Big Weed

by Christian Hageseth

  The discussion of U.S. history and politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with respect to cannabis is drawn chiefly from Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, updated and expanded edition, 2013); Ed Rosenthal’s Marijuana Grower’s Handbook, and The Pot Book, edited by Holland, particularly chapter 3, “Recent History,” by David Malmo-Levine.

  The discovery of cannabis- and cocaine-tainted pipes in Shakespeare’s garden was reported in “Bard ‘Used Drugs for Inspiration,’” BBC News, March 1, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1195939.stm) and “Drugs Clue to Shakespeare’s Genius,” CNN.com, March 1, 2001 (http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/03/01/shakespeare.cannabis). Those news reports were based on this scientific paper: J. F. Thackeray, N. J. Van Der Merwe, and T. A. Van Der Merwe, “Chemical Analysis of Residues from Seventeenth-Century Clay Pipes from Stratford-upon-Avon and Environs,” South African Journal of Science 97 (2001): 19–21.

  Quotes from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams can be found in The Pot Book by Holland. Monticello, the Jefferson residence historic site, offers an extensive, fascinating list of hemp references drawn from the writings of Jefferson: (http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/hemp).

  The THC level in cannabis typically is tested and reported each year following competitions in the United States and the Netherlands. The data, frankly, vary according to the labs performing the tests, sampling methods, growing techniques, and types of samples submitted. One gauge is the annual “Earth’s Strongest Strains” report published by High Times magazine. The 2014 report (http://www.hightimes.com/read/earths-strongest-strains-2014) includes my firm’s own SkunkBerry strain. In the 2014 review, High Times noted that THC content had risen enough across the board that it could now report several strains at 23 percent or higher, up from a previous level of 20 percent.

  The average THC content of cannabis found in Dutch coffee shops was reported in “Dutch Cannabis No Longer So Strong,” Netherlands Info Service News Bulletin, June 27, 2013: http://www.nisnews.nl/adb.html, based on a study by the Trimbos Institute commissioned by the Dutch health ministry. In 2011, after a survey by Trimbos found that cannabis sold in shops averaged THC content between 16 and 18 percent, the nation acted to ban cannabis that tested higher than 15 percent.

  Details of the collectible market for cannabis-labeled medicine bottles was drawn from antiquecannabisbook.com. A complete collection of all editions of the United States Pharmacopoeia, the “cookbook” that taught pharmacists how to prepare various medicinal formulations, that reference cannabis—and the 1942 edition that did not—may be inspected online: http://antiquecannabisbook.com/Appendix/AppendixC.htm.

  There’s no definitive cut of the film known today as Reefer Madness, but you can watch one version for free online: https://archive.org/details/ReeferMadness_479. Likewise, a version of Hemp for Victory may be viewed free online: https://archive.org/details/HempForVictoryfixedVersion512kbMp4.

  The complete schedules for controlled substance may be found at the U.S. Department of Justice website: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/cfr/2108cfrt.htm. A quick summary of the schedules may be found at: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/.

  The complete text of the Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972, also known as the Shafer Commission, may be found online: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/ncmenu.htm.

  Details on the gateway hypothesis are drawn from Marijuana Is Safer: by Fox et al. The background on Rockefeller, Mellon, and Hearst’s role in demonizing and eradicating cannabis is discussed in chapter 3, “Recent History,” by Malmo-Levine, in The Pot Book, edited by Holland.

  3. First Grow, First Blood

  I am by no means an expert on cannabis cultivation, but my notes on the plant’s growing requirements—humidity and temperatures—is based on personal experience and on Ed Rosenthal’s Marijuana Grower’s Handbook by Ed Rosenthal (Oakland, CA: Quick American, 2010).

  4. The Beauty of Failure

  Considering the role SkunkBerry has played in my firm’s success, I should mention that it is a sativa/indica hybrid. You can find further reviews online: http://theweedsnobs.com/skunk-berry-review/ and http://marijuana.com/community/threads/skunkberry-marijuana-strain-review.309550/. Jack Herer is another hybrid (http://www.leafly.com/sativa/jack-herer) bred by Sensi Seeds. Learn more about the late activist Herer online: http://www.jackherer.com.

  5. Don’t Bank on It

  The banking dilemma facing legal cannabis companies has been covered by prominent U.S. news organizations. A sampling of the best articles must include: “Banks Say No to Marijuana Money, Legal or Not” by Serge F. Kovaleski, New York Times, January 11, 2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/us/banks-say-no-to-marijuana-money-legal-or-not.html; “Pot’s Money Problem” by Alex Altman, Time, January 27, 2014, pp. 32–35; and “Pot Businesses Allowed to Open Accounts with US Banks” by Alison Vekshin, Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-14/treasury-lets-banks-offer-accounts-to-pot-businesses.html. I should add that the headline of the last article proved overly optimistic; banks are still waiting for action from Congress before granting cannabis firms access to banking accounts.

  As proof that the all-cash position of cannabis firms is untenable and dangerous, the Time article detailed the July 2013 murders in Bakersfield, California, of a medical marijuana dispensary owner and a security guard and the October 2012 kidnapping and brutalization of another dispensary owner in Orange County, California.

