the cannabis community in a positive light and framing it in terms of opportunity and advancement. If readers want to support this effort, particularly if they are members of a minority community and want to get involved, how can they engage with GoGreene.org and get involved with your effort? GREENE: We have two different ways that we are moving forward: Go Greene branches, and Go Greene groups. On the GoGreene. org website it gives you the information behind each of these two things. So one is the group. They can start by having monthly meetings about what’s going on. And then, whenever they are ready to commit to six monthly meetings with us overseeing them as Go Greene, the national (and soon to be international) network, these are the official branches. I plan on visiting all of these branches in 2016, and having community events with me appearing there, so we can drive more excitement, drive more people through these groups. DOPE: These are exciting times, aren’t they? GREENE: VERY exciting times! I mean, tomorrow is the anniversary of “Fuck it, I quit.” I would never in a million years have thought what transpired, would have. And that I’d be in the position I am today, with not only people looking to me for advice and leadership, but I am able to give it! I think ® that’s really cool.

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WRITER •DAVID BAILEY

HILE THIS writer wishes the term ‘fire’ here was being used to describe ridiculously good buds, real flames have in fact yet again traumatized our state and thousands of its residents. California’s status quo appears to have joined hands with Mother Nature’s, reaching north to make Washington another annual victim. The obvious difficulties that come with fire destruction are hard enough, but for those lucky enough to avoid the scorch, there in lies another lasting roadblock. Smoke and ash affect not only our food crops, but our medicine too. Smoky tasting bud may not seem like the worst thing, after all most of us love barbeque, but the reality is this occurrence has rendered a sizeable portion of this state’s harvest unfit for use. Unlike a tomato or squash, just washing off the outside of the fruit, or in this case flowers, won’t do the trick. As the hot, ash ridden smoke blows across the plants, the already sticky resin softens and attracts ash like a lollipop in a sand storm. The contaminants found in wildfire smoke turn medicine into a lung irritant, and for those growing for the I-502 rec industry here, well they can forget about passing that foreign particle or contaminant test.

So what’s to be done with all this smoky cannabis? Get ready oil market! Turning sub-par outdoor product into concentrates has been a popular practice across California and Colorado for quite some time now. With outdoor largely being seen as an inferior product, making oils and waxes turns an inconsistent product uniform. This blast run won’t be for just any extractor though, because getting that smoky flavor out takes some serious know how. As any extract artist will say, what you put in is what you get out. This is why nug runs have become so popular. Now imagine stuffing a column full of smoky product… you’re going to need something to clean it up. Carbon is used in nearly every market needing purification. Almost all distilled alcohol companies clarify their product with carbon, large scale air filters are filled with carbon, and yup…we can clean concentrates with it too! Whether in the column with the product, or as part of the winterization process, using carbon as a filter will not only pull out the extra contaminants, waxes and lipids but can remove the smoke flavor as well. If working with extremely smoky product, it’s better to find someone with a fractional distillation set-up. These set-ups aren’t exactly a dime

PHOTOS •JESSICA MCCALL

a dozen and take some serious lab experience to run, but if you know of a company that runs one, jump aboard. Factional distillation is amazing because it separates out all of the different cannabinoids, terpenes, waxes, and even contaminants before recombining only specific chemicals in the final product. This makes eliminating any possible contaminants like smoke a breeze. The final product has no residual solvent, like butane or alcohol, can be flavored however you would like, and is fully activated to be eaten as an edible or smoked/dabbed. Not too bad for starting out as BBQ bud. Hopefully not too many people lost their crops to the fires, both cannabis farmers and food farmers alike. We all live in this state together and can only do our best to work cooperatively to rebuild what we have lost. I hope that just as we rebound and work around the difficulties the fires have brought to our lives, we will be equally creative in how we work together to prevent future disasters. ®

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BUSINESS

WRITER/PHOTOS • STEVE ELLIOTT

ROOTS TO ZOOTS: Inside Seattle’s Largest Cannabis Candy Factory HEN I FIRST ARRIVED at the building housing Zoots’ operations, I wasn’t sure I was at the right place. The nondescript building in South Seattle bore no markings revealing its purpose; it looked a lot like every other building in the area, and that’s probably the idea. But there are some exciting things going on in there. Premium cannabis infusions, available at select licensed cannabis retailers in Washington State, are produced in Zoots’ candy factory. Concentrated liquid drops, energy drinks and lozenges all feature proprietary blends to assist cannabis consumer in customizing their own experience, safely and enjoyably. Db3 Corporation, the company behind Zoots, was founded by the three Devlin brothers Michael, Patrick, and Dan, hence the name Db3. Patrick and

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his nephew Kelly Devlin accompanied us on our tour of the building, and straightaway, I got an unexpected thrill. As Patrick ushered me into the first of two grow rooms, I saw a beautiful sight: The most cannabis plants I’ve ever seen growing in one place, 1,500 of them, to be exact. This grow room, one of two major ones, uses the “sea of green” method: lots of smaller plants. The grow room has sixty 1,000-watt metal halide lamps, with 25 plants per lamp, for a total of 1,500 super happy-looking plants in the thriving canopy. The thrills weren’t over and after I’d spent a few blissful minutes ogling the vegetative beauties, I was treated to a second grow room, this one using the deep water culture (DWC) method - one BIG plant per light. Patrick lifted up one of the plants to show us the root system, and I have to say, these were the most im-

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pressive roots I have ever seen on a cannabis plant. “We continue to experiment with both growing methods,” Patrick explains. “Growing one plant per light requires a little more time to grow in veg state than growing lots of smaller plants (the ‘sea of green’ method), but we have found deep water culture to be more efficient overall. With DWC, the plants in general grow faster and the yield is greater in terms of total percentage of THC per square foot of growing space.” Patrick told me that so far Zoots treats only contain THC; the company isolates the principal psychoactive cavnnabinoid so as to precisely quantify dosages. He showed me a gram of pure THC; it was beautifully golden. CBD products will be added to the Zoots lineup as well in the near future, ac-

cording to Patrick. “There’s definitely a lot of interest in CBD products, and it’s a priority of ours to help meet that growing demand,” he elaborates. “We’re in the process of developing CBD edibles now, and we plan to bring them to market before too long, but we also want to take the time to do it right — to make sure we are producing high-quality and consistent edibles in a variety of the CBD-to-THC ratios that consumers really want.” That’s not the only upcoming addition to the roster, Patrick says “In the very near future we’ll be releasing a new flavor of ZootRocks, which is something a lot of our consumers have been asking for. We’re working on something fun for the holidays, too — something we think could be a very popular gift amongst can® nabis aficionados!”

