Category: Uncategorized

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

Happy 2017 to our readers! It’s amazing how fast January went, and this post serves to locate CASP’s current agenda within the rapidly developing landscapes of cannabis and social change, in the age of formal legalization. We begin with federal, state, and local contexts, followed by CASP developments significant for the year ahead.

Geography and jurisdictional scale

California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada have joined Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, DC in successfully passing initiatives to join the “tax and regulate” landscape. Arizona’s initiative failed at the ballot box. Each initiative offers a different blueprint for evolving their particular “laboratory of democracy,” but California’s laboratory is backed by material significance that dwarfs what has come before. California is the main source of our nation’s cannabis supply (not Mexico), although (southern) Oregon has become quite significant as well.

The presidential election also shifts the context in which each of these laboratories operate, although it remains to be seen how much. The most important actors for Federal context remain the US Attorneys assigned to each State, through which federal enforcement takes place. Other important actors include the US Attorney General; the Food and Drug Administration; the emergent Congressional Cannabis Caucus; and national lobbying organizations.

At the local level, nothing has changed. Congress could legalize cannabis tomorrow and local jurisdictions could still find ways to effectively ban cannabis production, distribution, and consumption within their jurisdictions. Their ace in the hole is called “zoning.” At the end of the day, cannabis politics that do not gain local buy-in, at least with respect to removing punishments associated with the human-cannabis relationship, have failed.

CASP 2017

Our broader informational efforts support, and are confirmed by, our annual Whole Plant popular education event, the Original Terpestival (TM). We intend to return this event to Seattle, Washington, on July 15. This will be our third iteration. Given the State’s hostility to cannabis events, we anticipate a degree of difficulty pulling this off, but are up for the challenge. Last year’s event in Hopland, California, was a great success, but failed to raise funds for CASP operations.

Dr. Corva and Dr. Sexton continue to serve our mission through public speaking engagements, volunteer NGO and individual consultation, and paid consulting work. Our primary regular speaking work includes Seattle Hempfest, The Alliance Summit, and the Ganjier’s annual Southern Humboldt fall light deprivation event, the Golden Tarp. You can find us on podcasts, electronic and print media as the occasions arise.

This is the fourth year of our organization’s existence, and we will begin our third year with our own Federal nonprofit status in July. The Board that got us here is now joined by three new members, signaling an important evolution of our organizational structure and dynamic.

Next Steps

This year, we begin with a lot more clarity and a stronger network than ever in achieving CASP’s purpose, promoting a peaceful human-cannabis relationship based on the broader ecological principle of fostering an ecologically healthy society. I am incredibly grateful, as founder and social science research director, for the support and solidarity my co-founder and Medical Science Research Director Dr. Michelle Sexton; my Board; and our numerous solidarity organizations and allies around the world.

It’s always been a strange new world, and the people who create it together have much to do.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

The Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy is pleased to announce the addition of three new Board members, our first major update in three years. Crystal Oliver, Lara Kaminsky, and Jerry Whiting bring much to the table that will be honored in a more thorough welcome announcement, once paperwork is finished, but for now I observe that these three individuals are outstanding community organizers around Whole Plant Politics residing in the State of Washington with whom we have worked for years on key projects.

Their addition is the outcome of a year-long search for candidates who bring diverse perspectives and unique expertise to our core team. We are honored to have these three amazing people accept our invitation, and look forward to elaborating more once the paperwork is complete!

Aromatherapy was defined and coined in 1936 as the use of essential oils, applied topically, orally, or by inhalation to promote health, hygiene and psychological wellbeing.  All kinds of aromatic plants such as lavender, frankincense and rosemary have been used since antiquity for these purposes!

Terpenes and terpenoids are the primary components in essential oils, with about 300 of these traded on the world markets, estimated in 2013 to be worth over $1 billion. They are used in the flavor industry, in cosmetics, the pharmaceutical industry (a German company synthesizes THC from limonene), cleaning products, hair and skin care and for aromatherapy.   They have their own pharmacological activity, penetrate the skin, and also can be toxic to the skin, neurons, and reproduction.

Terpenes are what the compounds that we smell in Cannabis, and the upcoming event: Terpestival™ Terpene Tournament and Festival on July 23rd in Hopland, CA will provide a platform for the industry to further discover and define what :terps” mean for the bottom line, and for specific medical conditions.

The Terpestival™ Terpene Tournament and Festival will host three expert panels discussing these topics in detail:

1) Terpenes in extraction/product making. How does this translate to the market?

2) Terpenes in Growing: How does this translate to the market?