  The number of Mexicans killed in recent years in drug violence and the details about the $206 million cash seizure, the largest in history, comes from “Cocaine Unlimited: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions” by Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html. Details of the $15 million seizure comes from “Inside the Incredible Booming Subterranean Marijuana Railroad,” a fascinating look at the underground tunnels used by drug lords to smuggle marijuana into the United States and cash out, by Jason Kersten, GQ magazine (January 2014): http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201401/marijuana-railroad-mexican-drug-cartel-tunnels.

  6. The Haze of Paranoia

  The official website of the state of Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division is: http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/Rev-MMJ/CBON/1251581331216.

  The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library regards the Just Say No program as one of the hallmarks of First Lady Nancy Reagan’s legacy: http://www.reaganfoundation.org/details_t.aspx?p=RR1005NRL&lm=reagan&args_a=cms&args_b=10&argsb=N&tx=1203. An article that offers a contrary view is “Why Just Say No Doesn’t Work” by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, Scientific American, December 19, 2013: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work. Another article, “Whatever Happened to ‘Just Say No’?” by Mark Stricherz, The Atlantic, April 29, 2014 (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/ghost-of-just-say-no/361322) argues that the decline of the program is due in part to the success of medical marijuana programs and the “‘very substantial increase in the number of adults who use marijuana daily or near daily’ . . . the share of adults who have tried pot has risen to 38 percent from 24 percent in 1977.”

  The official website of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program is http://www.dare.org. In his article “Drug Abuse Resistance Education: The Effectiveness of DARE,” the sociologist David J. Hanson writes: “Scientific evaluation studies have consistently shown that DARE is ineffective in reducing the use of alcohol and drugs and is sometimes even counterproductive—worse than doing nothing. That’s the conclusion of the U.S. General Accounting Office, the U.S. Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Departme
nt of Education, among many others” (via http://www.alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html). For a more comprehensive look at the scientific literature, see Google Scholar’s listing of articles on the efficacy of the program: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=efficacy+of+dare+program&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&as_vis=1.

  My continuing observations on the history of marijuana prohibition in the United States, the impact of harsh penalties, and the benefits to the judicial system at large when millions of individuals are arrested and thrust through the system are drawn primarily from personal experience, Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, updated and expanded edition, 2013); and The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis, Its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science, and Culture, edited by Julie Holland, MD (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2010), particularly chapter 3, “Recent History,” by David Malmo-Levine. Eric Schlosser’s assertion that penalties for marijuana can be stiffer than those for murder in some U.S. states is found in his lengthy essay on marijuana in his book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2013).

  7. Seed to Sale to Bust

  For a look at the modern RFID tagging technology implemented to ensure seed-to-sale integrity, please see “RFID Tag Track Marijuana from Seed to Sale in Colorado” by Rebecca Hiscott, Mashable, February 11, 2014 (http://mashable.com/2014/02/11/marijuana-rfid-tracking). Some marijuana advocates oppose the seed-to-sale system, arguing that its ultimate steps invade patient confidentiality, as discussed in “Medical Marijuana Seed-to-Sale Tracking System Already Worrying Advocates—but Should It?” by Michael Roberts, Westword, October 21, 2011 (http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/10/medical_marijuana_seed_to_sale.php).

  8. The Cannabis Ranch

  A photo of the aircraft graveyard in its heyday was posted by a third party to the photo-sharing website Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rlunde/6331214648/. Readers may view recent photos of the site posted by my company at greenmancannabisranch.com.

  9. Family: Hageseth; Genus: Cannabis

  My discussion of adolescent use of marijuana is informed by my personal experience as a parent and by details provided in numerous books and articles over the years. Frankly, the physiological arguments for why young people should avoid marijuana are equivocal. In the text Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, updated and expanded edition, 2013), particularly their discussion in chapter 3, “Removing the ‘Toxic’ from Intoxication: An Objective Comparison of the Effects of Alcohol and Marijuana,” the authors summarize the science behind physiological impacts thusly: “Adolescents should also be advised to avoid cannabis, as it remains unclear whether marijuana, like alcohol, adversely affects the developing brain” (p. 38). A Duke University study, “Persistent Cannabis Users Show Neuropsychological Decline from Childhood to Midlife,” by Madeline H. Meier et al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 109, no. 40, E2657-E2664, October 2, 2012, (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657.abstract?sid=7a2a7f1f-ca77-40c4-8970-c758ca07561d), received a good deal of attention when it was used to bolster an antimarijuana campaign in Colorado: “Colorado Tries Hard to Convince Teens That Pot is Bad for You,” by Maanvi Singh, NPR, September 17, 2014 (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/17/348997416/colorado-tries-hard-to-convince-teens-that-pots-bad-for-you), but even the resulting public service announcement had to admit that the results of the study were disputed by a subsequent study, “Correlations between Cannabis Use and IQ Change in the Dunedin Cohort Are Consistent with Confounding from Socioeconomic Status,” by Ole Rogeberg, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 11, no. 110, 4251-4254, March 12, 2013 (http://www.pnas.org/content/110/11/4251) which examined the same data. More recent studies have centered upon whether marijuana with higher THC levels will have a stronger impact upon young brains. One article that investigated this issue is “This is Your Brain on Drugs,” by Abigail Sullivan Moore, New York Times, October 29, 2014 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/education/edlife/this-is-your-brain-on-drugs-marijuana-adults-teens.html).

