Top Canadian Pharmacy Exec. Wants to Dispense Medical Cannabis

5/06/2016

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The top executive of one of Canada’s largest pharmacy and grocery chains wants in on the nation’s medical marijuana market, according to The Toronto Star.

Galen G. Weston, president and executive chairman of Loblaws, said Thursday that Canada’s pharmacists are well-positioned for safely dispensing a controlled substance like cannabis.

“We’re an industry that is extremely effective at managing controlled substances,” he said. “It gives pharmacists the opportunity to work directly in real time with patients as opposed to doing it through the mail, working on their doses and making sure it actually has the therapeutic effect that it is intended to have.” If it were allowed, Loblaws would offer medicinal cannabis to patients with a doctors’ prescription, Weston said.

Pharmacists would provide a much more personal interaction with patients than the current online and mail delivery system, Weston said, though he admits to seeing no “safety or credibility” issues with the current system.

Loblaws isn’t lobbying the federal government in Ottawa to make changes, however. Rather, it is supporting a move by The Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada to do so. The organization is alarmed by what it calls a “lack of clinical oversight” in Canada’s current medical marijuana program, and argues that pharmacies should play a more central role in the dispensing of cannabis.

Ottawa has announced it is considering changes to the program, which are likely to be finalized sometime in August.

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Federal Agents Raid Three Michigan Dispensaries

5/06/2016

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Federal law enforcement officers executed search warrants on three HydroWorld dispensaries in Lansing, Michigan on Wednesday, confiscating plants, personal belongings, supplies, and cash from the shops on Cedar Street.

Trisha Burch, a HydroWorld vendor who was at one of the locations when the raids occurred, said agents from the FBI, DEA and ATF handcuffed everyone inside and ordered them to the floor.

“Initially when I got there I thought they were robbed, she said in a WLNS 6 report. “I didn’t know they were robbed by the FBI.”

The raid comes as the City Council considers a moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries and new ordinances for existing dispensaries. Michigan’s 2008 medical marijuana legislation permits use of medical cannabis by those authorized by a physician. Licensed patients and caregivers are allowed to grow their own; however so-called “provisioning centers” remain outlawed.

In 2011, Lansing’s City Attorney Office indicated that local dispensaries were operating “at their own peril.” In 2013, Michigan’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s public nuisance law could be used to shut down dispensaries.

HydroWorld owner Danny Trevino said he was surprised law enforcement chose to raid the locations instead of using the public nuisance law. Despite the setback, Trevino plans to stay in business.

“This is what I do. This is all I know,” he said.         

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California Voters Will See Cannabis Legalization on November’s Ballot

5/05/2016

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Voters in California will decide whether or not The Golden State will legalize cannabis for recreational purposes this November.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that proponents of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act have collected enough signatures to see a legalization measure appear on November’s ballot. Advocates claim to have submitted about 600,000 signatures, and only 366,000 are needed to qualify.

The measure would make it legal for anyone 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis, and would establish a regulatory framework for the commercial cultivation and distribution of recreational pot. The law would impose a 15 percent tax on all retail cannabis sales, which is expected to generate hundreds of millions in new tax revenue for the state.

California voters turned down a similar proposal in 2010. Since then, however, four other states — Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Alaska — and Washington D.C. have passed recreational legalization laws.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa), who supports the measure, calls this an issue of personal freedom. “I can’t think of a bigger waste of government money than to try to use it to control the private lives of adults,” said Rohrabacher. “The walls of cannabis prohibition and this tyranny that our people have faced is coming down. Join us in tearing down this wall.”

Newsom, who is personally against marijuana use, says he is more concerned about the effects of prohibition than the drug itself:

“You do not have to be pro-marijuana to be pro-legalization. We are not promoting something that is not already ubiquitous in the state of California. Survey after survey, our kids say the same thing: It is easier to get marijuana than it is to get alcohol.”

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Oakland, CA Expands Medical Cannabis Market

5/05/2016

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Oakland’s City Council voted unanimously to expand the city’s number of medical cannabis dispensaries and related businesses on Wednesday. The move allows an additional eight dispensary permits each year, 12 delivery services, five distributors, five transporters, two testing facilities, 28 manufacturers and 30 cultivators.

Lawmakers hope the new law will bring some of the black market into “regulatory sunlight,” according to the East Bay Times.

One of the law amendments dictates that half of the licensees for dispensaries opening in certain areas of the city must be issued to residents of that area. That individual must maintain at least a 51 percent ownership stake in the business. The areas, all in East Oakland, were identified as having higher marijuana-related arrest rates than the rest of the city.

The amendment, authored by Councilmember Desley Brooks, also permits applicants who have previous marijuana-related offenses in Oakland to own a dispensary. Brooks anticipates these amendments will lead to more minority-run ventures.

“When you look at the cannabis industry around the country, it is predominantly white,” Brooks said in the East Bay Times report. “When you look at the cannabis industry here, with respect to ownership, it is predominantly white.”

Currently, Oakland’s eight dispensaries generate about $4 million in taxes but Greg Minor, an assistant to the city administrator, declined to estimate the potential tax revenues the new dispensaries and other businesses could generate.

California’s “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” — which would legalize marijuana for recreational use — is likely to appear on ballots in November.

End

Colorado Lawmakers Reject Organic Cannabis Certification Bill

5/05/2016

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Colorado lawmakers rejected a bill that would have created an organic certification for cannabis, according to an Associated Press report.

The proposal was written to help consumers easily determine whether cannabis had been produced without pesticides. “Cannabis consumers, or tomato consumers, or any product consumer wants to know what goes into what they’re using,” said Ben Gelt, of the Denver-based Organic Cannabis Association.

The bill was defeated 4-3 in a Senate committee Tuesday. Some lawmakers were concerned that the certification, which would have been the first of its kind, would have led consumers to believe that cannabis is harmless.

“It will mislead people to thinking marijuana doesn’t have any health effects, that it’s okay.” said Sen. Rollie Heath (D-Boulder). “It kind of puts a stamp of approval on it.”

Sen. Pat Steadman (D-Denver), who sponsored the bill, disagreed: “Does that label mean there are no health effects? That’s it’s healthy, it’s wholesome? . . . I don’t think anyone is going to be under any false illusions.”

Others feared that U.S. Department of Agriculture would take issue with the state if it began certifying cannabis crops as organic—organic certification is regulated at the federal level, where cannabis remains illegal.

Concerns about pesticide use in Colorado cannabis were sparked last year, when Denver health authorities took thousands of plants from growers who, authorities suspected, were using banned pesticides.

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Michael Gordon: Cannabis Tourism

5/05/2016

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Michael Gordon is the co-founder of Kush Tourism, a national cannabis tour company. When Washington and Colorado voted to legalize cannabis in 2012, many knew there would be opportunities related to tourism, both in the sense that many people would want to visit a place where they could consume legally, and also in the sense that people would be curious to see behind-the-scenes at these new, legally-operating cannabis farms and retail shops. Michael recently joined our host Shango Los for a conversation about how Kush Tourism has found its niche, what a cannabis tour generally involves, and more. Listen to the episode below, or scroll down for the full transcript.

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Shango Los: Hi there, and welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host, Shango Los. The Ganjapreneur.com podcast gives us an opportunity to speak directly to entrepreneurs, cannabis growers, product developers and cannabis medicine researchers, all focused on making the most of cannabis normalization.

As your host, I do my best to bring you original cannabis industry ideas that was will ignite your own entrepreneurial spark, and give you actionable information to improve your business strategy, and improve your health, and the health of cannabis patients everywhere. Today, my guest is Michael Gordon. Michael is co-founder of Kush Tourism, a national cannabis tour company. Their tours create the opportunity for locals and tourists to get behind the scenes of the new cannabis industry. Welcome to the show, Michael.

Michael Gordon: Hi, Shango, thanks for having me.

Shango Los: So, Michael, I’ve been watching Kush Tourism grow over the years. As your business model grew and evolve, and I suspect that the history of your company, which we’ll talk about, has many lessons for cannabis entrepreneurs that are going to be in the early days of any state that’s normalizing. Let’s start by establishing what Kush Tourism is today. What are your offerings?

Michael Gordon: Shango, we started as a tour company a few years ago, and we’ve really been expanding. Our roots here, of course, are in Seattle, Washington, one of the first two states to legalize cannabis. We offer a behind the scenes tour, kind of like a winery or brewery tour, we get to introduce you to that master grower, to somebody who does oil extractions, glass blowing. So, you can learn everything from A to Z of how it’s made.

We’re able to offer this sort of experience in four states now, because we’ve got Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska coming online. No matter where you go, you’re going to have access as either a … Say you’re a curious adult, and you want to take your wife out on something fun, or maybe you’re that entrepreneur who really wants to understand how a new industry’s evolving.

It’s a really great personal opportunity to go behind the scenes.

Shango Los: You’re website shows that you are in these different states, and as the states normalize, I’m assuming that your … That the tours evolve over time. Because, it takes a while, so the cannabis is legalized, but then there are not companies there for you to give tours at for day one. What do you see as being the key markers, when you know that it’s time to set up a tour in a new state?

Michael Gordon: That’s a great question. Boy, and it really has evolved here in Washington state. Our first cannabis tour here in Seattle was two months before the first retail store opened up. You could imagine the challenges of: What is a cannabis tour? At that point. What is cannabis culture, how do you define that? One of the nice things, especially here in Seattle, is cannabis culture has been around for such a long time. You look at Seattle Hempfest, which has been here for 20 plus years. You’ve got Jimi Hendrix. We’ve had some of the best bud up here in the North West between BC and Humboldt for a very, very long time, so it’s deeply rooted in our culture.

The first step was saying, “Hey, we want to share this culture with everybody.” You can do that by talking about the medicine, by going to testing facilities, by going to a place like Hempfest Central. As the things started to evolve, we had retail stores open up so people could legally buy their product. We started having growers who understood that it was important to get their brand out there and share education and awareness around the plant. The same thing happened for processors.

Getting the magic spark is not only having tourism available, but having an industry that is open to the idea of education. That’s the foundation of everything that we do, Shango, is making sure that we’re providing access to something that’s typically been black market, and hidden behind closed doors, and saying, “Hey, you know what, guys? This is a mother. She worked as a lawyer for twenty years, she coaches her girl’s soccer team and softball team, but she also is a master grower.” Incredibly professional, she’s on top of her game, and she wants to tell you all about it.

When you’re able to expose people from all over the world to that sort of individual, all the stigma disappears.

Shango Los: I was going to say I like that idea too, because what you’re doing is you’re making the industry seem less scary to newbies, which is really the whole point of normalization, so that the stigma’s taken away.

Michael Gordon: Sure, and it doesn’t even just seem less scary, it is less scary. It’s a highly regulated market, the people who are in the legal industry right now have been working extremely hard and diligently, and that’s the only way they got there. So, we don’t see people running around with guns and masks, it’s quite the opposite. You might get sandwiches at a local shop after work and smoke a joint, but there’s no scary gangster mentality. It’s all but disappeared here in Washington.

