Month: February 2013

Meet the Former NASA Scientist Who’s Teaching Coloradans How to Grow Marijuana Legally

Jeannie Herer


 
Dale J. Chamberlain’s High Altitude School of Hydroponics (HASH) courses are specifically designed to comply with Colorado’s new cannabis law.
nasascientist.jpg
High Altitude School of Hydroponics
Even though Colorado passed Constitutional Amendment 64 legalizing the use of marijuana in November, it’s still a crime to sell cannabis in the state. Sure, plenty of charitable Coloradans on Craigslist will accept “donations” for doobie. And others are happy to barter. But what if you don’t have a pair of old shoes to trade for weed? How can one score an ounce of super-frosty Golden Goat in Colorado and not run afoul of the law? Former NASA scientist Dale J. Chamberlain has the answer. He’ll teach you to grow it yourself, at his (acronym alert) High Altitude School of Hydroponics outside Ft. Collins.
 
Full Article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/meet-the-former-nasa-scientist-whos-teaching-coloradans-how-to-grow-marijuana-legally/273559/

Parrish couple cultivated medical marijuana for 10 years before this week’s bust

Jeannie Herer

By ELIZABETH JOHNSON — ejohnson@bradenton.com
 

MANATEE — For 10 years, Cathy Jordan and her husband, Robert, have grown her medicine of choice in the backyard at their Parrish home.
Cathy Jordan began regularly smoking cannabis to curb her symptoms since 1989, three years after she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, reducing her pharmaceutical medications from nine to one. Jordan, like most people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), was expected to live three to five years with the condition. It’s been 27.
“I’m asking for my right to life,” Cathy Jordan said. “It’s life or death for me. I don’t have a way to live. You can’t just offer people a way to die.”
Her supply of South African Power Plant Plus, a Sativa and Indica blended strain of marijuana, was seized Monday afternoon. Detectives from the Manatee Coun
ty Sheriff’s Special Investigations Division confiscated two mature plants and 21 seedlings after receiving a complaint that marijuana was being grown at the home.
Dave Bristow, sheriff’s office spokesman, said the office rarely deals in cases of medicinal marijuana, and was unsure if the more than 20 plants found was normal. The Jordans say it is.
“It’s not greed, it’s need,” Robert Jordan said. “It takes so long to mature, you have to have some ready to use and some to replace it.”
The Jordans usually grow a crop in the winter to get Cathy Jordan through the summer months. Cathy Jordan starts her morning with a cup of coffee, then one or two rolled joints before having breakfast. She will have another joint after dinner or before bed, depending on how she feels.
The cannabis acts as a muscle relaxer, an anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant and appetite enhancer. It’s also clears her bronchial tubes of phlegm, which often causes fatal suffocation of people with ALS.
“It is literally saving her life,” Robert Jordan said.

Full Article:

Federal Bill Would Legalize Medical Marijuana

Jeannie Herer

A bipartisan group of 13 U.S. House members on Monday introduced the States’ Medical Marijuana Patients Protection Act, allowing medical marijuana patients and businesses to access and distribute cannabis without federal interference in states that have voted to legalize pot to relieve pain and suffering.
 
Full Article:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/02/25/medical-marijuana-bill-introduced-in-congress/

Poll: 7 in 10 back Florida medical-marijuana plan, enough to possibly affect governor’s race

Jeannie Herer

BY MARC CAPUTO MCAPUTO@MIAMIHERALD.COM
 
As many as seven in 10 Florida voters support a state constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana – more than enough to ensure passage and possibly affect the governor’s race — according to a new poll from a group trying to put the measure on the 2104 ballot.
Medical pot’s sky-high approval cuts across party and demographic lines, with Republican support the lowest at a still-strong 56 percent, the poll conducted for People United for Medical Marijuana, or PUFMM, shows.
 
Full Article:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253273/poll-7-in-10-back-fl-medical-marijuana.html
 

American Botanical Council announces James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award recipients

Jeannie Herer

‘Medicinal Plants and the Legacy of Richard E. Schultes’ and ‘Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana’ are this year’s recipients of the American Botanical Council’s (ABC) James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award.
 
