They Can't Be Serious..

And here we go. Washington State Liquor Control Board, in its infinite lack of wisdom, is proposing to allow over 200 possible pesticides on cannabis sold in the new retail outlets. I guess that's one way to control people..make them sick, or worse. And rumor has it they're trying to gut the medical cannabis law as well. No home grow..just pesticide-laden cannabis sold to consumers. Great work, people.

In case anyone was confused on this issue, when voters vote yes on a new law, city, county, and/or state officials cannot then try to circumvent in some way the new law. Oregon's legislature said yes to dispensaries and several cities, including Medford, said no. So the state's attorneys issued a letter stating they couldn't do this. Since it looks like we will be legalizing soon, this is a positive omen. 

I have to believe the problems we're beginning to see in Washington, similar to those in Colorado, are a reflection of those in power disagreeing with the new law. These are the same people who disagreed with the medical cannabis laws, so none of this is really surprising. The nonsensical 5 nanogram DUID limit is an example of giving something, yet making it impossible to have. If it were actually based on fact, then fine, but we all know it's not. So let's lock up some more people for doing something legal.

Oregon has published the rules for dispensaries for comment. One problem I see with it is that it does not require dispensaries to send their cannabis for testing to an independent lab. I would imagine with all the comments I know have already been made, and the comments pending, this will be changed. I wouldn't feel comfortable buying anything from a dispensary that did its own testing. That's why Washington's 200+ pesticide rule is so nuts.

Look, bugs aren't okay, because you know..fecal matter and all. But pesticides aren't okay either. We have to stop thinking in terms of acceptable loss. Elevate the standards for once. (I was going to say, set standards high, but that was too punny.) People with compromised immune systems cannot ingest fecal matter or pesticides. Nor should anyone else. So let's make sure the labs are doing their jobs correctly and require dispensaries to use them. And no icky stuff..please.

I've read that patients in Washington are organizing and responding to the proposed new rules. Please reconsider some of what you're proposing. And leave patients alone. Leave the dispensaries alone. If anything, make life better for patients. When people are that ill, and nothing else works, cannabis makes the difference between health and illness. And sometimes, between life and death. 

#Peace4Patients.. and everyone else..

Medicinal Cannabis..since we're talking about heathcare and all..

Apparently the government knew that cannabis preparations are effective in treating epilepsy. In 1949. And now the FDA has approved a study to look at this. Thanks, guys. Whatcha' gonna do when parents of children who have died from severe seizures come knocking on your door? What will you say to them? What will you say to the families of loved ones who have died from cancer? Because IT DIDN'T NEED TO HAPPEN.

Will you let everyone out of prison for using cannabis medicinally? Will you stop destroying lives yet? All we want to be is well. All we want is for our children to be well and to live happy and productive lives. And yet the federal government continues to stand in the way of truth...and health.

Washington State legalized cannabis last time. And now it appears that the worst fears of patients everywhere are about to be realized. Some want to gut the medical cannabis law and hurt patients in the process. After reading various articles, I've come to the conclusion that the recreational outlets are concerned about losing out to dispensaries, which is odd because dispensaries are reserved for patients, not the general public. Again, it's about money and not about the patient. Many of us were concerned about I-502 and voiced those concerns at the time. Oregon and Washington tend to follow each other at times so I hope we're more sensible here. It looks like we will be because already cities such as Medford have tried to ban dispensaries which were just legalized. The state's attorneys issued a letter telling them that they can't do this, so there's that. We'll take encouragement wherever we can find it, I suppose.

Everywhere you look now, articles are springing up about the efficacy of cannabis in the treatment of all sorts of conditions. Whether you vape, smoke, use concentrates, or use raw cannabis in smoothies for example, cannabis will help everything. And no, I'm not high. It really WILL help everything. Ideally, cannabis should be consumed raw, either in smoothies, or if you like the taste, just eat it as is. There is no altered state associated with this and it's enormously healthful. I use it daily in my smoothies along with hemp hearts and hemp milk as well.

