Grown in the USA

|k j| n KITLJ Calijoi'tiians ivill line up to cast their

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i/i a historic election. For the first time since the i();),j Marijuana Tax Act effectively outlaived cannabis, vot­ers will have a chance to legalize the sale, use and taxation oj'pot. Already,

for the past 18 months, a mainstream pot industry has emerged in America. Today, according to The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform, grass is the biggest cash crop in this country, generating more wealth than corn and wheat combined. Even the most conservative estimates (say, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron's) call cannabis a S14 billion market.

California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, in 1996. Thirteen states and Washington, D.C. have followed, and eight more have legislation pend­ing. Cannabis remains illegal by federal law. The "Green Rush" picked up speed in 2009 when the Obama administration

announced it wouldn't focus raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that con­formed to state laws. Between 2000 and 2008 Colorado issued about 2,000 medical marijuana cards to "patients." That num­ber has since grown to over 60,000. ("This industry is like a bolting horse running out of a stable that's on fire," said one dispen­sary owner.) From September 2009 to May the number of legal smokers in Montana tripled, to 14,000. Some 350,000 Cali-fornians are buying their cannabis legally today. "I ask kids all the time, and they'll tell you it's easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer," said one former state prosecutor who supports legalization.

The Green Rush has created a wave of entrepreneurs—marijuana millionaires, mostly farmers and middlemen. Indus­try workers in Oakland have unionized. Pot businesses now have access to tra­ditional insurance programs. Law firms such as California's Cannabis Law Group have sprouted to service the industry. An emerging pharmaceutical company, Can­nabis Science Inc., is now traded publicly on Nasdaq. Three universities have launched to educate cannabis workers and entrepreneurs: Colorado's Green-way University, California's Oaksterdam and Michigan's Med Grow.

CannBe, an Oakland-based marketing

firm, seeks to bring corporatization to the

industry, envisioning "the McDonald's of

marijuana." In July the Oakland city council

approved a plan to license four pot produc­

tion facilities (continued on page 60)

GREEN GROSSERS

The top i o pot-producing states with their highest-grossing cash crops

Marijuana Production in the United States (2006) Average Values 2003-2005

1. CALIFORNIA

Marijuana $13.BS billion

Vegetables $5.E7 billion

Grapes $2.E1 billion

5. WASHINGTON

Apples $1.15 billion

Marijuana $1.03 billion Wheat $507.22 million

9. WEST VIRGINIA

Marijuana $494.33 million

Hay $63.91 million

Cam $7.64 million

S.TENNESSEE

Marijuana $4.79 billion

Soybeans S277.BG million

Hay $252.37 million

6. NORTH CAROLINA

Marijuana $672.25 million Tobacco $533.87 million Cotton $3DE.32 million

Marijuana $473.97 million

Hay $346.75 million

Wheat $195.02 million

3.KENTUCKY

Marijuana $4.47 billion

" ¦ $421.D4 million

Tobacco $410.55 million

Vegetables $1.29 billion Oranges $1.05 billion Marijuana $593.80 million

Marijuana $3.82 billian Sugarcane $64.35 million Macadamias $40.13 million

B. ALABAMA

Marijuana $563.41 million Cotton $138.33 million S12D.EE million

% No [keep illegal] % Yes legalize)

LEGALIZE IT?

4 look at who support.* rannabis reform

Support far Legalizing Use of Marijuana-% Should be legal

2DD5 2DD3 Change

National adults :

Independent

Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal?

GROWN

(continued from page 46) where tens of thousands of pounds can be grown, packaged and processed annually. The industry even has its first employed critic, William Breathes, who writes about pot strains for the Denver alt-weekly Westumd.

In short, America is having a love affair with cannabis. From seed to smoker, tliis is the stoiy of a new thriving mainstream industry and an underground economy that has elbowed its way into the spotlight.

