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Cannabis Lifestyle Brand quaddeucenil.com QuadDeuceNil: FourTwoZero was created to help spread knowledge, educate, change misperceptions, and spread the love for cannabis, with the hopes of forging an educated community and open culture.

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WINTER 2018

ISSUE VI • CANNABIS

Deputy Editor Naomi Rosenblatt

CONTENTS

Managing Editor Jaime Lubin

Editors’ Letter

4

Wild World of Cannabis

Jaime Lubin

8

MJBizCon Interviews

Naomi Rosenblatt

16

Cannabis Timeline

Lori Lipten

22

Cannabis According to Spirit

HONEY FEATURE

24

Marvin Washington: The Revolution Might be Televised

HONEY FEATURE Naomi Rosenblatt

26

Crime and Punishment: The Law Takes on Jeff Sessions’ Pot Peeve

Catherine Hiller

30

Just Imagine: A Marijuana Thought Experiment

HONEY FEATURE Sam C. Long

33

The Highs Keep Cumming Exclusive Photo Interview with Alan Cumming

Consulting Editors Patricia Bosworth Soleil Nathwani Special Guest Editors Rani Soto Kym Byrnes Spirit Column Lori Bella Lipten Editorial Michael Demyan House Poet Jay Neugeboren Associate Editor Jennifer Parker Cover Design David Soto Illustration Eli Neugeboren Los Angeles Nadya Rousseau Creative Direction Blck Neon

Catherine Hiller Kaaren Nichols, MD 38 HONEY FEATURE Jaime Lubin

40

Our Epilepsy Hero: An Interview with Greg Grunberg

HONEY GUESTS Eben Britton Augustus Britton

42 43

Cannabis: A Tool For Health Walking Through the Fire with Eben Britton: A Brother’s Interview

Nadya Rousseau

45

Marijuana Over Migraines

John Gosslee

47

POEM

Susan Shapiro

48

Lighting Up: An Excerpt

Art Director Naomi Rosenblatt Art Director Assistant Io Escu Intern Mackenzie Schwark Founder and Publisher Ronit Pinto Cover Photo: Sam C. Long, infrared photography; Alan Cumming at Club Cumming, NYC 2017 Special thanks to **Marissa Mazek, Melissa Malamut, 2 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINEJohn Gosslee, & Sam C. Long

On Medical Marijuana

HONEY GUESTS 50 BLK Zen & The R.O.A.R.

Meet the Kaiju Photographs by Justin Bullock

Jaime Lubin

Green Acres is the Place for Him: Interview with Stephen Inglis

52

Emile “Hong” Westergaard “DX 21 Dasun” 54

Money and Marijuana: Green Chi

McKenzie Schwark

56

Weed TV

Kymberly Byrnes

57

Up in Smoke: An Interview with Sid Gupta

HONEY FEATURE Preston Peet 60 East Coast Honey Pot

New York, New Jersey, Cannagather, The Johno Show

Naomi Rosenblatt

69

Alex Harsley’s pot “In the Window”

M J Moore

70

Retro: Blow-Top Blues

Matt Saber

72

Reefer Madness: A Review

Sam C. Long

73

Ask an Exotic White Guy

Shellise Rogers

74

The Mindful Revolution: Staying “Woke”

HONEY FEATURE The Rialto Report

76

Hyapatia Lee on Cannabis Interview by April Hall

Jay Neugeboren

78

POEM

“DX 21 Dasun”

82

POEM

Tom Huth

83

Your Highest High

Chadley Britton

84

More Than Marijuana

Leah Wells

85

OxyKitten: The Different High of Cats

Jennifer Parker

86

When Play Dates Go To Pot

“DX 21 Dasun”

88

In Bed with Panama Red

Tank Burt

89

Black Heels, Purple Haze

Jon Horn

92

Opus Dopus: An Excerpt

Theresa Reed

94

TAROT: The Chariot CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 3

EDITORS’ LETTER Dear Reader, Our sixth print issue ventures into the wild world of cannabis. In its 12,000-year history with humanity, this potent and versatile plant has been legal more often than outlawed. With new legislation being introduced up and down the United States for medical and recreational legalization, our nation is just beginning to grasp the importance of this magical plant.

There are so many stories from the business, medical, arts, spiritual, and street communities about cannabis that we couldn’t fit them all. The story of cannabis is the story of power and justice, a fight for freedom, and now of a thriving industry.

AMERICA by Maria Lau

In autumn 2017 Honeysuckle became one of the first lifestyle magazines ever invited to cover MJBiz Conference in Las Vegas. Hosted by Marijuana Business Daily, this convention is the biggest event of the year for the international cannabis industry. What we learned at MJBiz, and from the whole production of this issue, is that cannabis holds numerous surprises and endless possibilities. This industry, still so stigmatized because of the War on Drugs, has flourished despite the odds. It’s a platform where women and minority leaders can gain new ground (just ask MJBiz CEO Cassandra Farrington and Israeli scientist Dr. Inbar Maymon-Pomeranchik). It’s a forum where NFL greats like Marvin Washington and Eben Britton can be entrepreneurial philanthropists, where exciting new networks like WeedTV can find the audience of their dreams. Today even iconic celebrities such as our cover artist Alan Cumming have come forth to claim cannabis as the legitimate right and joy it is.

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RAVEN by Maxime Giordani

Yet in many quarters the struggle for legalization rages on. Read about the ongoing case against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who tells us that cannabis is a “dangerous gateway drug” and vows to crack down on it. (As you’ll read, he now faces legal challenges as bold attorneys construe the use of marijuana as a constitutional right.) In the wake of the Opioid Epidemic, former heroin addicts testify as to why cannabis became their best chance for survival in a broken system. Actor Greg Grunberg (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) fights to break two taboos—that against epilepsy, a condition affecting nearly 65 million people worldwide, and the cannabis products that treat it. If we can take anything away from these stories, it’s that cannabis is truly the People’s Medicine and a gift from the gods. But it deserves a whole lot more respect.

We’re making cannabis a dedicated vertical online and in all print issues from this point forward (watch that East Coast Honey Pot). And enjoy the ride with us into a new frontier, and a new age for Honeysuckle with our equally wild growth. Even if you’re not a smoker, we bet these testimonies will leave you feeling high on life.

Ronit Pinto, Founder and Publisher Naomi Rosenblatt, Deputy Editor Jaime Lubin, Managing Editor CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 5

Highly curated marketplace for the high thread count hippie indigoandhaze.com @indigoandhaze

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Cassandra Farrington speaks at MJBizCon, autumn 2017

FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD Marijuana Business Daily CEO CASSANDRA FARRINGTON Over the past five years, the Marijuana Business Conference (MJBizCon) in Las Vegas, hosted by Marijuana Business Daily, has been the hallmark event of the American cannabis industry. Honeysuckle traveled to Sin City to get the fullest appreciation of legitimate businesses surrounding the plant. What we found was extraordinary—and oftentimes quite unexpected. Such as the pioneering biochemical research in Israel, Canada’s premiere occupation in the space and revelations with Chris Walsh, Editorial VP of MJBiz and one of the first journalists in the field. But we began our journey with the Madame of MJBiz herself, CEO Cassandra Farrington, for the inside scoop on the cannabinoid industrial revolution.

How long has MJBiz been holding the convention?

This is our sixth edition. Five years ago we had 400 people in this very funky hall in downtown Denver. It was a historic Masonic lodge. It was the only venue that would rent space to us for a marijuana business convention, because they were all like, “Business? Haha!

That’s not business; it’s going to be a smokefest!” No, when we said business, 8 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

we meant it was going to be a marijuana business conference.

We had 400 industry pioneers, which at that time was a huge success, and every year it has at least doubled if not grown three or four-fold. Every year it continues to be a phenomenal success for this whole industry. This year we have 670 businesses that are represented on the floor and we are very close to 18,000 registrants with one more day of the convention still to run.

It’s very interesting that a publication in the cannabis industry was the one that decided to found what is now the premiere expo for marijuana businesses in the country.

So, traditionally in the business -to-business media industry, business and media go hand-in-hand, because it’s truly all about the business information. Whether that content is in print, is online, or in person, it all fits together.

Honeysuckle Managing Editor Jaime Lubin interviews executives at MJBizCon and international pioneers in cannabis business and development As we put our business online, people kept saying, “You know what? We need some benchmarks, we need some industry. We need some things thrown into the dartboard so we can start tracking whether our expenses and our dispensary in Denver are in line with the expenses of the dispensary in Phoenix.”

So we came out with our factbook, and started that annual industry benchmark report.

Then people started telling us, “Okay, I know all about my buddies and the dispensaries in Denver, but there’s a bunch of people a lot like us in San Francisco, but I don’t know any of [them]. I would like to know what their challenges are. So we really need a place to get together and talk about the business side of the industry. Not a festival, not a lifestyle event, not a celebration of the plant. We need this to be about business.”

And we were a great source—unbiased platform—to be able to put that together.

How did you personally get into the cannabis industry?

We truly saw it as a business opportunity. My cofounder and I are business-to-business media professionals, and [when] we launched what has turned into Marijuana Business Daily, we expected it to be niche, extremely narrow premium content, and that niche has become mainstream.

What would be the reason for staying solely B-to-B and not necessarily expanding into cultural coverage?

The cannabis industry provides a unique opportunity for female and all kinds of diverse entrepreneurship. I think a lot of women came into this industry as businesspeople accidentally because they had a sick child they were looking for a solution for; they had an elderly parent and were working through their final days and used cannabis as a solution for their pain and saw how life-changing those uses can be, and wanted to share that with their tribe or communities.

The other reason why is that, in the cannabis industry, there’s no established hierarchy. It’s entirely an industry where we can slot in at all different levels of the organization depending on our skill set and what we’re interested in doing.

So it’s proven to be a fertile ground for that.

It’s really like getting back to our matriarchal roots, when we were in those little nomadic societies.

The cannabis

industry provides a unique opportunity for female and all kinds of diverse entrepreneurship.

While we as a business could do that, as a brand that would not be authentic to who we are and the relationship that we have with everybody here. Honestly the consumer media space is tougher, especially on the print side. Business people remain very engaged in getting regular ongoing news and information updates as it affects their businesses, because that’s their livelihood. Cultural publications can go down the more hobbyist or personal interest space. And those interests or hobbies can shift over time.

You happen to be a CEO in an industry that is rather open to women and minority leaders. Please tell us what it’s like to be in that kind of leadership position.

I do think there is something about the way that females approach entrepreneurship and business differently than that traditional white male approach that really does resonate with cannabis consumers and the way that you run your business in this industry. You have to be authentic, you have to be genuine, you have to care about the cause, or you’re going to get found out. It’s not going to be effective for you as a businessperson. So I think that women have an opportunity to really be themselves and have that be a true advantage.

As a female CEO, do you feel differences between you and your male colleagues, or that there are situations where you might not be taken as seriously?

I don’t, but I think it’s because I am so dominant, so visible, and because this is what I do and every single one of those guys needs me, and they know it. So they respect and appreciate me for what I have created.

I will say there are a remarkable number of men in this industry who are tuned into the fact that women think, behave, and approach strategy differently, and in ways that make a lot of sense for the cannabis industry.

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Jaime Lubin interviews Cassandra Farrington at MJBizCon What would you say to aspiring female entrepreneurs about how to keep each other safe in the business world, how to empower themselves and other women?

Over the last 8-12 months, I feel the emergence of a Good Ol’ Girls’ network, not to rival the Good Ol’ Boys’ network, but I very much sense that I have tapped into a network of other female entrepreneurs and executives in companies, not just in cannabis, but in my tradeshow world and among my MBA classmates and their world. I feel like there’s this really healthy network of females that are helping move conversations, get things done, and all that. And the more that that happens, the men in many of these companies are going to have to have really strong and respected relationships with women because they are otherwise going to miss out on deal flow that’s coming through that network, on great hiring ideas, on business strategies or what the future of the industry looks like. They’re going to miss out on those things if they don’t have a tap into that network.

Where do you see Big Pharma playing a role [in cannabis]? It’s that big silently approaching ghost.

I think that it’s happening. It’s not just Big Pharma. It’s Big Alcohol, Big Tobacco—all of those and more. The big money is looking at this space and they have very longstanding interests about protecting their companies and their sharehold-

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ers and they are not going to pull punches about that. How do we combat that? Through effective lobbying. Through really great relationships with our customers. Through continued public relations about cannabis and helping the general public understand what cannabis is and what it is not. Being honest about what it can and can’t do, or at least what we know it can and can’t do. Those sorts of things. I think it’s continuing to build that grassroots support to help people understand that this is a plant. It’s not a chemical, it’s not created in a lab.

It’s a plant! It’s like your tomato. Okay, it’s more like your oregano, maybe.

How do you want to see MJBizCon grow?

We came at this honestly and told people what we were doing and stuck to our guns, and therefore have garnered the trust of this entire community that we are the unbiased, trusted resource and we’re going to tell it straight. From here we’re going to follow the industry, just like we always have. We started this convention five years ago because people said that they needed that platform. Maybe ten years from now, they need connections to many other industries and that’s what we’re providing. Maybe ten years from now, it’s a federally regulated product like pharma and the business needs become very different. We’ll continue to follow what the business needs are.

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN CHRIS WALSH, Marijuana Business Daily’s VP of Editorial Strategy

Chris Walsh speaks at MJBizCon, autumn 2017

What is the benefit of a B-to-B concentration at MJBiz, in view of the publications that are attending?

We started it with a very specific focus: to provide business information and analytic notes to professionals. When we started in 2011, there was nothing like it out there. The only type of content for the industry was High Times, and we felt, “Look, this industry is coming out of nowhere. There are businesspeople that need help.” They want to know the stories that affect them; they want someone to cover the news effectively. The mainstream media almost never covered any of these issues or the industry, and if they did, it was always pot puns. No one ever took it seriously.

I come from a business journalism background, and we said, “Well, every other industry has news written seriously for the professionals in it, and this industry does not.” So that’s how we started our focus, and that’s [continued] from online to our magazine to the conference content here.

We've been keeping abreast of the trends in the cannabis business community, and recently heard that West Coast sales are expected to plateau for 2018. What do you think about that?

I don't think we've reported that they're going to plateau. I do a lot of our market estimates and research. In fact, California is the next gold rush. That’s common knowledge in the industry. That’s going to grow significantly, because [they've] legalized recreational marijuana... and that will become the epicenter of the industry. It shifted to Colorado when Colorado legalized recreational and California didn’t have regulations on its industry, so it’s really been a mess.

But as they started medical, as they've started to regulate recreational marijuana, that’s going to be a massive new market.

There’s going to be significant growth occurring in Washington State’s marijuana market; Oregon is growing. The only contractions we’re really seeing are in aspects of the medical marijuana industry in Colorado and Oregon, because they have recreational. A lot of patients are not renewing their cards and they’re just going to the rec market. That side has been contracting in those states, but in every other state we see, even the mature medical marijuana states, the programs are growing. They’re adding patients, they’re adding physicians’ lists, and their sales are growing. So the long-term future and the near-term future of the industry is extremely bright.

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Regarding the East Coast, obviously New Jersey is huge news right now. Some say it’s going to be the state to watch for 2018, but a lot of people are still saying it’s New York because that’s the last domino to fall.

Well, there’s a couple of things that we’ve seen play out. The marijuana industry has largely been concentrated out west.

Those are the pioneering states, those are the ones that got their industry regulated. What you’re seeing now is that the West is still a major part of this industry and still the epicenter, but the East Coast is developing as well, and it’s developing differently. It’s developing with more regulations and in many cases a more professional feel. The environments are different between the two from a business perspective, so New Jersey could legalize recreational next year. That’s looking very possible and it would be a massive development. And New York, its medical program has struggled a bit because of strict regulations. They didn’t license a lot of companies.

They’re working through some of the kinks. But obviously New York has the potential to be one of the top marijuana markets in the country, if not the world, depending upon if they legalize recreational marijuana and where they go with the program. If they can open that up more, that would be a massive market.

If New Jersey does get recreational pushed through in 2018, how is that going to change the overall appearance of the marijuana business community?

We don’t know yet, because no business on the East has gotten its recreational industry up and running yet. Massachusetts is kind of dragging its feet, Maine now is going to have a delay, and those were the first two—those were hopefully going to be the first two to go. What you see in the West is that the states that legalized recreational marijuana right now are moving fast. Oregon did the same—they’re starting early sales before they plan. In the East you’re seeing delays on the recreational side.

We’re not sure how that’s going to play out, but I can guarantee you that if New Jersey legalizes recreational marijuana and gets its industry up and running, it’s just going to be a key cog in the whole marijuana industry in this country.

Countries like Canada and Israel really have their cannabis industries booming as well.

What I’ve seen over the past couple years, especially in 2017, is this becoming a global industry. And you have Canada, where medical’s already legal federally, and now they’re going to legalize recreational marijuana next year. That is huge—they’re the first G7 country to do that. And they are already advancing so far that there are companies that are licensed and legal federally that are exporting marijuana across

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the country and the world, because more countries are legalizing medical marijuana and they’re looking for people. You can’t do that in the US because it’s illegal; we can’t export it from here. So Canada has this rapidly growing export industry. It’s becoming a leader on that end, and what you’re seeing is these companies are expanding into South America, into Europe. Australia has legalized medical marijuana. This year alone I think there’s something like a dozen countries who have made significant moves in either legalization or very close to it.

So you have Canadian companies coming into the US, you have US companies going into Canada, and then you have all these other companies going elsewhere and international companies coming in here! There’s Israeli companies that have been coming in these last couple months too. They’re very well advanced on the research side in that country.

We’re very aware that other countries are leapfrogging the United States because they’ve allowed other countries to usurp them. Israel is focusing really on pharmaceutical and research to back up the claims. Here in the US, people are kind of like, “This will help you with this!” Anecdotally.

There’s no hard data. So in Israel you have research, exporting in Canada, and you can only expect that this will continue.

It’s still really difficult to research in the US until the laws change. I think the US should still lead the way in creating a regulated market and finding a right mix of regulations that ensures a responsible industry that’s professional and legitimate, but that also allows business opportunities and it also has the necessary safety regulations to protect children or patients that use it as medicine.

The international presence is great at MJBizCon. What would you say to people who have never been here?

We have attendees from more than 40 countries here. For the first time we held a whole schedule of conferences about Canada; we have speakers from Israel and Europe. If you’ve never been here and are considering getting involved in the industry, then you should probably do your due diligence and see what it’s like. See the types of companies and the people, because a lot of people come in and make missteps when they don’t understand the industry. So when you can get together with 17,000 people and most of them are already in the industry, learn from them, attend sessions that can teach you the basics and the advanced strategies for the business, you probably couldn’t get that much education or networking in any other capacity.

At the end of the day we’re a reflection of the industry.

We wouldn’t be this big if the industry hadn’t grown this big either.

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD Israel: Science and Alchemy in the Real World’s Emerald City Cannabidiol Molecule (CBD)

It shouldn’t be surprising that the People’s Medicine began in the Chosen People’s land. In 1964 Israeli biochemist Raphael Mechoulam discovered CBD and THC within the cannabis plant; soon after, his studies proved that humans have their own bodily endocannabinoid systems and that the plant’s molecules work with our own to provide healing interactions. Dr. Mechoulam’s findings sparked an unprecedented investigative frenzy, and Israel became a global leader in the cannabis industry.

Today the nation is one of only three countries with a government-sponsored medical cannabis program, its knowledge and facilities second to none.

“We have the greatest minds and technologies here, with very powerful facilities,” says Dr. Inbar Maymon-Pomeranchik, founder of the Israeli biotech firm BioDiligence. “In Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, we have 17 labs that research the endocannabinoid system. The [Agricultural Research Organization] Volcani Institute has two big labs that the government is paying to research the plant itself. You have everything—research on the plant, endocannabinoids, cannabinoids. You have Professor David (Dedi) Mieri’s Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabinoid Research at Technion University [Israel Institute of Technology] in Haifa. Every day we discover something new and it’s amazing.

It won’t be fast, but in a few years we will know so much more about cannabis and then it will be the magic that we are all waiting for.”

Maymon-Pomeranchik, a PhD in Plant Science and Microbiology and a former student of Dr. Mechoulam’s, has

had a unique experience in the cannabis industry. After more than fifteen years as a molecular, genetics, and biotech researcher, she switched to the corporate side when investors asked for her expertise in navigating the “Green Rush.”

She created her company BioDiligence as a consulting firm to help point them in the right direction.

“There is a big gap between what you think you know and what you really know,” she cautions. “Worldwide, the cannabis companies arose like mushrooms after the rain. You’re just flooded with companies and if you don’t know where to start, you can go down. People speak all the time about due diligence, and [in cannabis] the main thing is the technology. You can look at the numbers and the Profit & Loss and the cashflow, and it looks nice, but if the technology is bad… I’ve met with so many companies that really believe in what they’re doing. But they believe in it so much that they don’t see their own mistakes. So I do biodiligence – scientific due diligence – and I put a mirror up so they can see and understand. I help investors find the right companies for them; it’s like matchmaking. You have to understand the technology and future of cannabis, and to hook up with the good people that understand it also.”

Industrially, cannabis has evolved differently from anything else modern science has seen. It all goes back to the research, as Maymon-Pomeranchik points out: “Usually we start with a molecule, we go to a petri dish, to a mouse, to a monkey, and then to a person, and we know what we’ve done.

In cannabis it’s vice-versa. Somebody

will tell me, ‘It cured my pain,’ so then I need to understand, ‘What did it take and how did it do that?’ We have to go back, analyze it, find the molecule and start again. This is what many researchers in Israel are doing right now.”

Above all, she notes, it’s important for scientists to figure out the plant itself. The cannabis plant contains over 400 known compounds (Israeli researchers speculate there are at least 1,400 different molecules), and aspects associated with growing conditions, lighting, and specific strains among other elements can cause its effectiveness to vary. For example, Maymon-Pomeranchik relays the story of a mother who gave cannabis oil to her autistic daughter. Studies have shown that cannabis can help regulate communication difficulties and social behaviors in children with autism, and for a while the daughter’s medicine worked perfectly. But when the first bottle ran out and the mother tried a second, she found that her daughter suddenly unresponsive to the new oil.

The woman contacted Dr. Mechoulam, who analyzed the bottles and discovered that, although they were from the same grower, strain, and harvesting conditions, the oils had turned out completely different.

“It’s the Entourage Effect,” Maymon-Pomeranchik notes. “This is the main thing we need to research right now. It’s not like an Advil where we know the exact dose and what’s inside.

We have no idea. But we need to start with education, and people in Israel are doing exactly that—all the genetics of the plant, how you maintain it, how to CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 13

standardize it. It’s beautiful and super interesting.”

She explains that the international lack of precise knowledge is what’s most dangerous for both patients and investors. “When you say that cannabis helps cancer, it’s like the magic word. We can’t say that cannabis kills cancer, but we can say that there’s something there, and in a few years we’ll know how to do it.

Investors want to believe just like we all do. When the investor comes and says, ‘Okay, there are five companies telling me they can do this and that,’ it can be very hard to discern who’s really doing the best thing. I try to explain, ‘Go to this company. They know what they’re doing and will do things the right way.”

Interestingly, Maymon-Pomeranchik feels that cannabis branding in the U.S. is generally better than in Israel, but that many American businesspeople are approaching Israeli companies for their growing practices and research facilities. She’s observed numerous investors who want to benefit from the industry’s potentially huge profit, but who often lose money because they’ve made decisions without the right information. “Once you understand cannabis is a medicine, you realize you don’t understand anything yet,” Maymon-Pomeranchik laughs. Americans may have the sizzle, but to play in this market we need their steak.

And there’s no time like the present to invest in Israel. Maymon-Pomeranchik calls it “a startup nation” because it’s home to both the most innovative research and one of the smallest pools of patients. Strict regulations ensure that only eight Israeli farms can grow and sell cannabis, 181 doctors are licensed to prescribe it, and approximately 28,000 patients can use it medically. The whole country is essentially a testing ground. (It’s also the site for a strange marriage between Big Pharma and Big Tobacco—this year Teva and Philip Morris have an agreement to invest millions of dollars in an Israeli cannabis company. If you can’t beat ’em, build ’em.)

The unknowns abound, but hope is flourishing. Based on Israeli research, we now know that cannabis can provide treatment for epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, inflammatory disorders, and so much more. According to Maymon-Pomeranchik, new experiments being done by Professor Mieri in Haifa are showing that certain cannabis strains are actually killing cancer cells at the petri dish level.

“So many people that I know use cannabis for fibromyalgia and it helps,” she adds. “It’s a horrible disease and there’s no normal medical [treatment] that you can use, but they take it and now they have life where before they only had pain. I rest my case.”

Hard to predict how much longer the rest of society will drag its feet before catching up to the Promised Land, but Maymon-Pomeranchik encourages everyone to bet on Israel. “Even if five percent of what we know about cannabis is true—and I can tell you that it’s more – we’ve got the jackpot here.” Let’s hear a universal amen for the land of milk, honey, and magic plants.

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Dr. Inbar Maymon-Pomeranchik at MJBIZ Con in Las Vegas, 2017 Photo by Ronit Pinto

PURPLE PUNCH

Photo by Martin Henderson

THE GREAT AND THE POWERFUL O Canada: A Green Rush on the upswing Canadians may be polite, but they're no pushovers – especially when it comes to cannabis. Not only does Canada hold one of the largest industries in the space, it’s the first G7 country set to legalize recreational cannabis. November marked the debut of an entire group of Canadian-themed conferences at MJBiz. Those Up North are strong with the plant business, particularly if intuition leads them there.

