Cannabis

Free to be you and me

Andrew Lam
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0
Free to be you and me

caitlin@sfbg.com

FREE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Like many progressive organization, this year-old network of unpaid teachers and unpaying students has found new energy in Occupy’s protests. Unlike many, it’s not stumbling when it comes to the next step in the movement. FUSF has teamed with Occupiers to develop its upcoming round of five-week classes, which will start in February. At press time, courses included “Introduction to Political Economy,” a class on subversive writers, and Chuck Sperry’s “Occupy Art” guide to bringing down the system with propaganda design.

Spring term: Feb. 5-March 4. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Viracocha, 998 Valencia, SF. www.freeuniversitysf.org

IMPACT BAY AREA

Some education strengthens your mind — some education strengthens your soul. Into the latter category falls self defense non-profit Impact Bay Area’s free-to-the-public “Introduction to Personal Safety” classes. Open to ages 12 and up at Sports Basements across the Bay Area, the course teaches you how to keep your eyes open when walking the neighborhoods, with the end goal of living life with less fear and more fun.

Next class: Feb. 8, 6-8 p.m. Register at www.eventbrite.com/event/2704831223. Sports Basement, 1590 Bryant, SF. www.impactbayarea.org

EAST BAY FREE SKOOL

Not to state the obvious, but we live in the Bay Area. Henceforth, we can stop looking at learning the Spanish language as an extracurricular activity, and more as something that we can do to bring our community closer together. That’s exactly the motivation behind the East Bay Free Skool’s Spanish-English Collective, an educational meet-up which unites bilingual teachers and students for some real pragmatic, communication-based learning. Free Skool is big on knowledge that brings the 99 percent together — check its website for other amazing free classes, from anti-gentrification workshops to herbal medicine primers.

Various venues, Bay Area. tiny.cc/ebfreeskool

CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO

At many of CCSF’s 10-plus campuses across the city, you can take courses absolutely free of charge — and sign up for them at any point in the semester. What can you learn? GED prep, introductory construction skills, economics, US contemporary writers, and tai chi, to name but a few of the offerings. How has this vast resource network escaped the chopping block in California’s beleaguered public school system? We almost don’t want to press the issues — let’s just sign up while these courses still exist.

Various campuses, SF. www.ccsf.edu

CW ANALYTICAL

You’ve planted your own garden, gotten your card, and are committed to heightening endocannabinoid levels in your medical marijuana patient family and friends — but do you really know what you’re doing making weed edibles? This marijuana laboratory offers intermittent classes for the cannabis food newbie or vet that teach about quality control, presentation, and applicable regulations.

Next class: “Labeling Your Medical Edible,” Jan. 19, noon. RSVP to reserve class space and to emily@cwanalytical.com. (510) 545-6984, www.cwanalytical.com

 

By the roots

Andrew Lam
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0
By the roots

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Where (besides this column, of course) do you get the latest on marijuana? When it comes to distributing accurate information about buds, Steph Sherer, executive director of medical cannabis advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA), makes no bones about her organization’s role. “Most of our members depend on us for news,” she told the Guardian in a recent phone interview.

Even when clashes between marijuana proponents and the government are brought to light — not always a given in this political climate — Sherer finds the one note handling of cannabis issues by the mainstream media troubling. “[Cannabis] gets thrown on [journalists covering] judicial beats instead of getting picked up by the human interest, or the health and science side of things,” she said.

ASA’s response to this dearth of useful reporting on cannabis was to develop a free iPhone application that serves as a media catch-all for medical marijuana advocates. At no cost, anyone concerned with losing their right to access their medicine safely — or who wants to learn the latest about the sticky green — can now download an interface that pulls together news updates, alerts for upcoming political actions, and materials that can add to one’s activism repertoire; things like phone numbers for legal counsel and advocacy training videos.

For Sherer, the app has the potential to empower the people in the crossfire of the ongoing clashes between the federal government and state-legal growing and retail facilities: patients. “We are creating a platform that empowers people to be their own advocate. The people who can advocate for this the best are the people who are affected.” 

ASA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR STEPH SHERER’S TOP 6 CANNABIS STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED IN 2011

1. In March, the National Cancer Institute recognized marijuana’s medical benefit, classifying it as a “complementary alternative medicine.” Days later, the reference was diluted on its website, per the recommendation of the National Institutes on Drug Abuse.

2. After Obama’s Justice Department fought their appeal, Californian breast cancer survivor Dr. Mollie Frye and her husband were sent to prison in April for five years because of their state-legal growing operation.

3. In October, California patient advocates sued the Obama Administration for violating the 10th Amendment by coercing and obstructing local and state officials, preventing them from implementing medical marijuana laws.

4. The governors of Washington State and Rhode Island petitioned the federal government to reschedule cannabis to allow for medical use.

5. In Connecticut and New Jersey, governors continue to move forward with cannabis access legislation despite threats from US Attorneys.

6. 63-year old Norman Smith uses cannabis to mitigate the symptoms of his inoperable liver cancer. Smith is being denied a transplant from Los Angeles’ Cedar Sinai Medical Center until he agrees to stop using cannabis.

 

What the new year brings

Andrew Lam
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0
What the new year brings

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE 2011 was a harsh year for medical marijuana. During its first half, the number of California dispensaries burgeoned. But a federal crackdown in September has left much of the industry shaking in its buds. By bombarding landlords with cease-and-desist letters threatening 40 years of jail time if they continue to let marijuana be sold on their property, the Department of Justice has effectively closed down walk-up operations for many smaller dispensaries.

But as we head into the year of the Mayan overhaul, one thing seems certain: advocates for safe and available access to medical cannabis aren’t going anywhere. How can they? Since Proposition 215 made it legal in 1996, 200,000 Californians have gotten physician recommendations to alleviate health concerns with marijuana. People use it for chronic pain, to make it through chemotherapy, for multiple sclerosis, severe anxiety.

“We can’t wait for the federal government to do the right thing in California,” said the state director of Americans for Safe Access Don Duncan. “As the state of California gets its marijuana house in order there will be less incentive for the feds to come in.”

Duncan and his organization were co-authors of the Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act — a unified voter initiative that was turned in to the California Secretary of State’s office last Wednesday, Dec. 21. Other contributors include NORML, the California Cannabis Association, the Humboldt Growers Associations, and the United Food and Commercial Workers — the union that now represents workers across the state, including Oaksterdam University employees.

“We’re hoping that this policy will reassure people that we can have a rational system,” continued Duncan in a phone interview with the Guardian. Duncan is convinced that the recent aggression by the Obama administration can be traced to people’s discomfort with the industry’s wild growth, and that a good faith effort to institute a comprehensive regulation system will assuage people’s confusion and fears about marijuana.

His initiative calls for the establishment of a centralized bureau of medical marijuana enforcement, to be comprised of 21 members from various state government offices, patients, advocates, a physician, a nurse, individuals from the marijuana research and policy fields and six people with experience in dispensary operations.

The bureau would be in charge of cannabis registration, industry regulations, and the use of funds that are generated by administrative fees. The initiative also calls for a sales tax of 2.5 percent on medical marijuana retail sales and states that cities — unless voters approve other guidelines — must follow a minimum zoning restriction of a dispensary for every 50,000 people.

In January, a campaign supporting the initiative will begin to drum up awareness. Backers are hoping that by instituting stricter and more consistent controls of dispensaries and growing operations, 2012 will look a lot brighter for the 200,000 Californians that have relied on their marijuana prescription to live their lives.

“I think this is really going to resonate with voters,” said Duncan. “We just need for officials to be able to step outside the controversy of it all.” It’s a hopeful stance. Let’s see how it holds up in the roiling of the upcoming election year.

Small town values

Andrew Lam
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0
Small town values

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE When we arranged to meet Fairfax (population 7,500) councilperson Larry Bragman, he suggested a rendezvous at “the coffeeshop.” When asked to be more specific, he clarified he meant Fairfax Coffee Roastery. “But you’ll see it, it’s right there.”

Bragman is a San Francisco-educated attorney who began coming to the small Marin County town decades ago. He’s been on town council — whose members pass around the title of mayor every year — since 2003. He was mayor in November, when the four-member council passed Resolution No. 11-58.

Bragman’s voice clogs a little with emotion when asked why the resolution was passed. “I don’t understand how you can justify a policy that denies help for patients that are going through that kind of hardship and suffering.”

The only medical marijuana dispensary in Fairfax, which is located in the county with the breast cancer rate in women is nearly 50 percent — closed its doors last weekend. The Department of Justice’s Melinda Haag sent a letter to the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana’s landlord, the likes of which are all too familiar to the medical cannabis industry nowadays.

