Colorado Kush Magazine by Randy MALINOFF

kush

colorado’s premier cannabis lifestyle magazine

42 features

42 Dan Hartman The Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Division Director Breaks Down the Licensing Process and Laws.

62 IZip: The Electric Bike Apple’s newest product…not! But it is cool and revolutionary… the laziest bike in existence!

66 Patients Out of Time They gave up guns, booze, and nightmares, due in no small part to marijuana.

72 Fly Fishing in Colorado Summmmmertiiimeee…and the livin’s EZ…time to pull out the rods and pull on the rubber boots.

92 Ziggy Marley A talk with Ziggy and the superstar crew behind his graphic novel, Marijuanaman. 6

inside

12 | Living Well: The Vegan Cleanse by Healthy Eater

18 | Rob’s Corner by Robert J. Corry 28 | This Month in Weed History: Bob Dylan by Josh Kaplan

from the editors

kush

colorado’s premier cannabis lifestyle magazine ay - the transitional month between spring and summer, the month of Cinco de

Mayo, college graduations and Mother’s Day. The month of Memorial Day, a salute to our soldier’s

A Division of Dbdotcom LLC

who have fought, and continue to fight, for our FREEDOM – yes, I did emphasize FREEDOM

Publishers | Dbdotcom LLC

– something that cities and States nationwide seem to ignore when it comes to the patient’s

Founder | Michael Lerner

FREEDOM to have safe access to Medical Marijuana. In 1996, California became the first state to pass a medical marijuana ordinance and fifteen years later, cities like San Diego, which just last month passed two city ordinances that amount to an effective ban on cannabis collectives, are trying to refute that medical marijuana is a necessary medication that approximately 70,000 of its

Editor in Chief | Lisa Selan Assistant Editor | Wasim Muklashy Chief Executive Officer | Bob Selan

own citizens depend on to cure their ailments or get through their battles with cancer, PSTD, AIDS,

Business Development | JT Wiegman

fibromyalgia, migraines, insomnia, chronic pain and a myriad of other illnesses.

Art Director | Robb Friedman, Joe Redmond

Director of International Marketing & Public Relations | Cheryl Shuman

In 2004, the voters of the State of Montana passed a medical marijuana ballot measure and a

few weeks ago Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer let a repeal of that law voted on by the Montana State politicians pass without his signature. The Wall Street Journal referred to this as the “Wild Wild West” getting “tamer.” By July 1, 2011, about 28,000 Montanans will effectively become criminals, and the businesses that used to serve them in an open and regulated manner will now return to illegal clandestine operations that receive no control and return no benefit to the state.

Director of Colorado Sales | Denise Mickelson Colorado Sales Manager | Christianna Lewis Advertising Sales Reps | Amanda Allen, Ed Docter,

I could go on, but essentially, voters by a majority vote in almost a 1/3 of our states have voted

Charlene Moran, Jason Moran, Fred Rhoades

for the right to have medical cannabis, yet politicians continue to find ways to refute the will of

Designers | Avel Culpa, Marvi Khero

the people.

Traffic Managers | Alex Lamitie, Kevin Johnson Ryan Renkema, Jordan Selan, Rachel Selan

In Colorado, the state is working as an entity to regulate Medical Cannabis as a complete

industry. While many might object to some of the parts of the Colorado Medical Marijuana law,

Many patients, including members of our armed forces who have fought for our FREEDOM need the fight for each patient’s right to have safe access to get their medicine. at least Colorado is taking the bull by the horns, so to speak, and creating a regulated, profitable industry that creates new businesses and employment opportunities for the state and provides patients with safe access to medication.

Many patients, including members of our armed forces who have fought for our FREEDOM

Distribution Manager | Alex Lamitie Contributing Writers | Al Byrne, Chef Herb, Angela Cifor, Robert J. Corry, Charlotte Cruz, Tyler C. Davidson, J.T. Gold, John Green, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Josh Kaplan, Jade Kine, Bud Lee, David Leggett, Mike Marino, Mary Lynn Mathre, Christine Metsger, Wasim Muklashy, Ed Rosenthal, Robert E. Selan, Austin Hill Shaw, Dillon Zachara Accounting | Dianna Bayhylle Internet Manager Dailybuds.com | Rachel Selan Dailybuds.com Team | JT Kilfoil & Houston

need the fight for each patient’s right to have safe access to get their medicine. In many cases, their lives depend on it. Kush believes this is a battle worth fighting. Please be sure to read the article about one patient’s use of medical marijuana and how it saved him from a life of addiction to hard drugs and alcohol (p 66). As an industry, we should band together to accomplish one goal – that is to allow medical cannabis to be readily available to all patients who have received a medical recommendation to get cannabis. Kush is fortunate to have been able to interview Dan Hartman from the Department of Revenue who is working diligently to make sure that medical marijuana businesses are properly licensed so that patients will have access to their medication (page 42).

On a lighter note, with spring in the air, and gasoline prices rising, be sure to check out the

new electric hybrid bike manufactured by izipusa.com (p 62), and if you plan on celebrating Cinco de Mayo all month long, our own Chef Herb has created some delicious Mexican food recipes for the occasion (p 98). Kush is also fortunate to be adding a new column this month from renowned “Guru of Ganja” Ed Rosenthal. Be sure to read his Ask Ed ™ questions and answers on growing cannabis on page 78.

From the staff and Editors at Kush Magazine, stay informed, stay involved and

medicate responsibly.

Kush Editorial Board, www.dailybuds.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS KUSH Magazine is also available by individual subscription at the following rates: in the United States, one year 12 issues $89.00 surface mail (US Dollars only). To Subscribe mail a check for $89.00 (include your mailing address) to : DB DOT COM 24011 Ventura Blvd. Suite 200 Calabasas, CA 91302 877-623-KUSH (5874) Fax 818-223-8088 KUSH Magazine and www.dailybuds.com are Tradenames of Dbdotcom LLC. Dbbotcom LLC 24011 Ventura Blvd. Suite 200 Calabasas, CA 91302 877-623-KUSH (5874) Fax 818-223-8088 To advertise or for more information Please contact info@dailybuds.com or call 877-623-5874 Printed in the United States of America. Copyright ©2011. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without the written written permission of Dbdotcom LLC.

round

month

ago I began to feel increasingly

sluggish

and cloudy headed. My body was a bit achy and honestly I felt like something was wrong. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I went to my doctor, he ran some tests and the diagnosis came up negative – nothing diagnosable could indicate why I am feeling this way. So I did what anyone would do…I got online. That’s where I came across Oprah’s challenge to do a vegan cleanse…I mean, you have to admit…she’s doing something right.

most packaged and prepared foods. I found myself focusing on single ingredients such as loads of veggies and fruits, rice, nut butters, whole grain cereals such as oats and barley, beans such as chick peas and kidney beans, nuts and soy products including milk and tofu. I found

Oprah and other celebrities jumped on the vegan cleanse

delicious gluten free bread products, quinoa pasta, and sweet potatoes

bandwagon back in 2009 when Kathy Freston wrote the book, Quantum

to give natural sweetness to veggie dishes. I was even discovered the

Wellness: A Practical Guide To Health and Happiness. I ended up

idea of adding nutritional yeast for extra flavor.

purchasing the followup, Quantum Wellness Cleanse: The 21-Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Mind, Body and Spirit, which is more about “conscious eating,” basically, eliminating foods with all sugar, alcohol, caffeine, gluten, and animal products from your diet in order to detox your system and rebalance your body. The premise is to replace these foods with foods that contain more nutritional value with the hopes it will enhance physical, emotional and spiritual health. First of all, I eat all types of protein, dairy and gluten. I drink caffeinated drinks and occasionally drink alcohol. So this was a radical choice for someone who has never had dietary restrictions. The only conscious eating I have done until now, is to look at fat content, carb content, sugar content, sodium content and then gauge portions based on caloric content. Sure, that might seem like a lot for most, but it was still a far cry from what this cleanse was asking me to do. In any case, I figured I’d give it a shot. The first thing I did was create a shopping list. The website makes it extremely easy by including a great straightforward list to follow: www. kathyfreston.com/kathy_freston_shopping_lists.html. I also read labels on foods in my pantry to see which ones contain hidden wheat (soy sauce!) and sugar. At the local Whole Foods I also found myself reading every label since many foods that are labeled Vegan also contain gluten! I instantly gained a new consciousness about what ingredients were in

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While I truly missed my morning coffee and felt more than slightly deprived when I went to a club with friends and ordered a sparkling water with lime, I found my will power to avoid these items remarkable and it got easier as each day passed (not to mention, I was the one that had all the energy and was all smiles the next morning). However, one of the hardest foods for me to give up was cheese - a bit of parmesan on my pasta or a slice of cheese on the portabella mushroom burger sure would have been nice! Despite all this, at the end of the three weeks I found I had so much energy, I was never hungry, I enjoyed working out and doing yoga more than ever and decided that I was going to try to use this lifestyle as a part of my regimen going forward (as a special treat, I wouldn’t feel bad about occasionally adding the foods I cut out and thought I couldn’t live without). My head is now clear and I actually enjoy food much more – especially since I now know what I am eating! So for a healthy jump start try a vegan cleanse! It may seem hard at first, but you’ll see, it’s worth it!

Q: Rob, I own a Medical Marijuana Center, with hundreds of patients and thousands of plants. We sell many pounds of marijuana every day, for profit. We hire employees, pay taxes, and advertise. We spent thousands of hours and dollars for full compliance with local and state laws related to Medical Marijuana. Should we fear the Federal Government, especially in light of U.S. Attorney for Colorado John Walsh’s recent pronouncement? -M.G., Boulder

A: M.G., you hit on one of the most common and most serious questions of anyone involved in this community or industry. Difficult to answer in a definitive way, especially because the Federal Government itself provides no direct and clear answer to this question, and the Feds’ actions so differ from its words. First, the President of the United States stated numerous times that “I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana; it is not a good use of our resources.” These exact words appear on videotape in a Huffington Post I authored last year, explicitly ratified by the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, also on video. Americans can rely on what the President and Attorney General say, and the words of government officials can provide a defense to criminal prosecution. Second, on October 19, 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. (“Main Justice” which outranks a U.S. Attorney for Colorado) authored a “formal” guideline for prosecutors which said those in compliance with State laws related to medical marijuana could expect no interference from the federal government. But then, on April 26, 2011, U.S. Attorney John Walsh tried to

marijuana. Gosh, I felt so much safer when this gentle man was taken off the streets and locked in a cage! Utterly inconsistent, the Feds originally said it raided Chris Bartkowicz for alleged non-compliance with State law related to plant count (how did DEA know this before busting down his door?), but then turned 180 degrees and persuaded a federal judge to place a gag order prohibiting even a mention of compliance with state law! So, yes, we should all fear the federal government, because it plays by no rules, makes rules up as it goes along, cannot be reasoned with, believes Might Makes Right, answers to no one, has guns, endless funds, and cold, dark prison cells with bars. The federal government long ago stopped being a servant, and now it believes it a master of we mere taxpayers who pay its salaries. And do not expect the Colorado State government coming to your defense. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers (a former Fed himself) said Walsh’s letter means that even the Colorado Governor, Colorado Legislature, and other State officials, are guilty of conspiracy to violate federal law for regulating Colorado’s Medical Marijuana industry. Under this “logic,” John Suthers himself is guilty of a federal criminal offense for representing the State in defending these regulations. So, if you continue to care for suffering Medical Marijuana patients, at least you may have good company. Prison poker with Chris Bartkowicz, John Hickenlooper, John Suthers, Matt Cook, and you, might be a good way to pass the time. You can even obtain marijuana in prison, which tells you everything you need to know about the enforceability of Prohibition.

overrule his superiors at Main Justice, and wrote a letter threatening the potential of prosecution. Not a mere theoretical threat, since Walsh and his prosecutors earlier placed Colorado caregiver Chris Bartkowicz in a federal prison cell for five years for the “crime” of growing medical

Robert J. Corry, Jr. is an Attorney licensed to practice in Colorado, California, and the District of Columbia. This column does not constitute formal legal advice, and should not relied upon as such. Please submit comments or questions to www.RobCorry.com.

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On my recent travels through Europe, I found my iPod stuck on Rancid and their jackhammer gutter-punk riffs and beats, which led me back through The Clash’s catalog and the analysis of their shared influences of Ska, Dub, Reggae, Rock, and Punk, as well as their general stiff-upper-lipped viewpoint on the world. It seemed like a strange jump at the time, but I started “Jones”-ing for some Bob Dylan, and consequently, my entire trip was spent listening to these three artists. The more I listened, the more similarities I found: rebellious ideas through stories of protest and strife, with interesting combinations of strangely accented vocals and unconventional sounds. This really came full circle, and is an homage to one of the greatest singer-songwriters in American pop history: This Month In Weed History’s birthday boy, Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 21, 1941. Dylan always wrote as a regular man with common everyday concerns. Rancid’s approach displays this same gritty work ethic, and also speaks to the common man. Their songs of left-wing political and social stances are sung with a whole lot of street cred and the mish-moshed drawl of a lower east-sider who’s lived in London too long - with a very wet bottom lip. This unabated notion of not giving a fuck, combined with really great songwriting has earned Rancid their stripes. And I’m pretty sure they are aware of how much they owe to The Clash, and Bob Dylan. While Dylan may have never thrown a Molotov cocktail, or smashed his equipment in a musical rage, his going “electric” at the worlds biggest Folk Festival (Newport 1965) can now be considered as “punk-rock” a move as any - a whole decade before anyone knew who The Clash were. Bob Dylan may just be the most punk of them all. With the moniker of the “best” or “most famous” American singer-songwriter of our time, Dylan could have hung his flat-brimmed cowboy hat up long ago, but turning seventy this year, he remains a slave to the road, touring the world like some mystical Hobo, ever in pursuit of a fresh sound (having re-worked all of his old favorites countless times over). What’s more “punk” than never going home? Dylan’s vagrant ways have become his norm. His Never Ending Tour (as it’s known) has been traipsing around the world playing nearly everywhere since 1980. Dylan’s song list is a cornerstone to Folk music, and he has fearlessly stepped into multiple other genres such as Blues, Country, Gospel, Rockabilly, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Swing, and even English, Scottish, and Irish Folk Music. Popularizing the acoustic guitar, as well as the keyboards and harmonica, Dylan has forged his sound far ahead of most of his contemporaries. His recognizable, and often mimicked nasal vocal quality is also a drawl of unique world travels - somewhere between Cowboy, Gypsy, and Creole medicine man, with the syllabic rhythms of someone new to the language, talking with marbles in his mouth. This undeniable sound created by his voice, guitar, and harmonica is not for everyone, and some find it un-listenable. I, on the other hand have learned to really embrace his quirky styles. As Dylan gets older, and continues to tour, his live shows remain very interesting, and his counter-culture influences ever so evident. You want to see, and hear what he’s going to do next, vocally or through a new arrangement. This keeps his fans, and his band, on the edge of their seats. His vast set-lists leave the reigns in his hands, and all in the venue chomping at the bit to see which direction the stone will choose to roll next…