Enter Paul Rosen, Director of iAnthis Capital Holdings in Toronto and New York. The primarily Toronto-based Rosen describes himself as an “intuitive investor,” explaining that he doesn't make investments based solely on due diligence documents, but also consults his “gut.” iAnthis Capital Holdings (IAN.C) is a publicly traded New York-based investment bank which has interests in several medical marijuana licenses across the United States. Rosen, acclaimed for his knowledge of the cannabis space, financial vision, and broad range of experience, serves on IAN.C's board. He is also a licensed attorney, having practiced constitutional law in Canada for several years, and received a B.A. in Economics from Western University in 1985 and an LL.B. from the University

Intuitive investor Paul Rosen

of Toronto in 1988. In terms of cannabis industry expertise, Rosen is The Man. During the MJBiz panel “Investing Overseas: Insights, Opportunities & Considerations,” where he sat with Dr. Inbar Maymon-Pomeranchik and Vahan Ajamian, Rosen spoke about his vision for the future of cannabis (“It's bright”) and his passion in advising Millennials who wish to enter the space. He informs new investors of where to take risks and where not to.

“Many people think they know how to make a lot of money in the industry,” Rosen says, “but in reality, there are a lot of ways to lose it.”

Those who invest in Canada's cannabis industry will most likely find themselves on the upswing over the next few years. Bruce Linton, Chairman and CEO of the medical marijuana giant Canopy Growth, predicted that by 2024 the country is likely to make $1.3 billion in medicinal cannabis-related business alone. He should know; Canopy Growth is the first federally-regulated, publicly traded cannabis company in North America, and the corporation has filed numerous patents on medical products and supplements in the field.

According to Linton, there are approximately 200,000 Canadian patients accessing cannabis from doctors (some are even four-legged friends. The division Canopy Veterinarian makes products to help companion dogs with physical pain in their last years of life). The market potential is huge.

Linton also notes that investors from the U.S. are turning to Canadian companies to invest in American cannabis businesses for them. This has led to rather organic economic job creation. And, because the American campaign to legalize federally continues to be slow, Canada has taken over in exporting cannabis products to countries that would normally want to do business with the U.S. “We don't have to invent the next Facebook or Google [to profit],” Linton observes. “We just have to have a supply chain change.”

The country is clearly set to be the dominant power in cannabis in the short term. Soon the world will be flush with Loonies and Toonies (Canadian one and two-dollar coins).

As for the prospect of U.S. legalization?

“It's kind of bad manners for me to comment on that,” Linton laughs.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 15

CANNABIS: A TIMELINE Cannabis goes back 12,000 years to South Central Asia/Mongolia, where it probably thrived in nutrient-rich prehistoric dumps. Its first recorded medical use, as a painkiller, dates back to China, 4000 BC.

A recipe for holy anointing oil appeared in the original Hebrew version of Exodus (30:22-23). The recipe contained over six pounds of kanehbosem, or (very likely) cannabis, extracted into olive oil along with other fragrant herbs.

Chinese Pictogram for “MA,”or Cannabis Ma has both yin and yang properties.

Kaneh-bosem helps me speak with Yaweh.

Cannabis is among our oldest and most beneficial plants.

Cannabis was originally exported from China to Korea, then to the South Asian subcontinent, and the Middle East—where it was used not only in anointing oil but also as medicine.

Gah! I haven’t taken a poop in days. And my belly is on fire.

Moses Egypt

Emperor Fu Hsi China

Girlfriend, I have the perfect cure for you.

In Ancient Egypt cannabis was used to treat glaucoma and inflammation, to cool the uterus, and to administer enemas.

4000 BC - 2500 BC

2500 BC - 1500 BC

1500 BC - 1000 BC

Emperor Shen Nung China

A healing plant, like ginseng and ephedra.

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Pharoah Ramessses II Egypt Anointing oil and fumigations, made with kaneh-bosem, granted Levite priests and prophets visionary powers.

Cannabis pollen was detected on the mummy of Ramesses II, who died in 1213 BC. Did he get high or get healed?

It is tied to our DNA , as people and animals have an endocannabinoid system. Throughout recorded history, humanity has put cannabis to medical, industrial, and ceremonial uses.

In 700 BC Persian prophet Zoroaster proclaimed in the Zend-Avesta that cannabis was the most important of 10,000 medicinal plants.

Zoroaster Persia

THE most important medicinal plant

Cannabis had been used early in Indian medicine to ‘enhance and prolong life,’ reduce fevers, and cure dysentery. By 600 B.C., cannabis was adopted by Ayurvedic (mind/body) practitioners. The Sushruta Samhita Ayurvedic treatise outlined curative uses of cannabis for fever, insomnia, dysentery, even leprosy.

CHRIST MEANS “ANOINTED ONE” Some historians say that Jesus Christ was anointed with hemp oil by the three wise men from Persia, and later in His life with chrism, a cannabis-based oil that brought on visions.

Making me some bhang!

Around this time in India, bhang, a cannabis drink often mixed with milk, was taken as an anesthetic and anti-phlegmatic.

1000 BC - 600 BC

The Scythians, a nomadic Indo-European people, had been using cannabis in the MIddle East since 2000 BC. Over the centuries, they brought the drug into southeast Russia and other parts of Europe.

600 BC - 100 BC

Heradotus Greece As it burns, it smokes like incense and the smell of it makes these Scythian dudes drunk!

100 BC - 30 AD

The apostle Mark describes Jesus healing: “So Jesus healed many people who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons.

But because the demons knew who He was, He did not allow them to speak.”

—Mark 1:34

Around 400 BC the Greek historian Heradotus noticed Scythians inhale smoke from burning cannabis seeds, and recorded his impression (above). By 200 BC in ancient Greece, cannabis was used as a remedy for earaches, edema, and inflammation.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 17

CANNABIS TIMELINE continued Around 400, cannabis and hemp were cultivated in England at Buckingham Mare for the first time.

My doctor, Dioscorides, hails the healing properties of cannabis and its use in “making the stoutest cords.”

Emperor Nero Rome

By 600 Paper was made from hemp by the Germans, French, and Vikings.

Cannabis seeds were found in the remains of Viking ships dating to the mid-ninth century. The Vikings and medieval Germans were said to have used cannabis for relieving pain during childbirth and for toothaches.

Stop bogarting! Leif has a toothache, and Brunhilde is giving birth!

written and designed by Naomi Rosenblatt

Over the next centuries, cannabis migrated to various regions of the world, traveling through Africa, reaching South America in 1545 and North America in 1606.

William Shakespeare England

In the 21st Century, it was brieflyspecualted that Shakepseare had partaken, due to forensic analyses of his pipes. But definitive proof about the Bard’s use remains elusive.

Queen Victoria England

It’s THAT time of the month!

30 - 400 The good doctor was doubtlessly refering to the “stoutest cords” of hemp fiber, another derivative of the cannabis plant. While the earliest papers created from hemp date back 2000 years to the Western Han Dynasty, hemp was harvested throughout history to create items ranging from rope to fabrics to industrial plastics. Hemp was often used to make the sail canvas for ships, for example; the word canvas derives from cannabis.

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400 - 1400

1400 - 1900

(after 1900 in the US, see page x)

By the late 1800s, cannabis extracts were sold in pharmacies and doctors’ offices throughout Europe and the United States to treat stomach problems and other ailments. But prohibition was waiting in the wings...

In 632 alcohol, but not cannabis, was forbidden in the Quran. By 800 hashish was used throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia. Its popularity corresponded with the rise of Islam in the region.

I forbid use of ...this herb named hashish, and hemp seed smoking!

Napoleon Bonaparte France

MARIJUANA AND HEMP? Have you ever wondered: What is the difference between marijuana and hemp? They are both subspecies of the cannabis plant: Cannabis sativa, known as marijuana, has psychoactive properties. Its component (cannabinoid) called Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC binds with receptors in our brains to produce a high. The other plant is Cannabis sativa L . (The L was included in the name in honor of the botanist Carl Linnaeus). This subspecies, known as hemp, is a nonpsychoactive type of cannabis that is used in manufacturing products like oil, cloth, and fuel. Hemp contains only trace amounts of THC, but produces Cannabidiol, or CBD—a cannabinoid with healing benefits that do not induce psychotropic effects. A second psychoactive species of the plant, Cannabis indica, was identified by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and a third, uncommon one, Cannabis ruderalis, was named in 1924 by Russian botanist D.E. Janischevisky.

The botanical drawing (left) signed by artist Elmer Smith, often reproduced at low resolution and without explanation in marijuana books, is the most detailed scientific illustration of the hemp plant ever prepared.

Here is what it represents: 1. Flowering branch of male plant. 2. Flowering branch of female plant. 3. Seedling. 4. Leaflet. 5. Cluster of male flowers. 6. Female flower, enclosed by perigonal bract.

7. Mature fruit enclosed in perigonal bract. 8. Seed (achene), showing wide face. 9. Seed, showing narrow face. 10. Stalked secretory gland. 11. Top of sessile secretory gland. 12. Long section of cystolith hair (note calcium carbonate concretion at base).

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11

10

2

4

12

1

7

8

3

9

WHO DISCOVERED CBD AND THC? Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, a renowned biochemist known as “the father of cannabis,” first identified the total synthesis of the plant in 1964. Internationally lauded for his discoveries of CBD, THC, and the human endocannabinoid system, Mechoulam (now age 87) is officially retired but still maintains research facilities at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and consults for Israel’s Ministry of Health. But who is he really? Here are some facts you may want to know about the cannabis expert: • Mechoulam was born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Sofia, Bulgaria in the 1930s. During World War II his father, a physician, was put in a concentration camp but survived and had reunited with the family by 1949, when they moved to Israel.

• Early experiences in the Israeli Army working with insecticides led Mechoulam to plant research.

• Among his numerous honors are the Israel Prize in Exact Sciences, the NIDA Discovery Award, the EMET Prize in Exact Sciences, the International Cannabis Research Society award for lifetime achievement, and honorary doctorates from Ohio State University and Complutense University in Madrid.

• Despite spending his life’s work in cannabis research, he has never smoked a joint.

• He has been quoted as saying that “humanity is not worthy of what cannabis has to offer.”

• In 2015 a documentary called The Scientist was released, centering on Mechoulam’s life and epic discoveries. Produced by Israel’s Y. Klinik Productions and the nonprofit research organization Fundacion CANNA, it can be viewed entirely on YouTube.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 19

CANNABIS TIMELINE USA Christopher Columbus

The sails and rigging that brought Columbus over the Atlantic were made from hemp.

Hemp was used in the colonies for legal tender, and all sorts of paper. The Magna Carter, bibles, maps, and even our U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were penned on hemp paper.

Jamestown settlers brought cannabis to North America around 1611. Throughout the colonial period, hemp fiber was an important export. The colonies of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut required farmers to grow hemp. In 1762, Virginia, in fact, imposed penalties on those who did not produce it.

1492-1900

THEN WEED GOT STIGMATIZED: Marijuana wasn’t widely used for its psychoactive effects in the U.S. until the early 1900s. During the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) Mexicans immigrated to the U.S., bringing “marihuana que fumar.” Americans began to get high. But unemployment and angst during the Great Depression incited resentment against Mexican immigrants and their “evil weed,” which was also associated with African Americans and New Orleans jazz clubs. Consistent with the Prohibition era’s view of all intoxicants—29 states had outlawed cannabis by 1931.

Just call me bad hombre!

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Despite the crackdown on cannabis, millions of Americans continued to use it medicinally and recreationally.

In 1964 the Thelin brothers opened the first head shop in the U.S. In 1968 a Home Office select committee reported that cannabis was no more harmful than tobacco or alchohol. But in 1970 the DEA’s Controlled Substances Act designated cannabis as a dangerous “Schedule 1” drug with no medical benefits.

In the 1990s cannabis remained illegal in the U.S., but was decriminalized in Northern Europe. Many medical studies of the benefits of cannabis were undertaken, and continue to this day.

1900-1937

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 Thomas Jefferson grew hemp, per his farming diaries from 1774-1824, but there is no evidence to suggest that he habitually smoked hemp, tobacco, or anything else.

Up to 1937 cannabis was a widely prescribed medicine. Animals were fed hemp so when mothers breastfed their children their milk contained phyto-rich cannabinoids. But as patented chemicals formed the monopoly known as “big pharma,” cannabis was outlawed around the world. By World War II, cannabis had been dropped from the American Pharmacopoeia.

was the first federal U.S. law to criminalize marijuana nationwide.

The Act imposed an excise tax on the sale, possession, or transfer of all hemp products, effectively criminalizing all but industrial uses of the plant.

1937-Present In the 21st Century, “push-pull” legislation persists. By 2013, with the Cole Memorandum, states gained the right to determine their own policies regarding use of medicinal and recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half the country, and recreational marijuana is legal in eight states.

More states are likely to legalize all forms of cannabis use ... unless the current Attorney General, an oldschool prohibitionist, sustains a federal crackdown. Stay tuned!

MY CANNA-CURIOSITY GOT THE BETTER OF ME! Yes, I was raised anti-pot. I was taught pot was a gateway drug. Yes, I divorced a guy who smoked too much pot. Only when I had my own out-of-the-box, tweaky, beyond funky kids did I realize how wrong I was. Cannabis saved my kids, my sanity, and made things clear: I was wrong. Now I live, breathe, and engage on the cannabis revolution. My book will help you or someone you love. Learn.

Partake. Educate.

Lea

“...We needed this book, and we needed it now.”

Jason Frankovich, Founder, Shennong Pharamaceuticals

For More Info.

ShiraAdler.com @The1ShiraAdler

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 21

Cannabis According to Spirit Lori Lipten, Spirit Channeler From spirit's perspective – how has Cannabis been misused over time?

We are the Rays of Orion standing with the elders of the Rainbow Nation as Spirit helpers for you here. We are guiding Spirits helping to serve the health and wellness of humanity. We are eager to facilitate the knowledge and understanding of how the plant people work with humanity to live in harmony with life. All plants are living beings. Marijuana or cannabis is an herb, a creative element, given to humanity to facilitate digestion, healing, relaxation, sacred ceremony, clear vision, enhanced ceremonial productivity and allowance of deeper meaning. It can promote dreamtime and stimulate creative processing. It has the power to link one to their herb brothers and sisters (the plant essence or spirit of the plant). This brings people out of slumber into awareness of life beyond the norm and can at times, expand consciousness.

It is not meant to be overused or used wantonly. It is meant to be honored, revered and used in specified ceremonial ways that promote health. When overused, it can deter one from wellness and promote disease and break down the clarity and processing ability of the individual. It is a sacred herb that has been used by many, for thousands of years.

Cannabis is misused when one is not in alignment with its essence. When the individual is not truly guided by Spirit into the usage of the herb for medicinal, sacred healing and ceremonial purposes, it can lead one into suffering. When used recreationally, one walks a fine line that can move the encounter from the sacred into disrespect and loss of self. When this misalignment occurs, imbalance manifests and this impacts earth and humanity adversely.

Is it being controlled by our government and if so, why?

The government within the United States has a vested interest in maintaining the criminalization of cannabis, as it is not yet viewed in its proper context. The current laws were created from misunderstanding, fear and racial bias. After a time, when organized crime began to manage the sales and distribution of this substance (which is no longer holy because it’s been altered chemically; dishonored, used for capital gain and to maintain control of a population through dependency for profit), the government now has an unconscious investment in maintaining this status quo. The government is not a “being” per se, nor is it a monolith. However, as an entity, 22 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

it can be run by an unconscious unification of ideas that no longer truly serve the citizens for which it was formed. Organized crime in various forms has a strong investment in maintaining the criminalization of cannabis in the United States.

Does spirit think it should be legal for medicinal use and consumption?

Cannabis has the power and potential to be a healing agent for many when used within the understanding and respect of its essence. As an herb, when grown and harvested with loving care and respect, it will yield great medicinal value for those in need of relief from pain, anxiety and blockages.

Applying cannabis oil, which has healing value above all, can bring great benefits too. Cannabis can be used in myriad ways. When spoken to directly and aligned with intuitively, the herb will tell the practitioner how to properly use the medicine for the one in need. When used reverently, inhaling of the herbal smoke can bring about great insights and refreshing perspectives. Sometimes the ceremony with the herb alone can free the individual of darker spirits and release patterns that have been lodged in the unconscious mind. When understood, this blessed herb can prove to be meaningful asset for those in need and should be used as a sacred element – not as a toxin, not for recreational pleasure and not wantonly without understanding.

How did indigenous cultures use it and where did it originally come from? What is the purpose of cannabis on earth from a spiritual POV? Cannabis originates from Central Asia where the Star People ensured the plants would thrive for the individuals in need. It was one of many herbs on earth meant to bring healing values to those who live here. It was used for thousands of years in spiritual healing, prayers, ceremonies, service, and offerings to the gods and Great Spirit. It was also used for hemp and its materials for long periods of time. Its seeds were meant to be healing too, and offered as gratitude for medicine people and visionaries in burial. It has been honored and revered for many years before it was brought to other continents. Over time, it became more and more available and was modified from its original purpose and mild stimulating properties.

Infrared Photo by Sam C. Long

Many shamans and indigenous people around the world understood how to work with plant medicine with reverence and awe of its proprieties, never taking it without permission or using it without genuinely Spirit-led purpose. Shamans used these herbs by contacting Spirit helpers first, who would lead them to the plants to be used for specific purposes. Spirit Guides, like us, would then tell the shamans how to apply the herbs as needed for the specified issues at hand. Cannabis would be burned, or used in other ways to honor Spirit, to promote healing and bonding with life.

This is its original intent.

All herbs are given to the earth to serve the life existing on the planet. When used with reverence and understanding, cannabis has the power to serve and promote healing, harmony and balance.

When not used properly, it will cause dysfunction, limit thriving and promote disease. Life is seeking harmony and restoration of its original intent. This can be done through awakening. When one is awake, one is no longer limited to viewing the world as finite, physical and linear. It is no longer confined to time and space restriction. Today cannabis serves only to enhance and promote thriving for all.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 23

NFL’s Marvin Washington The Revolution Might Be Televised

by Jaime Lubin, interview by Ronit Pinto and Transcription by Michael Demyan

Marvin Washington

“We haven’t had a countercultural revolution in almost fifty years. We’re overdue.” Marvin Washington, notable National Football League (NFL) player for eleven years and a legend in the cannabis community, makes this pronouncement over the phone in a conversation that's covered everything from history to science to spirituality, politics, and racial sociology. One of the main plaintiffs in the highly-publicized case against Jeff Sessions, Washington is an heroic advocate for the plant and a modern-day Renaissance man. Over the past decade, he has invested in six different cannabis enterprises (most prominently the industrial hemp derivative/extraction company Isodiol), supported grassroots organizations such as the Cannabis Cultural Association and Women Grow, and has remained a devoted activist in the fight to get medici24 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

nal marijuana removed from the NFL's “banned substances” list. He’s a busy man with little time to spare for interviews with lifestyle magazines—but in a few short minutes he completely turns our world upside-down.

Washington believes cannabis is a major key to sparking the new revolution that Americans badly need. Society, he explains, had too long a stretch of becoming complacent in its inequality.

Now the sharp divisions in our culture are coming to light through the shock of Trump's election and the Resistance movement, racial protests and violent backlash, and of course the greater push for legalization. As more and more states legitimize the cannabis industry, people of color face the challenge to succeed in vital new leadership positions.

“Cannabis was a seven billion-dollar industry last year,” Washington says.

“People of color, we're [profiting] less than two percent [off of that], all the way from dispensaries, to grows, to real estate... But we're still getting arrested anywhere from five to twelve times more than our [white] counterparts.

When it was illegal all over the country, we participated more than two percent in arrests, incarcerations, fines and what have you. So I want a level playing field. The communities that were disproportionately punished should participate in the upswing. We don't want to do ‘business as usual’ —we want a better business. I don't want to see this new industry that's going to be twenty-five billion dollars by 2025 [keep] people of color just as consumers.”

His own entrepreneurial investments dedicate themselves to providing as many opportunities for diversity as possible. Isodiol and Lenitiv Labs (a cannabis manufacturing company founded by media personality Montel Williams) are two businesses recognized for employing Af-

rican Americans at every level. In terms of balancing the ratios, it may be just the first tap into the marijuana well, but it’s a promising start. The population has gone thirsty too long.

“For 2018 I'm looking to get into California dispensaries and grow facilities,” he notes. “If we can get three or four dispensaries, you can be damn sure that it’s going to be diverse throughout.

If we bring this plan to our communities, we can change and gentrify [ourselves], nobody coming in and moving us out. I want to show people the medicinal and economic benefits of being involved in the biggest emerging market in this country. We’re not going to get another opportunity like this.”

Though clearly committed to empowering people of color, Washington wants to make clear he’s in favor of cannabis changing the game universally. This isn’t another issue to be twisted into biased dichotomies. It’s about saving lives.

“Cannabis is going to heal the planet,” he asserts. “I think we’re going through a period in this country where we’re getting away from the pharmaceuticals and the synthetics and trying to go back to natural things. Now people are starting to see the extent of the damage that’s been done with the [opioid epidemic] and GMOs in foods.

I definitely know that for one hundred and fifty years, before the prohibition of the plant, cannabis was the number one dispensed medicine. I believe it can go a long way as an alternative to opiates.”

Nowhere has this been more evident than in recent testimonies and case studies of NFL players. Throughout his career with the New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos and into his advocacy today, Washington is a firsthand witness to the destruction opiate addictions have wrought on professional athletes. It’s an especially

potent example of a problem he describes as “eating at the underbelly of America.”

Athletes get hooked on opioids primarily because of injuries they sustain while on the field. “Even just to practice and play through an injury, because there's an old saying in the NFL: 'You can play injured, but you can't play hurt,'” Washington elucidates. “All NFL players are dealing with some type of injury and medicating themselves through opiates, and they do work. But opiates are not meant to be used over a long period of time, [only] for acute pain for a short period.

A typical football player will start using them as soon as training camp opens in July and they're going to take anti-inflammatories, painkillers and pain blockers all the way up to January. If you extrapolate that over someone who has played for several years and then you want to cut them off cold-turkey when they're done with the game... It does not work that way. This is why I'm saying, 'Let's take something that's non-toxic, non-addictive, and have this as an alternative to what you're poisoning your players with.'”

Currently cannabis remains an illegal Schedule 1 drug at the federal level (meaning it's assumed to have the potential for abuse and “no known medical benefits”—yeah, right) and as such the NFL's Players Association still lists it among their banned substances. However, Washington is convinced that the organization knows all about the havoc opiate addiction is causing to the players, and predicts it will soon be prescribing them far more beneficial cannabis and CBD products instead.

He's quick to point out the hypocrisy in today's status quo: “The NFL has something called 'therapeutic-use ex-

TRUTH by Maria Lau

emption' and they let guys with ADD and ADHD use Ritalin and Adderall, which are banned as performance-enhancing drugs. But they [allow this use] because these guys have this medical condition. Why not do the same thing with cannabis? We're not talking about sending [someone] home with a blunt; we're talking about sending him home with a tincture, a transdermal patch, 50 miligrams of a vape that has THC and CBD in it... in states where it's permissible and legal.”

The past year has seen controversy surrounding the NFL particularly hard, with the “Take a Knee” protests initiated by former 49er Colin Kaepernick drawing Donald Trump's ire and igniting American racial debates anew. With his usual visionary acumen, Washington comments this logically feeds into the national movement of disenfranchised people rising up against injustice.

“These guys are going through the traditions that this country was founded on,” he observes of the protests.

“They're being patriots. It's constitutionally protected for them to have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. James Baldwin said, 'To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.' If you look at the socially conscious athlete, this was a tradition for African Americans going back to

the Sixties with Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, John Carlos, and Dr. Harry Edwards and the Olympic boycott. I think history is going to judge [Kaepernick and the other players] kindly.”

History will also judge cannabis kindly if Washington has anything to say about it. He envisions a future where, in twenty years, the plant and its products will no longer be considered Schedule 1. It will be championed by today's youth, by then grown into mature adults, and regulated by a more embracing government which will hopefully use it to combat the opioid epidemic's most catastrophic reach. From there cannabis can go fully corporate, develop its beneficial properties on all fronts, and emerge as the leader in plant-based medicine. If culture does indeed repeat itself, what better to reexamine than holistic, natural healing methods?

“The first ones to mark it aren't necessarily the ones to carry the torch,” Washington laughs. “Do you see Wright Brothers Airlines around? You don't but they taught us how to fly. I'm just being a good steward [in cannabis advocacy]; I might not even be remembered and that's fine by me. But something is happening in this country and I'm excited to see where it's going to go. Counterculture, awakening revolution is part of our history. I believe it's time.”

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 25

Naomi Rosenblatt

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT The Law Takes on Jeff Sessions’ Pot Peeve

1 Imagine the cruelty of a seventy-year-old man who, in a position to help, imperils the life of a twelve-yearold girl. Imagine that this girl and her family, after great distress, find a safe, effective cure for her epileptic seizures, but this man—a lawmaker—prevents her from using it.

You need imagine no further than U. S. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, whose tenure hangs in the balance of this scandal-plagued administration. Jeff Sessions is making news as this article is being written. The country at large wonders: How many Russian stories did this jackass forget?

Will he last as AG? Where will he be next year—back in his senate seat … or in prison?

Stories about twelve-year-old Alexis Bortell, whose life Sessions is endangering, are also making news. Outlets from NBC to Rolling Stone, from Salon. com to the New York Daily News report: “A Twelve-Year-Old-Girl Is Suing Jeff Sessions to Legalize Medical Marijuana.” While this headline is intriguing, it is not quite conclusive. Bortell is one of several plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in September 2017 by Hiller PC, a small New York City firm, in which Jeff Sessions, as head of the Department of Justice, or DOJ, has been named a defendant. Other defendants include the DOJ, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA, (Chuck Rosenberg), the DEA itself—and the United States. The team at Hiller PC holds that First Amendment rights of their clients, Bortell and other users of medical marijuana, are violated under current federal law.

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The particular law Hiller hopes to amend, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970, designates cannabis as a “Schedule 1 drug”—the most addictive type of substance, with no proven medical uses. Heroin, LSD, and mescaline are listed among other Schedule 1 drugs. Of course marijuana is much milder than any of these substances, and the range of its curative benefits were as known in 1970 as they are now.