Vaping is recommended over smoking, but smoking cannabis isn't the same as smoking cigarettes, and actually protects your lungs in the process. I know that sounds counter-productive, but apparently research shows this to be true. Of course the current histrionics surround the so-called e-cigs. Vape pens for oil are essentially the same thing..we just put oil in them to medicate with. The best table-top vaporizer is the Volcano. There are some others as well, but most pens actually burn the cannabis instead of vaporizing, which is fine as long as you know that. Some conditions respond well to inhalation versus ingestion, so you figure out what works best and then do it.

Concentrates are another category. I don't really include medibles in this, however. Technically food is medicine, but that's another subject. By concentrates, I mean oil, tincture, and capsules. Oil is also known as Rick Simpson Oil, or RSO. This is the sludgy stuff that takes a whole bunch of dried bud to make a tiny amount of oil. Pictures of my latest oil are below. I use it for RA and it works well. Tincture is typically made with alcohol or glycerine. I prefer the glycerine version as I don't drink alcohol. Patients either put some under their tongue or in tea to medicate. I prefer tea. The capsules are made by infusing cannabis bud into coconut oil. You can either strain the infusion or not (I don't) and then when it cools enough you put them into capsules. I use the Cap-m-Quik system which includes trays. Filling them is messy. There's no getting around it. But they work. Take a weekend to titrate when you're not going anywhere. Probably should do that with every new batch of whatever you make.

In any event, people should take a close look at cannabis. It's not what people have been led to believe. All this time, we've had a safe treatment available that the government has denied us. We need to either grow it and make our own medicine, or we need to have dispensaries who will produce the same product we make in our kitchens. Big Pharma needs to stay out of it unless it can do the same. It's the entire plant that heals..not some derivation of. The best part is the lack of side effects that many drugs give. Imagine removing a growth with oil that when gone leaves behind new healthy skin. Imagine that instead of surgery that leaves scarring and God knows what else! As they say, been there, done that, so I know it's true.

No matter how you end up medicating, the important part is that you do it. And when you do, you'll join a remarkable family. And we're all here to help show you the way!

starting cup after reduction

reducing more

when bubble are gone, it's done!

             








Amazon or Cap-m-Quik have capsules and trays for coconut bud capsules. I use a rice cooker to prepare the oil and then a coffee warmer to boil out what's left of the alcohol.




        

Legalize..just respect patients in the process..

Washington State has written their cannabis rules. Most will need legislative approval. Personal growing has been banned. Evidently this would apply to patients as well. Current law allows up to fifteen plants. Once again, legalization is accomplished at the detriment of patients. Not everyone buys their meds at a dispensary. Many of us grow our own. Oregon just decided to legalize dispensaries, which will help the existing dispensaries that started under the guise of "clubs". We voted no last time on dispensaries. But that didn't stop enterprising dispensary owners from opening businesses. Depending upon where they opened, some were harassed and raided, and some weren't. It probably would have been better to wait until they were legal, but those of us who really understand the benefits of cannabis on our health sometimes become exuberant and do things anyway. I'm not talking about drug traffickers here. Some of these dispensary owners are patients themselves. They only want to help people and have taken the risk to do so.

I have said many times that I believe in ending prohibition. It was based upon a lie anyway and countless lives have been ruined to further that lie. But to legalize at the expense of patients doesn't make sense. We don't have to make patients' lives more difficult by allowing the recreational laws to influence or apply to the medical laws. Patients use cannabis to become healthy. I know for some this seems odd. But that's why we do it. And it works! We get healthy! I'm living proof of this.