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exploring the origins of consciousness, pondering its mysterious beginnings some several hundred thousand years ago. Take a moment to put yourself in that unknown creature’s shoes. Imagine what it would have been like to go to sleep one evening with only your senses and instincts to guide you and wake up with the awareness of being aware. Imagine what it would have been like for all your sensorial experience—your ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel—to be suddenly met with a new capacity that utilized the senses, but was no longer tied to them in quite the same way. It gives me chills just thinking about it. We can never know for certain what actually happened. Did consciousness emerge all at once like a bolt of lightning, or did it come about erratically, starting and stopping through a series of fortuitous mishaps over thousands of years? Was it primarily genetic mutations driving the process or stresses in the environment, or some fateful combination of the two? No one can say for certain. But it happened, and a key ingredient underlying all of human innovation in art, culture, science, and religion was sprung upon the world. Let’s further our exploration of consciousness, this time focusing in on how to better access it. How do we begin to befriend the dynamic lens through which we see the world when we are looking through it all the

34 34

time? How can we get any real perspective on consciousness when we are dependent upon if for perspective in the first place? These are huge challenges but well worth the effort. Drawing from my own experience and from the experience of innumerable others, what follows are various timetested practices that can help us on our journey. Creating intimacy with our own consciousness begins by setting intentions. Setting intentions reminds us to keep paying attention to consciousness itself, and not be entirely distracted by the objects of consciousness. For example, you can say to yourself, “for the next hour I will pay attention to the movements of my mind.” or “This month I commit to befriending my consciousness.” Setting intentions doesn’t mean that you notice your consciousness at all times. That is impossible. But setting intentions does help consciousness move from the background, where it’s busy coordinating the whole show, to the foreground, where you can begin to see it more clearly. Think of how you might ask a shy, but extremely competent stagehand to come out and take bow. Do the same with consciousness. Next, record your observations as a way of keeping both consciousness and your commitment to observe it present in you awareness. Since consciousness itself is the ever present, umbrella awareness governing your experience, when it changes, you do too. Recording your observations will allow you to compare and contrast your various states of consciousness when you’re in the middle of them. Engage in fasts of various sorts, removing certain objects or activities from your routine for a pre-determined length of time. For example you can do a food and water fast for a 24-hour period, experiencing what it is like to not get your basic caloric needs met for a day. Or you can engage in a media fast, experiencing your minds craving for information and entertainment by avoiding all newspapers, magazines, television programs, movies, and internet usage. Or take a vow of silence for a day or two, and see how you react to restrictions on your own self-expression. Be realistic about what you can and cannot do, choose a length of time, and then…commit. By creating holes in your normal activity, and watching how your sensations, thoughts, and emotions change as a result, fasts allow you rare glimpse of your own umbrella awareness at work. Like an archaeologist removing the dirt and debris covering the foundations of an ancient ruin, fasts uncover what is always there but which we’re normally too distracted to notice. Like fasting, regular meditation similarly affects the mind. Meditation is to the mind what enemas are to the bowels. Far from being a sedative, it flushes your mind of unnecessary and distracting mental chatter. When practiced on a regular basis, it provides space, clarity, and contrast from your daily life that helps you to see the working of consciousness directly. A close companion of meditation, and often-used in conjunction with meditation and other practices are breathing exercises, which bring

awareness to our most basic, ongoing exchange with the world around us. By either increasing the rate of our respirations or slowing them down, we alter consciousness itself. Furthermore, by simply noticing our breath we can begin to use it as a tool for expanded awareness. With the breath as a focal object, when we inhale, we can circulate both the breath and our awareness throughout our body, bringing attention to places in our body, maybe the back of our knees or the lobes of our ears, that usually go unnoticed. Breathing out, we rejoin both our breath and our awareness with the world at large. With deep, cross cultural roots in the human experience, drumming and dancing decentralizes the heady, often overused awareness of the intellect through sound, sensation, and movement, extending your awareness throughout the body and beyond, leaving you with an expanded sense of consciousness. Drumming and dancing have been used ritualistically in all corners of the world for thousands of years, allowing one’s sense of individual identity to set sail upon the waves of sound and rhythm,

ultimately surrendering to a broader, more interconnected collective. Older still, as early humans forged for viable food stuffs, they discovered, quite by accident, that certain psychoactive substances have the capacity to alter consciousness directly, their molecules interacting in ways that changed their perceptions of themselves and their relation to the world that surrounded them. These unique substances have not only been one of the driving forces underlying early art, religious experiences, and human innovation, some speculate they have played, and continue to play, a vital role in the emergence and reshaping of consciousness itself. But they are not to be taken lightly. In contrast to all the other practices I’ve mentioned thus far, these substances should only be used with great humility and even greater restraint. When used sparingly, they make valuable signposts along the road to wisdom. When used in excess, they can destroy the road altogether. Finally, as intensely social creatures, it’s important that we invite others to support, reflect, and help us in our explorations of consciousness. One way of doing this through a process called circling. The idea of circling is simple: you gathering a group of people around you, tell them what you’re up to, and ask for honest feedback. The feedback of the other participants is not to come from their heads in the form of judgment or criticism, but from their hearts and bodies, making present time observations such as, “when you said you were tired, what I felt was resentment” or “when you said you wanted to relax, I sensed you wanted to escape.” All of us have shadows and blind spots, areas that are part of our consciousness, yet difficult for us to see, sometimes because they’re painful or because they don’t match the values of the prevailing culture. The reflections we receive through circling, however, along with the insights gained from the other

practices I’ve already mentioned, are a powerful way of gaining access to those hidden areas of our own consciousness. Circling also has the added benefit of building healthy relationships based on honest reflection. Despite its challenges, it is my heartfelt opinion that becoming a connoisseur of consciousness is probably the most useful thing you can do with your time. Here are just some of the benefits: Since consciousness processes all your experiences, the knowledge and clarity you gain by befriending it, and the limiting habits and prejudices you often overcome, affects all aspects of your life. Like wiping clean a blackboard before beginning use the chalk, becoming a connoisseur of consciousness allows your sensorial experiences to be more vivid, your thinking clearer, and your heart more open. Next, your consciousness ceases to behave like some disembodied puppeteer ruling you from a distance and begins to walk beside you like a dear friend. In other words, your consciousness becomes accessible, and something you can begin to engage directly. Finally, the combination of 1) paying attention to what you’re doing while you’re doing it, along with 2) maintaining connection to consciousness itself, leads to bliss; and not just any bliss, not the bliss off flopping down on a comfortable couch at the end of a long day, but an enlivening bliss, an energized ecstatic bliss that allows you to engage the world with ever increasing levels of clarity, empathy, and vitality. Joining what you are doing with your awareness of doing it, simple as though it may sound, is as challenging as it is rare, yet celebrated across all disciplines. In sports it’s known as “the zone.” In art, it’s the mindset (and bodyset) that produces masterpieces. In science, it’s the experience of insight that leads to more exacting explanations of the natural world. In religion, it’s the quintessence of the mystical experience that reveals all things as sacred. In short, consciousness is not only our single most defining quality as human beings; it makes possible our very humanity. With all this in mind, let’s return once again to the mysterious dawn of consciousness, not as something that happened long ago but as something fresh, something that is happening right now. In this moment, as the future becomes the present and the present become the past, the dawn of consciousness is underway. In every moment, like the morning’s breathtaking changes of light and color painted across the eastern sky, consciousness keeps dawning again and again, refreshing our sensations, layering new emotions, illuminating new perspectives, unveiling new insights, and giving us new opportunities to appreciate and to love. In an immense universe that is mostly black empty space, on a planet that is neither boiling hot nor frozen solid, the coming together of our agile bodies with our self-aware consciousness is incredibly rare and unfathomably precious. All of which begs the question, what are you going to do to get to know yours better? Austin Hill Shaw is a writer, architectural designer, and mapmaker of creativity across art, science, and religion. He specializes in helping others tap into and utilize the creative life force in everything they do. He can be reached at austin@austinhillshaw.com

With Purchase of an 1/8th or more 6/1/11

The current state of Medical Marijuana in Colorado Kush had the pleasure of having a candid conversation with Dan Hartman, the Director of the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Colorado Department of Revenue, regarding the current status of the licensing of medical cannabis businesses in the state. Colorado enacted a state regulatory license system last summer to license Medical Marijuana Centers and offsite growing facilities, as well as infused product manufacturers. Here is what Mr. Hartman had to say about it: Kush Magazine: For our readers that don’t already know you, can you please give us a brief description of what your job duties are? Dan Hartman: “As the Director of the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, I am tasked with creating the rules and regulations that meet statutory mandates to regulate the Colorado Medical Marijuana industry. Since late 2009, I have worked with my boss Matt Cook to help craft the legislation that created this Division, and since its passage I have been hiring staff and running it. My appointment as Division Director just formalizes the role I’ve been playing since July of last year.” Kush: What is the current status of the license application process? Dan: “We have been pushing hard since the last of the applications were received on August 1, 2010, and anticipate being able to approve applications by July 1, 2011.” Kush: Have any licenses been awarded? Dan: “No, they will not be awarded prior to July 1, 2011.” Kush: Have any licenses been declined? Dan: “Yes. We have officially denied 9 applications for failing to meet the certification deadline that required by September 1, 2010 that all Medical Marijuana Centers (MMC’s) are producing at least 70% of the medicine they sell. There have been approximately 50 Medical Marijuana businesses which were operating in cities or counties that have banned any such business within their jurisdiction that have received official notices to cease operations. Additionally, we have received 223 voluntary withdrawals, most of which are withdrawals of individuals, not businesses.” Kush: it appears that some of the license applicants may be having difficulties with meeting some of the stringent portions of the law and the rules promulgated. Are there currently any workarounds for applicants

that are having difficulties with the licensing process? For example, Kush has had calls from a few applicants that claim they meet the residency requirements, but they don’t have a lot of evidence to prove it, other than perhaps a copy of their house lease. Dan: “It depends on the concern – there are absolutely no “workarounds” for statutory requirements: residency, 21 years of age, no felony drug convictions, no felony convictions not fully discharged five years prior to application, no delinquent public obligations, no out-of-state ownership. However, we do have a variety of ways an applicant can prove residency; place of employment, income source, business pursuits, leases, motor vehicle registration, property tax payments, voter registration. Applicants can refer to our residency rule in Chapter 16 of the new rules. There have been 4,100 background checks run and 80 – 90% have been completed. We understand that there were quick deadlines for a July 1, 2010 submittals of the applications and we knew that many of them would not be complete. We are allowing people to add to or modify their applications as long as the problems were not related to the mandatory statutory requirements.” Kush: But is it now true that workers, and managers, other than owners or investors can be non-residents? Dan: “Under the current statute anyone working within the Colorado Medical Marijuana Industry must be a resident for two years prior to applying to work within or own a Medical Marijuana business. The legislature is now considering a bill (HB 1043) that will remove this requirement for employees, and we will know the fate of the bill by May 11th, when our state legislative session closes.” Kush: We understand that the out of state financing proposal for medical cannabis businesses has been stripped from the bill, but then rumor had it that out of state investment may be OK. What is the current status of this issue? Dan: “The current version of the bill does not allow for out-of-state ownership and it may or may not be put back in the bill as it makes its way through the Senate, but does not look likely to happen during this legislative session. Again, we will know the status of this issue and the rest of the bill by May 11th.”

(continued on page 44)

Kush: So what happens to the folks that borrowed money for example from their parent’s retirement funds in Florida? Dan: “They can use this as a funding source if it is a straight lender/debtor relationship, meaning they are repaying the loan with interest, but the lender cannot have any ownership interest in the business, no profit sharing or stocks — nothing. If money came from out of state, all we need to see is some form of promissory note with an interest rate that is not secured by the business property, assets or ownership.” Kush: So if the money was from a family member, then what? Dan: “If you borrowed from Aunt Lil, we need to see that it was a loan, and there is a copy of it in our file. You and Lil may have a great relationship and do not need any paperwork, but unfortunately the government does. The issue is that the out of state money cannot represent equity, control or the resemblance of ownership.” Kush: How is the overall medical marijuana industry doing? Dan: It is a new industry and as all new industries it has challenges. I am out at events each week meeting industry members and there is a lot of excitement. There is bound to be some settling and realignment, but the future of the industry looks bright. Kush: Any specific problems you see for foresee? Dan: “Our biggest concern is some Medical Marijuana business owners not talking to us. In many instances a large problem can be resolved before it becomes an issue by asking questions and getting information. But if people wait or move forward with incomplete or inaccurate information we may be put in a position to take a corrective action that could have been avoided. Talk to us, get information. We are heavily focused on education right now. Give us an opportunity to educate before we have to enforce.” Kush: What is the feeling about the latest letter from John Walsh (the Colorado Federal Prosecutor) to Attorney General Suthers (the Colorado Attorney General), regarding the Federal government’s position about Colorado’s medical marijuana laws, and thriving medical cannabis industry? Dan: “We have and will continue to build a transparent and enforceable regulatory system in the State of Colorado. We feel we are building a framework that is consistent with the guidelines provided in the Ogden memo (10/09) and will continue to ensure the safety of our citizens. Anyone, anywhere working in any state Medical Marijuana industry is well aware that Marijuana is illegal under Federal law, so it really didn’t send the shockwave through our Division. When I built this Division I hired people that were excited to be part of building something from the ground up and we are all still excited and looking forward to what the next few years will bring.” Kush: Are you concerned about any retaliation against state employees based on the latest threat? Dan: “No, we are public servants, tasked with a mission to ensure patients have access to Medical Marijuana as provided by our State Constitution and by State Statute.” Kush: What are your thoughts about the now infamous October 2009 “Ogden Memo” basically stating that the feds would stay out of medical marijuana states so long as patients and their suppliers were fully complying with state laws? Do you see the recent rash of letters from Federal prosecutors as a change in the Obama 2009 policy position? Dan: “I don’t see it as a change; many have asked questions regarding what they can do wrong. We are focusing on what needs to be done right. We are working to comply with the guidelines set forth in the Ogden memo and carry out our mission to provide a safe, well regulated Medical Marijuana industry within the confines of Colorado.

