San Diego: Medical Marijuana Growers Face Risky Legal Environment

November 23, 2009 – Patients with a doctor’s recommendation can legally possess and smoke marijuana in California for medical purposes. But where do they get their pot? The recent crackdown on marijuana dispensaries in San Diego has raised questions about legality of growing it and selling it.

California law says patients and caregivers can form collectives or cooperatives to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes. And that’s what Josh Bilben said he’s doing. He said he’s providing a place for patients, who don’t grow, to get medication from people who do.”

“One of the big concerns that communities, city planner, everybody has is where is this coming from,”said Bilben. “And what I’m able to say is this is coming from right here. No other place.”

Bilben is the director of Delta Nine Therapy, a medical marijuana collective in San Diego. He spoke as he pushed aside a metal cage door and unzipped a plastic sheet, that covers the inside of a seven by seven foot room containing 24 marijuana plants. The room is one of two locations where his collective grows product. Banks of lights hover over the plants. A fan keeps the air moving and a humidifier puts out a stream of vapor. Bilben says he’s growing a variety of plants.

“Now the Indica, the Purple Kush… when you take that it basically, in stoner terms, is called a couch lock,” said Bilben. “You sit on the couch. You don’t get up. You don’t really think about a whole lot. Like I said, the purple Kush is really good for chronic pain.”

The collection of plants doesn’t look like very much. But Bilben hopes, once the plants reach their flowering apex, they will provide ten pounds of smokable buds for him and three other patients. The collective charges its members 18 dollars a gram for Purple Kush to cover the cost of production.

In September, San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced raids on 14 medical marijuana operations. She accused the dispensaries of earning a profit and selling to anyone who came in the door, both of which violate state law. Dumanis and police chief Bill Landsdowne went on to say they knew of no medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego that were following the law.

But Josh Bilben believes he is following the law. Will Johnson does too. Johnson is director of the Kind Gardeners Collective, which grows plants in several San Diego locations.

“We have somebody’s patio. Somebody’s spare bedroom. We have an area in a commercial office. And this next month we’ll have the basement of a residential home,” said Johnson.

Johnson speaks from the patio of his Kensington home, located on the same street where the San Diego mayor resides. The growth of the medical marijuana business has raised concerns that dispensaries have gotten marijuana from illegal sources. Johnson says that’s certainly possible.

“Is there a loophole where the cartel can come in and join the collective, and then start supplying the collective? I can imagine that,” he said. “But think about that. Because we’re not talking about Mexican pot being brought up here, because no dispensary is going to sell Mexi. It’s crap.”

The tussle over medical marijuana in California heated up last week when the District Attorney of Los Angeles said his office would prosecute any collective that sold marijuana. In September, San Diego DA Bonnie Dumanis said patients who need medical marijuana should grow their own.

But while state guidelines require marijuana operations to be non-profit, they do not say sales are illegal. Josh Bilben points out his marijuana collective generates state sales tax. Alex Kreit, the chairman of San Diego Medical Marijuana Task Force, adds that the law makes no requirement that patients just grow their own. He makes the comparison between a marijuana cooperative and a food coop.

“Anyone who’s been a member of a food cooperative knows, it’s not like everyone who’s a member has to come in and grow their own turnips and grow their own radishes,” said Kreit. “I think that is just not consistent with what is meant by a collective and cooperative, and what the law contemplates as a collective and cooperative.”

The task force is writing recommendations to the San Diego City Council as to how medical marijuana businesses should be permitted and regulated. By Tom Fudge. Source.

 

Texas Man with Multiple Sclerosis seeks Legalization of Medical Marijuana

GARLAND, Texas – For 22 years, Tim Timmons has fought the pain of multiple sclerosis.

Prescribed medicine couldn’t stop the spasms or help him sleep, he said. Ultimately, Timmons said, relief came in the form of illegal marijuana, which is why he is now pushing for the drug to be legalized.

While 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, Texas isn’t one of them. Timmons said he wants that to change since he feels like he’s been forced to support organized crime.

“I have to support black market crime, but they’re the ones forcing me to do it,” he said. “I don’t want to support organized crime more than anyone would.”

Studies have shown that marijuana can ease muscle spasms and numb pain.

The Texas legislature voted down the last three medical marijuana bills that would have given doctors the authority to prescribe the drug.

In the past, lawmakers defended the ban on medical marijuana by citing the American Medical Associations’ position on the topic. But, after 72 years, that position may be changing. The AMA announced last Tuesday that it’s reversing its policy of classifying the drug as a Schedule 1 narcotic, stating that the issue needs to be reviewed. The announcement was in response to a new medical report by the AMA’s Council on Science and Public Health, which detailed various medical benefits.

Many pharmacists and doctors argue that those benefits can be obtained through legalized drugs that contain the active ingredient in marijuana, THC.

“What they fail to understand is there is THC available in a legal dose called Marinol,” said Donna Barsky, a Plano pharmacist. “It’s a prescription item. All a doctor has to do is write a prescription for it.”

Opponents of medical marijuana say it’s healthier because smoking the drug can pull unhealthy substances into the lungs.

“Marinol just plain doesn’t work, or causes worse situations than you had starting off,” Timmons said.

Another medical marijuana bill is expected to be filled in the Texas legislature in 2011. by Steve Stoler Source.

 

Support for Legalizing Marijuana Grows Rapidly around U.S.

November 23, 2009 – The same day they rejected a gay marriage ballot measure, residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries.

Later in the month, the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin and cocaine.

A few days later, advocates for easing marijuana laws left their biannual strategy conference with plans to press ahead on all fronts — state law, ballot measures, and court — in a movement that for the first time in decades appeared to be gaining ground.

“This issue is breaking out in a remarkably rapid way now,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Public opinion is changing very, very rapidly.”

The shift is widely described as generational. A Gallup poll in October found 44 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana — a rise of 13 points since 2000. Gallup said that if public support continues growing at a rate of 1 to 2 percent per year, “the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years.”

A 53 percent majority already does so in the West, according to the survey. The finding heartens advocates collecting signatures to put the question of legalization before California voters in a 2010 initiative.

At last week’s International Drug Reform Conference, activists gamed specific proposals for taxing and regulating pot along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol, as a bill pending in the California Legislature would do. The measure is not expected to pass, but in urging its serious debate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) gave credence to a potential revenue source that the state’s tax chief said could raise $1.3 billion in the recession, which advocates describe as a boon.

There were also tips on lobbying state legislatures, where measures decriminalizing possession of small amounts have passed in 14 states. Activists predict half of states will have laws allowing possession for medical purposes in the near future.

Interest in medical marijuana and easing other marijuana laws picked up markedly about 18 months ago, but advocates say the biggest surge came with the election of Barack Obama, the third straight president to acknowledge having smoked marijuana, and the first to regard it with anything like nonchalance.

“As a kid, I inhaled,” Barack Obama famously said on the campaign. “That was the whole point.”

In office, Obama made good on a promise to halt federal prosecutions of medical marijuana use where permitted by state law. That has recalibrated the federal attitude, which had been consistently hostile to marijuana since the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon cast aside the recommendations of a presidential commission arguing against lumping pot with hard drugs.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he was astonished recently to be invited to contribute thoughts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, was police chief in Seattle, where voters officially made enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority.

“I’ve been thrown out of the ONDCP many times,” St. Pierre said. “Never invited to actually participate.”

Anti-drug advocates counter with surveys showing high school students nationwide already are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco — and that the five states with the highest rate of adolescent pot use permit medical marijuana.

“We are in the prevention business,” said Arthur Dean, chairman of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. “Kids are getting the message tobacco’s harmful, and they’re not getting the message marijuana is.”

In Los Angeles, city officials are dealing with elements of public backlash after more than 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries opened, some employing in-house physicians to dispense legal permission to virtually all comers. The boom town atmosphere brought complaints from some neighbors, but little of the crime associated with underground drug-dealing.

Advocates cite the latter as evidence that, as with alcohol, violence associated with the marijuana trade flows from its prohibition.