But at that point in American history, marijuana was associated with the unwieldy “underground” left. Even Nixon aide John Ehrlichman admitted that federal regulators were exaggerating, if not lying, about its perils and lack of medical value.

Nevertheless, the federal ban on cannabis has remained in effect for decades.

Nevertheless, the federal ban on cannabis has remained in effect for decades. Recently, however, the Obama administration eased restrictions on state-legal interests, enabling each state to determine its own marijuana policy.

In 2013 former U.S. Attorney General James Cole drafted a memorandum to all federal attorneys, shifting away from cannabis prohibition toward a more laissez-faire and state-regulated approach.

The Cole Memo urged law enforcers to prevent distribution to minors, to bar access to gangs and cartels, to curb violence, stoned driving, and other abuses.

But Cole enabled state law enforcement officials, at their own discretion, to step

back from prosecuting compliant enterprises. This is why different laws now operate in different states—and why Alexis Bortell can use her cannabis oil (Haleigh’s Hope) and THC spray in her new home in Colorado, when she could not do so in Texas.

On a cannabinoid regimen Bortell’s health has improved dramatically, and she is doing well in school. She did not need to undergo risky brain surgery, as chronic seizure patients often do. But while she has lived seizure-free for over two years, Alexis Bortell is not free. The Cole Memo was rescinded by Sessions on January 4, 2018. Even with Cole in place, Bortell could not have travel to her grandparents’ home in Texas with her medication: She would have risked being taken from her family and placed in a foster home. She did not go to Washington to lobby for legalization of her medicine, as cannabis is illegal in federal jurisdictions. So long as it is designated a Schedule 1 drug, users and purveyors of medical marijuana cannot travel freely with the substance, and are subjected to many forms of penalty and congressional overreach.

“How could you possibly look at someone who’s benefiting from this as a medicine and threaten to take it away?” asks Dean Bortell, Alexis’ father. Imagine the cruelty of a lawmaker who could ease such vexing restrictions, but instead wishes to double-down on them.

Echoing his 1970 predecessors, Jeff Sessions proclaims that marijuana is a “dangerous” drug…”not something to laugh about.” He cites an “epidemic” and “uptick in crime” that speaks more to opioid abuse than to any recent findings about cannabis. It is worth noting

2

Illustration by Naomi Rosenblatt

that opioid overdoses in Colorado actually decreased by six percent since the state legalized recreational marijuana.

And The National Institute of Health’s most recent annual survey of teenage drug use found that teens’ marijuana consumption either declined or remained steady in 2016, despite the increasing availability of legal marijuana.

Such findings immediately disprove the “gateway drug” theory pronounced by Sessions—namely that “Much of (drug) addiction starts with marijuana.”

Yet, if Sessions had his way, state-level freedoms—like Colorado’s, that have correlated with a decrease in opioid abuse—would be sacrificed, and more prohibition-driven federal laws would be reinforced. Also, Sessions has urged Congress not to renew the 2014 Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, which specifically prevents the federal government from interfering in medical marijuana at the state level.

It is easy to see the bind in which Alexis Bortell and others who rely upon cannabis treatments find themselves.

Journalist Ryan Jenneman summarized it well in Newsweek on August 13, 2017: “…a federal crackdown on the cannabis industry would mean medical marijuana patients and veterans will be denied access to treatments that improve their quality of life. Tens of thousands of Americans would lose their incomes and jobs. Billions less (in revenue) would be collected from cannabis businesses for state and municipal programs. More otherwise law-abiding citizens would be locked up in prisons. More families will be torn apart. Innovation would be stunted, and pioneering entrepreneurs would be treated as criminals.”

According to an October 2017 Gallup poll, 64 percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Republicans, believe marijuana should be legal. Sessions is finding himself out-of-step, even within his own party.

Lauren A. Rudick, the founder of cannabis law practice at Hiller PC, watched medical marijuana help her dying mother in 2009. “This was pre-Cole memorandum,” she remembers. “Visiting a dispensary wasn’t a very ‘safe’ activity—robberies were commonplace, and there was no recourse against it from law enforcement. But the treatment worked well for my mother, so we found a collective with an owner we could trust—he had also lost his mother to gastric cancer, so he was committed to clean medicine and proper usage.

“As my mother’s legal caregiver, I was a cannabis proponent and was tasked with selecting strains and delivery systems. It was a turning point for me only because it opened my eyes to the industry. But from a patient advocacy perspective, I was already sold, and had been questioning the illegality of cannabis for quite some time.”

It is not surprising that Rudick felt compassion for her clients. Along with Alexis Bortell, the plaintiffs in the Hiller PC suit include a six-year-old boy with Leigh Disease who is currently in hospice care, a retired military vet who uses medical cannabis to treat suicidal ideation brought on by his PTSD, retired NFL player Marvin Washington, who seeks access to minority-assistance federal funding for his cannabis businesses, and a non-profit dedicated to diversity and inclusion. Together, these clients represent a cross-section of Americans who benefit from the medical use and entrepreneurship of cannabis.

“The constitutionality of the classification of cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug hasn’t been challenged since the early seventies,” Rudick notes. “There have been a few efforts to defend criminal actions on Constitutional grounds, none of which have been successful.”

Rudick believes that her lawsuit can repeal the CSA schedule—a change that would improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Once cannabis CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 27

is descheduled, Rudick and other advocates of legalization contend, it must be regulated, exactly like alcohol and other permissible substances.

Certain preliminary aspects of the case (the sufficiency of the complaint) are being tested now. But a final adjudication and trial on the merits, while expedited in an early favorable ruling

by Judge Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, will occur after

Rudick believes that her lawsuit can ...improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. discovery and depositions (likely toward the end of 2018). And even then, it’s likely that the losing side will appeal, and that this case will end up in the Supreme Court.

The entire legal team is eager to take on Sessions’ deposition, which is predicated upon his vague and scientifically unfounded notion that “good people do not smoke marijuana.” Hiller, PC and its attorneys are lead counsel, in tandem with two other experts: Joseph A. Bondy, criminal defense attorney, who is VP of the CCA and on the National Legal Committee of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), and David Holland, litigator and former General Counsel to High Times, and affiliated with Empire State NORML. “Are our clients ‘bad people’?”

Rudick justly asks. Sessions will be hard-pressed to prove the immorality of people like Alexis Bortell and her fellow plaintiffs. He will also be stymied by boundless evidence of marijuana’s safe use and medical efficacy. He can bluster and pontificate, but hard data will counter his claims. Moreover, if Sessions’ DOJ prevails in this case, it can be sued by state AGs precisely over the problematic definition of Schedule 1 drug.

But if Hiller’s clients win, the ruling will significantly move the government away from federal-level prohibition return discretion back to the states.

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“Let’s keep

up the

pressure.”

It would seem that the GOP might welcome such allocation of power to states; they certainly were the first to cry out for it during the Obama era. We might also wonder if the US AG would really take such vicious measures as he’s proposed, like civic asset forfeiture, to oppose business interests. Why would the GOP, notorious de-regulators in favor of big business, suddenly wax “Nanny State” about a robustly growing industry? What so affronts them about legalizing cannabis? What is really driving Sessions? Can he believe marijuana is more addictive or dangerous than legal substances like alcohol, tobacco, or opioids?

Or might there be, for example, a racially-motivated aspect to his cannabis crackdown? Some columnists have speculated that Sessions is eager to keep blacks and Hispanics—who are arrested for cannabis-related crimes between three and four times the rate of whites— incarcerated, to feed the private prison beast. Additionally, they suggest, Sessions may be solicited by industries that perceive themselves as rivals to cannabis—specifically, tobacco, alcohol, or Big Pharma.

“There are definitely major hypocrisies at play,” Rudick agrees. “Indeed, the encroachment onto states’ rights is an issue that we raise in our lawsuit. Sessions’ stance is rooted in ignorance and fueled by competing industries, which is par for the course in cannabis regulation (some of the first cannabis fear-mongering pieces appeared in newspapers published

by William Hearst, who had interests in the lumber and paper industries, both of which compete with hemp). At one point, Sessions had to give money back to the tobacco lobby, as it had exceeded the

Lauren Rudick Photo courtesy of Women Grow

maximum for campaign contributions.”

That said, Rudick also reminds us: “We are certainly at a tipping point — more than half the country lives in a state in which medical cannabis is legal. And as California’s regulations on adult-use are active, the 6th largest economy in the world is now legally producing cannabis.

Legalization makes economic sense—the money (if not the medicine) will change hearts and minds.”

For this reason, Rudick believes that Senator Cory Booker’s bill to federally legalize marijuana stands a chance. Even if it doesn’t pass in this Republican congress, future iterations of it will be welcomed by a fresh industry that is pushing its way through outmoded rulings, like green shoots erupt through crumbling sidewalks.

But under current circumstances, Rudick advises that “everyone working in the cannabis space, or who seeks to work in the space, become an expert in the regulatory environment that governs their operations—this includes both current and pending regulations. Sessions’ presence is threatening, but his obsolete viewpoints are continually and successfully being challenged. Let’s keep up the pressure.” In other words, let us nevertheless persist in our efforts to legalize cannabis and uplift the lives of millions of Americans.

Perhaps the first marijuana memoir ever published...

“Just Say Yes is one of the most unusual and refreshing memoirs ever written about the use of intoxicants.”

— Tom Callahan, BookReporter.com “Her writing is switchblade sharp. . .with the anecdotal zest of Pete Hamill and the narrative punch of Jack London . . .relentless humor, bruising honesty.”

—M.J. Moore, New World Review “This funny, wry and very candid memoir purports to be a Confession of an American Pot-Smoker but is really a cultural/personal history of the past fifty years.”

—Phillip Lopate, Nonfiction Director, MFA Writing Program, Columbia University Available on Amazon, in paperback or Kindle H

Heliotrope Books

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 29

Catherine Hiller

Just Imagine...

A Cannabis Thought Experiment America’s drinking culture is so ubiquitous we scarcely even notice it. Wine, beer, spirits, cocktails: they’re all around us all the time, with their promise of camaraderie, fun, and romance. So alluring! I’ve always regretted that my physiology doesn’t allow me to drink. Alas, alcohol usually makes me faint or nauseous long before it makes me happy.

Luckily, there’s a benign alternative, a high that my body (and soul!) embraces. Cannabis is my intoxicant of choice, and although the legalization movement is spreading, it still hasn’t come to my state. So I generally feel bereft when people gather to have fun. They’re always urging me to have some wine or a drink, and I usually end up holding a glass of something—the same something all evening long.

To illustrate how alcohol pervades our culture, please join me in a thought experiment. Let’s pretend that the history of marijuana and alcohol were reversed, so that marijuana was widely embraced but recreational alcohol (as opposed to rubbing alcohol) was banned in all but a few states. In most of America, owning or selling recreational alcohol could put you behind bars, while using marijuana was not only the norm but was culturally celebrated.

If that were the case, your vacation in a U.S. Virgin Island, might look something like the following. Note: you are not going there specifically to smoke a lot of pot. Marijuana just happens to be everywhere, as at most vacation destinations.

After you get off the plane in St. Thomas, you notice that in one corner of the airport by the baggage claim there’s a table upon which is displayed a variety of cannabis products: buds, candies, tinctures.

All are for sale. A pretty woman is handing out free joints made with the local marijuana. “Welcome to the Virgin Islands,” she says. Some tourists light up there and then, while others slip their welcome joints into their pockets.

On the ferry to your island, the first mate comes around to offer passengers marijuana cigarettes and spliffs (which combine pot and tobacco). These, too, are complimentary.

You arrive at the resort, and when you get to your room, you see a bowl of fruit, as well as a small tray holding a grinder, rolling papers, and a lighter. A note reads, “Enjoy Your Stay! The Management.” The refrigerator holds soft drinks, peanuts, and various cannabis strains and snacks. You’ll be charged handsomely if you avail yourself of these offerings, but hey, you’re on vacation!

By now, you’re really getting into the island mood or mode, and when go down to the restaurant for dinner, the menu offers yet more cannabis: a chicken marijuana/mole; a pineapple/cannabis upside-down cake. You’ve already smoked so much free stuff it seems excessive to get it in your food, so you order the fish with mango chutney.

Painting by Christie Mellor Left: VESPER curio cabinet. Acrylic and mixed media in a vintage wooden box Right: LORD BALTIMORE curio cabinet. Acrylic and mixed media in a vintage wooden box 30 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

Various joints are offered before, during, and after your meal. These vary by THC and CBD content and by their terpenes. Some strains taste lemony; others taste almost sweet.

You are not a cannabis connoisseur yourself, and you’re bemused by this emphasis on taste. After all, it’s the effect, not the taste, that you’re after.

The next day, you head down to the beach. Just as the resort website has depicted, there are two beach chairs set in shallow waters, romantically touching, facing out to sea, complete with hot young couple sharing a bong. Other people float by on rafts, conspicuously puffing from long pipes. All enjoy displaying their consumption.

You decide to go for a sail on a sunset cruise, and immediately upon setting foot on deck, every passenger crowds around the bar, ignoring the plates of shrimp, the bowls of guacamole, the platters of cheese, and the trays of cookies. No, they need to smoke something at once, and they shout their orders to the bud-tender, who supplies them with cannabis products. Fifteen minutes later, the people are mellow and calm. They’re delighting in the water, the clouds, the passing islands, the wind—and, suddenly, with little shrieks of delight, the food. Later, upon landing at the dock, many passengers go to the upstairs restaurant with its wonderful views. Happy with themselves, each other and the world, they smoke yet again.

At this point, you may be thinking: Who are these crazy potheads—and how much cannabis can they consume in one day? But go back to the early part of this piece, where you land in St. Thomas, and substitute “rum punch” or “wine” or “cocktails” every time you read “cannabis” or “marijuana,” and see how normal it seems. After all, almost every good hotel room in America comes equipped with wineglasses, an ice bucket, and a corkscrew.

Let’s resume the thought experiment: Coming home from your toking vacation, you go through security in St. Thomas without a problem, but ahead of you there is some sort of trouble. The local police are converging upon a young college couple. A scan of his backpack has revealed a steel flask; upon examination, it is found to be filled with the illicit island whiskey. The girl has started crying, and no wonder. It’s likely they’ll both be arrested, and they may be imprisoned for years.

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E P H E T E H

H IG

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Alan Cumming. Icon, Scottish actor, author, producer, activist (among other talents) —is renowned on the theatre scene for his groundbreaking portrayal of the Emcee in Cabaret, and came to widespread recognition in the U.S. as Eli Gold on The Good Wife. In between there have been hit films like GoldenEye, Spy Kids and X-Men 2; acclaimed theatre work around the globe; incredible achievements in humanitarian work, particularly for the LGBTQ community… and even the cheekiest of Reefer Madness. Now that Cumming is embarking on new adventures, like playing the first gay leading man in a network TV drama and opening his own club in New York City, he’s ready to spill all to Honeysuckle. The cult hero gave photographer, filmmaker and Honeysuckle hero, Samuel Clemens Long, some naughty notes on his love for cannabis and why life should be fun.

When did you start consuming cannabis and why?

I first had a puff during high school. Why? Well, because it sounded exciting and some cool older people were doing it and I was flattered they’d asked me. And I liked the idea of having my reality heightened. I still do. And I still think the cool people do it!

You’ve mentioned how, because of the difficult relationship you had with your father, you had to grow up quickly and have since embraced a second childhood in acting.

What place does cannabis use have within the “second childhood” approach to life?

Well, what I actually said was that I feel I’ve lived my life backwards. When I was a little boy I had to understand adult ways and suppress my fun and joy. And now that I’m an adult, I fully embrace little boyness in terms of joy and fun in a way that I think most adults find it difficult to, or have lost the knack of. Smoking pot is all a part of that joy. To me it is something that unleashes a wave of fun and liveliness and creativity. And I feel lucky in that I can dip into that and it not become something that controls my life. I have a motto - Everything in moderation, including moderation. Equally I feel it’s important to be able to utilize pot for all the positive things it can do, and still be able to function well in every aspect of life. I suppose I’m saying I’m a responsible stoner.

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In your native land of Scotland, do you smoke “flower” (what the kids are calling the bud nowadays) or hash?

It was always hash, growing up. I didn’t really have any grass till I went to America, many years later. Nowadays it seems that grass is more the predominant thing and hash is rarer in the UK, but in my day, it was rubbing off bits of that brown into a cigarette joint.

How have you seen cannabis culture change in California?

Well last year at one of the swag suites before the Golden Globes or Emmys, I forget which, I got two free gifts that were weed related! Those places are really weird - you walk into these big rooms and there are loads of stalls and people tell you about their product and you choose which color of shoes or sunglasses or deep fat fryer or vodka or whatever it is and there is some poor PA assigned to you with a massive and gradually-increasing-in-weight bag, and all of a sudden there was a stall with a weed vape pen and a little bag of grass, and they popped it into my bag and off I went! It was just so amazing to me to see how quickly weed and weed products had been subsumed into the celebrity gifting culture. But of course it makes sense, and also is the reason why the legalizing marijuana train has truly left the station - no state is going to renege on its legality once they see the financial benefits of it, not to mention how much calmer and happier their citizens will be!

Didn’t you once do a shoot with High Times where all the publicists were freaking out because you were actually smoking cannabis?

I did a movie of the musical Reefer Madness for Showtime, and at the press junket for it in L.A., Neve Campbell and I did a shoot and interview for High Times magazine. They wanted us to have a spliff in each of our mouths, and of course, as grown-ups and also as people who were promoting a movie called Reefer Madness and doing a shoot for a magazine called High Times, we agreed, and lit up. But our personal publicists, and the movie’s publicists, went into a tailspin and were freaking out. I had to have some strong words. I mean really. This was in 2005, and so the laws in California were not what they are now, but come on! Chill out, people.

In Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical you play the fear-mongering bad guy. How fun was that?

Reefer Madness was a total hoot to shoot. We shot it in Vancouver and British Columbia weed is rightly venerated by its inhabitants. So it felt good to make a paean to pot, and a political statement on hysteria and fear being used as weapons of propaganda in a place that completely encapsulated the film’s intentions and aesthetic.

Just for fun: Are Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups still your favorite thing to eat while high?

No, I’m vegan now, so soy ice cream is my munchie of choice!

Let’s switch gears. You do a considerable amount of charity work and receive many, many awards for it. Is there one organization/cause/award that is especially close to your heart, or one that’s doesn’t get the attention you’d like it to receive?

It would be hard to choose one. Everything I do is for something. I feel doesn’t get enough attention or money or justice.

Often I will be asked to support new causes because of certain themes in my work. Like after the movie Any Day Now, which was about gay adoption, I joined the Family Equality Council Board of Advocates. When my memoir Not My Father’s Son came out and I talked about abuse in my childhood, I started working with Safe Horizon [the largest social service agency for victims of abuse in the United States]. But I am always drawn to organizations that help queer youth, because I think being comfortable with your sexuality or gender identity is hard enough and getting even harder each day Trump is in power, so having to deal with anything else like homelessness or abuse needs all the support we can give. To this end, I’m currently an ambassador for the Hetrick-Martin Institute and also support Bailey House, the Ali Forney Center, and the Trevor Project.

You’ve also become an entrepreneur; this fall your new nightclub, Club Cumming, officially opened to the public in NYC. But it all started as a party in your dressing room. Tell us about your move to club owner and what someone walking in your doors can expect.

It’s another of those things in my life that just sort of happened. I feel sometimes like I have tumbled through life, but standing back from it at my great age, I can see a pattern...

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36 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

the older I have got and the more comfortable with myself I’ve become and the more able I have been to self-determine—I have understood the importance of fun.

Not just ha ha ha fun, but feeling safe fun, feeling a part of a welcoming community with no judgment fun. So Club Cumming started off as parties where I brought together a huge mix of different people and made them all feel comfortable enough to let go, and now Club Cumming the bar is a place that is a manifestation of all these things - a place where everyone is welcome, where fun and kindness and sexiness and a sense of community are the only house rules! And singing and dancing and heavy pouring! And its working; people are loving it. And I’m loving it too. I love being a bar proprietor! (And I bartend sometimes too!)

You’re starring in the upcoming CBS drama Instinct, based on the James Patterson series Murder Games. Tell us about the new character you’re giving life to, Dylan Reinhart, as well as your trending behind-thescenes interviews on Instagram.

Instinct is about a middle aged man who is an academic and writer, former CIA operative, motorbike rider, husband (to another man), former child musical prodigy and general Dapper Dan. He’s lured back into the investigative field when the NYPD ask him to help catch a serial killer who is leaving clues related to his bestselling book on abnormal behavior. It’s kind of campy and such fun, and I am playing the first-ever gay leading character on a network drama in U.S. TV history.

So it’s no biggie.

Okay, another just-for-fun question: We know sex on cannabis is amazing.

What element of intimacy is most heightened for you while high?

How amazing my penis is!

Interview and photography by Sam C. Long CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 37

Kaaren Nichols, MD, with Catherine Hiller

A PHYSICAN SPEAKS: What most people don’t know about Medical Marijuana If you think using medical marijuana will make you stoned all the time, think again. Most strains of medical marijuana are high in CBD (cannabidiol), a non-psychoactive compound that promotes healing, and low in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the molecule that gets you high. This is contrary to many recreational strains, which have greater amounts of THC and can result in certain psychotropic effects. For example, children who use Charlotte’s Web cannabis oil, which contains less than .3% THC and helps reduce the incidence of seizures, do not feel or act stoned. They have nothing in common with the recreational user, who relishes an altered mental state.

People should also rethink the idea that medical marijuana has to be smoked. Patients are using it as an edible, a tincture (a liquid placed under the tongue), or, frequently, as a topical (a lotion or a cream applied to the skin).

In New York State, medical marijuana is only available in these forms. So even if you’re opposed to smoking, you can still use medical marijuana.

There are hundreds of cannabis strains, all of which have different effects. Some are good for pain, others diminish nausea, and others help people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). New strains are constantly being developed for different conditions, including Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease. Much cannabis research is being legally carried out in Israel and Canada.

Even though the U.S. is home to much groundbreaking medical research, very little has been done in this country on marijuana specifically. In 38 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

the Forties, a federal official classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug (meaning it has no accepted medical use--and a high potential for abuse). This classification meant that for decades marijuana could be studied or prescribed only with enormous difficulty, and thus developed a stigma. Today, however, doctors in 29 states and Washington, D.C., can prescribe medical marijuana for certain conditions.

I am a Family Practice physician in Washington State. The most frequent reason I authorize medical marijuana to my patients is to relieve intractable pain. Many of my patients had been using pharmaceutical opioids (such as OxyContin), which can have undesirable side effects such as severe constipation, nausea, and addiction. By using medical marijuana instead of opioids, they have been able to decrease and even stop their opioid use. For instance, my patient Beverly* was riding her bicycle when she was struck by a car, which fractured her pelvis and both legs. Three years later, she was still using OxyContin to manage her severe pain. After I prescribed her medical marijuana, she was able to decrease her painkiller usage from six pills a day to just one.

OxyContin addiction is extremely serious. Once you stop using, symptoms include itching, sleeplessness, paranoia, and a strong fear of impending death. At this point, many people will seek relief by using heroin, so the medical marijuana option is a huge benefit that may prevent people from experimenting with heroin and other opiates. Use of medical marijuana stops the symptoms of withdrawal at the same time as it diminishes intractable pain.

Another reason I sometimes authorize medical marijuana is for nausea.

Just last week, Stephen* came into my office to obtain an authorization.

He had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy, which left him extremely nauseated and with no appetite. I recommended that he obtain a marijuana strain developed to help both conditions. He called my office yesterday to tell me that his nausea was completely gone, he was enjoying his meals again, and he was gaining back the weight he had lost.

Medical marijuana is also effective in relieving the nausea experienced by HIV and migraine patients. However, it is not to be used during pregnancy, as it might negatively affect the developing fetus.

The number of conditions that medical marijuana can alleviate is extraordinary. My 69 year-old patient, John David*, was diagnosed with glaucoma two years ago. His ophthalmologist prescribed him the appropriate eye drops, but after several weeks of use, he found the drops irritated his eyes. He stopped using them and began using a specific strain of marijuana instead. When his doctor tested his eye pressure, he found that it was in a normal range. My patient Betsy* was diagnosed with MS when she was 46. She has been using a strain of medical cannabis that alleviates her symptoms, and she has had no progression of her disease in several years.

Eric* returned from Afghanistan and was diagnosed with severe PTSD. He has found that medical marijuana reduces his symptoms so that he can function normally. *All patients’ names have been changed.

PORTLAND MEMENTO by Naomi Rosenblatt

Unfortunately in Seattle, where I practice, it has become much more difficult for patients to obtain the medical marijuana they need, even after I authorize it. The closing of medical marijuana dispensaries has deprived patients of the knowledgeable staff who are able to recommend the most effective new strains for various conditions.

Furthermore, since July 1, 2016, patients must pay a high excise tax for their cannabis medicine. Many of my patients live in poverty and rely on social security benefits; these costs are prohibitive. By enacting SB5052, which raised the tax on medical marijuana from zero to 37.5%, the Washington State legislature has forced them to seek non-regulated black-market cannabis, with deleterious results to their health (the ratios of CBD-to-THC are no longer precise) and added risk of arrest. These patients are being denied safe access to specific strains. I hope the government will remove the restrictions it has imposed on this multipurpose medicinal plant.

When penicillin was first discovered, it was hailed as a wonder drug because it was safe, cheap and effective in treating many different conditions. Lester Grinspoon, Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, writes that“marijuana, for the same three reasons, will eventually be hailed as a wonder medicine.”

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Jaime Lubin

OUR EPILEPSY HERO: Greg Grunberg on CBD Benefits “It’s incredible that this is something that’s been around forever, and there’s such a stigma attached, and there shouldn’t be,” actor Greg Grunberg says of medicinal cannabis. “There’s such a stigma attached to epilepsy, and there shouldn’t be. I understand it with epilepsy, because you watch someone have a seizure and it’s scary. But there’s nothing scary about cannabis.”

