Tue, Feb 21, 2012 6:16 pm

• Originally published @ Cato Unbound, as part of a series of essays on ending the government’s failed war against cannabis

  Ending Cannabis Prohibition in America

  The now forty-year-old organized effort to reform cannabis laws in America is on the precipice of major socio-political reforms with approximately fifty percent of the population no longer supporting the nation’s seventy four-year-old Cannabis Prohibition. While reformers have made tremendous gains, notably at the state level, which have placed them at this crossroads, obstacles to full cannabis legalization are abundant and deep-seated in Congress and the federal government.

  This paper seeks to identify important areas of concern for cannabis law reform, highlight the factors that have created a positive environment for reform, recognize who are the last and largely self-interested factions in society who fervently defend and/or prosper from Cannabis Prohibition’s status quo, and what are some of the strategic decisions that reformers can implement that will hasten an end to Alcohol Prohibition’s illegitimate, long-suffering cousin.

  Important Areas Of Concern For Cannabis Law Reformers

  There are several areas of concern for reformers, notably the federal vs. state disconnect in Washington, D.C.; citizens’ illogical fear of cannabis more than alcohol; and the political box canyon potentially created by medical cannabis.

  Federal vs. State Government Disconnect –

  On a recent video essay broadcast October 20, CNBC host and former senate staffer Lawrence O’Donnell lamenting about Cannabis Prohibition said ‘that only in the U.S. Senate can there be zero discussion about a policy change fifty percent of the country supports’. In a nutshell, despite 14 states having decriminalized cannabis possession, and 16 states and the District of Columbia ‘medicalizing’ cannabis, the U.S. Congress and the executive branch (along with a federal judiciary that is totally deferential to Congress’ intent and will regarding anti-cannabis laws) have a near total disconnectbetween what the governed want vis-à-vis reforming cannabis laws and elected policymakers on Capitol Hill who strongly support the status quo.

  The numbers that frame this political quandary: 75% of the public support medical access to cannabis; 73% support decriminalizing cannabis possession for adults and now 50% of the population support outright legalization (California, where one out of eight U.S. citizens live, nearly passed a legalization voter initiative last fall, only losing by three percentage points). So it can be asserted with confidence that ‘soft’ cannabis law reforms of medical access and decriminalization enjoy overwhelming public support and that the ‘hard’ reform of legalization has now moved into the majority (The recent Gallup poll showed only 46% of citizens continue to support Cannabis Prohibition).

  However, even with clear polling data to help guide them away from restrictive policies no longer supported by the public, the Obama Administration’s fifth attempt this October since he took office to introduce ‘digital democracy’ into policymaking decisions by creating a public website where citizens and organizations can post online petitions seeking changes in the ways government works, the president was once again confronted by the publics’ number one question: Why do we have Cannabis Prohibition in 2011? Shouldn’t it be ended as an ineffective public policy?

  Unfortunately, like the previous four opportunities to confront public unrest about Cannabis Prohibition, despite the NORML petition being number one with 72,000 signatures, the Obama Administration once again totally rejected any public calls for cannabis law reforms and re-asserted the federal government’s primacy over the states in enforcing national Cannabis Prohibition laws (see discussion below).

  Cannabis’ Fear Factor –

  Recent polls and focus group data gathered by cannabis law reform advocates post last year’s near-victory in California for Prop. 19 (the initiative that would have legalized cannabis) revealed an important and troubling public perception that reformers need to largely overcome to be successful: Almost fifty percent of the general public in California—where the issue of reforming cannabis laws have been vetted like no other place on earth since the late 1960s— illogically fears cannabis more so than alcohol products.

  Forgive the pun, but reformers have to do a better job ‘normalizing’ cannabis use such that its responsible use causes no greater concern in the public’s eye than the responsible use of alcohol. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine cannabis becoming legal anytime soon if fifty percent of the public fears the product and the consumers who enjoy it.

  Medical Cannabis’ Political Limitations –

  While NORML is the sui generis of medical cannabis in the United States (first suing the Drug Enforcement Administration to reschedule cannabis as a medicine in 1972, NORML vs. DEA), the organization recognizes that absent substantive changes in the federal government’s Controlled Substances Act (and controlling International treaties envisaged and championed by America at the United Nations), qualified medical patients accessing lawful cannabis with a physician’s recommendation in states that authorize such is an untenable conflict with the existing federal laws that do not, under any circumstance, allow for the therapeutic possession, use or manufacture of cannabis.

