HIGH TIMES Medical Cannabis Cup Seattle Day 2 – Changing Minds On I-502 And The Triumph of Ganja Jon
Day Two of the Cannabis Cup came and went like a whirlwind. Thanks to so many fans who found the time to track me down (I tend to be on the move most of the time) to tell me how much they appreciate the show. It especially warms my heart when those fans are the hard-working activists who are facing not only the reefer mad prohibitionists who oppose legalization, but also the utopic idealists who smoke pot themselves and oppose legalization. Fighting a PR battle on two fronts is never easy and I’m glad a thing or two I may have written or said might have helped.
I didn’t wade too much into I-502 debating this time around because I do plenty of that online. But I was approached by one young man who questioned why I was in support of I-502. We were alone at my booth for a while having a very respectful conversation. He was genuinely curious because he was worried about the 5ng/ml per se DUID provisions of I-502, but after some digging, he mentioned someone he knows who has to pee test for probation and they set the level at 50ng!
“That’s metabolites in urine, man,” I explained, “not active THC in the bloodstream. I-502 sets the limit at the actual active impairing THC in the bloodstream, not the inactive metabolites that show up in your pee for weeks.” The young man’s eyes widened. ”Active THC,” he repeated, “that makes me think about this differently. I though they were talking about that bullshit where you can get caught days after you stopped smoking.”
I was fair, though. I explained how active THC spikes in the bloodstream shortly after puffing, then drops rapidly and in one-to-four hours after toking, will probably be below 5ng in most everyone who tokes. However, I warned, big fellas like you and me who are puffin’ tough all day every day? Yeah, we’re probably going to have a baseline above 5ng even when we wake up. ”Yeah,” he adds, “‘specially when you’re blazin’ oil, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Yeah, I replied, and guess what? If you or I was driving around right now, the chance we’re going to get a DUI is exactly the same now as it will be after 502 passes. I’m not below 5ng, I know that. But I’ve been driving for nine years on the West Coast from LA to Seattle and cross-country to Denver multiple times, and I just do what we stoners have always done – don’t get caught. Trust me, dude, if we get pulled over, a cop thinks we’re impaired or just wants to fuck with us, arrests us and draws blood, and we come up over 5ng, we ain’t getting out of that now.
So in politics, ugly as it is, you sometimes have to give a little to get a lot. Do I like a 5ng per se? Hell no, but does it increase my risk any? Not a bit; I’m in danger of DUID now. But in exchange, we get to finally make weed smoking legal! Not medical excuses, not decrims with tickets and fines, I mean legal enough that a cop can come to my door and I can smoke a joint in his face and there ain’t a goddamn thing he can do about it.
“Yeah,” he observed, pointing at the much-lighter skin on my arm, “but you know there’s two different justice systems, man.”
Exactly! I responded. That’s why it is so important to make marijuana legal! Right now, cops want to shake down young black and brown kids. They want to get names and addresses and descriptions and fingerprints and records built up so they can catch the next “suspect matching the description” and the prime way they do that is using the excuse of “probable cause” to believe some kid is committing a marijuana crime, or worse, planting marijuana to make the excuse…
“But I’m a patient,” he interrupted, “I can already have a pound and a half.”
Kinda, I explained. You have a defense in court for a pound in a half. Washington’s medical marijuana law doesn’t have arrest protection; if a cop wanted to be a dick, he could arrest you for possessing a gram, and after you bail out and go to court, then you can show your recommendation to the judge. But if I-502 passes, you will have arrest protection for an ounce of medicine. And don’t forget it also covers a pound of medibles – you know how they use the weight of the brownies and act as if that’s all marijuana? No more, you can have a pound of brownies or cookies or butter, whatever. And 72 ounces of tinctures!
We wrapped up the conversation and he told me his name was Courtney, he’s really glad he talked to me and learned the DUID was all about active THC, and he was the owner of a dispensary in town called “Left Coast Cannabis”. I smiled, realizing that flipping the vote of a dispensary owner is a huge coup, as many patients will just vote the way their “weed guy” tells them to vote.
Later that night, Courtney and Lest Coast Cannabis won a Medical Cannabis Cup for their medical collective that dispenses medicine to their medical marijuana patients. I encourage all medical practitioners to adopt the Left Coast Cannabis medical dress code; nothing says “medical” like fishnet stockings and medi-pants. It would certainly make a colonoscopy or a root canal more bearable.
But a fellow like this, while well-meaning, is not someone providing the service and expertise one would expect from a pharmacist, but rather a bartender. And I have no problem with that, either, but we can only tell the general public it’s medical for so long before our own excesses become the case against us. Soon enough, there will be cannabinoid pharmaceuticals – GW Pharma’s starting human trials on some in 2013 – and THAT will be your “medical marijuana”, further painting our use of flower and oil as the domain of hedonists, not healers.
I mean, would you let a dentist or surgeon near you who advertised like this?
The highlight of the night was the awards presentation. I got to announce the award for Best Medible, which went to a dispensary named after Captain Kirk. (See, wouldn’t “Dr. McCoy” at least be more “medical”?) But the most awesome moment of any of the Cannabis Cups I have covered was to be backstage when our friend, the lovable Pirate of Pot, the one and only Ganja Jon, won the Best Concentrate award with his brother for their preparation of butane hash oil. It was just a couple of years ago he was a shy, frightened kid facing three days a week of kidney dialysis, doing his first media interview on the issue of medical marijuana and organ transplant. Through a harrowing transplant and the loss of his non-functioning eye he kept up his commitment to the cannabis community, becoming a cannabis expert in his own right on the rapidly-evolving subject of cannabis concentrates. Now he’s at the top of that field and I couldn’t be more proud.
Published with special permission from RadicalRuss.Com