The dispensary was located in a school zone. Landlord Fred Ezazi had 45 days to evict the dispensary, it said, or he would face up to 45 years in prison or civil forfeiture. (See 12/14/11’s Herbwise column “For the kids?” about an SF dispensary that received a similar notice)

“It feels like a violation,” says Bragman when asked how it feels to be a small town politician being railroaded by federal agencies. Resolution No. 11-58 supports the Alliance and other California dispensaries’ right to continue business. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a similar resolution in October.

Bragman insists that the policies his city developed to regulate the Alliance were exemplary. When the dispensary was founded by longtime marijuana activist Lynette Shaw shortly after Proposition 215 passed, Fairfax “had the foresight and courage to create the first use permit in the state of California [for a marijuana dispensary],” says Bragman. When called for comment, the city’s finance director Michael Vivrette said the Alliance was one of the top ten sales tax contributors in a town struggling with budgetary woes.

Later, we walk the three blocks to the Alliance, which is (was) located on a quiet street next to a Little League field in a non-descript office building. You have to walk up a flight of stairs and peer inside its windows to even know what it is.

A few despondent marijuana patients lingered in the waiting room, sadfaced and bewildered that the space would soon be gone. “I thought that a press blackout meant that we wouldn’t talk to press,” a woman spits at me when I ask the man at the front desk when they would be closing. It was hard to be frustrated with her truculence.

Bragman went so far as to call Haag to try to reason with her letter’s logic. “I said ‘you’re going to encourage the black market traffickers which we all know are a threat to the community. It’s unbelievable. It’s just so stupid.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article identified the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana as Marin County’s only cannabis dispensary. It is not, and we regret the error

For the kids?

Andrew Lam
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2
For the kids?

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Mission District dispensary Medithrive has started doing home deliveries. Since Nov. 22 its medical marijuana patients can have buds, tinctures, Auntie Dolores’ brownie bits, and more delivered straight to their apartment doors.

So why are Medithrive customers and staff members peeved? Because the new feature isn’t an expansion in services — it’s a forced shift in the co-op’s business structure. The dispensary was compelled to close its doors on 1933 Mission Street after a Sept. 28 letter from Department of Justice attorney Melinda Haag threatened its landlord with jail time if Medithrive didn’t cease operations in the space within 45 days. (Full disclosure: Medithrive is a Guardian advertiser)

The feds’ given reason was Medithrive’s proximity to Marshall Elementary School, located a 745-foot walk (according to Google Maps) from the dispensary door.

But Marshall’s principal Peter Avila wasn’t consulted on the matter. When called for comment by the Guardian, he said that he had bigger safety concerns.

“Right next door to Medithrive is a liquor store,” Avila said, adding that there is also a methadone clinic across the street from his school. “We have to deal with people passed out on the property, people smoking — those are more the issues than people buying medical marijuana.”

The principal says he patrols Marshall’s immediate neighborhood three to four times a day, dealing with drug addicts, people with mental problems, and the Mission’s homeless population. He called the dispensary “discreet” and never saw any cannabis usage by dispensary patients. Indeed: “They looked pretty much like the people who were coming out of the Walgreens [down the street].” In the past, Medithrive has offered to sponsor health education at Marshall.

Regardless, the dispensary’s Mission Streets doors are shuttered now. On many days, a staff member stands outside, handing out flyers announcing the delivery service to customers unaware that walk-up sales have ceased.

“We’re actually not in such a unique position,” said Medithrive community outreach liaison Hunter Holliman. The Tenderloin’s Divinity Tree and the Mission’s Mr. Nice Guy dispensaries also closed their doors this autumn in light of similar school zone notifications sent to their landlords. The landlord of Marin County marijuana activist Lynnette Shaw, founder of Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, was also hit. Shaw intends to fight to stay open.

Holliman says the shift to delivery services has been unexpectedly popular with Medithrive’s customers and allows the dispensary to service patients unable to physically access the storefront location — but it’s not without its challenges. Operations have been transient since the co-op is unable to even stage deliveries from the space on Mission Street. The day that the Guardian called, a voicemail informed patients that due to high call volume they’d have to leave a message so that dispensary staff could call them back. Once contacted by a helpful “budtender,” it took a little over an hour for the order to arrive.

Although Medithrive let go of many employees in its initial closure, it’s hired nearly all back in the transition to the labor-intensive delivery services. The dispensary is still hoping to secure another brick and mortar location, but permitting for new dispensaries has stalled at the city level.

Even if the dispensary’s been booted from its space, at least Medithrive patients still have access to medical cannabis — for now. Holliman is convinced that Bay Area dispensaries haven’t seen the end of legal challenges. “I’m sure there’s more to come,” he said grimly. “The feds are really serious about this.” 

Medithrive’s delivery-only menu is available at www.medithrive.com

Michael Goldstein, 1953-2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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7
Michael Goldstein, 1953-2011

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco lost a valued champion of progressive causes on Dec. 2 when Michael Goldstein lost his battle with stage 4 lymphoma after surviving nearly 20 years living with HIV, a disease that helped awaken his political activism.

Michael was born in 1953 in New Mexico, where he was raised. His grandparents had come to New Mexico after surviving the Holocaust, and Michael came to the San Francisco in the early 1980s. Like many gay men of his generation, Michael came here to find community, to create family, and to be welcomed when much of the country was still hostile to the LGBT community.

He worked at Neiman Marcus, dressing “the San Francisco A list,” as he used to say. He studied at City College towards a paralegal certificate and was heavily involved in student politics. He landed a job at AIDS Legal Research Panel, where he worked when he was diagnosed HIV-positive in the mid-’80s.

The news hit hard, and the treatment he began took its toll. The HIV drugs were harsh then and there were many horrible side-effects with these early drugs. At that time, there was very little information or education about HIV/AIDS and there was even less support, from families and from the public.

Our San Francisco political community became Michael’s family. He was also blessed with an amazing friend in Lorae Lauritch. They worked together at NM, became roommates, and lived together with some incredible cats that were dear to him, including Paloma, Huey, Cadeau, and Missy.

Michael was a proud feminist who valued the women in his life and community, leading him to endorse a pair of successive female candidates for the Castro’s District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors: Eileen Hansen in 2002 and Alix Rosenthal in 2006.

Over the years, Michael served as an elected member of the Democratic County Central Committee (serving as vice president), served as President of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and was appointed to a San Francisco City College citizen oversight board, where his questioning helped bring attention to mishandling of funds at that institution.

Michael was determined, opinionated, persistent, intolerant of bullshit, prickly, always questioning. He challenged us all to move a common agenda, come together beyond our own personal ambitions, but to also never back down out of convenience or feigned civility. “Civility doesn’t make change,” he often said.

I came to know Michael as many came to know him. Michael always showed up in support of every one of our causes. He not only showed up, he advised, opined, debated, argued, protested, got arrested, drafted policy, and so much more. Campaign after campaign, issue after issue — our friendships grew around our passion for politics, our deep concerns about everything, and a strong and unwavering belief that anyone can help make change.

Michael believed that and Michael lived that.

In the past few years, many of us noticed that Michael wasn’t feeling well. We pushed him to go to the doctor. This is a man who spent hours fighting to push through HIV/AIDS policy and funding, healthcare reform, Healthy SF — and he did not have healthcare, had not seen a doctor in nearly 10 years, and was not treating his HIV.

As many know, Michael and I were like brother and sister…often bickering back and forth on whatever was going on. We “debated” like the dear friends we had become. His lack of healthcare was one of the more important issues I would bring up often. As a long term survivor of this condition, Michael knew the score.

As the symptoms of this disease ravaged his body, he retreated from us and attempted to make sense of the unimaginable alone.

Finally at the end of September, Michael was admitted to General Hospital. With the amazing care of Ward 5A, Diane Jones, and all the amazing General Hospital workers, as well as Laguna Honda Staff and at his final resting place UCSF — his care, though coming too late, was the best in the world and gave Michael a fighting chance. He was clearly comforted and supported by his community in his final days, support that mattered so much to him.

If you knew Michael, you know there is a “what comes out of this” part. We all got to really see the results of the hard work we all participated in to rebuild General Hospital, to rebuild Laguna Honda, and to provide healthcare access to everyone, even the poorest among us. Michael, personally, was able to experience the fruits of our collective labor over these years.

He also experienced some areas where there really is a need for some work. We need to remember that AIDS/HIV is still killing people every day. We must improve people’s access to healthcare. We need to protect patients’ access to medical cannabis, even in General Hospital. We need services and we need housing, particularly affordable housing for those who need it, people struggling through this bad economy.

These are our issues and this is our agenda on the left that we have been fighting for.

I will never forget Michael. One of the last real discussions we had about politics was around election time, with Michael remembering the 2010 elections. Michael was probably more upset about what has come out of that election — the beginning of a political shift to the right in San Francisco — than many.

He has been such an integral part of the work that brought our progressive community together and he was devastated by the events tearing it apart. More than anything, he wanted to bring us together, but he ran out of time.

Michael had an agenda. His agenda was to move forward our agenda. It is time to come together and do that.