SEED MONEY

Aaron, the/I in DNA Genetics, splits his time between Amsterdam and Los Angeles, but as a medical marijuana seed geneticist, he has found that L.A. is the place to be these days. In his early 30s, he resembles your typical IT office worker. His company, which he launched in 2003 with his part­ner Don—the I) in DNA Genetics—and which now has nearly a dozen employees, creates cannabis strains and sells the seeds to farmers and home growers.

"What we do is completely legal," Aaron says, sitting in his office in downtown L.A. "We do trades with collectives and patients that cover our costs—power, water, nutri­ents, rent, soil, employees—and strictly follow the nonprofit model. We are just looking to recover our costs."

Seed geneticists have emerged as key figures in the new pot economy. They're responsible for the high quality that consum­ers today demand; go<xl American-grown pot has roughly 20 percent tetrahydrocan-nabinol, or TIIC, the chemical that causes the high, as opposed to yesteryear's Mexi­can schwag, which contained alxuit seven percent. Geneticists also create and name the strains of cannabis in the industry's first attempts at branding. Apollo 13, Sour Diesel, Purple Kush—these arc the Dr Peppeis and Whoppers of the pot trade. In this regard, DNA Genetics has become a prolific force.

"DNA has created a sort of seed dream team," .Aaron says. lie started growing pot as a hobby. When he realized this was his calling, he and his partner moved to Amster­dam to learn the trade from the tx-st, but in recent months the Green Rush has lured them home, lixlay they spend most of their time in the lab, white coats on, breeding tomorrow's strains—say, crossing an African male strain with an Afghan female strain. They cultivate breeds for months, then test the product on themselves. Geneticists can breed pnxluets with great specificity, focusing on flavor, odor, visual beauty and of course the high, which varies from strain to strain. DNA charges anywhere from $40 for its cheapest package of six seeds (Con­noisseur's Cannabis) to $110 for its most expensive (Kandy Kush). The company's strains have won multiple Cannabis Cup awards, the Super Bowl for pot growers.

"At center is L.A. Confidential," Aaron says, pointing to a jar of crystal-coated buds, "a great medicinal strain. Choco-lope, a great-tasting and pleasant saliva that really helps with nausea and everyday

use, is at small forward. Lemon Skunk, a tasty and mild strain, is at power forward. OG Kush is our shooting guard, one of the world's most sought-after medicinal strains. And Martian Mean Green runs the point but is currently sold out."

Aaron and his partner have been called seed gods by industry insiders, a moniker that makes him laugh. "I'm no god. But we joke that it can sometimes feel like playing God. I'm just really good at what I do."

Should prohibition be lifted, DNA Genetics could turn its operation into a multimillion-dollar company overnight. But Aaron has more lofty goals: "Some­day I hope to teach the craft to the nexl generation of geneticists."

DOWN ON THE FARM

On any given day in the Emerald Triangle of northern California—Mendocino, Huni-boldt and Trinity counties—you can stand in the sunshine, lift your nostrils to catch the breeze and smell millions of horny female pot plants yearning to be pollinated.

Val (not her real name) is a second-generation hippie-chick farmer. She's a lady outlaw with 15 cell phones and a briefcase full of $100 bills, a gorgeous California girl who moonlights as a lire-eating belly dancer when not supplying weed for her Venice dispensary and a nationwide underground clientele. Both her parents, now divorced, glow weed for a living and taught Val every­thing she knows. It's a family operation.

Val lives on her mother's farm in Mendo­cino County. High wooden fences surround the property. Iwo muscular Dobermans and a pit bull roam outside at night to discour­age thieves. There is a long wden shed that l<x)ks like* it could shelter farm equip­ment; inside is an indoor growing operation with thousands of dollars' worth of high-tech lighting that produces a rotating harvest of hundreds of pounds of cannabis year-round. Next to the shed, enclosed by electrified fencing, is a hall'acre of stately female plants that have been allowed outside to luxuriate in the sun. A single plant will yield roughly a pound of super-high-grade weed.

