Indiana House Votes Unanimously (93 to 0) to Legalize CBD Oil

Indiana’s House of Representatives has voted unanimously to approve legislation that would legalize cannabidiol (CBD) oil.

cbd2Indiana’s House approved House Bill 1214 with a unanimous 93 to 0 vote. The measure now moves to the state’s Senate, where a similar measure was recently passed by its initial committee. If passed by the Senate, the proposal would be sent to Governor Eric Holcomb for final consideration.

House Bill 1214 “Specifies that the definition of “industrial hemp” includes the resins of the Cannabis sativa plant. Defines “CBD oil” as a product that contains: (1) not more than 0.3% THC; (2) at least 5% cannabidiol; and (3) no other controlled substances. Legalizes CBD oil”, and “Repeals superseded provisions relating to cannabidiol registration.”

The full text of the measure – which was filed by Representative William Friend (R) along with a bipartisan group of three other lawmakers – can be found by clicking here.

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Marijuana Company Donates One Million Meals To Californians In Need

Bloom Farms, one of California’s leading marijuana manufacturers and distributors, donated its one millionth meal to the state’s nonprofit food banks in January, 2018, CEO Michael Ray announced this week.

“From the start, we wanted to build a business that contributed to the communities we live and work in on many levels,” Ray said.  “Donating our one-millionth meal shows that we’re succeeding for our customers, who have purchased one million of our products and appreciate that we are working toward the greater good, and for California’s most vulnerable families who have received the gift of nutritious food.”

“I’d like to thank our customers, our dispensary partners and our 70 employees across California for making this possible,” Ray continues.  “We’ve seen the tremendous impact corporate responsibility initiatives in traditional industries have had and milestones like this go a long way to showing the impact cannabis companies can have and changing perceptions of the cannabis industry.”

For every Bloom Farms product sold the one-for-one cannabis business donates money to food banks across California to cover the cost of sourcing and distributing a healthy meal; one Bloom Farms item sold has equalled one healthy meal donated since the Bay Area company started its one-for-one program in December 2015.

Bloom Farms directed its remaining 2017 donations – as of mid-October – to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa, supporting Californians in need and those affected by the wildfires, which Bloom Farms Founder & CEO Michael Ray and his family have also endured in the past.

“Having experienced the total loss of our family farm just two years ago in the Butte Fire, it broke my heart to see all of those affected in the Northern California fires,” said Ray. “We all need to take care of each other. We will continue our efforts to provide any relief that we can.”

More than 5.4 million Californians don’t know where their next meal is coming from – and that includes the 2.1 million children who may go to bed hungry each night, according to the California Association for Food Banks. The state’s food insecurity rate is nearly 14 percent, and a teenage Ray saw this first-hand while growing up in Calaveras County, CA, with childhood friends who oftentimes were drawn to his family’s house for home-cooked meals.

“Back then we were simply having my friends over for dinner, but I didn’t realize the severity of the situation until I got a little older,” said Ray, who founded Bloom Farms in mid-2014. “Today, one in seven Californians don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That’s a lot of people, and we need to be there for them.”

“Partnering with Bloom Farms has made all the difference for World Harvest LA and its clients,” said Glen Curado, CEO of World Harvest LA Food Bank. “They not only contribute financially, but their staff volunteers with us as often as they can. It’s an amazing company with extraordinary staff.”

Upon learning about Bloom Farms’ recent milestone, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services President and CEO Blake Young responded: “What an incredible accomplishment! 1 million meals is no small feat, and donations like these from Bloom Farms are so impactful in our community. Every single person can get involved in some way and help fight hunger. Congrats to Bloom Farms on reaching this impressive mark.”

In addition to its one-for-one program, Bloom Farms gives its employees four hours of paid volunteer time every month to dedicate as they see fit – and many of them choose to spend those hours working in one of the organization’s partner food banks.

“Our one-for-one program extends beyond the act of giving. It provides our employees with an actual sense of purpose,” said CEO Ray. “Good people can work anywhere, but being a Bloom Farms employee and participating in these volunteer days and knowing that every purchase gives back to our most vulnerable neighbors gives us all something beyond a paycheck.”

Bloom Farms also engages California communities outside of its one-for-one program. In the last 12 months the business has donated to the Calaveras County Butte Fire relief efforts, hosted Cannabis Career Fairs and Bloom Fit yoga classes in San Francisco and Los Angeles and sponsored renowned cultural events including the San Francisco International Film Festival, Wanderlust and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

“Bloom Farms is a different kind of cannabis company, and our customers know that when they choose our products,” said Keith J. Hart, Bloom Farms’ Social Good Manager. “Our company’s vision is to change the conversation around cannabis and one of our core values is to give something amazing back; our food bank partnership allows us to do both and we are excited to share this milestone with them.”