“Seriously,” said Bruce Merkin, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group based in the District, “there is a reason you don’t have Mexican beer cartels planting fields of hops in the California forests.”

But the controversy over the dispensaries also has put pressure on advocates who specifically champion access for ailing patients, not just those who champion easing marijuana laws.

“I don’t want to say we keep arm’s length from the other groups. You end up with all of us in the same room,” said Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which has led the court battle for medical marijuana and is squaring off with the Los Angeles City Council. “It’s a very broad-based movement.”
By Karl Vick. Source.

 

California’s Medical Marijauna Patients Expanded To Include Teenagers

At the Peace in Medicine Healing Center in Sebastopol, the wares on display include dried marijuana — featuring brands like Kryptonite, Voodoo Daddy and Train Wreck — and medicinal cookies arrayed below a sign saying, “Keep Out of Reach of Your Mother.”

The warning tells a story of its own: some of the center’s clients are too young to buy themselves a beer.

Several Bay Area doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to include teenagers with psychiatric conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“It’s not everybody’s medicine, but for some, it can make a profound difference,” said Valerie Corral, a founder of the Wo/Men’s Alliance forMedical Marijuana, a patients’ collective in Santa Cruz that has two dozen minors as registered clients.

Because California does not require doctors to report cases involving medical marijuana, no reliable data exist for how many minors have been authorized to receive it. But Dr. Jean Talleyrand, who founded MediCann, a network in Oakland of 20 clinics who authorize patients to use the drug, said his staff members had treated as many as 50 patients ages 14 to 18 who had A.D.H.D. Bay Area doctors have been at the forefront of the fierce debate about medical marijuana , winning tolerance for people with grave illnesses like terminal cancer and AIDS. Yet as these doctors use their discretion more liberally, such support — even here — may be harder to muster, especially when it comes to using marijuana to treat adolescents with A.D.H.D.

“How many ways can one say ‘one of the worst ideas of all time?’ ” asked Stephen Hinshaw, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. He cited studies showing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention, memory and concentration — functions already compromised in people with the attention-deficit disorder.

Advocates are just as adamant, though they are in a distinct minority. “It’s safer than aspirin,” Dr. Talleyrand said. He and other marijuana advocates maintain that it is also safer than methylphenidate (Ritalin), the stimulant prescription drug most often used to treat A.D.H.D. That drug has documented potential side effects including insomnia, depression, facial tics and stunted growth.

In 1996, voters approved a ballot proposition making California the first state to legalize medical marijuana. Twelve other states have followed suit — allowing cannabis for several specified, serious conditions including cancer and AIDS — but only California adds the grab-bag phrase “for any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

This has left those doctors willing to “recommend” cannabis — in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of medical marijuana, they cannot legally prescribe it — with leeway that some use to a daring degree. “You can get it for a backache,” said Keith Stroup, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Nonetheless, expanding its use among young people is controversial even among doctors who authorize medical marijuana.

Gene Schoenfeld, a doctor in Sausalito, said, “I wouldn’t do it for anyone under 21, unless they have a life-threatening problem such as cancer or AIDS.”

Dr. Schoenfeld added, “It’s detrimental to adolescents who chronically use it, and if it’s being used medically, that implies chronic use.”

Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said she was particularly worried about the risk of dependency — a risk she said was already high among adolescents and people with attention-deficit disorder.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, however, patients and doctors have been reporting that marijuana helps alleviate some of the symptoms, particularly the anxiety and anger that so often accompany A.D.H.D. The disorder has been diagnosed in more than 4.5 million children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers have linked the use of marijuana by adolescents to increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia for people genetically predisposed to those illnesses. However, one 2008 report in the journal Schizophrenia Research suggested that the incidence of mental health problems among adolescents with the disorder who used marijuana was lower than that of nonusers.

Marijuana is “a godsend” for some people with A.D.H.D., said Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist who has written several books on the disorder. However, Dr. Hallowell said he discourages his patients from using it, both because it is — mostly — illegal, and because his observations show that “it can lead to a syndrome in which all the person wants to do all day is get stoned, and they do nothing else.”