Both Val and her mother are licensed by the state of California as care-givers, which allows them to grow an indeterminate amount of cannabis for their patients— supposedly not more than is required to supply the card-carrying clientele of their Venice dispensary. But who is counting? Farms like Val's operate on the legal frontier. According to federal law, the entire operation is illegal. And any transaction that involves profit or that is conducted with anyone but a licensed dispensary is illegal in California.

On a good year, with minimal busts and rip-offs, Val clears around $300,000, tax-free. She has had her setbacks—loads lost on the road, middlemen busted with the goods and ratting to the man; hence the alias and the disposable cell phones.

"It's changing day to day," she says about her operation. "That's the only way to stay one step ahead." And as in any other business, Val says, "it's hard to find gexxl help. That's why I try to keep it all in the family. At least I

know I can trust my mom.... People are glow­ing pot in their closets, in their basements. It's all over the place. There's no way the heat can control it. So many people I know, with­out the income they get from growing weed, would be on welfare. The sad part is, people still get busted and go to jail."

Val was arrested once on a cross-country jaunt, moving product from the growing lields to the lucrative markets back F.ast. Her attorney got the case thrown out on a techni­cality, but she lost her load and spent another hundred grand fighting the case. Now she's a lot more careful. Too many people, she says, have mistaken the changing legal situ­ation for an opportunity to get sloppy.

And then there arc the thieves—Mexicans and biker gangs prowling the countryside. As one local farmer recently put it, "The woods up here are dangerous. There arc mountain lions, Mexicans...and the Mexi­cans will kill you." Two recent incidents in Washington involving burglary of pot plants left one man beaten to death and another with a gunshot wound. Other pot-related killings occurred in Montana and Los Angeles this year. In late [uly cops busted 97 people, most of them Mexican nationals believed to have contacts with drug car­tels; the arrests netted $1.7 billion worth of plants from industrial-size plantations in California's Sierra Mountains.

"I deal almost exclusively with people I have known for years," Val says. "People get popped, they roll over and give up their friends. It can be an ugly business. For all the good times, honestly, I've seen as many harsh scenes."

For the bulk loads going out of state, Val deals exclusively with three middlemen. "I know if they were to take a fall, they'd stand up and protect me," she says. "The big issue is always putting it on the road. Once your herb comes out of the closet or out of the field, your exposure is 10 times as great. That's why the price jumps so much from the grower to the consumer."

ON THE ROAD

On a hot Saturday night in June 2009, a vigilant Illinois state trooper was on station­ary patrol, sitting in his cruiser in the center median crossover on Interstate 80. The trmper was positioned 10 miles east of the Mississippi River. I Ie was watching traffic on the route known to cops as the main north­ern corridor for loads of reefer headed from California to market on the East Coast.

A white Ford F-150 pickup pulling a large trailer in the eastbound passing lane caught the cop's eye. He clocked the pickup doing 62 in a 55 mph zone—hardly a major speeding violation hut reason enough to investigate. "I observed the white Ford pickup change lanes from the passing lane to the traveling lane and dramati­cally decreased \.sic\ its speed," the trooper recorded in his field report. He made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop.

"As I exited my squad car and walked

past the white enclosed trailer, I noticed

three large, high-security, bolt-type locks,"

(continued cm page 124)

GROWN

(continued jrom page 60) the trooper wrote in his report. The woman behind the wheel produced a Virginia driv­er's license identifying her as Tamara Louise Geagley, age 26. When the cop asked Gea-gley if she knew why she was being pulled over, she seemed nervous. She said she was headed to New York for "work."

Backup and a K-9 unit arrived. Inside the trailer police found 334 pounds of premium grass, valued at $5,000 a pound, vacuum sealed in plastic bags. Geagley immediately rolled over and gave up her boss, a former mountain-biking champion named Melissa "Missy the Missile" Giove. When the DEA conducted what is known as a "controlled delivery" of the weed, agents seized roughly another 40 pounds of cannabis, a money-counting machine, statements from foreign banks and $ 1.4 million in cash from a home in upstate New York. Another $800,000 was discovered at a different location.