“WE WANT TO TAKE THE TIME TO DO IT RIGHT TO MAKE SURE WE ARE PRODUCING HIGH QUALITY, CONSISTENT EDIBLES IN A VARIETY OF THE CBD-TO-THC RATIOS THAT CONSUMERS REALLY WANT.”

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PHOTOS • PROVIDED BY DR. EIDELMAN

#END420SHAME

CANNABIS IS NOT COCAINE OLARITY and fear defines the cannabis industry. In 2012, of the 1.5 million drug arrests in the US, almost half (48.35%) of those arrests were for cannabis possession and use. It’s no wonder that it’s rare to find an individual who feels ambivalent. You either hate it or you approve of it. Naysayers see cannabis as a gateway drug where all of the supposed benefits are hearsay. They believe that if cannabis is legalized across the country, kids will become dumber, drug overdoses will skyrocket, and the destruction of the world as we know it will follow. Proponents view Cannabis as nonaddictive, safe for consumption, and medically beneficial. They see little-to-no negative side effects to cannabis use and believe that the benefits far outweigh any potential risks. So, how do we bridge the gap? First, the United Stated must declassify cannabis as one of the most dangerous types of drugs on the market—a Schedule I drug. Even cocaine, Oxycodone (derived from the same poppy plant as heroine) and Vicodin don’t receive Schedule I classification though they claim 16,000 lives each year. By classifying cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, the US has forbidden officially sanctioned research, increased punishment for use and possession, and has unequivocally stated that cannabis meets two specific criteria: • There is currently no accepted medical use • There is a high potential for abuse The classification seems ironic considering that there are over 42 different diseases and medical conditions that are currently being treated with medical cannabis including nausea, headaches,

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muscle spasms, fibromyalgia, bowel distress, cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain. William S. Eidelman, MD—a medical cannabis doctor in Southern California—had this to say, “I have been repeatedly surprised at [cannabis’] wide range of medical effects. It is a powerful anti-inflammatory, it lowers blood pressure, it dilates bronchial airways (making it a good treatment for asthma), it is anti-epileptic, it is beneficial in autoimmune diseases like Chron’s, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, etc.” Dr. Allan Frankel has found similar results with his patients. “I’m still shocked by many of the clinical responses we get. Knowing the possibilities of CBD and other major and minor cannabinoids, I was certain pursuing [cannabis] would be of great benefit to my care of patients.” For both Dr. Eidelman and Dr. Frankel, the most surprising use of cannabis is its aparent ability to treat cancer, “not just the nausea and loss of appetite caused by cancer treatment, but cancer itself,” Eidelman states. So, if cannabis clearly doesn’t fit the first criteria required for a Schedule I drug, how about the potential for abuse? The Journal of the American Medical Association has found that the states that have implemented medical marijuana experienced a 25% decrease in opiate overdoses, while overdoses increased in the states without medical marijuana. In California, from 2010 - 2012, there was a 60% greater decrease in drug arrests compared to the rest of the US (23% vs 14%). It seems that the potential for abuse is also low with cannabis. So, how is it classified as a Schedule I drug? It always leads back to an incorrectly associated shame, lack of understanding,

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and fear. In the early 1970s, when the Controlled Substance Act was first implemented, cannabis was considered a negative social issue and not a dangerous drug. President Nixon didn’t know how to classify cannabis so it was automatically placed as a Schedule I substance, awaiting further review. Unfortunately, opponents, such as Sen. James Eastland, could not see past the negative stigma. “If the cannabis epidemic continues to spread at the rate of the postBerkeley period,” Sen. Eastland stated, “we may find ourselves saddled with a large population of semi-zombies.” While Sen. Eastland had no proof or legitimacy to his claims, his viewpoint won, and cannabis remains a Schedule I drug. Now it is finally time to move past the overwhelming divide between sides to find a sustainable future for cannabis. When DOPE asked Dr. Frankel and Dr. Eidleman if there was one thing they would like

“ THE PUBLIC HEALTH BURDEN

OF CANNABIS USE IS MINOR COMPARED WITH ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND OTHER ILLICIT DRUGS. A RECENT AUSTRALIAN STUDY ESTIMATES CANNABIS USE CAUSED 0-2% OF THE TOTAL DISEASE BURDEN IN AUSTRALIA—A COUNTRY WITH ONE OF THE HIGHEST REPORTED RATES OF CANNABIS USE. CANNABIS ACCOUNTED FOR 10% OF THE BURDEN ATTRIBUTABLE TO ALL ILLICIT DRUGS, 10% OF THE BURDEN ATTRIBUTED TO ALCOHOL, AND ONLY 2-5% OF THE BURDEN TO TOBACCO.“

THE UNITED STATES MUST DECLASSIFY CANNABIS AS ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS TYPES OF DRUGS ON THE MARKET—A SCHEDULE I DRUG. EVEN COCAINE, OXYCODONE (DERIVED FROM THE SAME POPPY PLANT AS HEROINE) AND VICODIN DON’T RECEIVE SCHEDULE I CLASSIFICATION EVEN THOUGH THEY CLAIM 16,000 LIVES EACH YEAR.

everyone to understand about cannabis, they both agreed that knowledge and understanding is vital. “There is no need to be afraid of cannabis,” Dr. Eidleman says, “It is a miraculous substance.” Dr. Frankel followed up with, “I would like everyone to know that cannabis, like any other medicine, can be dosed predictably…and very effective.” In order to #End420Shame, cannabis must first be declassified as a Sched-

ule I substance. Then, with valid medical research and active proponents fighting for legalization using unarguable statistics and compelling stories, we will #End420Shame once and for all. If you have a compelling cannabis story to share, write us at kellyv@dopemagazine.com or share it on our Facebook page or Twitter account @ ® DOPE_Magazine.

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WRITER •R.Z. HUGHES | PHOTOS • SEAN CORBOY

otency testing has been an integral part of the effort to bring cannabis out of the shadows as a socially acceptable and responsible product. Sending out individual samples for every strain and every batch can be tedious, especially for those growers looking for slight differences in their product within a window of a few days to determine optimum harvest timev. Steep Hill Labs has made this process much easier with the Quantacann2, a remote testing device that puts the results in your hands within minutes.

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Dr. Don Land, the Chief Scientific Consultant for Steep Hill, explains how the Quantacann2, now available for lease in Washington, is able to give such immediate analysis. A desktop spectrometer, it looks like a large black box. Fill up the test cup and place it on the instrument for one to two minutes and the rapid throughput produces results instantly. It gauges the potency with a technique known as diffused reflectance infrared spectroscopy. In simpler terms, as a light shines through and reflects off of the sample, the device collects data about the

chemical composition. With only infrared light penetrating the sample, it is never destroyed, consumed, or altered in the testing process. TheQuantacann2 tests for THC-A, THC, CBD-A, CBD, CBN, and moisture content, comparing the results with past samples in their database to get a true reading. This is a tool designed for dialing in harvests and finding elite genetics. Dispensaries have also been utilizing it as a way to check product as it comes in the door, ensuring that the 25% THC strain is as advertised.