Known for his longstanding characters on Felicity, Alias, Heroes/Heroes Reborn and in the box-office smash Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Grunberg’s most important role hits closer to home—epilepsy advocate. His oldest son Jake was diagnosed with the condition (a chronic neurological disorder which causes unprovoked seizures) at age 7, and ever since the father of three has been on a mission to heighten public awareness and fundraise for research and treatment.

In 2007 Grunberg founded TalkAboutIt.org in partnership with the Epilepsy Foundation; it’s a website where Greg creates new avenues of communication for patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and the global society to eliminate taboos surrounding the disorder. As we learn from videos on the site featuring our favorite celebrities (including Kristen Bell, Jennifer Garner, and Hayden Panettiere), the condition affects 65 million people worldwide, with 3.4 million in the U.S. alone. 1 in 26 Americans will develop epilepsy in their lifetime, and 33% of all patients are living with uncontrollable seizures because they haven’t found a treatment that works for them. This was Jake Grunberg’s reality—until his dad decided to try medical marijuana.

The Grunberg family’s experiments with cannabis treatment for Jake began in 2014, shortly after CBS aired the 60 Minutes documentary on “Charlotte’s 40 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

Web,” a medical strain curated for the use of young children. Although Greg was interested in learning about medical cannabis, and its use has been legal in his home state of California since 2003, he came to the investigation with parental concerns.

“We’ve been going through ‘the epilepsy carwash’ for a long time,” Grunberg explains. “And we learned very quickly that it’s important to find the right medication, the right treatment and doctors, as soon as possible to get the seizures under control. [Many people] respond to the first medication that they’re given by their doctor, and Jake fell under the percentage that didn’t. It’s important for everyone in the epilepsy community to understand that they need to get to not just a neurologist, but an epileptologist. We were with a pharmacologist, a neurologist who specialized in epilepsy and knew a lot about the combination of medicines. Because of that, Jake was and still is on a cocktail of medications. There are some incredible medications out there… But we kept hearing stories about medical cannabis and how it was helping different conditions, and hard-to-treat epilepsy was one of them.”

He continues, “I didn’t like the idea of trying cannabis for Jake in any form that we couldn’t measure: ‘Okay, we gave him too much or too little.’ I didn’t want to get it in the form of a candy or cookie. We were able to get hold of a strain that had a high ratio of CBD and only one part THC – it’s drops, like an oil – You put it under your tongue. Jake does it in the morning and at night, and it seems to help him sleep, which is really important for somebody with epilepsy, because lack of sleep and fatigue can absolutely lead to more seizures.”

While Greg clarifies that Jake started using his drops at age 18 (he’s now 21) and that these are from a different strain than Charlotte’s Web, the ratio—25

parts CBD to 1 part THC—and effects are comparable. When combined with his other medications, cannabis appears to have helped reduce Jake’s seizures tremendously.

“In my mind, this is not a substitute for medication in any way,” Grunberg emphasizes. “Other people may feel differently. In our situation, we know that cannabis is not the silver bullet, that Jake definitely needs all his other medication too. But from what we’ve seen and our neurologist has said, the cannabis actually helps his medications work more efficiently and effectively. What that means for us is we can start titrating down his other medications. It’s really a balance. You have to be talking to your doctor all the time.”

Obviously, cannabis use is not without its side effects. Studies verified by the Epilepsy Foundation since 2015 have found that certain patients (about 16-22% of those in tests of 214 people) experienced additional drowsiness, diarrhea and upset stomachs when taking CBD oil. (Interestingly, researchers noted that patients receiving placebos also reported the latter two side effects; they believe the stomach problems are symptoms of components in the oil, not the cannabinoids.) This still seems a small price to pay considering the upside: The studies showed most patients’ seizures decreasing by an average of 54% when using medical cannabis in conjunction with standard epilepsy medication.

Asked whether he might have started Jake on cannabis at a younger age had the drops been available sooner, Grunberg responds, “That’s a really good question. It’s definitely something we felt more comfortable trying once he was 18, and that’s something every parent or caregiver has to think about for themselves. I mean, Jake had brain surgery when he was 12 ½. Brain surgery’s the downright last resort, but he was having hundreds of seizures a day.

Photo by Allan Amato

When that happens, as a parent, you will do anything to stop it. We turned to brain surgery, because he was a candidate. So would I try cannabis, which is absolutely harmless and non-addictive? Yes, I would try that before I try some of the other things.

“Being in this community as a parent, we will do anything to get our son’s seizures under control. As we see now, cannabis isextremely beneficial. For so long we’ve thought of it as associated with all these hardcore drugs, and it’s not at all.”

He laughs before admitting, “I didn’t grow up as a pot smoker, but of course I can’t let my son try something that I haven’t tried. So I tried the drops and smoked this strain, and it is absolutely harmless.

It just kind of calms you down and chills you out, like a shot of whiskey. But the really important thing for people to understand here is that it can help, but you’ve got to ask your doctor about it.”

It’s amazing to realize how two heavily stigmatized subjects, epilepsy and cannabis, are now coming together. We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what medical cannabis can do, or understand all the potential treatments and cures for epilepsy, but we’re getting there. The best path to innovation is through open conversation, as Greg’s advocacy shows.

“As far as hope is concerned, it’s a great time to have something like epilepsy,” he

comments, “because now you can find medications that really work and it’s getting better all the time. But it can be so scary for people if they don’t know what to do. The key [information], like never sticking anything in someone’s mouth when they have a seizure. That’s an old wives’ tale. Don’t hold them down; let them have their seizure. Bring them gently to the ground and put something under their head - it’s the fall, the trauma to the head, that hurts them. This is really what I do, encourage people to talk about epilepsy and not be afraid of the stigma. That’s why I created TalkAboutIt.org.”

Having just completed this year’s National Epilepsy Awareness Month in November, Grunberg is on a roll. He and Jake hosted a team at the Pasadena Rose Bowl’s Walk to End Epilepsy, which they have done for several years, and with Talk About It!’s sponsors he’s been spearheading a viral social media campaign that has huge material impact. For every post with the hashtag #MyEpilepsyHero across any platform, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals will donate $1 to the Epilepsy Foundation (they’re also helping Greg to bring Talk About It! to its next phase). Use photos or videos in your posts to share who in the epilepsy community has inspired you, and that’s a quick, easy way to fundraise for research and keep the conversation going at the same time.

Of course, Hollywood keeps Greg pretty busy too – this summer he wrapped production on the A Star Is Born remake starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, and has a major role in HBO’s upcoming Joe Paterno biopic, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Al Pacino. He’s recently released episodes of his new podcast called An Actor, a Comedian and a Musician Walk Into a Bar (co-hosted by Kirk Fox and Nick Marzock), on iTunes.

As he says, “It’s a great platform where I can ‘Talk About It!’” And music fans can always find him performing around the country with Band From TV, the fundraising juggernaut Greg founded to benefit worthy causes through rock and roll. (Other members include fellow Hero Adrian Pasdar, Desperate Housewives’ James Denton, Chicago Fire’s Jesse Spencer, The Bachelor’s Bob Guiney, and The Orville’s Scott Grimes.)

But home is in the heart.

“Luckily through the band we’re able to raise money for Talk About It! and I can do stuff like this to get the word out about epilepsy,” Grunberg sums up. “And I’m so proud of Jake. He’s doing all the things a 21-year-old would normally do.

He’s a black belt in Tae Kwon Do – he just had his tournament and took gold in board breaking and all these forms. He’s got a great job in the film business that he loves. He’s successful and he’s happy. Epilepsy is something you’ve got to stay on top of all the time, but he doesn’t let it stop him. He really is my hero.”

Let’s not forget that Jake’s dad is one too. Father and son are in this together, fighting the good fight. Because whether it’s epilepsy or cannabis, it’s time to break the silence and give back to the global community. Let’s eradicate the stigma.

There’s so much we can share with each other, if only we don’t bogart the vital information.

For more about epilepsy research and treatment, visit TalkAboutIt.org and epilepsy.com. For upcoming tour information and more about the charities Band From TV supports, visit bandfromtv.org CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 41

Eben Britton

CANNABIS: A TOOL FOR HEALTH eat the seeds, vaporize the extracts, and wear the clothes when I can. I truly appreciate the fact that cannabis is not only a versatile herbal remedy, but also a great material for everything from clothing to car parts.

The pills always made me feel crazy. Anger and frustration would simmer at the surface, on the edge of snapping at even just the whiff of something displeasing. After taking them I felt so irritated and uncomfortable that my physical distress was exacerbated. From black depression and feelings of hopelessness to waking up at three in the morning drenched in the cold sweats of withdrawal.

The truth is that thousands of people and families are dealing with the brutal reality of opiate addiction. A recent report from the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) states: “Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015. Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 20,101 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 12,990 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2015.”

Meanwhile there has always been this plant, a substance highly demonized by the world. There was no way Photo by Augustus Britton you could be a “stoner” and a “jock.” The idea was that Like every other guy that has played football, I have en- if you were someone who wanted to partake, you probdured many injuries covering my body. From my head to my ably were not going to be a success on the field. What mattered was that my intuition was telling me differently. toes, everything has been broken to some degree.

As my career progressed and the game took its toll on my I’m sitting here at my desk with a shooting pain like a spear through my lower back. In 2010 I suffered a life-altering back body, I found myself repeatedly drawn back to the plant. It injury during off-season workouts with the Jaguars. The disc soothed me, especially in those most severe times of pain.

It quieted the chaos in my mind, providing me with an inner between L5 and S1 exploded like a jelly donut peace suitable for a recovering body. squirting toxic ooze all over my sciatic nerve.

Today, nearly three years out of It would be over a year before I corrected the issue in surgery, which resulted in an infection.

I smoke the flower, my football career, I’m dealing with pain on a daily basis: back pain, a I was put on eight weeks of intravenous antibieat the seeds, neck that doesn’t turn, feet that feel otics and placed on injured reserve. Long story like bricks and ankles that unhinge. short—I’m dealing with the residual damage of vaporize the extracts, Cannabis allows me to work through that ordeal to this day. all of it. I remember the pills sent me My compressed discs. My twisted spine. and wear into a hopeless mental state where There is an ebb and flow to the surges of pain there was no possibility of feeling through my body. A twisted spine and rib the clothes ... better. On a physical note, opiates cage. My sternum frequently spasms and most cause respiratory depression, making days I have no feeling in the bottom of my foot. My daily regimen to manage that pain consists of it difficult to get up off the couch, much less get exercise. yoga and exercise, along with regular cannabis use. One The body heals when it flows, when fresh blood loaded of my favorite aspects of the cannabis plant is that it can with nutrients can be carried back and forth to the affected be used in a variety of ways. I use cannabinoid-rich topical area. We accomplish that through movement—and cannapain relief creams, high-CBD tinctures. I smoke the flower, bis is the fire that ignites that action.

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Augustus Britton

WALKING THROUGH THE FIRE WITH EBEN BRITTON The subject of cannabis is vast: it is political, spiritual, medicinal, ancient, personal. There are a select group of contemporary people embracing the herb publicly, and helping to awaken the subject; my brother Eben Britton is one of them.

Eben is an entrepreneur who played six years in the NFL, and cannabis is a dreamscape for him. We sat down in Los Angeles—a literal haven for the herb—to wax on some of the mysteries of the beautiful THC and CBD, as well as stone-cold words on why this plant may change the world after all.

Augustus Britton: When did you realize cannabis was medicine?

Eben Britton: I think that awakening to cannabis as medicine happened around my fourth year in the NFL. I started being very conscious of the fact that I would take pharmaceutical drugs, and without a doubt they made me feel angry, irritable, and uncomfortable.

They made it difficult for me to sleep.

I was waking up at two or three o’clock in the morning with withdrawal symptoms, cold sweats, and chills. I realized that any time I consumed cannabis I felt none of those things. I was able to relax.

I was able to get calm and find peace after a long day of beating myself up both physically and mentally. From meetings and hours of weight lifting and practice, I would come home and the thing that helped me come down was cannabis.

I could smoke a little bit of a joint and find relief, whereas if I took pills they would exacerbate the discomfort. My last two years with the Chicago Bears, I didn’t take any painkillers or opiates. I was really going to cannabis as my main source of pain management.

AB: Tell me about intuition in terms of finding a healthy lifestyle for yourself.

EB: Intuition is something that is being blinded and fogged in many ways.

By pills. By processed food. By technology. We are constantly being bogged down by toxic materials, as well as both ingestible and cultural exposure. I think there is something to be said for intu-

ition and having an awakened experience in life. It comes down to paying attention to what you are putting in your body and how that makes you feel. I think I have been very fortunate in my life that I haven’t taken things at face value. I’ve always questioned everything, and that has helped me to not always sacrifice my personal experience, or the experience I would want to have.

This is incredibly important because our bodies tell us things all the time; they are giving us feedback. Everything you put in your body is accompanied by an experience afterward. And I think we need to get back to this kind of understanding as people.

AB: What would you say to the person who is afraid of cannabis?

EB: I think the path to normalization, to acceptance with cannabis for the layperson that may say, “This is an illegal drug,” or they are steeped in the propaganda and the misinformation and archaic ideas that surround Reefer Madness and all of that, I would say that they need to educate themselves on two main components. One is the history of the plant. This plant has been utilized for ten thousand years, treating quite literally everything from depression to impotence. This is a plant that has far-reaching healing powers. It contains the most abundant source of cannabinoids, which are an incredibly essential compound within and for the human body. And taking that a step further, we have an endocannabinoid sys-

tem in our bodies, a system that produces the same chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. The endocannabinoid system is found in our brain, our bones, skin, lungs, liver, heart, all the vital organs, our digestive system, and our blood. It is very much in part responsible for our mood, how we feel and deal with pain and stress, our sleep rhythms, and our appetite, which are our four key processes that the human body goes through on a daily basis. This system is responsible for regulating it. It is basically responsible for keeping us in homeostasis. When you ingest cannabinoids from the cannabis plant you are helping to facilitate all of these processes that our bodies must go through on a daily basis. That is the medicinal and historical side of the plant. The other component is the industrial aspects of cannabis. There are over fifty thousand uses for the plant material, from sails on sailboats, to household materials, to computer chips, clothing, paper, and there is the hemp seed, which is essentially the most nutritious food on the planet. It has a perfect spectrum of Omegas, ten grams of plant-based protein within three tablespoons; it is an incredible super food. There are so many ways to consume cannabis. Anyone who maybe be afraid of getting high, well, you don’t have to smoke it or get high. You don’t have to take the THC part to feel and obtain the benefits of cannabis.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 43

I rub CBD and THC cream on my back and shoulders, neck, parts of my body that sustained the most damage in my football career. I try to incorporate it into my everyday lifestyle. That’s how I view it. That’s how I live. This is not alternative to me anymore. This is how it is done for me. It is about finding a way to heal myself. A part of dealing with trauma, dealing with anxiety, and with depression. I use it on a daily basis.

AB: What are you doing to move this movement forward and help spread awareness?

EB: This whole journey for me started in advocacy. I started writing about my experiences using cannabis as opposed to opiates and how healing that was for me. I realized there is a need for this type of information. I am a founding member of Athletes For Care, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to being a health and wellness resource for athletes of all ages. It is for people to come and get educated on how to take care of yourself in a holistic and sustainable way following an athletic career.

Our cannabis advocacy flowered into being about how the herb fits into a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise, nutrition, and meditation, and more. I felt there was a need for athletes to feel safe to get this type of information.

AB: Have you created any cannabis-derived products?

Photo of Augustus Britton AB: How might you describe the ethos of what is happening right now with cannabis?

EB: The cannabis movement is the people’s movement.

The movement toward legalization is a microcosm of people being tired of our government, tired of our healthcare system, and wanting to take back control of their lives.

AB: What is the most exciting part about all of this?

EB: We are in a wellness revolution. Cannabis fits very intricately into that pie. What that means to me is that we are moving into a realm where cannabis will be accepted as a normal part of the family kitchen, because it will be viewed as an essential part of optimal nutrition. We are seeing a shift in our consciousness as a people to a much more holistic, healthy future.

AB: How do you consume cannabis?

EB: Many forms. I eat the seeds, first and foremost. I purchase as many hemp-derived items as possible, including clothing and wares. I consume the flower by smoking it. I vaporize the concentrates. I take oils. I use topicals.

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EB: I’ve created a health and wellness company called Be Trū Organics. We specialize in homeopathic products with phytocannabinoid-rich hemp extract. We have a fantastic pain relief cream that is good for sore muscles and joints. We have an oral spray made from hemp-extract combined with goji berry and ginseng. It is uplifting and focusing and helps manage inflammation. We also have a gummy, like a daily vitamin, which provides phytocannabinoid-rich hemp extract as well, along with Vitamins B12 and D3. What sets us apart is that we are combining this cannabinoid-rich hemp oil alongside super foods and also various essential oils within our cream, specifically. The hemp extract elevates the efficacy of all the other ingredients. Our products are also completely THC-free.

You get all the fantastic anti-inflammatory properties into your system without getting high.

AB: Cannabis feels like the tip of the iceberg.

EB: Cannabis is reframing pain. We have slipped into a softness of thinking that everything needs to be easy. Into an idea that we should avoid pain at all costs. But for any amount of growth to happen there has to be pain, there has to be struggle. The idea of a “painkiller” is funny to me.

But cannabis allows us to move through physical, mental, and spiritual hardship in a productive manner, without doing further damage to our bodies. We can learn from all of this, from all of our inner and outer surroundings.

Nadya Rousseau

MARIJUANA OVER MIGRAINES A ten-pound, 36-inch sledgehammer pounded my head, specifically my left temple, shooting waves of pain across my face, down my neck and into my spine. My eyes were sealed shut—if opened, anything I saw swirled and whirled like I were back on a Six Flags Rollercoaster. Specifically, the one where you are holstered in, and flipped around going sixty miles per hour with your legs in the air beneath you.

These sensations had been going on for what seemed like hours. My lights were off, and the room reeked of peppermint. Peppermint oil and Excedrin were my only chances at this point. When the pain began to dissipate and the hammer retreated, I thought what everyone thinks who endures chronic migraines—I hope this one doesn’t come back.

Every month, for at least three days, I was debilitated by these migraines. As a teenager in high school, there were days my mom picked me up early because of crushing headaches, which were later classified as hormonal migraines. Ah, hormones—they giveth and they taketh away. For some women, horrendous monthly pain by way of menstrual cramps and migraine headaches. Sometimes self-medicating succeeded; I vacillated between Excedrin and Naproxen. Aspirin, Tylenol, and Ibuprofen didn’t work. Once I was lucky enough to get some prescription Naproxen—which is stronger—and that was headache relief gold. But it also hurt my stomach and created dizziness sensations, so I didn’t pursue an ongoing prescription.

Two years ago, I went on birth control and hoped I’d receive some headache relief in addition to the more obvious benefits of the medication. I did—but it didn’t last long. They returned, and I began noticing other unpleasant side effects of BC. So, I quit.

Back to Excedrin, peppermint oil, and the usual OTC goodies that didn’t do much to help.

Concerned friends asked, “Why don’t you just smoke weed?” I would shrug, said I had a bad experience with marijuana in the past. I live in Southern California, where medical marijuana is widely accessible AND acceptable, yet I didn’t want to go down that route. I was terrified of unwanted side effects—paranoia, addiction, maybe even worsened headaches. In my mid-twenties, I had an unfavorable experience with a brownie that, much to my surprise, contained a large amount of hashish from a Sacramento Dispensary. I ended up spending the night in the hospital from one of the worst anxiety attacks ever.

Marijuana would just make me sicker, I concluded.

Then I began smoking occasionally, usually a Hybrid strain. I didn’t know what Hybrid, Indica, or Sativa meant, I just enjoyed what I was given. And, wow. No crazy side

Illustration by Gea

effects, just relaxation. A warm, tingly feeling that melted away my stress, and happened to alleviate my headache pain.

I began hitting up friends who had their Medi-Cal cards to get my hands on some marijuana to keep around in case a headache struck. I realized edibles, not flowers, were what didn’t agree with me.

I knew it was time to give in and get my own medical supply, but for I was still apprehensive. There was something that felt somehow rebellious or subversive about it, even though marijuana is now completely legal in California. I figured I could just rely on my friends to help occasionally. Plus, my headaches were not as severe lately.

Then I got one of the worst migraines of my life—literally. It lasted six days. Three days before my period, one day during, and two days after. I couldn’t get any work done, I was rendered useless by the pain.

It was time. One five-minute FaceTime call with a medical marijuana doctor on an app called “Eaze MD,” later—I had my authorization. One week after that, I had in my hand, my very own medical marijuana card and certificate. Yet, it took me two more weeks to walk into a dispensary and make a CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 45

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Photo by Martin Henderson

PURPLE PUNCH

purchase. I had an arbitrary fear of judgment; I imagined the Bud Tenders (the people that help customers select their marijuana products) thinking I was clueless, or mistakenly choosing the wrong product. I just had to get over it. So I researched heavily the best products to prevent migraines.

When new to medical marijuana, research is key. Apps like Weedmaps and Leafly are to the marijuana community as an APA Stylebook is to journalists. I came across two discoveries: Hashman’s Canna Drops and a hybrid strain called Harlequin.

Last August, I was migraine-free for the first time in months. I had been taking my Canna drops for about four weeks, each night before sleep. Still, I questioned the efficacy of the marijuana. I had also started taking Evening Primrose Oil, which is noted for its hormone balancing effects, and has been said to help women alleviate their menstrual headaches.

Self-education when trying any type of new medication is key—including marijuana. I learned about 1 to 1 ratios (a balance of CBD and THC), and how CBD-dominant strains can often prove the most therapeutic. CBD is one of many active cannabinoids in marijuana—and noted for its anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties. People like it because it relieves their pain without getting them high like THC. Then, last September while writing this essay, I suffered from a migraine. I was traveling , and couldn’t fly with my Canna Drops from California to the East Coast. Marijuana isn’t federally legal, and the legality in states like New York and Maryland are nothing like they are in California. So I didn’t pack it, and had been without the drops for about two weeks—which brings me to the conclusion that they do work. That hammer you read about earlier? Yup, it took about three hours to start pounding. Over the past month the Canna Drops effectively prevented my migraine pain, but they need to be taken daily.

When in New York City, I was shocked to see only seven dispensaries pop up on my Weed Maps App. In Hagerstown, Maryland, there is one medical marijuana doctor, and the price tag associated with a visit felt like four times that of what I paid in California. Most people don’t have the income to seek treatment, even in states where medical marijuana is becoming available.

What needs to happen next is clear: we need to continue to rally and advocate for federal legalization so people who suffer from migraines, seizures, and other life-altering conditions receive the treatment they need without having to cut through their savings.

What’s the better alternative? A toxic liver from OTC medicines that do little to help, or feeling high from time to time? If you know the answer, you may not only be already high, but you have common sense.

John Gosslee

The Sacred Spaces are Full of Pills and Smoke It’s still humid from the storm and I wonder if my shirt is wet because I walked in the rain, or because I chose to wear a shirt.

The buildings are the buildings and something else, but the names of things aren’t what they are in the mouth, their shape, lost in translation, grip the air like two mountain sides echo a voice. * No one sees the root of the tree until the dirt is washed away, the crown returned to the bone kingdom.

No one thinks of me tonight and the me that doesn’t hold itself in the body passes through my gate.

It’s a godless heaven and being is the only answer to the needle forcing its path into the body.

Photo by Susan Saandholland

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 47

Susan Shapiro

LIGHTING UP Excerpt from Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex (now available as an e-book from Penguin Random House) 10 A.M.: Woke up and wrote on calendar "D-Day," then changed it to "No D-Day," swearing that I was ready to stop my daily dope habit. Rifled through desk and threw out Zig-Zag and Bambu rolling papers, leftover roaches, two pipes, minibong and plastic Baggies. Proclaimed it would be easy since pot wasn't physically addictive. Lit lilac scented candle and watched flame flicker, feeling serene. Decided it was never about smoking, it was about being a pyromaniac. Found names and phone numbers of drug dealers in address book and whited them out with Liquid Paper.

Turned page, noticing I could still read dealer's numbers backward. Whited that page out too.

Drank six diet sodas in a row. Cleaned apartment, paid bills, returned phone calls. Felt productive, wonderful, so happy to be drug-free.

11 A.M.: Ordered fruit salad, newspapers and more diet soda from local deli. Ate fruit salad and drank two liters of diet soda from bottle. Opened wooden box from Jamaica to find half a joint left. Guessed it was stale.

Sniffed longingly and considered eating it before tossing in garbage. Contemplated rummaging through garbage to find and smoke it.

Took out trash filled with pot paraphernalia, tossing it down incinerator. Wondered if any of my dealers were listed.

Illustration by Gea

12:30 P.M.: Read in the paper that, when asked "Everybody Must Get Stoned." Felt hungry. Lit another scented candle.

eighty calories. Polished off box of ten Smart Ones diet fudge bars, adding up to four hundred calories, feeling stupid. Noted that everyone got munchies when they got high, I got munchies when I quit. Threw away hemostat brother gave me for roach clip. Drank more diet Coke. Wrote list of cool nicknames for dope: Hemp, Love Weed, Love Boat, Buddah Sticks, Blunts, Green Goddess, Wacky Tobaccy, Mary Jane, Black Gold, Magic Smoke, Ganja, Alice B. Toklas. Started to laugh hysterically. Started to cry.

2 P.M.: Craved a joint though I'd never once toked so early in the day. Tried to work. Went to freezer and ate forty-calorie Smart Ones diet fudge bar. Ate another forty-calorie diet fudge bar, proud that my pig out consisted of only

5 P.M.: Went to take nap but couldn’t sleep from too much diet chocolate and diet soda. Looked up diseases medicinal marijuana eased: cancer, AIDS, arthritis, MS, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s. Reminded myself I was lucky not to have cancer, AIDS, arthritis, MS, epilepsy, or Alzheimer’s as reason to keep toking. Promised myself if I ever got Alzheimer’s, I’d

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become senile pothead. Worried I wouldn’t remember promise. Recalled Dylan admitted to lifelong toking. Looked at recent picture of Dylan. Heard phone message from Claire.