Debra Walker is an artist, activist, DCCC member, and city commissioner who ran for the District 6 seat on the Board of Supervisors last year.

You grow, girl?

Andrew Lam
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0
You grow, girl?

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The average celebrity autobiography follows an arc of learning and growing. The earnestly-made mistake — whether in the form of childhood shenanigan or adult infidelity — and then the ensuing redemption. But rarely do book-sized treatises emerge from the decision to leave the celebrity fold for the greener fields of bud agriculture. Leave it to the girl from the Blair Witch Project to produce that one.

You know Heather Donahue’s snotface. Apparently too well, because as she writes in her new memoir Grow Girl: Once Upon a Time She Made The Blair Witch Project, Then She Went to Pot. Literally (Gotham Books, 286pp., paper, $26) — score nothing for succinct subtitles — too many people took the movie’s faux-reality premise seriously. Casting agents, it seems, couldn’t shake the feeling that this professional actress was merely a kid caught with a Camcorder when a malignant forest spirit got a bee in its bonnet.

But then she met a guy from Nuggettown (an actual place, renamed for anonymity). What ensued was a romance that left Donahue the proud renter of a secluded house in the wood and enough pot-growing equipment that she had to grow to stay afloat financially.

Such a pat story! Throughout Donahue’s at times overly flowery, but on the whole eminently readable narrative, the growth of her fellow (capital G) “Girls” mirrors her struggle against the confines of society — the larger, non-weed growing one but also more interestingly, the grower (capital C) Community of Nuggettown.

For not all is hunky-dory in the land of impressive tri-cone crystal formation. Women in Nuggettown are relegated to supporting roles — the kept “pot wife,” the “grow girl” that is often bossed about by her XY-chromosomed peers. On the cover of the book Donahue is clutching the top of a healthy bud plant to her naked breasts, a stereotypical male fantasy if there ever was one — but it’s ultimately all about empowerment. She blooms from a shattered ex-actress to a fuller human being, all under the Mondo Reflector she installs herself on the grow room ceiling.

One approach the medical marijuana movement might benefit from is humanizing its growers. Imagine a commercial like those for Florida oranges or California cheeses. A proud farmer fluffs up Mary Jane’s leafy bustle while a down-home voiceover plays in the background (“High CBD levels, if you want ’em. Donchaknow.”) Yes, your friendly medicine agriculturist is a person too, says Grow Girl. Possibly a person that reinforces gender stereotypes through a strict hippie code of conduct slash double standard, but a person with debts and passions and doubts nonetheless.

Donahue humanizes the cannabis industry. Some farmers, she writes, are making enough money to keep Nuggettown’s kayak store in business, but any conspicuous consumption masks the fact that it’s not really advisable for smalltown weed people to be saving their ducats in your run-of-the-mill local credit union. These are moms-and-pops, guys!

The book is slightly dated. The storyline ends in Nuggettown’s hope for a persecution-free Barack Obama presidency (Obama’s very promises rendered all the more poignant for today’s reader, informed of the President’s about-face on the issue of raiding state-legal growing facilities). For a brief moment, it seemed like cannabis would slough off the shackles of social stigma and claim to an honored position in our medical establishment.

That didn’t happen, of course — the feds raided Mendocino County’s Northstone Organics in October of this year, for chrissakes. But Mary Jane, still she rises, as does Donahue by book’s end, after agricultural disasters, horrendous break-ups, and shattered expectations.

So, Grow Girl is great if you like your marijuana stories imbued with a general sense of struggle. (And what other kind, really, exists these days?)

Ongoing research

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Ongoing research

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is better known for its scientific research on hallucinogenic drugs than on marijuana. That’s because the federal government is holding, but it won’t share with the decades-old nonprofit.

“The National Institute of Drug Abuse is ‘the National Institute of Drug Abuse,'” said MAPS director of field development Brian Wallace in a recent phone interview with the Guardian. “It’s not ‘the National Institute of Drug Research’. Its members are focused on the abuse of drugs, not their potential applications.”

Wallace — who was in the midst of preparing for “Cartographie Psychedelica,” next week’s MAPS 25th Anniversary Conference in downtown Oakland — was speaking about the NIDA’s decades of refusal to sell clinical study-grade cannabis to his organization. MAPS’ mission is to learn more about the potential of psychedelics and marijuana in treating ailments that Western medicine has proven ineffective in mitigating.

“It’s a conflict of interest that they have the monopoly on that cannabis,” said Wallace, adding that a farm located on the outskirts of the University of Mississippi is the only enterprise legally permitted by the federal government to produce buds.

The continued rebuff means that studies that could potentially prove the medicinal properties of cannabis are impossible to conduct. Not that there aren’t better buds out there. “Any medical marijuana patient has access to better weed in California’s dispensaries,” says Wallace, noting that government-approved weed isn’t available with the same diversity of cannabinoid levels.

Ironically, MAPS has had more luck obtaining MDMA for its clinical studies than marijuana, which they hope someday to test in post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans.

But the group has had its share of victories to celebrate over the last few decades. Enter the anniversary conference, five days of lectures, workshops, and parties that will assemble drug experts to speak on the past, present, and future of drug research. The event will feature a banquet to honor the progenitors of holotropic breathwork, a self-healing technique that involves quickened breathing and music engineered to take listeners to another stage of consciousness. The conference’s “most festive occasion,” according to Wallace, will be Saturday, Dec. 10’s late-night “Medicine Ball,” featuring glitchy DJs like LA’s Sugarpill and Canadian soul vocalist Ill-Esha.

Of course, it won’t be all fun and games at the Oakland City Center Marriott. The days’ programs are filled with hallucinogenic and marijuana-themed lectures and workshops. Cannabis enthusiasts will be stoked on opportunities to learn about the cutting-edge of research theories, even if the government is being prohibitive about testing the theories out. A full day’s workshop on the science and politics of medical marijuana is planned featuring doctors and activists for Friday, Dec. 9. Those unwilling to sit through that many hours of dishing on dank can check out University of California San Francisco Osher Center’s Donald Abrams, who will be giving a run-down of the past two decades of medical marijuana research in a lecture on the afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 10.

Wallace hopes that the conference will provide a learning opportunity — even to those who are not died-in-the-wool drug users.

“We have people that come dressed in a suit and tie and we have people that come dressed in tie-dye,” he says of his organization’s reach. “The MAPS community is expanding and growing to be much more expansive, to the point that a veteran who is affected with PTSD will know about the work that we do.”

“CARTOGRAPHIE PSYCHEDELICA: MAPS 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE”

Dec. 8-12, all access conference pass $310–$455

Medicine Ball Party

Dec. 10, 8 p.m., $25–$35

Oakland Marriott Civic Center

www.maps.org/25

 

Dear Obama

Andrew Lam
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0
Dear Obama

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Dear Obama,

Hey, how are you? You haven’t responded to my tweets, so I though I’d get at you on here. We have some things to discuss.

In all of the hubbub surrounding Occupy, the nationally-coordinated strikes on encampments, the general unrest, and the inspirational organizing taking place during this dour period of history our country is now experiencing, you’ve made next to no response.

But your federal agencies have managed to find time in the middle of said havoc to attack marijuana dispensaries and grow-ops that are legal under state law. Last week, they raided (way too much of that word going around these days) 15 of them in Washington State.

Weird, why?

On a related note, we need to talk about Sativex. Oh what, you thought we didn’t know? Don’t make this turn into a Beyonce video.

Let me tell you what I’m for sure about, and then we can talk about what I don’t understand.

I know for sure that Sativex is a drug developed by British company GW Pharmaceuticals, which declined to answer any of my phone calls while researching this letter so it’s a little unclear where exactly the drug stands on its path to legality in the US (it’s already being prescribed in Europe and Canada). Sativex is used to treat multiple sclerosis spasticity, or muscle tightness. Currently, it is in Stage III trials in the United States for use in the treatment of cancer patients, trials that are being conducted by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, the company handling the drug’s development in the US.

Sativex (and this really gets to the heart about why I’m writing to you via the Guardian cannabis column) is made from marijuana. It has been tinctured and refined into a mouth spray that contains both THC, and — unlike the synthetically engineered Marinol, which is currently being prescribed in the United States to deal with nausea and lack of appetite in cancer patients — cannabidiol, or CBD, the other cannabinoid in marijuana. It doesn’t work as fast as smoking the stuff though, in a doobie say, or bong.

But it is still cannabis albeit in an adulterated form and if things proceed as they have been, doctors will be able to legally prescribe it. Of course, it’ll be way more expensive than Humboldt’s finest — estimates for cost of treatment are pegged around $16 a day.

Now. The other day, as I wrote in this selfsame column (“Some joy in Mudville”, 10/16/11) I ran into a one Lynette Shaw, who runs the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana. She’s a patient herself and has been fighting for safe, comprehensive access to medical cannabis for over two decades. Her Fairfax dispensary, which sits on land the city specifically zoned for the purpose, is in danger of being closed because federal agents have threatened her landlord with jail time for allowing his property to host illegal drug trafficking.