Also, current law allows patients or caregivers to possess 24 ounces of useable cannabis. The new rules would drop that amount to 3 ounces. Here's the problem with that. Many patients process their cannabis into other forms for medicating. Some make oil, tincture, or capsules to medicate with. This takes more than 3 ounces to do. Expecting this from patients doesn't make sense and could change the course of their return to health. Some patients also use raw cannabis in their diet. They include it in smoothies and juice. The health benefits of raw cannabis are only now being discovered and the news is great! I use raw leaf and small buds in my morning smoothies. Ingestion in some form is typically more effective than smoking for many conditions. Using raw cannabis, for example, doesn't even result in a high. And now growers are creating varieties that are higher in CBD and lower in THC which will also have less of a high. Tinctures made from high CBD varieties are what parents are giving to their kids with constant and severe seizures. It stops them. (Watch Sanjay's special)  Smoking or vaporizing is optimum for some kinds of pain as well as muscle cramps. It's great when you need to relax and to clear your mind of troublesome thinking as many survivors of PTSD have discovered. And yes, you'll get high from that. And you'll feel better. Trust me on this. I'm a survivor and cannabis has helped calm my mind without the resulting side effects of an anti-depressant.

The point is, patients figure out what works for them and then they get well. Colorado left patients alone. I hope Oregon does as well when we legalize. I know letting go of long-held beliefs is at the bottom of these decisions. Sanjay Gupta's special aside, people still believe in the whole "reefer madness" propaganda.  It's not easy to suddenly believe that cannabis is a safe plant that should be available to everyone.

But as we legalize, please leave patients alone. In the mean time, we need to reschedule cannabis federally so that research can begin in earnest. We did this in Oregon and rescheduled from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. Cannabis is a safe plant and should be scheduled even further down the list, if not removed completely. Stop trying to control something that is a personal decision. I still use Humira for my RA, but cannabis is what put my disease into clinical remission. I was so ill for so long that it may take time to discontinue the Humira. I also take Sulfasalazine, although it's been reduced by half. It would be nice to only take that one. The Humira scares me. I was also able to discontinue the anti-inflammatory drug, the narcotic, both blood pressure pills, and I'm down to 1 Metformin, which is also ending soon. This would have not happened without cannabis. I have no problem with western medicine. I just wish medical schools also included natural medicines in their curriculum. My medical experience has been lop-sided and would have been richer if I could have had meaningful conversations with my doctors about all forms of medicating. They shouldn't have to fear losing their medical license for talking to me about cannabis. So I don't tell them. And that's sad. It's not what I want. 

Prohibition must end. Simple as that. No one needs to freak out about it. States with existing medical cannabis laws must either leave them alone or make them better. States without medical cannabis laws need to enact them. And for pity's sake, keep the pharmaceutical companies out of this. It's the whole plant that heals. Not an unreasonable facsimile of, which is what these pill factories pump out. If what they produce isn't what we do in our kitchens, then it's not medicine. Sorry about that. A guy in front of a booth at Hempfest this year stopped me and try to sell me some cannabis oil. I thanked him and said I make my own. And you know what? He got a really odd look on his face. And it didn't seem like he was puzzled. It seemed like he understood what I was saying.

States should take a lesson from my experience at Hempfest and never underestimate the empowered patient. Because guess what else we are? Voters. Yes, we vote, among other things like raising families, holding down jobs, and helping our communities understand the truth about this wonderful plant. We're chatty like that..

Legalize..just respect patients in the process.
 

Did we just open the door to legalization?

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that as long as states don't let it be a free for all, they can move forward on recreational use of cannabis. And apparently, this applies to the states with legal medical cannabis as well. Now that we have legalized dispensaries here in Oregon, and reduced cannabis to a Schedule 2, it will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds. 

It certainly feels like we're on the path to full legalization. I've never understood how it could be prohibited on a lie in the first place. Especially considering how many lives have been ruined by incarcerating folks for using a completely safe plant to feel better - either medicinally or recreationally. What difference does it make which it is?

But then we've been led astray before, and I suppose that we'll have to wait and see just how far-reaching this is. Will it stop the court case involving an Anaheim landlord and the DEA in which the DEA wants to seize the building owned by the landlord because he had a tenant there with a dispensary? I read that the building is worth 1.5 million so is that what this is about? Money? What about the fact that it's legal in California for dispensaries to exist? Will they finally leave Harborside alone? After all, Oakland wants them there. Will this result in releasing the people in jail for cannabis? It should. Will the raids on the legal dispensaries stop now? Was it the fact that Senator Leahy decided to hold hearings next week in the Judiciary Committee to ask why state laws aren't being respected that this response happened today? I mean, I don't really care as long as this is the real deal.