  This state and federal conflict regarding Cannabis Prohibition laws came into full view this year despite previous attempts otherwise by the Obama Administration to slightly modify the federal government’s historic recalcitrance in allowing states greater autonomy to create cannabis controls, and in some cases such as Colorado, to establish tax and regulate bureaucracies specifically for medical cannabis.

  Federal actions against medical cannabis in 2011:

  *US Attorneys in California deny the city of Oakland the ability to set up a city-sanctioned arrangement with medical cannabis industry to cultivate and sell medical cannabis;

  *The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruled that medical cannabis dispensaries are not legitimate businesses under federal law and therefore can’t take standard business tax deductions;

  *The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) sent a memo to all gun dealers in the U.S. warning them not to make any sales of guns or ammunition to medical cannabis patients, even those who possess a state-issued ‘medical cannabis patient’ card. In effect, this federal action has rendered medical cannabis patients with no Second Amendment rights;

  *Federal banking regulators regularly harass and threaten local and state banks not to do business with commercial medical cannabis businesses, even if the businesses have state and city-issued licenses to sell medical cannabis;

  *US Attorneys in California and the DEA sent warning letters to otherwise state-compliant medical cannabis businesses that are properly zoned under local laws to shut down or move away from federally-funded schools, day care or recreation centers within 1,000 feet of the dispensary;

  *These same US Attorneys are now threatening to legally pursue newspapers and magazines that advertise what are otherwise legal, state and city-authorized businesses and their lawful commerce.

  Also, under numerous state Supreme Court decisions, lawful medical patients can be denied employment; along with driving privileges (which was recently overturned in California), child custody,Section Eight housing, university residences, and even be denied a life-saving organ transplant.

  With so many onerous institutional discriminatory practices and restrictions—and the price of medical cannabis remaining inordinately high because of the existence of Cannabis Prohibition—patients who genuinely need access to this low toxicity, naturally occurring herbal medicine would be far better served by ending Cannabis Prohibition in total than trying to carve out special legal exemptions to existing prohibition laws.

  Why Cannabis Reform Is More Popular Now Than Ever Before

  The rapid increase in public support for cannabis law reform is made possible by five factors:

  1) Baby Boomers are now largely in control of most of the country’s major institutions (media, government, entertainment, education and business) and they have a decidedly different perception and/or relationship with cannabis than the World War II generation (AKA, the Reefer Madness generation), who, were largely abstinent of consuming cannabis.

  2) These crushing recessionary times have forced many elected policymakers to drop their support for rigorous enforcement of Cannabis Prohibition laws. Numerous states and municipalities have adopted half measures towards legalization, notably decriminalizing possession or adopting a lowest law enforcement priority strategy.

  3) Medical cannabis first becoming legal in 1996 by popular vote in California. After the nation’s largest and most politically important state adopted medical marijuana guidelines, sixteen states and the District of Columbia have followed suit setting up a terrific state vs. federal government conflict that has already visited the U.S. Supreme Court twice (2002 and again in 2005).

  4) The advent of the Internet in the mid 1990s allowed citizens to communicate directly with each other at very low costs, create large social networks of like-minded community members, avoid mainstream media (which readily serves as a lapdog, rather than government watchdog in the war on some drugs) and educate themselves with verifiable and credible information about cannabis (rejecting government anti-cannabis propaganda programs like the controversial DARE program in the public schools and thePartnership for Drug-Free America’s ineffective ad campaigns in the mainstream media).

  5) Americans are apparently (and finally!) becoming increasingly Cannabis Prohibition weary after seventy-four years. In comparison, America’s great failed ‘social experiment’ of Alcohol Prohibition lasted about a dozen years.

  Who Actually Wants Cannabis Prohibition To Continue?

  One of the principle lessons in the Art of War is to ‘know thy enemy’. Therefore, it behooves cannabis law reformers to understand what small, but powerful factions in American society actively work to maintain the status quo of Cannabis Prohibition:

  1) Law enforcement – There is no greater strident voice against ending Cannabis Prohibition than from the law enforcement community—from local sheriff departments to the Fraternal Order of Police to State Police departments to federal law enforcement agencies.