Shango Los: You mentioned that your first tour happened about two months before the first store opened, but I’ve seen your company name around longer than that. Were you guys giving tours in the pre-recreational market when it was just medical?

Michael Gordon: Yeah, absolutely. It was so much fun, because we were able to take people into a medical facility, and say, “Hey, here’s what the candy shop looks like.” There are 40 jars here, the strains … This is why CBD is good, here are the cannabinoids, and really provide access to this education for the first time anywhere in the entire world. But, there are also the challenges, because your average person can’t go into a medical store and buy pot, which of course they’re interested in, but I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with companies like Winterlife Coop back before recreational stores opened up. There were these deliver companies in Seattle, Washington. They were providing what was dubbed as a stop gap measure.

It was legal to sell weed, it’s legal to smoke it, it’s legal to buy it, but there were no stores open, so these delivery services started saying, “Hey, pot is medical for everybody. We’ll start delivering it to you.” They were placing ads in magazines and newspapers, they had a website, it was like, “Holy cow. What is happening in this industry right now?” I can’t believe these guys are professional drug dealers with a website, and not getting in any trouble. Although there weren’t retail stores opened up, surely we could point them to The Stranger back page, and say, hey, look at all these retail stores. Sorry, look at all these delivery services. I know they’re not probably legal, but the police chief has said that they’re providing a stop gap measure. Here’s an issue of The Stranger, you guys have fun and stay out of trouble.

There was always interesting workarounds. I’ve never been able to buy, sell or touch marijuana, but I’m here on the education side. If you’re looking to just get higher than you’ve ever been before, maybe this tour isn’t for you. If you’d like to understand what lights they use in a grow operation, and why they take clones from where they do, you know, really focused on education, because you can get stoned back home, but you can never walk into a grow operation and ask those intimate questions.

Shango Los: What has the transition been like for you from dealing with medical company owners, and then going through the transition to working with recreational company owners? In my experience, and this is a generalization, they’ve got different approaches to the business, and I’m sure that with you bringing people into their operations, you’ve probably noticed a difference as well.

Michael Gordon: Sure. We always highlight the best in the industry that we have. For instance, I know Stephanie Viscovich was so kind to open her doors with her dispensary back before the recreational stores opened up, and she had such a heavy influence on medical. We didn’t deal with any of the shady folks, everybody was incredibly helpful and open armed, but what we’ve seen with the transition is an ability to better leverage our resources.

For instance, we produce cannabis tourism maps, so if you come into a legal state, you know where you can make a purchase, what the local laws are, what you can and can’t do. Oh gosh, Shango, we probably distribute 400,000 plus of these maps a year in three different states. Probably 2000 hotels. When I’m able to leverage that and say, “Hey, you’ve got great operation, but now I can give you advertisements and it gets printed 200,000 times every six months,” I’m able to drive these guys more value.

Then I say, “Hey, we take you to the grower. Now we can go to the retail store. You can actually try Goldstar Cannabis’ product. You saw where it was grown, you had this intimate connection with the master grower, and it produces value on all sides.” So, that’s been the most exciting part, is being able to create more value for everybody involved.

Shango Los: You know, I was thinking about the flyer that you were just … The map that you were just describing. The entrepreneur in me went, “Oh, there’s another revenue stream as well.” In the early days, as you were growing, did you find that you needed to make sure that you could develop other revenue streams in addition to the tours? Because selling advertising into your map, and then distributing it in other states, that’s almost an entirely separate business, but under the same idea, and you probably have got not only more legal flexibility, but also it’s an entirely different kind of revenue stream.

How diversified were you guys? Or, were you really, majorly focused on doing the tourism, and moving human bodies around the city?

Michael Gordon: We first got our foot into the industry via the tours. It was incredibly opportunity for PR when everything was becoming legal for the first time. We were lucky enough to have the first tour in Washington state to a slew of an incredible amount of media. We’ve been in every TV show, every radio channel, up until the point where the History Channel featured us this year, which was an incredible opportunity. But, tours are good. It creates a good job, but it’s been very difficult. It was an uphill battle trying to make a living.

One of the ways we wanted to promote our tours were in the hotel rack cards. When you were in the hotel lobby and you see them, “Let’s go whitewater rafting, let’s check out a winery tour,” I wanted it to say cannabis tours, try out the Kush Tour. The reality was though, that that startup point of our life when we were working 70, 80 hours a week, getting paid $500 a month, it was a beautiful thing that I’m so happy we’ve made it through. We couldn’t afford to advertise, and this is where one of our first big pivots occurred, Shango.

We wanted to do these brochures, but we couldn’t afford it, so what we did is we worked with a few of the local retail stores. We said, “Hey, why don’t we work together? I’m going to advertise you guys on these brochures, I’m going to advertise my tours, then we’re able to split up the cost of this distribution.” Well, that ended up being one of our biggest revenue streams. Stores really enjoyed it, it drove a lot of businesses. We work very closely with the Seattle Concierge Association as well. It worked so well to the point that we were like, hey, you know what, we should really pursue this. Now we’ve got over probably 175 advertisers in three different states, we’ve been welcomed with open arms to this. This distribution was difficult to achieve, Shango.

I called these guys every two weeks for six months before they gave me the green light to even distribute in those locations. It’s always been an uphill battle. Goodness, once the flood waters break through, you can recognize some great opportunities. We also had the good fortune of having strong online resources. If you’re looking up, if you come to Washington, recreational cannabis we pop up number one. That holds true for Oregon and Vegas and all these other states coming on. We’re able to drive a huge amount of business via our resources, in addition to our tours.

Shango Los: I think another good thing to point out here is the importance of building your alliances within the cannabis community, because you solved a capital issue, meaning you didn’t have enough money to get the maps printed, by instead of fundraising and asking for money, you went and you created agreements with other cannabis companies who shared your ideals and your goals; and then, were able to throw all of your money into the kitty to make the maps yourselves. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, when they’re starting out, they’re thinking about all the money that they need to raise for this project or that project, and I think that’s a really good example how working together to help your allies get what they want can help you get what you want.

Michael Gordon: Yeah. There are two kind of lessons that we really learned in this. One has to do with MVP, which is called a minimum viable product, and the other one is an advertising agency model that we follow. The MVP is how do you test something out really, really fast. We’ve got this idea for the math, but how do we test it without spending $20,000 and four months to do it? Then, actually, we worked with a couple of local universities, and we postured that same question to it: How do you test this map without actually paying $20,000, and how fast can you do it?

The answer is it costs about $40 and takes about a day and a half. You find a couple people who are willing to work with you, you design something, go to FedEx, cut it up, and you put it in the connoisseur’s hands. You find out whether or not people are willing to pay for it, you find out if it’s an effective resource, and you’ve learned it in 36 hours. As a startup company, it’s important to accelerate your learning processes.

I always encourage you guys out there, especially in the cannabis industry where things are rapidly changing, test something out. It probably only is going to take you 24 to 36 hours to do it. Learn what you can from it, and then make your next decision.

Shango Los: That’s great.

Michael Gordon: The other piece to that, Shango, is the advertising agency model. We saw an interesting thing happening in print. Say you advertise in a local publication in your retail store. While you’re paying for distribution that’s in Seattle … you’re reaching this huge demographic, when the reality is you probably only want to target the people who are, say, four miles away from your store. That’s where most of your business is going to come from.

If you’re able to distribute that cost of the distribution between fifteen stores, you’re only paying for that distribution that’s around your store. You’re able to carve out that little piece of distribution you want without having to afford the entire page. Those two ideas put together really enabled us to pursue these maps.

Shango Los: That makes sense. It’s a highly targeted group. Not only is it targeted to tourists who are interested in cannabis, but then it’s also geographically targeted as well, so that they’re closer to your store.

We’re going to take a short break and be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

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And now, back to the show.

Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. My guest this week is Michael Gordon, co-founder of Kush Tourism. Before the break, we were talking about how your company has grown, and the product that you deliver both to tourists in the way of taking them behind the scenes of the new, legal cannabis industry, but also the outreach that you’re doing for your cannabis partners, by putting a cannabis map in the hand of tourists that may or may not actually ever end up on the tour.

You know, Michael, I was thinking, during the break, that there’s got to be some obstacles that even though cannabis is legal in the states that you have tours in, that there still must be some obstacles, either legal or cultural, that are still causing you some grief. Can you give me an example or two?

Michael Gordon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s a funny thing. You would think being in the ancillary business, not buying, selling or touching cannabis, you wouldn’t have many obstacles. But, my goodness, that is not the truth. Everything from banking, can I advertise here, what does the insurance policies look like, who’s willing to work with us? Has been a major headache. To give an example, I’ve been trying to work with Visit Seattle for the past, oh gosh, two years now. And say, “Hey, can we advertise our tour here? It’s totally legal. We don’t buy, sell or touch cannabis.” We’ve climbed up the flagpole, I’ve taken the VP on a tour, the VP bought some cookies, gave one to the president as a joke, but until I get the board of directors on the tour, it probably won’t happen.

We see these obstacles all the time, Shango. I think one of the biggest ones that we had to overcome was, in cannabis tours, when there’s a certain amount of infrastructure that needs to be established. For us, that’s tours, activities and accommodations. If you come to Seattle or Colorado or Oregon, you need a place to stay where you can consume cannabis, you need things to do to really create that whole picture. If you go to Napa Valley, you can stay at the vineyard, you can do the tasting tour. You’ve got an incredible vacation plan.

What we did is we had to go out there and hit the phones up and say, “Hey, guys. Here’s our idea.” Cannabis tours, and people are going to be flocking from all over the world. Do you know someone who’s been to Amsterdam? It’s not because of windmills and bicycles, it’s because they have pot shops. So, we started creating this buzz. We said people are going to be coming, these are professionals, they need a place to stay, they need things to do. We started calling up everybody and pleading our case: “Would it be okay if someone smoked pot on your property? Maybe in the backyard? Not a big deal.”

We started developing this infrastructures of bed and breakfasts. Of hotels that are willing to work with us, and finding activities like the Kush tour, like pipe blowing classes. High painting down in Colorado. Where people could actually have a great time and enjoy their vacation.

I’d say that was one of the biggest obstacles, is it was just developing the idea of what is cannabis tours? Getting people on the bandwagon. Of course, now, people understand what Kush Tourism is, and they travel from all over the world to experience it, so thankfully that ship has sailed, but there’s still a lot of room to improve.

Shango Los: You know, I think that a lot of people, when they are considering getting into cannabis, they’re just thinking: Oh, I’m going to get in, I’m going to set up shop, I’m going to sell my stuff, I’m going to get rich. They don’t realize that we’re still at the pioneer level of this game, where especially if you’re in a normalizing state, but even in the already legal states that if you’re moving into a new niche of the industry, that you yourself are probably going to have to be the person to normalize it, just as you described, where you were the person reaching out to bed and breakfasts and say, have you ever considered allowing cannabis, because you needed to get all those people on the board, so the environment of Seattle as a whole was welcoming, so that you could even get your customers in the city to offer them a tour. I don’t think a lot of people consider that.