Marin County, for whatever reason, has one of the highest incidents of breast cancer in the country. Is this where Sativex will be marketed?

We’ve all been wondering, Prez, why on Earth your administration would choose this moment in time to make moves on state-legal growing operations. We’ve been told that it’s election year maneuvering, but even that’s not cynical enough for me.

Here is what is not: you’ve received more than $1.6 million from the health sector — doctor’s associations, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies — since the beginning of the year. That’s more than any other candidate, in fact you edged out the next runner-up Mitt Romney by over $700,000. It would appear that Big Pharma has identified its horse in this race.

So that’s it on my end. From you, I’m just looking for some answers. Why processed drugs over plants? Why does cannabis have to be passed through a lab and profit the pharmaceutical industry to get fair clinical trial testing? Must all of our medicine be corporatized to be deemed beneficial to us?

My email’s up there.

 

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

Some joy in Mudville

Andrew Lam
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0
Some joy in Mudville

caitlin@sfbg.com

“I like the way you trim it/I got to bag it/Bag it up.” A ganja-fied version of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” was playing over the speakers the night of Saturday, November 12 at 847 Lounge, an event space above the SoMa dispensary Green Door. The party’s mood was — yes — high as patients awaited the announcement of the winners in three categories of cannabis products at the Patient’s Choice awards ceremony, conversation with the activists and patients assembled in the room veered towards the serious.

Medical marijuana activist Mellody Gannon enjoyed the scene from a table in the center of the room: “As a patient, it’s really important right now that things like this are going on,” she said. Amid puzzling federal crackdowns, the future of her medicine is smoky. Recent pressure from the Department of Justice on landlords and banks has caused many dispensaries to consider shutting their doors (see “Feds crack down,” 10/12/11).

Which is why she was heartened to see cannabis connoisseurs coming together to celebrate the best of what California cannabis producers have to offer.

This year’s Patient’s Choice event was a much more intimate affair. Attendance was open to the public in 2010, but this year was limited to dispensary staff, activists, and the patients who had paid the $350 for a judge’s testing package. Judges had to sample over 30 strains (not to mention other products) in the 10 days leading up to Friday, when their votes were tallied and winners announced to stoned elation.

The event, sponsored by many of the city’s best-known dispensaries, was a fundraiser for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), an organization that promotes secure and available ways for prescribed patients to access medical marijuana.

Gannon, a patient since 1996, said that ASA’s advocacy is important — many times her doctors have turned up their nose at the medical efficacy of her marijuana prescription. “They tell you that you’re crazy or just a pothead,” she said.

After breaking a host of bones in a car accident, she relies on cannabis to mitigate chronic pain. “If they start closing these clubs, where are you going to go?” she asked.

Lynette Shaw sat nearby, smoking a strain home-grown buds she’s named Bonanza Jellybean. Shaw founded the Marin Alliance dispensary in Fairfax in 1997 after working on the Proposition 215 campaign the year before. She obtained special zoning from the city for the dispensary and insisted “we’ve done everything they told us to, even when the rules changed. We’re completely regulated to the satisfaction of the community.”

Nonetheless, one of the Department of Justice’s cease-and-desist letters landed in the mailbox of her landlord. Now unless something changes, Shaw’s dispensary — located in a county with one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the nation — will be out on the streets. Her landlord was threatened with 40 years in prison for renting to an illegal drug trafficker.

While others have pegged the Obama administration’s about-face on the tolerance of medical cannabis to election year grandstanding, Shaw thinks the persecution of state-legal marijuana operations like her own is a harbinger of much more dire civil rights violations.

“They’re trying to break the Constitution over marijuana. That’s why it’s important that we fight back now,” she said.

It was clear from the crowd at 847 Lounge that the medical marijuana movement wasn’t going to lose their meds without a fight. Perhaps strangely, the family producers that proudly hoisted their glass, Stanley Cup-looking trophies for best strain and other products still had an air of winning about them.

Uh oh … feds raid pot clubs in Seattle

Zelda Bronstein
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10
Uh oh … feds raid pot clubs in Seattle

The feds have launched a coordinated series of raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in the Pacific Northwest. The Stranger in Seattle has extensive coverage:

Federal agents and local law enforcement are executing a volley of raids on medical-marijuana disperses throughout Western Washington this afternoon, according to several sources, who say some of the proprietors are being handcuffed and taken away in squad cars. Thus far, we’ve received reports of busts in Olympia, Lacey, Tacoma, Puyallup, and Seattle.

The Cannabis Defense Coalition has posted a tally of 14 dispensaries raided today.

The raids are leaving patients empty handed and it’s not clear what comes next or whether any of the Western Washington clubs will survive.

This is very bad news, and you have to wonder:

The feds have threatened pot clubs across California and shut down at least two in San Francisco. They’re trying to shut down a lot more in the Seattle area. At least 14 mayors have been on a conference call to coordinate strategy against the Occupy movement. Are the feds involved in that, too?

Is November the month that governments across the country, working together, are going to strike back at medical pot and Occupy? What possible reason could the Obama administration have to do that, one year before an election that he won’t win without the support of the people who are getting arrested, evicted, abused and forced to lose their medical suppliers?

What the fuck is going on?

 

 

 

Welcome to Marijuanaland

Andrew Lam
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1
Welcome to Marijuanaland

steve@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Marijuana is California’s top cash crop, one that has had a major impact on the state, particularly since it was legalized for medical use in 1996. Nowhere is that impact felt more than in the global epicenter of pot production, the fabled Emerald Triangle — the rural northern counties of Humboldt, Menodocino, and Trinity — which has been transformed by the cannabis boom, in ways good and bad.

In his new book, Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, author Jonah Raskin offers an insider’s look at the pot-fueled evolution of the people, politics, economics, and culture of the region. The fascinating journey — mixing personal stories with deep investigative reporting — begins in 1977 when Raskin harvested his lawyer/rancher father’s secret pot patch after he died from cancer and continues through last year’s defeat of Prop. 19, the measure that would have legalized even recreational marijuana use but which was opposed by many growers seeking to protect their market share.

Along the way, we meet a wide variety of cultivators, from back-to-the-land hippies to their entrepreneurial grandchildren, as well as the cops, community leaders, lawyers, journalists, and others touched by the marijuana trade — which in the Emerald Triangle, is pretty much everyone.

The book, published by High Times magazine, is certainly a celebration of the wonder weed and harsh condemnation of the federal government’s long-lingering war on it. Raskin — a Sonoma State University communications professor who has authored 14 books, including 2009’s Field Days about food politics — is revealingly honest about his love of marijuana and support for his fellow smokers.

“This book is in part a story about coming out of the marijuana closet,” Raskin told me. “I don’t want to out anyone but I will say this, that famous journalists who smoked marijuana stopped smoking it when they wrote and published books about marijuana so that when they were asked after publication ‘Do you smoke pot?’ they could honestly say, ‘No I do not.’ I don’t pressure anyone to come out. It’s an individual choice. But I do think that individuals and the whole society need to come out and come clean about marijuana. It has been a dirty little secret for far too long. I also wanted to prove that we are at a place in California where you can admit to smoking and not have adverse things happen to you.”

Yet Raskin also writes critically about the marijuana industry and the greed, secrecy, social problems, criminality, and economic homogenization that it has spawned in a part of California that once passionately eschewed some of these very forces. True, much of the problem stems from prohibition rather than pot production itself, but his warts-and-all approach is a refreshing perspective on an industry that tends be either demonized or glamorized — so much so that the book almost didn’t get published.

“I had to twist some arms and I had some inside help — the fact that High Times was willing to publish a book that didn’t paint an entirely rosy picture also shows that they have grown up and that they felt strongly enough about the book and themselves to publish it,” Raskin told me.

That kind of journalism — which sees marijuana as an important California industry, but one deserving of more scrutiny and sunshine — is also practiced by a pair of regional journalists included in the book: Anderson Valley Advertiser publisher Bruce Anderson and Arcata Eye editor Kevin Hoover. Along with Raskin — and perhaps us here at the Guardian — these journalists have helped create the beginnings of an honest public dialogue about this booming industry. And as Californians try to fend off the latest law enforcement assault (see “Feds crack down,” 10/11) and prepare another legalization push as soon as next year, Marijuanaland is an important contributor to that conversation.

Impertinent questions to Sup. Sean Elsbernd

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 At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. Sean Elsbernd voted against a sensible resolution supporting regulated and safe patient access to medical cannabis in San Francisco.

He was on the losing end of an an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Carmen Chiu and Mark Farrell also voting against.

I was curious why, in San Francisco in November of 2011, he would vote against what I and many others considered a sensible but restrained resolution supporting local small businesses that are regulated and paying taxes and about the only business showing growth in the city.