The responses from the Federal prosecutors are based on letters they have received from the various states asking the Federal government if Medical Marijuana laws in their states are illegal and if they are going to prosecute to enforce Federal laws. The Federal government will answer ‘Yes.’ We know that and have always had that in mind and we are trying to follow the structure in the Ogden memo.” Kush: What message do you feel Kush Magazine should depict about the prevailing conflict between State and Federal laws? Clearly the message from the Federal government is “although we won’t go after seriously ill medical marijuana patients, states should not license businesses that provide or distribute medical cannabis to them.” Knowing that most people don’t have green thumbs and are highly unlikely to be able to grow their own medicine, where does that leave legitimate patients? Dan: “We assume all patients are legitimate as they have been entered into the registry based on a medical doctor’s recommendation. There is a place for retail of Medical Marijuana and we are making every effort to regulate in a transparent, efficient and fair manner. Our laws are intended to have a regulatory structure that is vertically integrated so that we can assure that all licenses issued are fully complying with state laws.” Kush: What’s in store for patients and medical marijuana patients in the future? Dan: “I have no way of knowing how the current or future Federal government will choose to address this complex issue and don’t want to hazard a guess. In regard to Colorado’s Medical Marijuana patients, their near future holds assurances from our Division that the Medical Marijuana they purchase, from lawfully operating Centers, has been grown within our state so that they are not supporting the black market or at risk of buying unsafe Medical Marijuana.” Kush: Any comments or observations you would like Kush readers to read? Dan: “It is an exciting time to be this industry, and my staff and I are excited to be working to build the framework under which it will be regulated. While regulation and compliance may not be easy, it is necessary and I am proud to be here working with all industry stakeholders (patients, industry members, local government, law enforcement, medical professionals and my fellow state employees) to strengthen and legitimize the Colorado Medical Marijuana Industry. We are not here to stop people from getting licenses. To the contrary we are really trying to get people licenses.” While the full regulatory laws are slated to go into effect July 1st, Hartman stated that the Department of Revenue may get a little breathing room from the state legislature. “We are hiring new employees to help with compliance and license approvals, and not all of the new employees will be up to speed on the 100 pages of new rules by July 1st. If we don’t get some extra time then plan B may be to issue temporary licenses while the work load is completed.” Hartman concluded by saying he hopes that the people that have applied for licenses will not fear the process. “We really don’t want to put anyone out of business while the license process is underway. It just may take a little while longer because we want to get it done right,” he explains. Once the Department is finished with the application review and inspection process, letters will be sent to the applicants with the results. For any licenses that the state does not intend to approve, a Notice of Proposed Denial will be sent, offering the applicant the opportunity to come before the Department and make their case. Our conversation with Mr.Hartman made it quite clear that his Department has every intention of working with the industry to help applicants reach their intended goal of acquiring a license to legally operate in Colorado.

Hempful Hints

by Bud Lee

Nothin’ But The

It’s a ruff world out there…the other day I’m chillin’ by this tree, and Charlie comes over and just starts barking up a storm about Big Moe and that crazy redhead he’s been chasin’. Apparently, they were seen around the backside of the park rollin’ around - who knows what they were up to: probably burying some bones or something - no really, she’s one scary bitch. So anyway, then Princess herself prances over like her shit don’t stink, and starts barking at me just for sniffin’ the hydrant on the way in – I didn’t even claim it with a shpritz…I tell ya, these high maintenance bitches are the worst. So she’s mad-doggin’ me at this point and I’m just staring back at her, like a standoff. And she starts kinda perking her lip up in what’s trying to be like a sexy come hither way, and the sunlight was hitting her just right. I was really taken aback, and I’m thinking the only way to really warm up to this bitch is to just be the Alpha-male, you know? Just then, she let’s out this huge fart, and it stunk up the entire place! She cleared the whole area around the tree. It was a disaster… even the humans were running…it was hilarious! We were rolling around for a while. That’s when she prances off denying it was her. Can you believe that dogshit? So, hey we’re getting together later for poker…you in? If you, or anyone in your dog walking group has ever seen, heard, or experienced this scenario, or one close to it, then, well…get some help (or you really need to share your medicine with the rest of the group). But all joking aside, as animal owners, we must take care or our furry friends and remember how much joy they bring to our lives. In doing so (as humans), we are lucky enough to have the resources to share such info with other animal lovers: the ability to spread the news about medical advances, breeding techniques, feeding and domesticating tips, training of animals, and, of course, general habits within each breed. These are the types of things that our animals depend on us for, and in return they look at us funny, like they understand us. And they do. They know when we need to cuddle with them, or when to run around and wrestle, or when we might just need that unconditional love they offer. These are the reasons that dogs in particular have become human’s domesticated animal of choice. Yes, there are cat people, and all the great farm animals that are somewhat domestic, but this is not about them. This one’s for the dogs… KUSH magazine continues to find new and exciting hemp products for you to use, and now your dogs can benefit from your eco-friendly ways, and support of hemp. With three new product lines and respective websites, we’ll let you and your pooch decide. EarthDog.com www.EarthDog.com, you will find an array of cool animal products, including solid hemp line leashes, beds & blankets, hemp chew toys, and designer Pewter medallions and key chains. There are also great items for us humans, like funny t-shirts, holiday ornaments, charity bracelets, posters and stickers. These make really unique gifts for the animal lovers in your life, and gift certificates are available. Maybe Fido’s birthday is coming up? HempBasics.com www.HempBasics.com have always had a huge line of hemp products for us humans like clothing, rope, oils, etc. Now they also offer a line specifically for dogs, with their Tug-AHemp rope chew and pull toys, made from dry-spun Hemp yarn, which is grown without any harmful pesticides, bleaches, chemicals or toxins. In fact they are 100% biodegradable. Fairly priced between $4.50 -$13.50, these eco-friendly items will bring you and Fido joy for numerous hours. Look into using their Hemp Seed Oil for your dogs too. It’s great for their coats, joint health, and also prevents chaffing of their paws. NaturalWoof.com Last but not least, check out www.NaturalWoof.com, where you’ll find an eco-friendly array of different leashes, muzzles, and harnesses, all made from strong hemp fibers and designed with earthy, vibrant colors. Along with eye and ear care products, dental products, balms, salves and sprays, Natural Woof offers a variety of dog shampoos for all types of skins and coats. Whether Fido runs a little itchy at times, has odor problems, or just has a mangy coat that’s hard to manage, there’s a solution here for you. With all organic ingredients, both you and Fido will find a spring in your step. Check out their toys, beds, bowls and treats too. So remember…who’s there for you day after day, week after week, month after month, through thick and thin, offering unconditional devotion to you, at all times? KUSH magazine! Just kidding (sorta). It’s your beloved dog! He or she deserves a little love this Spring, so check out these sites, and then you can tell all your dog park friends about them too (or, depending on your medication, perhaps your dog will take care of that for you…)

Dawg In Me….

Just a couple of months ago, a friend told me about a ‘million-dollar idea’ he had, and how it was going to be his future path to Easy Street. Before he would tell me the idea, he swore me to secrecy, and repeatedly made me promise not to talk to anyone about it. What did my friend have up his sleeve? The next Pet Rock? Being a dreamer myself (and never one to dismiss other’s), I complied with his demands, eager to hear his idea. “Dude, imagine a place that had killer grub, with menu items named after different ‘weed strains,’ and it would basically be for college students, late night grub, for when they’re either partying or studying, or whenever…just a place that leans towards that culture.” I responded: “Bro, are you taking about Cheba Hut? Cuz it’s already been done. I just went there…and their food is chron!” With disappointment in his voice, he exhaled “…well, I guess timing is everything.” We laughed and agreed that the timing is definitely right for a place like this. At first glance, you might drive right by a Cheba Hut, and not think much of it. But as you get closer, the name and logo start to lure you in. Cheba is just one of Marijuana’s many nicknames, so right off the bat, they’ve got you thinking. Then you might notice that the palm trees in their logo are closer to pot leaves… hmmm… and there’s smoke coming out of the cute little hut. Could this place be…yeah, you get it now - “toasted” subs. Between its green motif, the array of Rock‘n’Roll posters, 420 emblems, the killer mural emblazoned with pot leaves, and the huge “Home of The Blunt” blunt hanging on the wall, it may feel more like your local head shop or dispensary, but the smell of their quality food will instantly set you straight. The casual and inviting staff might greet you with “Hey bro…?”, or “What’s happenin’ man? What can we get’cha…?” There are stoner salutations, sandwich sizes called “Nugs” (4” sub), “Pinners (6” sub), and “Blunts” (12” sub) and such food names like: Humboldt, Silver Haze, Train Wreck, Pakalolo, Afghani, Kush, Chronic, and of course, The Kind. These sandwiches are all made fresh and to your liking. And with desserts that include the ‘Sticky Icky’ (peanut butter and jelly), and ‘Goo-balls’ (rice krispies, peanut butter, honey, and cocoa… what!???), they offer nothing but beautiful compilations of the dankest delectables. Upon my first visit, I was instantly drawn to one of my favorite munchies, a BLT (or Cheba Hut’s version, KUSH). This was perfectly fitting for me, and

just happened to have the same name as my favorite strain. The different menu items all sounded fun, exciting, and flavorful. With this combination of tasty food, marijuana innuendos, and direct iconography, Cheba Hut has not only sunk its teeth into something great, but continues to keep the “spliff” lit. Cheba Hut - “Toasted” Subs was founded in 1998 by Scott Jennings, near the campus of Arizona State University, where he attended, and paid his way through college delivering food. Given that most of his customers were college students, doing what college students do, Scott came up with this blazing concept. It’s turned into more than just college dreams, and bong loads - he now leads this growing franchise as President and CEO. With locations in California, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, and Arizona, it is clear that 420 friendly states are on-board. If only those uptight states knew what else they were missing. It’s great to see that the marijuana culture has come this far…that this busy, and very legitimate, sandwich shop, with delicious, quality food can…and has, successfully used this image. It says a lot about our changing times that a franchise like The Cheba Hut can raise a torch (or Blunt) to the testament of this booming culture. This restaurant not only plays up to, but relishes in the obvious - that lots of people enjoy marijuana, both medically and recreationally, and that the lingo and culture has made it to the doorstep of our daily lexicon, and is knocking on the door of political acceptance. This may have blown my mind ten years ago, but with today’s generation getting closer to the overall acceptance of marijuana, The Cheba Hut should be commended - not just for their fortitude, and entrepreneurial qualities, but for their great sense of humor, and kind, killer, tasty grinds. Check out their full menu, grab some gear, and even learn how to franchise one in your town at ChebaHut.com

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The market for electric bicycles has been rapidly increasing over the last few years and is expected to continue growing for the next decade across the globe. With millions of e-bikes already being sold in China and Europe, the US can look for a surge of e-bikes as consumers begin to see them as a cheap, reliable, eco-friendly and efficient means of transportation. From socially conscious techies in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley and progressive epicenters of the Northwest business, to pleasure beach riders of Southern California’s coast, hipster desert dwellers in Phoenix and other Green-friendly cities and college towns across the country, throngs of environmentally-minded folks have already jumped on the bandwagon. Currie Technologies is eagerly eyeing this market for their IZip line of electric bikes. The IZip Zuma is their excellent mid-level e-bike built with the purpose of capturing this wide demographic that includes young professionals, baby boomers with active lifestyles, students, the weekend bike rider on an outdoor daytrip or the daily commuter. Heavy on design and boasting a grip of useful features, the Zuma handles all the cruiser’s bike riding needs. The frame is built in the shape of a standard retro-style beach cruiser you see a countless number of zipping around college campuses or the boardwalk at Venice Beach. However, a quick glance at the bike reveals the

added components, which makes it leaps and bounds beyond a normal bike riding experience. While each IZip e-bike model varies to some degree on the design and placement of the battery, on the Zuma, the battery is mounted on a rack over the rear wheel and yields enough juice for a range of 16 to 22 miles. For riders who wish to move completely by the exertion of their own force, the bike can be used with the electric motor turned off and still provides a greater deal of enjoyment over a regular cruiser with its beefed-up aluminum frame, 7-speed gear shifter, front and rear suspension system, and alloy disc breaks. However, the true benefit of the Zuma, as with any IZip e-bike, is when the rider pushes the little red power button conveniently located within thumb’s reach on the handlebars. After a few pedals to build moment there is a sudden but subtle jolt as the 500watt motor kicks in and takes over the work of the geared hub. Hills with a decent incline are handled as if riding on flat ground. A pull of the throttle located on the handlebars quickly gets the bike zooming up to its 20 mph top speed. Overall the Zuma is an awesome bike and a bunch of fun to ride. It’s well made from tires to wires to seat cushion, and whether going to class, commuting for work, or just trekking around on an afternoon jaunt, the Zuma provides an eco-friendly and energy efficient transportation solution. Check out www.izipusa.com for more info!

Fertile Ground is a monthly column highlighting the hottest state and national issues surrounding marijuana reform. This column is brought to you by Brian Vicente, the Executive Director of the advocacy group Sensible Colorado, and a partner at Vicente Consulting LLC, a full service medical marijuana law firm.

by Angela Cifor, Sensible Colorado Law Clerk his year’s baseball season started out differently for Jay Sanner, who has coached Fountain Valley youth baseball in Colorado for the past seven years. Sanner, a cancer patient, says he was recently fired from his volunteer coaching position due to his status as a medical marijuana card-holder. Sanner’s plight began when he broke his back in the mid-1990s while serving in the Army. To manage the resulting pain, Sanner was prescribed significant doses of painkillers by the Army. Due to his extensive use of painkillers, Sanner’s liver enzymes escalated to an unhealthy level. Once he made the connection between his medication and heightened enzymes, he decided to stop taking the painkillers altogether. Almost immediately, his liver enzymes decreased. Although he was able to address this specific medical issue, Sanner’s overriding problem of pain management persisted. His solution was to become a medical marijuana patient in 2002. Not only has medical marijuana eased the pain of his back injury, but it has also helped to relieve the severe symptoms of the treatments he receives to combat colon cancer. Since being diagnosed with this cancer last year, Sanner has undergone radiation and chemotherapy, in addition to an eight-hour surgery to remove 11 centimeters of his colon. For Sanner, medical marijuana serves to stimulate his appetite and manage his pain. On March 16, 2011, Sanner was called into a board of directors meeting for Fountain Valley Baseball and was asked to step down as the coach of the youth baseball team. A justification letter written by Board member Carl Benda stated that the board needed to address concerns expressed by several parents. According to Benda, a number of parents were troubled by Sanner’s medical marijuana recommendation and his contact with their children as a baseball coach. When the board asked Sanner to resign from his position until the board could obtain further guidance, Sanner refused.