Full Article:
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Industry/ABC-announces-James-A.-Duke-Excellence-in-Botanical-Literature-Award-recipients

Even Louisiana is seeing that drug offenders need a break

Jeannie Herer

By James Gill, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
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Gov. Bobby Jindal, along with lawmakers and justice system stakeholders, held a press conference in Baton Rouge Feb. 15 to announce a series of legislative proposals aimed at reducing recidivism among drug offenders and improving services and programs for juveniles. (Photo by Lauren McGaughy/NOLA.com|The Times-Picayune))
 
It might take Louisiana 100 years to follow the lead of Colorado and Washington, which legalized marijuana possession a few months ago, but even here a liberal whiff is in the air. It is a very faint one, because, when we elected Bobby Jindal governor, the idea was not to turn Baton Rouge over to a bunch of hippies. Even though he claimed to have witnessed an exorcism, mind-altering substances did not appear to be his bag. He has always been the model of a law-and-order Republican.
But the times are a-changing, and it is no longer regarded as subversive to suggest that locking up penny-ante offenders and throwing away the key might not be the most enlightened policy. Now, here comes Jindal to propose somewhat less prison and more probation and treatment. It is about time. Louisiana locks up a higher percentage of its citizens for drug offenses, for longer terms, than anywhere else. The average sentence for possession here, on first and second offense, is four years.
It costs a lot to destroy so many lives — we imprisoned 1,350 first- and second-timers in 2010 and 2011 — and financial considerations will help drive any reforms.
Jindal is still not reaching for the kid gloves. He plans to focus on “rehabilitating those who can be rehabilitated – non-violent, non-habitual offenders.” He might as well have said “those who don’t need to be rehabilitated,” because such folks would not be caught up in a rational criminal justice system. Let them enjoy an occasional toke in peace while we concentrate on criminals who pose a threat.
Jindal proposes more drug courts, where offenders are given probation and may qualify to have their records expunged. The recidivism rate in such courts, of which we currently have 48, is 3.2 percent, whereas drug offenders sent to prison are 10 times more likely to be convicted again. Statistics don’t get less surprising than that.
 
Full Article:
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2013/02/even_louisiana_is_seeing_that.html#incart_river

OSU to offer course on hemp

Jeannie Herer

By Don Iler
 
Oregon State University will be offering the first course in industrial hemp beginning spring term. The course will be offered online and is the first of its kind in the world.
The three-credit course, WSE 266, is being offered by the College of Forestry’s department of wood science and engineering and will be coordinated by Anndrea Hermann, an instructor in the college.
“It’s an up and coming crop in the United States and we are going to need professionals coming out of academia who are experts in multiple areas,” Hermann said.
Cultivation of hemp is currently illegal in the United States, although importation of it is legal. Hemp is a non-psychoactive relative of cannabis sativa indica or marijuana, and can be used for a variety of purposes. Hemp was once widely grown in the United States but has been banned by the federal government for more than 50 years.
Hermann said hemp can be used in a variety of different applications, from making paper and textiles to food products and biofuels, and the industry stands to grow in the near future. Sales of hemp products exceeded $452 million last year according to the Hemp Industries Association.
Hermann said a variety of students would benefit from the class, anyone from food science students to those interested in fashion and textiles.
 
Full Article:
http://www.dailybarometer.com/osu-to-offer-course-on-hemp-1.2994547#.USp6qqL-fFJ

(Yonhap Feature) Korea’s forgotten high times

Jeannie Herer

By Jason Strother

Screen shot from an anti-marijuana public service announcement circa mid-1970s
 
Like any young art student, Kim Woo-jin sought inspiration wherever he could find it. He studied ceramics at university during the mid-1970s, a time of economic and cultural upheaval in South Korea. Kim says he was a freshman when upperclassmen showed him how to expand his creative horizons.
“A lot of art students were smoking marijuana at the time It made ​​me more focused and I felt that I could do anything,” says Kim, who asked that his real name not be used. “We did not feel any shame or guilt about smoking marijuana, back then it was not considered a social problem”    Smoking marijuana was not uncommon for Koreans like Kim who came of age in the 1960s and 70s. But for the youth of today, it is an almost unthinkable taboo. For the few who have tried it, experimentation occurs overseas and is not a story they share with friends upon returning home. Celebrities who admit to smoking are publically shamed and face vicious attacks by Jaded fans on Internet message boards    Korea, in fact, has a long history with cannabis, and one that seems to be all but forgotten. Marijuana, known in Korean as “daema,” was once found growing wild throughout the countryside. It lined the sides of dirt roads as a dust guard for homes. It was one of Korea’s largest cash crops, cultivated to make hemp for numerous products including the “hanbok,” Korea’s traditional costume, as well as funeral shrouds. The plant’s seeds were and still are considered a remedy for constipation by practitioners of Korean traditional medicine, and steamed seeds could be found in some herbal markets.
 
Full Article:
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/n_feature/2013/02/14/16/4901000000AEN20130214003200315F.HTML