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DR. DON LAND Dr. Land is the Chief Scientific Consultant for Steep Hill, guiding and evaluating their processes and business practices from a scientific standpoint. He received his PhD from UC Irvine where he developed new techniques in both spectrometry and spectroscopy, earning him a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship in Germany – all before he was 28! Currently a tenured professor at UC Davis, Dr. Land founded Halent Labs, later merging with Steep Hill in 2013, to become one of the highest quality medicinal cannabis research and testing firms around.

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CANNANEWS

HISTORY OF CANNABIS

MANY CANNABIS enthusiasts know the plant has been safely and therapeutically used for thousands of years as medicine, recreation, fiber, and food. Some of its uses may surprise, and some of the laws surrounding its past may just shock you! Outlined here is a brief history of cannabis from ancient times to early prohibition in America. When the history of the plant is examined it becomes quite clear humans have loved cannabis for a very, very long time. How many thousands of years has cannabis been used? At least 10,000 years! Hemp cord and pottery dating back to 8,000 BCE was first identified in an ancient village where modern day Taiwan now exists.

The first use of medical use of cannabis documented for child birth came out of Jerusalem in 300.

In 1213 the Egyptians used cannabis for menstrual pain, vision, administering enemas, and inflammation. Cannabis pollen was found on the mummy of Ramesses II from the same time.

6000 is the earliest record of cannabis being used as a food. Hemp rope also first appeared in Russia back in 600 BCE.

The Venidad, a volume of the ancient Persian religious text ZendAvesta, proclaimed in the year 700 that cannabis was one of the most important 10,000 medicinal plants, and it mentions bhang. In 2737 it’s recorded that the first medical use of cannabis was by Emperor Shen Neng in China.

India’s first documented use is in the sacred text of Atharvaveda in 2,000-800 was as “Sacred Grass,” a medicinal and ritualistic offering.

In 1500 China cultivated cannabis for food and fiber, and the Scythians made hemp cloth.

In India, year 1000, the first documented use of Bhang was recorded, a drink of cannabis and milk used as an anti-phlegmatic and anesthetic.

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WRITER •LINDSEY RINEHART

The nomadic Scythian tribes have heavily documented use of cannabis from 1500 forward. The tribes even began leaving it as offerings in royal tombs, signifying its value to the culture, from 300-700. Their tribes traveled over much of Europe, bringing hemp with them.

Around 5-600, the Jewish book, the Talmud mentions euphoric properties being present in cannabis.

Cannabis first journeyed to Iceland with the Vikings in 850, and in 1000 Hemp rope became common on Italian ships.

In the early 1200’s the Europeans had become very comfortable with their hash use and it spread throughout.

he discovery of Ethiopian pipes containing cannabis dating back to 1300, suggests that cannabis use had spread from Europe to Africa.

In 1533 King Henry VIII declared it illegal NOT to grow cannabis, and he issued fines to farmers for not growing industrial hemp!

In 100 CE (All dates from here forward are Common Era, CE) China invented the first hemp paper, and hemp rope also appeared in England.

Then, in 200, cannabis appeared in the East’s first pharmacopoeia as an anesthetic used by Chinese surgeon Hua T’o.

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Angolan slaves brought cannabis to plant between rows of cane, in the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil in 1549.

Meanwhile in the US, from 17451775 George Washington grew hemp, and from 1174-1824 Thomas Jefferson was growing too!

Beginning the first documented importation of hemp crop by government, Russia began exporting hemp to England in 1600.

Cannabis first made its way to America in 1606-1632, as the British and French grew cannabis for hemp at their new colonies in Port Royal, Virginia, and Plymouth.

Simultaneously, in 1616 Jamestown settlers began growing the hemp. Hash began to be widely trade between South Asia and Central Asia in the 1600’s.

Shortly later, in 1870-1880, the first reports of hash use were reported from the Greek mainland resulting in the 1890 Greek Department of Interior issuing a full prohibition. In the 1800’s growing cannabis on plantations became popular in America and it was grown in California, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, and South Carolina.

By 1840 America, medicinal cannabis was available for various forms of ingestion, and the Persians had added hashish to the shelves of their pharmacies.

Cannabis’ popular use in the US earned it a spot in The U.S. Pharmacopoeia in 1850.

Widely used in the US from 18501915, the therapeutic herb cannabis could be purchased from general stores and pharmacies to help a sick loved one! In 1753 Linnaeus classified Cannabis sativa for the first time.

In 1906 In the U.S. the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, which regulated the labeling of all products containing cannabis, among other drugs.

By 1914 The Harrison Act in the U.S. defined use of cannabis as a crime.

Then, in 1776 Kentucky began growing hemp too

The first real prohibition occurred in 1798 when Napoleon realized that the Egyptians were using hashish and the French soldiers returning home with it; a full prohibition then occurred in France.

From 1893-1894, Central Asia reaped the benefit of the India Hemp Trade, and The India Hemp Drugs Commission Report was issued stating that 70,000 to 80,000 kg per year of hashish was legally imported from India to Central Asia!

In 1840, Queen Victoria reportedly used cannabis to treat her menstrual pains.

he first documented cannabis tax appeared from the British in 1856 shipments of ganja from India.

Then from 1915-1927 the dark days of prohibition fell on America. Prohibition first began in California (1915), then Texas (1919), followed by Louisiana (1924), and then New York (1927)

The history of cannabis is clearly vast, and much was omitted here due to space constraints. DOPE Magazine is dedicated to featuring the rest and the best of cannabis history as it unfolds in our future issues.