Herein lies tile rub when it comes to the Green Rush: licensed farmers may be allowed under state law to grow marijuana, and

licensed dispensaries may be allowed to sell it. But transporting it is a legal gray area, and moving it across state lines is illegal.

On any given day in the U.S. hundreds of tons of marijuana are on the road or in the air, being trucked or flown from guerrilla grow­ers to distributors and consumers around the country. FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service, tractor trailers, motor homes, horse trailers, Grandma and Grandpa's SUV packed with what looks like luggage, moving vans, private planes, lx>ats, even snowmobiles: Domestic smugglers use whatever means necessary to get the product to the marketplace.

Eric Canori, the alleged distributor of the weed seized from Missy Giove's trailer, is represented by Michael Kennedy, the dean of dope lawyers. Kennedy has been fighting cannabis prohibition for more than 40 years. The legal team he has assembled is using this case to challenge the current classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug (meaning no medicinal value, the same as heroin and crack) under the federal Controlled Substances Act. It could end up being the case that forces the federal government to confront the fact that 14 states (with more on the way) have

declared that pot dcx's have medicinal value. Eventually, proponents envision, canna-bis will be transported in branded vehicles like Budweiser trucks. Until then, the high­ways and mail systems will serve as the most critical battlegrounds between the American government and its pot-smoking public.

THE KIND DOCTOR

On the bottom flcx>r of a leafy courtyard in Marina del Rey, California sits Green Bridge Medical, one of the dozens of new cannabis-physician offices cropping up around Los Angeles. Sandwiched between a yoga studio and real estate offices, Green Bridge looks like an acupuncture clinic. Kntcr Dr. Allan Frankel. Wearing jeans, an Izod polo and tennis shoes, the 60-sometliing Kraiikel lks eveiy bit ail M.D. He has been a board-certified internist for more than 27 years, with big chunks of that time at UCIA Medical Center.

"Five years ago, when I first told my col­leagues and friends I was leaving to open a cannabis practice, not one supported it," he says with a smirk. "Now my colleagues refer patients to me weekly and I'm a lead­ing lecturer on this subject."

lb buy medical marijuana legally a patient needs a doctor such as Frankel to provide a "recommendation"—not a prescription, as cannabis is not an FDA-approved medi­cine. Frankel didn't tiy pot until his mid-4()s, and it was not until eight years ago, when a vicious virus in his chest attacked his heart, that he began to smoke regularly. But as a doctor he has believed in marijuana's medic­inal value for a long time.

"For years at UCIA I worked with chemo and oncology patients," he recalls. "They were in so much agony that I would wheel them out into the garden and give them a joint. And eveiy single one of them would feel better. I never saw it as a moral issue but a human issue."

So after suffering a fate similar to his former patients' and being told he had less than a year to live, Frankel began to smoke heavily, and, well, here he is. According to Frankel, the lion's share of cannabis dcxtors are not smokers; they're in it for business reasons and will, for a fee, offer a cannabis card after a 10-minute consultation for anytliing from insomnia to back pain. The majority of patients in Los Angeles, for example, are in their 20s and 30s, hardly a demographic of ill people.

A large portion of voters who will weigh in on legalization next month believe the doctor-patient system is a scam, an excuse for smokers to get high and dcxtors to earn money. A Washington Post blogger recently called the medical marijuana movement "ail insult to our intelligence." Justin Ilartfield, who started the company weedmaps.com to help people find dispensaries, has a doctor's recommendation for pot to ease anxiety. "I'm fine. I don't really have anxiety," he recently told The Wall Street Journal. "The medical sys­tem is a total farce. It just needs to be legal."

But not all dcxlois are in it for the cash. Kven the American Medical Asscxiation has reveised its 72-year antipot policy and urged the fed­eral government to do the same, suggesting that "marijuana's status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed."