Michael Gordon: Yeah. I think that’s right. What it really boils down to is if you come into an idea with your heart and soul, something that you’re really passionate about, it’s something that the community will embrace and support you in. You couple that with a good idea and 60 to 80 hours of work a week, and you can do that for a couple years, there’s a good chance you’re going to make it through. What a cool time to be in this industry. Everybody working now is a pioneer. We are creating the Jim Beans and the Anheuser-Busch’s of the cannabis industry, but we’re also creating the Legion Brewings, we’re creating these little craft companies.

It’s a big ball of Play-Doh. Whatever you want to do right now, if you’ve got a dream and you know how to execute it, you can make it true. That’s the most fun, exciting part of this industry.

Shango Los: Early on, you and your co-founder, Chase, were constantly weighing risk. There’s business risk, yes. There’s, okay, do we have enough finances to last until we’re going to get our next infusion of capital. There’s that kind of risk. Then, there’s also the kind of risk where, is the city of Seattle going to bust us for coming in contact with the cannabis, and maybe being too fragrantly making money around it.

Not to say that the city of Seattle ever had those thoughts, but two years ago, we weren’t really sure how these laws were going to play themselves out. What did you and Chase do to determine how much risk you were willing to experience to make this happen?

Michael Gordon: That is a great question. For something as volatile as cannabis where you could end up in federal prison, we played it very safe. Never has cannabis consumption been a part of our tour, because in the state of Washington, according to the marijuana clubs law that was passed, it would be a class C felony to directly or indirectly contribute to somebody consuming cannabis in a public place with any sort of pecuniary gain, any sort of financial incentive is what that means. I don’t want a class C felony. I don’t want to go to jail. Goodness knows the business is, my opinion, it’s not worth it to me. The risk isn’t worth it.

You still have to play that line of the gray area of hey, I’m doing this the right way, I’ve read the laws. Through and through I’ve gotten second opinions on it, is it okay what we’re doing? And, the reality is, yeah, it is okay, and we’ve played our cards right as a certain bit of luck, but it’s also the approach that you take. If you come into this tour idea and you’ve got girls with pasties on and you’re handing out joints and blunts because you think it’s okay and it’s the gray area, you’re painting the picture of the cannabis industry that nobody wants. Nobody from the city wants, nobody who’s looking at you as a case study saying, “Here’s what cannabis tours could be,” wants to see the shady business.

If you are bringing professionals in … We see the lawyers, doctors, couples. A disproportionate number of veterinarians. When they see this group of people coming, there is no stigma, it disappears entirely. We haven’t had a single negative news report come out ever. I think they look to our company and say hey, these are the guys doing it the right way. They’re the pioneers showing us what cannabis tourism is. What is the potential of this industry? It’s really important, as somebody who is an advocate for cannabis legalization for medical … As an advocate for seeing the stigma disappear, we take the right approach. It’s our responsibility to be promoting the best that the cannabis industry has to offer, and help guide it in a positive direction.

Shango Los: You didn’t really ever go under the radar. As a tourism company, you had to be blatant and out in the media from day one. I’m curious to what degree you interacted with the city of Seattle. Not necessarily asking for permission. Maybe you did. Did you ever reach out to them to say, hey, can we get an informational meeting just to let you know who we are. How did you interact with the city?

Michael Gordon: We certainly have spoken with Pete Holmes and we’ve spoken with some of the marijuana policy people, but the reality is, because we are such an ancillary company, we don’t buy, sell or touch the product, there’s very little risk involved. It’s like a sightseeing tour. All we do is we talk about weed, granted, it’s incredibly in depth, and we get to show you some things and it’s really interactive, but at the same time tours aren’t regulated. Information is not regulated, so we were able to skirt those laws.

Staying in compliance with the Washington department of transportation and all that has it’s own challenges as well. That’s extremely difficult to do. We never had a big problem with staying in compliance when it has to do with the cannabis industry.

Shango Los: Right on. That’s good to know. It also probably helps out with the idea that you guys wanted to keep your risk as low as possible as well. It’s time for us to take another short break. We will be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

The Ganjapreneur.com podcast is going to sound a bit different going forward. We are now producing our podcasts in house, so we can have more control over how they sound. We want to make them an even better listening experience for you. That means the show is going to sound a little bit less produced and whiz bang, and a bit more down to Earth and pleasant on the ears. We didn’t used to control the commercial content, and we, and many of you, thought it sounded out of sync with the rest of the vibe of the show.

Going forward, during the commercial breaks, we’re going to bring you companies that we believe in. We’re going to tell you about them, we’re going to tell you how to get in contact with them, and then we’ll get right back to the show. Pretty simple really. This change also means we are booking our own commercials now. If you want to reach out and connect with our audience in the most personal way we can offer, drop us an email at grow@ganjapreneur.com, and we can talk about you becoming a commercial sponsor of the podcast.

It is our hope and intention that these changes will make the podcast an even more pleasant listening experience.

Thanks for listening and being part of the Ganjapreneur family. Now, back to the show.

Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. Our guest this week is Michael Gordon, co-founder of Kush Tourism.

Michael, we’ve gotten through the business aspects of it, but I know that there are people listening that are thinking to themselves, “Can I get stoned on the bus?” You’ve already been clear that you guys don’t provide cannabis, but I do know that retailers are part of your stops. So, break it down for us. For people who want to know, blatantly, can they do the tour high, and when can they get stoned? How does that play into the tour?

Michael Gordon: We eluded to earlier the fact that you’re not allowed to provide any sort of place where someone for to smoke that’s in public, or if you have any financial gain to be had. Unfortunately, the answer to that is there’s no consumption allowed between the start and end of the tour. With that being said, have I ever had a customer show up to our tour high? Most of them. Have I ever had people smoke after the tour is over? Probably 99% of them have found a way to consume … I think here in the state of Washington it’s like a $27 fine for getting caught smoking in public. I don’t know of anybody who’s gotten a ticket, but it’s surely on the lowest of low priorities.

Consumption is really not the focus of our tour. You can go home, you can get high, you can hotbox your car if you really want to, although it’s illegal and you’re not supposed to. But, what’s truly unique is the experience we’re able to provide and just the intimate acts as to the behind the scenes look of the industry.

Shango Los: Do you find people are waiting for the tour, so it hasn’t officially started, and people are toking up because they already know that they can’t toke on the tour. The folks are told in advance that you’re not going to be hitting your bong in the van?

Michael Gordon: Yeah. I think that most of the people already have shown up high. It’s never a disappointment. The tour is so interactive. You’re talking with the master grower about how they do clones and how they trim their buds and why this drain looks the way it does, and why should you grow this drain. There’s almost no time for smoking. Smoking takes away from the experience. Would I like you to be able to consume pot on the tour? Oh, heck yeah, I would love that, and at some point we’ll have those laws changed, it’s obviously going to come at some point. We’ll see these vapor lounges open up.

I know that we had Club Zero here, give it a shot in Seattle, and there was a very brief window of time where you had a place where you could go and consume it. It wasn’t a class C felony. Goodness knows, as soon as it happens again, we’re going to be there on day one for our clients.

Shango Los: Do you give your guests a don’t get too high talk at the beginning to put them in check?

Michael Gordon: We always preach responsible consumption. I’d say, typically, we don’t have the massive stoners who are taking gram dabs on our tour. We have folks who smoke in the evening, they smoke occasionally. Maybe they smoke five joints in a day, but they aren’t the kind of folks who are going to be stuck to their couch and that’s their preferred method of living.

These are the boomer population. These are the folks who are out there wanting to try new foods, explore new places, travel the world. I forget the question to be honest, Shango.

Shango Los: That’s all right. The question was just do you give them an orientation to not get too baked? You’ve certainly answered that. Let’s say I was going to go on the tour today. If I was going to go on the tour today, where would you take me in, let’s say, Seattle?

Michael Gordon: Great question. The tour is about a three and a half hour experience, and it focuses on the how it’s made of cannabis. We start at The Boro School of Glass here in Seattle. This is one of the premiere pipe blowing schools. It’s run by Nathan Aweida, who goes by Nate Dizzle. The inventor of the SwissPerc which is this incredible percolation device, if you’ve never tried it. We take you through how to make a pipe in the first pipe blowing school here on the west coast. You can see it from start to finish. Heck, you can even purchase your pipe and smoke from it later that day, if you’d like.

From there, we visit Dawg Star Cannabis, and learn how plants are grown, how they are brought into flower, how they’re trimmed, how they’re cured. Once again, it’s the how it’s made tour. We’re able to talk to you … Jeff there, their master grower, who’s actually a professional arborist for over 30 years. I know Dawg Star was looking to bring somebody who wasn’t within the industry to bring this incredible cultivation knowledge in a different approach. Jeff does a great job.

I know that their Blue Deisel … just tested over 30%. They tested it ten times to see if that was true. From there, we always try to involve a processor, so they’re able to see how cannabis oil is made. I know there’s a big negative stigma with BH, or Butane Hash oil, Butane Honey oil, because people are blowing up their houses. You’ll see in the legal industry that that is so regulated. They’re in blast proof rooms, there’s spark free lights, the air is being circulated every fifteen seconds.

It’s important to understand that dabbing has it’s uses. Not only for medical patients who need that level of potency, but because you’re removing plant matter from that equation, if you can figure out how to dab in moderation, then it’s actually going to be a cleaner high for you.

From there, we’ll of course visit one or two retail stores. I think it’s important that you have an opportunity to buy a product. There’s so many nice ones to choose from here in Seattle. We’re very, very gifted and lucky to be able to show that as our industry. We’ve tried bringing a couple Seattle viewpoints as well. So, you guys who are traveling from out of state can come here and see the sights, take that photo in front of plants, but also with Seattle as your backdrop.

Shango Los: Awesome. It actually sounds like something that I would enjoy myself.

Michael Gordon: Shango, you should come on tour sometime, I would love to have you.

Shango Los: I was actually a little jealous. I was stoked because you guys made a tour donation to the Vashon Island Marijuana Entrepreneur’s Alliance meeting last week that I was there. When it was announced that there was a free tour that you guys had put on, everybody was all excited to win the tour. Yeah, I’m going to have to get my act together and come on the tour myself.

Well, Michael, we have reached the end of our time. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m really appreciative that you took the time to be with us, and explain to us not only how the tour works, but the trials and tribulations that you’ve had in getting it set up.

Michael Gordon: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Shango. It’s exciting to be able to share our experiences, especially as an ancillary company, we have the opportunity to work with everybody. It’s a gift and a blessing. If you guys out there are trying to join the cannabis industry, give it a shot. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity right now.

Shango Los: To find out more about Kush Tourism, you can go to their website at kushtourism.com. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur podcast in the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com, and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest cannabis news, product reviews, and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcriptions of this podcast.

You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. Do you have a company that wants to reach our national audience of cannabis enthusiasts? Email grow@ganjapreneur.com to find out how.

Today’s show was produced by Pat Packet, I’m your host, Shango Los.

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Germany Will Legalize Medical Cannabis Next Year

5/04/2016

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Germany’s health minister has announced the country will legalize medicinal cannabis in 2017, CNN reported.