In July 2017, Bloom Farms was recognized as one of the Top 100 corporate philanthropists in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times – placing them alongside other companies including Google, eBay, Levi Strauss & Co., Twitter, Microsoft, Bayer, Adobe, The Gap, PayPal and Salesforce.

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Review: ‘Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America’

Well researched and packed with insightful analysis, Emily Dufton’s Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books) chronicles how cannabis went from verboten to Main Street commerce in the U.S during the last 50 years.

When did the effort to end pot prohibition exactly begin in America? Trivial Pursuit fans will learn that the first modern marijuana-law-reform activist was Lowell Eggemeier, who in 1964 lit up a joint in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice and dared police to arrest him, which they did. “I’m starting a campaign to legalize marijuana-smoking,” he declared. A year later, LeMar (short for Legalize Marijuana) was founded (without Eggemeier’s help).

Through numerous interviews with many of the principals involved in early cannabis-law reform efforts, Dufton (pictured above) aptly discusses the origins of the first three separately organized pioneering groups: LeMar and Amorphia, which in short time evolved into the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), founded in 1970.

With NORML leading the public charge, Congress formed a commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in the 1972 Shafer Report. Despite President Richard Nixon disparaging its findings, 11 states decriminalized pot in the ’70s, starting with Oregon in 1973.

Dufton also correctly acknowledges glaucoma sufferer Robert Randall, who received cannabis from the federal government from 1975 until he died in 2001, as the first bona fide medical-marijuana patient in the U.S. In the ’80s and ’90, a myriad of second-wave reformers like Randall and his organization Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics pivoted away from advocating primarily for decriminalization in favor of enabling patients’ access to medicinal cannabis.

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980—who toughened drug-law enforcement on multiple fronts, and, along with his wife, argued that people should “just say no”—put a chill into the legalization movement, but Dufton notes that a 1978 scandal involving NORML and White House drug czar Peter Bourne didn’t help. “The downfall of Peter Bourne and the subsequent downfall of (NORML founder) Keith Stroup brought the country’s first experiment with decriminalization to a close,” she writes.

EXCERPT: “Aided by the experienced marijuana activist Allen St. Pierre, who ran the day-to-day operation of the group, NORML came back to life at the precise time when medical-marijuana laws were beginning to sweep the country, and its insurrection aligned with a renaissance of interest in the drug, heralding a moment that was ripe for the return of marijuana lobbying and activism on a national scale.”

While examining the work of cannabis activists and their strategies over the last six decades, Dufton casts nearly equal light on anti-marijuana groups like the Parents Resource Institute for Drug Education (PRIDE) and the “parents’ movement” of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Government funding kept PRIDE and other similar groups going.

In contrast, cannabis-law reformers relied largely on small donations from hundreds of thousands of stakeholders. That changed in the mid-1990s, when a triumvirate of supportive billionaires (Geroge Soros, Peter Lewis) provided the massive funding necessary for a series of successful state medical-marijuana ballot initiatives from 1996 to 2001.

The passage of California’s Prop 215 in 1996, establishing an individual’s right to use cannabis therapeutically, marked the end of the grass-roots advocacy era in cannabis-law reform. After that, “grasstops” organizations such as the Drug Policy Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Marijuana Policy Project relied almost entirely on the largesse of a handful of rich donors and family foundations, most of which favored ballot initiatives and litigation over activism and public protests.

Dufton’s Grass Roots is the best non-autobiographical account of the modern effort to reform U.S. cannabis laws. It’s must-read.

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West Virginia Considering Medical Marijuana Improvements

The 2018 legislative session is underway in West Virginia, and several bills have already been introduced to make the medical cannabis program more workable and accessible for patients.

The two most important bills that have been introduced so far are HB 4147 and HB 4149. HB 4147 would require the state to begin issuing ID cards to qualified patients and caregivers in July of this year instead of waiting until July 2019. HB 4149 would allow patients to purchase cannabis flowers from dispensaries, rather than limiting patients to more expensive extracts.

If you are a West Virginia resident, please email your state legislators today and tell them patients can’t afford to wait another year and a half, and that they need access to whole plant cannabis.

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Study: Long-Term Marijuana Use Doesn’t Increase Risk for Adverse Lung Function, May Reduce Emphysema Risk

The long-term use of marijuana isn’t associated with a decrease in lung function, and may reduce the risk of emphysema, according to a new study published by the journal Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases.

For the study, researchers examined the relationship between the long-term use of marijuana and lung health in 2,300 patients ages 40 to 80.

“This cross-sectional analysis of participants enrolled into the SPIROMICs cohort was performed to investigate the relationships between marijuana use and pulmonary function and symptoms”, states the study, which notes that “Those enrolled were carefully screened and recruited based on tobacco use history and spirometric function”.

According to researchers; “Neither current nor former marijuana use was associated with increased risk of cough, wheeze, or chronic bronchitis when compared to never marijuana users after adjusting for covariates”. Both current and former marijuana use “was associated with significantly less quantitative emphysema”. In agreement with other published studies, researchers “also did not find that marijuana use was associated with more obstructive lung disease.”