Realized she might have an extra joint, though I’d have to go to her place, at 102nd Street and Riverside. Decided it was worth schlepping ninety-four blocks uptown. Wondered if she’d give me the name and number of her dealer. Didn’t pick up phone or call her back. Got headache. Took extrastrength Tylenol.

6 P.M.: Tried to work. Remembered that Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg swore by dope. Admitted I never loved writing of Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. Rationalized that, since Dr. Winters said I had to quit marijuana, I could still smoke hashish. Realized I couldn't switch to hashish without being a drug-addicted liar. Pondered whether hash brownies were okay. Decided hash brownies weren't okay and would destroy both sobriety and diet. E-mailed my pal Pam that I was quitting dope. Surprised that she asked if I'd send one last $200 bag of strong New York stuff to her in L.A. Said "sure." Then figured out I couldn't buy some for her without buying some for me. Saw I'd already whited out phone numbers of dealers anyway. Called her back to say no. Went to work, recalling Rastafarians' claim that cannabis was a sacrament that heightened spirituality. Admitted I'd never been religious or spiritual. Wished I could be as high and cool as Bob Marley. Recalled Bob Marley died at thirty-six.

8:30 P.M.: Turned on Macy Gray CD. Realized for the first time that songs were all about drug trips, including lyric "I just want to go get high." Wondered if street dealers still sold dime bags in Washington Square Park. Turned off Macy Gray CD. Looked up interview where gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson admitted smoking pot for decades.

Acknowledged what a fucked up mess Hunter Thompson had been for decades. Opened door for Aaron, who asked, "How are you?" Answered, "Great," sobbing in his arms.

Ordered Chinese food from Sammy's. Drank more diet soda with chicken and broccoli. Got worse headache from MSG. Took two more extra-strength Tylenol.

11:30 P.M.: Noticed Marijuana Girl snow globe on shelf and immediately threw it in garbage. Decided that one could be straight and have a Marijuana Girl snow globe.

Took it out of garbage and put back on shelf. Turned on TV to That 70's Show rerun, where cool teenagers sat at table, passing around a joint. Turned off TV. Paced around apartment, hyper from too much caffeine, bloated from Chinese food, and dizzy from MSG. To chill out, took leftover Xanax my brother gave me when I was nervous about getting on a plane. Realized that between the caffeine, Tylenols, and Xanax, I was more doped up now than when I was on dope, and I still wanted some.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 49

BLK ZEN and The R.O.A.R.

MEET THE KAIJU

Photos by Justin Bullock

Splicing Trap with EDM and PUNK, Kaiju Killer Klan, part of Brooklyn collective ElevenSixtySix was birthed by The R.O.A.R. and BLKZEN as a side project to their main gig in Monsters on the Horizon to exorcise their inner ratchet twisted selves. The loose rap crew makes dangerous, in your face music that explodes on stage, and in your ears. They are rounded out by KOI alum Jerrbul, as well as drummer Kevin McAdams from Monsters in the live manifestation.

The cliché of smoking weed in the studio is decades old but they wanted to give some insight into what strains work better or worse when you’re trying to record that fire track.

HEADBAND

GORILLA GLUE

OG KUSH

We can whip up some serious magic in the studio with this. It's a really great strand to mix and master with. It doesn't mess with your hearing like a lot of other strains. I don't feel tired while I'm high but the come down has me completely slumped. *Yawn*

Unexpected surprise. It put us in a good space. We were feeling a bit lazy but we got to making some genre-fluid fire music! We were doing a movie score mixing rock with trap.

We made some crazy Japanese Future Bass on this one. It felt similar to Gorilla but it dries out your throat, so not the best if you’re planning on cutting vocals. Love the taste when vaped.

8.5/

10

7/ 10

9/ 10* * with water. 7/10 without water.

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G

REEN ACRES IS THE PLACE FOR HIM Stephen Inglis on Cannabis investment and Puerto Rican Recovery Interview by Jaime Lubin

This fall the world looked on in horror as a series of hurricanes, especially Hurricane Maria, devastated Puerto Rico. Thousands inhabiting the island, a U.S. territory, remain without power; over 900 people have died. But as recovery slowly begins, Puerto Ricans and companies all over the world look toward the magical plant for hope. Not only for its medicinal properties, but also for the good business opportunity it brings. Investor Stephen Inglis, manager of the hedge fund Green Acres Holdings, explains why cannabis is bringing Puerto Rico back from the brink.

How long has cannabis been legal in Puerto Rico?

SI: The original executive order was made in the summer of 2016 by the previous governor, Alejandro Padilla. The actual law was passed and put into effect by the new Republican governor Ricardo Rosselló in July. So it’s just getting started! The number of patients who have signed up since the legalization is more than 15,000.

How many years have you been working in, and with, Puerto Rico?

SI: I started to look into the benefits of working in Puerto Rico in 2015 from a tax standpoint. It wasn’t until January 1st of this year that I began to act on my plans. The company was just launched and registered in January.

What appealed to you the about of all this? What inspired you to take the leap?

SI: Puerto Rico has some of the most productive land in the world, and it’s not being used. Puerto Rico, because of its foster child-like relationship with the

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Green Acres post-Hurricane Maria

SI: No, I wouldn’t say all of agriculture, but in some aspects, it certainly has driven this technology forward. I think one of the parallels could be what porn did for photography.

very valuable crop. When people started to grow it indoors because at times it couldn’t be done outdoors, they realized they could get a better-quality crop indoors, so people started developing superior techniques utilizing hydroponics. People’s basements were filled with hydroponic equipment. They studied which light spectrums worked best, how nutrients affected various plants, how to get different budding properties, and experimented with crossbreeding. This led to the whole evolution of high-potency cannabis crops. What you buy now surpasses the bag of Mexican weed you used to get in the Sixties and Seventies.

It’s funny that the taboo industries often set the bar for more mainstream industries.

How much of the cannabis that is used and sold here in the mainland comes from Puerto Rico?

SI: Well, these taboo industries are also the high margin. Cannabis is a

SI: Zero. It is very important to know that you cannot move cannabis,

United States, actually imports 80%of its food, which is crazy. They have all this great land, which is lying fallow.

Before Puerto Rico became a part of the U.S., they used to export coffee to Europe and had a robust agricultural industry.

Would you say that cannabis is now at the forefront of all agricultural technology?

The Puerto Rican scope of usage is pretty broad. It’s hard to say how much of the cannabis use was medical, or just stress relief during these trying times. There was a noticeable continuation of the business. As a matter of a fact, a few dispensaries benefitted from some of the other dispensaries that were wiped out in the storm. What’s interesting about Puerto Rico, which is very different from California, is that you can actually franchise dispensaries and have branded franchising. If you have a license in one franchise you can go to another franchise and buy from there too.

I hadn’t thought about dispensaries being franchisable.

SI: Branding is a big thing right now. Branding cannabis products is very important, especially in California.

Stephen Inglis of Green Acres

What is the mission of Green Acres Holdings?

nor any money derived from cannabis, across state lines. Even if you are in a legalized state. You can’t move cannabis between California and Oregon, or Oregon and Washington. Interstate commerce is strictly forbidden. So, Puerto Rico at this point is its own little island, both figuratively and literally.

Although, it’s not official yet, there is an intention to export it from Puerto Rico to other legal countries, but not to the United States. That’s a long time coming, but perhaps before that we’d be able to ship it to Germany and [elsewhere]. Puerto Rico has made it available so that anyone who visits from a legal state, and has a medical license, can purchase cannabis from their dispensaries. So there is a sort of reciprocity, and it’s very good for the tourist trade. It’s actually very lax, so if you don’t have a medical license you can get one there pretty quick.

SI: Green Acres Holdings is a company that was set up in Puerto Rico in order to make agricultural and real estate developments in general, but primarily agricultural. Everything from organic farming to, hopefully in the near future, growing high-CBD strains of hemp outdoors. We also are involved in the indoor cultivation of cannabis. Green Acres doesn’t have a growing facility at this time, but we are in the process of connecting with some growers to change that.

Since cannabis growth is constrained to the states in America wherein it’s legal, what effect does Puerto Rico’s economic devastation have on the cannabis industry as a whole?

SI: What we have seen post-Maria is that cannabis has become one of the industries that the Puerto Rican government wants to see revived and revitalized quickly since it is such a high priority industry. Most of the greenhouse growers were knocked out by Hurricane Maria. The majority of growers who utilized reinforced steel or cement buildings are okay. We found that right after the hurricane, the dispensaries that were still operating saw a lot of business. It looks as if buying cannabis is similar to buying groceries. It was quite interesting to see how strong the business is, and how people found ways to get to a dispensary to get their cannabis.

Did your grow survive the hurricanes?

SI: Yes, but it’s not my grow, although I’m involved with it. It is Natural Ventures’ grow. I’m involved as a banker.

The extent of the damage was a bit of water damage on the roof. Luckily, they had generators, which a lot of citizens have, because the power in Puerto Rico even before Hurricane Maria was sketchy.

What is an EB-5 investor, and what does that have to do with Green Acres?

SI: EB-5 is a program set up by the U.S. immigration that allows you to get a Visa for an investment that creates jobs, specifically if you are in what is called a ‘target economic area’ in which the unemployment rate is higher than the average. If you can create ten jobs for two years and make a minimum investment or capital risk of $500,000 you can apply for an I-526 petition to get a Visa to become a permanent resident. It’s essentially a green card.

A lot of countries have been active; the Vietnamese, the Turks, Brazilians, and most of all the Chinese. If you’re getting it in an area that isn’t a target economic area, then you’ve got to pay $1,000,000 for your visa for producing the same 10 jobs. The immigration office is paying closer attention to the changing status of target economic areas.

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MONEY & MARIJUANA: An Introduction to Green Chi

by Emile “Hong” Westergaard & “DX 21” Dasun Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico is one giant target economic zone. They’re under distress, so we’re using EB-5s to fund the development of land in Puerto Rico and create agricultural jobs. It’s really a nice plan because there is little risk of capital, since you’re actually buying land that’s producing cash flow after the crops start to yield; you can easily create ten jobs within the first two years. This works well with labor-intensive crops such as coffee and vanilla.

What is Green Acres doing differently in this space?

SI: I think that Green Acres is different because we’re using EB -5 for funding, we’re making both traditional farming products and cannabis, and we’re looking to develop and sustain high standards of organic farming, which also applies to cannabis. The thing with medical cannabis is there are a lot of regulatory hurdles to ensure there are no impurities in the crops such as lead in water. If you’re using old pipes in your grow and you have lead in the water, which will get in the plants, that can be a big problem.

Are there initiatives that Green Acres is participating in to help the recovery of Puerto Rico?

SI: Yeah, we have a connection with Govardhan Gardens.

They have a farm that has been instrumental in setting the bar for organic farming and introducing new and forgotten species of fruits and nuts to the farming community with his seed and nursey market. Sadly, their farm and production were suffered heavy damage from Maria. We’re helping by directing Puerto Rican recovery funding to get them back up and running, and make sure they’re part of the process for helping others in the area rebuild their farms as well. I guess the silver lining would be that people have to start over, which gives them the opportunity to start growing different crop varieties using more organic and sustainable techniques.

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Whether green leaf or green backs / it’s green chi for Green Chi apps / Marijuana Anonymous / never fond of us / because we always relapse / Smoke like smokestacks and make stacks / sure as we’re plundered and the government is funded by tax / Taking stock of stocks / we plot / puffing on pot / strong to the finish / like Popeye / ‘cause we always smoke our spinach / apt with the Green Chi app / our fortunes rise and don’t diminish / So high without a limit / Green chi is energy you smoke or trade and even spend it…

What exactly is “green chi?” Well, chi, which literally means “breath, air or gas,” is the traditional Chinese cultural concept of life force and energy flow, similar to prana in the ancient Indian Hindu philosophy. Green Chi is term coined by 34th generation Shaolin monk Sifu Shi Yan Ming to apply this concept to commerce and the current of currency. According to Sifu, green chi is money as energy.

Green chi is neither good nor bad in itself. But it is powerful and can be means to either good or bad ends.

How you get it and what you do with it defines its energy. If you sacrifice your soul in order to get money, then it is hard to see how you will be able to do much good with it. We sacrifice our souls when we spend the vast majority of our lives being at someone else’s beck and call in order to make money. We are sacred beings with a manifest destiny we are meant to find and complete.

The moment we answer to someone else we are not pursuing our manifest destiny.

That doesn’t mean we don’t work at all. We can hold regular jobs and generate “good” green chi. We can work for someone else or for a team. If you love your work and who you work for and are treated honorably

BIG SUR HOLY ORANGE Photo by Martin Henderson

and respectfully and are appropriately compensated for your work, then you are in a job that would appear to be fulfilling and full of good green chi.

Now, once you have earned some green chi what you do with it is very important. We should consider how we spend it and where. How much do we know about the companies and people to whom we hand over our money? Do we care about what they do with the money we give them? Do they use it to support causes you disagree with? If you know that will you still buy their products or services? Do you still want to hand your green chi over to them?

On the other hand, maybe you like the product AND the company. You like how they do business, how they treat their employees, how they interact with their communities. In that case maybe you not only want to buy their products but you want to become a part owner. If it is a publicly traded company you can do exactly that by purchasing stock in the company and owning a share of that company. Now you are truly letting your green chi work for you and also representing your values in the world because you have tied your energy, your green chi, with theirs.

Maybe you have all of the green chi you need and you want to give back. How do you decide who gets your green chi? How do you choose a charity? Do you give a lot to one cause or a little bit to many? You are more likely to be powerful with giving if you focus your giving and become an expert in the area you have chosen.

That will lead to more good green chi.

If you decide you want to create your own company and invest in yourself, think about your passions. What do you have to bring to the world that you believe the

Marijuana can be another form of green chi; the plant clearly has energy that impacts the world. world will want? How do you go about creating that?

How do you envision yourself as an entrepreneur? (And by the way we include all artists in all media as entrepreneurs.) How do you run your company? How do you treat your employees? How do you treat the planet? How do you treat your communities? How do you make a profit? These are all questions we must consider if we are seeking to create good green chi.

Your company can only sustain itself by generating excess green chi; that is what any sustainable business does in the end. But HOW they do that is key, as is what they do or you do with the profits. Do you underpay people or do you inspire them to be effective? Are they transparent with their employees and customers about the business runs?

While pondering all of the above, the other green chi may come into play as an enabler for good meditation.

Sifu Shi Yan Ming did not intend green chi to be a double entendre, but in an age of growing acceptance and use of marijuana medically and recreationally, we cannot ignore the obvious association. Marijuana can be another form of green chi; the plant clearly has energy that impacts the world. Whether it is good or bad, as is the case with money as green chi, similarly we would argue that it depends on how it is being used—to run away from the world or to deepen engagement.

We are not going to debate whether sitting around and getting stoned is good or bad. But on the other hand, medical marijuana as a non-addictive alternative to opiates to treat pain would appear to be good green chi. Marijuana in general to treat stress and anxiety is natural, safe and often more effective without the devastating side effects of many neurological medications.

The medical uses of marijuana will be gotten into elsewhere, but the data showing broad and powerful benefits of its use continues to hold up, and appears to support use of the whole plant in many cases as opposed to derivatives.

Finally, the question is how do we connect the two green chis? Legalization of marijuana should bring transparency to a huge black market. When we shell out green chi to buy green chi we will know what we are buying and who we are buying from. We like transparency. It is honest and empowers us all to take responsibility for our green chi and REPRESENT!

Amituofo!

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McKenzie Schwark

WEEDTV-THE CANNABIS NETWORK Ronit Pinto discusses WeedTV with CEO Mark Bradley Hearing the phrase “Weed TV” might spark one with scenes from the new Netflix show Disjointed, or Abbi and Ilana’s creative ways of getting weed on the subway in the second episode of Broad City. But for those lucky enough to already know, WeedTV-- or The Cannabis Network -- is a digital platform for those interested in growing their brand within the marijuana industry.

Their webpage is like an interactive board game. The homepage is made up of squares labeled Entertainment, Buzz, Cooking, Products, Weed101, and Medical. The squares link to channels where anyone interested in weed can get information on the industry, new strains, cleaning paraphernalia, and even entertaining videos like “Sketchy Weed Stories,” a series which chronicles strange stories about purchasing cannabis. The brainchild of CEO Mark Bradley and his partners, WeedTV’s platform also allows for independent content creators to own a channel where they can promote their product through video installments and advertisements.

You would be hard pressed to find a more perfect CEO than Mark Bradley for a business like WeedTV. Bradley himself has produced over 1600 projects for television, and combined with his business partners they have done well over that.

Bradley brings over thirty years of media experience to the channel, and says he has massive expectations of where they will be able to take the business.

The opportunity for expansion and innovation is what originally drew Bradley to the marijuana industry. “What I like about the industry is that it’s entrepreneurial,” he says. “And I’m an entrepreneur.”

We have some amazing things coming up.

It was more than just the opportunity to get in and be one of the first platforms for the marijuana industry of its kind that called Bradley to creating WeedTV. He also believes in the product they promote. “I personally believe in the medical benefits of it,” he says about what drew him specifically to marijuana. “I have seen it help people, cure them, relieve them.”

Bradley is excited to be a part of blowing up a product that he truly believes in. He is passionate about making sure those in the industry have the proper tools to be able to market and develop their brand in order to provide a high quality product 56 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

to consumers. High quality means alot to Bradley; he uses it to describe the benefits of marijuana and his own content.

Although he is open to any content creator using WeedTV to their advantage, Bradley really want high quality content on the site. Because of that he is willing to put those thirty years of media experience to good use by providing those who want to use his platform the mentoring they need in order to make exceptionally well branded content.

Bradley and his team are stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada.

When asked if they have plans to expand into the other rapidly growing marijuana markets in the United States like Portland and Denver, Bradley says they don’t plan on it. He sees more potential in international markets and right where they are-- in the arid desert of Nevada.

The future seems extremely bright for WeedTV. Bradley and his team are optimistic about where they can take it; from dispensaries to more content to plenty of exciting projects he isn’t quite able to share with us just yet.

“You will want to do a follow up article in about ten months or so,” he boasts. “We have some amazing things coming up.”

UP IN SMOKE WITH SUPER CANNAPRENEUR SID GUPTA Interview by Kymberly Byrnes

GROW HOUSE by Martin Henderson

Sid Gupta, founder and CEO of Pistil Point Cannabis in Portland, Oregon, has mastered the science and art of growing some of the best marijuana in the world. But without the right business acumen, even with the best buds, your plans can go up in smoke.

Gupta began his career by throwing large-scale nightclub/ rave parties while in high school in northern New Jersey and in college at NYU during the early 2000s. Now he’s the host of NYC’s largest annual 420 party at Hudson Terrace, one of the city’s hottest rooftop bars, which he co-owns along with several other trendy restaurants and nightclubs throughout New York and New Jersey.

Diving into the cannabis business, Gupta’s ensured his work ethic has changed the game. At Pistil Point, he’s cultivating award-winning strains, producing premium products, and embarking on celebrity collaborations that have everyone in the industry wondering what comes next.

“We’re creating amazing genetic lines with experienced growers and a dedication to the craft and patience,” Gupta says. “Our philosophy is simple: responsible consumption, production, and testing in order to create responsible medication. It’s not just about growing cannabis, it’s about educating lawmakers, patients, and consumers alike about what cannabis is and how it can help.”

Responsibility is important to Gupta, who’s trying to reinvent what a marijuana consumer looks like to the public.

Here, Gupta talks about what it takes to make it in this upcoming trillion-dollar industry and how he got to where he is today.

You grew up in New Jersey in an entrepreneurial household. What were you like as a kid?

I went to work at a very young age washing dishes in one of my dad’s restaurants. I was a very mischievous kid; if you told me not to touch the stove because it was hot, I would touch and burn my hand. Then, I’d touch it again just to make sure. I always pushed the envelope.

My dad was a pioneer. He saw opportunities and seized them. He bought taxicab medallions, newsstands, whatever you see Indians owning, my dad owned. He inspired me to think anything is possible.

You are a successful restaurateur and nightclub owner.

When did you decide to enter the wild world of weed?

When weed went [recreational] in 2013, I went to the first High Times Recreational Cannabis Cup in Colorado. I was totally mesmerized. My epiphany there was that even though my family was very successful in the restaurant and hospitality business for 40-50 years, I could never get next to the CEO of McDonald’s. Here, however, I could get next to the biggest edible producer in the world. I realized the cannabis industry, based on my network and background, was perfectly acceptable. And I thought to myself, I need in. I set thingsinto motion and set up shop in Oregon by the following summer.

It took me about twelve months of speaking to anyone that would talk to me. I toured 200+ properties; there were endless nights staring at Loopnet and Marijuana Business Daily, absorbing everything I could about the emerging industry.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 57

Sid Gupta filming an interview for VICE with Pistil Point brand ambassador NBA legend Cliff Robertson for Uncle Cliffy Sports Cannabis at their Portland headquarters.

My first building was 300,000 square feet of undervalued waterfront warehouse property just languishing on the market –the rest is history.

What was the recipe for success for Pistil Point?

We were looking for something sophisticated. Then we started looking at the anatomy of the plant. “Pistil” popped out for obvious reasons. When a plant is producing pistils, you as a grower understand the plant is a female and she will produce the fruit that you want - the bud.

More than that, Pistil Point was early to the party in Oregon, approaching it with a bullish attitude. We cultivate our own cannabis and process our own extracts out of a strategic location, but we also have contacts with other farms around the state to cultivate our genetics. We bring the bulk of this cannabis back under our umbrella to service our branded products. The trick with Oregon’s “unlimited licensure” is to own the brand, the distribution, and the shelf space to avoid commoditization. If a company is successful, and few are, it’s virtually impossible to grow enough product to service your portfolio.

You’ve been working with really big names in the business for years. Can you talk about some of your current partnerships?

We’ve partnered with [rapper] Master P, [former NBA player] Cliff Robinson, [hip-hop artist] Kent Jones and musical group We The Best, and Shine Rolling Papers. One of the more interesting relationships has been with DJ Short, the geneticist behind [the sativa strain Blue Dream’s parent] Blueberry. We are also partners with Montel Williams, who’s had Multiple Sclerosis for 26 years and access to the world’s best medical treatments, doctors, and scientists.

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What are some new projects you have coming up?

Our recent partnership with G Pen will be a game-changer. Chris Folkerts [their founder] and his team spent the last two years developing state-of-the-art disposable vaporizer technologies. The G Pen GIO is second to none. Attached are some of the best known genetics available, such as those of Bay Area legend Berner. Plus, we have an entire line of Skittlez genetics and some other really fantastic cuts; we are hitting the Oregon and California market hard with these.

We also have 150,000-square-feet licensed of canopy space between Oregon and California: a warehouse and greenhouse complex in Portand from which we distribute and process, a warehouse in Sacramento, and 100 acres in Calaveras County with greenhouses and outdoor production. We have an industrial hemp license which means we can grow as much as we want. We are harvesting 100,000 pounds. Of that, 95 percent is going to oil. Additionally, we have a CBD line upcoming next year, being positioned and branded for sale within an existing national network of 20,000 retailers. It’s [completely unique] to the market.

Your home state of New Jersey is on the brink of going rec. What, if any, are your plans to come back to your roots on the East Coast?

That’s home and always will be. Coming out West was to understand something that just wasn’t accessible back East.

But I’ve been producing cannabis awareness events there for several years so Pistil Point can have some connection back home. This platform has led me to recent roles on advisory committees and trade associations helping to shape legislation in New Jersey’s adult use market. Being able to assist the state in developing a responsible framework after everything we’ve learned out West is amazing.

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SOUR BANANA SHERBERT

IN THE ZONE by Ronit Pinto

EAST COAST HONEY POT Preston Peet

MARIJUANA ACTIVISM IN NEW YORK CITY There are numerous organizations working in NYC to reform marijuana laws today, networking with other activists, and reaching far more communities than ever before. The driving factor for many is not solely human rights or justice, but also a rather distinct “how can we cash in on this legalization” vibe. No longer the purview of the strictly tie-dyed, long haired radical, today the marijuana activist’s image is more likely that of a clean-cut capitalist and entrepreneur.

“I was going to lead marijuana activists and supporters in the Gay Pride March in June,” says Arlene Williams, better known as Ganja Granny. At 80 years of age, standing just barely five feet tall, she still cuts a striking figure at protests and events. “I kept telling my doctors in the hospital that I had a prior engagement. They not only got me out in time, but three of them marched in Gay Pride along with us.” Williams works non-stop all over the globe to reform the public image of marijuana with her Green Ribbon World and the International Grannys Association.

She observes, “Here, people are not so together. In other countries, people manage to put their differences aside.

[Americans] too often have their own agendas. We need new blood, new ideas. We need this new generation.

We have to do it together. It’s time for the younger people, and they are doing it. Health issues have slowed me down in the past four years, [but] I continue to travel internationally and encourage supporters to join established reputable organizations, to contribute in 60 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

any way they can to legalize cannabis around the world and especially in New York.”

This writer’s first-ever cannabis assignment came from High Times magazine and concerned the annual Million Marijuana March in 1999 (today known as the Global Marijuana March). At the time, some heated debates ensued between marijuana policy reformers and activists about the effectiveness of loud, raucous street parades and protests, as opposed to putting on a suit and tie and lobbying the government directly. Not only that, but what exactly reformers wanted was in question as well. Was outright legalization of marijuana the goal? Or should activists focus solely on medical marijuana, as its eventual legalization was more likely to be implemented?

“Things have changed,” says Steve Bloom, editor at Freedom Leaf magazine and Celebstoner.com. “The focus used to be Cures-Not-Wars and Dana Beal (founder of the ongoing yearly Global Marijuana March events), but now there are many more organizations, more groups putting on events.