No matter if doctors themselves smoke or not, they all face the same issue of dosage.

How can you give a proper dose of a medi­cine when no definitive studies have been done and the medicine itself is a plant, not a pill created to exact specifications in a lab?

"This is a gray area for sure," Krankel admits. "A lot of doctors use edibles, but since those are absorbed through the stomach and must go through hepatic metabolism, which turns the cannabis molecules into a much longer-lasting and veiy stoney medicine, it is almost impossible to quantify dosage, and too much can cause psychotic reactions." He continues, "Smoking has some of the same issues, plus the possible harmful effects on the lungs. Vaporizers definitely have less tar, but again, it's very hard to define dosage."

The solution? Tinctures, liquid TIIC doses that are dispensed under the tongue through a dropper. The medicine is absorbed through the sublingual veins, a reliable delivery conduit. The method is not yet widely used— most doctors recommend vaporizers—but Frankel is a tincture pioneer.

"I was told by colleagues and my lawyer not to be involved with tinctures," he says. "But I believe in the IIipp<x:ratic oath, in serving your patients first and making them well."

By placing three drops under the tongue twice a day, Frankel claims, no matter how old you are, how much you've smoked or how much you weigh, your pain or anxiety will be alleviated for up to six hours. Says the good (l<x:tor, "I treat lawyers, doctors, executives, and it almost always has the same results for every patient."

THE DRUG STORES

"Medical marijuana isn't a cure-all medicine," says Barry Kramer, who runs the medical marijuana dispensary California Patients Alli­ance. "This is a quality-of-life medicine."

Kramer's office, on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, is strangely futuiistic and antiquated at the same time, as if it were pulled from the set of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey dean white walls, shadowy cool lighting, spick-and-span floors and an incubator room in the center for growing plants, its windows slightly clouded. The medicine is kept in neat glass cases, num­bered, named and organized.

Serving patients since 2007, CPAis a pre-ICO collective, meaning it was established, licensed and had been "following protocol" before the Los Angeles city moratorium on new dispensaries.

"The city really screwed up," says Kramer, 50, a former actor from Chicago. "Because they were too lazy or scared or whatever to act four years ago and create meaning­ful, regulated, logical laws around medical marijuana, there are now hundreds of illegal dispensaries operating. They went from not enforcing protocol at all to overly enforcing it to the point that it is completely irrational and hurts patients."

After dragging its feet, I.A's city council created an ordinance and began serving evic­tion notices to dispensaries in [une. So many had opened—more than 800 of them—that city officials began to force most to close, cap­ping the number at 135. To stay in business a marijuana wellness center must not be within 1,000 feet of a school, public park, place of worship or residential neighborhood.

"Even though we anticipated this when we were looking for a space four years

ago and found this place, we now have to move," says Kramer. "We comply with it all but the residential part. Where in L.A. are you going to have places for rent that are 1,000 feet from a residential area, clean, nice and functional and with a landlord interested in having a medical marijuana dispensary as a tenant?"

Critics argue that the majority of dispen­sary owners are financial opportunists. Says Bob Ilagedorn, a former Colorado state sen­ator and currently public allairs officer for the Colorado Wellness Association, "I've visited about 80 dispensaries in the Denver area. I'd say 10 percent are serious about the wellness side of things, 50 percent are inter­ested in moving product and the other 40 percent are a balance of those two."

While Kramer admits that many oppor­tunists have raced to open dispensaries ("Iley, it's America"), a solid number are "in it for real medicinal values and helping patients get their medicine safely, properly and with compassion."

Kramer's patients are typically between 28 and 40 and mostly male—actors, business­men, creative professionals. Their number one complaint is anxiety (with chronic pain a close second). Which of Kramer's strains is best for anxiety? "Asativa-dominant strain such as Chocolope, Trainwreck, LCD or Haze seems to work best."