The full text of the study can be found by clicking here. It was conducted by researchers from the following institutions:

 

1. National Jewish Health, Denver, Colorado
2. Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora
3. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles
4. Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy, Department of Medicine and Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine, San Francisco
5. Departments of Radiology, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City
6. University of Utah Health Sciences Center, Salt Lake City
7. Department of Biostatics and Informatics, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora
8. Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
9. Columbia University, Division of General Medicine, New York, New York
10. University Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor
11. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

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The Best Way To Grow Super Lemon Haze Marijuana

Want a cannabis strain whose flavors reflect its namesake? Want a lemony-sweet/tart experience with a psychoactive kick? Yeah, you do! Give Super Lemon Haze marijuana a try. Wait, what’s that? Your local dispensary doesn’t sell this tasty variety? No worries. Just grow your own!

That’s right, growing your own marijuana is a very real option these days. Countless companies across the internet sell specialized equipment (grow lights, soil, fertilizer, etc.) for just this purpose. You can even assemble most of your supplies from your local hardware store. It’s just that easy.

But once you have all the supplies, how should you go about using them? The experts at Honest Marijuana have been growing the finest organic marijuana for years, and we’re ready to pass our knowledge and experience on to you. In this article, we’ll reveal the best way to grow Super Lemon Haze marijuana so you can get the most yield out of this popular cannabis strain.

The History Of Super Lemon Haze

Super Lemon Haze was first produced by Green House Seeds. It won first prize in the 2008 and 2009 High Times Cannabis Cup and another first prize in the 2010 IC420 Growers Cup, so you know it’s gotta be good. Sure, it’s not the strongest belle at the ball (as you’ll see in the section below), but what it lacks in psychoactive punch, it makes up for in flavor and aroma.

The Biology Of Super Lemon Haze

Super Lemon Haze is a sativa-dominant cross between Lemon Skunk and Super Silver Haze. When it flowers, Super Lemon Haze produces kief-caked, multi-colored buds that are reminiscent of the Fruity Pebbles strain.

Super Lemon Haze is a fast grower and can reach heights in excess of 78 inches in just seven to nine weeks. Even though it’s one of the tallest-growing strains, its yield is similar to much shorter varieties. In fact, Super Lemon Haze produces 1-3 ounces of bud per square foot (similar to Ghost Train Haze, which is half as tall). But where the plant lags in yield, it excels in speed of growth. If you choose the Super Lemon Haze strain over the Ghost Train Haze, you could be reaping the rewards of your labor a full month before the latter finishes flowering. Prodigious!

As the name Super Lemon Haze suggests, the strain produces zesty, sweet, and citrusy aromas while its flavor is sweet and tart like a lemon drop. In terms of THC count, Super Lemon Haze averages around 16 percent, although some varieties of the strain have topped out at 25 percent. As we said, it’s not the strongest strain at the party, like Sour Diesel, Chemdawg, or Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies, but it is above the 10 to 12 percent THC that most other strains exhibit.

Because of its lower THC count, Super Lemon Haze has both milder beneficial effects and milder side effects.

The Effects Of Super Lemon Haze

Super Lemon Haze produces a happy, euphoric, energetic high interspersed with peaks of high focus and valleys of drifty bliss. Those effects make it ideal for relieving the following medical problems:

• Stress
• Depression
• PTSD
• Chronic pain
• Excessive fatigue
• Headaches
• Migraines

Sounds great, right? It is. But before you say, “Yeah, that’s the strain for me!” there are some side effects to consider.

The Side Effects Of Super Lemon Haze

The most notable side effect of Super Lemon Haze is dry mouth. If we rated the side effects on a scale from 1 to 10, dry mouth would be a 10 (maybe even an 11 or 12). Dry eyes follow at a close second on the scale of side effects, though it only rates a 5 or 6 on the ten-point scale.

Coming in third, fourth, and fifth respectively are paranoia, anxiety, and dizziness. The nice thing about these last three is that they only rate a 2 on the side-effects scale. That’s not too bad for a strain that can relieve your pain and make you feel euphoric after a long, hard day.

Now that we’ve discussed the facts about Super Lemon Haze, it’s time to reveal the best way to grow a batch of this tasty treat.

The Best Way To Grow Super Lemon Haze Marijuana

From this point forward, we’ll assume you’re growing your Super Lemon Haze inside in a controlled environment. It is possible to grow Super Lemon Haze outside, but unless you’ve got the perfect combination of conditions, you aren’t going to maximize your yield.

1) Soak The Super Lemon Haze Seeds

Step one is to soak your seeds in a glass of water to “wake them up.” Remove the seeds from the water when a white taproot pokes its way out of the hull, but don’t leave the seeds soaking for more than 32 hours (they could drown, the poor things). If some seeds don’t produce a taproot after a little more than two days, they may be bad. Discard them and focus on the seeds that did produce.