Until the age of 18, patients requesting medical marijuana must be accompanied to the doctor’s appointment and to the dispensaries by a parent or authorized caregiver. Some doctors interviewed said they suspected that in at least some cases, parents were accompanying their children primarily with the hope that medical authorization would allow the adolescents to avoid buying drugs on the street.

A recent University of Michigan study found that more than 40 percent of high school students had tried marijuana.

“I don’t have a problem with that, as long as we can have our medical conversation,” Dr. Talleyrand said, adding that patients must have medical records to be seen by his doctors.

The Medical Board of California began investigating Dr. Talleyrand in the spring, said a board spokeswoman, Candis Cohen, after a KGO-TV report detailed questionable practices at MediCann clinics, which, the report said, had grossed at least $10 million in five years.

Dr. Talleyrand and his staff members are not alone in being willing to recommend marijuana for minors. In Berkeley, Dr. Frank Lucido said he was questioned by the medical board but ultimately not disciplined after he authorized marijuana for a 16-year-old boy with A.D.H.D. who had tried Ritalin unsuccessfully and was racking up a record of minor arrests.

Within a year of the new treatment, he said, the boy was getting better grades and was even elected president of his special-education class. “He was telling his mother: ‘My brain works. I can think,’ ” Dr. Lucido said.

“With any medication, you weigh the benefits against the risks,” he added.

Even so, MediCann patients who receive the authorization must sign a form listing possible downsides of marijuana use, including “mental slowness,” memory problems, nervousness, confusion, “increased talkativeness,” rapid heartbeat, difficulty in completing complex tasks and hunger. “Some patients can become dependent on marijuana,” the form also warns.

The White House’s recent signals of more federal tolerance for state medical marijuana laws — which pointedly excluded sales to minors — reignited the debate over medical marijuana.

Some advocates, like Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard University, suggest that medical marijuana’s stigma has less to do with questions of clinical efficacy and more to do with its association, in popular culture, with illicit pleasure and addiction.

Others, like Alberto Torrico of Fremont, the majority leader of the California Assembly, argue for more oversight in general. “The marijuana is a lot more powerful these days than when we were growing up, and too much is being dispensed for nonmedical reasons,” he said in an interview last week, bluntly adding, “Any children being givenmedical marijuana is unacceptable.”

As advocates of increased acceptance try to win support, they may find their serious arguments compromised by the dispensaries’ playful atmosphere.

OrganiCann, a dispensary in Santa Rosa, has a Web site advertisement listing the “medible of the week” — butterscotch rock candy — invitingly photographed in a gift box with a ribbon. OrganiCann also offers a 10 percent discount, every Friday, for customers with a valid student ID. Source.

 

Hemp Processing in Canada – 50% Goes to U.S.

A representative of HempOil Canada discusses the processing of hemp and materials made of hemp used in a myriad of products mainly destined for the United States:

 

What would Marijuana Legalization look like?

November 22, 2009 – With multiple initiatives in circulation and an Assembly bill gathering headlines, discussions about legalizing marijuana have become part of California’s political discourse.

Advocates on one side argue that the result will be an economic boon as tax revenues rolls in and jails rid themselves of nonviolent offenders. Defenders of prohibition say legalization would be a nightmare of stoned kids, addiction and highway deaths.

Or maybe the reality would be a lot more mundane.

“Most of the popular debate is dominated by two groups—avid pro-marijuana crowd, and the true prohibitionists,” said Michael Vitiello, a University of Pacific law professor who has written several articles on the topic, including a recent Wisconsin Law Review piece looking at the potential for legalization in California. Both sides, he said, are prone to “gross overstatements.”

By contrast, Vitiello calls himself a “tepid legalizer.” On the one hand, he said, he doesn’t “expect Western civilization as we know it to end” if pot becomes legal. He points to the widely-circulated statistic that per capita marijuana in the Netherlands, where pot has essentially been legal for years, is half that of the U.S — partially, he said, because few there view the drug as “cool.”