Thereafter, the Fountain Valley board members, employing a questionable voting protocol, refrained from voting entirely and instead left the decision to two provisional members. These two men nominated and seconded the motion to remove Sanner from his coaching position. The ultimate justification for the board’s decision was that it had no way of monitoring Sanner’s drug activity while he is coaching. Sanner insists that he has never been under the influence of marijuana while performing his coaching duties. He further contends that after seven years of coaching, he has never heard of any concerns from parents about his medical condition and fitness as a youth baseball coach. Even more, Sanner is convinced that the board’s decision was biased, as evidenced by the fact that none of the sitting board members actually voted on his removal. A demonstration was held by Coloradans 4 Cannabis Patient Rights on April 16th in Fountain to protest Sanner’s termination. What remains to be seen is whether the Fountain Valley Baseball board’s decision will be vindicated and Sanner’s love for coaching defeated by his use of medical marijuana to manage his pain. If you or someone you know has a compelling story about medical marijuana, please contact josh@sensiblecolorado.org

Patients Out of Time:

y n n Joh

Between 1987 and 1992, I became involved with a Veterans Health Administration and Agent Orange Class Assistance Program that funded Vets, acting as peer counselors, to search out and offer aid to fellow Veterans. All the counselors who did the fieldwork fought in Vietnam, as did almost all of the clients or patients. There were a small number of women in the group, all nurses of the Army and Navy. The majority of the guys were Army or Marine enlisted, a smaller number of Navy “brown water” sailors and a few from the Air Force. The closer you came to death every day, and there were many ways to observe that act, the likelier a Vet was to be diagnosed with post traumatic stress (PTS).

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I was the only counselor to have served as a Commissioned Officer and I doubled as the Contract Administrator for the multi thousand dollar grants we used to help Vets in the Appalachian region of Virginia and West Virginia. I had about 200 guys I worked with over those years. Johnny was one of those guys. Johnny worked at a wood yard, as did his son. His boss had called us one day looking for someone to talk to Johnny…get him some help. I showed up late one afternoon and met the boss, who was younger than Johnny and I by a dozen years. Johnny was his friend as well as an employee and he was drinking himself to death. Johnny’s boss was sure it had something to do with Vietnam.

Johnny and I saw each other every week for months. He was on parole for pistol-whipping a bar patron who thought the little guy in the corner of the room could be bullied. Johnny took that bar patron for a ride of terror before knocking him in the head and dumping him and his car in a big ditch. I took Johnny for rides through the tree-lined roads of the county, away from the saws, the noise. He was angry and drinking incessantly, doing lines of coke whenever he could get his hands on it. My job was to find a way to get him to talk out his pain, the emotional scars he carried along with their live-in demons. Talk we did - about his homecoming, a day late he said to me, because if he had been there when the flood came, he could have saved his family; father, mother, two sisters and younger brother. He was convinced that he could have saved them (or at least died with them), but the Marines had him in a stockade for acting up when he came to the states, for refusing to get a “getting out” haircut, for telling a sergeant to go to hell. Guilt is a primary factor in PTS and Johnny had more than enough because he had not been at home when he could have been. This was on top of a tour of duty that young 19-year old Marines like him endured in the endless jungles of danger. He was a gunner on an armored vehicle. Four fifty-caliber machine guns fired at his command with the power to blow an engine block to pieces. One night he and his friends found themselves under attack. The next morning, in front of his guns, he found over 400 dead men…but he was untouched. It was 20 months of talk before he remembered that morning, that night, and when he did… he cried for a long, long time. It had not taken the counselors long to determine a trend among the Vets. Some drank to excess and, like Johnny, took any other intoxicating drug they could find. Then there were those who did not drink or do coke or take pills. They used cannabis instead. Johnny told me he could not sleep more than a couple of hours at a time - an exhausted rest at best. He told me he could not relax, his appetite was reserved strictly for alcohol and being unconscious. I urged him to use cannabis and he did. He stopped the coke cold. His alcohol intake decreased to only a few beers a day. And he slept. He slept. A cannabis researcher in Italy has coined a phrase about the endocannabinoid system. It helps us eat, sleep, relax, protect, and forget. Cannabis is the only plant that has phyto-cannabinoids (made within the plant) that are similar to the endogenous cannabinoids (made within the body) recently discovered in the human body. When I use cannabis I do not dream and I told Johnny that and I told him that he could sleep again too if he used cannabis. It

would help him eat again…real food. It would help him relax for a while, and concentrate on good thoughts and forget the painful images he carried in his head and while these positives were replacing the negatives, his body would enjoy a return to homeostasis from feeding his system with cannabis compounds. Johnny called me a couple of years later, after I no longer worked as a counselor. He wanted me to know that he was fine now. “You helped me man,” he said. Straight up. He then proceeded to tell me that he stopped drinking, was married now, his son was with him, and he still used cannabis every day. Surprisingly, especially after hearing a story like this, it may be hard to believe that in the US, military Veterans like Johnny are denied the use of cannabis for any purpose in 34 states. Furthermore, in the 15 states with medical marijuana laws, an illogical and ignorant law-enforcement–and-lawyer-generated medical protocol for medical cannabis use is in place. These “medical marijuana” programs are morally unjustified, medically unsound and designed by men and women with no medical training at all. Johnny and I use cannabis illegally in Virginia to help us cope with the trauma we endured, for what we did for our country…things that these politicans and lawyers could never imagine in the worst of their worst nightmares.

That is not right. So I’ve got a suggestion for the citizens of the US. A suggestion that I feel is fairly decent and not out of line. Please support your troops by allowing doctors and nurses, rather than lawyers and politicians, to take care of Johnny and me and the other Vets. He and I and they have had enough of what this country has not done for us, especially after what we have done for this country, and allowing Veterans the use of clinical cannabis would be a great start on remedying that situation. Is that really too much to ask? Take care, Al Byrne for Patients Out Of Time Patients Out of Time is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to educating health care professionals and the public about the therapeutic use of cannabis. I choose to drop the “D” for disorder, making it PTS rather than PTSD. The symptoms of post traumatic stress are a NORMAL response to an ABNORMAL stress. It is an insult or added stress to diagnose someone who has undergone severe trauma with a disorder. Some choose to call it post traumatic stress syndrome.

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Marijuana policy reform activists across Colorado and around the country are coming together to form a coalition in support of ending cannabis prohibition in Colorado in 2012. In particular, the coalition is working on a statewide ballot initiative that will: 1) remove criminal penalties for adult use and private growing, and 2) establish a legal market that allows for cultivation, distribution, infused products, testing, and retail. More details about the proposed law will be made available after the language is finalized. No single organization or individual is heading the effort. Rather, a wide variety of activists, organizations,

professionals, businesses, and others are working together to create and campaign for the best possible initiative. And with your help, this coalition will end cannabis prohibition in Colorado in 2012.

Here are some of the core coalition members thus far. Visit their websites to find out more about them and sign up to get involved in their efforts in Colorado and nationwide. Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) drugpolicy.org

The Drug Policy Alliance is the nation’s leading organization promoting alternatives to the drug war that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) leap.cc LEAP is made up of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who are speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies

Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) mpp.org

The Marijuana Policy Project works to increase public support for non-punitive, non-coercive marijuana policies, and to change state laws to eliminate or reduce penalties for the use of marijuana.

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) norml.org

NORML is a nonprofit public-interest advocacy group that represents the interests of the tens of millions of Americans who use marijuana responsibly.

Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) saferchoice.org

SAFER works to undermine support for marijuana prohibition by increasing the percentage of the public that believes marijuana is safer than alcohol.

Sensible Colorado sensiblecolorado.org

Sensible Colorado researches, educates, and advocates for more effective drug policies, with a focus on medical marijuana and broader marijuana policy reform.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) ssdp.org

Students for Sensible Drug Policy mobilizes and empowers young people to participate in the political process and fight back against counterproductive Drug War policies, particularly those that directly harm students and youth.

Women’s Marijuana Movement (WMM) womensmarijuanamovement.org

The Women’s Marijuana Movement is working to change the perception of marijuana in our society and increase the percentage of women who support ending its prohibition.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws in support of medical marijuana and the subject of legalization is manna for reality-makers. Compassionate, rational, sexy or sinister —the spin is in the eye of the talking head. What’s surprising about the conversation is that both sides seem to agree. “I think it’s about time we legalized marijuana,” Glenn Beck said during a broadcast of his recently defunct Fox network show. “We have to make a choice in this country. We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars, or we legalize it. But this little game we’re playing in the middle is not helping us...” The self-professed libertarian may have given some viewers whiplash with his declaration, but this is hardly the first time reefer has been rolled out for debate. The difference now is that whatever path they follow, the purveyors of opinion have converged at the same thumbs-up destination. The consensus is…Legalize it. With indisputable verification regarding the benefits of medical marijuana, it may be that the argument against legalization has become untenable. So much so that in October, on ABC’s “This Week,” conservative Washington Post columnist George Will conceded: “We have legalized gambling, which used to be considered a sin and a crime, with no national debate – No decision moment —We just did it,” he said. “We’ve legalized prostitution, as anyone who opens a telephone book and looks under ‘escort’ can tell you, and… We’re probably in the process now of legalizing marijuana.” Not exactly a rousing endorsement, but coming from Will - a man so buttoned-down, he has been known to rail against blue jeans – it is significant. After a decade of belt-tightening, is the sturm und drang over cannabis waning? Escalating percentages favor decriminalization, and considering the projected revenue from regulation and taxation, legalization is just good business. The cavalry loping over the hill to rescue the economy is flying the freak flag. Wait. Lick your finger and hold it in the air. You know which way the wind is blowing. Occasionally, a half-hearted skirmish is waged to make a case for the insupportable. Bill O’Reilly parried his pointed shtick and thrust forth the supposition that hardcore drug addicts will procure prescriptions for medical marijuana, only to finance heroin habits by selling the buds to children. The problems with his premise are

multitudinous and even he can’t say it without blinking. Arguably the meanest girl on the block, Ann Coulter, is not swayed by anything so spurious as human suffering. Puh-lease. When Barbie’s evil twin pops a press-on nail, she sucks it up. A nasty piece of work disguised as an Amazon goddess, Coulter takes a position that could be summed up as “Let them eat FDA approved morphine. But not on my dime.” As a matter of fact, in an essay published in the September 2000 edition of Jewish World Review, Coulter wrote: “Like everyone else in America, I had never really listened to the arguments of the drug legalization crowd because...it’s not going to happen. These people are like scholars whose area of expertise is an obscure bug in a Third World country. Their theories could be completely insane, but no one cares enough to bother listening to them.” Eleven years later, Coulter is still flipping her mane dismissively — albeit with less conviction - but no one really cares enough to listen. Another politico with pulchritude, Sarah Palin has weighed in on the subject. “I think we need to prioritize our law-enforcement efforts,” Palin said. “And if somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society.” Publically distinguishing marijuana from addictive and destructive substances (including alcohol and many prescription drugs) has been arduous. But as anyone in know-biz will attest, it’s beginning to smell like team spirit. Because in America it really is about whether you win or lose. And everyone wants to be on the side that’s winning.

WE DIG THIS

I’m not much of a fishing person, but this sport has fascinated me for years. Ever since I first saw a man in huge boots standing in the middle of a river, I thought that this is for people who really are in touch with nature. If you know absolutely nothing about fly-fishing, then I am talking to you because this is a beginner’s guide for both of us. What I do know is that with over 36 species of both cold and warm water fish, Colorado is famous for some of the best fly fishing spots in the western US and people from all over come here to cast their rods in our waters. Most people who fly fish don’t do it for survival these days, and catch-and-release fishing is widely practiced. Fly-fishing is as much about relaxation as it is about sport. If you are up to your hips in a mountain stream, surrounded by trees and not much else, then you’re far away from wherever it is you came and therein lays the beauty of fly-fishing - peace, quiet and fresh air. So if you’re new and going to try it out, respect the angler’s solitude and try to find a spot of your own. There’s plenty of fish, so they say… Let’s assume you are ready to give it a go. You have bought or borrowed (no stealing) a fly rod, reel and line combo. But wait, there’s more. Here are some things that even though you might not think you need…you do. They are (1) a fishing vest. You need a place to put your stuff and since you’ll be in the middle of a body of water, it’s not like you can just grab something from your car/campsite/cooler, etc. (2) Flies (3) A fly box (4) Waders (5) A landing net (6) A bunch of things like clippers, leaders and magnetic releases. So if you get serious about it, which is easy to do, be prepared to spend about $750. If you just want to try it out, there are plenty of outfitters with gear for rent and lessons to give. If you’re interested in warm water, then Colorado offers over 2,000 lakes and reservoirs to choose from. Metro Denver is home to many of these reservoirs such as Aurora Reservoir, Quincy Reservoir, Chatfield Reservoir, as well as the lakes in Washington Park, most of which are filled with both native and non-native species. If cold water is what floats your galoshes, Colorado’s cold waters consist of over 6,000 streams and some of the best trout and whitefish you’ll ever find. A guide to these waters is available online or at any sporting goods shop (a good start would be coloradofishing.net). So do some homework, get a fishing license, grab a friend or two and get ready for some serious Zen.