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CANNA-HEALTH CANNANEWS

WRITER •ABIGAIL

” High quality extracting is being perfected by this generation and will surely leave its mark in the history of the cannabis industry. “

ANNABIS CONSUMPTION in the United States has evolved in the past fifty years. These days cannabis can be enjoyed in most any way, shape, or form. However, in the smoker’s world it comes down to two things: cannabis and extracts. Cannabis flowers seem increasingly rare at cannabis conventions. Social media is filled with news feeds of dab hits and sensual photographs of a processor’s latest endeavor. Hash-like substances have been consumed all over the world for thousands of years, but the United State’s recent obsession with all things extracts is relatively new. When the United States was founded, everyone grew hemp as directed by law. In the 19th century, smoking cannabis for its euphoric effect was having its moment in France, but that didn’t translate over much to the United States at the time. It wasn’t until after the Mexican Revolution in 1910 that cannabis consumption caught on here. Immigrants brought cannabis from Mexico and introduced many Americans to smoking culture. This is when the derogatory word “marijuana” was created as conservative media outlets attempted to highlight Mexican origin of cannabis, and to discourage anti-immigrant groups from supporting its use. Cannabis could be readily found in jazz clubs and speakeasies at time. Attacks against cannabis smokers were racist from the start. Fear mongering led to the inclusion of cannabis in the Uniform State Narcotic Act in 1932. This Act more or less kept recreational cannabis use in the dark until its reemergence in 1960’s. Recreational consumption in the 1960’s and 1970’s was truly the birth of experimenting with different forms of consumption in the United States. Alice B. Toklas brought edibles to the mainstream with her “Alice B. Toklas Brownies”. The bong as we know it today was emerging, and was written about for the first time in a

ROSS

GRAPHICS • BRANDON PALMA

1971 issue of Marijuana Review. Hash was being consumed as well but it wasn’t until early 2000’s that it began to be extracted in the form that is most common today. Hydrocarbon extractions are a cleaner way to smoke and expose the body to fewer carcinogens than conventional flowers. The methods of concentrate consumption has been highly controversial. This is largely due to the fact that to outsiders, the process may resemble hard drugs and paraphernalia. Also, the news is lit up with stories of amateur extractors starting fires and in extreme cases, blowing themselves up. However, the fact is that extracts are here to stay and this chemistry-based art form is attracting whole new groups of smokers and talented extractors are the current rock-stars of the cannabis processing industry. Cannabis extracts have been consumed and processed for decades in the US, but the rise of concentrates to the top as a “smokers choice” of sorts, is relatively new. Demand for all types of extracts is undeniable to both recreational and medical producers. The original draft of the recreational cannabis law in Washington didn’t allow any kind of extracts to be sold unless they were infused into edible or topical products. However, the Liquor Control Board could not deny that this law set precedence for a new cannabis black market, and eventually the law was revised. Washington medical cannabis is still not allowed to process extracts using butane. Interestingly, this feels like a gentle nudge by the state to send previous medical consumers down the recreational road. Legislation will need to stay one step ahead of the game to continue to provide a safe and clean product for cannabis smokers across the state. High quality extracting is being perfected by this generation and will surely leave its mark in the history of the cannabis industry.

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WRITER •R.Z. HUGHES

PHOTOS • ALLIE BECKETT

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NATURAL CARE FOR SKIN AND SOUL HE WORLD of recreational cannabis, dominated by flowers and edibles, is beginning to come around to an alternative and affordable way of using the herb. Cannabis has been used as a topical since time immemorial, with ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese texts all pointing to the plant as a source of relief when applied as a poultice or salve. Ethos Extracts has a wide line of sprays, tinctures, and skincare products that utilize the beneficial properties from the entire plant – roots included. Their natural water-based tinctures are effective, the rosewater facial toner is refreshing, and their massage oil is smoothly seductive. The Spray Joint Max is a great product; used as an oral spray, it looks like a breath freshener, with each pump coating to mouth in 2.5 mg of fastacting THC. Muscle Melt is another top seller that smells great, is

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non-greasy, and penetrates deeply, with anecdotal evidence suggesting it may even help with bee stings! Dedicated to helping the planet and furthering science, Ethos Extracts donates 1% of all profits to Puget Sound water restoration projects. They also have a PhD in-residence program that is accepting proposals for new studies on cannabis and is currently strength testing an adobe brick made from the byproducts of cannabis and hemp. Ethos has also devised a Cannabis Standardization Protocol (CSP) in which the most common eight cannabinoids are blended to give the same amounts for the same products consistently year after year. With a passion for advancing the scientific conversation around cannabis, Ethos Extracts is proving that “there’s more to this ® plant.”

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WRITER •KELLY VO

CANNANEWS

PHOTOS • PROVIDED BY WANDA JAMES

CANNABIS AND RACE TWO PASTS & TWO FUTURES INTERTWINED

“DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU LIVE, DEPENDING ON YOUR ZIP CODE,THAT DECIDES WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO BE A MILLIONAIRE OR WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO DO HARD TIME FOR CANNABIS, AND THAT IS RIDICULOUS.” 114

ANNABIS AND RACE GO handin-hand. They are impossibly intertwined, and the connection isn’t positive. According to a study completed by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in 1990, half of those arrested in California for cannabis possession were nonwhite. In 2010, the ratio saw an increase to 64% nonwhite. Looking at it another way, cannabis possession arrests for teenagers of color rose from 3,100 in 1990 to 16,400 in 2010—an arrest surge 300% greater than the population growth of nonwhites. It may be easy to think, “Well, more nonwhites must use cannabis,” but cannabis use is equally distributed between the white and nonwhite populations (14% and 12% respec-

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tively). The unfortunate truth is that California’s Black population is 10x more likely to be imprisoned for cannabis, 12x more likely to be imprisoned for a cannabis felony, and 3x more likely to be imprisoned for cannabis possession. Furthermore, Denver’s arrest rates have fallen overall since the legalization of cannabis, while the arrest numbers for African Americans in Denver are experiencing an increase according to public records. It’s not all just facts and figures. Wanda James, the President of the Cannabis Global Initiative and owner of Simply Pure, she has felt the personal impact from the disparity in cannabis arrests. It’s one of the main reasons she entered the industry. “I’m in the industry because when I met my brother in 1999, and

he told me that he was doing ten years for possession of cannabis, I didn’t believe him,” Wanda says. “All my friends got high, and I had never known anybody to get arrested. That being said, my friends ranged from middle-class to wealthy. We would sit on the front steps of the dormitory rolling joints and the Colorado State University police would walk by and say, ‘Hey guys, put that away,’ but no one was arrested.” When Wanda heard her brother’s story, she knew it was worth investigating, but when she talked to a few attorneys, they revealed that her brother’s experience was far from extraordinary. In fact, it was and still is the norm. In 2012, almost 750,000 people were arrested for cannabis related crimes—nearly half of all drug arrests—yet 23 states have passed medicinal cannabis use and four states and the District of Columbia allow for the legal sale of cannabis. “Depending on where you live, depending on your zip code, that decides whether you’re going to be a millionaire or whether you’re going to do hard time for cannabis, and that is ridiculous.” When it comes to race, Wanda says, “it isn’t just arbitrary. We’re targeting poor neighborhoods that happen to be black and brown.” The statistics back her up. The NAACP reveals that while African Americans represent only 12% of the total population of drug users in the US, they represent 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prisons for drug offenses. It’s no wonder that African Americans have been hesitant to enter the cannabis industry as owners and leaders. In Colorado, beyond Wanda and her husband who own Simply Pure, there is only one other licensed black cannabis business owner. “Everyone else who owns happens to be white, and they’re making millions and millions of dollars,” Wanda says. “There’s this feeling that what works for white people won’t work for us,” and based on the statistics, they have a right to feel nervous. One in 15 African American children will have a parent in prison compared to 1 in 111 white children. So how can things change? It starts with elected officials. “I really want Black and Latino elected officials to understand that if

