Pubdate: Thu, 15 Oct 2015
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Column: The 420
Copyright: 2015 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Ngaio Bealum

POT PAPERS

Gov. Jerry Brown has finally signed the new medical marijuana 
regulations into law. What happens next?

- -Willy Wonky

Chaos. Perdition, Cats sleeping with dogs and riots in the streets. 
Psych! These rules will create a huge demand for lawyers and 
consultants, but the game won't change much. People who don't want to 
be involved in the medical cannabis industry can still grow marijuana 
for their personal needs. Folks who want to sell weed will have to 
sign up and pay fees and be regulated. You know, like any other 
industry in America.

It gets a little complicated because there are like 17 different 
classifications of licenses (http://tinyurl.com/ncof3l7). One of the 
goals of the new law is to keep marijuana businesses from becoming 
huge monopolies, so they have it set up like Washington, where you 
can either be a grower, a processor or a distributor. This will make 
it difficult for some clubs that have full vertical integration (they 
grow and sell their own cannabis), but I am sure a competent lawyer 
can show them a way through the various hoops and pitfalls.

The bottom line: This is what we wanted. We need regulations, and 
while these rules aren't perfect, neither are they permanent. As long 
as we stay vigilant and work with our advocates, lobbyists and 
elected officials, we can continue to create fantastic cannabis 
regulations for the benefit of all involved. I know it's not the 
marijuana nirvana we have all dreamed about, but these are steps in 
the right direction. And, if we do it right, all these rules will be 
gone and replaced with new rules for full-on recreational cannabis 
legalization in 2016! (I think the activists want us to say "adult 
use" instead of "recreational," but whatever.) The battle is not 
over, and weed is still winning.

I need some paper made from my hemp. Can't make any myself, my 
blender does not work.

- -KB (Not the same KB as last week)

Sorry to hear about your blender. Good idea, though. An acre of hemp 
produces four times more usable fiber than an acre of wood, and you 
don't have to cut down our ancient and beautiful forests to do it. In 
fact, my homie Doug Fine (on Twitter  just harvested a 
bunch of legal hemp up in Oregon state. I think Kentucky has a hemp 
harvest this year, as does Minnesota along with a few folks in 
Colorado also. This is great for farmers and great for America. Hemp 
is an amazing and versatile plant. The stalks and seeds from a hemp 
plant can create just about anything the petrochemical companies can 
concoct, and do it without messing up the environment. Hemp is 
naturally pest resistant, so you don't need lots of pesticides (save 
the bees!), and hemp doesn't leach nutrients from the dirt like some 
other plants (looking at you, cotton). We need to grow hemp again in America.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom