Tag Archives for medical marijuana

How much THC does Afgooey Super Melt REALLY have?

accordingtomycalculations

Over at the March 4, 2009 East Bay Express:

The Manhattan Project of Marijuana

If pot is truly medicine, shouldn’t it be standardized? Analytical Labs wants to test the potency and safety of Cali cannabis.

By David Downs

At downtown Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the hairy green buds have numbers. The new nomenclature beckons viewers from within seven gleaming glass display cases. Antiseptic white placards boast authoritative black digits. Each stands erect next to a Petri dish of high-octane “White Rhino” or “Afgooey Super Melt.” They read: 7 percent, 11 percent, 18 percent, or 21 percent. Even 80 percent.

“80 percent THC?” asks a potential customer. He’s referring to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol — the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

“That’s a concentrate,” reminds Stephen DeAngelo, proud owner of the three-year-old collective. DeAngelo’s facility boasts 20,000 members and grossed more than $10 million last year. Even amid the recession, lines are a constant phenomenon and DeAngelo is looking to double his space. Hundreds of new customers sign up monthly, attracted partly by the immaculate facility: its savvy, well-paid “budtenders” and $40, eighth-ounce pot dosages. But part of the appeal is the new placards — the result of a disruptive new service by Harborside’s partners at the Analytical Laboratory Project.

“For the first time in the 3,000-year history of human cannabis consumption, consumers will be provided a scientific assessment of the safety and potency of products prior to ingesting them,” DeAngelo announced in December.

In the months since, DeAngelo’s patrons have enjoyed mankind’s most detailed product information thanks to the country’s first commercial marijuana lab. Arrest and jail remain a constant worry for him and the lab’s two owners. But they believe that if pot is truly medicine, it needs quality assurance and dosage information. The Analytical Laboratory Project wants to be the source of that information. The lab’s ultimate goal is to provide testing for half of the 300 dispensaries in California.

Read more here

Pot Activists to Obama: Legalize Today, Get High Tonight, Right?

First, President Obama’s Kenyan half brother gets arrested — in Kenya — for holding, like, one joint. Then over the course of the last week the DEA busts a series of medical marijuana clinics across California. Then cops in Fontana — formerly a hub of the pig farming industry and now a dismal commuter suburb of LA — discover 1,800 pounds of weed being smuggled inside … wait for it … concrete lawn donkeys. “Drug mules,” geddit? (At least those pickup truck rampin’ Mexican cartels have a sense of humor, right?) The next thing you know, Obama’s bro is out on the streets again, all charges dropped. Coincidence, or…? Connect the dots, friend.

You know who doesn’t have a sense of humor? All the marijuana activists that were blowing up yesterday across the internet over the DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics that took place from South Lake Tahoe in Northern CA to Venice and Marina Del Rey down here in Los Angeles County. Do you know the reason why they are so itchy about these acts of Federal aggression? Because back in March and May of 2008 Obama said some evasive but still encouraging shit to two Oregon newspapers: Southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune and the The Willamette Weekly — an alt-weekly — about basing policy on science when it comes to medical marijuana. And we block-quote the Weekly:

Would you stop the DEA’s raids on Oregon medical marijuana growers?

I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism. The way I want to approach the issue of medical marijuana is to base it on science, and if there is sound science that supports the use of medical marijuana and if it is controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed, then it’s something that I think we should consider.

Then, as if to confirm any suspicions that the casual reader might have about the Lollapalooza-types one might find staffing an Oregon alt-weekly, the interviewer asks Obama if he would get a tattoo were he placed “under duress.” That is certainly an imaginative question. But we digress …

As of January 28, Hopey’s man Eric “Lando” Holder is running the Justice Department, thus everyone from the libertarian burners at Reason to the up-against-the-wall muckrackers at Counterpunch to LA Times haberdashery columnist Patt Morrison (we kid we kid Morrison is oft very clever and funny) is like, “Lay off already!”

Get your summary of the day’s chatter after the jump.

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