We all know what humidity is - it’s water vapor carried in the air. We all know what relative humidity is, too - at least, we think we do! Trouble is, humidity may be affecting your plants in ways you may not be aware of, and worse, might well be stunting the growth of your little green friends. This is an important consideration anywhere, especially so in the dry, arid western part of the country. So, grateful growers, when you implement these humidity-building tips you’ll see noticeable acceleration in the growth of your crops! First, a few definitions: Relative humidity (RH) has nothing to do with uncle Ernie’s damp armpits- rather it’s a measure of the percentage of moisture currently in the air relative to its maximum carrying capacity at the current temperature. That last bit is the part that trips people up, since air’s carrying capacity for water changes drastically with temperature- 80% RH at 60 degrees might be only 25% RH at 80 degrees! Since your skin isn’t as sensitive to humidity as it is to temperature, it’s essential to put a thermometer/ hygrometer in your growroom to keep tabs on it. Spend a little money to get a good one with a memory function since you don’t want to be working with inaccurate information. Even better, get one with a remote sensor so you can check your growroom’s conditions even when you’re not in there- maybe not required but darn convenient, let me tell you! Unless your address is in the middle of the lake, chances are you will have a nasty shock when your new unit tells you that your RH is 12%. Yep, that’s Colorado, all right- small wonder then, that you can get zapped with static electricity just walking across the carpet. Now, for the science; Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) is the mechanism by which all land based plants transpire and breathe. If RH is too high, they won’t be able to transpire and won’t be able to move nutrients up the stem to your precious growth tips where the action is. If humidity is too low, then the plant becomes stressed because it must spend too much energy just trying to move enough water to keep from wilting! Suffice to say that if your humidity is much below 45%, your plants are spending too much energy moving water and not enough actually growing. Now, how to get it up there? The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind - from a swamp cooler. Of course you have a ventilation fan pulling warm, stale air out of your growroom, but unless you have a swamp cooler chances are it’s pulling all the humidity out, too. Go out and get one, and not the kind that hooks up to your furnace - they just don’t put enough moisture in the air. Also, don’t get a ‘hot air’ type as that will overheat things, and don’t use a spray mister type because that will atomize the dissolved minerals in the water. When they dry they’ll precipitate out of the air and stick to everything! The type that pulls air through damp matting is what you’re looking for. When you get it going, you will discover that it will cool off your growroom substantially, since evaporating water cools the air. Good news, since now you can reduce the amount of air being pulled through your growroom without worrying about

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overheating! Playing with your swamp cooler and exhaust fan settings will enable you to balance temperature and humidity. I can already hear you guys from Humboldt County saying, “Low humidity is NOT our problem around here!” Of course you’re right - different parts of the country have different issues, and getting your relative humidity down in damper areas is just as essential as raising it in drier parts. Dehumidifiers work by chilling air and thereby causing water to condense out, and thus ‘wring’ the excess moisture from your growroom’s air. You may also have noticed that your air conditioning unit does this pretty well, too. Either way, the ideal relative humidity is somewhere in the neighborhood of 55% RH if you like to keep your temps in the 70s and if you want to run in the low to mid 80s for best CO2 absorption, go for RH settings in the 65-75% range, and about 10 points lower than these when in bloom stage. Now if anyone tells you that blooming plants need less humidity than that, don’t believe them! The best way I know to reduce essential oils in the end product is to let the humidity fall too much during mid and late blooming phase. We live in a time of increasing automation and this can be a very good thing, especially when it comes to keeping temps and such in your growing area stable. An environmental controller is like having someone who does nothing else all day and all night but manage the temperature, humidity - and for the better units, CO2 - keeping them all as close to optimal as possible. Using one of these in your setup will greatly reduce your workload and stress level and lead to better, more consistent results. Best of all, it works 24/7 without breaks and doesn’t even ask for pizza! My advice? Don’t skimp on quality gear here, get a good one and don’t skip the CO2 function. Even if you don’t use it now, you may in the future and the difference in price isn’t worth the brain damage to try and add it back in later. Lastly, with higher RH comes the possibility of fungal problems like powdery mildew, but don’t be concerned - use a natural antifungal such as neem oil, and be sure the air doesn’t stagnate around your plants by keeping the lower parts of them trimmed up and by circulating air through the understory of your grow. And since most coins have two sides, you will enjoy the benefits of higher humidity on discouraging spidermites and aphids as well! Other benefits include better temperature stability, thus making for smaller swings in temps when conditions change. You may also notice your plants will be asking for a lot less water, which helps reduce the danger of nutrient burn. Well, that’s it for this month, so keep up the good work and happy growing. I love hearing from everyone out there, so keep those emails coming! Feel free to send any comments or questions to me at indoorcultivationconsulting@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to answer them! Feel free to send any comments or questions to me at indoorcultivationconsulting@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to answer them!

ASK ED

In Kush Magazine’s newest column, Marijuana’s Undisputed Grow Champ Ed Rosenthal answers all your questions.

by Ed Rosenthal TOO HOT OUTDOORS Kevin (Internet): MY G13 and Bubba Kush were really fattening up last week when the temperature reached daily highs in the 88-91° F range. Now the temperature is sitting at 95-100° F and the plants are just sitting there. What’s going on? Will the extreme heat destroy any of the THC or stunt them? How should I handle the situation? Should I pump them with more water and nutrients or should I shade them during the extreme mid-day heat?

Ed: Given ample amounts of light, carbon dioxide (CO2), water and nutrients, temperature can be a limiting factor. Much like cold-blooded animals, plants’ metabolism and photosynthesis is affected by temperature. When the temperature dips below 59° F, metabolism, the life processes that include cell maintenance and growth slows to a crawl. Photosynthesis, the process in which plants use light energy to convert CO2 and water to sugar using the energy from light, also slows to a crawl. Both metabolism and photosynthesis rates increase as the temperature rises. It reaches its zenith at around 32-90° F at the leaf surface. At just a slightly higher temperature the photosynthesis rate drops precipitously as the plant goes in to protective mode. It uses transpiration, releasing water from the stomata in order to cool the leaves. There are several things you can do to keep the plants cool. Your idea of using a shade cloth that only allows 60-70% of the light through can keep the plants cool enough to continue photosynthesizing. Another idea is to use cooling misters. These units break water up into a 5-micron spray that quickly evaporates, cooling the air by as much as 11° F. Fans that drop water onto fan blades and special sprayers that use a high power pump are used to produce these tiny water bits. During times of extreme heat plants use a lot of water. Be careful that the water is not too nutrient rich. They are sipping a lot of water that they are releasing rather than using for metabolism or photosynthesis. If the water has high nutrient levels they will accumulate in the plant, so that it becomes over-fertilized. Instead, dilute the water’s nutrient level.

FOOLING THE DOGS Swan (Internet): Is there a legal chemical that will cause a marijuana sniffing drug dog to alert on a target other than weed?

Ed: Yes. Most of the time, dogs are taught to sniff not marijuana, but one of the terpenes it contains, B-Caryophyllene. It is also found in cloves, black pepper, and hops. B-Caryophyllene has garnered a lot of interest recently because of its anti-inflammatory properties. It is commonly used in the food processing industry and is not on a restricted list.

An hermaphroditic plant was primarily female but male flowers were induced using sodium thiosulfate.

(continued on page 80)

WORMS IN THE BUD Hodgesme (Internet): I have some good bud but as it ripens little worms attack it, leaving webs. Then it rots really quickly. I think the worms are infecting the bud with a disease that kills them and turns brown almost overnight. What can I do to stop this?

Ed: The “worms” are really caterpillars of moths or butterflies. There

are several ways to prevent them and to stop their damage.

COUNTING FORWARD Bud Kush (Internet): How long do I count my flowering days? Is it from the first day I turn the cycle to 12 hours or from the day I start to see flower formation?

Ed: When seed companies list the number of days until ripening, they are starting the count when the lights are turned to short day cycle, 11 or 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day.

Placing nylon net around the developing buds or even the entire plant prevents the moths or butterflies from landing and laying eggs on the leaves or stem. No eggs- no caterpillars. Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide produced by flowers in the chrysanthemum family. It is safe to use around edible plants and is quite effective. It breaks down soon after use, but is harmful to fish and other cold-blooded animals, so you should be careful in its use. There are many brands of pyrethrum available in garden shops. BT- Bacillus thuringensis, is a bacteria that infects insects, but not you or your pets. It is very safe to use. Soon after a caterpillar comes in contact with the bacteria it stops eating and then dies within a day or two. The bacteria release new spores to infect other insects coming in contact with it. BT is extremely effective and renews itself so reapplications are usually not necessary. Several brands of BT sprays are available.

FEMINIZED SEEDS

The mites are on the underside of the leaf but they create small, brown necrotic spots on the leaf upper surface. .

Keith (Internet): What problems are associated with feminized seeds? What is the best way to deal with them? Ed: Feminized seeds have many advantages over normal seeds, which produce either male or female plants. Gardeners can start fewer plants because there are no males to remove. Feminized seeds are especially helpful to outdoor growers with larger plants. The plants thrive more than a clone because unlike a clone, they grow long taproots that provide an unbroken highway to the canopy for water and nutrients going up and sugars and enzymes going down the stem. Before these seeds were used, the gardeners had a choice of using clones or growing twice as many plants, and then discarding the males; twice the work per harvested plant.

The second problem is, should you wish to breed you don’t have a male of that variety, only the females.

The mites weave webs that they use as super highways to get to their plant-sucking parties.

Normally feminized seeds should only be used for grow-outs, not for breeding. The exception is to preserve a particular genetic rarity by crossing a plant to itself to preserve a particular genetic rarity. Feminized seeds can be produced in several ways (there is a good article about it in Big Book of Buds 3, page 148), but most breeders use a chemical, sodium thiosulfate, to induce male flowers on female plants. Since the pollen is produced by a female plant it has no male genes so all the seeds are female. The problem with any breeding program that relies on pollen from females is that the process may be inadvertently selecting for hermaphroditsm. Most likely, the plants that produce the most pollen have more of a tendency towards hermaphroditism. Since they produce the most pollen they will have the most offspring. Over several generations this tendency becomes more pronounced. So, after the plants are bred conventionally, the grow-out seeds can be produced using pollen from induced male flowers.

A mite attacking a leaf. Mite infections are always serious and to should be dealt with properly.

Photo: courtesy of Nature’s Control

There are two problems with feminized seed. The first is that some varieties and crosses result in a small percentage of hermaphroditic plants. So the plants have to be watched and any hermaphrodites removed.

SEED FROM HERMAPHRODITES Rusty (Illinois): I have a hermaphrodite plant that is pollinating itself. Will the plants grown from this seed be feminized?

Ed: Maybe. It depends whether or not the plant is a natural hermaphrodite or has expressed male flowers as a result of stress. Some varieties regularly produce hermaphrodites. Remove these plants as soon as they indicate for fear of accidental pollinations. Seeds resulting from self-pollination or pollination with other hermaphrodites will produce a high percentage of hermaphrodites. When crossed with a non-hermaphrodite plant, a smaller percentage of the progeny will be hermaphroditic. Sometimes plants that are usually all female produce male flowers as a result of stress from irregular light period, dry mediums, or other neglect of needs. Seeds resulting from these crosses are usually mostly female with a few hermaphrodites sprinkled through. Although the plants have to be watched for male flowers your work and effort will be rewarded with a group of mostly female plants.

CLONE GENERATIONS Friend Dan (Internet): How many times can I clone a clone from a clone without changing the genetics? People have told me they have made clones from clones more than twenty times and have not seen any difference in bud weight or any other differences in the plants. I have also heard that every time you make a clone from a clone you lose weight and potency. What are the facts?

Ed: Bedrocan, which produces marijuana for Dutch pharmacies, uses

cuttings that it removes from plants going into flowering as clone stock. They regularly test the cannabis for cannabinoids and keep detailed records of yield. The results have remained stable for years. It is fine to use generations of clones because the genetics and the plant’s characteristics will remain the same.

SPIDER MITE DAMAGE Meheidi (Internet): How much damage do spider mites do to the buds? I will be harvesting in a month. Do I need to worry? Ed: Spider mites can ruin your crop and you should take action immediately. They are related to spiders rather than to insects. Spider mites feed on plants by sucking their juices through their “proboscis”, strawlike mouths they use to puncture leaves and suck their vital juices. Mites’ fast lifecycle and the large number of eggs they produce lead to logarithmic increases in population over a very short period of time. Expect time to sexual maturity of less than a week and a high tilt in favor of females so a small infection can become a serious problem very quickly. While some growers aim simply to control mites and other pests they will never be rid of them. You can use biological controls to keep their population extremely low or totally eliminate them from your garden. Some methods include sulfur bombs, high carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration (above 5000 PPM) and herbal oil sprays that include cinnamon or clove oil. You can find more information on eliminating these pests in the book, “Marijuana Garden Saver”.

VENTILATION RATE David B. (Internet): How often should air in my grow room be exchanged? At what time is it most beneficial, when the lights are on or off, during vegetative growth or during flowering?

Ed: Ventilation is used for two purposes: to cool the room and to provide the plants with carbon dioxide (CO2) laden air. If you use air-cooled lights, very little heat from the lamps will get into the room and it is relatively easy to cool the room when the outside is cooler than the room air. On the other hand un-insulated spaces are sometimes greatly affected by the climate. In cold areas heat must be supplied to the garden room to keep it warm. Conversely in warm climates outside air may be too hot to cool a garden. With these factors in mind, as well as the number of lights and the size of the space, you can figure the parameters for airflow. If you are not using CO2 enrichment the ideal temperature is 70-72° F during the lit hours and no more than 5° F lower in the dark period. With CO2 enrichment the space can be kept at about 86-90° F, which encourages fast growth. During the dark period the plants don’t photosynthesize so they don’t use CO2 but they do transpire so the moisture must be removed using a steady breeze. As you might have noticed CO2 is part of the ventilation equation. C02 is one of the two ingredients plants use to produce sugar, using light to power the process. Air contains about 380 PPM of CO2. Under high light conditions such as a sunny summer day outside or under a 1000 watt lamp covering 1.5 meters inside, plants can use up to 1200-1300 PPM. The combination of high light, CO2 enriched air and warm temperatures creates conditions for plants to grow faster, larger and mature earlier. When you ventilate your room you bring in air with CO2 levels of the ambient air. No matter how good the ventilation system it cannot match the growth of systems that use CO2 enrichment. Plants use up the CO2 in an enclosed room very quickly so it must constantly be replenished or the plants will stop growing. You can check out how much CO2 is available to the plants by placing a CO2 PPM meter in the canopy. As the amount in the air declines, the plants’ photosynthesis rate drops. To stop this from happening use a fan to create a steady breeze, which will bring fresh air to the canopy and keep the plants photosynthesizing. Both ventilation, bringing fresh air into the room, and circulation moving fresh air into the canopy, removes the old used air and is required for the plants to benefit. For these two reasons I recommend a closed system using air-cooled lights that draw air from outside the garden space and then exits the hot air outside as well. Ideally, the space will be cooled using air conditioning and it will be heated using a CO2 generator, which burns natural gas or propane and emits CO2 heat and moisture. The air will be enriched using the CO2 generator when the room needs heat and using CO2 tanks during warm periods. The tanks are connected to a PPM meter and emission controls. The generator is connected to a thermostat and goes on whenever heat is needed.

Readers can submit questions to: Ask Ed 4096 Piedmont Ave, Suite 268 Piedmont, CA 94611, USA.

You can also Email Ed: asked420@gmail.com All questions featured in the Ask Ed column will be rewarded with a copy of Ed’s book, Best of Ask Ed: Your Marijuana Questions Answered. Sorry, Ed cannot send personal replies to your questions.