So I emailed him some Impertinent Questions:

“Why do you continue to support a federal crackdown on medical marijuana? Why do you do this as a purported advocate of small business and bringing in more tax revenue to the city?”

I  also asked Elbernd who he now supported for mayor, since the last time I heard from him he said he would support Mayor Ed Lee only if there were no other candidate who could beat State Sen. Leland Yee. He replied that had not endorsed a candidate for mayor, but if I contacted him after the election he would tell me who he voted for. “Rest assured,” he said, “the Bay Guardian endorsements will certainly influence my decision making process.”

On the marijuana issue, Elsbernd objected strenuously to my statement that he “supported the federal crackdown. Please send me the recording, clip, reporter’s notes, or any other documentation you have that demonstrates t hat I specifically said I supported the federal crackdown.”

Elsbernd asked if I was referring to his note vote on the resolution. (B3 answer: I was.)

“Are you erroneously extrapolating an opinion of mine based on my ‘no’ vote. Is that journalism or is that political spin? Would not a journalist simply ask the question like this, ‘Why did you vote no” on the resolution Making assumptions without any fact to back it up seems a bit irresponsible and lazy for a journalist. While you e-mail me under the guise of being a constituent, and your certainly live in District 7, we both know that this email discussion will be posted very soon on your Bay Guardian website (hello to all of who have time in your day to read Bruce’s blog) with additional edits and snide comments to which you will not me the opportunity to respond. (B3 comment: Elsbernd knows that I send him Impertinent Questions from time to time and that the Q and A will appear on my blog. And he knows he can answer in the blog comments or in a letter to the Guardian. To his credit, Elsbernd always answers me and I enjoy hearing from him. And I keep inviting him to talk things over at tapas night on Thursday night at the Que Syrah wine bar in West Portal in his district. I even offer to buy the first flight, but alas  he never shows.)

Elsbernd then says he will answer my real question. “Why did I vote ‘no’ on the resolution?

Did you read the entire resolution? (B3 answer: yes.) Did you agree with every ‘whereas’ clause and every ‘resolved’ clause? (B3 answer: Yes.) Elsbern continued, “I do not. In particular, I strenuously object to the ‘whereas’ clause on page l, line 12-16, which implies that all licensed medical cannabis dispensaries in San Francisco are ‘clearly acting in good faith,’ and that they ‘take every measure possible to be safe and professional members of the community.’

Elsbernd then gets specific: “I suggest you talk to your neighbors on the other side of Portola/Junipero Serra who live near the dispensary on Ocean Avenue and ask them if ‘every measure’ has been taken to to be safe and professional members of their community. I suggest you read the police reports in and around the area over the last five years and compare those same reports o before the opening of the dispensaries and ask whether or not ‘every measure possible’ has indeed been taken. If you take the time and do that work, I think you’ll understand, why, as the representative of those neighborhoods, I voted against that resolution. (B3 answer: I am always take note  when Elsbernd purports to represent his constituents in his district. But he could have amended the motion in committee (he was absent on the committee vote) or at the board. Instead, he used this single example to justify his opposition to a timely resolution putting the city squarely on record as being opposed to the ridiculous, expensive, job-killing, and tax-killing crackdown by the federal government on medical marijuana and its use in treating debilitating diseases and chronic pain in thousands of patients in San Francisco and throughout the state. The resolution also resolved that the supervisors “encourage the President and Congress of the United States to enact legislation requiring federal law enforcement to respect state medical cannabis laws.”)

Elsbernd also argued that the resolution called “for a massive tax reduction for all dispensaries in its resolved clause to support HR 1985, a bill by Rep.Stark granting a tax exemption for all such businesses? I know the Guardian typically opposes all business tax exemptions. Do you guys support this one.” (B3 answer: The Stark bill is not a a tax reduction bill. It is a bill aimed at reversing an IRS crackdown on many large dispensaries—including Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest in Northern California, that they cannot write off normal business expenses and must pay a 35 per cent levy on those claims going back for three years. Harborside’s Steve DeAngelo told the Guardian that this IRS attack would put Harborside—or any company with high overhead costs—out of business.  http://www.sfbg.com/2011/10/11/feds-crack-down

Stark’s bill would reverse that IRS decision and allow dispensaries to deduct expenses according to state law just like all other businesses in California.
http://americansforsafeaccess.org/downloads/Stark_bill_2011.pdf

And so my original Impertinent Question remains: why is Elsbernd (and Chiu and Farrell)  supporting in effect a federal crackdown aimed at killing off marijuana dispensaries and killing off a growing sector of small business and a valuable source of tax revenue? If he isn’t supporting the federal crackdown with this vote, what is his position on medical marijuana dispensaries?  Wine and tapas, Sean?  B3)

That’s amoré

Andrew Lam
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0
That’s amoré

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The ever- unfolding swath of life’s problems that can be solved by cannabis has been extended the length of an aphrodisiac shot made from cannabis, cane syrup, glycerin, citric acid, and other supplements. Product name: Amoré. Don’t worry, it’s locally made.

Amoré is the brainchild of a one Ed Silva, a gregarious medical industry product developer (think defibrillators and glucose monitors) who started up his San Jose dispensary Sensi Herbal Care in November 2010. It sells topical cannabis treatments, lemonade, chocolates, and buds, but Silva says its “flagship product” is its insomnia-fighting cannabis shot called Indi.

“That product has literally helped thousands of people with their insomnia problems,” he told the Guardian in a phone interview. The dispensary also stocks an energy formula, of course Amoré, and has a pain reliever in the works.

Recent legislation posed at the city level in San Jose, where regulations that would limit the city’s number of dispensaries (now hovering around 900) to 10 businesses. Paid campaigners and volunteers say they turned in 48,598 petition signatures last week to halt the process. They only needed 29,653 to initiate a referendum on the new guidelines. The United Food and Commercial Workers union Local 5 donated $5,000 towards supporting the referendum to stop them.

The city’s new policies, an employee who answered the phone at Sansi said, could have shut down the dispensary — and community access to the Viagra of the cannabis world — down. Later, Silva sounded triumphant when he informed the Guardian reporter on the laws’ impending curtailing.

Without a medical background — besides developing defibrillators — Silva was a bit vague about his methods of creating cannabis formulas, but was confident in the way customers responded that they were doing their job. He’d submitted the product to lab quality assurance testing and informal focus groups.

The optimal way to use Amoré? Silva cautioned that the drink’s effect would vary among individuals. “It doesn’t work for everyone, that is true for every medication out there,” he said. But generally, “45 minutes before.” It was further clarified that he meant pre-sexual escapade.

Our Guardian tester, who took the “for her” variety of Amoré, found its power varied, a.k.a., got turned-on, then slightly nauseous, then turned-on. Tastes like a particularly gnarly 5-Hour Energy Drink, fades fast. A mixed bag. On a small “caution” panel, the label of Amoré prohibits the contents being taken with alcohol, other supplements, and heavy machinery.

When asked about one of the label’s more esoteric ingredients, the fo-ti root (also listed are dodder seed extract, kudzu root, and tribulus fruit), Silva semi-helpfully explains “It’s also called sho-wu. It means ‘black-haired Mr. Hee.’ It means that in Chinese, it’s a Chinese herb. That’s a name from someone in an old village in China. You can research that on Google, there’s a story behind that.”

So of course we do, and sure enough, it tends to be used to restore graying hair. So that’s fo-ti. But why is it in this cannabis aphrodisiac shot, whose silver hard plastic bottle clearly states “for her”?

Says Silva: “It’s also known as a happy herb. It has the effect of making you happy, which is always a good thing. There’s a few people who I’d like to give that regularly, like every hour.” Which left us still unconvinced regarding Amoré, but still a big fan of Silva.

Blowback

Andrew Lam
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0
Blowback

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE A throng of reporter types had gathered in the lobby of the State Building to listen to State Senator Mark Leno and State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano badmouth the feds.

“It is not the purview of the federal government to upset the will of the people,” said Ammiano, to the grunted affirmations of the patients, advocates, and cannabis business owners who had also assembled for the event.

Leno called the recent steps taken against the medicinal cannabis industry — which provides California each year with somewhere between $50 million and $100 million in taxes according to a 2010 estimate by the state’s Board of Equalization — “the exact wrong policy for a deep recession.” And then there’s the patients themselves. The two gay politicians commented that the issue of patient access is especially salient for the LGBT community, given that group’s increased incidence of HIV and AIDS.

Ammiano and Leno announced plans to push for federal regulatory guidelines that would clear up inconsistencies in the way medicinal cannabis works at the state level. As of press time for this article, Ammiano had scheduled another panel to discuss the matter on Tuesday, October 25 where he’ll be joined by marijuana advocates, labor leaders, Steve DeAngelo — founder of Harborside Health Center, which the IRS recently announced owes millions in back taxes because the business cannot legally write off standard expenses — and Matthew Cohen, who was handcuffed for hours along with his wife when the DEA raided his legal Mendocino County grow-op Northside Organics earlier this month. The event is being timed to coincide with President Obama’s visit to San Francisco this week.