Many are trying to get in on the business front, NYC being the business capital. New York doesn’t have a ballot initiative, so we’re still at the mercy of the legislature.”

Citizens of New York do not have the option to vote directly whether or not to legalize marijuana, instead having to rely on their representatives in government to do it legislatively. “But there’s not a lot of business opportunities yet in New York,” says Bloom.

“The crowd has gotten younger. It’s not so much just older white guys. I’ve seen a lot of progress in the last three years.”

Women Grow, founded in 2014, is a glaring example of just how much things have changed. A national organization that stresses women’s place in the marijuana business world, the group holds a variety of monthly events in 35 cities around the U.S. and Canada for both men and women. At these meetups, newcomers to the movement are introduced to entrepreneurs, speakers and others already knowledgeable about the marijuana reform movement and the cannabis trade.

“I feel activism is evolving,” says Tanya Osbourne, Market Leader for Women Grow NYC. “The Freedom of Expression movement has come to join with the new advancements in medicine acknowledging what we have always believed, that cannabis is medicine. The movement is being led by those who see cannabis as a strong and profitable vehicle for entrepreneurship. We must make it fair and accessible for all people. We are at the point where cannabis activism has voices from many demographics and communities, from long-time supporters to Millennials. The voices are loud and growing: from women who want equality, parents who want access, people of color who want fairness and inclusion, from the medical community who want new advancements, and entrepreneurs who want opportunity!”

With the passing of the Compassionate Care Act in 2014, medical marijuana is today legal in New York,

with some restrictions (smoking medical marijuana is not legal, nor are edibles).

This has opened up the market to a small degree. Currently there are just five licensed medical marijuana companies allowed to do business in NYC. “Most of the activism is around business opportunities,” says Empire State NORML’s (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) Douglas Greene. “There are people around who want to change the laws. but most are the people who see a business opportunity. It really depends on how you want to define activism. We in the coalition (the various groups backing Start SMART New York, a campaign to regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol is today) are proposing a progressive, open structure in general for adult use. If that were taxed, it would produce a lot more opportunities. Now, there are a lot of venture capitalists funding the industry.”

These groups backing the Start SMART NY campaign are interested in steering at least some of the money brought in by a legal, taxed marijuana market back into communities hardest hit by the War on Some Drugs today. The Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), the Cannabis Cultural Association, and Latin Justice are just some of the groups concerned with the social impact the War on Drugs has had on minority communities. They want to be sure those communities profit from any legalized markets, be they in the current medical marijuana market or from an Photo by Tony Brescia eventual recreational market down the road.“ “It’s easier to focus on making money,” says Greene. “Back in the day, we would see most of the money for reform coming in from Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project (both still very active), with their big backers Peter Lewis and George Soros having a lot of say in things. It’s a lot more diverse funding stream today.”

“I think that the pot movement is too large to stop,” said Dana Beal, after observing there are many activist groups in NYC seemingly working against one another, or at cross purposes. “But it’s a lumbering behemoth. No one can predict what will happen next.”

PHIL MURPHY: NEW JERSEY UPDATE As Governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy is giving cannabis communities a lot of hope. In a recent press conference, the Democrat ordered a 60-day review of the state’s “constrained” medical marijuana program, explaining his intent to amend it by expanding the number of licensed dispensaries and consider allowing both home delivery and purchases over two ounces to increase patient access. Murphy also detailed plans to expand the availability of edible products and permit New Jersey’s six approved dispensaries to open retail locations throughout the state. This is a radical departure from the state government’s previous stance on medicinal cannabis under Republican Chris Christie; Murphy believes it’s past time that “patients be given the compassion they deserve.”

But these compassionate strides are only part of the governor’s exciting policy reform efforts. In just the first weeks of his “honeymoon period” in office, Murphy has filed a multi-state legal action to challenge the constitutionality of the GOP tax bill; rescinded a rule adopted by the Christie administration that moved to weaken standards of “justifiable need” to carry a handgun; and signed an executive order to gear New Jersey back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon trading pact designed to fight climate change. Most strikingly, Murphy has consistently proclaimed his desire to legalize and tax recreational cannabis. If he does so, the industry could generate $1 billion of revenue for the state.

Among those most likely to benefit from Murphy’s plans are the state’s resident veterans, many of whom use medical cannabis as treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). New Jersey native Leo Bridgewater, who served three tours of duty with the Army and as a Defense Department contractor, is a co-founder of the New Jersey Cannabis Commission. In addition to his activism throughout the East Coast, Bridgewater spoke at Murphy’s “A Fairer New Jersey” press conference in support of helping expand patient access to the plant—especially for those suffering from PTSD. Another notable New Jersey native helping to push legislation is Rani Soto.

If Governor Murphy has his way, it may not be long before New Jersey provides a shining example to the rest of the country: living green, safe upon the shore. Let’s dare to hope.

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Ronit Pinto

NEW JERSEY OPIOID EPIDEMIC

RONIT by Sam C. Long

New Jersey has been the key state for cannabis developments in 2017. As Governor Murphy assumes office, local advocates are speaking up about cannabis’s power to combat the national opioid epidemic, which particularly affects Jersey communities. Brandon Chewey of Asbury Park, founder of Shoreganix— a Jersey Shore Cannabis Collective—is also a former heroin addict. He shared the following on the broken rehabilitation/recovery systems: Chewey says getting clean from heroin is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do and is still “haunted by my past to this day.”

During his eleven years as an ad62 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

dict (now five years sober) he tried every path to sobriety, including going cold turkey and taking the narcotic buprenorphine; before finding success in a Methadone clinic and then sustaining it with the use of medical marijuana.

While there’s a stigma against Methadone, he swears by it. “As a person that has been through the trenches of addiction, I can tell you that Suboxone [a combination painkiller medicine] maintenance and methadone maintenance are the best ways for an addict to achieve sobriety.”

However, the biggest obstacle in recovery is staying sober, not necessarily getting sober.

“I can’t tell you how many rehabs

I went to, got sober, got out and then had no idea what to do next. Addicts need the chance to live outside of an institution or rehab facility with some type of crutch to acclimate them into society.”

With no life skills, or much education, he says all he knew was what he learned in jail and from other addicted friends.

“Rehab facilities told us the 12step program was it. So if you are the type of person that does not conform to 12-step programs, such as myself, you are left to squander and find your own way to acclimate to a new life of responsibility. I can’t stress enough how difficult the transition from jails and rehabs to the streets is. Doing

what it took to get drugs and nothing else for ten years. Your mindset and comprehension of regular life and responsibility are extremely difficult for someone who is unexpectedly released from jail or not ready to leave rehab. They will relapse if they do not have a strong plan to recover.”

For Brandon, it took three years on Methadone before he got clean. “The Methadone allowed me to stay off of drugs and go to work without being sick or craving heroin or any other opiates.”

Medical cannabis helps in ways that Methadone or other rehabilitation programs can’t. Such as with anxiety from years of drug abuse, night terrors and PTSD—the latter caused from seeing friends overdose, death and trauma at a very young age.

New legislation in New Jersey keeps Brandon hopeful for legal medical use, particularly for opiate addicts, where it is both criminalized and stigmatized. However, he remains skeptical of President Trump’s recent declaration of opioid as a national crisis.

“It has been a long time coming. I recently read on the news that from 1999 to 2016 the United States has had over 560,000 deaths from opioid overdoses recorded and 65,000 alone in 2016. But at the end of the day it always comes down to where the funds were appropriated.”

Chewey says it could be excellent or extremely detrimental.

“If Trump takes his policies toward the opioid crisis from Governor Chris Christie in any form, we will all be doomed and relive a system similar to the War on Drugs, which would focus on outlawing marijuana and enforcing harsher penalties. Hopefully enough research has been done to show that our government is aware that forced rehabilitation is often a failure and waste of tax dollars.

“If they use the money to invest into policing the drug dealers and imposing more money and fines into our court system, they’re going to ruin an entire generation of Americans. It is a huge problem, especially here in New Jersey where the ports of Newark are flooded with heroin. It’s not biased, it’s all over the state from the upper class to the housing projects here in Asbury Park. The disease of addiction does not discriminate. Still, I’m extremely happy that they are taking a look and spending funds on the opioid epidemic.”

One convert, his mother, is a Doctor of Nursing Practice and a strict, churchgoing conservative in “the Nancy Reagan mold.” She was adamantly opposed to cannabis all her life, but has changed her opinion toward pro-medical cannabis after witnessing how it changed Chewey for the better.

“She always believed a drug is a drug is a drug, and cannabis is no different. But the improvements my father and I made as medical patients convinced her, and she now embraces cannabis as a healing medicine. Today she speaks at nursing conventions, testifying as a parent who saw me go through my worst pain, not knowing what to do, or how to help my addiction when it was at its worst. If she can change her opinion, there’s hope for the rest of the country.”

“She always believed a drug was a drug and Cannabis was no different.”

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 63

WHY CANNA WE CANNAGATHER? The networking organization CannaGather has become the go-to forum for New York cannabis industry pros to find each other. Founder Josh Weinstein, a professional angel investor, spoke to Honeysuckle’s Naomi Rosenblatt and Jaime Lubin about powering up the East Coast legalization movement… and why working with this community is simply good business.

Given your tech and business back- How would you describe the CannaGather community? Who joins and ground, what drew you to the cannabis attends events, and why? Do other industries in NY State overlap with industry? What was your vision and moti- CannaGather? What kind of entrepreneurs tend to be drawn to CG? vation for founding CannaGather?

JW: The CannaGather community is composed primarily of entrepreneurs Josh Weinstein: In 2004, I got the domain across a wide variety of industries—engineering, healthcare, growers, media, name NYCHigh.com to start a social network chefs and more— plus service providers — law, real estate, accounting, investors, for high school students, nothing to do with patients, and activists. cannabis. Eventually I realized legalization would be inevitable and tried unsuccessfully to get the domain back [after it had lapsed].

I tried again a few years later (2013) and secured similar, better domain. Although I’m a nonconsumer, cannabis is a triple-bottom line industry: money, medicine, and social justice. The vision was to create a community analogous to the New York Tech Meetup, but for the cannabis industry. My cofounder Gary and I hosted a few events to this effect and we’ve tried to serve as a connective tissue for industry folks.

What is CannaGather’s mission? What kinds of events does CannaGather sponsor and host? What are some of CannaGather’s benchmarks in attaining its goals?

JW: CannaGather is the access point for those looking to learn more about and get involved in the legal cannabis industry. We also aim to connect the industry leaders.

We host monthly education and networking events in the middle of the month. We’ve scaled our community to over 3,000 members and consistently hold events with over 100 people.

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Honeysuckle Founder Ronit Pinto, Managing Editor Jaime Lubin, CannaGather founder Josh Weinstein and Rani Soto at MJBizCon, Las Vegas. Photography by Thomas Rachko.

but I hope we’ve normalized the conversation about the power of the plant, enabled folks to make solid connections to get into the business or between business, and motivated people to take action or at least get educated.

We still have a long way to go, and hopefully we can conJW: The only trepidation I have with the events is making tinue to serve this role. sure that they are well run and people have a good time.

Our community is full of professionals, business and oth- What states currently serve as good models for NY erwise; as such, smoking at our events is out of the ques- State, and why? tion as our members wouldn’t do that and we would kick them out pretty quickly [if they did]. We haven’t had a JW: California is the ideal model. I’m definitely for full problem thus far and hope this continues. legalization, but it seems our state government is taking an incremental approach. Though conservative, it CG was formed in 2013. How has it changed in response is moving in the right direction. Hopefully it continues to the Trump administration? How does the country’s down this path and quickly. political shift potentially impact the future of legalization and the cannabis industry in the US? What upcoming events would you like our readers to be JW: Not much change post-Trump, although we did have aware of? a session in November to discuss the ramifications of the election. I personally have been more mindful of the great JW: We’d love the Honeysuckle readership to come work being done by NCIA, MPP, and DPA to name a few as to upcoming events! Sign up at CannaGather.com and check out the next event at nextevent.CannaGather.com they aim to push for broader legalization of cannabis.

Do you ever feel trepidation when you plan and hold events? Do you fear that participants might sneak an edible or smoke, and imperil the legality of the organization?

Since you have taken ventures to a national and global level previously, why is CannaGather specific to New York State, rather than to the Northeast region or the country at large?

JW: It’s definitely something that could expand beyond New York, but New York is my hometown and place of residence. Moreover, NY is the financial capital of the world, so if we can turn the tide here, that will have a ripple effect across the country and abroad.

I think you’re seeing this right now with the cryptocurrency space. We hosted an event in Los Angeles a few months back that was well attended. We’d love to continue to host more there and in other hubs, but our focus is making sure we execute and scale in New York. It’s exponentially harder to scale a venture as the number of locations increases: variables conflate, resources spread

GIRL SCOUT COOKIES

thin, and it’s tiring. The lesson from previous attempts is to focus resources until you build something that is scaled (or at least scalable) and self-sustaining before expanding.

Once you nail down the mechanics in one venue, you can then think about infrastructure beyond.

How do you feel CannaGather has changed the status of cannabis in NY State?

JW: I can’t say we’ve made a dent that big (at least not yet),

Photo by Martin Henderson

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 65

Citizen Jay Daily

THE RESURRECTION OF THE MRP Reform Party himself. Dewald is affiliated with Restrict and Regulate New York (RRNY), a campaign to legalize adult-use Cannabis through a state constitutional convention. He underscores the camaraderie among Cannabis users that crosses political lines and believes it can be useful.

According to Dewald, the results of the 2016 elections—both in regard to what happened with Bernie and the Democrats and Trump with the Republicans—are symptomatic of the same thing: both parties are like “stagnant dinosaurs” rotting from the inside on their own internal philosophies. The draw to third party candidates is palpable and will likely have a similar effect on the next round of national elections.

While Dewald understands the critics of a single-issue party, he thinks New York is in a unique position to allow the Marijuana Reform Party to draw power—most likely by co-opting votes from both the Green and Libertarian parties. At the local and state levels, this kind of draw can drive the winds of change to tip the scales of power. In 2018 that wind will whisper, “Mary…”

Dewald thinks Neil Kaufman is the kind of person we need to lead the charge and the party. Kaufman has been practicing corporate and securities law for more than 30 years and has been actively involved in the Cannabis industry since 2014, when he helped represent an applicant for a New York medical marijuana license. Since then, his Cannabis practice has grown as he has participated in over $100 million in cannabis industry financing transactions for issuers and investors.

Kaufman and Dewald worked on

the Proposition 1 campaign to hold a constitutional convention in New York in an attempt to legalize Cannabis in the face of opposition from the state legislature and Governor’s office. Prop 1 failed, but the efforts continue under the direction of the recently restructured Marijuana Reform Party. If Dewald is right, Kaufman may just have the draw he needs to mount the Governor’s seat and sway the legislature.

Says Kaufman: “I have advised [Dewald] that if the party can be revived legally in an operationally and financially sound manner, I would consider accepting its nomination as candidate for governor—if we determine that we will be able to mount a credible statewide campaign. The social justice, humanitarian, fiscal, anti-crime and anti-opioid crisis benefits of legalized cannabis are extremely compelling, and deserve the attention that a strong campaign would bring.”

Raspberry Lemonade

What goes around comes around, and there’s nothing new under the sun. These are timeless words, never so true as we face the political realities of 2018. With looming impeachment and criminal investigations at the highest levels of our federal government simultaneously competing for our attention with super-expanding markets and the unbelievable upshot of blockchain currencies, the state of Cannabis legalization seems like a small blip on the national scene. But with the changing of the old (and fat) guard in New Jersey, legal adult-use Cannabis is fast to become a new reality across the river. And that will force some hands.

Re-enter the Marijuana Reform Party. Originally founded in 1997 on an obvious platform, the party ran candidates for statewide offices in New York-- including for governor-- in both the 1998 and 2000 elections, garnering over 15,000 votes both times. Practically defunct since 2002, a movement is afoot to resurrect the party.

The time seems ripe. As legal Cannabis continues its march across the country, New Yorkers are facing a new paradigm shift. The shell has already been somewhat cracked with the sale of medical Cannabis beginning in New York in 2014, but New York’s Cannabis program leaves much to be desired.

That keeps away many who might benefit from the program. Resistance to medical Cannabis has been staunch since before the inception of the program. The Marijuana Reform Party wants to change all that.

Jerome Dewald and Neil Kaufman are working to make that happen. Dewald, a 66-year old investor, is excited to guide the party back from the brink, but is not aiming to lead the Marijuana

Photo by Martin Henderson 66 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

Father ELnakar Allah-ade

CANNABIS: HARMFUL OR HEALING “universal acceptance of the plant... and that is what Babylon come with now, ’dem want accept part of the plant...ALL the plant good bredren.”

— intro. Perfect Tree

by CHRONIXX feat. Eesah Many folks in the N.Y. city and state regions are considered “recreational pot users,” as most in the movement to legalize marijuana will tell you. Thus, it is hard for the medical campaigners to get support.

Cannabidiol (CBD) or pure hemp, is being regarded as the “alternative to

medical marijuana,” and this is due to its legality and multifaceted benefits.

CBD is a non-psychoactive element of cannabis that has a wide array of therapeutic benefits that the plant itself, even when used for intoxication/meditation, purposes; it has been used for centuries in other countries as a healing agent. These benefits include: 1. Acting as an anti-inflammatory 2. Anticonvulsant 3. Antioxidant 4. Antiemetic 5. Antipsychotic agent and 6. According to research, there are NO KNOWN NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS. [emphasis added by editors] Past and present scientific research supports the consumption of CBD from hemp oil for its general health benefits. It has excellent nutritional and economic value, which include: • Nearly every part of the plant is usable.

• It doesn't require herbicides to grow or thrive. It's renewable and fast-growing.

• It provides essential elements of fatty acids that the body doesn't naturally produce and must be consumed in diet • Leaves soil in a better condition than before it was planted.

• Overall, it offers patrons a natural organic (NON-GMO) way to relax, reduce pain and maintain a healthy life.

CBD is derived from agricultural hemp and does not contain illegal amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the primary intoxicant in Marijuana. This facet makes it popular with industrial hemp farmers and should be a welcome aspect to medicinal farmers and dispensaries.

Hemp, which contains less than 0.3% THC, is grown for its fiber and is used for food, textiles, oils, to make rope, fiberboard, paper and manila hemp for envelopes. Considering all these benefits, there should be an abundance of support for the legalization of marijuana. We just need to spread the word of its value.

SBSE x Hazy Kush

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 67

Check out The Johno Show After Hours YouNow.com/TheJohnoShow weekdays from 7am to 9am and occasionally 9:30 to 10:30pm; where you can see Johno lighting up and talking with fans

JOHNO WEED QUIZ

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nated. In Bubblegum's case, it's from Kansas and then it went to Maine, then it went to Holland to be perfected, and then it came back and won like three Cannabis Cups.”

While he's not an activist per se, he's very passionate about the cause, believing in decriminalization and destigmatization. For Johno, cannabis is simply a way of life – and when he's having so much fun, who can argue with that?

Johno says his IQ goes higher when he's high, as evidenced by his “Stump the Guest” answers (which he got mostly right – 4 out of 5!): 1. The average Cannabis plant has a maximum of how many leaflets? a. 10 b. 13 c. 15 d. 12 2. Which historical figure made the oldest written reference to Cannabis? a. Herodotus b. Aristotle c. Plato d. Cicero 3. The Ethiopian Zion Coptic church, a religious movement in the

United States, believes that Cannabis is. a. a gift from God b. What will save humanity c. the Eucharist or d. Fuckin' awesome 4. Which president grew his own hemp? (No options because Johno got this right away!)

5. The movie musical Reefer Madness gender-flipped one of its actors from the stage version. Which actress played that part? a. Neve Campbell b. Kristen Bell c.

(I can't read cause I'm really high) d.

Brittany Murphy

Answers: 1. B, 13 He didn't pick the correct number because of superstition... wrong 2. A, Herodotus The first visualization of the Cannabis plant was Egyptian... right 3. C, The Eucharist Well, it's fucking awesome, but they also probably use it for the Eucharist.

4. George Washington!

Last fall we interviewed Jonathan, host of popular YouTube channel The Johno Show.

Curious about all things cannabis culture, Johno discusses products, trivia, and different strains during his “strain review.” However, we pulled a “reverse-Johno” and interviewed him.

Our own Sam Clemens Long underwent a “strain review” Johno-style, getting to the heart of what makes this super stoner tick – a mix of politics, activism, lightheartedness and fun. (And stay tuned, because 2018 will see The Johno Show, a cannabis infused cultural talk show for the cannacurious, interviewing more artists, writers, politicians, activists, musicians, and actors.)

Here are a few excerpts from Sam's experience: Sam's eyes widen as Johno pulls out a huge joint. “Bubblegum's a great strain, it smells great.'

Sam asks, ‘How do you prepare a strain review?’ Much of it is research.

He doesn't light up before he goes live. “A lot of my audience's interest is in the historical, where strains origi-

Photo by Ronit Pinto

5. Neve Campbell

with host Jonathan Goodman

HOME GROWN by Alex Harsley

Naomi Rosenblatt

That Pot in the window “What made you snap the shutter?”

He shrugs. Speaking with master photographer Alex Harsley, I get the sense that he prefers to convey as little exposition as possible and thereby require images to speak for themselves. Still, I hunt for narrative.

“Did you know the grower who lived there?”

“Not at all.”

“So you just saw that weed in the window…”

“I wasn’t even sure what it was. I needed my 22 mm telephoto lens…”

“How high?”

Harsley smiles at the double entendre. “Third floor.”

“Well then, a cruising cop wouldn’t necessarily notice, but a hawk-eyed photographer might catch wind?”

“It faced the back.”

“Still … plastered against the pane—that’s begging for bust.”

Harsley shrugs and says matter-of-factly, “It needed a lot of light.”

But the vinyl shade in the next pane is drawn, as though the window itself is winking at us.

“I have a fascination with windows,” he tells me. “How they separate public from private life.” Like a camera lens?

“I still think it’s risqué or at least a little exhibitionistic,” I persist.

He shakes his head. “Ordinary East Village scene, of the time.”

“Would it be of this time too?”

“No … people nowadays don’t want to wait for it to grow, when it’s so readily available.”

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 69

M.J. Moore

RETRO: BLOW-TOP BLUES “. . . dragging themselves through the negro streets at

dawn . . . angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection . . . who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness . . . contemplating jazz . . .”

—Howl, Allen Ginsberg

Decades prior to Rock ‘n’ Roll’s official emergence in 1955 (when “Rock Around the Clock” topped the charts, conclusively ending the Big Band Era), marijuana enveloped American culture and its rebellious, mostly urban subcultures. Authoritarian laws and policies tried to do away with all that jazz.

And it literally revolved, at first, around Jazz.

For the longest time Jazz music, which became mainstream in the 1920s, was perceived by parents, preachers, politicians and the police as the red-hot soundtrack for a subterranean “underground,” youth culture where all the races mixed. These negators believed that marijuana inspired the music and then the inevitable interracial sex.

In Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, & Drugs (2017, Da Capo), independent historian and cultural commentator Martin Torgoff writes a sweeping account of how much of America’s marijuana debate was scripted eons ago.

America’s new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is hardly the first to make bold anti-marijuana pronouncements. A quick trip in Ye Olde Time Machine reminds us of the career and agendas of Harry Anslinger, who back in the Jazz Age loomed large while heading the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Dubbed “The Paranoid Spokesman,” Anslinger spearheaded a mass-media anti-cannabis campaign as the 1930s unfolded. That multifaceted campaign went beyond making outlaws of anyone who smoked weed. It aimed to forbid by law any and all freedoms regarding marijuana, premarital sex (interracial sex in particular), and the devil-may-care hedonism associated with the Roaring Twenties and its failed Prohibition laws. Torgoff explains: “Anslinger became convinced that the only way to ensure against any possibility of a recurrence of what had happened with Prohibition—the phenomenon of a significant percentage of the American population wantonly and brazenly breaking an unpopular law they found obnoxious, living as virtual criminals until the law had to be repealed—would be through a national campaign

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BOP APOCALYPSE by Martin Torgoff

against the weed.”

Anslinger and his Federal Bureau of Narcotics used the mass media of the day (major magazines, movies, plus newspaper articles). Torgoff explains: “Before 1935, the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature lists not a single article about marijuana in any major national magazine. From July 1935 to June 1937, four appeared; between 1937 and 1939, there were seventeen.” Those stories spotlighted crimes and murder sprees committed by individuals who were allegedly high. Demonizing weed, at the precise cultural moment when alcohol was again legalized, sparked a crusade that’s still in effect.

As the Swing Era uplifted millions of Americans’ hearts and had their dancing feet flyin’ high, the racially-biased links between dangerous weed and dangerous music would become clear. Swing would invite Jazz right into America’s living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms (or wherever else radios blared). No matter how white the Swing Era appeared, the music was still rooted in the Blues and black culture, integrating America long before baseball did.

“King of Swing” Benny Goodman was warned by managers and promoters about hiring masterly black musicians like Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Charlie Christian. Goodman broke “the color line” and Tommy Dorsey followed when he hired arranger-composer Sy Oliver to write classics like ”Swing Time Up in Harlem” and “Opus One.” It’s no accident that one of drummer Gene Krupa’s biggest hit records was “Let Me Off Uptown,” “Uptown” a code word for Harlem. It was no accident that Krupa was eventually framed for marijuana charges, or that “Let Me Off Uptown” incited controversy because white vocalist Anita O’Day and black trumpet-man Roy Eldridge sang the lyrics as a flirty, jive-like duet.

In Bop Apocalypse, Torgoff connects the dots: “Anslinger was prepared to put forth a number of signature images to isolate what he saw as the greatest threats being posed to American civilization. If the first image was that of an axe murderer and the second that of a degenerate schoolyard pusher, the third was equally threatening and pernicious: a Negro jazz musician.”