  2) Federal and state bureaucracies born from Cannabis Prohibition itself – Washington, D.C. and most state capitals have created dozens of anti-cannabis government agencies to both maintain and enforce existing Cannabis Prohibition laws. Examples: Drug Enforcement Administration, Office of National Drug Control Policy (AKA, drug czar’s office), DARE, Partnership for a Drug-Free America,National Institute on Drug Abuse, Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, National Drug Control Information Center, etc…

  Many of these bureaucracies in turn provide most of the funding to so-called ‘community anti-drug organizations’ to create the false appearance of local grassroots opposition to any cannabis law reforms.

  3) Alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies –

  Historically, alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals companies play both ends of the middle when opposing cannabis law reforms for the simple reason that all of these industries will lose a portion of their market share to legal cannabis.

  4) Private corporations that prosper from Cannabis Prohibition –

  Numerous private companies donate significant funding annually to anti-cannabis politicians and organizations to maintain the status quo. Examples of such are private prisons, drug testing companies, rehabilitation services, communication companies, contraband detection devices, interdiction services and high-tech companies.

  Reformers can hasten the end of Cannabis Prohibition

  -Cannabis law reformers need to better politically organize via the Internet, resolve to no longer vote for pro-Prohibition candidates, and to fund and champion pro-reform candidates.

  -Bipartisan support to end Cannabis Prohibition is a political given. However, since the 1990s every single major cannabis law reform initiative that has been successful has been funded by one of two liberal, politically divisive billionaires (George Soros and Peter Lewis). Reformers need to achieve greater political and funding diversity to significantly advance cannabis law reforms in today’s highly divided national political landscape.

  -Recognize that most all of the major policy reforms are first achieved at the local and state level, in time putting due political pressure on the federal government to follow suit.

  -Cannabis law reformers need to better work in concert with other like-minded political and social organizations that also oppose failed government programs or seek redress for grievances against the government.

  -Reformers need to create a far more simpler reform narrative that juxtaposes ‘pot tolerant’ citizens against ‘intolerant’ citizens in the same manner that Alcohol Prohibition pit ‘wets’ against ‘drys’.

  -Reformers need to continue demonstrating the tremendous cost to taxpayers of maintaining Cannabis Prohibition; the loss of needed tax revenue and the genuine lack of social controls that enhance public safety.

  -Reformers need to keep directing public and media attention to the serious de-stabilization of the country’s borders created by the tremendous illegal succor of Cannabis Prohibition in countries likeMexico.

  -Continuing what cannabis law reformers have been successfully achieving for forty years, which is to say winning a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign in the population, and recognizing that elected policymakers in Washington are not going to be able to lead the country out of it’s long-suffering Cannabis Prohibition without public advocacy that is derived from effective, politically diverse and bottoms up grassroots stakeholdership.

   

The “Patient Access to Regulated Medical Cannabis Act of 2012” is the product of the newly established Committee for Safe Patient Access to Regulated Cannabis (CSPARC), organized by local medical marijuana industry advocate Mickey Martin.

“In December when the Board of Supervisors passed the back-door ban on medical marijuana, there were a lot of people (who felt that) what they were passing was just bad policy,” Martin said Monday.

“(The policy) just doesn’t address the issue,” Martin added.

Martin said the problem is that medical marijuana operations are not well-regulated and banning them outright “doesn’t make them disappear,” it just pushes them out of sight and makes it unnecessarily harder for people to get to.

Martin compiled the initiative with local medical cannabis patients and providers, he said. The legal language was written by local attorney James Clark and filed with the County Office of Elections in late January.

“(The measure) went through 15 drafts with a lot of feedback along the way,” Martin said. “I think we’ve come up with a plan that meets state law and will satisfy a lot of the issues that have come up in the past.”

Those issues, Martin said, included the large number of dispensaries that cropped up within the county and the proximity of those operations to schools, playgrounds and residential neighborhoods.

David Spradlin, former director of Magnolia Wellness – a medical marijuana collective – and founder of a community services organization called Orangevale Beautiful, said in a press release Friday that the county has failed to provide “meaningful guidance” on how patients should get their medicine.

Spradlin said one of the purposes of Proposition 215 was to encourage governments to implement a plan to provide for safe and affordable distribution of medical marijuana to patients.

Instead, Spradlin said, the county has “opted out of following state law” by banning dispensary operations.

“When Magnolia Wellness was forced to close, tens of thousands of local patients who depended on us for medicine were displaced,” Spradlin said. “Dispensaries provide a safe place for patients who are unable to, or not interested in, growing cannabis to get a variety of quality medicine in a caring environment.”