3) Terpenes in Health and Ritual

There is a growing trend in the Cannabis industry to make efforts toward preserving the terpenes during extraction, as well as during curing of the cannabis flower. These compounds are also concentrated with supercritical CO₂ extraction. Whenever the plant is heated in extraction, the terpene ratio dramatically shifts away from the lightest weight compounds, the monoterpenes to the heavier and more complex terpenoids or sesquiterpenes.

Plants of the same genus that are almost identical in appearance can produce profoundly different chemotypes, as evidenced by Cannabis species.  This unique “fingerprint” of each species or varietal is why a particular one may be your favorite.

For example, a top-selling variety on the West Coast (where it was bred) and in Colorado is Blue Dream.   This strain came from a cross of a Blueberry, reported to be heavily “indica” with Super Silver Haze, a “sativa”. One of the reasons that this may be a popular strain is due to the unique balance of the terpenes: pinene and myrcene.  Here is the terpene profile from 11 Blue Dreams grown in Washington State:

When the afghanica strains (came with the “purples”) were introduced and bred into the genetics, beginning around the mid 1990’s, the terpenoids were resurrected and also began to dominate the industry. When the purples were introduced, there was an explosion of smell (floral and fruity), and these were the first truly branded varietals. This was because the quality has always been defined to the growers by the terps! Does the smell attract you? Then go for that variety!

Terpenes are affected by growing conditions, plant genetics, nutrient availability and plant “stress” such as heat, drought and water. Plant stress is actually what may increase the production of these chemicals. In addition, when harvest occurs and how the plant is handled and cured after harvest are important factors for preserving the individual terpene profile of each plant.

When the terpenes from essential oils are inhaled, we have specific receptors in our nose (olfactory bulb) for recognizing scent. When these receptors are bound by a terpene, electrical signals are sent to the brain. Linda Buck with Richard Axel won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for this discovery. These “chemoreceptors” are also found in the lining of the gut on what are called enteroendocrine cells, that may signal hormonal or neuronal pathways.

The take-away message is:   “don’t let your cannabis selection be defined just by the cannabinoid profile”.   The terps need to be used along with the cannabinoid profile for the end-user to be satisfied. One way to tell whether your bud is fresh and pleasing, is to smell it!  This is also one indicator for medical use and how a patient may know if a product is going to work for them! This scent is what is going to drive the market!   Start requesting the terpenoid profile from your dispensary or supplier and compare the varietals.  Pinene and terpinolene are two that are more rare, and you should be on the look-out for. Why?  Come to the Terpestival and find out!!

The growing demographic of sophisticated Cannabis connoisseur cares about much more than the THC or CBD content. 

To enter the Terpene Tournament™

To buy tickets to the Terpestival™

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

About ten years ago, while drinking with fellow graduate students at Flowers on the Ave, I encountered a perspective on drug policy that threw a wrench on my critique of the US war on coca in Bolivia. My friend Wendy, who I think was writing (yet another, I thought) a philosophy dissertation on Nietzche, suggested that perhaps ending the global drug war in Bolivia was a terrible idea. It would collapse the price of coca and ruin an agricultural livelihood that kept thousands of mostly indigenous Bolivians from extreme poverty. We were drunk-ish, and I remember feeling a slight panic as I searched for a response to this challenge to a fundamental paradigm I was carrying, that the drug war was simply BAD. I found a response that worked for me, which was that however true that may be, the social movement I was studying seemed to think ending the US drug war in Bolivia was a good idea. And they did, pretty much: Evo Morales was elected to the presidency, and then again, and then again … it didn’t end practices of coca eradication but it did pretty much end the US direction of that agenda.

Thus goes the postcolonial world.

But the ambivalence towards plant policing lodged in my brain and I’ve carried it ever since, albeit with considerably more nuance. When it came to cannabis agriculture in the US, I immediately understood how the liberalization of law, policy, and policing practices in Northern California posed a problem — multiple ones — relating to the extreme wholesale price drop that occurred between 2009 and 2011, which was at least 50% for outdoor cannabis. The watersheds of Humboldt county began to echo with an existential anxiety: how low would prices go, and how long would it be worth it to grow cannabis? Even small farmers began growing more and more to maintain the same income level, and until last year the price drop was thought to be permanent.

The price drop was partly the result of the fact that the virtual end of policing cannabis in Humboldt, in California, and in much of the rest of the US due to the State budget crises and reorganized priorities in the face of the financial crisis signaled a green light for citizens to grow more and more with less fear of getting caught. The small farmers in the watersheds saw mega grows proliferate all around them. The general race to the bottom helped produce disastrous environmental results, especially pertaining to the North Coast water ecology.