2) Use The Best Soil For The Job

The best soil is one you make yourself. If you want to learn how to mix your own soil and fertilizer from scratch, check out our article How To Grow Marijuana: The Ultimate Organic Guide.

Sometimes, though, mixing your own soil isn’t really feasible (talking to you, city-dwellers). Don’t despair. Bagged soils can be just as effective as soil you composted yourself. Regardless of how you get your soil, make sure that it:

• Drains well
• Holds water
• Has the correct nitrogen to phosphorus ratio
• Contains a good balance of fungus and bacteria
• Is slightly acidic (pH of 6)

Ask around at your local garden center to find the best bagged soil for the job.

3) Plant The Seed In A Small Cup

After the taproot emerges, bury the seed (taproot down) so that the seed itself is just below the surface (no more than ⅛ of an inch). This ensures that the seedling will be able to break through into the open air.

4) Make Sure Your Water Is pH Balanced

Cannabis prefers a slightly acidic environment, so make sure your water is pH balanced accordingly (between 6.0 and 7.0 on the pH scale). You can buy pH increaser or pH decreaser at your local garden center.

5) Give Your Plant The Right Amount Of Light And Darkness

As soon as the seedling pokes its head through the dirt (Hello!), give it 18 hours of light followed by 6 hours of darkness. We recommend 315-watt bulbs and a 24-hour auto-timer so that you don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to turn off the grow lights (that’s a major buzzkill).

6) When The Seedling Is Big Enough, Transfer It To A Grow Pot

When the seedling begins to develop new leaf nodes (the start of the vegetative phase), transfer the plant to a five-gallon grow pot. Add more soil and continue giving the plant 16-18 hours of light every day.

7) Make Sure Your Plant Is Warm

Keep your grow environment between 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Don’t let the temperature fall below 65 degrees Fahrenheit or exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

8) Keep The Air Circulating

Keep the air moving at all times by angling a fan up toward the ceiling (don’t point it directly at the plant).

9) Water When The Soil Is Dry

Only water your growing plant when the top inch of soil is dry. You can tell when your plant is thirsty because the leaves will begin to droop and take on a limp, lifeless appearance.

10) Keep Multiple Plants Separated For Best Results

Super Lemon Haze likes a lot of personal space, so keep multiple plants separated (or move them further apart as they grow) to promote growth and flowering.

11) Reduce The Hours Of Light To Force Flowering

After six or seven weeks of growth, begin to gradually reduce the hours of light each day until you reach the 12-hour mark. This will signal to the plant that it’s time to start flowering.

12) Harvest Your Super Lemon Haze Buds

Your Super Lemon Haze is ready for harvest when the trichomes change color from clear to amber. Carefully trim the buds away from the stem and move on to the next step. You’re almost finished!

13) Dry The Buds

Hang the Super Lemon Haze buds in a room where the temperature can be maintained around 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity can be kept between 40 and 50 percent. Keep the buds here for about a week.

14) Cure The Buds

Break down your buds into small pieces, and store them in glass jars with lids. These jars should be kept in the dark at a temperature between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit for one to three weeks. Crack the lids every day to let some fresh air in (like burping your Tupperware).

After three weeks of curing, your ganja should be good to go. You can now roll a joint or decarboxylate the buds for use in edibles, tinctures, and oils. For a complete guide to decarboxylation, check out our article Marijuana Decarboxylation: Why And How To Decarb Your Weed.

Enjoy The Fruits Of Your Labor

Growing marijuana is not difficult. In fact, it’s no more difficult than growing any other plant. You just have to give it plenty of attention and the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. With a little trial and error, you can grow healthy buds year after year.

For more information on all things marijuana and to check out our 100-percent-all-natural cannabis products, visit HonestMarijuana.com today.

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Exclusive: Coachella Promoter Donated to Anti-Pot Groups

The promoters of the annual Coachella music festival, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), recently announced that cannabis use would not be allowed at the event this April, even though recreational marijuana was legalized in California in 2016 and commercial sales began Jan. 1. The city of Indio, where the festival is held, has banned new pot businesses, but Coachella is on private property. So what gives?

The event’s promoter made the call. “NO Drugs or Drug Paraphernalia, Marijuana, Marijuana products will be allowed,” the Coachella website warns. That’s the rule for camping at Coachella as well.

Anschutz’s History of Contributions to Antidrug Groups

While Coachella’s marijuana ban is standard festival policy, it’s not widely known that AEG founder Philip Anschutz’s private family foundation has donated thousands of dollars to antidrug groups over the last few years, including Kevin Sabet’s Sam Inc. (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) and Smart Colorado.

The Anschutz Foundation’s 2016 tax return.

