Marijuana Blog

I have been consuming marijuana since 1993. The first time I smoked marijuana with a name attached to it was ‘The Project’ during that year. The strain was created by my friend’s step-dad who crossed two unknown strains that he obtained in Hawaii while on vacation in the late 1980′s. He originally just called his grow room his ‘project’ and the name became attached to the strain that was produced by the grow room. He said it was a pure sativa strain, and it packed a punch the likes of which I have rarely seen in all of my years of traveling and toking.

 

For a long time I wasn’t concerned with strain names. I had seen so many people take an unknown strain, create a name themselves, and pass it along to the people they sold it to. Just because someone thought they were smoking the White Widow strain didn’t really mean that they were actually smoking that strain. I’ve seen new strain names pulled out of thin air, which didn’t come about from a new strain being created, but merely from someone taking a marijuana they bought and giving it a catchy name to help sales. For a long time I kind of considered strain names to be unreliable at best, or a total sham at the worst.

 

A question I often get is, ‘how many marijuana strains are there?’ It’s not an easy question to answer. As I previously stated, just because a strain name is out there, doesn’t mean it’s a unique strain. This is especially true of celebrity strain names. CNN reporter Sanjay Gupta is a great example. After Mr. Gupta announced his support for medical marijuana, a few weeks later the Gupta strains started showing up at dispensaries out West. Clearly there was not enough time to create a new strain from seed, veg it, flower it, dry it, and get it in a jar to be sold. Someone took an already established strain, simply changed the name on the jar, and started selling it as a new strain.

 

That scenario has occurred who knows how many times all over the world. The answer I offer up to people when they ask how many strains there are is to point them to Leafly, which has the largest database of marijuana strains that I know of right now. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Leafly currently has 779 marijuana strains on file. How many of those are unique, I’ll leave that up to them to determine. I would say that there are at least that many out there, but since Leafly adds new ones each week, and I have personal friends that have created strains that aren’t in their database, there are clearly more than that.

 

I wonder how many there will be five years from now, or ten years from now. We have a few hundred on The Weed Blog right now, and I add new ones as often as I can. I’m getting my medical card again soon, and with legalization on the way in Oregon, I’ll be able to visit dispensaries and stores to find new strains to add to our site. Stay tuned!

 

Source: http://www.theweedblog.com

A marijuana decriminalization law passed by the D.C. Council in the spring took effect Thursday at 12:01 a.m. after a Congressional review process passed.

 

The new law, like others around the country, eases punishments for minor marijuana offenses.

 

Now, unless someone is discovered carrying more than an ounce of marijuana, officers can only confiscate the drug and write a $25 ticket.

 

Police also can no longer take action simply because they smell marijuana. They can no longer demand that anyone carrying under an ounce of marijuana produce identification, according to the Washington Post.

 

There will still be civil penalties for those caught using marijuana in public or caught with it on federal government property.

 

Police prepared for the arrival of the new law by reviewing an eight-page special order and taking an online tutorial, according to the Washington Times.

 

"As of midnight Wednesday night, no member can make or approve an arrest for marijuana possession without having first taken this training," Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump told the Times.

 

Supporters of this law, and others like it around the country, argue that laws for low-level drug crimes such as marijuana possession often target young black and Hispanic men, with the punishment sometimes affecting their entire lives. The district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., recently announced a similar change there, and for the same reason.

 

But Delroy Burton, chair of the D.C. Police Union, has criticized the law as too vague and confusing.

 

"This is not a simple issue," Burton told the Washington Post. 'It's about enforcement and decriminalization and where you draw the line of what officers can do or cannot do."

 

Source: http://www.usatoday.com

A  Farmers market for medical marijuana users has been temporarily shut down after an L.A. County Superior Court judge agreed to halt operation of the Boyle Heights cannabis marketplace.

 

The judge’s ruling Tuesday grants a temporary restraining order filed by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer, who sought to stop the California Heritage Market operations because he said it didn’t comply with the city's law for marijuana dispensaries.

 

Voters passed Proposition D last year, which established legal parameters where marijuana dispensaries could do business.

 

The ruling, Feuer said, supports the “spirit and the letter of Proposition D.”

 

“The bottom line is that we argued successfully that this so-called farmers market was an attempt to make an end-run around the will of the people when they voted to put Proposition D in place,” Feuer said. “The court saw through this subterfuge.”

 

The order would restrict the market’s operators from setting up booths and advertising it, according to the city’s injunction. Police and fire must also be granted access to the site.

 

“The court was very clear: There could be no multiple vendors selling at this site, only bona fide employees,” Feuer said.

 

The market, which opened over Fourth of July weekend, was held in a warehouse directly behind the West Coast Collective dispensary in an industrial zone in Boyle Heights.

 

The following weekend, the market reopened again.

 

Proposition D, Feuer said, does not allow multiple, independent vendors to sell on one site.

 

“That’s essentially what this business model was,” Feuer said.

 

But attorney David Welch, who represents the Progressive Horizon collective, said Feuer’s argument doesn’t make sense.

 

He said a farmers market is no different from a dispensary in that they both sell goods from a variety of vendors.

 

“Their arguments are basically a misunderstanding on how this business operates,” he said.

 

The city’s actions, Welch said, were essentially proving that “you can’t actually open a marijuana dispensary” in Los Angeles.

 

A hearing is scheduled Aug. 6 to determine whether the market will be permanently closed.

 

Source: http://www.latimes.com