Letter to Colorado Politicians Regarding HB 1284 and SB 109:

Below is the text of an email I sent to EVERY SINGLE State Senator and State Rep: PLEASE copy and paste the body of this text and do the same (forward it to your reps, or all reps!), together we can beat this thing!

Dear Sir / Madam,

There is a very disturbing development brewing in the State Legislature regarding medical marijuana regulation. HB 1284 and SB 109 seek to destroy the very meaning of both the State Constitution and the Federal Constitution by trampling on the rights of law abiding, productive citizens of Colorado, who are registered patients certified by licensed medical professionals to use medical marijuana, and who share the same rights as every single citizen in our society.

This email was written to inform you that as patients and citizens we will not sit by while you trample our rights as citizens of the State of Colorado, and the United States. We will not submit to being harassed and terrorized by "inspectors with guns" making weekly visits to our LEGITIMATE businesses or PRIVATE residences or property. We will not submit to the violation of our Constitutional right to privacy by allowing money-and-blood hungry law enforcement to access the medical marijuana Registry (State Constitutional Amendment 20 specifically bans them from this illegal invasion of privacy). We will not sit by while you cap the number of patients who can access a particular qualified professional to provide them with medicine, creating a double standard in our society where any pharmacy may sell deadly drugs such as pharmaceutical-grade heroin to prescribed buyers without harassment, but the sale of relatively harmless medical marijuana is treated like a criminal enterprise.
WE DEMAND EQUAL TREATMENT WITH OTHER SIMILAR BUSINESSES AND INDUSTRIES, not the over-the-top criminal treatment provided to us by HB 1284 and SB109. WE WILL NOT WAIVE OUR 5th AMENDMENT RIGHTS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!!!!!

A pledge is currently being circulated to dispensaries, advocates, and citizens at large across the state that will hold you accountable should you choose to violate medical marijuana patients' rights by voting yes on HB 1284 or SB 109. Signers of this pledge have agreed to boycott and campaign against ANY PUBLIC OFFICIAL who votes for HB1284 or SB109 in their current versions. The pledge will continue to be circulated long after your vote is cast, so think long and hard about what a grassroots movement is capable of.

Only with SEVERE changes to current legislation will we even consider abandoning this pledge. We are committed to removing officials from office who have forgotten what rights are GUARANTEED to all Americans. These bills stink of communism and over regulation. Conservatives, are you prepared to attach your name to such regulatory monstrosities in the face of angry conservative voters who are tired of government over-regulation? Democrats, are you prepared to lose your liberal base of voters in what is shaping up more and more to be a hostile re-election cycle for liberal politicians? Think long and think hard before you vote to support these bills in their current forms.

We are asking that you work with us, the patients and caregivers, to develop legislation that makes reasonable sense, and that does not treat us as criminals, but rather as medical providers and honest entrepreneurs. We want to be your allies and supporters, but you must support legislation that is Constitutional, fair, and reasonable. Come together with us as citizens of your districts and regions, to develop a real system that keeps the patients' needs first in mind, not the needs of insecure law enforcement stuck in an archaic past that no longer exists.

Any bill that we support must at a bare minimum keep police out of medical issues, respect patients' rights first and foremost, and reflect the reasonable and compassionate nature of Colorado's citizens. The current versions of HB 1284 and SB 109 could not be further from the will of Colorado voters. Medical marijuana was about treating sick people with compassion, not treating them like criminals. Support us now or lose our support when you need it most--election day.

Sincerely,

Medical Marijuana Patients and Advocates from across your districts and state

P.S.: See attached flier regarding this issue, which is currently being circulated far and wide across the state. There could be a lot of new people working for the State of Colorado after the next election if you choose to vote for the Constitution-destroying bills before you. WE WILL HOLD YOU POLITICALLY ACCOUNTABLE FOR VIOLATING OUR RIGHTS!!!

The Name Game: What's the real scoup on Medical Marijuana strains' genetic lineage?