As per a measure approved Monday, seriously ill patients in Germany that have “no therapeutic alternative,” and a doctor’s prescription, will be allowed access to the country’s new medical marijuana program. It will remain illegal to grow your own cannabis, however, so patients will be relying on government-sourced medicine purchased from a pharmacy. Until specially supervised plantations have been established, however, German officials will have to import medical marijuana products.

Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe said that he wants insurance companies to cover the costs of medicinal marijuana when patients have no alternatives. “Our goal is that seriously ill people are looked after to the best of our ability,” he said.

Germany’s federal drug commissioner Marlene Mortler warned that despite being medicinal, marijuana remains a potentially dangerous substance. “The use of cannabis as a medicine within narrow limits is useful and should be explored in more detail,” she said. “At the same time, cannabis is not a harmless substance, a legalization for private pleasure is not the aim and purpose of this. It is intended for medical use only.”

This move follows similar announcements made recently by two North American countries, Canada and Mexico.

Canada — where medical marijuana is already legal — will legalize the recreational use of cannabis sometime next year; Mexico plans to allow medical marijuana and to decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of cannabis.

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Vermont House Kills Marijuana Legalization, Expanded Decriminalization Bills

5/04/2016

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Vermont lawmakers struck down several proposals aimed at reforming marijuana laws in the state, according to a Marijuana.com report.

The House of Representatives voted 121-28 against legalizing recreational cannabis use, despite both Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) and Attorney General William Sorrell supporting the measure. The proposal was passed by the Senate in a 16-13 preliminary vote last February. The law would have taxed and regulated marijuana sales for adults aged 21 and older.

A separate proposal that would have decriminalized cultivation of up to two cannabis plants was also defeated in the House, 70-77. The measure would have expanded the state’s standing decriminalization laws, under which adult possession of up to one ounce is a civil violation and carries a fine up to $500.

“The War on Drugs policy of marijuana prohibition has failed. I want to thank those House members who recognize that and worked to move this issue forward,” Shumlin said in a statement following the vote. “It is incredibly disappointing, however, that a majority of the House has shown a remarkable disregard for the sentiment of most Vermonters who understand that we must pursue a smarter policy when it comes to marijuana in this state.”

In another close vote – 77-68 – the House passed provisions forming a Marijuana Advisory Commission which will make recommendations to the legislature regarding marijuana legalization. The Commission will “provide guidance…on issues relating to the national trend toward reclassifying marijuana at the state level, and the emergence of a regulated adult-use commercial market for marijuana within Vermont,” according to the bill text. The first meeting of the Commission will occur on or before July 1 with a final report due Dec. 15.

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Major Cannabis Victory: Feds Drop Forfeiture Case Against Harborside

5/04/2016

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In a major victory for cannabis normalization and the medical marijuana movement, the federal government has dropped its forfeiture case against Harborside Health Center, the world’s largest medical marijuana dispensary.

The forfeiture case was originally brought against Harborside in 2011 in a sweeping federal crackdown on California’s medical marijuana industry, and the dropping of this case mirrors a similar move made several weeks ago when the federal government dismissed its case against cannabis pioneer Lynette Shaw.

In a press release issued Tuesday by Harborside, dispensary founder and cannabis industry tycoon Steven DeAngelo said:

“When US Attorney Melinda Haag first filed suit to seize the property Harborside is located in, I vowed we would never abandon our patients … and predicted Harborside would outlast the efforts to close us down. Today, thanks to the deep support of our community and our elected officials, and the skill and determination of our legal counsel, that prediction has come true. We believe this dismissal signals the beginning of the end of federal Prohibition; and thank our patients, staff, and supporters everywhere for help achieving this historic victory.”

While federal agencies worked to shut down big players in the industry, many local and state officials condemned the move as federal overreach. Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan said in a press conference held Tuesday,

“As someone who advocated for Oakland’s nation-leading system to permit, tax and regulate cannabis facilities from the beginning, I have been very pleased at their success in providing clean and safe facilities that contribute positively to the surrounding community. Harborside Health Center has been a strong positive presence in Oakland, both for the patients they serve, the workers they employ, and for the vital public services that are supported by their tax revenues.”

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Toronto Officials Perplexed by Wave of New Marijuana Dispensaries

5/03/2016

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An influx of medical marijuana dispensaries in Toronto, Ontario have local lawmakers scratching their heads over how to react to the changing tides of marijuana reform.

Under Canadian federal law, only government-licensed companies can legally distribute marijuana for medicinal purposes — and only via mail service. On the other hand, a recent court decision ruled that patients are allowed to grow their own medicine, and the recently-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes sometime next year.

It’s this mishmash of federal positions on the legality of cannabis that have led Toronto City Councillor Paula Fletcher to call for some federal clarification.

“We need a sign from the federal government — are they going to change the rules around medical marijuana? Should we as council be trying to close these clinics altogether or make new rules around where they can go, how close they can be to each other?” Fletcher said. Lawmakers in Vancouver, British Columbia made such an effort last year, ultimately passing regulations that limit where marijuana dispensaries are tolerated within Vancouver city limits.

“What’s really clear is it’s a multi-gazillion-dollar industry, to have so many shops open up like crocuses in spring. If we’re legalizing, we need to make sure taxpayers benefit,” said Fletcher.

When asked about Health Canada’s stance on the influx of new cannabis distributors, an organization spokesman told The Toronto Star, “Dispensaries and other sellers of marijuana who are not licensed under the current law are illegal … Questions about enforcement of federal regulations in this area should be addressed to local law enforcement.”

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Colorado Proposal Would Lower Cannabis Purchasing Restrictions for Tourists

5/03/2016

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Tourists in Colorado may soon be able to buy as much marijuana as the state’s residents, according to The Denver Post.

The change would come from an advancing piece of legislature that seeks to repeal restrictions first established in 2013, which were designed to combat the illegal, out-of-state trafficking of legally-purchased cannabis. The original law allows any adult 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis, but limits dispensaries to selling only a quarter of an ounce per day to someone without a Colorado-issued ID.

However, regulators are now saying that retail cannabis is not the main problem causing marijuana diversion in Colorado. Rather, it is more likely that underground growers are taking advantage of the state’s loosened prohibition to grow and distribute black market cannabis across state lines. The Marijuana Enforcement Division has not cited a single dispensary for breaking the quarter-ounce rule.

New possession limits for cannabis concentrates and edibles are now likely to even further complicate the rules, and the industry is lobbying to drop the quarter-ounce restriction on tourist sales for simplicity’s sake. “We’d have to hire math professors to work in the dispensaries,” said Mark Slaugh, head of the Colorado Cannabis Business Alliance.

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New Hampshire’s First MMJ Dispensary Opens in Plymouth

5/03/2016

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The first dispensary in New Hampshire has opened for business, after more than two years of delays and lawsuits.

Last Friday, Plymouth-based Sanctuary ATC received their registration certificate and were operating just one day later. By 11 a.m on Saturday they already had about a dozen patients waiting for the doors to open. In all, they served 45 people by the end of the day, Sanctuary’s director told New Hampshire Public Radio.

Three more dispensaries are expected this year, with two more run by Temescal Wellness opening in Dover and Lebanon “within the next few weeks,” according to The Daily Chronic‘s report. Prime ATC’s Merrimack location is slated for this summer.

New Hampshire became the 19th state to approve marijuana for medical use after passing House Bill 523 in July, 2013. In an email to supporters, Matt Simon, a New Hampshire resident and New England Political Director for the Marijuana Policy Project, said “there were no celebrations in 2013” because they expected a slow implementation process and, of course, red tape. They started issuing medical marijuana ID cards last December.

“Today, now that a dispensary is open and now that over 600 patients have been issued ID cards protecting them from arrest, we believe it is finally time to declare victory!” Simon wrote. “We will, of course, continue pushing for further improvements to the law.”

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Obama Cracks Weed Joke at Final White House Correspondents Dinner

5/02/2016

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President Barack Obama cracked a joke about his former cannabis use during the final White House Correspondents Dinner of his presidency, earning several seconds of cheers and laughs from the audience.

The president set the joke up by discussing his rising approval ratings during the final year of his presidency. “And yet somehow, despite all this, despite the churn, in my final year, my approval ratings keep going up,” he said. “The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major.”

See below to watch the segment for yourself.

https://youtu.be/DpbEg-zVcpU?t=8m47s

Jokes like these, particularly when coming from the President of the United States, are a sign of cannabis normalization.

President Obama has famously admitted to both smoking and enjoying marijuana despite its ongoing prohibition, and in a 2014 interview with The New Yorker acknowledged, much to everyone’s surprise, that cannabis is safer than alcohol. It’s a far shot away from previous presidents’ admissions about their cannabis use, particularly Bill Clinton’s infamous “I didn’t inhale” remark.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual event where journalists, politicians and celebrities gather for a roasting of prominent figures and news stories. The president’s speech this year touched on the raucous presidential race — front runner candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump did not show up to the event; Bernie Sanders, however, did.

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Hawaii’s Medical Cannabis Companies Selected

5/02/2016

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Hawaii’s four-member panel awarded its eight medical marijuana licenses on Friday, laying the foundation for dispensary infrastructure in the state, Hawaii News Now reported.

The licensees are allowed two dispensaries and two production centers, but must first pay a $75,000 licensing fee to the Department of Health. The law allows dispensaries to start selling cannabis as soon as July 15, but several applicants are aiming closer to the end of the year.

Manoa Botanicals, Aloha Green Holdings, Inc., and Cure Oahu were selected to operate in Oahu; Hawaiian Ethos and Lau Ola won the licenses for Hawaii County; Maui Wellness Group and Pono Life Sciences Maui won the two available licenses for Maui County, and Green Aloha will serve Kauai County.

Lau Ola is owned by Richard Ha, a former Big Island banana farmer. In a blog post Ha wrote that he would reach out to University of Hawaii’s Hilo School of Pharmacy for cannabis research, and the state’s College of Agriculture for production methods.

“When they announced our group Lau Ola was awarded one of the licenses, it was like we were watching the Super Bowl and somebody scored a touchdown,” Ha wrote. “I was elated, and then I thought, ‘Holy Smokes (sic).’ It’s a huge deal, and I am thinking about the big picture.”

In order to be given final approval the licensees must have an enclosed indoor production facility, a product tracking system, and security systems in place. Products also require lab testing. The companies’ prices are not yet set.

Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson’s Simple Organic Living, one of 66 total applicants, was not selected for a license.

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A collection of clones on display in a California cannabis dispensary.

Oregon Awards First Recreational Cannabis Production Licenses

5/02/2016

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The Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) has issued eight licenses for the production of recreational cannabis, OPB reports. These are the first recreational marijuana licenses awarded under the state’s new cannabis regulations.

“These licensees reflect the pioneering spirit Oregon is known for,” said OLCC Chair Rob Patridge. “They come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and possess the entrepreneurial spirit of this industry.”

The licensees are located in Lane, Tillamook, Washington, Clackamas, Jackson and Josephine counties. The licenses awarded are for Tier 1 and Tier 2 outdoor and mixed cultivation sites. Tier 1 growers are allowed between 5,000-10,000 square feet of growing canopy, Tier 2 growers are allowed between 20,000-40,000. Licensees can begin production as soon as they pay their annual licensing fees ($3,750 for Tier 1, $5,650 for Tier 2).

According to a press release issued by the OLCC, Oregon’s first recreational cannabis licensees are:

• Harold Frazier, Dale Fox, Maiden Azalea LLC (New Breed Seed) – Outdoor, Tier 1, Lane County
• Far Out Farms, LLC (Far Out Farms) – Mixed, Tier 1, Tillamook County
• Preston Greene (Yerba Buena) – Mixed, Tier 2, Washington County
• Smokey Mountain Farm, LLC (Smokey Mountain Farm) – Outdoor, Tier 1, Washington County
• Jennifer Speer-Harvey, Antonio Harvey, Daniel Speer (Terra Mater) – Mixed, Tier 2, Clackamas County
• PWCC, LLC (Pacific Wonderland Craft Cannabis) – Mixed, Tier 2, Clackamas County
• SOCC, LLC (Southern Oregon Cannabis Company) – Outdoor, Tier 2, Jackson County
• Charles J. Brooks (Loved Buds) – Outdoor, Tier 1, Josephine County

It was announced earlier this year that the OLCC would be licensing producers first, so that the chain of supply would be established by the time retailer licenses are issued sometime this fall.

According to its press release, “The OLCC has received 910 applications and expects to receive between 1200 and 2000 applications during the 2016 calendar year. The agency expects to issue about 850 licenses in 2016.”

“Today is just another step on the path to implementation,” said Steve Marks, Executive Director of the OLCC. “We’re going to continue to remain focused on creating a recreational marijuana system that ensures public safety, protects our children, and fosters a successful legal market for the recreational use of marijuana.”

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Seattle 4/20 Protests Touch on Race and Inequality in Legal Cannabis

4/29/2016

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Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop sits on the corner of 23rd Avenue East and East Union Street in Seattle’s Central District, just a mile from downtown. The neighborhood — once Jewish, then Japanese — became largely Black in 1960s. During the crack epidemic of the ‘80s, the block was one of the most dangerous in Seattle, and many Black families with the resources to do so moved elsewhere. Local journalists still tend to refer to the intersection with terms like “gritty,” “long-troubled,” and “infamous,” but the area has been steadily gentrifying since the 1990s.

Ian Karl Eisenberg, who founded Uncle Ike’s, has been buying property on the block since 2009. Besides the pot shop, he owns a restaurant, a car wash, and buildings that house offices and a bar and lounge. Some of these buildings were abandoned when he bought them. Eisenberg has wagered millions of dollars on the block, but until he opened Uncle Ike’s in 2014, he was afraid he’d made a bad bet. The store is now the highest-grossing cannabis retailer in the state.

The area has prospered economically and crime rates have fallen, but gentrification has proven divisive. Uncle Ike’s has provoked the ire of several local groups. On Wednesday, amid the city’s 4/20 festivities, protesters blocked the intersection in front of Uncle Ike’s, shouting “No justice, no weed” and “Uncle Ike’s has got to go.”

The protesters have several objections to Uncle Ike’s. The most immediate is the pot shop’s proximity to the Mount Calvary Christian Center church and the church’s Joshua Generation Teen Center. Washington state law dictates that cannabis businesses can’t be too close to places where children congregate, such as youth centers, schools, and playgrounds. Churches aren’t included on this list, and, in response to a lawsuit filed in 2014 by the church, state lawyers argued that the teen center doesn’t qualify as a youth center, either. According to lawyers who spoke with Pastor Reggie Witherspoon Sr., the teen center is open just ten days a month, and almost exclusively for religious activities. The church has filed two lawsuits against Uncle Ike’s, both of which have been ruled in the store’s favor. NAACP official Sheley Secrest has objected to these decisions, arguing that the law was clearly written to protect children: “Whoever says it’s not a legitimate teen center is ducking, and we want the law enforced.”

Besides its proximity to the church and youth center, some protesters bristle at what they see as a cruelly ironic development in cannabis history. The intersection at 23rd and Union  has been the site of many drug arrests. Pastor Witherspoon reportedly told Seattle Mayor Ed Murray that if Uncle Ike’s is allowed to retain its location, then the mayor “needs to let all the brothers and sisters go who are incarcerated for marijuana.” Hip-hop artist Draze takes a similar line in his new song Irony on 23rd, which he performed at the protests Wednesday.

The Seattle Black Book Club (SBBC), a Black-led community organizing group whose members strive for “Black liberation,” has taken an even harder line toward Eisenberg. Their Facebook page features an essay titled “Take A Hike Uncle Ike! Gentrification Stops Here!” In objecting to the store, the article cites neocolonialism and systemic racism, and features a list of demands for Eisenberg. The first is that he give “54 percent of his real estate holdings to the community for the purpose of community-controlled low-income housing.”

The anger directed at Uncle Ike’s reflects wider discontent among marginalized communities across the country with the way cannabis legalization has played out. This anger, broadly speaking, is justified: the legal history of cannabis speaks volumes about race and class in the United States. A 2013 ACLU study found that police arrest Black people nearly four times as often as they arrest white people. A former Nixon official recently admitted that the War on Drugs, which led to the arrest on marijuana possession charges of more than 600,000 people in 2014 alone, was created to disrupt the Black population.

In an interview on Democracy Now last Thursday, Wanda James, CEO of Simply Pure, a Denver-based cannabis dispensary, connected the disproportionate rates at which Black Americans are arrested for cannabis possession to the private prison industry and its need for “slave labor”:

“If you can name a corporation right now, they are profiting off of labor, enslaved labor. . . . To fill those spots, they need to be able to put bodies into those prison systems. And those bodies right now are being collected on the streets of America through cannabis arrest. We’re seeing last year alone that 701,000 people were arrested for simple possession of cannabis.”

Some have argued that the scarcity of Black-owned cannabis businesses in states that have legalized the drug reflects the disproportionate rate at which Blacks are arrested for cannabis possession. In an interview with Tom McKay in MERRY JANE, Kris Krane, the former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that “it’s obvious from attending a marijuana business conference that the industry is heavily white and heavily male.”

In states that have legalized cannabis, the motivating factors for this disparity are knotty. As in any industry, having a prior drug conviction can make it more difficult to enter the cannabis business. And although some states, such as Oregon, have moved to expunge prior marijuana convictions, this is not the norm. That said, a prior cannabis conviction doesn’t necessarily bar you from entering the industry.

Regulatory systems differ among states that have legalized cannabis. Washington State, like Oregon, regulates the drug as it does alcohol — it uses a point system to determine whether people with criminal records are eligible for a license to sell alcohol or cannabis. The cutoff is eight or more points. A felony earns you 12 points, which stay on your record for ten years; misdemeanors get you four points apiece for four years. In a state with more draconian enforcement policies, these points would have greater effect; in Washington, cannabis enforcement has officially been the police force’s lowest priority since 2003. Voters approved full marijuana legalization in 2012, so theoretically only people with felony cannabis convictions should be barred from obtaining a cannabis license. (Though the wording of the law is sometimes startlingly vague—Oregon can deny you a license if you are not “of good repute and moral character.”)

And the state has no say over whom pot shop owners can hire. In a phone interview with Ganjapreneur, Eisenberg said that Uncle Ike’s looks to hire people with knowledge of the product — and that “if they live in the neighborhood, that’s like ten gold stars on the resume.” Of course, Eisenberg is thinking about Seattle’s notorious traffic and Ike’s bottom line: “It’s not because I’m trying to be a do-gooder anti-gentrification person — it’s because I want people to show up to work on time.”

In states that have legalized cannabis, the most salient barrier to entry in the cannabis industry is economic. State licensure rules set up by state governments make it difficult to enter the industry without deep pockets. In the MERRY JANE interview, Krane cited fees of “between $200,000 and $1.5 million … and demonstrated capital just to apply.” Less-than-affluent people “have no capital to start a business, they are unlikely to be hired by shopkeepers, there is no small business administration program that is actively helping them start a new venture,” said Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh. “When the government put the regs in place, they made it impossible for most low-income people to ever enter the economy.” Jonathan Caulkins, drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, noted that white people have been able to move from the black market to the legal cannabis industry more easily because of where they were in the black market: “In the short run, it’s mostly people coming over from producing medical and high-end black market, which disproportionately served a more educated and more affluent market and was disproportionately white.”

Because people of color are more likely to confront these economic barriers, the way states have regulated legal cannabis has engendered a cruelly ironic development in the racial history of the drug’s legal status. In an interview with The Seattle Times in February, Eisenberg acknowledged as much, asking “How do you set up a system” in which those communities that have been hurt by decades of racist policies and policing “can benefit in the same ratio they were disproportionately harmed, especially in a heavily regulated industry?” Eisenberg says he donates to the ACLU’s Mass Incarceration project, and that he is involved with the local YMCA and a nearby high school’s teen center. But he isn’t about to accede to the demands of groups like the Seattle Black Book Club, whose goals he says are unclear to him. Eisenberg has offered to meet with the group’s members, but they appear unwilling to negotiate:

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When I asked him about Washington State’s drug laws, he said that “all the drug laws are bullshit, and if somebody has a bullshit drug conviction I wouldn’t care if they’re in the legal market.” He also said that the state should expunge the records of people who have been charged with simple cannabis possession charges, and that “in terms of getting a lot of people actually released, I think you ask for baby steps.”

Regardless of what Eisenberg says, groups like the SBBC will likely continue to harbor resentment over the presence of pot shops like Uncle Ike’s in neighborhoods that were hit hard by marijuana prohibition. It’s important that cannabis industry entrepreneurs and activists pay attention to stories like these. Who benefits most from cannabis legalization? We may all be happy about burning down prohibition, but creating truly egalitarian regulations isn’t that simple — and so far, we’ve failed.

Legalizing cannabis is a good thing. But if industry rules cement the economic effects of racist policies, then we’re only reinforcing the status quo. As states continue to scrap old marijuana laws, those on the side of legalization should think critically about who stands to profit from proposed regulatory systems. A movement as progressive as the push for cannabis legalization must do more to bring about rules that might level what has long been an uneven field of play.

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Two-thirds of Utahns Support Medical Cannabis

4/29/2016

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Citizens in Utah would overwhelmingly support a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in the state, according to a UtahPolicy poll released Wednesday.  

Sixty-six percent polled support access to doctor-prescribed medical cannabis; compared to just 28 percent opposed. Earlier this year the legislature failed to pass a medical marijuana bill and now the issue will likely appear as a ballot initiative in 2018.

The poll found that the majority – 55 percent – of Republicans who identify as “very active” in the Mormon Church were for medical marijuana infrastructure while 91 percent who consider themselves “very liberal” supported the legalization.

Republican Sen. Mark Madsen was responsible for legislation allowing full use of the plant as medicine; however that bill was redrafted and amended so that it permitted less use of THC. It was ultimately defeated in the Senate.