So we have two socially disastrous outcomes that were produced in no small part by “controlled substance” law and policy liberalization: livelihoods were threatened and the environment was trashed. These are ongoing phenomena, of course. But they are generalizable in that they give us social questions to ask of particularist policy changes. One of them is, how does legalization eliminate livelihood options and what should be done about that?

This question is especially salient as out national economic “recovery” renders livelihood security a national problem to a degree that was previously associated with the “Third World.” Global financialization as the dominant class project of Modernity means that we are increasingly subject to the whims of financial speculation aimed at capitalizing on bubbles and shifting the costs of modernization to those least able to afford it. This is no longer a Third World problem, and the “Green Rush” in its current iteration is directly connected to that pattern.

Cannabis legalization doesn’t just mean that cannabis markets get regulated and taxed: it means that those with access to capital are positioned to centralize the benefits of market participation, in no small part by displacing and replacing entrepreneurial livelihoods from one segment of the population to another. The way legal systems are designed and implemented can either concentrate this dispossession, or mitigate it.

In Washington State, the decision to replace our Medical Cannabis system entirely rather than build bridges from it to the Legal system has amplified this social problem considerably. Thousands of Washington State citizens are out of work already, and the July 1 takeover date will finish the job. How will those people survive? What jobs will they get? How will they pay their rent, raise their families, or in some cases escape abject poverty at the end of their lives?

This is a major social problem. The economic “recovery” has institutionalized austerity conditions, shrunk the “middle class,” and rendered a significant chunk of our population literally disposable and facing rising costs of living. Washington’s hunger for revenue from regulated cannabis markets has led to unconscionable tax levels that make undercapitalized small businesses almost impossible to sustain. The high cost of entry into legal markets and constantly shifting rules have discouraged most medical cannabis actors from even trying to enter. And many who have tried have failed already or on their way to failure.

In future posts, I will consider the social impact of legalization as class warfare, especially as it applies in Washington State. If any readers want to share their stories, please feel free to send them to dominic@caspcenter.org for consideration.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This may seem like an odd question, and it’s certainly not answerable given that we were never really able to tell what the environmental impact of cannabis prohibition was in Washington. However, we certainly can describe ground conditions set by Phase I of cannabis legalization here, roughly from December 2012-July 1, 2016 (when changes to I 502 from last year’s legislative session fully take over from I 502). Once we know these, we can begin to track the environmental impact of cannabis legalization going forward.

This post does not do that, although it is inspired by progress towards doing that in our forthcoming book, “Phase I of Cannabis Legalization in Washington State: An Ethnographic Report from the Field.” Instead, this post highlights our methodology for describing those ground conditions. It’s pretty simple.

First, we start with the BOTEC white paper from September, 2013, linked on the WSLCB web site, which identifies the main environmental impact policy concern: indoor production.

“We find that the predominant environmental concern in marijuana production is energy use for indoor production (less importantly for greenhouse production) and in particular the climate effects of this energy use. We then turn to the main opportunities for growers to reduce these environmental consequences, finding that the most important is substituting greenhouse and outdoor production for indoor operations, and managing indoor production for reduction of electricity use and especially electricity use during the day. We also sketch some ways the Liquor Control Board (LCB) can encourage better environmental practice in this industry (4 of 32).

If indoor production is “the predominant environmental concern in marijuana production,” then our methodology must be to identify how much of Washington’s production market created in Phase I is in fact indoor production vs greenhouse or outdoor.

One thing must be clear: this is not an indictment of indoor producers, some of which are subsidized for using LED lights; some of which are subsidized by local jurisdictions keen on re-industrializing a busted economy; and some of which intend to bootstrap into greenhouse production sometime in the future. As a result, this is not an indictment of WSLCB policies and rules. It is an objective assessment of the field given the analysis laid out by BOTEC’s WSLCB-endorsed white paper.

This is, therefore, a review of what happened in Phase I, in terms of what kind of cannabis production became possible at the very creation of our state’s legal market. It is subject to continual revision as Phase II develops.

At the moment, the actual data compiled by our sources is not ready for public consumption for a number of reasons. But here’s a rough sketch of what I see, for now.