When the Swing Era tipped into the Forties, the all-American craze for alcohol was again fast supplemented by the rise of marijuana. By then a new generation of young writers had consolidated around Columbia University: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others bonded there, having endless encounters and escapades long before the media puffed them up as Fifties Beat Generation archetypes.

Kerouac’s writings, were in many ways his prose attempts to capture and replicate his unconditional love for Jazz. Torgoff says that when “Kerouac sat down in April 1951 and spewed forth… On the Road… the manuscript contained a dithyrambic evocation of the history of jazz in America, later published as ‘Jazz of the Beat Generation’… that used Lester Young as its central driving force and inspiration and that epitomized the essence of Kerouac’s developing spontaneous prose style.”

At the same time, young Norman Mailer (whose best-selling debut novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948) fell in love with cannabis. Writing in his trademark third-person mode later in the 1970s, Mailer looked back with fervor: “It started in the winter he was first smoking marijuana. He smoked it with all the seriousness of what was then his profoundly serious heart. It was 1954, and the drug was more important than any love affair he had ever had. It taught him more. ….

It was the arena of the particular sensation he chased, as though he had been given a lovely if ineluctable emotion while watching . . .” Well, you get the picture.

Like jazz, cannabis remains a blissful harbinger of unbounded freedom in American culture. No wonder the powers that be persist in their pathological efforts to demonize it.

Gene Krupa's LET ME OFF UPTOWN with Roy Eldridge and Anita O'Day

ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN!!

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CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 71

Matt Saber

REEFER MADNESS:

White Lies, White Youths and the Privilege of Scapegoats

The last time I smoked marijuana, I spent ten minutes giggling at a lawnmower. I had smoked grass and the lawnmower cut grass, so I assume the joke manifested from that realization. As far as I can recall, I didn’t violently murder anyone that night; but if I have learned anything from Reefer Madness, it is entirely possible that I went on a killing spree and have simply forgotten.

Reefer Madness is a laughably bad 1930s film designed to warn parents of the dangers of cannabis. As with all great films, Reefer Madness takes place at a meeting of the School-Parents Association (SPA), at which the parents are warned that “marihuana” causes uncontrollable laughter, violent outbursts, and inevitable insanity. An intense urge to eat large quantities of snack food is not mentioned—but obesity wasn’t invented until 1950, so they likely decided it was an irrelevant side effect. The bulk of the film is a story told by the head of the SPA. It’s a story that could happen in YOUR town to YOUR children. It’s also the story of a few fine white kids and how pot destroyed their lives.

The first beautiful WASP child who has his life ruined by the Chronic is Jimmy. Jimmy is a fine young lad who says things like “jive” and dances as poorly as you would expect any white boy to dance. While the Devil’s lettuce doesn’t improve his dancing, it does cause him to drive extremely fast and run over a pedestrian. Jimmy drives away and feels bad about the hit-and-run, but sees no real repercussions for his actions. The realism of a white kid getting away with manslaughter is meant to lure the viewer in, to ground the upcoming stories in fact, and to distract the viewer from the realization that if you’re truly stoned, you’re much more likely to drive 20 MPH under the speed limit while also constantly checking your mirrors.

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Next on the chopping block is Bill, a promising young tennis star who quotes Shakespeare and gets embarrassed when his girlfriend’s mother sees them kiss.

After lighting up a few reefers, Bill starts whiffing tennis balls and hooking up with a hussy in some strange lady’s apartment, before getting into a fight and being accused of murder. Because of the dangerous memory loss associated with ganja,

REEFER MADNESS 1936 poster

Bill believes that he committed the murder (although he was actually framed by a joint-hustling street tough) and is found guilty by a jury. The judge eventually throws out his conviction because he doesn’t want to ruin Bill’s tennis career; but golly, that was a close call.

Mary, being a woman, doesn’t fare quite as well as Bill. Unfortunately for Mary, she has no sense of smell, and inadvertently smokes a marijuana cigarette thinking that it’s just tobacco. After surviving an attempted rape, she is the victim of a stray bullet and dies. The other main female character in the film, Blanche, is so distraught over Mary’s death and her role in it that she throws herself out a win-

dow. You see, women actually feel guilt, while men just pretend to.

Finally, there’s Brock, an upstanding member of the Stanford swim team. After smoking the sticky icky, he brutally rapes a woman in an alley—though to be fair, he’d hallucinated her consent first.

Brock is found guilty, but because he was white and under the influence, the judge merely sentences him to a lifetime of regretting that he ever got caught.

Some of you have probably seen a black-and-white movie or two, and have realized that the last example wasn’t actually in the film. What you may also have realized, simply by being a human with a number of questionable life experiences, is that cannabis does not cause individuals to rape and murder each other. Certainly, a few reefers can cause impaired driving and judgment, but the insanity and violent outbursts claimed by the film are seemingly white lies with the intent of scaring the good people of the 1930s into action. To understand the mindset that drives a film like Reefer Madness, you have to understand that all white children are inherently good—until an outside force corrupts them. Whether that force is marijuana, rap music, or NFL players kneeling during the national anthem; white kids are all just future Ivy League graduates until something unsettling gets in the way.

Luckily, times are changing. Old mindsets evolve, and wacky tobacky is no longer the scourge threatening to corrupt our promising youth. We’ve realized that God’s green goodness has medical uses for old white people, so we’ve moved on to villainizing the true menaces to young white minds: feminism and civil rights movements. Someday, we’ll make our way out of the 1960s and white men are going to pay. Until then, light up a bowl and enjoy your privilege.

Samuel Clemens Long

ASK AN EXOTICALLY WHITE GUY Honeysuckle is a hilarious mix of people from every walk of life; something we’re proud of. So it should come as no surprise that editorial meetings for the Cannabis issue are a real reflection of the variety that New York has to offer (in both people and strains).

So here we are, those of us who partake, enjoying this miracle plant, and the subject of race comes up.

Great, I need fodder for my column. As everyone should know, black people were only counted as a fraction of a human in the not too distant American past (3/5 to be exact). Not to be outdone, someone from the Jewish delegation one upped their black colleague by saying that at least they were a fraction human, unlike the Jews whom, as everyone should know, have been accused of descending from “apes and pigs” by another major world religion (and some Reichs of the past).

Then someone looked around the room and did the math. Everyone in the room was black, brown or Jewish except one person. And who do you think that was, dear reader? Of course it was I, your humble narrator, the exotically white guy.

What’s it like being the only human in the room? Fucking hilarious. And I wasn’t the only person laughing (although the image of me just laughing maniacally in a room full of people staring at me is almost better). And then someone who didn’t find the whole situation funny asked me why it was. And although as E.B. and Katherine White point out, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process,” I’ll try.

It’s the sheer absurdity of racism. Years ago people were like, “Oh clearly this person standing next to me, speaking the same language as me, dressed in clothes/living/breathing/etc like me is a different species.

Clearly.” And everyone else was like, “Yeah, sure, what that guy says.”

And our modern audience will say that they aren’t anything like those racists of the past. Of course not!

But today we live and participate willingly/unwillingly in a country where systematic racism sees black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates, yet blacks are imprisoned at 6 times the rate of whites.

The modern racist says, “Oh clearly we should lock up a disproportionate percentage of the black/latino community for crimes in a clearly lost war on drugs.” And everyone else is like, “Yeah sure, what that guy says.”

Let’s just hope that the revolution contained in these pages continues. And those black and brown men and women get let out of their cages, where they can finally be just as human as me.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 73

Shellise Rogers

MINDFUL REVOLUTION: STAYING "WOKE" WITH CANNABIS DURING THE NU JIM CROW ERA Gently floating through the air private homes, apartments, social gatherings, and street corners. Slipping between the millions of dollars being collected by states across the country, the billions collected by the DEA, and pungent on the breath of countless people arrested for having small amounts. Relaxing the minds of those looking to unwind from a long day's work, or from the world, and its trauma porn depicted in the mistreatment and exploitation at the hands of a sometimes violent criminal-justice and capitalistic system. Alleviating thousands from thoughts of the hate group rallies that glide across our social media timelines. An aromatic flower with hairs and scintillating crystals that has been present for centuries and has many times fostered cross-cultural conversations about racial, social and economic injustice, the recasting of our cultures, our overall health, and pushing back against prejudice by conceptualizing a suitably regulated system for it all.

Cannabis has been known to alter a person's perceptions. To be ‘Woke’ means to be keenly aware of what is going on in the community. It ruffles the spirit of complacency that settled into the homes of those who survived the civil rights era, and awakens them to the fact that Racism and Jim Crow laws were never eradicated. They simply changed form.

Are you still sleep?

Or are you woke?

The Hard truth is: We have all been deceived. Systematically misled about what cannabis is and does, left estranged from information alluding to its effects on our bodies and minds—de-

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luded by decades of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Our lives so deeply embedded, comfortably coddled in the delusion within the systems of oppression that are so complex, most of us hardly know it’s there. We can’t ignore what's right outside our front doors, in our faces at each corner, and under our noses.

Richard Nixon’s former Chief Advisor John Ehrlichman said, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”1 African and Latin American people have been stigmatized with the negative connotations of ‘marijuana’. In this ‘other’ America, punishments are disproportionately enforced by the War on Drugs. “A Black person was 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person—a disparity that increased 32.7% between 2001 and 2010”2 Consistent with how our president views D.A.C.A, there is no consideration of inclusion or reparation on a state or federal level for the use of ‘Jim Crow’ laws that enforce segregation and exclude communities destroyed and ensnared in the criminal justice system by the War on Drugs from profitable participation in the cannabis industry.

The civil rights movement failed to secure or find a solution to economic mobility for the ‘other’ America where thousands still exist living at staggering

rates of unemployment, poverty, and a lack of opportunity. Ask yourself, “How is it that my government swindles money off cannabis while still keeping the criminal marijuana laws that persecute minorities intact?”

The Controlled Substances Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon is our country’s federal drug policy; it places all regulated substances under existing federal law into one of five schedules. The placement of a substance is based on its medical use, the potential for abuse, and safety or dependence liability. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determine which substances are added or removed from these Schedules.

Cannabis, a Schedule I substance, is listed beside other substances such as Heroin, LSD, and Meth. This means these substances have a “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use,” and “a lack of accepted safety for use or other substance under medical supervision.” While Marinol - a synthetic version of THC is prescribed to control nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy and in stimulating appetite in AIDS patients—is classified as a Schedule III substance. Meaning: it is viewed as having “less potential for abuse,” “a currently accepted medical use in treatment,” and a “moderate or low physical dependence or psychological dependence from any abuse of the substance.” 3 You are still ‘sleep’ if you think healthcare and public well-being must be a priority for our local and state governments for twenty-nine states as well as the District of Columbia to have medical marijuana programs. There must be a reason why, amongst these states, eight of them

FOCUS by Maria Lau

have legalized “Adult” (aka Recreational) Use, downplaying Federal rulings of the Controlled Substances Act. Perhaps, they’re addicted to tax revenue and corporate interests.

Eventually, legalization and de-scheduling will happen from the pressure for freedom and democracy, or the outcry against capitalist greed. Awakening the masses by contradicting our blind trust in the government’s commitment to the public’s best interests and providing a space of curiosity are documentaries such as What the Health by Kip Andersen, Prescription Thugs by Chris Bell, 13th by Ava DuVernay, and ‘Requiem For The American Dream’ by Noam Chomsky.

If you have a gold mine there will be a point in the goldmine where you have the richest part which is called the motherlode. Within the cannabis community there are countless conversations, case-studies, and research being completed about how cannabis affects our ways of thinking and seeing the world differently. Those within that society study how we can utilize the legalization of cannabis and hemp to make interventions that address the housing, financial and employment needs of low-income populations, and how to use the cannabis plant to engage in ways that actively challenge the world we live in. These efforts are catalysing change for the progression of all people through community effort. The goldmine of this movement is indeed the revenue—but the motherlode, the concentrated essence of the spirit of cannabis, is revolution.

Medisi Ventures is a social impact enterprise that utilizes impact investing and consulting to ensure the legalized cannabis industry has a long lasting positive impact on our society. TiYanna Long, the founder of this enterprise, informs us that, “New and booming industries change the face, structure, and identities of cities.

An increase in economic power has often come at the detriment of already struggling communities. Cannabis legalization is creating a new economic power and is going to have a massive impact and affect housing, transportation, education, healthcare, and so much more. It is up to us, as the cannabis community to ensure we are covering all of our bases as we build this foundation.

Sustainability is the goal.”

We entice advocates and activists to stand together.

One of the greatest weapons and strengths of the civil rights era wasn’t non-violent protest. It was community and solidarity. There are common threads between all of our differences and struggles that bring us together as humans. We can’t solve our country’s problems using the same kind of thinking that was used to create them.

We shift the paradigm together much stronger than we do individually. We should all strive to heighten our consciousness and overcome our egos.

We are the disinherited of this land and we have weapons in our hands. Chiefly, the weapon of protest against social, racial, and economic injustice. We will secure our rights as American citizens and have a seat at the table of economic opportunity. If we are wrong, the Constitution is wrong. If we are wrong, our congress, the DEA and the FDA is wrong. If we are wrong, nature itself is wrong.

1 LoBianco, Tom. “Report: Nixon's war on drugs targeted black people.”

CNN, Cable News Network, 24 Mar. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/ politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index. html. Accessed 7 Sept. 2017.

2 Edwards, Ezekiel, et al. The War on Marijuana in Black and White . ACLU, New York, NY, 2013, pp. 1–185, The War on Marijuana in Black and White 3 Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs. Recommendation to Maintain Marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. 20 May 2015, www.scribd.com/document/326538608/Why-the-FDA-thinks-marijuana-isn-t-medicine.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 75

HYAPATIA LEE ON CANNABIS Interview by April Hall day I was clear as a bell. I could think, and the colors weren’t gone from my world as they were with the prescription drugs. Cannabis gave me my life back.

You developed dissociative identity disorder – commonly referred to as multiple personalities. Did cannabis help you with that?

When did you start smoking marijuana and why?

My stepfather sexually abused me when I was young, so I ran away from home to live with my grandmother. A few years later I was raped and it all became too much. I called the police and they took me to the local hospital.

There, I was given all kinds of medication to help me deal with the emotional trauma of my sexual abuse, but none of it was doing any good.

But I met a therapist while I was at the hospital and he suggested that I try smoking pot. Twelve bowls later, I had the first good night’s sleep since my rape. And when I woke up the next 76 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

Absolutely. I’m Native American and I’ve studied with traditional medicine men and women throughout my life.

These healers taught me about a story called The Flowering Tree, which says that inside each of us there is a man, a woman, a little boy, a little girl and two wise elders. I learned that my multiple personalities were just the people in the flowering tree.

Pot lets me communicate with these people and gain insight. According to Native American traditions, you can't achieve wisdom until you shut down the adult worries about life – “Oh, I didn't pay my bill. I left the water running. I’ve got to feed the cat.” Pot helps me turn down those adult voices and listen to the children and the elders.

You were an extremely popular adult film star in the 1980s. In recent years you became a professional cannabis grower. How did you get from one career to the other?

When I was in adult film, I used to write a sex advice column for Cheri magazine. A number of years ago, I contacted the editors of High Times magazine and asked them if they would be interested in a column of sexual advice for stoners. They loved the idea, so the High Times column ‘Stoner Sex’ was born.

Several years later, I was looking to get out of Indiana where I was living.

Colorado was starting to legalize marijuana, not just for the ill but also for recreational use. I called my editor at High Times and asked him if he happened to know anyone in Colorado looking for a grower. I had been growing marijuana for the black market in Indiana for quite a while, so I had a lot of experience.

The editor put me in touch with someone and, after hearing about my background, I was offered a job. I moved out to Colorado just weeks later.

How did you learn to grow cannabis?

Necessity is the mother of invention. I needed marijuana for my medical needs and it was too expensive to buy on the black market in Indiana.

So I started picking out the seeds and grooming them every time I bought some pot. I networked with growers on the black market for information on how to grow. I started watching a lot of instructional YouTube videos.

And High Times was a great resource too. I learned how to grow in soil, in water, in the air. I learned about nutrients and pH balance and salt. I really became an expert.

Has marijuana ever gotten you into legal trouble?

Oh yeah, a few times. One time I was driving in Indiana and I got pulled over because my license plate had expired.

When the cop walked up to the car, he asked, “Do I smell marijuana in here?”

Of course, I answered “Absolutely not!” but he gave me a summons to appear in court anyway. Luckily the cop didn’t show up at the court date, so the summons was dismissed.

Another time when I was dancing on the strip club circuit, my then-husband and I tried to bring a quarter pound of pot into Canada with us. When we got to the border crossing, Customs officials found a few seeds and stems on the floor of our truck.

They arrested my ex for the seeds, but luckily when they searched the truck they didn’t find the quarter pound – the Great Spirit must have been with us. I bailed my ex out and the case was ultimately discharged.

And right before I moved to Colorado, I had a really close call.

One early evening, a couple of helicopters starting flying over my 18 acres where I was growing about 300 plants. I knew right away that my teenage son, who liked to brag, must have talked too much. When the helicopters left, I went out in the night and pulled up all the plants myself. It was a ton of work, but it paid off because I never was arrested.

What can you tell us about your job as a grower in Colorado?

Photos courtesy of The Rialto Report

It was a big job. We had about 300 different strains and approximately 10,000 plants across four greenhouses and several acres of outside grow. The nice thing about Colorado is there’s enough carbon dioxide in the air that you can grow really nice plants. The soil isn’t great, but you can work around that and, of course, grow aeroponically or hydroponically.

I left that job not that long ago and now just grow personally. I have a permit and supply marijuana to several patients I work with.

What have you been doing since you stopped working as a professional grower?

I’ve been working on ‘Native Strength’. It’s a program for living a full life of integrity based on a variety of Native American traditions. I’ve written five books on the strength system that you can find on Amazon. And I just finished shooting the eighth episode of my ‘Native Strength’ television show that can be found on YouTube. One of the episodes is focused on the use of plants, including cannabis, in traditional medicine.

Even though I’m no longer growing professionally, I’m still using and promoting cannabis as an alternative to industrial pharmaceuticals. Have you heard the side effects on some of those prescription drug TV ads? I’ll stick with the drug that at worst might cause the munchies or the giggles as a side effect!

What have you been doing since you stopped working as a professional grower?

I’ve been working on ‘Native Strength’. It’s a program for living a full life of integrity based on a variety of Native American traditions. I’ve written five books on the strength system that you can find on Amazon. And I just finished shooting the eighth episode of my ‘Native Strength’ television show that can be found on YouTube. One of the episodes is focused on the use of plants, including cannabis, in traditional medicine.

Even though I’m no longer growing professionally, I’m still using and promoting cannabis as an alternative to industrial pharmaceuticals. Have you heard the side effects on some of those prescription drug TV ads? I’ll stick with the drug that at worst might cause the munchies or the giggles as a side effect!

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 77

POT LUCK Jay Neugeboren

Pot luck favors The prepared mind, I mused, spotting the nickel bag, alone, in a box marked Fresh Direct.

So I was. She stopped.

Your joint or mine?

Why not if it’s good pot, she laughed. Time and chance happens to me all the time, plus I’ve got rolling papers.

I’ll brew the stew.

You gauge the gauge.

Later, we saw the light we’d made. She inhaled my joint, I sipped her stew.

What luck when high to fuck!

Then she to me: It’s easier to fall in love on pot than not.

SANTERA by Maria Lau

78 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

SAM by Ronit Pinto

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 79

213 E Maple Rd, Birmingham, MI 48009 (248) 593-6991

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GABI by Maxime Giordani CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 81

Illustration by Arielle Toelke

“DX 21” Dasun

A POTHEAD’S NIGHTMARE Ain’t nuthin’ in my pocket coming close to having trap

This is a pothead’s nightmare

Just a half a bag of kush and some change to cop a wrap

This is a pothead’s nightmare

Now how in the hell do I re-up on some get high?

This is a pothead’s plea:

I guess I’ll hang out with some stoners that I live by Will they spark a blunt or play frugal and fucking front?

The smoke spot got what I need and what I want But the funds are low, so I guess I’m going to suffer Save my last buds for getting lift after supper Who got the get high? Come put me on!

I’m down to my last and after that my shit is gone!

I got you high before so come return the favor Or next time when I got some smoke I’ll see you bitches later!!!

I BARELY GOT A DIME I BARELY GOT A DIME I’M RUNNING OUT OF WEED I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND! I BARELY GOT A DIME I BARELY GOT A DIME I’M RUNNING OUT OF WEED I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND! I BARELY GOT A DIME I BARELY GOT A DIME I’M RUNNING OUT OF WEED I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND! Please.

Help me.

Peace.

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Tom Huth

your highest High What’s your favorite high of the day?

Your wake-and-bake? Your soak-and-toke?

Your heading-to-work buzz?

Your getting-home balm?

Your before-dinner lift?

Your sleepytime drift?

What is your choicest time to elevate your state of awareness?

Here are my own Top Three tee times.

It’s hard to beat the first altered adventure of the day. A walk, for example—the sun still low in the sky, the puzzle-pieces of shadow and light dancing across the sidewalk, the morning glowing with promise, untarnished by doubt. I feel a glad-to-be-aliveness in my step, a gratitude. I admire an ancient oak tree, battered yet sturdy, and pretend that we‘re brothers-in-arms.

Then there’s the high of first sitting down to work at my desk. When I write something stoned, the words that come out of my fingertips feel fresh from the oven. They dance—or at least I see that I can teach them to dance. They invite me to join in the suspense of arranging them across the stage in just the right order. I’m down on the screen with them, shuffling them around, bringing in new darlings for tryouts, marrying some and divorcing others: beseeching them to sing together in harmony.

But my highest high often comes from a little ritual I observe several evenings a week. It involves going alone to some friendly (but not too friendly) bar, and selecting a stool where I have lots of elbow room, and unfolding a few pages of whatever I’m writing, then going out to the parking lot to consult with a small wooden pocket pipe.

I come back inside and take a sip of wine, which only magnifies the lyrical sense of disorientation. Now, when I pick up those pages of writing, I look at the words with new eyes, as if I’ve never seen them before.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 83

Chadley Britton

MORE THAN MARIJUANA *Note: I am not a doctor or professional herbalist; these are MY personal experiences as well as the experience of one other person with these plants. Please consult a doctor before using any plant for any medical or recreational uses. ** Have you heard about damiana? Well, until having an unfortunate reaction to smoking pot a few years ago that left me anxious and paranoid, neither had I. Willing to give up cannabis but not herbs in general, I visited a loose-leaf and herb shop. The dried flowers and leaves of the damiana plant are commonly smoked as an aphrodisiac and can be used to reduce anxiety and nervousness. The idea that a plant could get me buzzed and turn me on was a total win-win.

Four ounces and less than ten bucks later, I was home brewing a cup. It was a pleasant taste to me (after adding a touch of honey), and after a few minutes I felt more relaxed and yes, a bit more aware “down there.” I decided to take it step further and smoke a bit of it in one of my old bowls. It was a bit rough on the inhale and the smell immediately reminded me of the bitter tang of cannabis, except not as dank. I did, however, feel a buzz, but nowhere as potent as with pot; it was more of a relaxed, mellow high, almost equivalent to having a single glass of wine. It didn’t fog up my head or make me feel heavy or disconnected from my body as some strains of marijuana have done to me in the past. The effect didn’t last as long as weed either and wore off about thirty minutes later. I will continue to drink the tea and save the smoking for special occasions.

My friend, Alicia H. is not into marijuana but she is a proponent of other plants, not only for relaxation but for her own personal growth and self-searching. She runs her own online forum (https://www.octiimmortalis.com/) for furthering knowledge of plant benefits and energy exchange. It's a fantastic blend of the natural scientific world and esotericism.

Here are a few of Alicia’s thoughts on Mugwort: Smoking is therapeutic and instant, but more so in a tea form before bed. The tea has a slower reaction for me, but it hard punches in a dream state. The tea brings about prophetic dreams and astral projection and digs deep into the subconscious. If you're not ready to face yourself and truly move forward, I would advise people to hold off on it. It won’t give you what you want. It will give you what you need. There are times however when it’s more fun than 'detoxing the psyche.'"

Marijuana is a great plant and has so many benefits and can help with so many people’s personal lives, but Mary Jane isn’t the only plant with healing properties in the world. Do some research, head to an herb or holistic shop and ask about other plants that might help you in other ways.

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DAMIANA

Other Benefits of Mugwort (in tea form): • Alleviates anxiety and depression • Eases menstrual pain and some joint pain • Can aid in weight loss * Vivid or lucid dreaming or dream recalling **Chadley Britton is a writer and sex educator based in New York City. @goldtonegoddess

Leah Wells

OxyKitten

The Different High of Cats

“Every feline, no matter how small, is a masterpiece,” proclaimed Leonardo DaVinci. Devoted cat owners readily agree with him, but can we say what, exactly, draws us irresistibly to cats? Do we receive a ‘contact high’ from them; do cats produce their own effect parallel to that of water’s negative ions or cannabis’s THC? If so, how?

Of all mammals, cats have the biggest eyes in proportion to their faces. These enthralling green or golden eyes, with pupils that wax like the moon from a crescent to an orb and back with the changing light of the day, were used to tell time before cuckoo clocks and smart phones. Their acrobatics have made them a funny page favorite (Garfield) and earned them the lead in popular cartoons (Tom and Jerry). To this day, their languid grace inspires poetry and even long-running Broadway musicals.

For all the sorcery and varied roles attributed to the cat throughout human cultures—sun god, literary muse, fertility talisman, pocketwatch—is it possible that, in addition, there is a certain chemically-induced kick that accounts for their timeless appeal? Recent studies tell us: absolutely yes! Petting cats releases endorphins, hormones that attach themselves to receptors in our brain in order to relieve pain.

We also experience a rush of other “feel good” chemicals, including dopamine, prolactin, norepinehrine, and oxytocin—the famous “cuddle chemical” or “love hormone.” As with a mother and baby or two romantic lovers, the release of oxytocin can occur just by looking into the eyes of a beloved pet.