According to its tax returns, in 2016, the Anschutz Foundation donated $50,000 to SAM Inc., and another $110,000 to its partner organization, Smart Colorado. It gave another $50,000 to Smart Colorado in 2015. The goal was to counter the impact of Amendment 64, the recreational-marijuana legalization initiative the state’s voters passed in 2012.

Proof of Philip Anschutz’s $200 donation to Coloradans Against Legal Marijuana in 2000

This was not the first time Anschutz (pictured above) has funded antidrug groups. In 2000, when the Amendment 20 medical-marijuana initiative was on the Colorado ballot, he made a personal donation of $200 to Coloradans Against Legalizing Marijuana.

Anschutz’s Contributions to CeDAR Drug Treatment Center in Colorado

Also in 2000, the Anschutz Foundation gave the University of Colorado $25 million to build a medical complex in Aurora. The Anschutz Medical Campus is home to the Center for Dependency, Addiction and Rehabilitation (CeDAR). The foundation put up another $3 million for the initial endowment and capital for CeDAR, and continues to be a major donor.

Ben Cort

From 2013-2017, SAM supporter Ben Cort worked at CeDAR. In 2013, Addictionpro.com reported: “Ben Cort started at CeDAR in February, just a few months after having coordinated the campaign against Colorado’s marijuana-legalization initiative that voters approved in November. Cort remains involved in the marijuana policy debate, having become a board member for the Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) national organization.”

Cort has worked with SAM for several years and is a director of SAM Action, Sabet’s 501(c)(4) political-nonprofit group. In 2014, he attended a SAM policy summit to strategize against legalization measures in Oregon and Alaska. Cort also traveled to Alaska in 2014 to campaign against the legalization effort there. He left CeDAR last January, but continues to work with Sabet and other legalization opponents.

Christian Hopfer

Also on the campus is Professor Christian Hopfer, a psychiatrist who’s leading a $5.5 million twins study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It’s comparing twins in Colorado, where pot is legal, with twins in Minnesota, where it’s not. “Some people may benefit,” Hopfer predicts. “But for a subset of people, we suspect there will be adverse consequences.”

In 2013, Hopfer warned that marijuana could damage the brain. “There are a lot of studies showing that there’s an increased risk of severe mental illness,” he stated. “It’s not a big risk, but it does appear that in some vulnerable people marijuana can cause a real, serious mental illness, like a psychotic condition that persists.

Anschutz Has Actually Shown Support for Harm Reduction

The Anschutz Foundation has assets of more than $1 billion; it hands out millions of dollars every year to Colorado-based nonprofits. In contrast to its support for SAM, in 2016, the foundation gave $5,000 to the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver, which provides services like syringe exchange for people who are homeless or otherwise at risk. Imagine what HARC could have done with the $110,000 that went to Sabet’s groups during the same funding cycle.

Private foundations are basically nonprofits with one sole or primary funder, like the family foundations that underwrite shows on PBS, or drug-policy and criminal-justice-reform efforts. As a private foundation, the Anschutz Foundation can’t engage in any political activity, nor can it make any donations to a 501(c)(4) or political-action committee.

Anschutz’s Conservative Background and Media Holdings

The 78-year-old Anschutz, who lives in Denver, had a net worth of $10.3 billion as of 2015. He owns the right-wing publications Washington Examiner and The Weekly Standard. In the past, he and his foundation have made donations to organizations with anti-LGBT agendas, such as the Family Research Council and Alliance for Defending Freedom. But Anschutz now says, “We’ve immediately ceased all contributions to such groups.”

That’s progress. Now it’s time to pressure Anschutz into curtailing his support for anti-marijuana groups like SAM. If you go to Coachella, a small part of what you pay for a ticket will end up in the pocket of these groups, some of whom tried to stop California’s Prop 64 and Colorado’s Amendment 64 from passing. They may have lost those battles, but at Coachella, the drug war goes on.

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Pennsylvania Senate Committee Votes Unanimously on Resolution Urging Feds to Remove Marijuana from Schedule 1

A Senate committee in Pennsylvania has approved a resolution calling for a change in federal marijuana laws.

Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee has voted unanimously (9 to 0, with one absence) to approve Senate Resolution 258, which is “A Resolution urging the Congress of the United States to amend the Controlled Substances Act to remove marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance and to recognize the proven medical purposes of marijuana.”

The resolution was filed by Senator Anthony Williams (D), along with cosponsors Senators Michael Folmer (R), Jay Costa (D), Vincent Hughes (D) and Sharif Street (D). Its official text states:

RESOLVED, That the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania urge the Congress of the United States to amend the Controlled Substances Act to remove marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance and to recognize the proven medical purposes of marijuana; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a copy of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the presiding officers of each house of Congress and to each member of Congress from Pennsylvania.

The full text of Senate Resolution 258 can be found by clicking here.