“I really want Black and Latino elected officials to understand that if they support the continuation of cannabis prohibition, they are supporting the most racist laws in American history. What they are doing is sending our children to prison.They are putting children that look like them in prison. There is no other way to slice it, and it is wrong on every level.” they support the continuation of cannabis prohibition, they are supporting the most racist laws in American history. What they are doing is sending our children to prison.They are putting children that look like them in prison. There is no other way to slice it, and it is wrong on every level.” Beyond elected officials, Wanda sees women in the industry as the place where the power lies. “It’s women that are going to change this industry. We’re the mothers of babies with epilepsy; the mothers of sons who are arrested. I think that female-led lobbying efforts are extremely powerful because elected officials have a hard time looking at moms and saying, ‘Well, you just want to get high. That’s why you’re fighting for this.’ Mothers can say, ‘No, I want my baby to grow up healthy, and my child with epilepsy have a life that’s not so drugged up they’re walking through life like a zombie.’” When it comes down to it, the budding legal cannabis industry presents an excellent opportunity for women and minorities to change the relationship between race and cannabis for future generations. “This is a brand new industry,” Wanda says with enthusiasm. “It’s an amazing industry for women and minorities to take hold of. It’s time for us to come around and understand that we need to own the products and not just use them. You don’t have to grow weed to be a part of the industry. There are writers. There are designers. The face of cannabis looks like me. It looks like my husband. It looks like you. Anything you can do in any other industry, you can do in cannabis. Jump on ® board. Let’s do it!” dopemagazine.com ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE

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WRITER •MELANIE BIGALKE

CANNANEWS

LOOKING FORWARD

Diversity and Inclusion in Cannabis HERE IS no question that the War on Drugs has perpetuated racial disparities throughout the United States. The unequal application of laws and sanctions, and the long-term impacts on communities are staggering to contemplate. According to a 2010 report by the ACLU, blacks were 3.73x more likely to be arrested in every region of the United States for cannabis—and the US spent over $3.6 billion on possession enforcement in 2010. According to the report, the midwestern corridor of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota presented the largest disparities

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in incarceration rates for cannabis possession among people of color. In the four states, the black arrest rate is 7.3x higher than the arrest rate for cannabis possession among the white population along the upper Mississippi River corridor. (See sidebar for further information.) The ACLU estimated that more than $490 million ($495,611,826) of the $3.6 billion spent on cannabis enforcement was on incarceration of offenders. The final conclusion of the report was that the only solution to begin repairing the racial disparities that are currently inherent within the system is through the legalization of cannabis across the United States. Even though that happy day seems

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to be getting closer on a nationwide level, the problem of racial inequality in the nascent cannabis industry is only beginning to be addressed. While national legislation to legalize the plant would begin to address the disparities in the incarceration rates, the lack of access to capital and banking services, and other hurdles that confront cannapreneurs, create an even harsher impact upon communities of color. So the question is being posed, “How can the green revolution be made more accessible for all strata of society?” Anne Wallace of the MJINews recently investigated these issues in her article “Achieving Diversity in the Cannabis Indus-

“There is a rosy picture in here somewhere…It is a picture of an industry that leads by bringing social justice, sustainability, and equality together under the banner of cannabis” try”. From existing operations to cannabis-specific staffing agencies, diversity is a challenge. One staffing agency is quoted as saying “The applicant pool that comes to us lacks diversity. For some experienced positions we place, the candidates that respond are 95% white men, and this is consistent with what we hear from businesses.” Educational opportunities present obvious challenges, but the industry itself can also stand to become more innovative in its search for business partners and opportunities. There are a number of interesting social venture and non-profit models that are already working in the space. GoGreene is a campaign and 501C3 by infamous Alaskan journalist and advocate Charlo Greene aimed at increasing diversity in cannabis and supporting medical patients. The Minority Business Cannabis Association is a non-profit organization “Created to service the specific needs and interests of minority cannabis entrepreneurs, investors and patients.” Women Grow has launched chapters in 33 cities in the United States and Canada and has been called the fastest-growing organization in cannabis. Aside from increasing access and diversity in the industry, the opportunity to integrate incarcerated and formerly incarcerated communities presents intriguing potential for the industry. A Social Ignition is a Portland, Oregon-based organization that works with men in prison to teach entrepreneurship and transitional life skills. ASI’s Ignition Option is a “12 session series that begins with the power of choice, introduces business basics like marketing and finance, and culminates in a Presentation Day, where the men pitch their business ideas to a room full of distinguished guests.” There is a rosy picture in here somewhere, a land where the end of prohibition sparks mass clemency and the cannabis industry is flooded with a ready workforce and entrepreneurial spirit. It is a picture of an industry that leads by bringing social justice, sustainability, and equality together under the banner of cannabis. With the help of organizations like GoGreene and a Social Ignition, these seemingly impossible images may just arise with the same velocity as that of the recreational market. This requires, however, a thoughtful and inclusive approach to developing the industry business by business. Integrating social responsibility and equitable capital divestment into everyday business practices is integral if the cannabis industry wishes to address the racial disparities created by the War on Drugs.

By The Numbers: 2010 Disparities (ACLU Report, “The War on Marijuana in Black and White”) • Between 2001 and 2010 there were over 7 million arrests for possession. In 2010 alone 784,021 arrests were for cannabis possession (nearly half (46%) of all drug arrests in America). • Nationwide, in 2010, the white arrest rate was 192 per 100,000 whites. The black arrest rate was 716 per 100,000 blacks. In the Northeast and Midwest, blacks are over 4x more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than whites. In the South, blacks are over 3x more likely, and in the West they are twice more likely. In over one third of the states, blacks are more than 4x more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than whites.

• The states with the highest racial disparities in cannabis possession arrest rates per 100,000 in 2010 were Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois.

• In 2010, Oregon had the fifth lowest disparity… and the black arrest rate (563) was more than double the white arrest rate (271).

U.S. States

IOWA D.C. MINNESOTA ILLINOIS WISCONSIN KENTUCKY PENNSYLVANIA

Black Arrest Rate

White Arrest Rate

Times More Likely Blacks Arrested

1,454 1,489 835 1,526 1,285 697 606

174 185 107 202 215 117 117

8.34 8.05 7.81 7.56 5.98 5.95 5.19

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PAGE TITLE

WRITER •FIRST LAST

PHOTOS • FIRST LAST

CANNANEWS

ONLINE

CANNABIS COMMUNITIES

ECHNOLOGY HAS always offered a

necessary layer of anonymity and distance to conversations about illegal substances, from its earliest implementations to the recently exposed dark web of anonymous networks like the Silk Road. In 1971 or 72, when the internet we know now was still a dream, and a handful of engineering colleges were connected through a proto-network called Arpanet. Engineering students from Stamford used the network to coordinate a pot deal with their counterparts across the country at MIT. Twenty years later, hundreds of thousands of secure anonymous transactions were coordinated over Silk Road—an anonymous darknet marketplace for cannabis and thousands of other more sinister substances.