The most recent measure sponsored by Republican Sen. Evan Vickers failed to make it to the floor for a vote last month after lawmakers realized it would cost the state $800,000 to implement the program. Legislative leaders indicated that there was no money in the budget to cover that cost if it were to pass, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Vickers’ bill would have focused on CBD instead of whole plant therapy, as was in the case with Madsen’s proposal.

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Alaska Officials Draft Regulations for Recreational Cannabis Cafes

4/28/2016

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Alaska’s Marijuana Control Board agreed Tuesday on draft regulations for “on-site consumption” marijuana businesses, Alaska Dispatch News reports.

Marijuana bars and cannabis cafes in Alaska will be allowed to serve food and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as dispense small amounts of cannabis flower and other products to patrons, who must be at least 21 years old. Customers will not be allowed to smoke or eat their own stash, however, and must make purchases at the bar.

Alaska is the only legalized state so far to include in its marijuana regulations a public space where cannabis consumers — particularly tourists, who often have nowhere to legally smoke pot — can consume in a social setting, other than a private residence.

Some of the board’s rules are aimed at preventing over-consumption, including one provision that caps the amount of cannabis flower from a single purchase at one gram. Edible doses will be limited to 10 milligrams of THC, while marijuana concentrate products will be capped at 0.25 grams per transaction. Businesses would also need to make available information about marijuana safety and to all consumers, free of charge.

Marijuana Control Board chair Bruce Schulte advised a “suitable degree of caution” moving forward, as cannabis cafes will likely cause more problems for local law enforcement than any of the board’s other regulations.

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Dr. Greg Gerdeman: Human Endocannabinoid System Awareness

4/28/2016

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Dr. Greg Gerdeman is an assistant professor of biology at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, whose research has focused on neurobiology and the human endocannabinoid system. He recently joined our podcast host Shango Los for a conversation about what the human endocannabinoid system is, why current medical students are not being taught about it, and how he thinks that medical cannabis may serve as a preventative measure against ailments brought on by endocannabinoid deficiency. Listen to the episode below, or scroll down for the full transcript!

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Shango Los: Hi there and welcome to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. The Ganjapreneur.com podcast gives us an opportunity to speak directly to entrepreneurs, cannabis growers, product developers and cannabis medicine researchers, all focused on making the most of cannabis normalization. As your host, I do my best to bring you original cannabis industry ideas that will ignite your own entrepreneurial spark and give you actionable information to improve your business strategy and improve your health and the health of cannabis patients everywhere.

Today, our guest is Dr. Greg Gerdeman. Dr. Greg Gerdeman is an assistant professor of biology at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He has actively researched the neurobiological targets of cannabis since entering graduate school at Vanderbilt University in 1995. There, his doctoral dissertation in pharmacology included seminal discoveries about the functioning of endocannabinoids in the brain, especially within neural circuits involved in motor control and pathologies of movement and compulsive disorders. His work at Vanderbilt and subsequently the University of Arizona was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and earned multiple awards for excellence from the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

More recently, Dr. Gerdeman co-directed a study supported by the National Science Foundation investing the release of natural endocannabinoids during endurance exercise. His papers have appeared in top-tier scientific journals including, “Nature and Neuroscience,” and, “Trends in Neuroscience,” and have been cited over 1,500 times in the scientific literature. His research has been highlighted in press pieces ranging from Science to National Geographic to Men’s Health. He coauthored a chapter in, “The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis,” and has written as a guest commentator on medical marijuana for the Tampa Bay Times. At Eckerd College, he teaches courses in physiology, neuroscience, and pharmacology. Presently, Greg is Chief Science Officer at 3 Boys Farm in Ruskin, Florida.

Welcome to the show, Greg.

Greg Gerdeman: Thank you. Thank you for having me very much.

Shango Los: One of the reasons I was so interested in having you on this show is because not only do you have a deep understanding of the endocannabinoid system but also you are interested in the cultural aspects of humans coming to realize that we even have an endocannabinoid system and how that is changing culture itself.

The first half of the show, we are going to talk about the endocannabinoids science behind it. Then, the second half, we are going to talk about humans waking up to this realization.

Let’s get people started with an explanation of what the endocannabinoid system is and what role does it play in our bodies.

Greg Gerdeman: That sounds great. I am happy to do that. What are the endocannabinoids? Here, here I go into the narrative of discovery already. They come about because science, ever since the discovery of the plant cannabinoids, THC and cannabidiol (CBD), there was a big scientific endeavor to figure out what they’re doing in the brain. Admittedly, there was great institutional negative bias about it. The research was directed to figure out how things go wrong, whether we get addicted or go mad with cannabis.

What we came to discover out of that research climate, that funding context, is that the body contains intrinsic molecules, signaling molecules that act much like THC and likely other cannabinoids do.

One way to look at that when I talk to people is to say, “What is the signaling molecule?” All cells in the body communicate by releasing various kinds of signaling molecules, like a hormone is a signaling molecule that travels through the blood and the pancreas can communicate with cells in the body by releasing insulin and telling them to get ready for the cells to be ready for sugar.

We came to find in the ’90s that nearly every brain cell, the neurons of the brain release these molecules that we call endocannabinoids that act in many ways like THC does to turn down excitability, excessive activity that can be toxic in the brain, and to mediate processes like perception and learning and memory. They’re kind of like the body’s own cannabis molecules in a sense. They’ve been called the body’s internal marijuana. There’s a good reason to say it that way.

Shango Los: If I am following you correctly, the cannabinoid receptors are receiving the signals from our own endocannabinoids that are made within our body and those signals tell the endocannabinoid system how to modulate any one of these systems. Am I following you?

Greg Gerdeman: Yeah, I think so. It is how cells communicate with one another. The cannabinoid receptors on nerve cells, immune cells, and a whole variety of other cells, the cannabinoid receptors are there to receive the signal but so many different tissues and cell types release these endocannabinoids in order to tell their neighbors what is going on and especially to calm down in excited states, like with seizure activity, excessive activity in neural cells, or with immune cells when they’re getting super inflamed and active. Endocannabinoids get released and cells communicate with their neighborhood by releasing these endocannabinoids and dampening down in general the activity.

Shango Los: All right. That makes sense. If we produce endocannabinoids in our system, what is the benefit for us in adding more cannabinoids to our system by ingesting the cannabis plant?

Greg Gerdeman: There’s lots of way to approach that. One of the direct ways is we more and more and more believe that in certain cases of pathology, there is a deficit, a physiologically relevant, clinically relevant deficiency in endocannabinoids that may be to blame for the depressed mood or the state of say, seizure activity, or chronic pain. Situations like fibromyalgia and migraine. These are where there is a good solid body of evidence that some people suffering from these pain states have for whatever genetic reasons lower levels of activity in this endocannabinoid system. Treating with plant cannabinoids is quite legitimate to say like supplementing this endocannabinoid system.

There is a huge growing body of research, as mainstream as science research gets, that this endocannabinoid system is an intrinsic mechanism for cellular protection, neural protection. Mainstream science has referred to the endocannabinoid system as the brain’s intrinsic neuro-protective system. It is a system by which we maintain balance, what physiologists call homeostasis. Endocannabinoid signaling is part of keeping that balance set point. It is so complex because it is distributed throughout all of the systems of our body. On a case to case basis, different individuals or different syndromes, you may be needing to boost that endocannabinoid system or it may be therapeutic to do so.

Shango Los: Right on. This next question is based entirely on rumor. I do understand the science from having Dr. Ethan Russo on this show that when we fall into endocannabinoid deficiency that it can lead to all sorts of our systems becoming out of whack and can lead to fibromyalgia or worsening of PTSD, irritable bowel syndrome, all sorts of stuff. The rumor part of it is that just in friendly conversation at cannabis conventions, some folks will suggest that the reason that we are seeing an increasing in these disease nowadays is because historically the human had access to cannabis because we continually grew it as we evolved.

However, in the last 70 years, cannabis has been out of the hands of Americans and so because of that, our body, which was used to including cannabinoids, suddenly that supplementation is gone and so we are only left with our endocannabinoids, leading to an increase in these related diseases. Is there any scientific basis for that or is that just people talking around the water cooler?

Greg Gerdeman: It seems pretty speculative. I like the thinking but certainly there is a lot of great modern scholarship about how the cannabis plant has spread across the world. In my roles, when I am talking, for example, debating people around public policy and whether cannabis should be used as medicine in the very close-minded place of the Southeast, I run into doctors who say, “It has been used a long time but so what? So was Strychnine.”

Cannabis has been used for such a long time but it is not just that it is an old medicine that makes it good. It is a medicine that has been used since before recorded history. Our earliest medical documents show that it is there and it has been preserved for thousands of years and across dozens of migrations and cultural transitions, grown, cultivated, selected for traits. We, as humans, have certainly shaped the evolution of cannabis.

The flip side of that question where I read what you are talking about is whether our cultivation of cannabis has helped to shift and shape our evolution as human beings. That would be a theory of co-evolution, which is certainly a scholarly thing to speculate.

As a biologist, I am much more comfortable saying that we have a mutualistic relationship. Cannabis helps human health and we have cultivated cannabis and advanced it for that reason.

When it comes to things like fibromyalgia and chronic pain states being exacerbated, I am more comfortable saying that is because of the chronic stresses that we have in our life that are characteristic of industrialized, 9 to 5, traffic jam reality. We know from really good scientific research that the endocannabinoid system gets assaulted by chronic stress. The endocannabinoid system is part of the body’s stress buffering system. No doubt about it. I could talk about that in very fine detail that might make your listeners kind of glaze over because we know brain networks and molecules and animal situations where that happens. Your system of endocannabinoids in your brain, your endocrine system is part of your body’s stress buffering system and chronic stress wears it out.

Supplementing with plant-based cannabinoid medicines may just have been there all along, granted we have been in this overlong experiment of suppressing it. It has kind of been there almost like an old friend coming to the rescue kind of thing.

Shango Los: If our stressful lives are calling for us to supplement our endocannabinoid system with cannabinoids that we have grown in the cannabis plant, does it matter in what way we ingest those cannabinoids? Whether it is combustion through smoking a joint or a tincture, eating something edible. Does the form that the plant takes when we put it into our body play a role in the quality of those cannabinoids?

Greg Gerdeman: My take from what people are doing and the experience of my more clinical colleagues is really that it depends a lot on what condition you are talking about. We have come to find out that cannabis can be therapeutically helpful in so many ways, not just stress. Many ways that were not anticipated, even 10 years ago.

Going with the flow I was on, let me say that I am a big believer that for your primary care and taking care of yourself, the first step should not be getting the right balance of cannabis cannabinoids, it should be de-stressing and focusing on what makes your life better. Getting to the root of the problem and where you are out of homeostatic balance in your life. I will leave it at that very broad brushstroke there.

If someone has chronic, some sort of anxiety condition that gets triggered, for example PTSD, for certain symptom control, inhalation, like vaporizing or smoking is unsurpassed because you can administer a low dose and achieve an effect, even a sub-psychoactive effect, and sort of what we call titrate to dose very quickly. Take a puff. Get what you need and go about your day.