The proposed Patient Access Act includes provisions for limiting the number of dispensaries in the unincorporated areas of the county, sets a tax rate of 4 percent on all cannabis sales and restricts the minimum distance between any cannabis operation and “sensitive use” areas, such as schools and residences, to more than 1,000 feet.

“We think that federal interference has been less in areas that have regulated programs in place and more controls,” Martin said.

According to information from the County Office of Elections, the initiative must have a minimum of 57,000 valid registered voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

Martin said he and the CSPARC organization are seeking volunteers to help gather signatures with the goal of getting at least 80,000 to 100,000 signatures.

The official title and summary of the Patient Access to Regulated Medical Cannabis Act of 2012 can be found HERE.

Local medical marijuana activist Ryan Landers said he was part of the group that worked to get Proposition 215 passed in 1996, and he doesn’t want to see those efforts wasted.

“Patients need the right to cultivate their medicine like we gave them 15 years ago,” Landers said Monday. “I don’t want to see those rights taken away or stepped on.”

Landers said the Board of Supervisors’ move to ban dispensary operations in December was “inappropriate and unnecessary,” and would do more harm than good for medical marijuana patients.

“It’s not just an alternative, it’s life or death for thousands of people right here in Sacramento,” Landers said. “It not only stopped distribution, but also cultivation.”

If voters approve the proposed ballot initiative, it will bypass the authority of the Board of Supervisors.

The board will still have power to adjust the tax rate on cannabis sales or increase the allowable number of dispensaries from the measure’s minimum of one dispensary per 25,000 residents within the county, Martin said.

“The board cannot thwart the will of the people, though,” Martin said.

Offices of the members of the Board of Supervisors were closed Monday in observance of Presidents Day, and supervisors were unavailable for comment.

The deadline to submit all signatures to the County Office of Elections is June 17, according to the county website. Martin said CSPARC’s goal is to have the required number of signatures submitted by June 1.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Originally published April 22, 2010, ‘Abraham Lincoln Was A Hempster’

Update: National Public Radio reports that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other human who has ever lived–second only to Jesus Christ. More than 15,000 books have been penned about ol’ Abe. An impressive 35-foot high tower representing these numerous literary works is found at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.

When Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, first strode onto the public stage in 1832 and stepped into American History, he was wearing a pair of hemp pants.

From many points of view, Abraham Lincoln was America’s greatest President. Besides guiding America though the Civil War, the most troubled passage since our nation’s founding, he possessed the keenest intellect of anyone to have ever lived in the White House. He also possessed the greatest understanding of the life lived by the common man of anyone who had been or will ever be elected President. Abraham Lincoln came from the dirt, the death, the toil, and struggle of the American frontier.

He was born of the pioneer hordes that keep forever moving westward. A champion wrestler, Abe was the tallest, the strongest, the toughest, the fastest runner, the longest crowbar and maul-throwing man to ever sit in the Oval Office. Almost entirely self-educated, Abe had the benefit of only a total of four months of formal schooling. The stories of Lincoln walking twenty miles to return a borrowed book are true. He had a great fire burning within to learn—and as a teenager, had read all the books within a 50-mile radius of where his family lived in frontier Indiana. Dennis Hanks said of his cousin, “Seems to me I never seen Abe after he was twelve ‘at he didn’t have a book in his hands or pocket…It didn’t seem natural, nohow, to see a feller read like that.” Through hard work, determination, unbending honesty, and a deep well of talent, Abraham Lincoln rose to become the most revered man in all of American history.

In Nineteenth Century America, social classes were set apart in many ways, their clothing was one of the most obvious. It was a time when the expression, “Clothing makes the man,” was still at full currency. Slaves, indentured servants, the pioneers living out on the frontier, the poorest of the poor, all wore a fabric called “tow-cloth”, and like a “tow-rope” it was woven out of hemp fibers. Tow-cloth was cheap and virtually indestructible. You could grow it and weave it yourself. Hemp had much longer, tougher, and courser fibers than flax. Flax was woven into the fabric called “linen”, and sometimes flax was blended with hemp to make tow-linen—though at times the term “tow-linen” was also used to give a fancy name to cheap goods (plain old tow-cloth) somewhat like how faux-suede or faux-fur is used today. Easy to grow in most climates, hemp resists pests, produces nutritious seeds, and has universally useful fibers. Josiah Henson (1798-1883) an escaped slave who won international fame and inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin stated in his autobiography that for fellow slaves: “Our dress was tow-cloth; for the children nothing but a shirt; for the older ones a pair of pantaloons or gown in addition.” Tow-cloth, tow-linen, hemp cloth, different names for pretty much the same thing—and not only for slaves, but millions of America’s poor whites wore it as well.