THE EARLY DAYS OF ONLINE CANNABIS COMMUNITIES

Before the safety of medical and recreational markets, cannabis cultivation was a strictly clandestine and generally solitary practice. Outside of pockets of freedom like Amsterdam and Northern California, there was little opportunity for growers to safely interact with each other to discuss the craft. Se-

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curity was the paramount concern—both from law enforcement and would-be thieves—and every conversation about cultivation (especially with a stranger) was risky. By the 1980s, a novel solution presented itself: geographically disbursed communities of common interest could connect their computers to electronic Bulletin Board Systems via telephone lines to communicate relatively anonymously. For the first time, growers could draft and digitally publish information for other growers, compare notes, and communicate to trade genetics with likeminded individuals. There was no master index of these Bulletin Board Systems and the world wide web hadn’t yet manifested in earnest, so an aspiring user needed to get the dial-in number from an existing user. This personto-person transmission of the BBS dial-in number ensured a basic amount of security: no one could accidentally wander on to one of these systems, and new users were generally vetted for their personal references. The decade was a pivotal point in American and Global culture as the computer revolution reached family living rooms across the nation. Services like Prodigy, American Online and Compuserve joined the dial-up BBS network to connect users to the early internet,

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including a disbursed message board system called Usenet and the early stage World Wide Web. Usenet newsgroups flourished for thousands of specialized topics, and since the late 80s, “questionable” topics like sex and mind altering substances were relegated to the alternate hierarchies of Usenet, where rules were considerably more lax than mainstream channels. These alt.drugs and alt.cannabis newsgroups became repositories, and incubators of techniques and knowledge stored in text files distributed relatively anonymously (and almost instantaneously), allowing for the first crudely written, and even more crudely illustrated, instructionals to be disseminated. By the 1990s, both Internet-based personal computing and the final era of black market cannabis were on their way to becoming culturally established, and the two trending forces soon came to overlap. In the late nineties, Weedbase established itself as the first web-based forum site, where growers and smokers could connect and share info, tips and photos. By 1998, a few of the regulars had started talking about starting their own forum dedicated to cultivation, which led to the creation of Overgrow.com.

OVERGROW.COM

WRITER •STEVE MARASCHINO

THE GOLDEN AGE OF CANNABIS FORUMS

When members of Weedbase began the discussion of starting a cultivation focused forum in late 1998, they could have had no way of knowing what they’d just set into motion. Overgrow.com combined unique features that encouraged community interaction and a cultivation-based focus, at a time when browsing the web was becoming a normal American activity. As digital photography and file compression improved, this became the first genuine peerbased platform where cultivators could share high quality images of their gardens, genetics, and finished buds. This open exchange of ideas and associated photographic proof led to two trends that have become major factors in online cannabis forums: cooperation and competition between growers. Through Overgrow, thousands of growers worldwide connected and swapped information, lore, and genetics—for the first time, there were hundreds of seeds and clones being traded, shared, and explored in groups that could collect notes and information for each other and those running the same strains in the future. Pointers on plant preferences, comparative experiments, and group phenotype hunts suddenly became possible. At the same time, standards started to emerge on how to share “smoke reports” on finished grows, and how to document problems encountered in the garden for crowd-sourced problem solving. Overgrow flourished and Heaven’s Stairway, the associated seed market, served as a central hub for seed genetics from around the world to be sold to the US and Canada. At its height, the forum had 75,000 users, most of them active on a regular basis, with the seed market funding the costs associated with maintaining the site. Unfortunately it all came tumbling down. In January 2006, Richard Calrizian (the handle of the administrator responsible for the seed sales) was raided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for selling and distributing cannabis seeds. News that authorities had seized their servers and user information reverberated through the web, and most users immediately went underground, many dismantling grow operations in fear of follow-up raids.

THE NEXT GENERATION

After the fall of Overgrow, some users disconnected entirely in fear of being linked with the next takedown, while others reshuffled their

identities and set off for alternate forums. One was the forums attached to International Cannagraphic magazine (known as ICMag), run by a seed distributor known as Gypsy Nirvana. The other was the THCFarmer forums, linked to the SeedBay marketplace, run by an administrator known as Logic. ICMag, which was already operating with limited attention, took off immediately after the Overgrow raid and became a hub for many of the refugees. With discussions focused on every sub niche of growing from small cabinet grows to large vertical stadium setups and living organics to DIY hydroponics, it became the hub where new strains, new techniques, and new personalities won the interest of the cannabis world. Strains like Girl Scout Cookies, Golden Goat, Bruce Banner, Gorilla Glue, and countless others made their first appearances and started winning growers’ hearts on the pages of ICMag. Personalities like Rare Dankness’ Scott Reach and the Cannabist’s Ry Prichard first established their reputations and networks in the digital corridors of ICMag. THCFarmer similarly supported a community of breederand growers, many of which have come to greater prominence in the past few years. From OGRaskal and his White Fire OG, to Swerve and his work with Cali Connection, to Loompa’s Headband and Krome’s the White, and of course Obsoul33t and his Alien and Franchise genetics lines, “The Farm” has been a launchpad for the current generation of seed company brands and genetics. The associated SeedBay site became home to seed auctions fetching as much as $2,000 per pack for legendary genetics that would be coveted by collectors and breeders for years.

CANNABIS COMMUNICATION IN THE ERA OF SOCIAL MEDIA

As medical and recreational cannabis became increasingly accepted and legal, in many states growers, breeders, and extractors began to turn to mainstream social media channels like Facebook and Instagram to continue these trends of competition and cooperation. Facebook plays hosts to hundreds of public, private, closed, and secret groups for every aspect of cannabis. Instagram has become the defacto proving ground for old and new growers alike, offering a convenient platform for users to show off their work and curate their images with hashtags. While growers’ infatuation with strains like Gorilla Glue #4 and Girl Scout Cookies

GRAPHICS •BRANDON PALMA

can be traced to the forums, the consumers’ fascination can generally be credited to Instagram. Similarly, the rapid dissemination of new trends and techniques like rosin (solventless hash oil) and no-till organic growing can largely be credited to the compelling formula of Instagram, where every text-based claim is based on the visual proof of an image as a starting point. Today, social media sites grapple with their policies regarding cannabis pages and content. Instagram has performed multiple account sweeps aimed at cannabis accounts in illegal markets, prompting the creation of services like MassRoots and marijuana.com, but so far Instagram has been mostly hands-off to accounts depicting activities that are legal in their area. Facebook has taken a mixed approach as well, generally allowing cannabis content to proliferate in the absence of community complaints, but cooperating by providing information at the request of law enforcement. There is no doubt mainstream social media channels will continue to facilitate more discussions with more participants than ever before over cannabis, but it’s unlikely that these conversations will be carried with the passion, conviction, or concentrated expertise that marked the legendary threads from the golden age of cannabis forums.