Lately Kramer liimself has been sulfering anxiety. Along with the stress of having to move his business, he also has to deal with the every­day, though small, possibility of being raided. The feds have backed oil'raiding dispensaries ("unless the place of business has other moti­vations or is tied to something bigger," says Kramer), but there's always that chance.

In February the Los Angeles County dis­trict attorney's office made an example of Jell' Joseph, proprietor of the high-profile West LA dispensary Organica Collective, charging him with 24 felonies, including selling, trans­porting and possessing marijuana. Joseph pleaded not guilty. "I've seen too many peo­ple sull'er and die from cancer and AIDS not to try to help them," says Bryaii Epis, a for­mer dispensary owner now serving a 10-year stint in California for growing pot.

"Sure, I get mildly worried," Kramer admits. "But I know I'm following every pro cedure there is. I run my dispensary very professionally and by the book."

CPA works as a functioning co-op and typ­ical nonprofit. Employees are paid (CPAhas fewer than 10), and if there is any profit alter payroll, rent and expenses, the money is donated to causes or charities.

"I know people out there think we are making millions," Kramer says, gesticulat­ing. "But so far we haven't had the good fortune of being able to have profits, which we would love to donate."

Like any arena for survival of the fittest, there will he a core of survivors when the dust settles. One key factor and point of debate is how the dispensaries obtain their medicine safely and legally.

"We are a private member co-op, and we obtain our medicine only through members and in-house patients we know intimately," Kramer explains. "They get compensated for their time and expenses, but again, it's a nonprofit." And what

about the black market and drug cartels that have L.A. residents worried?

"Of course a lot of the fringe dispensaries obtain their medicine through questionable means," he says. "There's no debating that. But I'm in this for the long haul, so I follow protocol. CPA is going to survive and thrive and serve our patients for a long time."

Although the so-called protocol for obtain­ing the medicine is still blurry, Kramer thinks that in the near future the medicine will be largely grown by the wellness cen­ters themselves, tested and regulated like any medicine.

"We'll be growing our own medicine soon," Kramer acknowledges. But, he adds, "I think it will be a combination of members cultivating as well, because, to be honest, if we had to grow all our own medicine right now, I'd need an 8,000-square-foot ware­house, not this 800-square-foot office."

Oh, and don't forget to indulge in the bowl of chocolates and candies on your way out.

THE CONSUMER

In many parts of America today cannabis is more socially acceptable than tobacco, especially considering tobacco kills 400,000 people every year and there's no evidence marijuana causes cancer or any other dis­ease. The stigma once attached to grass among the middle class is disappearing.

As opposed to the old "I didn't inhale" days, today politicians speak openly about marijuana. Did Ohaina inhale? "That was the point." New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg? "You bet I did, and I enjoyed it." Fourteen-time Olympic gold medalists smoke marijuana, as we learned from Michael Phelps and the lx>ng hit heard around the world. CKOs such as former Bear Stearns chief James Cayne have been reported to light up with regularity. On the Ibday show Matt Laucr did a segment on "stiletto stoners"—educated career women with impressive social lives and a taste for kind bud.

According to the federal government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (statistics from 2001 to 2007), more than half of all adults in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 49 have smoked pot in their lifetime. Almost 40 percent of annual mari­juana users smoked more than 100 times a year, meaning there arc more than 8 million regular users today. Whites are more likely to smoke than blacks, and men are much more likely to smoke than women. Pot smoking among teens and the elderly is on the rise.

Advocates of legalization put forth the argument: If all these smokers paid taxes on their cannabis, what might that do for our ailing state budgets, especially in California, where the government is setting prisoners free and cutting school programs due to a nearly $20 billion budget shortfall?

Leading up to the election, depending on the poll, voters are roughly split down the middle on the legalization issue. How­ever it turns out, the vote won't stop the Green Rush from moving forward. Can­nabis use and support has reached such a critical mass, it's out of the hands of politi­cians now. Legal or not, the kush doctors and dispensaries are here to stay.