Then, other symptoms, since I started with PTSD, I will continue there, a major problem is sleep and being scared of sleep, being woken up with nightmares and there, some sort of edible product, a little pill, a little gummy, what have you, a little oil at night, as I understand from patient report and what is largely hearsay for me because I don’t work with patients is that that kind of thing is very helpful for a significant number of patients. They may have different modalities. That is where having an integrative cannabinoid medicine approach that takes what the person is dealing with, combined with a respectable understanding of the cannabis medicine and the different products, it just becomes part of a health program. That is really what is so lacking in medicine today is having a program about your health as opposed to just getting a script and popping pills.

Shango Los: Yeah. The big difference between preventative medicine versus acute care.

Greg Gerdeman: Exactly.

Shango Los: Greg, we need to take a short break. We will be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

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It is our hope and intention that these changes will make the podcast and even more pleasant listening experience. Thanks for listening and being part of the Ganjapreneur family. Now, back to the show.

Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. Our guest this week is endocannabinoid researcher and author, Dr. Greg Gerdeman.

Before the break, Greg, we were talking about the endocannabinoid system and kind of giving people a superficial understanding of what their endocannabinoid system is and the proper care and feeding of it. One of the things that I am interested in how your papers come across is that you like to also talk about the idea of humans realizing that we even have an endocannabinoid system and how it is starting to shape and shift care.

How much has the knowledge of endocannabinoid deficiency and the existence of the system grown in the last 10 years? It seems new.

Greg Gerdeman: It is new. It is not as new as it seems sometimes but it is new, really. It is really new since the early ’90s. It has been growing by leaps and bounds. It is like a floodgate, really.

When I think back, when I started getting into this, just to ask a room what cannabis is, that wasn’t much in the vernacular, at least in Tennessee, where I was at. Endocannabinoids, nobody knew anything about. I sometimes get spoiled or fooled into thinking more people know about it than they do. Maybe because I look at my Facebook feed and it is just all about it.

Shango Los: Yeah, we live in a bubble, Greg.

Greg Gerdeman: It’s true. People are learning more and more about it. It is only going to continue because in my view, it is one of the epic scientific discoveries of the second half of the 20th Century, maybe the whole 20th Century. It is a gigantic paradigm-shifting discovery about cellular communication.

Shango Los: At a systemic and doctor-patient relationship level, how is the discovery and I guess more popularization of the endocannabinoid system changing the way that we look at our body’s systems and healing and preventative care?

Greg Gerdeman: I think at the basic science level, and this is largely researchers that are in labs, it is really changing models of how health and disease work in a lot of systems. Even various cancers, a cannabinoid sort of system problem may be part of the ideology of the tumor disease growing. It is more at the level of the basic research though.

By and large, outside the pockets of cannabis normalization, as you talk about, which I love that term, outside of those pockets, there’s tremendous naivete about what it is. I was meeting doctors at a conference just this past weekend who knew nothing about the endocannabinoid system and their eyes are looking like mine did when I was a 20-year-old graduate student. There’s much to learn about it.

Shango Los: Sometimes I will engage with Western doctors who do not have the cannabis knowledge but they’ll come to me to talk to about some aspect of patient care because since I am in the industry, I sometimes know more than the doctors do. They ask me about it and then I mention the endocannabinoid system and so often, I get this kind of blank look on their face that they actually don’t even know that we’ve got one.

People joke that they don’t teach the endocannabinoid system in med schools and that they have only just recently started teaching it. Is there any truth to that? Do they teach it in med school?

Greg Gerdeman: The thing is largely no, but more and more. I have talked about it all along for a long time. It is also sometimes said within the cannabis culture, we learn about the skeletal muscular system and the cardiovascular system, why not the endocannabinoid system? They’re not quite the same. It is not a perfectly fair comparison because the endocannabinoids are molecules. You don’t see those with your naked eye. It is not an anatomically distinct system, anatomical system per se.

The endocannabinoid system is mechanism that is shared throughout the tissues in the body. It is a key mechanism by which I daresay every tissue system in the body regulates itself. It has been most pronounced in our understanding of the brain and the immune system. Then, I think that is where the greatest action is, so-to-speak.

Awareness is growing. What can I say? The neuroscience textbook that I teach my undergraduate neuroscience course with and is the most popular undergraduate neuroscience textbook by Mark Bear and colleagues, it has three pages on endocannabinoids. It cites my work and others and it calls it, “The most exciting discovery in cell signaling in the past several years.” My undergraduates are learning about it.

Whether physicians are going to have entire courses in medical school or not, it certainly needs to be integrated into much of their curriculum and experience beyond just the little module they have about why drugs make you high and addicted, which is sort of traditionally where it gets pigeonholed.

Shango Los: Right on. Right on. That makes sense. On a practical level, is it true that always adding more cannabinoids is good or can the endocannabinoid system become overwhelmed because I am over-supplementing with cannabinoids?

Greg Gerdeman: I would lean towards the latter. I am definitely not going to say it is always going to be better. I think I have learned a lot from some of my colleagues, like Dustin Sulak and Bonnie Goldstein and doctors that really work with this that sometimes going too much and developing tolerance to the cannabis, it puts patients back into a negative experience. What they need for therapeutic dosing is really low. Regular micro dosing of cannabis.

I am very interesting in the preventative health mindset of low, frequent, or relatively often dosing with cannabis or sort of the acid raw cannabinoids that aren’t psychoactive possibly being a healthy approach to staving off neurodegenerative disease, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that we know are related to chronic inflammation.

On the other side and this also is buried in the more rigorous science, there are conditions that may be exacerbated by CB1 activation. There is concern that activation of CB1 receptors in the vasculature of the blood vessels may help to promote atherosclerosis or consequent increased stroke risk, for example. I think there should be more research into that. There certainly may be cases and sort of particular individuals or genetic predispositions, where it is not a good idea at all to engage in cannabis as medicine.

Shango Los: Wow. I have never heard that before. That is brand new information for me. Now, this begs this question and I am going to ask you for a number. I know that I am asking you to do something that is challenging. I want you to rise to the occasion.

Let’s say that someone, like me, who doesn’t necessarily have one of the typical health issues that CBD is recommended for. However, I appreciate the neurogenesis and neuro-protectant qualities of cannabinoids. I just want to take a supplement daily that will help me not have Alzheimer’s, not develop into Parkinson’s. Just something to help me as I get older. I actually do that. I have grown my own ACDC at 20 to 1 and made my own tincture and had it lab-tested. Every day, I have a squirt of it and it is 5 milligrams of organic CBD and a little bit of water and boom. I don’t know that 5 milligrams is the right amount to actually help me long term.

Based on your research, can you just give us ballpark figure of what somebody who is wanting to stay healthy but not necessarily targeting it for a particular issue that they are trying to fix, how many milligrams of cannabinoids should we be trying to put into our bodies a day just as a simple supplement? Micro dosing, that doesn’t tell me much numerically and I would really love to have that number.

Greg Gerdeman: Right. When you are talking about CBD, it is a shot in the dark. Sure, 5 milligrams, 10 milligrams, that makes sense to me. That makes sense to me and I totally resonate with what you are saying about why not try that? With the group I am working with in Florida, 3 Boys Farm, who wants to get into growing, that is the kind of product that we think would be very good for health, wellness, and prevention.

The thing is there is so much of a skilled research structure, research and institutionalized environment in the U.S. that has been shackled to study this stuff. I think that people should get together in groups, whether its crowdsourcing or through medical center initiatives or something. It would just be great for all of us to accumulate that data and track it. People are doing it anyway, and why shouldn’t they? It is just absurd that it should be prohibited like it is. Utterly absurd and it just seems to me like everybody knows that but I know they don’t. It should be tracked if we really want to be able to get a handle on that dose.

In animal studies and those then can be very hard to extrapolate because mice metabolize things much faster than humans do, for example. That would suggest that low doses. I just mentioned a possible risk factor like atherosclerosis, hardening of the arteries but in a highly published prestigious published mouse paper, super low doses of THC, like microgram doses in mice, which metabolize it better than we do, had lower incidence of atherosclerosis, hardened arteries, which is a risk factor for all kinds of cardiovascular disease and number one killer in the U.S.

Work by people like Gary Wenk and others at Ohio State looking at Alzheimer’s disease models in mice show really low doses, regular frequent doses. He started calling it his “Puff-a-day” model, like taking a puff a day of cannabis could stave off these chronic neurodegenerative diseases. Oftentimes, we know if it runs in our family or we have a good sense of it, why not? There is no good reason to think that we shouldn’t let people self-experiment with that and have the liberty to do it. Let’s unshackle the research engine to follow that and make our future generations all the more informed about it.

Shango Los: That’s great. That tells me both that my 5 to 10 milligrams a day is a good place for me to go and all of our support for continued research is a good call.

Greg Gerdeman: I think so.

Shango Los: With that we are going to take another short break and be right back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

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Now, back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast.

Welcome back. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I am your host, Shango Los. Our guest this week is endocannabinoid researcher and author, Dr. Greg Gerdeman.

In the first segment, we talked about the nature of the endocannabinoid system and what it is and how to feed and water it. Then, in the second part, we talked about the importance of endocannabinoid research and how it is coming into the public consciousness. A great deal of the people who are listening to this show are entrepreneurs who want to make the most of cannabis normalization by both bringing a good product to market that also helps patients.

Greg, can you give us an of how best entrepreneurs, who want to be able to deliver a product that is rich with CBD to help feed the endocannabinoid system, can do that?

Greg Gerdeman: Yeah. Thanks. I think that is a great question. Personally, I am excited to see how much companies and entrepreneurs are taking to trying to educate patients and the public. I see so much talk about the endocannabinoid system within the context of cannabis businesses that as an educator, I am excited about it. They’re talking science. That needs to keep up. Building inroads to help educate physicians about that and normalize their concepts of CBD and endocannabinoid-based medicines is key.

Speaking of products, one of the things I am really excited about is the progress moving forward with non-psychoactive topicals, whether it is CBD or the acids like THCA, CBDA. There is so much potential there. As a great personal case in point, I have been invited to give a keynote continuing medical education accredited lecture at a Congress of Clinical Rheumatology at a conference in Destin, Florida next month. It is one of the largest conferences of clinical rheumatologists, mainstream docs that don’t study cannabis and I am giving a talk on cannabis and cannabinoid biology. I am thrilled to be asked. The point is these are doctors who I am going to try to focus on immune system modulating effects, the notion of topicals that are not psychoactive at all, and it does help to break down these barriers to understanding the cannabinoid system as a therapeutic system. Personally, I think as that sort of health care normalization goes on, more physicians will understand that we really know a lot about its effects in the brain and its psychoactivity as well and it will be less scary.

Shango Los: Putting myself in the shoes of a product developer, I would think that I would be excited about pretty much taking any edible product I am making, whether it be a tincture or a capsule or an actual tasty snack edible, and just put 5 to 10 milligrams per serving, just add it to it as a supplement and that way, whether it is a patient and they need the CBD or if they are a recreational user and are using cannabis for its stress-relief and life quality enhancements, either one is going to be benefiting from having 5 milligrams of cannabinoids added to whatever they are ingesting. Would you agree with that?