When the politicos were done with their spiels, they trotted out Charlie Pappas, the owner of Divinity Tree Patients’ Wellness Cooperative. The landlord of Pappas’ 3,000-member dispensary was served with a cease and desist notice from the DEA that threatened property forfeiture and jail time if he continued to let Divinity Tree operate in his building.

Pappas approached the podium in a wheelchair, a patient himself. As he was introduced, it was noted that here we had one of the little guys, not a tycoon turning millions of dollars of profit as dispensary owners have been portrayed by unsympathetic media and government officials. It’s illegal to turn a profit off of medical marijuana — and who would want to get rich off of sick people anyway?

The controversy over the issue is understandable, but also mind-blowingly hypocritical. You know who turns a profit off of making and distributing medicine? The pharmaceutical industry, to the tune of billions of dollars, in fact. Makes the $1.7 billion national market that constitutes the medical marijuana industry look like shake.

The sound of money talking rendered unsurprising the words of a one Bruce Buckner, who has been a patient “since the laws passed” and who came down from his home in Sonoma County to attend Ammiano and Leno’s press conference. Buckner shared his suspicions about why the federal government turned its eyes to dispensary operations this autumn. Slightly grizzled and wearing a straw hat, Buckner had sat patiently though the event, hooked up to a respirator.

“It’s real obvious why Obama is doing it,” he said. “The pharmaceutical industry is afraid of how potent this medicine is.”

Weed Wars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Weed Wars

HERBWISE “I always knew that doing this show would be a risk,” says Harborside Health Center founder Steve DeAngelo in a phone interview with the Guardian. A medical marijuana dispensary could probably always be considered controversial fodder for a nighttime reality TV program, but DeAngelo’s enterprise rose above standard controversy when it became the target of the IRS, the federal agency ruling that it could no longer write off common business expenses. It now owes $2 million — an amount that left the rest of the industry quaking with concerns over its future.

The perfect time for an on-air debut, right? DeAngelo thinks so.

“If the American people see how we use this medicine, how we distribute it, they’re going to support it,” he says. “They’ve only gotten a chance to see the government’s side, the propaganda side.”

Especially nowadays. In the past few weeks, the feds have launched a multi-lateral attack on medical cannabis dispensaries (see the Oct. 12 Herbwise column, entitled “Feds crack down”). The Treasury Department convinced banks to close dispensaries’ accounts. The Department of Justice has sent out numerous cease-and-desist letters to dispensaries. The notifications insist that the trafficking illegal substances is occurring, and that it must be stopped — a turnaround from the Obama administration’s earlier pledge that it would not stand in the way of a patient’s access to medicine.

DeAngelo claims that Harborside is among the top 10 highest tax payers to the city of Oakland. The dispensary has gone through disputes over taxes paid before, but this latest persecution has meant a diminished sense of security for the dispensary’s 120-person staff at its San Jose and Oakland locations — not to mention among patients.

“They’re terrorized,” says DeAngelo. “I have 60, 70, 80-year old patients who are terrified.”

It’s high drama stuff. Ironically, filming for Weed Wars — save a few remaining pickup shots — had already concluded by the time of the ruling. Surely Discovery Channel executives are smacking their foreheads, having shot the relatively boring chunk of 2011 at Harborside.

“It does seem like the cameras got turned off at just the wrong time,” says DeAngelo.

The dispensary founder says that his people thoroughly vetted Braverman Productions prior to signing any deals — it wasn’t the only offer they got to be the subject of such a show. He’s confident the company will shy from the “unreal setups” so prevalent on other reality TV series. And he hopes that despite the current drama (which might make its way into the final episode of the program’s season), producers will portray the dispensary in a way that’s respectful and shows an accurate image of what day-to-day operations look like.

But whether or not that will be the case remains to be seen. An article written by a staff member in the September 2011 edition of the Harborside newsletter questioned the use of “weed” in the show’s title (a faux pas in the medical marijuana industry). In such a volatile political environment, the temptation to sensationalize cannabis dispensaries might run pretty hot. Or on the contrary, maybe Weed Wars will make the sale of state-legal marijuana seem as normal as being a Coloradan bounty hunter or a Kardashian.

Regardless of what happens, DeAngelo’s not ruing the day he decided to go into medical marijuana.

“We decided when we opened our doors that it was worth the risk. I still think it was worth that risk.” *

Weed Wars premieres November 27 at 10 p.m. PST on the Discovery Channel

 

Medical marijuana protesters gather at City Hall in wake of federal raids

Andrew Lam
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9

Protesters met in front of the San Francisco Federal Building this afternoon to challenge the recent federal crackdown on California’s medical marijuana industry. The rally formed on the heels of yesterday (October 13)’s raid by federal agents on Northstone Organics, a Ukiah medical marijuana cooperative.  

“Our state, our medicine,” protesters chanted. Among those present — about 30 individuals, per Guardian estimates — were medical marijuana patients, patient advocates, dispensary employees, and a representative of the Medical Cannabis Association. 

“When you’re a part of the medical cannabis movement, you feel personally affected by these raids,” said Shantanae Todd, an advocate and patient herself. Todd suffers from seizures and says she has found relief through her medical cannabis presciption for two years.

“What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans? I’m not seeing much of a difference here,” cried Shona Gochenaur, executive director of low income medicinal cannabis center Axis of Love and member of the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force. Gochenaur urged Kamala Harris, California’s Attorney General — who has resisted taking a stand on the federal government’s persecution of medicinal cannabis producers — to lend more vocal support. 

“We need to give everyone a clear message today that patients are not willing to go underground,” said Gochenaur. The protesters plan to meet and rally at noon the day after each and any future large-scale federal raids on California marijuana producers.

One last cannabis fest? Despite IRS ruling, medical community soldiers on

Andrew Lam
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1

Last week, the IRS’ two year audit of Harborside Health Center ended poorly for the medical marijuana industry. The federal government agency decided that the dispensary (Oakland’s largest, as the Bay Citizen reported in its coverage of the craziness — check out our story in today’s paper about the additional threats that have been made) couldn’t deduct standard business expenses, a move that left Harborside in the hole for $2 million and the rest of its industry in need of a joint. 

Such was the setting for the West Coast Cannabis and Music Festival this weekend (Fri/7-Sun/9). Things got a little weird. Which is not to say that things weren’t also good. The 215 legal smoking area was ample proof that medical cannabis is alive and thriving, especially in the here and now. How else to explain the booths hawking aphrodisiac cannabis drinks and medicated vanilla chai truffles? Outside, the fresh-faced and strongly-quadricepped carried forth at the Rock the Bike music stage, its live and DJ offerings projected into the Cow Palace parking lot by a woefully shallow pool of volunteers. The muscle mass we pay for music… 

Even the charming gentlemen at the Harborside booth were all kinds of upbeat, eager to talk about their new Discovery Channel reality TV show. They were handing out copies of their dispensary’s newsletter, the Harborside Illuminator. In it, general manager Andrew DeAngelo’s column, which contained a transcript of a conversation he had with the show’s producer, Chuck Braverman:

DeAngelo: Chuck, I really liked the name Cannabis Confidential — why did they go with Weed Wars?

Braverman: Bigger tent

DeAngelo: What do you mean bigger tent?

Braverman: The title Weed Wars will get more people into the tent to watch the show.

DeAngelo: But we don’t call it ‘weed’ and there is no war.

Of course, some would say there is a war on now. It certainly felt like I was being drafted by Sunday afternoon, when California state senator John Vasconsellos’ time to occupy the speaker’s stage was approaching. A barker alternatively sang and cajoled into the microphone, eventually resorting to bribes. “Anyone who sits down over here will receive a free joint. People, you need to hear this!” Ever obliging, we sat and listened to the woman who introduced the senator. She informed us she was filming the talk, although the final destination of the video was unclear to those of us who had just made her acquaintance. 

“Senator,” she trilled. “Look at all these people here who love you!” You and free marijuana, doll. 

Which is a really snarky thing to say, because we had little to say against the senator’s speech, which was 45 minutes of a call to arms to save patients’ right to access their medicine. And truly, we had to agree with the woman who had repurposed an electric green sleep sack as a dress, but not before cutting out the tits, donning a black mesh garment underneath, affixing a fake weed plant to the crotch area, and boldly Sharpie-ing across the front of it all “Obama can you replace our tax revenue?”

She giggled and posed in front of a strangely perfect WCCMF logo-ed wall when asked by (more than one) photographer if they could digi-capture her. Probably because she knew we all agreed with her, which come to think of it is a big part of these festivals: meeting other stoners that share your concerns. 

Like, does that aphrodisiac stuff really work or what?