While petting and stroking cats has proven therapeutic, their purring also provides surprising and amazing benefits—to them, and to us. Purring, the soft, rumbling vibration produced by cats under certain circumstances, is one way they communicate. Recent studies into bioacustics (the science of animal sounds) reveal that a cat’s purring can actually help to heal our broken bones, ligaments, and tendons. Veterinarians have long observed that cats rarely suffer from bone or joint-related diseases. We’re only beginning to learn about how the frequency of their purring actually aids in restoring bone fractures and reducing inflammation. Talk about good vibes!

Yes, let’s talk about them: Cats bring us so many chemi-

cally-induced pleasures—but it doesn’t stop there. Cats permit us to murmur sweet nothings and be silly in the middle of a busy day. Even when we have our big boy power suits and big girl hats on, they allow us to “let our hair down,” to “let go” and be informal. We may be between love relationships, but a friendly cat entitles us to coo and cuddle away our loneliness, to run our hands softly through their fur and stroke them meditatively; to laugh, to buy toys and play games with feathers and rattle mice.

Our own gregarious silver tabby, Gaucho, warmed up the entire floor of my building by introducing neighbors. Chatting over cats even produced a job for me. Out on the block, cats are an integral part of the neighborhood. Like farms of old, many shops and newsstands have their own cat, such as Jimmy at Gem Spa on Saint Marks Place—a local celebrity who greets customers. Other working cats can be found in hospitals, nursing homes, even prisons.

We have domesticated and cared for animals over centuries, and now human society looks increasingly to the animal world for salvation. With therapy animals of every stripe achieving mainstream acceptance, even on seats of commercial air flights, there is growing respect for the power of simply holding a cat to mend a broken heart or apparently, even a broken bone. And yes, to get us high!

But can what makes us high get cats high? Can we enhance our mystical bond with them by sharing second-hand smoke? Not a good idea, as it happens: THC is not appropriate for kitty or other animals. When we light up, we expect to get high. Animals experiencing these “stoner” effects don’t know what’s going on, and can become disoriented and even dangerously stressed out. Yet a product like CBD oil (with THC removed) can be used to alleviate afflictions like arthritis and nausea in animals, as in humans. Still, the best high that human and animals can share is simply love.

Recently, a humorless FDA prohibited “love” from being listed as an ingredient on the side of a bag of granola. Imagine if the etheric elixir of oxytocin and endorphins that only partially explains the mood-elevating, community-building buzz of loving a cat could be bottled! The FDA would never go for it—but you could be sure that some clever marketer would be calling it Purrfume.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 85

Jennifer Parker

WHEN PLAYDATES GO TO POT I’ll never forget the first time I dropped my daughter at a playdate that wasn’t one masquerading as a friend-with-benefits date for me—no, not those kinds of benefits. Being the mom of a toddler can be isolating. Even the most verbal, precocious snowflakes have a witching hour (coincides with happy hour) and in my house, lunch started about ten minutes after breakfast and ended ten minutes before dinner. I craved adult company. Spending time with other mothers under the guise of a playdate was like two hours of bliss. Most of my daughter’s preschool classmates in Washington DC came with mommies as desperate for adult daycare as me, so we’d just hang out, drink coffee, maybe break out the wine and make bad jokes about it being seven o’clock at night somewhere. It didn’t matter if the kids liked each other.

For the uninitiated, kids under the age of three don’t really play together, they play in parallel. I just had to pick the other mommies carefully.

Right before Zoë turned four, we moved to Seattle and I thought I would continue to make friends through my thirty-six-pound social lubricant. It didn’t surprise me the first time my outgoing kiddo was invited to a playdate. What was clear was that I was no longer included. Now I was faced with the question that I’d been rehearsing for about a year: No guns, no drugs, right?” I was met with a bemused half-smile on the other mother’s face like I was asking her if she didn’t allow organic vegetables in the house. She assured me that there weren’t any firearms. Non-confrontational by nature, I didn’t press any further, left my daughter at the house and went to my happy

86 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

place, Whole Foods. About $175.00 later I picked Zoë up and drove home. I had been downgraded from plus one to “driving Miss Zoë.” Sometimes I would be invited in towards the end of the playdate and more often than not, there were the remnants of a joint in an ashtray on the deck.

I have a confession to make: I have never smoked pot. The reasons are crazy long and boring, but one is that I can’t parse the difference between the smell of marijuana and the odor of skunk. Another—In 1978 at the age of ten, I read the memoir, Midnight Express because I wasn’t allowed to see the movie. I was obsessed with the soundtrack. For years I was sure that any drug use meant in-

evitable incarceration in a Turkish prison, severe beatings and being forced to eat my own feces. My father shouldn’t have left the book out. Mostly, I’m a rule follower.

In 2012, I voted to legalize recreational marijuana in Washington State; now a resident of Manhattan, I would do it again. By keeping a drug that is technically no more harmful than alcohol illegal, there’s a risk putting an unknown substance from a dubious source that has changed hands God only knows how many times that may be none too clean into one’s body. Some of my friends who smoke don’t think twice about who has touched what is going into their bodies but can’t handle the idea of sharing a fork at dessert. After several legal hiccups, pot became kosher in people’s homes, backyards, and at certain public events where it had already been ubiquitous. I didn’t vote for legalization so I could start experimenting with drugs at the age of forty-four with a clear conscience.

I was tired of the mixed message that my daughter was receiving when she went to friends’ houses. Otherwise law-abiding adults were purchasing a drug on the black market and contributing to a shadow economy that had far greater implications than a parent wanting to take the edge off after a long day.

It was disheartening that doctors, lawyers, software engineers and teachers could casually break, if not ignore, laws in front of their children. I was just looking for parents who thought it was important to set an example of following laws in front of their kids even if they disagreed with them. I’m not talking

Illustrations by Gea

about civil disobedience like unjust laws about segregation, I’m talking about grown-ups behaving like adults.

Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol and it has caused our penal system to implode. Prior to legalization, getting caught possessing pot was among the lowest priority of the King County Prosecutor’s Office, which is the jurisdiction of Seattle. What wasn’t a minor offense was dealing marijuana.

Washington State is one of seven states in the US without an income tax. By legalizing recreational pot, the state has been able to collect revenue that would otherwise fuel an already robust underground economy and criminal justice system that seems to be a housing solution for people of color. Over the next two years, Washington is expected to collect $730 million dollars in tax revenue from recreational cannabis. Some of the money goes to Medicaid, schools and roads. Jobs are created, the nuisance crime of possession of pot isn’t choking the legal system. Illegality creates mystique and the juvenile

thrill of breaking the rules.

New York Cannabis advocate Jerry Szycer and owner of the companies H3MP and JustGetHigh.com said, “We don’t let twelve-year-olds drive 6000-pound cars. There’s a process. We don’t just throw keys at them and say, here. We teach them about safety and using good judgment but not before they’re ready. Legalization is all about harm reduction.” Szycer went from cannabis prohibitionist to evangelist and can make a great case for why the pharmaceutical industry is terrified of the legalization of pot. His ninety-three-year-old father died in agony. He believes that people who could just take the edge off their pain would not turn to opiates. He’s also the parent of two children and believes in science. He’s in no hurry for his thirteen-year-old daughter to experience marijuana.

Szycer thinks her brain needs to be fully formed first, which is technically around the age of twenty-five. Then, it will be her decision. For the record: Szycer prefers edibles.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 87

B

“DX 21” Dasun

IN BED WITH PANAMA RED:

A SEX ON CESS MANIFESTO The energy of memory infusing the mus-

my baby. Dolly dagger with the swagger. She

ing is of a fyah angel whose interior an-

has the twinkle, twinkle of little stars turning

gles were once mine to roam and wander.

supernovas in her pupils. She purposefully,

When I finally got a pot to piss in and after

slowly and deliberately, licks the jagged edge

copping pot, copping a squat and lighting

of the roll-up. Looking me dead in my eyes

up, after getting lit, I’d hit her up. I lit her

with a promise of what is to come to a tune

up until bliss had her pissing. Still not cer-

of Big Pun, she teases the tobacco wrapper

tain if it was squirting caused by vigorous

with the tip of her tongue.

insertions as purple powered my person.

She mounts my hips. I feel a tingle in

I transcended dimensions, growling while

my tent-pole as I am caressed by the heat

dispersing…

egressed between her thighs. She leans over

Illustration by Arielle Toelke

Lion and lioness lying sprawled across a

and gives me a deep kiss, bitter from the bite

futon. Clear as day I see our foreplay. Roll-

of the blunt. Light ignites and amidst nag

lies and White Owl to serving Dutch Mas-

ing a Backwoods with thoughts of back

champa incense, we puff in insight and then

ters. Never ran. Never will. Thinking of the

shots and making the coochie pop. Panting

I enter her entrails. A Warrior King sings of

thrill of being inside her after some skunk

with a Penonome, Panama dawta. She’s

the Empress so divine and the woman’s vir-

rolled in Bambu or EZ Wider. Old soul. I

truly a commando. Never wore any panties.

tuosity. I rise in elation; the melodies mental-

loved the way she rocked and rolled. Puff-

Looking longingly in her lustrous eyes, hik-

ly magnified. The bass intensifies and rivets

ing an “L” but never took an “L.” A shorty

ing up her long, Bob Marley printed skirt

my vibration. The sound intertwines with

who took shorts of no sort. Under pictures

to poke punani. Smearing guava jelly on

my mind as me and naughty shorty’s essence

of bitches with Too Short, or Uncle Luke,

an eagle spread while elevated by lamb’s

combines. We are a trinity. She, the sympho-

she’d puff her Newports. Her voice was

bread. Ital jockey in the saddle. No brush.

ny and me are one.

raspy. Coming and going she had me with

Soon I reminisce, set adrift on memory

the kung-fu grip of that needle-eye poom-

Panama Red I called her. Pun intended

bliss. Fantasizing getting the inner tension in

poom contracting during our action; it just

because she gave my head the good med-

my innards rising. I time travel as thoughts

heightened the marijuana magnified sat-

itation. Toe-curling, fury unfurling, ethe-

unravel enthused with the music, the mellow

isfaction. Bootcampian champions blast

real essence sucking combustion when we

miasma of marijuana and many muses…

through a Kenwood via compact disc. We

No stone. Just stoned. Just sensi. Seen?

gave each other heaven and hell, listening

were joined at the joy junction. Drawing

I am now the energizer bunny in a freaky

on a joint to anoint the function. Sexing

frenzy steady beating on a Bahamian drum

was moving from black and white to tech-

with the hum of sour diesel fueling the en-

But now I’m in bed with Panama Red. She

nicolor then taking a quantum leap into

gine within. Thinking of how I’d crumble the

brings me back to the present with the per-

Real 3-D. Steady pumping but not losing a

herb, roll up and then slide up in her guts

sistent pressure of the press of her potent

breath, for she was my prana; my Lil’ Kim

as she bent over baring her big, beautiful,

pleasure chest. She rides, rotating a cow-

and sexy mama.

bodacious butt providing her back as a back-

girl that could never cow-tow, watching the

After a pull ‘pon de spliff, a kiss was a

drop for a hot creamy nut. Chain-smoking

flow of her camel toe and how far up in I go.

paradigm shift, enhancing the dancing,

high-grade like menthols, damn near de-

I enter a haze seeing white noise, blacking

no matter which set of lips the big stick I

mented in the dimensions my spirit circum-

out while I come to. I rise as I arrive, lifting

carried was betwixt. I was bewitched from

vented propelled by pulls on the pungent.

her; cradling her bumper and thighs.

first stroke, no joke, to final twitch. Fall-

I’d get Technologic as I would Touch It, bust-

to Wu-Tang’s “Heaven & Hell.”

I’m reaching the apex of great sex with this miniature T-Rex of a Cocle Empress.

ing into chasms of the spasms of orgasms;

ing it out as Busta Rhymes would bust it. My

sinking teeth into her shoulder as I am the

love frog, she had handy jays that blew oth-

My growls turn to pants into sighs. I curl

exploder.

er’s blow jobs out the skies like dismayed

up, wrapped around her so tight. A tangle

I see her.

blue jays. Thinking of that sweetness sweeps

of torsos and limbs.

She’s in her birthday best and I am enjoy-

through my sensual outer reaches.

I close my eyes.

Tremble with the aftershocks of our

ing the press of her humid flesh against my

I’m back in the nineties when names had

bare body as she lies beside me. With skilled

no need. It was just “a nickel bag of weed.”

fingers, she surrounds the silver haze with

My byline’s first shine was of a Brownsville

And all I can think about is…

cigar skin as I run my hand over hers. Dolly

chick who changed my chapters from Phil-

…what the fuck is in the kitchen to eat?

88 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

tremors.

B

lack Heels, Purple Haze

Tank Burt

“Wear those black heels,” were my last words to Jane before I took two tokes of God’s Gift then headed out the door. My weekend bag over my shoulder and the extra pounds of “meat” between my thighs, getting to the train became a task. I took a moment to adjust, making sure no one saw, for fear of looking like a perv.

All I needed was for some woman to see me and think, “Who’s that guy with a hard-on touching himself?”

Jane Chen and I had been dating for months after a false start a few years prior. Our sexual chemistry was unparalleled. But that night we would take it to the next level which, in our case, meant going old-fashioned with “Jake,” my dildo alter-ego. No vibrator. It was all, literally, on me now.

My advance preparation eliminated the normal lag time between strapping on and getting the right pressure on my clit as well as the perfect angle for her maximum enjoyment. I could walk in her door and when we were ready to go at it, we would.

After I adjusted Jake I continued almost floating to the train in a kind

of slow motion. Besides slowing time, weed makes me philosophical. The audaciousness of what I was doing hit me. There was a time when I didn’t know who I was and now I was creating a night of intimate ecstasy. Up until that point I had never loved anyone quite like Jane. No matter the drama, the stay/go, I was in—all in.

Jane opened her door in a too-tight t-shirt, shorts into which her ass didn’t quite quite fit and those shiny black heels. As we kissed, I made sure our waists never touched. I pardoned myself briefly from her warm mouth to put beer and mango in the fridge.

Then I watched my hot dancer girlfriend walk down the short hallway.

“Stop,” I said, low and firm.

She froze and glanced back at me.

“Put your hands against the wall.”

She fought a smile and complied.

I whispered, “Spread your legs.”

Standing behind her, I placed my hands outside of hers on the wall, and pressed Jake into her. She gasped. I kissed her neck. She moaned and tilted her head back. My want, my utter desire to consume her compelled me to get on my knees.

I slid her shorts off and ate her until her legs started to buckle.

Then I arose and carried her to the

Photo of Tank Burt by Patricia Dillon

couch. She unzipped my pants and I ripped off everything I had on in seconds. We kissed and the length of our bodies pressed together. I slid in, slow and deep. We both moaned in exultation. All that mattered was the thrusting, her opening legs wider, my growling, the sweat, our breathing faster and faster, until…ecstasy.

We dissolved on the couch into a heap. She caught her breath and sighed, “Oh my God that was so good.” We both chuckled.

“You wanna smoke?” I asked. She nodded. I brought Purple Haze for just this occasion. We blazed, drank beer, laughed and fed each other mango.

Then we fucked until 3am that night, and the night after—until Monday morning came around.

She got up and dressed for work in a black skirt, white shirt, and those black heels. Chic, simple, and sexy. I wanted to eat her pussy right then. At 7:49, I wanted in. “Don’t start something you can’t finish,” she admonished. So instead of heavy panting, off to work we went on our separate journeys. Our relationship suffered a similar fate: separate journeys. But I remember those days and nights so fondly and long to create them with someone new.

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 89 GABI by Maxime Giordani

90 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

CANNABIS WINTER 2018 | 91 Photo by Natalie• Shmuel

Jon Horn

OPUS DOPUS: An Excerpt

...I remember the first time I hit Tangier, coming across from Spain on the Ibn Batutta ferry. It was a beautiful day, where the Atlantic meets the Med, and the ferry’s prow calmly cut spumes of sea which glittered under the big sun in a cloudless sky… and a big Brit backpacker next to me, whom I hadn’t really noticed, said, “Looks quite magical from a distance, dunnit?” He had a shaved head, one earring, and an ironic grin. I said I’d never been to Tangier before, and he spat out half a laugh.

“Well, watch yourself… I’ve been here too many times. The white city rising up the hillside there looks to be a storybook citadel, but if you stay too long you’ll swear it’s the bloody bunghole of the world!”

“Then why do you keep coming back?”

“Ah, I can’t get enough of that kif from the Rif, the hills where the fresh air is scented with cannabis and it’s all open and above-board since they’ve quit cracking down on the growers, the new laissez-faire policy, long may it last!” ...Mellow cannabis was always my fave everyday high. Opium was heavy, and if you used to too much it would get you down. Coke and meth and other “hard” drugs had big downers in store. Not so pot. And here before us was a whole hillside thick with tall, full, green-turning-golden hemp stalks bursting with buds, leaves waving gently in the breeze. All I could say was “Wow!” 92 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

Photos by Judy Rosenblatt

Photo by Natalie Shmuel

CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 93

The Green One by Art of Melush

Theresa Reed

FEBRUARY TAROT: THE CHARIOT We’re already a month into the new year. Have you begun working on your goals? If not, there is no time like the present to take those reins in your hands and get moving. Focus your will on the wondrous things you want to achieve. Then go, go, go until you reach your destination! This month can bring great gains and triumphs but only if you are willing to commit to the work ahead. This is not the time to sit around and hope that the Universe does your bidding. Instead, you must take personal responsibility. Remember: your future is determined by the actions you take or don’t take. This 94 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

month, start the ball rolling towards your desires. That begins with you.

This month is ideal for any sort of travel, especially short road trips. If you have a case of the winter blues, find a weekend where you can go somewhere special. It doesn’t have to be expensive, far, or warm. Just somewhere that takes you out of your daily routine and gives you a fresh outlook. When you come back, put the pedal to the metal on your goals. With a freshly fueled mind, you may go further than you thought.

Contributor’s Bios POTLUCK: Jay Neugeboren is the author of twenty-two books. He has appeared in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and The American Scholar and over fifty anthologies. He is the only writer to have won six consecutive PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. jayneugeboren.com WEEDTV: McKenzie Schwark is a graduate of DePaul University’s Creative Writing program, and currently writes and edits in New York City. Her work is published or forthcoming in Bustle, bitch media, BUST, Storm Cellar, and more. Mckenzieschwark.com, @schwarkattack CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; CANNABIS TIMELINES: Naomi Rosenblatt is Deputy Editor and Art Director of Honeysuckle Magazine, founder and publisher of Heliotrope Books. heliotropebooks.com, @heliotropebooks YOUR HIGHEST HIGH: Tom Huth is a journalist and author of the memoir Forty Years Stoned: A Journalist’s Romance.

UP IN SMOKE: Kymberly Byrnes is a Cannabis investor, host of “Cannabis with Kym B,” co-founder of the New Jersey Cannabis Commission, and East Coast Director of CannabisBuyer.com. @cannabiswithkymb pistilpoint.com @pistilpoint BLACK HEELS, PURPLE HAZE: Tank Burt is an actress, writer, and director known for the films Love Is Strange and Biscuit. @TankBurt MEET THE KAIJU: @jerrbul @elevensixtysix @kaijukillerklan/ @iamtheroar @BlkZen @youngkoii LIGHTING UP; CANNABIS CRAZY; AN EX-POTHEAD’S QUALMS: Susan Shapiro is an award-winning writing professor and New York Times bestelling author of 10 books, including the memoir Lighting Up and co-author of Unhooked: How to Quit Anything. susanshapiro.net @susanshapironet @profsue123 OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD: Dr. Inbar-Maymon-Pomeranchik is a PhD scientist (Plant Science and Microbiology) and a biotech investment consultant. She is the founder of BioDiligence. Biodiligence.net

POT IN THE WINDOW: Alex Harsley is a renowned photographer who directs the 4th St. Photo Gallery, and founded the non-profit Minority Photographers, Inc. in 1971.

4thstreetphotogallery.com CANNABIS ACCORDING TO SPIRIT: Lori Lipten is an international best-selling author, world-renowned medium, contemporary shaman, and empowering retreat leader and teacher. llipten.com IN BED WITH PANAMA RED; A POTHEAD’S NIGHTMARE; MONEY & MARIJUANA: “DX 21” Dasun is a writer, poet, editor and speaker of the cobo bobo misfit mystic. @dx21dasun, dx21presents.com MARIJUANA OVER MIGRAINES: Nadya Rousseau is an L.A. based social entrepreneur, multimedia journalist, and activist. She is the founder and CEO of Alter New Media, a digital marketing agency for impact. socialmediastorytelling.co @nadya_rousseau, @nadyarousseau MINDFUL REVOLUTION: Shellise Rogers aka SISTAH ROGERS is a social justice activist and political advocate.

She hosts safe listening spaces on topics such as Financial Literacy, Emotional and Mental Health.

OUR EPILEPSY HERO: Greg Grunberg’s graphic novel Dream Jumper: Book 2 is now available. His podcast “An actor, A comedian and a Musician Walk into a Bar” is also available on iTunes. @greggrunberg #MyEpilepsyHero HYAPATIA LEE ON CANNABIS: The Rialto Report is an adult film podcast series on the adult film industry in New York and beyond. Its founders were consultants on the HBO series The Deuce, starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Therialtoreport.com A PHYSICIAN SPEAKS: Kaaren Nichols, MD, is a Family Practice physician based in Seattle. She has 35 years of experience and authorizes medical marijuana.

FEBRUARY TAROT: Theresa Reed aka The Tarot Lady is a full-time Tarot reader in practice for 30 years. She is the author of The Tarot Coloring Book. Learn more about her at thetarotlady.com, @thetarotlady CANNABIS • WINTER 2018 | 95

Illustration by Arielle Toelke

THE SACRED SPACES ARE FULL OF PILLS AND SMOKE: John Gosslee is the editor of 50 Contemporary Women Artists (Schiffer, 2018). He’s the editor-in-chief of Quiet Lunch, [PANK] and Fjords Review. His poetry is widely published.

WHEN PLAYDATES GO TO POT: Jennifer Parker is a Manhattan-based writer and mother. The editor in chief of StatoRec, Jennifer’s film criticism and author profiles have appeared in Fjords Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Pank Magazine.

CANNABIS: HARMFUL OR HEALING? Father ELnakar Allah-ade’s career as a Poet and lyricist began in 1973, and ventured into other mediums. He is a ghostwriter for Hip hop artists, editor of street literature and has several unpublished novels. The winner of several National Poetry Contests, two of his recent works were published in “Berkeley RHYTHMS.” @TGPkuumba THE RESURRECTION OF THE MRP: Citizen Jay Daily is a Technical Writer at Medicine Man Technologies and CEO/Owner at TokeRadio.com.

JOHNO WEED QUIZ: The Johno Show is seen by millions of people each month on CCTV (Cannabis Club Television) in dispensaries throughout the nation. For more on The Johno Show visit: youtube.com/TheJohnoShow MARIJUANA ACTIVISM IN NYC: Preston Peet is the editor of Under the Influence—the Disinformation Guide to Drugs and author of Something in the Way, soon to be published by Feral House.

GREEN ACRES IS THE PLACE FOR HIM: Donate to Govardhan Gardens as part of Puerto Rican Recovery at organicfarm.net. Learn more about Green Acres Holdings at inportalusa.com/green-acres.

REEFER MADNESS: Matt Saber lives a quiet life in suburban Michigan and dreams of one day developing a passion for something other than sarcasm.

company Be Trü Organics and has written for publications including Playboy Magazine, SportsIllustrated.com’s The Cauldron, and Leafly. @edsbritton **Article Sources: “Opioid Addiction 2016 Facts & Figures.” Https://Www. asam.org/Docs/Default-Source/Advocacy/Opioid-Addiction-Disease-Facts-Figures.pdf, Asam.org, www.asam. org/. “The Effects of Opiate Use.” DrugAbuse.com, drugabuse.com/.

WALKING THROUGH THE FIRE: Augustus Britton is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Flaunt Magazine and Malibu Magazine, and he is currently finishing his debut novel. @augustusbritton JUST IMAGINE: CANNABIS THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Catherine Hiller is the author of five books of fiction and Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir. Her novel The Feud will be published by Heliotrope Books in 2018. catherinehiller. net @edgycathy RETRO: BLOW-TOP BLUES: M. J. Moore is Honeysuckle’s RETRO columnist. His novel, For Paris~ With Love & Squalor, (Heliotrope Books, 2017) focuses on the famed city.

MORE THAN MARIJUANA: Chadley Britton is a writer and sex educator based in New York City. @goldtonegoddess MONEY & MARIJUANA: Emile “Hong” Westergaard is a former hedge-fund Wall Street investor, a 35th generation Shaolin Monk, musician and cannabis connoisseur. He has parlayed his experience and spiritual philosophy into an investment literacy tool and platform known as the “Green Chi App” (greenchiapp.com). *gea is a chilean-born multidisciplinary artist, pseudo UFOlogist, cinephile, cat friend person, based in New York.

Her unique work encompasses drawing, painting, illustration, and digital media. an autodidact, she has exhibited solo and in group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Santiago, Zurich, and Toronto. Geaphiles.com

OXYKITTEN: Leah Wells is a singer, songwriter, and music educator. Her book, On Another Note (Heliotrope Books, 2017), is a teaching memoir. @leahwellsmusic

Art of Melush was formed by Australian contemporary artist, Melinda McCarthy (a.k.a Melush) An exhibiting artist for 20 years her award winning work is held in private collections worldwide. artofmelush.com

CANNABIS: A TOOL FOR HEALTH: Eben Britton played for six years in the NFL. He is the cofounder of the wellness

OPUS DOPUS: Jon Horn is a travel writer who has written a marijuana travel memoir.

HONEY LOVE: A shout-out to Kush Clicks, Cannabis Network Radio, A Rebel Minded Society, WGNYC

96 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE

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