Greg Gerdeman: Yeah, I think so. Of course, if you are talking about THC proper, 5 milligrams can be high for people. That is not really what you are talking about.

Shango Los: No. No. No. I am talking about the non-psychoactive family.

Greg Gerdeman: Right.

Shango Los: Like cannabidiol.

Greg Gerdeman: It makes sense. I am not going to be an expert to talk about the balancing act that has to be worked with the FDA vis-a-vis dietary supplements or treating some sort of condition but speaking commonsensically, absolutely. I agree with you 100%.

Shango Los: Right on. Right on. The last question before we wrap up here is as a product developer and let’s say that I am growing a high CBD strain, for example ACDC or Remedy, and so I am not growing it for its THC content. I am growing it for its cannabidiol and other cannabinoids. Are there certain processes of extraction that degrade the cannabinoids that they are trying to deliver to their customers? Are there specific extraction methods that just walk all over cannabinoids that we would want to avoid?

Greg Gerdeman: Gosh. I am learning more and more about the actual hands on extraction methods. I think mostly it is avoiding heat and that those methods that will start to generate high heat certainly will enhance the rate of oxidizing and breaking down the cannabinoids into something that you may not want and not hitting your desired target because I think it is certainly important to know what is in there, at least from a medical perspective and if we want to track of time, like I said, research what works and what doesn’t. It is really important to know what’s in there.

Extraction methods, there are lots of really great experiments going on with extraction methods. Certainly, myself intuitively am opposed to the butane and other hydrocarbons as extraction methods. That doesn’t make sense to me as a health-promoting thing. Otherwise, there are lots of different things that can be done with cold alcohols and super critical fluid extraction and just sort of slow-pressing it into oils of choice or the solventless sort of hash methods. I think that is why these vertically integrated systems, although we hope to get into that in Florida, it is not really what Florida should do. There should be a rich entrepreneurial market to try these different artisanal sort of products and let the entrepreneurs help figure all of that out by open dialogue.

Shango Los: It also sounds like almost a commercial for Rosin Tech and just trying to squish flowers into oils since it’s mostly friction and weight and very little heat at all.

Greg Gerdeman: Yeah. They’ve got an angle. Sure.

Shango Los: That’s all the time we have for today, unfortunately. I have really enjoyed having you on the show there, Dr. Greg Gerdeman. You have such an elegant way of explaining the endocannabinoid system. I think it makes it really accessible. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Greg Gerdeman: It is my pleasure. Thank you. I hope to be speaking more. I am working on a book. I hope to be out there more and more. I really appreciate being on this show.

Shango Los: To find out more about Dr. Greg Gerdeman, you can simply do a Google search, which will bring you several articles, interviews, and a few videos. You can also connect with him directly via email if you want at glgerdeman@gmail.com. You can find out more about his work with 3 Boys Farm at their website, 3boysfarm.com. That is with the number 3. If you want to learn more about the endocannabinoid system, you can go all the way back to episode number three of the Ganjapreneur podcast with Dr. Ethan Russo, where we discussed the science behind endocannabinoid deficiency and its impacts on health.

You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur podcast in the podcast section at Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest cannabis news, product reviews, and cannabis jobs, updated daily, along with transcriptions of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. Do you have a company that wants to reach our national audience of cannabis enthusiasts? Email grow@ganjapreneur.com to find our how. Today’s show was produced by Pat Packett. I am your host, Shango Los.

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Maine Cannabis Legalization Initiative Will Appear on Nov. Ballot

4/28/2016

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Cannabis legalization advocates in Maine have successfully cleared the hurdles of getting a recreational marijuana initiative approved for this November’s ballot, according to an Associated Press report. The referendum initiative now goes to lawmakers, who can either approve the proposal straight out or wait and let voters decide come November.

The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which is backed by the Marijuana Policy Project, submitted nearly 100,000 signatures last month after a lengthy petition.

While the initiative only required 61,123 valid signatures to be approved for the ballot, a legal challenge made by Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap nearly brought the whole campaign crashing to the ground. Dunlap originally rejected the initiative, saying that a faulty notary signature had led to more than 17,000 invalid signatures. Per Dunlap’s count, after the systematic disqualification of thousands of signatures, the campaign was still about 10,000 short.

Advocates challenged the rejection, filing a lawsuit against the petition’s disqualification. A Superior Court judge then ruled that it was unfair to disqualify signatures over slight differences in a notary’s handwriting, and sent the petition back to the secretary of state for reconsideration. Dunlap announced Wednesday that an additional 11,305 signatures had been approved, meaning the MPP-backed proposal was approved for November’s ballot.

David Boyer, Maine’s political director for the MPP, said, “We think that regulation and controlling marijuana and putting it behind the counter is a far better approach than giving drug dealers a monopoly.”

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LCB Work Group to Tackle Pesticide Regulations, Lab Proficiency Standards

4/27/2016

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The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) has organized the formation of a lab proficiency standards and pesticides focused work group comprised of regulators, industry leaders and cannabis lab specialists.

The group, whose first meeting takes place this Thursday in Olympia, will work to determine lab proficiency standards for Washington’s cannabis testing labs, as well as how to proceed with the regulatory control of pesticide use on legal cannabis crops.

Jeremy Moberg, owner of CannaSol Farms in Okanogan County, said in a phone interview this is likely the first time the LCB has organized a collaborative effort between enforcement agencies, industry representatives and the testing labs themselves. Moberg was invited by the LCB to Thursday’s work group.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “The working group is meant to collaborate varying opinions from parts of the industry.”

The pesticides issue has vexed regulators for some time, and with marijuana product recalls now an alarming reality in both the Washington and Colorado markets, Thursday’s work group will seek to safeguard Washington consumers from dangerous pesticides while fostering growth in the industry.

Currently, all regulations for pesticide use on agricultural products fall under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Because cannabis remains federally prohibited, however, this has led to particularly restrictive limitations for commercial marijuana growers. The Washington State Department of Agriculture has announced a list of approved pesticides for commercial cannabis growers — on an agricultural scale, however, the options are minimal.

According to a document issued by the LCB last September:

Use of a pesticide on marijuana is allowed if:

  • The active ingredient is exempt from the requirements of a tolerance on all food crops (e.g., auxins, biopesticides [most active ingredients], copper, cytokinins, gibberellins, petroleum oil, phosphorous acid, pyrethrins, soap, sulfur), and
  • The label has directions for use on unspecified food crops, home gardens or herbs (outdoor or enclosed), including unspecified food crops or herbs grown as bedding plants. (Marijuana will not be specifically listed as a crop on the pesticide label.)

Thursday’s meeting will be the first of several sessions aimed at taking control of cannabis pesticides on a local level. The group also will likely discuss whether or not further pesticides should be approved for commercial growers. The absence of federal legalization, however, complicates things.

“The biggest issue in front of the federal government is consumer safety,” Moberg told Ganjapreneur. “And the biggest problem we have is that states are not able to regulate pesticides to ensure public safety is met in this industry. It’s actually illegal for states to regulate pesticides.”

“[Cannabis] is a crop that’s both consumed orally and inhaled, and there’s a lot to be studied there,” he said. “My fear is the federal government goes through all of this and comes up with a laundry list of toxic pesticides that are someday going to be allowed on cannabis.”

Moberg hopes the work group will reach an agreement to guarantee safety for Washington consumers from potentially toxic pesticides.

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Nebraska and Oklahoma Seek to Join Court Challenge Against Colorado Cannabis Laws

4/27/2016

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The attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma have filed a motion to be added to two existing lawsuits attempting to shutter Colorado’s legal marijuana program, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to dismiss a lawsuit by the states last month.

If the motion is approved, Nebraska and Oklahoma would be added to the suit brought by sheriffs in Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, and owners of a horse ranch in Pueblo County, Colorado. Those cases were both independently dismissed by a lower court but the plaintiffs have asked for an appeal, which will be heard by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, according to The Denver Post. Both appeals requests were merged into a single suit.

The Colorado suits share a common plaintiff – D.C.-based Safe Streets Alliance – and argue that federal drug law should supersede state law. The border states’ lawsuit alleges that Colorado’s legalization of cannabis violates their sovereignty and has forced them to spend more money on law enforcement due to the increased number of people caught bringing marijuana into their states.

The suit by the horse ranchers focuses on their rights under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The statute aims to eliminate “the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce.” Additionally, the ranchers say a neighboring marijuana cultivation facility – which they refer to as “an illegal drug conspiracy” – impedes their views and interferes with construction plans on their 105-acre property.

The Appeals Court will decide if it will add the states to the suit, but no timeline on that decision is available.

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Hawaii Resolution to Study Drug Decriminalization Passes Senate

4/27/2016

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Hawaii’s House and Senate have approved a resolution requesting that the Legislative Reference Bureau examine the potential impact of decriminalizing some drugs, including marijuana and marijuana concentrates, according to a Marijuana.com report.

In addition to marijuana, the scope of the study would include Schedule III, IV and V drugs. Drugs such as heroin and ecstasy are Schedule I, along with cannabis, but will not be included in the research. Schedule II drugs, such as methamphetamine and cocaine, are also excluded.

The original version of the resolution introduced in the House included Schedule I and II drugs, however the version approved by the Senate limited the program to include only offenses pertaining  “to the illegal possession of a harmful drug, detrimental drug, marijuana or marijuana concentrate.”

The amended resolution will head back to the House, who passed the measure 37-7 last month, where it will need to be voted on again before it is official.

“We shall see what the House has to say about this, they wanted ALL drugs to be part of the study and it was their resolution,” Carl Bergquist of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai’i, told Marijuana.com.

In testimony to the House Committee of Judiciary, DPFHI wrote that decriminalizing drug possession for personal use would decrease the state’s prison population, treat drug addicts instead of incarceration, and free up law enforcement to deal with more “pressing issues.”

The study would be due later this year in order to be ready for the legislature’s 2017 session.

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King County, WA Passes Moratorium on New Marijuana Businesses

4/26/2016

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Seattle’s Metropolitan King County Council has approved a four-month moratorium on applications for cannabis producers, processors, and retailers in unincorporated areas of King County.

The emergency bill, drafted by Council Vice Chair Reagan Dunn, was written to address concerns about a recent increase in the number of applicants seeking approval to operate in rural parts of unincorporated King County. Council members are concerned that allowing production in these areas could violate King County’s rural zoning laws.

“For unincorporated communities in King County, the Council acts as the local government,” said Dunn. “It is therefore our job to make sure we are adequately serving and protecting the areas we represent. This moratorium will give us more time to study this issue in more depth and potentially make changes to better preserve rural communities.”

Rural zoning laws in King County were written with the intent to “preserve the rural character” of unincorporated areas. Rural residents have voiced concerns about the potential impact of cannabis production facilities in their communities, such as neighborhood crime, smells, noise, and environmental dangers.

The King County Council will study the potential for these during the moratorium, which began April 25th. The moratorium does not affect areas within city limits.

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