Feds crack down

Andrew Lam
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8

steve@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Reversing its previous pledge to abide people’s rights to legally obtain medical marijuana in California and the 14 other states that have legalized it, the Obama Administration has launched a crackdown on the industry using several different federal agencies.

During an Oct. 7 press conference in Sacramento, California’s four U.S. attorneys announced their intention to go after the industry with raids on large-scale growing operations and big dispensaries and civil lawsuits targeting the assets of people involved in the cannabis business.

“We want to put to rest the notion that large marijuana businesses can shelter themselves under state law,” Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, based here in San Francisco, said at the press conference.

That pronouncement is just the latest in a series of federal actions against those involved with the production and distribution of California’s top cash crop, an industry that the California Board of Equalization estimates to be worth about $1.3 billion in tax revenue annually. Sources in the medical marijuana business say the crackdown began quietly this summer.

Hundreds of dispensaries and other medical marijuana operations had their bank accounts shut down after the Treasury Department contacted their banks and warned them of sanctions for doing business with an industry that remains illegal under federal law. The Internal Revenue Service last month also notified many large dispensaries — including Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest in Northern California — that they cannot write off normal business expenses and must pay a 35 percent levy on those claims going back for three years.

Harborside’s Steve DeAngelo told us that would put Harborside — or any company with high overhead costs — out of business. “This is not an effort to tax us, it’s an effort to tax us out of existence,” he said, noting that Harborside paid the city of Oakland $1.1 million in taxes this year. In addition, the Department of Justice recently began sending 45-day cease-and-desist letters to hundreds of dispensaries around the state, including at least two in San Francisco, warning the clubs and their landlords that the operations violate federal law and could be subject to federal laws on the seizure of assets from the drug trade.

“It’s a multi-agency federal attack on patients’ access to this medication,” DeAngelo said. “It’s going to drive sick and dying patients back out onto the street to get their medicine.”

Haag claimed the state’s medical marijuana laws, which California voters approved back in 1996, have been “hijacked by profiteers.” Yet both local officials and people in the industry say that characterization is ridiculous, and that the federal government’s new stance will destroy an important industry — one that is very professional and well-regulated in San Francisco — and send legitimate patients back into the black market.

“I think it’s a step in the wrong direction and counter-intuitive to the Obama Administration’s contention that he would respect state’s rights,” said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who authored groundbreaking legislation regulating San Francisco’s two dozen dispensaries, a system that he said “is working well…But now the federal government is pulling the rug out from under us.”

Shortly after taking office in 2009, the Obama Administration released the “Ogden memo,” written by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, stating the federal government would respect the rights of states to legalize and regulate medical marijuana. It was seen by cannabis activists as a sign that Obama was de-escalating the war on drugs, at least as it applied to marijuana.

But in June of this year, the DOJ release the “Cole memo,” by Deputy Attorney General James Cole, which it said “clarifies” the Ogden memo. In fact, it reversed the position, stating unequivocally that federal marijuana prohibition prevails and “state laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law with respect to such conduct.”

“They’re bringing the hammer down,” said David Goldman, who works for Americans for Safe Access and sits on San Francisco’s medical marijuana task force. “This is not U.S. attorneys doing this on their own, this is coming from the top levels of the DOJ.”

Actually, Goldman and others suspect it goes even higher than that, right to Obama and his political team, who appear to be making a calculation that cracking down on medical marijuana is a good move before an uncertain reelection campaign.

“It’s political. It’s all about Obama appealing to the middle to win reelection,” Goldman said.

“I don’t think there’s any rational basis for what’s going on. It was clearly a political calculation,” DeAngelo said. “Why do they think it’s better for patients to buy their medicine from the black market?”

He said the crackdown will bolster the Mexican drug cartels, destroy a thriving industry that provides jobs and pays taxes, hinder efforts at better quality control and growing conditions (see “Green buds,” Aug. 16), and waste law enforcement resources to seize and destroy a valuable commodity.

“It’s a policy with all downsides and no upsides,” DeAngelo said.

Mirkarimi said that this crackdown could finally force cannabis activists to take on the federal prohibition of marijuana directly: “Bottom line, marijuana is the United States needs to be reformed so it’s not a Schedule 1 drug,” referring the federal government’s conclusion that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no medical applications.

But for now, DeAngelo said the industry will fight back: “We will fight it in the legal system, we will fight it in the court of public opinion, and we will appeal to Congress.”

The Hangover: Oct. 7-9

Andrew Lam
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0

Jounce with us, if you will, through the Guardian staff’s frenzied weekend. Here’s our live reviews, hot raging, random sightings.

***Blow Up is reputed to be the best party in the city. I’ll say it’s almost certainly the best regular event for the 18+ crowd. But rule number one of going to a 18+ club event: don’t wear your nice shoes, even if the code does say “dress to impress.” It was only thanks to sheer luck and repeat viewings of The Matrix that I managed to avoid a geyser of projectile vomit in The Factory’s overcrowded men’s room Saturday night at Blow Up Forever II. “You go here.” I said, guiding the poor kid to the urinal I was about to use. “I’ll wait for the stall.” Click here for full story. (Ryan Prendiville) 

***Stationary bikes snuggled into the corners of Public Works’ sweaty cavern of a first floor, but the realness of the Bikes and Beats party on Friday was onstage. The event was billed as J Boogie’s album release party and the DJ spent the night doing what he does best: orchestrating sick collaborations. At one point he had Jazz Mafia (including emcee Aima the Dreamer) and Duece Eclipse sharing the stage with him simultaneously. That’s a lot of local live luminaries to look at. (Caitlin Donohue)

***Overt-sweetness ran emboldened through Twin Sister’s set opening for Pains of Being Pure at Heart on Friday at Slim’s, leaving a trail of cotton candy kisses in its wake. Lead singer Andrea Estella, hugging herself tightly, laid out tender and girlish vocals over the band’s funked out disco’d-Cardigans tone. The Long Island band, spread across stage in a perfect line at the front, pulled through decorated versions of “Bad Street” and other tunes off its highly enjoyable, recently released album, In Heaven. The only misstep, in my mind, is the oddly nasally pop tune “Saturday Sunday.” It’s too cutesy, the call and response of weekend days is at times cloying. By contrast, Pains of Being Pure at Heart kept it moody, with songs like “Heart in Your Heartbreak” recalling the darkened club scenes from Nic Cage classic, Valley Girl, when the Plimsouls’ thrust into “A Million Miles Away.” Quick tip: Slim’s has a pretty decent hummus plate. (Emily Savage)

***Completely inappropriate for a blog feature called the Hangover, but nonetheless we must give props to the Life Is Living Festival on Saturday in West Oakland’s De Femery Park for being the Bay’s feel-good event of the year. Was it the way the breakdancing children spun blithely on their heads? Maybe the youth parkour obstacle course, spoken word stage, or arts and crafts tables? Probs an amalgamation of it all. Plus, Los Rakas and ?uestlove made for a slammin’ live block party soundtrack. Click here for full story. (Donohue)

***(See accompanying photo) Someone had to make a statement at this weekend’s West Coast Cannabis and Music Festival — the medical marijuana industry is in absolute turmoil after last week’s forboding ruling by the IRS about Harborside Health Center’s tax status. Speaker Senator John Vasconsellos spoke to a multitudinous crowd at one stage (perhaps the free joints that promoters promised to anyone willing to take a seat upped number a little), and outside in the sunshine Rock the Bike bravely endeavored to keep the music stage pedal-powered, despite a location off the festival’s beaten track and corresponding dearth of volunteers.  

***Emotions ran high for the second consecutive sold-out Girls show at the Great American Music Hall last night. Chris Owens, JR White, and their talented ensemble were perfectly in sync as they treated us to a lengthy set highlighted by a trio of charismatic female vocalists. A powerful solo from one of the ladies made for an especially moving rendition of “Vomit.” Girls played nearly every song from Father Son Holy Ghost as well as old favorites like “Heartbreaker,” “Hellhole Ratrace,” and “Lust For Life.” The high point for me was the tender encore of “Jamie Marie,” which began with just Owens and his guitar on the flower ornamented stage before the rest of the band stepped out to resounding applause. The rapport between band members was palpable and I couldn’t help feeling a little bummed to be witnessing the closing chapter of their national tour. (Frances Capell)

***”This is the only mayoral candidate that’s doing drag events!” The woman at the door was, of course, wrong — just last week Lil Miss Hot Mess coupled with Queers for John Avalos to through the high school-themed Homo Homecoming at the Verdi Club. But last night’s Bevan Dufty’s “Politics is a Drag” campaign fundraiser was staged by the mayoral race’s only gay candidate, which was good enough reason to attract a Florence and the Machine-themed number from La Monistat and a return to the Sarah Palin costume that Anna Conda donned for a Work More! event — a reprise of a number she choreographed with the help of Guardian Managing Editor Marke B. (Caitlin Donohue)

***The Stevie Nicks show at The Fillmore on Sunday night was like a time warp to an early 1980s high school. Although most of the women in the audience were in their 40s and 50s, they were competing for “Best Dressed” like girls more than half their age. They paid tribute to their Queen Stevie in dark velvet, shimmering shawls, and long skirts. If I didn’t know better, I would say they’d kept those clothes in their closets for 20 years just for this occasion. But shopping with my mom has taught me that they sell it all at Chico’s. Click here for full story. (Ann Edwards) 

Spreading smoke

Andrew Lam
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0
Spreading smoke

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE When asked to describe herself, Green Cross Dispensary patient Nicole Williams laughs. “I work full time, I go to school, I care for my mom. My brother’s taking the LSATs on Saturday — what else should I say? Native San Franciscan, long time resident.”