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Study: Tokyo Has Most Expensive Marijuana in the World, Quito (Ecuador) Has Cheapest

A new study – the 2018 Cannabis Price Index – has revealed the cost of marijuana in 120 cities around the world, and calculates how much tax revenue a city could gain from legalization.

For the study, Seedo (an automatic cultivator device) began first by selecting 120 cities across the world, including locations where cannabis is currently legal, illegal and partially legal, and where marijuana consumption data is available. Then, they looked into the price of cannabis per gram in each city. To calculate how much potential tax a city could make through legalization, researchers investigated how much tax is paid on the most popular brand of cigarettes, “as this offers the closest comparison”. They then looked at what percentage marijuana is currently taxed in cities where it’s already legalized in the US.

“This study has revealed some incredible insights into the kind of tax revenue that legalising weed could generate.” says Uri Zeevi, CMO at Seedo. “Take New York City for instance, which has the highest consumption level in the study at 77.44 metric tons of cannabis per year. If they taxed marijuana at the average US cannabis tax level, the city could make $156.4 million in potential tax revenue per year. This is equivalent to providing nearly 3 months worth of free school meals to every single public school kid in New York City.”

The table below reveals a sample of the results for the 13 US cities featured in the study:

#	City	Legality	Price per gram, US$	Total possible tax collection, if taxed at cigarette level, mil US$	Total possible tax collection, if taxed at average US marijuana taxes, mil US$	Total consumption in metric tons
1	Washington, DC	Partial	18.08	47.51	20.96	6.18
2	Chicago	Partial	11.46	119.61	52.77	24.54
3	Philadelphia	Partial	11.30	68.37	30.16	14.22
4	Boston	Legal	11.01	28.59	12.61	6.10
5	New York	Partial	10.76	354.48	156.40	77.44
6	Dallas	Partial	10.03	51.01	22.5	11.95
7	Houston	Partial	10.03	89.13	39.32	20.89
8	Phoenix	Partial	9.35	58.26	25.71	14.65
9	Miami	Partial	9.27	16.24	7.16	4.12
10	San Francisco	Legal	9.27	30.94	13.65	7.85
11	Los Angeles	Legal	8.14	124.88	55.10	36.06
12	Denver	Legal	7.79	20.53	9.06	6.20
13	Seattle	Legal	7.58	20.59	9.08	6.39

The table below shows the top 10 most and least expensive cities for cannabis:

Top 10 Most Expensive Cities						Top 10 Least Expensive Cities
#	City	Country	Legality	Price per gram, US$		#	City	Country	Legality	Price per gram, US$
1	Tokyo	Japan	Illegal	32.66		1	Quito	Ecuador	Partial	1.34
2	Seoul	South Korea	Illegal	32.44		2	Bogota	Colombia	Partial	2.20
3	Kyoto	Japan	Illegal	29.65		3	Asuncion	Paraguay	Partial	2.22
4	Hong Kong	China	Illegal	27.48		4	Jakarta	Indonesia	Illegal	3.79
5	Bangkok	Thailand	Partial	24.81		5	Panama City	Panama	Illegal	3.85
6	Dublin	Ireland	Illegal	21.63		6	Johannesburg	South Africa	Illegal	4.01
7	Tallinn	Estonia	Partial	20.98		7	Montevideo	Uruguay	Legal	4.15
8	Shanghai	China	Illegal	20.82		8	Astana	Kazakhstan	Illegal	4.22
9	Beijing	China	Illegal	20.52

…

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Study: Tokyo Has Most Expensive Marijuana in the World, Quito (Ecuador) Has Cheapest

A new study – the 2018 Cannabis Price Index – has revealed the cost of marijuana in 120 cities around the world, and calculates how much tax revenue a city could gain from legalization.

For the study, Seedo (an automatic cultivator device) began first by selecting 120 cities across the world, including locations where cannabis is currently legal, illegal and partially legal, and where marijuana consumption data is available. Then, they looked into the price of cannabis per gram in each city. To calculate how much potential tax a city could make through legalization, researchers investigated how much tax is paid on the most popular brand of cigarettes, “as this offers the closest comparison”. They then looked at what percentage marijuana is currently taxed in cities where it’s already legalized in the US.

“This study has revealed some incredible insights into the kind of tax revenue that legalising weed could generate.” says Uri Zeevi, CMO at Seedo. “Take New York City for instance, which has the highest consumption level in the study at 77.44 metric tons of cannabis per year. If they taxed marijuana at the average US cannabis tax level, the city could make $156.4 million in potential tax revenue per year. This is equivalent to providing nearly 3 months worth of free school meals to every single public school kid in New York City.”