“Instagram has become the defacto proving ground for old and new growers alike, offering a convenient platform for users to show off their work and curate their images with hashtags.”

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INCREASED HYPER-PRIMING

HEALTH

Ever realize after partaking in cannabis that you make connections between seemingly unrelated words or concepts with greater ease? The plant really does put some minds in a state where abstract concepts flow, and ideas that would normally seem totally unrelated, suddenly gel. A 2010 study researchers at the University College found that these moments of ‘hyper priming’ are more common in chronic cannabis users, even when not typically considered “stoned”.

MAKE ROOM FOR EPIPHANIES Kumar suspects cannabis may work to give people the headspace they need to access creativity. “Many times you connect unrelated things when you’re in a diffuse state of attention,” says Kumar. “There’s an incubation period, so ideas just sit around, and sometimes you just get a solution.”

SILENCING THE CRITIC WITHIN

By elevating euphoria-inducing dopamine levels in the brain, cannabis quells our inner editor that can impede creativity, leaving us more open to consider original ideas that might initially be rejected as just too far out there.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

A Catalyst for Creative Thought? WRITER •LAEL HENTERLY

GRAPHICS• BRANDON PALMA

HINK CANNABIS helps you be more creative? You’re in good company.

Over the last couple of centuries a dazzling array of accomplished creative visionaries have credited cannabis with assisting their process. Researchers started trying to test the theory more recently, and so far the results have been inconclusive. Here’s what science says the plant can do for creativity thus far:

Does cannabis promote a more effective brainstorm? In a study published in Psychopharmacology earlier this year, researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands got a group of research subjects to partake in cannabis and complete divergent thinking tasks— considered by many to be the gold standard test of creativity. The “enhanced” subjects didn’t do so hot, but West Chester University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Krishna Kumar says he’s skeptical of the current methods for measuring divergent thinking. “When we do lab tests on creativity, we ask, ‘how many uses of a pen?’” observes Kumar, “but what does that tell you about creativity in real life?”

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

Funding for creativity research is scarce, so don’t expect anything conclusive any time soon. University at Albany State University of New York psychology professor Mitch Earleywine says he would like to see more research on cannabis’ effect on incubation. “I think it would enhance that, where you set aside a problem and come back to it later,” says Earleywine, “but there is no data yet.” ®

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Try it at Home!

Excited to crank up your epiphany output with some cannabis? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all method to stimulate creative thought, but there are a few general best practices:

Several notable geniuses credit cannabis for igniting their creative fire…

Stick with Sativa

Not all strains of cannabis are equal when it comes to stimulating creative thought. The general rule of thumb is “more sativa - less indica”. A sativa-dominant strain like haze is a good place to start. Even if the whole creative genius thing is a fail, you’ll still get a caffeine-style kick and a dose of motivation.

Famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan didn’t just smoke cannabis; he wrote anonymous essays extolling its virtues.

Jazz musician Louis Armstrong described cannabis’s effect on creativity most aptly as his “assistant.”

Go Slow

Remember those researchers from Leiden University? While their super-stoned research subjects were bombing the divergent-thinking test, their slightly stoned peers were doing just as well as the placebo group. You can always smoke or dab or vape more in half an hour if creativity still isn’t happening, in other words, pace yourself, and beware of potentially strong edibles with difficult to gauge effects. Sometimes less really is more.

In the 1970s Apple founder Steve Jobs smoked cannabis multiple times a week.

Prolific novelist Stephen King was featured in High Times back in the 1980s.

Lighten Up and Believe

“If people think cannabis will make them more creative, it does. Humor or positive mood induction can enhance creativity, so [we] can see how cannabis might work in those ways.” says Earleywine.

Document It

You know when you have an amazing idea and the next day it’s just gone? Write down all those crazy ideas while that inner-critic is subdued by dopamine, and look it over later when your editorial judgment returns.

Perhaps we can’t say we saw him smoking, but evidence that William Shakespeare occasionally partook in cannabis is mounting.

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CANNANEWS

THE DARK SIDE OF ILLEGAL CANNABIS GROWING UMAN TRAFFICKING and drug smuggling have gone together for a very long time. It is abundantly clear that the cannabis industry, left in the dark without legalization, can be a breeding ground for criminal activity and human exploitation. Current laws are improving as far as employee rights are concerned, but they are still nowhere near perfect. In states where cannabis is now legal and regulated, individuals are able to hold legitimized jobs in the cannabis industry, while minimizing the risk of being taken advantage of.

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WRITER •ABIGAIL ROSS

Decriminalizing cannabis protects workers within the industry to worse conditions. In the United Kingdom 90% of cannabis is grown indoors. It is from exploitation, but an extremely different reality exists in many places across the world and many of these cases of exploited persons estimated that 75% of cannabis grow operations are ran by Vietnamese gangs. Children are often used as gardeners because they are cheaper are left unheard. In May 2015, it was estimated that over 3,000 children were traf- and more reliable than automated systems. If authorities raid grow opficked into Britain. Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Trafficking erations the child is usually the only one there faced with drug charges that can be as steep as 14 years in prison. The detainee will rarely talk, Bureau stated: “By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children for fear they will further endanger their families. Christine Beddoe, director of EPCAT UK, released in the UK who are being used for a statement explaining: profit by criminal gangs…The ”These children are thoupolice and the authorities are “Often the same child will be sands of miles away from their now aware that trafficked chilexploited not just in a cannabis farm families and deprived of their dren are being forced to work in but also in myriad different ways. This basic human rights. Children cannabis farms but this is really exploited in this way are often only the tip of the iceberg. Often is happening right under our noses and locked in or coerced to work in the same child will be exploited not enough is being done to stop it.” cannabis farms, forced to sleep not just in a cannabis farm but on floors and in cupboards, exalso in myriad different ways. posed to dangerous fumes, conThis is happening right under stant heat and light, as well as the ever-present risk of fire and electroour noses and not enough is being done to stop it.” Many are underpaid or forced to work for free. Sadly, these chil- cution. They are also subject to horrific physical and emotional abuse. dren only account for 25% of the total amount of humans trafficked Once discovered, many are not identified as victims of trafficking and from South East Asia to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom are instead viewed as criminals and charged with drug or immigration is not the only place exploitations like this exist, and due to busts in offences, further adding to their trauma and maltreatment. The UK the past few years, human trafficking for cannabis production has been should not and must not treat children in this way.” There are many ways to get involved and fight human traffickbrought more into the light. There are a few ways immigrants end up in these tragic situations. ing injustices. Consuming cannabis consciously is the easiest way to The first is through “debt bondage.” Families may owe money to the avoid human exploitation in the workplace. In American states that government or local gangs. Often times a gang will lend the money in cannabis has been legalized we are incredibly blessed to have the abilexchange for a family member or child to work off the debt in a foreign ity to regulate labor practices and improve the quality of life for cancountry. When children arrive in these countries they are most often nabis employees. This means that by purchasing cannabis through loenslaved and forced to live in horrific conditions. Another common cal communities’ dispensaries and recreational shops, local cultivators way people end up in forced labor situations is to be forwarded the and producers are supported, and black market injustices are avoided. money to migrate to a new country. Potential immigrants are charged The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (www.traffickan insane amount of money to be moved. The trip itself is danger- ingresourcecenter.org) provides a list of regional resources and inforous and long; some are locked up in crates for days on end as they are mation. Legitimization and decriminalization of cannabis can affect smuggled through transit countries. They are promised work where lives in ways unimaginable, and awareness is the light that illuminates they will be able to pay their debts off. However, the reality often leads truth in even the darkest of places.