I don't know, but things do feel different. Watching the Let Freedom Ring event yesterday in Washington DC commemorating the March on Washington as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave me hope for the future. It seems like people are getting really tired of the nonsense that's been going on. It's all about oppression in one fashion or another. Doesn't matter if it's cannabis laws, the Voting Rights Act, the Keystone XL Pipeline, Wall Street and the economy, Congress, the Violence Against Women's Act, SNAP, Meals On Wheels, Head Start, or anything else. We want to be treated with respect and dignity by our government. We want law enforcement to stop behaving like thugs. We want Congress to do it's job. We want this ridiculous sequester to stop so that necessary programs such as SNAP, Meals On Wheel, and Head Start are fully funded. It's okay to care about the American people. You're supposed to. You can't create the current situation and then walk away from your responsibilities. 

And your primary responsibility is to tell us the truth. Always. The last thing any of us should fear is following our state laws. Because that's what cannabis patients fear. We follow our state laws and then we go to jail anyway, or the dispensary owners have their businesses raided. Or our children are taken from us. I hope this new understanding stops all of this from happening in the future. It's like that doctrine of clean hands idea. If you can't come into court to sue someone when your own participation in the situation is less than legal, then how can the government prohibit something it's lying about and then incarcerate its citizenry for knowing the truth and using it anyway? 

It would be one thing if cannabis killed people. I know the government likes to say it does all kinds of horrible things, but it's simply not true. But if it were that bad, then prohibition would make sense. We have all kinds of laws on the books protecting consumers from businesses that essentially lie to them about their products.  If it's against the law to scam people in business, why isn't lying to the American people about cannabis? Surely we can all agree that we've been scammed all this time. If anyone doesn't agree, better watch Sanjay Gupta's special again. 

All we're asking for is for the truth about cannabis to be common knowledge. I attended the Seattle Hempfest this year and listened to a panel of doctors talk about the efficacy of cannabis in the treatment of pretty much everything. Dr. William Courtney went on and on about the benefits of daily raw cannabis in one's diet. He fervently believes that it should be a regular part of our diet. And given all of the environmental concerns we face, cannabis can protect and heal us. 

The federal government never should have allowed this state/federal conflict to exist in the first place. As soon as decriminalization efforts began, followed by medicinal cannabis laws, the federal government should have eliminated the conflict so that state laws would be respected. To let it go on this long is abuse. The federal government needs to own what they did to all of us. 

So there you have it...

Medical Cannabis Laws are a Blessing...not a Given

I just read an article about a couple in Arizona who have medical cannabis cards and then flagrantly violated state law to open a "bakery" in their home, complete with customer counter and hours of business sign. Great.

I know our economy isn't great. Cannabis is prevalent and it's tempting to make money with it. Growers, in my opinion, violate the OMMP in Oregon all the time when they charge their patients x amount for an ounce of cannabis that belongs to the patient in the first place. To get reimbursement, growers are SUPPOSED to present the patient with grow store receipts as well as the patient's portion of the grower's electric bill.  But they get creative and decide that those fees result in an ounce costing the patient anywhere from $100/ounce to $300/ounce. Far as I'm concerned, this is illegal.  There's no way they can justify this cost. We can say the growers are confused, but it's opportunism at it's most egregious. They take advantage of sick people who can't grow for themselves and are afraid to say anything for fear they'll lose access to their medicine. If voters in Oregon had approved dispensaries during the last election, some of this would have gone away. But we didn't do that.

Thank goodness for the actions of diligent activists who have worked tirelessly to tell the truth about this plant. They are the unsung heroes of our movement. Medical cannabis laws are a blessing. They're not a given. If patients continually violate them, they'll be repealed. Stop it.