With so many dispensaries popping up everywhere here in Denver and other parts of Colorado, the medical market is slowly falling prey to a problem that plagued the black market for decades: We're talking, of course, about the name game.

The name game is when a retailer of cannabis simply gives the commercial pot they are selling a famous name, such as "kush" or "skunk" and many varieties on these two names. It has been used on the black market for years to move mid grade buds off the shelves.

However, this practice becomes immediately more troubling in regard to Medical Marijuana. The reason for this is that many patients suffering from severe nausea or pain truly need particular strains or genetic lines [often pure Afghanis (Indicas) work wonders for pain, for instance] in order to experience relief from their symptoms. Dispensaries mislabeling their product might result in less than adequate medicine for many patients.

As a longtime cultivator of Cannabis I find myself constantly tracking down the lineage of strains in dispensaries I visit. The benefit of my experience here comes in being familiar with the true breeder of origin [or story of origin for clone-only strains such as Chem/Dawg] for many popular strains today. Many times I become immediately aware that a strain a dispensary is selling is not what they are touting it to be.

I don't want to get into too much finger-pointing, but I will give as an example here a recent visit I made to a local organic dispensary here in Denver. While in the waiting room of this dispensary, I decided to check out their clones, which were in rockwool [I generally expect organic clones to be in peat pellets or else rapid rooter plugs]. The clones were labeled on their respective plastic domes with signs about what strains were contained and their basic genetic lineage [Indica /Sativa].

Canabis Indica Leaf Canabis Sativa leaf

The first strain I viewed made me scratch my head. The sign advertised that it was Afghani #1, then labeled it as a pure Sativa. To provide a little background here, Afghani #1 was bred by Sensi Seeds by taking their finest landrace indica varieties and inbreeding them for many generations, until a very consistent, pure result was eventually distilled, which became Afghani #1.

In a sense, Afghani #1 is considered a Landarace Indica [Also known as an IBL or Inbred Line], which means it is one of the purest Indica's on the planet. [A cannabis Landrace is a marijuana plant that has been geographically isolated from the possibility of cross-breeding with any other marijuana strain of a similar plant species., and then selectively inbred for many generations for purity and potency.]

And yet what they had in the dome was clearly a sativa dominant strain, with longer, thin leaves and long internodes. Whatever it was, this strain was in no way related to Afghani #1, which has fat, stubby indica leaves, [and incidentally is excellent for pain, as where a pure sativa like what I saw in the dome is not likely to have nearly the desired effect for a patient suffering from chronic pain].

So how does the average consumer, not familiar with genetic lineages, ever verify their medicine's true identity? The answer is research. Shop around on the net, go to breeders' websites and really thumb through their information. Keep a list of the most respected breeders in the industry, and familiarize yourself with their strains. Most of all, ASK QUESTIONS of the dispensary employee selling you the medicine.

Simply put, if that employee seems unstable with their information, they are not fit to be providing you with care, and I suggest you take your caregiver status elsewhere, with true professionals and students of marijuana strains as medicine.

I wanted to give a bump here in this blog post today (the link is below in the next paragraph) to a post made on the forum of a very respected breeder, Sensi Seeds (Holland). The post was made by an administrator to the forum, and it very clearly lays out some of the hysteria associated with bunk strain names, and the bunk perception that marijuana is somehow more potent now in the medical world than it was 25-30 years ago. This belief is not founded in any form of reality, and here's why.

I mentioned Landrace strains earlier in my post. Many Landraces have been being cultivated for hundreds of years and passed down through families for generations, constantly selectively breeding the finest specimens together until a potent, uniform version can generally be distilled from nearly every seed phenotype.

The belief that we've somehow accomplished more in 20 years of selective breeding than was accomplished in hundreds is naive at best, manipulative at worst. Check out the forum post here, and find more information on Landraces and their use in creating many of the strains you know and love, here.