GROWERS GROVE

The Green Rush Bubble Most people without previous experience don’t dive into a new business in a new industry just because they heard the industry was doing well. If graphic design or welding suddenly became the rage, people who had never used a computer or an arc welder probably wouldn’t think of starting a business in those trades even if the price of the commodity was rising (which it’s not in this industry). But for some reason, the medical Cannabis industry is viewed differently. I don’t know why, but right now everyone is riding high on the idea that even if they have no previous experience or background in Cannabis whatsoever, it’s a perfect time to open up a Cannabis business. Don’t worry if you have no knowledge of the skilled trade itself, if you’ve never grown a plant or if you’ve never even worked as a budtender in a dispensary, “The Green Rush” is on and everyone in the Cannabis industry is wealthy, so go for it and assume it’ll all work out. Yeah, here’s a history lesson for the business majors. Most people who flocked to California for the Gold Rush didn’t actually make any money. In fact, most of them sank everything they had into land that never produced any gold. Far more people found bankruptcy than wealth. The only people that had financial security were the ones selling shovels. So, for all the Cannabis industry professionals that are encouraging people with no experience to invest whatever they have into an industry based on a skilled trade that they have no previous knowledge of, you should really think about the ramifications of inexperienced individuals getting in over their head in an industry that still has many risks associated with it. As someone who spends a great deal of time educating struggling growers and cleaning up the potential disasters created by people getting in over their heads, I can tell you that selling the idea of starting a Cannabusiness is a very dangerous thing to do. I’ve seen several examples of dispensaries that opened after taking a weekend class on the Cannabis industry. Completely naïve but very eager, these businesses crumbled shortly after opening simply from lack of experience in the industry. In one very sad case, a poorly secured dispensary (that literally opened because they took a weekend class hyping the Green Rush) was robbed and the overnight security guard was beaten severely. Not only did the owner lose everything and all the employees were suddenly out of work 82 82

(one in the hospital), but all the product in the store was on consignment and now the growers operating on less and less of a margin all found themselves out of much needed income. In another case, a couple invested their retirement money in a dispensary only to lose everything in less than a year. Sometimes I think the only people making money in the Green Rush are the people selling the idea of the Green Rush to people who are just seeking financial security in a bad economy. There are occasionally finances in the Cannabis industry, but there is very little security in them even when you do find them. The idea of the Green Rush is by far the single biggest factor influencing the market now. It’s responsible for the massive outbreak of both ignorant consumers and inexperienced growers. The amount of superlative Cannabis is roughly the same now as it was 10 years ago, but it’s been diluted in an ocean of ho-hum buds. To find real chronic, discerning consumers have to wade through lots of “pretendicas” - pot that passes inspection at a glance but is terrible once smoked. In the exceedingly flooded market, some Cannabis Stores that are unable to compete by turning over lots of high quality Cannabis, try to survive by focusing on increasing their margin. Many consumers assume that Cannabis Stores always carry the best, but in the current market many of them just stock whatever they paid the least for. There are so many new patients every day who have no memory of better Cannabis days that the shift in market quality is overlooked by many patients. Cannabis Stores that focus on quality and turnover and who pay their growers top dollar for premium Cannabis, always have better medicine than stores that do not. Many dispensaries are so focused on asking the question of “How little can I pay for this product?” that they forget to ask the more important question of “Will my competition pay the grower’s asking price to have this product?” If it is an outstanding product, consumers will travel to stores outside their usual shopping area in order to get it, so dispensaries that hold a hard line on a high quality standard will draw in more customers even if they have to pay a little more for the product. Instead of advertising how cheap their eighths are, they should advertise that they pay their growers top dollar. I bet the quality of herb in their store goes through the roof as growers with outstanding products start showing up again (along with (continued onproducts). page 80) the customers that follow outstanding (continued on page 84)

Another Lawyer Joke Recently, I was speaking with a few folks that represent the current cutting edge of medical marijuana policy for their local area (ironically, none of them were growers). During a discussion of local rules and regulations, one cooperative operator told me that his lawyer calculated the expenses of growing Cannabis and told him that he shouldn’t pay more than $3000 per pound of Cannabis because the expense “couldn’t be justified”. I told the cooperative operator that I’ve spent many years analyzing the economics of how much lawyers make versus how often their clients get screwed and I can’t find any justification to pay lawyers more than minimum wage. Besides clearly highlighting himself as an individual who has never grown a single Cannabis plant, this lawyer expressed a belief that many people who have never grown Cannabis believe – it’s soooooooo easy to grow. I mean, seriously, “it’s a weed”, right? Well, that might be so in some areas and you might enjoy smoking your moldy, untended, ditch weed; but fine medical Cannabis is something different altogether, or at least it certainly should be. I’ve never been out hiking and stumbled across a bunch of super chronic buds completely free of pests or diseases just sitting there by the side of the trail growing without care. Outstanding medical Cannabis doesn’t just happen – it’s a labor of love. (Emphasis on the labor.) It almost always comes from controlled environments that require some expensive hardware. Maybe I should find this lawyer and ask him where he goes hiking. Or maybe it’s slightly more complicated than simply adding up a spreadsheet of items you imagine constitute a complete Cannabis garden (“Let’s see. Pots, dirt, lights – what else could there be?). Maybe fine medical Cannabis is a skilled trade with many facets, just like carpentry or welding or graphic design and requires a period of dedicated apprenticeship along with the financial resources to build an excellent environment for cultivating fine Cannabis. Maybe the people who have spent many years dedicating themselves to the craft of Cannabis production are typically better at it, producing a higher quality standard that should be met with a market price that reflects an appreciation of everything that goes into producing fine medical Cannabis. Only those who’ve actually grown Cannabis know what it really costs to produce it. So what all goes into this “Premium Medical Cannabis”, anyway? Oh, nothing really. Except for the countless hours of labor, a controlled environment, tons of expensive electricity (or an expensive greenhouse), water, rent, nutrients, additives, pumps, fans, filters, meters, trays, pots, medium, inoculants, irrigation equipment, more labor, security, constant monitoring for pests and diseases, 50 trips to the hydro store, 100 trips to Home Depot, lots of sleepless nights and frayed nerves, more labor, blood, sweat, tears, dedication, experience, diligence, trial, error, waking up early, going to sleep late, air conditioning, dehumidification, climate management, cloning, re-potting, pruning, staking, trimming, trimming, trimming, trimming..... hopefully it’s an easy variety to trim or else that part of the list would continue. Plus, you have to say goodbye to having a normal life. Suddenly unknown guests aren’t welcome, it influences whom you date, vacations become impossible because 84 84

the plants can’t take a vacation, etc. Now that’s a tough thing to put a price on and probably wasn’t on the lawyer’s itemized list of garden necessities. Even though the odds of getting arrested are somewhat lower now, you still have to cope with risks like armed robbery and burglary. Even without that, it takes a lot of labor and resources to produce. At any rate, it’s a lot more than most people give growers credit for. The idea that Cannabis is “free” for growers is an illusion, like the idea that the drinks in Vegas are free. If you lose $100 at roulette over the course of 2 “free” beers, weren’t those actually the most expensive beers of your life? Similarly, the growers that still hang on to excellent, harder to grow, lower yielding strains only grow them only for their own head stash – they’re too expensive to grow if you’re not getting wholesale prices that justify it. They know all too well the high cost of producing fine Cannabis. The bottom line is this. We’re currently in an era that is defined by a huge surplus of mediocre pot. As strains slowly disappear, and our genetic diversity dwindles in the wake of whatever is left getting crossed with the same few dozen common strains, we risk losing a lot of good medicine in the process. There’s a lot of herb out there and while competition in the market is fierce, new gardens that lack both the experience and the hardware to produce truly fine Cannabis need to be differentiated from older, established gardens with extensive climate controls that have been finetuned for success over many years. If you look closely at the products out there, you’ll find that they speak for themselves when sampled with a careful eye and an experienced palette. Growers that have rare, outstanding products will eventually find it a good home – either at fine cooperatives that pay for quality or elsewhere with a little extra hustle. It’s simple economics. - Jade Kine (Growers Grove writer Jade Kine is a former greenhouse manager for the medical Cannabis industry with over a million plants worth of experience. He is also the founder of CannAcademy, a trade school dedicated solely to horticultural training for growers. Got a grow question for Jade? Drop him a line at JadeKine@gmail.com Complete bio at JadeKine.com)

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Double-dazed and purple-hazed, he had journeyed from the cheap wine and endless row of topless bars that formed a phallic phalanx along the fog drenched streets of San Francisco’s wet dream North Beach...caressed the Golden State’s left coast as though fondling an asphalt breast...whoopin’ and hollerin’ and campin’ and campin’ it up and down on the Pacific shores at Big Sur with love. Then, Death Valley with its shimmer, dunes and mountain hues, purple and copper in color, and then crossed the border into Old Mexico looking for a new life among old Mexicans and even older Indians who held the secrets of peyote. He was already high when he walked into the dusty hot sun baked village, himself as dusty and tired as the old siesta men already asleep against adobe buildings. Holographic mandalas appeared as the mescaline hit he had taken just an hour before began to take effect, causing them to swirl in the air to the strains of a marching band, bold as brass. He marvelled too at the hallucinatory batons that were silver, tossed high, higher than he had ever seen, high into the bosom of the sky by young zen cheerleaders in revealing skirts of catholic plaid. Haiku visions followed him down the streets and into the cantina, visions of poets and hemp happy hipsters spinning out of orbit with a post-beat cadence, swimming and sailing as great Ahab whaling ships in search of a great white whale in a kaleidoscopic sea of murals filled with mermaids. Beastly large frescoes, obscenely obese as magneto generators deep inside the industrial vagina of old Henry the Ford’s not enough eyeliner, yet, too much Rouge Plant, downriver, back home, years back, eons ago, in Detroit. Now he was well beyond home, and far past the exhaust of a creative blaze orange blue-collar sunset. The mescaline massaged him with gentle fingers of hallucination as the dust swirled at his feet as he entered the cantina and ordered a drink. Soon he could see only the dilated vacant alley eye socket stares of the institutional disabled and he could now eavesdrop on those

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silent screaming voices in the victim’s head. Victims imprisoned in wheelchairs, straightjackets and hopped up on narco midnight pills while interjecting injections of sweet dreamy morphine. Drug induced circumnavigating their own private Polar Ice Caps, past giant icebergs, round and round the Cape we go, circular explorations they were, easy to negotiate, except for those 90 degree corners of fleeting reality that appeared only as more hallucinations obscuring what they really were. Those recesses, the corners, the 90 degree forks in the road, were illuminated in deep shadow by electric currents, pulsating and twitching in orgasmic release as the tequila he was now drinking in the cantina, had wormed it’s way home to the grand nerve central station, exposing the masks of drunkards with tankards, comedians and dexadrinians. The broken mirror in the men’s room fired back olfactory warning shots over the head and as he ducked he could see the pile of neon lipstick tubes lying in the bottom of an empty William Holden swimming pool, empty except for Holden floating on top with a bullet in his back, on the fading estate of old Sunset Boulevard. The drugs finally shielded him from the visions of bright lights emanating from a very secretive Left Bank French underground, thick with homosexual transsexual mascara that penetrated deep into the bowels of the cabaret underworld of a bereft Berlin. A socialista workers paradise appeared in it’s glitzy place, forewarning of a possible fornication as he sat down on the floor of the bar to watch Tom Joad and the False Maria getting it on, electing eventually to erect monstrous and preposterous monuments to Karl Marx, Frederich Engles and Papa Ooo Mao Mao! The subliminal droning of the Industrial assembly lines hummed a tune that was a delightful color, and as colorfully imposing as Diego Rivera’s blue-collar steel-grey Soviet Stalin hues. I looked around, my head spinning around and then...I stumbled, I tumbled and swore as I fell, face down, ass up onto the cantina’s jukebox floor – passed out and

pissed off in Ciudad de Juarez in 1966. Dreaming drunk, vivid and vibrant, I walked the dog of Chihuahua through the desert of the same name. The desert, now deserted except for techno-color fragrance of nighttime, dreamtime nightshade and bella donna blooms. I could have been snorin’ in Sonora with a senora or senorita or two, dos, passos, pesos, but instead travelled in suspended cartoonic and catatonic animation through fully phallic fields of the cactian cosmos astride a fully loaded, fuel injected heavy metal steely dan saguaro…locked and loaded. I found buttons in the surrounding hillsides, and ate one only to feed a hunger and to quench and squash a thirst. Soon I was assailed by the sounds of laughter and unfamiliar dialects, not chinee but mex me thinks, with the dust swirling like little dustbowl tornados created by little brown feet belonging to the little brown kids of the little brown mestizo village who danced delirious in the dormant dirt of the dusty catholic plaza… Saint San Shit or something or other. A lone tree, stood, still, silent, leafless, but flashed on and off with liquid-light, bright with Robert Johnson hues of blues and the hot reds of deep south negroid rhythms, bumps and grinds, bullfrogs, gators, bayou crickets, and big invisible swampy snakes with blank faces. The mescaline band, mucho mariachis in hand, performed a flaming tight pants’d flamenco with a flamingo of dubious gender on the table, tanked up on too much tequila. Then the trumpets, blaring out festive fiesta fandagos with a serape serenade for sweet scheherazades, with wave after wave of music, like lyrical tsunamis crashing to shore, deep inland and further yet to reach the lagoons and Indonesian caves. In my dream, or someone’s dream, can’t remember now, I stood alone, with all the others, fixed in place fixated on all the empty eye sockets of the other prisoners of Zen, in the Jesuit jail, white stucco’d, caucasion calked and adobe’d, surrounded again like Saturn confined to rings of debris, by anxious urchins, begging, imploring to fill the piñata with more peyote and tequila dreams. I lowered the mache of paper to the dusty ground below, filled it, packed it like a pirates cannon full of shrapnel words, not in any particular or peculiar order of sentence or structure of any kind. Then it was raised by the numerous Pablitos by its frayed rope high above the blindfolded assemblage who couldn’t wait to swing a stick at it like Mussilini hanging upside down in the square like a slab of fascist meat. Sticks swang and swung and swinged, wildly, no hits, no runs, no errors until ol’ Number Seven connected with a direct hit. As the ball flew out of the stadium, words, so many of them, fell from the punctured piñata complete with punctuation, like so many pieces of pretty candy flying out without wings in every direction. It was an explosive array of metaphors, verbs, nouns, some were renowned nouns while others merely unknown nouns. The cascade of the english language fell not to the ground but found sanctuary on the linen pages of a book waiting for them in illiterate alleys, for their very arrival, survival and grammatical revival. The children, the smart ones, not the adults, gathered up the little candy like words together, and together they spent the morning forming sentences and paragraphs until the no-sense finally made sense, mainly socialista mumbo jumbo about a lady named Frida, Che Guevara and the flats of tortilla. Soon the words became sentences, the sentences paragraphs, and soon it was a book, a tome, that I read a little of. Soon in my dream my eyes became heavy with drink and mescaline and I had to rest. I laid the invisible book on the invisible table next me and was glad to sleep. The alcohol and peyote were wearing off as the plaza and the piñata began to fade from view and my reach. Voices disappeared too, decibel by decibel until there was only a loud silence. I had some tea in a cup and it smiled back at me, a weird Cheshire cat got your tongue grin, and then I doubled over and threw up…