All the years Abe was growing up, the dirt poor Lincoln family wore tow-linen, home-grown hemp cloth they wove themselves. They were so poor that “Men and women went barefoot except in colder weather; women carried their shoes in their hands and put them on just before arrival at church meetings or at social parties.” his Dennis cousin Abe Lincoln; “In the early years he wore buckskin breeches and moccasins, a tow linen shirt and coonskin cap, ‘The way we all dressed in them days,’ said Dennis Hanks.” Hard cash money was very hard to come by on the frontier. Men’s wages were as low as $.25 per day, when there was work. Frontier people had to make do with what they could raise or catch. Dennis Hanks said it was a, “mighty interesting life fur a boy, but thar was a good many chances he wouldn’t live to grow up.” The pioneers made most of their own essentials for living, their log homes and hand-hewn furniture, their clothes that came from the animals they killed and skinned and the hemp and flax they grew, spun into thread, and wove into cloth. By the time Abe was eight, “The clerk was the only man he knew who was wearing store clothes, Sunday clothes, everyday of the week.”

It is an oft repeated, and even more often ignored, fact that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written on hemp paper. Paper in the early days of America was made primarily from rags. Since the poor and the very poor constituted by far the largest percentage of the early American population, most of the rags available to be made into paper came off the backs of the poor were rags of tow-cloth or tow-linen. The other famous hemp-growing Presidents, Washington and Jefferson, grew hemp for cordage and to clothe their own field slaves.

Of all the thousands of biographies of Abraham Lincoln that have been written, there is one that stands out to me, the biography written by Carl Sandberg, the poet. Sandberg grew up in the Illinois prairie, talked to and lived among men and women who knew Lincoln. His six-volume biography of Lincoln took Sandberg a whole lifetime to complete. He received a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1939. The first volume, The Prairie Years, through Sandberg’s mastery of the English language, captures the feel of the American frontier life as very few books ever have. It is from Sandberg’s Lincoln that I am quoting in this blog.

Lincoln was in attendance when, “The boys were having a jollification after an election. They had a large fire made out of shavings and hemp stalks; and some of the boys bet a fellow I shall call ‘Ike,’ that he couldn’t run his bobtail pony through the fire.” The pony had more sense than its rider and slammed on the breaks at the very last second, “and pitched poor Ike into the flames.” Lincoln saved him. You can be sure that the boys and Ike were drunk on corn squeezings, or somesuch, not high on hemp fumes, because the varieties of hemp grown for fiber contain less than .03% of the active ingredients for which its brother marijuana is world-famous. Today law enforcement in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois annually wastes significant time and resources each year gathering and destroying millions of wild hemp plants to puff-up their drug enforcement statistics. This “ditchweed,” this non-psychoactive feral hemp, mid-west law enforcement has been chasing for years, like a dog chasing its own tail, might very well have escaped into the wild from one of Tom Lincoln’s several farms in those states, between 1810 and 1830, when hemp was grown and worn the Lincoln family to protect American History’s most important person from the elements.

Elections were to become a big factor in the rest of Abraham Lincoln’s life, both those he lost as well as those he won. Abe volunteered at the outbreak of the Black Hawk War and was elected Captain by his men. Upon returning home from that campaign, Abe ran for public office for the very first time. When he first ran to try to become a state representative, he ran wearing a pair of hemp pants. “Lincoln started electioneering and kept it up till the ballots were counted. He traveled over Sangamon County with his long frame wrapped in flax and tow-linen pantaloons, a mixed jean coat, clawhammer style, short in the sleeves, and bobtail,” When the results were all in, Lincoln had lost his first election, coming in eighth among thirteen contenders. But, from the voters in his home district, Abe had received an astonishing 277 out of the 300 votes cast! Our man in hemp pants had a big future in politics.

Next, Lincoln hunkered down as a clerk in New Salem, Illinois and studied the law. “At one time, while storekeeping, he slept on the counter of the store because the Rutledge Tavern was overcrowded. He wore flax and tow-linen pantaloons, no vest, no coat, and one suspender, a calico shirt, tan brogans, blue yarns socks, and a straw hat bound round with on string or band.” These flax and tow-linen pantaloons could be the very same pair of pants mentioned earlier when Abe first ran unsuccessfully for election. Hemp cloth, as tough as it is, probably hadn’t worn out yet.