The table below reveals a sample of the results for the 13 US cities featured in the study:

#	City	Legality	Price per gram, US$	Total possible tax collection, if taxed at cigarette level, mil US$	Total possible tax collection, if taxed at average US marijuana taxes, mil US$	Total consumption in metric tons
1	Washington, DC	Partial	18.08	47.51	20.96	6.18
2	Chicago	Partial	11.46	119.61	52.77	24.54
3	Philadelphia	Partial	11.30	68.37	30.16	14.22
4	Boston	Legal	11.01	28.59	12.61	6.10
5	New York	Partial	10.76	354.48	156.40	77.44
6	Dallas	Partial	10.03	51.01	22.5	11.95
7	Houston	Partial	10.03	89.13	39.32	20.89
8	Phoenix	Partial	9.35	58.26	25.71	14.65
9	Miami	Partial	9.27	16.24	7.16	4.12
10	San Francisco	Legal	9.27	30.94	13.65	7.85
11	Los Angeles	Legal	8.14	124.88	55.10	36.06
12	Denver	Legal	7.79	20.53	9.06	6.20
13	Seattle	Legal	7.58	20.59	9.08	6.39

The table below shows the top 10 most and least expensive cities for cannabis:

Top 10 Most Expensive Cities						Top 10 Least Expensive Cities
#	City	Country	Legality	Price per gram, US$		#	City	Country	Legality	Price per gram, US$
1	Tokyo	Japan	Illegal	32.66		1	Quito	Ecuador	Partial	1.34
2	Seoul	South Korea	Illegal	32.44		2	Bogota	Colombia	Partial	2.20
3	Kyoto	Japan	Illegal	29.65		3	Asuncion	Paraguay	Partial	2.22
4	Hong Kong	China	Illegal	27.48		4	Jakarta	Indonesia	Illegal	3.79
5	Bangkok	Thailand	Partial	24.81		5	Panama City	Panama	Illegal	3.85
6	Dublin	Ireland	Illegal	21.63		6	Johannesburg	South Africa	Illegal	4.01
7	Tallinn	Estonia	Partial	20.98		7	Montevideo	Uruguay	Legal	4.15
8	Shanghai	China	Illegal	20.82		8	Astana	Kazakhstan	Illegal	4.22
9	Beijing	China	Illegal	20.52

…

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‘Mary Janes’ Documentary Features the Women of Weed

In a Marin County hotel room, a group of women are giggling, adjusting each other’s hair and posing for selfies. It’s pretty typical, until you hear the dialogue.

“Fuck Facebook!” one says

“Censorship is bullshit!” barks another.

Yes, this is not just any group of women, and this is not just another gathering of friends. We’d all come together to attend the world premiere of Mary Janes: The Women of Weed at the Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 8, but we weren’t as happy as we should’ve been, given that we were hours away from our documentary debut.

As pioneers in an industry being reborn outside of prohibition in a society where women are rarely chosen to lead, we’re well seasoned in the ways of hypocrisy and cannabis. Yet, no matter how far we get forging the path to legitimacy, around every turn is a reminder that we can’t put down our machetes just yet.

On this day, our oppressor was Facebook. The social network had refused to allow ads for Mary Janes, because the film’s about marijuana. Let that sink in. The same company that let clandestine agents of the Russian dictatorship buy and use space to create divisiveness during the 2016 Presidential election decided that a documentary about a legal industry violated their terms of service.

Also See: “Mary Janes” Ranked No. 1 Pot-Doc of 2017

If there are two things that get us Mary Janes up in arms, they’re censorship and hypocrisy, and as women in the cannabis industry, we’re intimately familiar with both. The industry’s conscience, spirit guide or even spirit animal, women have played a major role in ushering in the new age of cannabis.

Mary Janes: Women of Weed takes the viewer on a journey of discovery through the eyes of filmmaker Windy Borman (pictured above), who like myself was a child of the Just Say No era in the ’80s. Borman sets out to investigate whether the rhetoric she’d been told about cannabis was accurate or just a fabrication meant to scare her into a drug-free existence.

Borman seeks the answers to these questions by interviewing female industry leaders and those in business, science, medicine and policy. Through her questions and experiences, she uncovers not only the truth about the cannabis plant, but the ways in which female leaders have shaped the industry in the image of the plant herself—strong, diverse, adaptable and with a focus on healing.

But don’t get me wrong, we’re also fierce gatekeepers of truth and protectors of justice, which is why our happy hotel-room reunion was focused on our growing ire at Facebook. We are Mary Janes: The Women of Weed: industry leaders, business developers, researchers, educators and warriors, and a force to be reckoned with.

Check out the schedule for upcoming Mary Janes screenings here.

MARY JANES ROLE CALL

 Here are the 33 “Women of Weed” featured in the movie.