1. Washington State legal cannabis production is overwhelmingly indoor, driven especially by the development of highly capitalized warehouse operations especially on the West side of the state.
2. Greenhouse production is minimal at best so far, but highly capitalized greenhouse operations on the East side of the state loom like expiration dates for Western warehouse production.
3. Full sun outdoor production is, as you might expect, concentrated on the East side of the state. These operations are mostly devoid of Light Deprivation approaches, which means to me these operations are breathtakingly uninformed and shooting themselves in the foot every season that they delay implementing Light Deprivation crops — multiple ones, not just one.
4. Indoor dominance in the first two years of production was pretty much sealed when the WSLCB failed to approve enough producers in the Spring of 2014, choosing instead to focus on approving Retail before swinging wildly back to producers in July 2014 — too late for any outdoor producers to get in a full season of experience and production.
5. Thus, we are looking at only our second full season of outdoor and greenhouse production. It’s a massive ship to turn around, as indoor capacity has overwhelmed retail capacity by itself in the meantime; but it won’t take too many more full seasons before outdoor production overwhelms indoor production — not just with cheap “oil crops” and material for rolling joints, but boutique, indoor-competitive Light Dep product.
6. And then there’s the pesticide phenomenon: is there an indoor-outdoor aspect to problematic pesticide use in Washington’s legal market?

I’m going to leave that last question dangling. But now you have an idea of how this particular question can be, and is being, answered.

by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

This post is intended to pick up and amplify a few things from MJBA’s David Rheins’ recent interview with Mark Kleiman, Washington’s former “weed czar.”

First, a couple of comments about Kleiman, who is a bit of a controversial figure amongst cannabis people. Critiques of his perspective circle around two things. First, his cannabis politics are those of an outsider. And second, BOTEC, the organization that he heads, is often not just “back of the envelope” but outright off the envelope and onto the table in terms of its published work. I don’t think it’s controversial or negative to speak to both of these Kleiman properties, so to speak.

First, while the man is no Tommy Chong, he’s definitely a huge proponent and user of psychedelics, which means his “outsider” status is not so clear cut when it comes to queer consciousness. LSD was the original counterculture sacrament, with cannabis playing a secondary and more everyday role in hippie lives after the 1960s. In fact, the Brotherhood of Eternal love sold cannabis to finance their mission of getting LSD to the world, not the other way around, according to Nick Schou’s “Orange Sunshine.”  Kleiman certainly seems more inclined than most (all?) psychonauts to toe the stigma that regular cannabis use is a serious public health risk rather than a marker of cultural identity, but that’s clearly a perspective that endears him to the reformist/centrist wing of the anti-drug war movement.

Second, Kleiman uses this report as evidence they got something right in their first round as Washington State consultants, back in 2013. My critique is that this is probably not well-supported, as a result. Literally, the point is so minor I’m not going to get into it. But for me, that means the interview is chock full of “good Kleiman.” So, to the interview itself and my comments, question by question. To see his answers, you’ll have to go to the interview itself, because it deserves traffic.

“It’s been nearly 2 years since Washington State opened its first recreational marijuana market, how well have your market estimates held up?”

See point the second.

What new insights have you had about the legal cannabis market since you first issued your report?

Kleiman concedes something that was pretty obvious to any observers of the local Washington medical market.

Who is the typical recreational cannabis consumer? How much do they consume?

Kleiman’s answer to this is really, really good.

Washington’s marijuana excise tax is 37% Colorado’s is 25% and Oregon is 17%; why such a wide disparity between the legal recreational states?  What should the right level of taxation be?

Kleiman’s answer to this is really, really, really good. Three efficient statements with clear implications for How to Do it Better, although the third one still has an issue. Can you name it?

What are the greatest challenges to the legal cannabis industry?

I like this answer, although I don’t share his challenge priority or some of the reasons he has it. It’s still good, because (spoiler) it clearly indicts the retail bottleneck, which is something policymakers could fix (and could have fixed, for good, in December).

What is the future of legal cannabis in the US? Will we continue to see legalization happen one state at a time, or do you envision an end to Federal prohibition in the not too distant future?

Great answers! And there’s a lot more to be said about why California is important. The question Washington policymakers and the WSLCB should be asking themselves is not whether the Federal government likes their model or not, it’s whether Californians like the WA model. And the answer to that is really, really clear: they do not. The coming struggle will be between California’s model and the Federal model, not between Washington and other states — although Washington is apparently in favor with the Feds, according to a high level NORML friend of mine.

Thus concludes my analysis of this excellent, focused interview with one of the more influential cannabis policy persons on this planet, in terms of who will listen to him. I’m not on team Kleiman, but I’m interested in common ground as it becomes apparent. Thanks to David R. for making space for this.

Don E. Wirtshafter, Kari Boiter, Dr. Dominic Corva, John Davis, Kevin Oliver, Rachel Kurtz on the State of the State in Washington a public event at Hempfest 2015.