Abe won the election the next time he ran for state representative. But even after he’d become a member of the Illinois state legislature and a lawyer, Lincoln’s material station in life hadn’t changed very much. As described by a colleague, Abe, “He was poverty itself, but independent.” But Lincoln was now in position; he was ready now to make his mark in history, and to make it when slavery had become the dominant issue. As he said later, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not feel this way.” At the very end of his first term in the Illinois state legislature Abe and one other member introduced a resolution protesting resolutions supporting slavery stating, “They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy.” This humble man from the backwoods had taken his first public stand on slavery, the most important and divisive issue that has ever confronted America. It started a path for an honest man in hemp pants that he would walk unfailingly to its end, a path that would make him immortal.

Quotes from Carl Sandberg, © 1924 Lincoln The Prairie Years and Carl Sandberg, © 1954 Lincoln The Prairie Years and the War Years one volume edition, italics and bolding added

Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot in Ford’s Theater the evening of April 14, 1865. He died the next morning. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, at Lincoln’s passing, “Now, his is one for the ages.” There was a white banner trimmed in black hung over Broadway in New York City, it read, “The great person, the great man, is a miracle of history.”

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Colorado’smedical marijuanabusiness is booming, as is the national media coverage on the issue, depicting Colorado as the cutting edge in what could be a national move to legalize pot.

The story is catnip to TV producers: controversial, emotional, young- skewing and photogenic: the buds, the smoke, the giant greenhouses! All you need are a few eccentric characters who will let you film them inhaling; a vocal opponent, and a gaggle of hardy brothers whose giant growing operation boasts “Bubba Kush” as their top seller.

National Geographic Channel found them.

Add to the already abundant crop of films about Colorado’s pot industry a National Geographic series — exploring growers, retailers, patients, cops, opponents and the political firestorm in one picturesque town.

“American Weed,” premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m. on NGC, zeroes in on a Fort Collins family confronting the forces who aim to restrict the legality of medical marijuana dispensaries.

Shot last fall in the buildup toFort Collins’ vote on Question 300, the 10 hour-long episodes of “American Weed” cement the state’s reputation as “Cannabis Country USA.”

The documentary finds plenty of drama, along with greenhouses in the woods outside of Denver, and six camera-ready brothers — Joel, Jesse, Jonathan, Jordan, Jared and Josh Stanley — who grow and distribute weed.

There’s lots to learn … about pure cannabis pollen, about how to transplant a cutting, about a diabetes patient seeking pain relief, about the crusader waving signs on street corners to shut down dispensaries. And about Question 300, which ultimately banned medical marijuana dispensaries in Fort Collins.

NatGeo carefully avoids taking sides.

Deanna Gabriel, herbologist at Dixie Elixirs, which makes marijuana- infused sodas, candies and oils, examines a jar filled with cannabis in a scene from “American Weed.” (Provided by NGT)

target=”_blank”>The various interests are noted, and the series poses a leading, or at least loaded, question:

“Is the pendulum swinging back to curb the 10-year proliferation of medical marijuana in Colorado?”

The opening hour chronicles the brothers at work and play at the grove. After putting their life savings into the idea, they’re not exactly efficient business operators.

Ticking down the weeks to the vote, a regular customer and an opponent hand out leaflets to mostly apathetic students on the Colorado State University campus. Obviously, the series will be less suspenseful for local viewers familiar with the Question 300 outcome than for the broader audience.

The first hour also tracks Sgt. Jim Gerhardt of the North Metro Task Force making a bust after middle-schoolers found a patch of marijuana growing next to a suburban house. The kids reportedly helped themselves. The cancer patient growing the plants is hauled away in cuffs.

In retrospect, Joel Stanley, 32, who lives in Colorado Springs, said the opponents of medical marijuana in Fort Collins were better organized.

“Not a lot of people actually show up to vote on these things,” he said by phone last week. “We could have done a better job of creating awareness.”

But the family business thrives elsewhere. The Stanleys still have one medical marijuana store in Denver and three in Colorado Springs.

There’s a misconception “that people in this industry are making a lot of money,” Stanley said. “You have to invest a lot of money” to be legal.

The Fort Collins battle may be over, but the war rages on, and Colorado remains a bright destination for camera crews seeking an angle.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com

 

Read more:Ostrow: National Geographic Channel spotlights Fort Collins in series on pot wars – The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_19982585#ixzz1n2eGpXWk
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