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CANNANEWS

SYSTEMATIC OPPRESSION IS COMING TO AN END! EDICAL CANNABIS LAWS in California do not currently protect patient’s civil rights. This leaves us open to stereotyping, discrimination, segregation and abuse from the powers that be. This environment of shame and fear can be a constant stress in our lives. As medical cannabis patients, we endure the loss of our children, housing, education, health care, banking and financially we suffer a disadvantage. This is nothing new for many, if not most people of color in this country. With the technological advancements of the internet and cell phone cameras, the abuses that were previously suffered in silence are being shown to the world. The hash tag phrase #BlackLivesMatter is a way to raise awareness of discrimination, racism and abuse by the system. The positive energy of social justice is being used as fuel for a long coming change being felt across the nation. It is a responsibility we all share. Not one day must pass before everyone takes a stand against racism and discrimination in every form. Cannabis prohibition was planted with seeds of racism. The truth is, interests in the pharmaceutical, chemical, timber, cotton and alcohol industries pushed for prohibition throughout the states before the Marijuana Tax Act came before congress in 1937. This was done with news articles and propaganda films that played on the prejudice and beliefs of popular culture at that time. A quote many of you may have heard from the head of the propaganda movement, Henry Anslinger, The Commissioner of Narcotics, “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” I was honored to interview, The Rev Ashiya Odeye, Reverend Director of Order of the Olufumni Rastafari Church and Executive

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“BLACK LIVES HAVEN’T MATTERED IN THIS COUNTRY, AND THAT’S BEEN A PROBLEM. WITH SLAVERY AND THE RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION THAT HAPPENED, AFTERWARD THERE WERE [STRUGGLES] THAT STILL EXIST TODAY...”

ISSUE 51 THE PAST TO PRESENT ISSUE dopemagazine.com

WRITER •KIMBERLY CARGILE

Director the Justice Reform Coalition. His organization works hard to promote civil rights for all. It is not a coincidence that a large number of the people he helps have been arrested for cannabis crimes. Even though studies show that young white and black men use cannabis in equal amounts, the young men of color are arrested at much higher rates. “Black lives haven’t mattered in this country, and that’s been a problem. With slavery and the racism and discrimination that happened, afterward there were [struggles] that still exist today...” Revered Odeye stated. As we talked, I reflected on the phrase “innocent until proven guilty,” and wondered why we continue to disseminate this phrase. The truth is a person arrested is guilty till proven innocent. This flaw in our social justice system is an abuse to our citizen’s human rights. People who do not have money needed for bail or a lawyer, sit in jail for years sometimes waiting for their “speedy trial” to begin. In that time they can lose their job, their homes, personal relationships and not to mention their mental health and dignity. This is extremely devastating for many innocent people. The socio-economic disparity between the white and black communities leaves the black community vulnerable to this particular social injustice. The roots of prohibition are firmly planted in racism, and the movement to protect medical cannabis patient’s rights is founded on the same ideals that fought against racism. Medical cannabis activists are fueled by the same passion required of any repressed people

rising up from imaginable mistreatment. When cannabis activists look for solutions to changing laws and changing minds, we look to the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the disabled patient’s rights movement and the gay rights movement. True freedom can only come when there is a level playing field for all. As a subculture, the cannabis community has the opportunity to set new standards for how we treat one another. This morning at the From Raids to Regulation – The Emerging Politics of Pot Conference at Sacramento State University, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dale Sky Jones, a passionate and knowledgeable activist. She currently sits as chairwoman of the board for the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, taking a leading role in California legalization with the initiative in 2016. She stated, “What we are trying to do by legalizing cannabis is to disassemble these aspects of the social and civil justice issues of the drug war. These aspects, [being] a disproportionate amount of contact between cops and young people of color (especially men), and this assumption of guilt and presumption of sales.” By educating ourselves on the history of racism in this country, we learn that being born white gives a person current economic, educational and legal privilege based on a tired old system of patriarchy and racism. This has left a large majority of the African American population in this county disadvantaged. Making a change is going to first require that the most privileged white people recognize this fact and take a stand against injustice.

PHOTOS • LINDSEY AHERN

The fact that the cannabis movement’s leaders and public stakeholder’s majority is made up by white men played out today when I called my longtime friend, crazy comedian, vocal cannabis activist, and social genius Ngaio Bealum. Not surprisingly, another writer from DOPE Mag had already contacted him. He joked about the irony of this truth, “Really am I the only black cannabis activist in Northern California to call?” I asked him what we can do to change this disparity in our industry. He says, “Remember, the cats that bore the brunt of prohibition were mostly black and brown.” It’s no wonder the majority of the front line of cannabis activists are white. They have less of a chance of serving time for standing up for what is right. “Now is the time for more black people to get openly involved, not just secretly involved or on the sideline involved. The time is now for black people and minorities and cats to step up!” Diversity is a strength in our country and will be as well in this new industry. “Legalizing weed goes a long way towards solving a lot of different social justice problems in one swoop,” Ngaio so perfectly states. We have a problem that we all have a responsibility to fix. When I asked the Rev what we need to do in order to make a change in our country he reminds us, “The main thing is to be resistant. That’s our right as citizens. We must enact our right to be civilly disobedient. “ Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights! ®

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