She’s being interviewed by the Guardian to gauge the demand in the Excelsior neighborhood for a new business that’s relocating to the neighborhood where it will be the first of its kind: the Green Cross’ new marijuana dispensary walk-in facility. Currently, the company is the city’s sole licensed delivery-only dispensary.

The Green Cross is hoping to have a little more luck with 4218 Mission than it did with its first location, which opened in Noe Valley in 2004 as a more professional alternative to the stereotypical cannabis club with “long haired hippies behind the counter,” in the words of dispensary employee Caren Woodson.

But the idea attracted so many customers (some garnering complaints that marijuana was being sold on the street) that the city’s planning department rescinded owner Kevin Reed’s permit for the space. After a disappointing attempt to open a location in Fisherman’s Wharf, an aide to the Mayor encourage Reed to try for a delivery-only permit instead. Now, the dispensary hopes the third try’s the charm. A public hearing to discuss its application to re-open in the Excelsior is scheduled for Nov. 17.

“We’re going to make sure we’re addressing the neighbors’ concerns,” Reed says, sitting on a stool in the Green Cross delivery and call center, which operates out of the front rooms of his comfortably-appointed SoMa apartment. In front of him are the flashing screens of 32 security cameras — a glaring reminder that Green Cross’ first commitment is to safety.

Green Cross employees dress in business casual — even, as this reporter witnessed, when they’re up to their elbows in bowls of weed nugs they’re breaking apart. Though currently located in a mostly residential building, Woodson claims that the business has never received a single neighborhood complaint.

The delivery service has now served over 3,000 clients. Having sunk a half million dollars into failed permitting procedures, Reed hopes he’s created a comprehensive plan that will pass the expectations of the various city agencies through which one must venture to open a weed dispensary.

The new location will necessitate a focus on discretion and security. Monroe Elementary School and the Mission YMCA are both a few blocks away. Plans include a wall that would block all view of the goings-on inside the dispensary. Plans do not include a space for on-site smoking, and members will have to sign a code of conduct that says they’ll be respectful of the surrounding neighborhood.

350 patients in the Green Cross’ database live in the proposed site’s 94112 zip code. Williams is one of them, and has been a patient since Green Cross’ Noe Valley days. She’s nowhere near the image of a troublemaking pothead, but it’s small wonder she was “pretty excited” to hear that she might be getting a new neighbor.

“You’re just looking for a safe place where you can get your medicine and go home.”

GREEN CROSS MANDATORY REVIEW HEARING

Nov. 17, time TBA

Room 400, City Hall

One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, SF

(415) 558-6377

www.sf-planning.org

www.thegreencross.org

Counting calories

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Counting calories

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE An old factory sits in the outskirts of Oakland. In decades past, this building produced name brand snacks, but the smell of baking still permeates the factory air.

And weed. It smells like weed too. Bhang Chocolate churns out medicinal marijuana sweets here, bars that are smartly packaged in Bhang’s sleek black, orange, and green boxes that are a far cry from the plain wax envelopes and saran wrap that most marijuana edibles used to be sold in. The company is part of the current expansion in edible products — these days, patients can buy medicated cheesecakes, and even savory trail mix.

Adjacent to Bhang’s factory floor, about ten marijuana edibles producers are listening to a man talk about quality control for weed food. Robert Martin, Ph.D., worked for years in corporate food product development and quality assurance. He tells the class his specialty was frozen foods.

Martin is the co-founder of C.W. Analytical, a business that consults marijuana producers and has cannabis testing facilities. A patient himself, he says that marijuana-medicated foods are technically subject to all the same guidelines for commercially-produced non-pot products, although actual enforcement is sparse. C.W. offers these classes for free to interested entrepreneurs. They teach professional skills and serve as an introduction to the for-sale services the business provides.

The students are being treated to quality assurance fail stories from Martin’s career in the corporate world. A sherbet producer he once knew bought a wildly expensive machine to make fudge bars, but when he failed to make the proper tests on his treats, they caused a nasty spate of diarrhea in consumers and he ended up losing his shirt.

“That’s the kind of crap that can happen to you guys,” cautions Martin, and starts reading from a tongue-in-cheek guide to how you can tell food has gone bad. “Flour is spoiled when it wiggles,” he reads. This is quality assurance humor. “I love this stuff!”

One of the day’s students Lacey (not her real name) says she learned a lot from the class that she’ll be able to implement in her own business, Laced Cakes Bakery. She’s been making prettily iced cannabis cookies and brownies since 2007 and has seen the industry requirements shift dramatically.

“Years ago, you could just bring down a tray [to a dispensary] and drop it off,” she says. Nowadays, to sell in San Francisco she has to package the sweets in opaque material and make sure that the design can’t be interpreted as too appealing to kids. “The laws keep changing.”

She had heard about C.W. Analytical at some of the cannabis expos she’s been a vendor at — the firm will have a booth at next weekend’s West Coast Cannabis Expo as well — and was happy that the class was offered for free. She hadn’t finalized her opinion, however, on Martin’s suggestion that producers get their foods analyzed by the company so that they can put nutrition labels on their packaging. “It seems like they might just be trying to make money off of us,” she mused. 

WEST COAST CANNABIS EXPO

Oct. 7-9. Fri/7, 3-9 p.m.; Sat/8, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun/9 11 a.m.-7 p.m., $18 one day/$45 weekend pass

Cow Palace

Geneva and Santos, Daly City

(650) 591-0420

www.westcoastcannabisexpo.com

 

Harsh times

Andrew Lam
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0
Harsh times

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE It’s what you would call a recession novel.

The lead character of Tony D’Souza’s Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight (292 pp, Mariner Books, $14.95)has nearly navigated the entirety of the upward-downward spiral to drug kingpin-dom we know so well from Scarface. This is how his story ends, in part:

“And there was the recession and there was not the recession and there was fear from the recession and there was not the fear from the recession. And there was America and there was not America and there was me and there was not me.”

The moment comes after hundreds of pages of violence and paranoia. D’Souza’s James is a successful freelance journalist rendered financially obsolete in the Crash Which Dare Not Speak It’s Name. Reduced from an A-list Austin lifestyle, he decides to drive a pound of marijuana across the country, literally to make ends meet for himself and his young family. His surprising ambition leads to mansions in Florida and reliance on the money-sick and power-mad for business.

Mule reads like an episode of The Wire, drawing from Weeds for some background material. And like those two series, what it has to say about the times we’re living in is worth hearing.

James is a deal-shoot-angst protagonist, a thoroughly middle class character. He wears Lacoste. He can’t get a byline to save his life, hence the drug running. His white skin is an advantage as a mule because it keeps him from being profiled by highway cops.

But if the Obama job plan passes, if unemployment was no longer at 9.1 percent, would James still be hustling? This is where Mule succeeds, its sheer ambiguity making it so much a product of this rightnow. In 2011, it’s not clear if we should be taking deep breathes and job hunting through the madness or straight up losing our shit in the face of economic meltdown, environmental heart attack, and vitriolic culture war.

And yes, Mule is also about marijuana itself. This too is important. How many Cali children have saved their skins by trimming in Mendo?

This is the same substance that supports the professional photographers and glamour shots we profiled in last week’s column. Only in Mule, double murders are performed over the stuff, people lose their minds to transport it. These are the same things that are happening across the hemisphere, despite our privileged Bay Arean cradle where we smoke in the streets and get prescriptions to stoke our appetites. Medicine, felony: marijuana is ambivalence itself these days.

If you’re looking for a novel-length iteration of why cannabis should be legalized, you could do worse than Mule. But you could also do better. That’s because of the book’s omnipresent ghoul, the generation-derailing R-word.

Sure, if selling pot wasn’t grounds for a felony or worse in most of the country, James would never have to smack around that snotty college dealer with the kid’s own textbooks, or been rendered paralyzed by fear in a grotty hotel room in San Angelo, Tex. — but would his world morph to emerald green good vibes? If weed were legal, wouldn’t it be assimilated into that other source of our brave protagonist’s dread? Would it be just one more job field described by our dismal unemployment levels?

Mule is a drug novel. But it’s also a recession novel and it’s not a recession novel and the novel’s about fear from the recession and the novel is not about fear from the recession.

In other words, read it.

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