• Giadha Aguirre de Carcer – founder/CEO, New Frontier Data
• Betty Aldworth – executive director, Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Sarah Batterby – CEO, Hifi Farms
• Windy Borman – director, Mary Janes: Women of Weed
• AC Braddock – CEO, Eden Labs
• Jill Brzezicki – founder/lab director, CMT Labs
• Juliana Carella – cofounder/CEO, Auntie Dolores and Treatibles
• Stacia Cosner – deputy director, Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Melissa Etheridge – singer/songwriter; owner, Etheridge Farms
• Sabrina Fendrick – director of government affairs, Berkeley Patients Group
• Mary Gordon – cofounder, Aunt Zelda’s and Zelda Therapeutics
• Kiana Hughes – cofounder, Two Dope Chicks
• Andrea James – founder, National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
• Wanda James – CEO, Simply Pure
• Karen Lazarus – founder, Sweet Mary Jane
• Jaime Lewis – executive chef, Mountain Medicine; board chair, NCIA
• Laila Makled – advocacy relations, National Cannabis Festival
• Leah Maurer – co-owner, The Weed Blog; branding and outreach manager, Yerba Buena
• Madeline Martinez – board member, NORML
• Jacqueline McGrane – owner, Cannabinoid Consulting
• Wendy Mosher – CEO, New West Genetics
• Jeannie Moss – cofounder/CEO, AnnaBis Style
• Genifer Murray – founder/CEO, Carbon Blue Consulting; cofounder GENIFER M
• Karen O’Keefe – director of state policies, Marijuana Policy Project
• Amanda Reiman – vice president of community relations, Flow Kana
• Lindsay Robinson – executive director, California Cannabis Industry Association
• Drayah Sallis – founder, Our Cannabis Culture
• Dr. Sue Sisley – internal medicine and psychiatry
• Sabria Still – product specialist, Metropolitan Wellness Center
• Shaleen Title – commissioner, Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission
• Mitzy Vaughan – managing attorney, Greenbridge Corporate Counsel
• Dr. Daniela Vergara – founder, Agricultural Genomics Foundation
• Ah Warner – founder/CEO – Cannabis Basics
• Taylor West – senior communications director, COHNNABIS

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California Medical-Marijuana Pioneer Dennis Peron Passes Away

After a long battle with lung cancer and COPD, beloved California marijuana activist Dennis Peron passed away today at 2:30 pm PT at the Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco. He was 71.

Dennis Peron is dead. Medical marijuana pioneer, dope dealer to the Castro, godfather of legal cannabis was 71. pic.twitter.com/YnRjnwx89g

— Chris Roberts (@cbloggy) January 28, 2018

Peron founded the medical-marijuana movement in San Francisco nearly three decades ago. Two years after Prop P (which he drafted) passed in San Francisco legalizing medical cannabis in 1991, Peron opened the Cannabis Buyers Club. By 1996, it had 10,000 members and a large storefront on Market St.

Next on Peron’s agenda was to legalize medical use throughout the state. He and California NORML’s Dale Gieringer wrote the first draft of Prop 215, which would pass with 56% of the vote in 1996, making California first state to recognize cannabis’ medical benefits.

Also See: How California Legalized Medical Marijuana

Peron famously theorized that “all marijuana use is medical.” The vague wording of the new law opened the door for all sorts of conditions, from cancer to insomnia, creating a legal gray area that bordered on complete legalization. Over the past 21 years, pretty much any resident who sought a recommendation for medical use received one from a participating doctor.

Also during that time, 29 other states followed California’s lead in legalizing medical use in some form or another. However, when it came time for full recreational legalization (Prop 64), which passed in a 2016 California voter initiative, Peron opposed it.

“Prop 64 is a misrepresentation of what marijuana is primarily for,” he commented at the time. “This kind of legislation will hurt a lot of people, especially small growers and businesses who are trying to provide to their clients but can’t afford to because of the excess regulations and taxation on their products.”

Dennis Peron was born on Apr. 8, 1946 to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, N.Y. and raised on Long Island, N.Y. After a stint in the Army during the Vietnam War, he moved to San Francisco, which was ideal for him since he a was gay man and the city was known to embrace sexual diversity.

By the mid-’70s, Peron was running a large marijuana operation, called The Big Top, out of his Castro St. apartment. Original landrace strains from Mexico and Colombia overflowed in bowls; customer stopped by and filled up bags of cheap but potent grass. Peron had become San Francisco’s Pied Piper of Pot.

He started getting involved in local politics, working for Harvey Milk, who ran for Supervisor several times until he won in 1977. But deranged Supervisor Dan White assassinated Milk, who was also gay and a New York native, along with Mayor George Moscone, 11 months later. Peron, who’s portrayed by Ted Jan Roberts in the movie Milk, was devastated.

After his successes with medical marijuana, Peron moved north of San Francisco, where he grew his own plants. But ultimately he returned to San Francisco and was diagnosed with cancer. Peron died surrounded by his closest friends, who’d held onto hope over the past few years as he grew frailer that he’d be able to overcome the disease. Surely, medical cannabis helped Peron to the very end.

RIP Dennis Peron, compassionate warrior and champion of medical #marijuana. pic.twitter.com/FVrXT2rS37

— California NORML (@CaliforniaNORML) January 28, 2018

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