Next day…the sun rose in the east as I suppose it feels it has to, that is what we hired it for after all. It warmed my face as I sat up, refreshed in spirit with a hollow stomach. Sitting in the corner, quiet as a saint was the mysterious Doc Yucatan, a haiku hobo of recent acquaintance from Denver. “Damn Doc, I had the weirdest dream last night, or I think it was my dream and not someone else’s. It was one long string of dream beads or shells strung together.” Doc motioned for me to get up as it was time to head out, so we both got up to leave old Mexico after I had splashed rancid brown water on my face and grabbed by backpack by the bedstead. Doc and I walked through the sleepy village and down the sleepy road where even the dogs were to goddamn lazy to bark at us, we lit a joint and walked out into the desert… the Haiku Hobo and the Dharmabum in search of the Peyote Coyote in the kingdom of cactus…

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From Paris Hilton to Drew Barrymore, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no secret that cannabis is an essential addition to the medicine boxes of many divas and femme fatales. For the fashionable woman, there are plenty of high-class options for consuming cannabis in a style befitting of a princess, regardless of budget. Cannabis has been used for eons as a cure for period cramps, an appetite stimulant for those suffering from eating disorders, and as an anti-anxiety medication for women living with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The VSyndicate Price: $9.99 - $11.99 a v a i l a b l e at t h e V s y n d i c at e . c o m No bigger than a credit card, The VSyndicate is a clever alternative to the average clunky grinder. Breaking up has never been easier: just rub the bud on the design in the center of the card and the cannabis forms a neat pile beneath it. The innovative shape of The VSyndicate also makes it perfect for packing a swift joint. The edges are great for scooping and smoothing, which means there is no need to grab another straight edge. The VSyndicate comes in three varieties, all which provide different coarsenesses depending on your needs. The fine grinding card maximizes the benefits of vaporizing by providing a fine particle in a snap, while the coarse card is perfect for rolling blunts and packing a quick bowl. The VSyndicate can be cleaned with soap and water, or with alcohol and a soft cloth for that brilliant shine that is sure to complement your new manicure. Starting at $9.99, the price is right for divas on a budget, even after you splurge on that 1/4th of Purple Princess.

Kiva Cannabis Confections Price: Between $10.00 - $12.00 L i s t o f r e ta i l e r s a v a i l a b l e at k i va c o n f e c t i o n s . c o m From the crisp packaging to the smooth taste, Kiva Cannabis Confection’s line of premium chocolate products is an original alternative to more traditional edibles. A lifesaver during that time of the month, Kiva Confections provides relief from menstrual cramps while allowing you to indulge that omnipresent craving for decadent chocolate. All of Kiva’s products are made in California, and at $10.00 - $12.00 retail, Kiva Bars feel like a splurge without truly breaking the bank. One bar delivers four sweet and creamy doses, great for late night gatherings and as an unexpected pre-meal appetizer. This line of fine chocolate uses cannabis extract from outdoor plants that are dried and slow cured especially for the process of chocolate infusion. The dark chocolate Kiva bar pairs perfectly with a bottle of red wine and your favorite romantic comedy.

Gone are the days when she-smokers were limited to harsh bongs, gigantic grinders, and boring stash boxes; the girly-girls of the present have plenty of sexy, discreet, and delicious ways to consume cannabis. So, ditch your brother’s hyper-phallic Sherlock for these pieces picked especially for the fairer sex. Whether you are looking for a birthday gift for that feminine significant other, or shopping for a grinder to match your new shoes, these toys are top picks for fabulous women and those hoping to spoil them rotten.

IoLite Portable Vaporizer Price: Around $200 m y- i o l i t e . c o m Smaller than most cell phones, the IoLite provides is powerful vaporizer with a discreet, funky exterior. The IoLite is available in over nine colors for all of your moods and its lightweight, sleek look goes well with any outfit. Powerful enough for all of your vaporizing needs and rechargeable, the IoLite is a greener alternative to battery operated portable vapes. Weighing in at just under three ounces, the IoLite is a lightweight, sleek, and popular way to get your dose of girly green. The IoLite is produced by Oglesby & Butler Ltd, an Irish company renowned for its gas products, which makes it a great mix of quality and sex appeal. In addition to its good looks, the IoLite also provides friendly customer service through its American and European helplines. The IoLite promises a full two hours of vaporizing before recharging and upgrades are available, so for those who can afford the price tag the IoLite is the epitome of usability and taste.

As medical marijuana dispensaries continue to pop up all over the country, from California to Michigan, a new profession has emerged that is taking the medical marijuana community by storm - “Bud Tending”. Paraphrased from the age old Bartending moniker, Bud Tenders act very much in the same way, but instead of serving alcohol they serve you up with a fat bud of your choice. Not only is this literally a dream job for many medical marijuana advocates looking to meet and interact with many like-minded people in the community, but also an excellent way to make an living in this struggling economy. Bud Tenders are required to have a good knowledge of different strains and types of medical marijuana as well as being able to effectively communicate with their patients and help them find the best type of marijuana to suit their specific needs. Bud Tenders also need to understand the correct weights and measurements of cannabis, how it is priced and how to effectively display the inventory to ensure maximum customer interest. But most of all, one of the most important qualities a Bud Tender needs to have are excellent customer service skills. But to really understand what Bud Tending is all about, as well as what it takes to become a Bud Tender, is to actually interview one. And when it

comes to Bud Tending, there are few in the industry more knowledgeable and experienced than Bud Tender Dan from G3 Holistic Inc. in Moreno Valley, California. Here is my interview with Bud Tender Dan Dave: Without feeling you have to go too in depth, what is your take on the sweet leaf? What do you feel it does for you personally? Bud Tender Dan: I have been using medical marijuana for years for a range of issues including bleeding ulcers (can’t take pain meds), insomnia (can’t take pills), and relief from skeletal/muscular pain (again, no pills!). The Marijuana Plant has enormous medical value (aspirin comes from tree bark!) and potential but the federal government must remove cannabis from the schedule 1 drug list to allow for proper research and clinical trials. There is new Cannabinoid (THC, CBD, etc.) research with a host of implications including the destruction of cancer cells without harming the healthy tissue (not only symptom treatment but an anti-tumor effect, according to a report by the National Cancer Institute, cancer.gov). Dave: How long have you been a Bud Tender, what establishment do you work at, and what made you decide to get into this profession? Bud Tender Dan: I have been the Senior Patient

Consultant/Bud Tender at G3 Holistic, Inc. since it’s inception in 2009. A few patient friends and I exceeded our med needs with our gardens and decided to form a collective, ‘by the patients, for the patients…’ I have 30 years of restaurant/bar management experience, 30 years of product knowledge, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a Pre-Med/Science curriculum from The Ohio State University, and a father who is an oncologist specializing in geriatrics and hospice/ palliative care. The combination of these factors created a kind of perfect storm career for me as a patient consultant in the Medical Marijuana field. Dave: What kind of training does a Bud Tender need? Do you need to go to school to be a Bud Tender? Bud Tender Dan: More training than there is currently available, but new schools and classes are constantly sprouting up! I attended The Oaksterdam University, (www.oaksterdamuniversity. com), completing as Valedictorian a 13-week semester course covering a wide range of topics including civics, law, patient consulting, methods of ingestion, and, of course, cultivation. Continuing education is a must as medical marijuana laws are constantly changing. Classes and workshops are available, the best being provided by Americans for Safe Access, or ASA (www.safeaccessnow.com). I just completed their Marijuana Activist Bootcamp last month. Dave: What are a few crazy, inspirational, funny, etc stories you have during your time as being a Bud Tender? Bud Tender Dan: Regarding crazy and funny, there is never a dull moment. We had a night janitor stuck in our magnetic doors and the police

thought he was breaking in. Our landlord assumed our grow (house) was illegal and SWAT showed up at the house and ended up threatening the landlord. A patient with a glass eye took it out, polished it up, and played marbles on the bar with it - pretty disgusting! As far as inspirational? That’s easy. Our collective is located minutes from a major hospital and every time a patient stops by after chemo/radiation treatment it’s extremely rewarding to make them smile by providing safe effective meds for their pain and suffering. Product knowledge is key and essential when recommending a strain for a specific condition/ailment. Dave: What is your advice for someone who is thinking about becoming a Bud Tender? Bud Tender Dan: Bud tending is an experience that requires a combination of knowledge, skill, care, compassion, and customer service that is unlike any other career position. Part bartender, part patient consultant, caregiver, friend, and risktaker/target, the Bud Tender has an enormous responsibility to his/her patients, coworkers, and collective. Get active in the medical marijuana community! Attend a marijuana school; there are a few of them now. The State of Colorado even accredited a cannabis college! Join Americans For Safe Access, NORML, and any other local ‘grassroots’ campaign that will keep you informed and involved in this rapidly growing industry. It is definitely a budding industry! Remember that not all share your views, so the best defense is information. Almost every marijuana myth has been discredited over the last 20 years; we just need to reeducate ourselves with some actual facts.

“Ziggy Marley’s Marijuanaman ” is the new 48-page oversized full-color hardcover graphic novel conceived by Ziggy Marley, illustrated by Jim Mahfood (Clerks, Spiderman) and written by Joe Casey (G.I.Joe, Superman, Iron Man). Published in conjunction by Tuff Gong Worldwide and Image Comics, the work goes beyond the obvious title and is loaded with political and financial implications. “We knew that the initial reaction to a book named Marijuanaman would be this: people would perceive it as a silly stoner comic, a Cheech & Chong, ‘Half-Baked’ kind of thing; those type of weed and stoner stereotypes,” says Jim Mahfood. “So we went out of our way to make it a more weird and mystical thing. It has a bit of a dark edge to it.” “The book represents a conflict, a spiritual war of sorts, between the crusaders of Exodus representing the natural world, the plant and the positive,” explains Mahfood, “versus the artificial, synthetic world represented by the evil and sinister Pharma-Con.” “The main character doesn’t even smoke,” Mahfood continues. “He is THC. He is the living embodiment of the plant and represents the positive sides of its healing and spiritual properties.” Ziggy Marley, a committed environmental and social activist, sees Marijuanaman as “a metaphor for what marijuana can be. This is a new perspective,” he tells us. “You know, they’ve villianized and demonized and criminalized this plant so much throughout history that we wanted to bring to people a new perspective.

“A superhero character is a great metaphor for what the plant can do for the planet.” On the flip-side of the superhero coin, we have Cash Money, Pharma-Con’s Terminator-like Weapon of War and the antagonistic villain battling Marijuanaman . The juxtaposition of organic vs. synthetic, man vs. machine, peace vs. violence, defines this project. One of Cash Money’s angry rampages in the book is noted by a caption, “The synthetic cocktail pumping through its pipes urges more violence.” As can be expected, the dialogue and storyline are pregnant with multiple meanings. “We didn’t want to be overly preachy to the reader, this is a comic book and we still wanted it to be fun and entertaining,” explains Mahfood. “But, at the same time, if you read between the lines, there is a message in there.” Take this sentence for example: 92

“Meanwhile Pharma-Con continues to traffic in all things that involve the unnatural world.” “It’s a money game,” elaborates Ziggy. “It’s a big hypocrisy because there’s alcohol, there’s tobacco, there’s pharmaceutical drugs that hurt people every day. If this plant is to fulfill it’s potential, it will compete with a pretty established and powerful institution in society, the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not easy for some guy who is making billions of dollars to give way to something that will make him make less.”

“They’d rather people get drunk I guess.”

“This book was a complete and equal collaboration between Ziggy Marley, Joe Casey, and I,” says Mahfood. “We all got along extremely well, there were no egos involved here. I was really proud to work with these guys and I think our different sensibilities came together quite nicely to make something new and offbeat.” No undertaking like this can be carried out without an Executive Producer, and just like most things in Marley’s life, finding the right EP for “MarijuanaMan” was a deliberately organic process. Tom Martin, best known for his work on hundreds of film posters through the 70s and 80s, happened to be a neighbor of Ziggy’s, and it was they who created the original idea together. Once they brought Joe Casey on and, being that he had already written several comics with Mahfood, all it took was a quick glance at Mahfood’s work online for the team to agree he was the right man to illustrate the project.

Mahfood’s signature style has made him a fixture in the LA Art scene. Many know him by his moniker “Food One,” and for his collaborations with DJ Z-Trip. He has worked for every major comic book company and his illustrations have appeared in Playboy, Spin, URB, Heavy Metal, among countless others. He illustrated director Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” comics, several Spiderman projects for Marvel Comics and has performed live art at countless underground hip-hop events (as a matter of fact, it was through the late great DJ Dusk that I first met Mahfood over seven years ago). ”MarijuanaMan” represents the culmination of his many years of illustrating. “My approach to the art was to do it my way, to do it like I normally would if this was my own creation and my own book,” says Mahfood. “Luckily, Ziggy was cool with that and understood my direction. He gets the vibe of what I am going after with my visuals. And Joe and I have been friends for a really long time and he definitely knows how to cater his writing towards my drawing and art style, so I really feel like I got away with a lot here. I was able to do my thing and not be restricted, and in the end, as a creative person, that’s all you can really ask for.” The public confirmed Mahfood’s excitement at the book release party on Four Twenty. A constant stream of more than a few hundred people zig zagged through Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood for the book release party. Ziggy Marley, Mahfood and Joe Casey sat at a table together signing books and answering questions. The back patio served fish tacos,

rice & beans, chile relleno, micro brews, exquisite medicated smoothies and other assorted edibles. L.A. musical legend Lonnie Marshall and Leimert Park Muralist Michael Massenburg were also in the mix while up-and-coming mixmaster, DJ Expo, rocked the turntables with a steady stream of reggae, hip-hop, funk & soul. Ziggy Marley’s electric smile lit up the room up, for celebrations like this are what keep him going. And with that, “Ziggy Marley’s Marijuanaman,” accomplishes it’s objective. It resists the urge to simply glorify marijuana while finding an inventively appropriate way of properly celebrating its advantages. Mahfood’s playful illustration style is matched by a storyline that addresses several current issues of these times. The entertaining narrative and embedded symbolism within makes “Marijuanaman” a graphic novel especially relevant to our era.