  Unfortunately, adolescents who use marijuana are likely to suffer other consequences that are far clearer and are more compelling reasons for avoiding the substance: In current U.S. society, young people who are caught using marijuana tend to pay a higher price than those who use alcohol, namely: a criminal record, loss of education and employment opportunities. Young people are still developing their understanding of moderation, and are liable to overindulge, which can lead to driving under the influence. They are unlikely to use any technology, such as vaporizers, to reduce their risks from combustion and are thus at risk for pulmonary damage. Last, adolescent usage of street drugs is always alarming because it is virtually impossible to know what drugs bought off the street actually contain.

  One of the best discussions on marijuana I’ve found for parents is authored by medical sociologist and drug abuse expert Marsha Rosenbaum; in The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis, Its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science, and Culture, edited by Julie Holland, MD (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2010), chapter 30, titled “What to Tell the Children,” contains a brief summary of Rosenbaum’s work. The full text of her pamphlet, titled “Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens and Drugs” and distributed by the Drug Policy Alliance, is mandatory reading for all parents and can be found online: http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_SafetyFirst_2014.pdf.

  In 2013, CNN’s medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon by training, made a very public about-face on the issue of medical marijuana, resulting in two documentaries, which can be found online: Weed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn9eTC1mNTk) and Weed 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFu-Ihwyzg).

  A fine resource for parents and others investigating the potential of cannabidiol (CBD) for family members suffering from seizures and other ailments is the website of the nonprofit organization Project CBD (http://www.projectcbd.org). Whether farmers who are growing hemp will be able to ship the nonintoxicating CBD oil made from this strain of cannabis out of state is a matter of speculation at this writing. The issue was summarized nicely in “Bid to Expand Medical Marijuana Business Faces Federal Hurdles” by Dave Philipps, New York Times, August 23, 2014 (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/us/bid-to-expand-medical-marijuana-business-faces-federal-hurdles.html).

  The impact of cannabis on disease has been documented by a host of different researchers around the world. A 2009 landmark article in the Journal of Opioid Management, by University of Washington researcher Sunil Aggarwal and his colleagues surveyed thirty-three U.S.-controlled trial studies published between 1971 and 2009 that reveal cannabis as “safe, effective medicine for specific medical conditions.” The full article is behind a paywall at the journal, but the National Institutes of Health stores the article abstract online: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19662925, and the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group, posted a press releases on the report and its findings: http://www.mpp.org/states/washington/press-releases/33-us-clinical-studies-show.html. If thirty-three controlled trials are not convincing enough, readers may wish to review a seventy-page report issued by NORML, “Emerging Clinical Application for Cannabis and Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, Sixth Edition,” that lists the more than two hundred recent studies dating from 2000 to 2013 that investigated the use and safety of cannabis to treat twenty different conditions. The full report is available online: http://norml.org/pdf_files/NORML_Clinical_Applications_for_Cannabis_and_Cannabinoids.pdf.

  More germane to my discussion of cannabis and its impact on cancer patients such as Bob, readers will find part 3, “The Clinical Use of Cannabis,” in Holland’s The Pot Book to
be a more manageable read. The introduction, in particular pages 242 to 246, discusses the ability of cannabis to treat the Big Six side effects associated with conventional cancer treatment: depression, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, and pain. This section of the text explores the U.S. government’s obstruction of cannabis research; its “pot farm” in Oxford, Mississippi; the plant’s potential use in psychiatry; and more. In the same text I refer readers to chapter 6, “The Endocannabinoid System,” by Gregory L. Gerdeman, PhD, and Jason B. Schechter, PhD; and chapter 7, “Anandamide and More,” by Raphael Mechoulam, PhD, and Lumír Hanuš.

  A compelling documentary, Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis, produced by PBS Montana, investigates the science behind endocannabinoids and can be viewed online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aTbnO9I-TU.

  The full text of the U.S. government’s patent #6630507, “Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants,” can be found online: http://www.google.com/patents/US6630507.

  Some examples of old-time advertisements for hasheesh candy and a discussion of its properties can be viewed online: http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2013/02/07/Incredible-Delectable-Miracle-19th-Century-Medicine-Hasheesh-Candy.

  The “pot brownie” story has been somewhat distorted over time. Alice B. Toklas was the longtime companion of the writer Gertrude Stein. Technically, the recipe was not Toklas’s but that of an artist friend named Brion Gysin, who called it “Haschich Fudge.” The original recipe can be found online (http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/03/04/the-alice-b-toklas-cookbook-folio-natacha-ledwidge/) and in the 2010 paperback of the cookbook by Harper Perennial.