Pithy statements are found sprinkled throughout. Statements like, “Humanity is a curious mix, equal parts beauty and violence, love and hate. And the cures your planet provides naturally are not taken advantage of.” “When it’s coming from the people, the common people, they have a problem with that because it’s a control issue… they want to control everything you know? It’s a big hypocrisy because there’s alcohol, there’s tobacco, there’s pharmaceutical drugs that hurt people every day,” Marley tells Kush. “But once a big corporation finds out how to make money, then the politicians will get some bravery inside them and get on board,” he hypothesizes. “Once the FDA and these guys get together and say ‘how can we control this and make sure the right people make money from it?’ then that’s when you’ll kind of see them ease up the pressure.” A means to an end? You decide. In the meantime, pick up your copy of Ziggy Marley’s Marijuanaman and stick it to Big-Pharma while you still have the chance. -Mike the PoeT aka Mike Sonksen is a Spoken Word Artist, Tourguide, Educator, Journalist, & Historian based in The City of Angels. mikethepoetla.tumblr.com/ youtube.com/user/MikeThePoet1 Photography by William Thoren 93

Colorado Concert Calendar

Live Music Preview May/June U2

5.21.11 @ Invesco Field at Mile High (Denver) Ireland’s rock phenoms, U2 come to Denver for an event that could border on epic proportions. Formed in 1976, the group still consists of original members Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. They have always maintained that recognizable sound built upon melodic instrumentals, and highlighted by Edge’s textural guitar with Bono’s expressive vocals. Hearing songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Beautiful Day”, “I Will Follow”, “New Year’s Day”, “One”, “With Or Without You”, and countless others is a priceless experience that will be sure spring a bit of extra inspiration into your attitude. They’ve won 22 Grammy Awards, and in 2005 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Aside from being tremendous musicians, the men of U2 are good people, giving so much back through world humanitarian causes. Get to Mile High in late May for a classic concert to remember .u2.com

Adele

5.28.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver)

Coming from a traditionally un-musical family, Adele broke the mold and is now breaking into the mainstream charts. So where did her aural spirit come from? “It all comes from impersonating The Spice Girls and Gabrielle,” she explains cheerfully. “I did little concerts in my room for my mum and her friends. My mum’s quite arty; she’d get all these lamps and shine them up to make one big spotlight. They’d all sit on the bed.” Later on in childhood, her dad’s best friend, a dance producer, declared Adeles’s voice ‘wicked,’ and invited her to record a cover of ‘Heart Of Glass.’ It was the first time she really got a microphone in her hand, and she quickly realized it was her calling. She comes rolling in to Ogden Theatre in Denver on May 28th, and this will be a fantastic concert from a voice that will undoubtedly give you chills all night long. adele.tv

Fitz and the Tantrums

6.03.11 @ Bluebird Theater (Denver); 6.04.11 @ Black Sheep (Colorado Springs)

One day, before it all started for these funky indie darlings, Fitz’s exgirlfriend called him with an old church organ that her neighbor was selling for 50 dollars. ‘Breakin’ the Chains of Love’ was written that same night, and the beginning of a promising career was born. Using the pain of his split with that ex as inspiration, along with the organ, he created their debut EP, Songs For A Break-Up Vol. 1. They’ve since signed with LA’s Dangerbird Records, which released their debut full length album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces. Their sound is a little 60s Soul, a little Motown, and maybe even a little bit of early Hall & Oates. Really enjoyable music, with a fantastic live set that should get you dancing in no time at all. fitzandthetantrums.com

Sleigh Bells + Neon Indian

6.04.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver)

Brooklyn’s Sleigh Bells are a pretty damn noisy electronic group. Imagine a poppier version of Crystal Castles. It’s loud noise-pop mixed with dance and punk influences would probably describe their sound best. They released their debut album Treats this year, which has reached the top 50 on Billboard’s US charts. Their live show is incredibly raucous and full of energy, with live guitar and vocals, and the rest coming out of a backing track. Neon Indian are now missing guitar wizard Ronny Heart, but their live set should still be solid. The band is touring in anticipation of their 2nd LP release, one which was recorded by mastermind Alan Palomo in the frigid city of Helsinki. This is a respectable pairing, and Odgen is where it’s at on June 4th. Seeya there! infinitybells.com; neonindian.com

Foster the People

6.08.11 @ Bluebird Theater (Denver)

Springing to recent success on the back of Hype Machine (hypem.com) and some stellar performances at this year’s SXSW in Austin, indie rockers Foster the People are soon to be a household name. Coming from Los Angeles, the band started up their engines back in October of 2009, and have gotten massive radio play by indie stations with their hit “Pumped Up Kicks.” The trio of Mark Foster, Mark Pontius, and Cubbie Fink only have a single EP right now, named Foster the People EP, but you can bet they’ll have a full album out this year at some point. Coming off the heels of playing Coachella out in the Californian desert in April, watch out for these boys as they storm into Bluebird Theater in Denver. Something tells me this will be the last time you have a chance to see them in such an intimate setting. fosterthepeople.com

Miami Horror + Flashlights

6.11.11 @ Bluebird Theater (Denver)

After years in the making, Miami Horror finally released their much anticipated debut LP, Illumination, just last year. Melbourne’s favorite psychedelic indie-electronic adventurers, Miami Horror put on a really enjoyable live show, probably the best amongst all of their contemporaries.

This Page: U@ Right From Top: Sleigh Bells, Fitz and the Tantrums, Foster the People, Miami Horror, Adele 94

Joining up with the Aussies on this night in Denver is Boulder’s own Ethan Converse and Sam Martin, with their band Flashlights. Recently signing with LA’s Binary Records, Flashlights will release their debut EP, Hidden Behind Trees, on June 6th. They make hypnotically gorgeous electronic tunage, music that makes you feel nostalgic for things that never may have never happened to you, but that you wish had. This should be a heck of a show between these two bands. miamihorror.com; flashlights.bandcamp.com

Cake

6.13.11; 6.14.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver)

Many people only know Cake as the band that plays that “going for distance song.” But Cake is a hell of a lot more than just that career launching single ‘The Distance.’ They are a legitimate heavy weight in the world of alternative rock, with a twist of funk. Their latest album, Showroom of Compassion, was released on January 11th, and they are hitting the road in support of that record. This pair of shows in Denver kicks off on June 13th, a good opportunity to cure that awful case of the Mondays. Even if you can’t manage to scrounge up some form of date that night, you better get your butt out on the 14th to see these Sacramento natives rock Ogden Theatre. On any one of these nights, you can have your cake, and eat it too. cakemusic.com

Mumford & Sons

6.15.11 @ Fillmore Auditorium (Denver)

Mumford & Sons are a British folk rock band, rising out of London’s surprisingly strong folk scene. The band has gained a lot of momentum since releasing their EP, Love Your Ground, and touring extensively in the UK. Their debut album, Sigh No More, was released in the UK in 2009, and in the US in February of 2010. It peaked at number two on the UK Album Chart and climbed high up the Billboard 200 in the US. Nominated for two Grammy Awards and playing Coachella in April, the band seems on the way up...even further. Their live set changes energy levels at a drastic pace, going for almost silent and slow to raucous and rowdy in a matter of seconds. Definitely worth checking them out at the Fillmore in June. mumforandsons.com

More Great Shows! The Cars : 5.15.11 @ The Fillmore (Denver) Awolnation : 5.15.11 @ Black Sheep (Colorado Springs) System of a Down : 5.18.11 @ Comfort Dental Amphitheatre (Englewood) Arctic Monkeys : 5.30.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver) Yeasayer : 6.01.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver) The Airborne Toxic Event : 6.02.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver) Bright Eyes : 6.03.11 @ Fillmore Auditorium (Denver) Noah and the Whale : 6.04.11 @ Bluebird Theater (Denver) Ratatat : 6.05.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver) Ben Harper : 6.06.11; 6.07.11 @ Ogden Theatre (Denver) Peter Gabriel and the New Blood Orchestra : 6.13.11 @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre (Morrison)

NCIAkushad3_v.4 3/18/11 4:30 PM Page 1

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Celebrate Cinco De Mayo

All Month with Great Mexican Treats A true sign that summer is almost here.

To learn more about

Asparagus Salsa

cook with herb

Ingredients • 1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces • 1 cup chopped seeded tomatoes • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion • 1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped • 1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro • 1 garlic clove, minced • ¼ cup THC olive oil • 1 teaspoon cider vinegar • 1/4 teaspoon salt • Tortilla chips

Chef Herb &

go to www.cookwithherb.com

Avocado Fruit Salad Ingredients • 3 medium ripe avocados, pitted and peeled • 2 tablespoons lemon juice • 1/2 cup plain yogurt • 2 tablespoons honey • 1/8 cup THC olive oil • 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel • 1 medium apple, chopped • 1 medium firm banana, cut into 1/4-inch slices • 1 cup halved seedless grapes • 1 can (11 ounces) mandarin oranges, drained

Directions Place asparagus in a large saucepan; add 1/2 in. of water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water. In a large bowl, combine the asparagus, tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, cilantro, garlic, THC olive oil, vinegar and salt. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, stirring several times. Serve with tortilla chips.

Calico cheese dip

Ingredients Directions • 4 cups (16 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese Cut avocados into chunks; Place in a large bowl; drizzle with lemon juice • 1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies and toss to coat. Drain, reserving the lemon juice; set avocados aside. • 1 can (2-1/4 ounces) sliced ripe olives, drained • 4 green onions, sliced For dressing, in a small bowl, combine the yogurt, honey, THC olive oil, lemon peel and reserved lemon juice. In another large bowl, toss the • 3 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced • 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley apple, banana, grapes, oranges and avocados. Serve with dressing. • ¼ cup THC olive oil • ¼ cup white vinegar • Tortilla chips Directions

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In a large bowl, beat together the cheese, chilies, olives, onions, tomatoes and parsley until blended. Prepare salad dressing mix THC olive oil and white vinegar; pour over cheese mixture and mix well. Serve immediately with tortilla chips.

Corn bread Ingredients • 1 cup THC butter, melted • 1 cup white sugar • 4 eggs • 1 (15 ounce) can cream-style corn • 1/2 (4 ounce) can chopped green chile peppers, drained • 1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese • 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese • 1 cup all-purpose flour • 1 cup yellow cornmeal • 4 teaspoons baking powder • ¼ teaspoon salt Directions Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish. In a large bowl, beat together THC butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in cream corn, chiles, Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Add flour mixture to corn mixture; stir until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.

lime juice. Chill the lime juice and scallops all day or overnight until scallops are opaque (you cannot see through them). Empty 1/2 of the lime juice from the bowl. Add tomatoes, green onions, celery, green bell pepper, parsley, black pepper, THC olive oil, and cilantro to the scallop mixture. Stir gently. Serve this dish in fancy glasses with a slice of lime hanging over the rim for effect.

Elote

(Mexican Corn-on-the-Cob) Ingredients • 4 ears corn, shucked • ¼ cup melted THC butter • ¼ cup mayonnaise • 1/2 cup grated cotija cheese • 4 wedges lime (optional) Directions Preheat an outdoor grill for medium-high heat. Grill corn until hot and lightly charred all over, 7 to 10 minutes, depending on the temperature of the grill. Roll the ears in melted THC butter, then spread evenly with mayonnaise. Sprinkle with cotija cheese and serve with a lime wedge.

Mexican rice

Ingredients • 1 pound bay scallops • 8 limes, juiced • 2 tomatoes, diced • 5 green onions, minced • 2 stalks celery, sliced • 1/2 green bell pepper, minced • 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley • freshly ground black pepper • 1/8 cup THC olive oil • 1/8 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Ingredients • 5 tablespoon THC olive oil • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric • 1 teaspoon garlic powder • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed • 2 teaspoons paprika • 1 pinch red pepper flakes • 1 pinch cayenne pepper • 3 green onions • 1 green bell pepper, chopped • 1 cup pre-cooked corn kernels • 2 small tomatoes, diced • ¼ cup ketchup • 2 cups cooked rice • salt to taste

Directions Rinse scallops and place in a medium sized bowl. Pour lime juice over the scallops. The scallops should be completely immersed in the

Directions Heat THC olive oil in a wok-style pan with turmeric, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, paprika, chili flakes, and cayenne pepper. Add

Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted into center of the pan comes out clean.

Scallop Ceviche

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the green onions and the green peppers; saute 1 to 2 minutes over medium-high heat.

• 1 cup chopped almonds • 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

Add corn and tomatoes and saute until tomatoes release their juices. Add ketchup and stir until mixed.

Directions In a medium bowl, cream the THC butter and sugar. Stir in vanilla and water. Add the flour and almonds, mix until blended. Cover and chill for 3 hours.

Add rice and stir until heated thoroughly. Salt to taste.

Baja Couscous Ingredients • 1 cup couscous • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin • 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste • 1 ¼ cups boiling water • 1 clove unpeeled garlic • 1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained • 1 cup canned whole kernel corn, drained • 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion • ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro • 1 jalapeno pepper, minced • 1/3 cup THC olive oil • 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or to taste Directions Combine the couscous, cumin, and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the boiling water and seal with plastic wrap. Set aside for 10 minutes. While waiting for the couscous, cook the unpeeled garlic clove in a small skillet over medium-high heat until toasted and the skin has turned golden-brown. Peel the garlic and mince. Stir the garlic into the couscous along with the black beans, corn, onion, cilantro, jalapeno pepper, THC olive oil, and lime juice. Serve warm or allow to cool.

Simple South-of-the-Border Cookies Ingredients • 1 cup THC butter • 1/2 cup white sugar • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract • 2 teaspoons water • 2 cups all-purpose flour

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Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Shape dough into balls or crescents. Place on an unprepared cookie sheet and bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from pan to cool on wire racks. When cookies are cool, roll in confectioners’ sugar. Store at room temperature in an airtight container.

Cinnamon cookies Ingredients • 1 cup THC butter • 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon • ¼ teaspoon salt • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour • 1 cup confectioners’ sugar • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. In a medium bowl, cream together 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar and THC butter until smooth. Stir in vanilla. Combine flour, salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon; stir into the creamed mixture to form a stiff dough. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Mix together 1 cup confectioners’ sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon; roll balls in cinnamon mixture. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in preheated oven, or until nicely browned. Cool cookies on wire racks.

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