Medical research, Vitiello said, is increasingly pointing to the idea that people choose or avoid certain drugs based on their own brain chemistry. Marijuana is already so prevalent in California, he said, that most people who would use it probably already are.

On the other hand, he said he doubts projections that legalization will result in big tax revenues and thousands of non-violent offenders leaving prisons. The bigger impact would probably come on local jails, where many people head for a period after a marijuana arrest but never actually go to prison.

“The idea that we’re going to empty our prisons and save a billion, I don’t know how they’re getting that number,” Vitiello said.

Most in the debate agree that very few people are going to prison in California merely for smoking pot. The bigger issue is how many people are going back to prison on a parole violation of failing a drug test for marijuana. This has become a major rallying point for pro-legalization activists.

“My estimate is that there are thousands of people today in state prison in California for having done nothing but smoking marijuana because they were on parole,” said James Gray, a retired Orange County Superior Court judge who has become a major legalization and libertarian activists.

According to Corrections spokesman Paul Verke, only 256 were found to have violated parole in California last year solely for failing a marijuana test. He added that he did not know how many of these were returned to custody. Some in the legalization community say they have been seeking these figures, unsuccessfully, for years. “CCR will say it’s not many, parole officers will say they never do that, but on the other had we know family members who say that they have,” said Margaret Dooley- Sammuli, deputy state director with the Drug Policy Alliance. “Clearly this is an area where we don’t know what happening, and clearly this is a problem.”

Another area where the actual effect would be unclear is on tax revenue. The legalization initiative filed by the founder’s of Oakland’s Oaksterdam University, which teaches students about cultivation and other aspects of the medical marijuana business, cites a figure of $15 billion in illegal marijuana sales in California annually. While estimates vary, few contest that pot is California’s top cash crop, easily outpacing our state’s vaunted wine industry.

That initiative calls for unspecified taxes. AB 390, the marijuana legalization bill being carried by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, calls for a tax of $50 an ounce. Growers would pay a licensing fee of $5,000, with a $2,500 annual renewal. While it’s very unlikely AB 390 will get anywhere, some have pointed to these fees as a possible model of taxation.

But the state would be trying to overlay these taxes on an already-thriving illegal market, with numerous large operations already running without the knowledge of authorities. Legalization would also likely inspire more people to grow their own. Few people are going to grow and ferment their own wine, or grow and roll their own tobacco for that matter. But small amounts of marijuana can be successfully grown by anyone who can keep a houseplant alive.

In fact, Vitiello said, there is a natural tension between the desire to relax law enforcement and the hope of brining in tax revenue. If not reporting a crop is nothing more than a minor tax offense, he said, there will be little incentive for most people to report to the Franchise Tax Board. Making penalties strong enough to get people to report, however, could actually send more people to prison, at least in the short term.

John Lovell, lobbyist for the California Peace Officers Association and several other law enforcement groups, scoffs at the idea that legal pot would be a moneymaker for the state.

“The hard dollars will be far more than any revenue that is brought in through any kind of spurious tax effort,” Lovell said.

Lovell referred to studies from Maryland and British Columbia that he said point to the dangers of people driving while under the influence of marijuana—a problem he said would get much worse under legalization. He also pointed to a RAND Corp. study he said that shows pot taxes would be a fraction of what proponents claim. Most of the tax penalties in current bills and initiatives, he said, amount to little more than “licensing fees.”

Another issue is the penalties for selling to minors. Many proponents have said the penalties should be similar to those for adults who procure alcohol for kids. Both the Ammiano bill and Oaksterdam initiative allow legislative leeway in determining what these penalties should be.

“These things are negotiable,” Ammiano said. “My druthers are that we do look at sentencing and determinate sentencing. There are obviously areas we can negotiate on.”

Then there’s the question of where people could buy it. Most models point to a highly-regulated distribution system, perhaps akin to the state-run liquor stores in Washington State.

There could also be major local differences. There’s already been a decade of testing on what this might look like, in the form of the medical marijuana dispensaries that have been operating since California voters passed Proposition 215 by a wide margin in 1996. Some areas, particularly Los Angeles, have reported significant problems, with a large number of dispensaries operating. The more likely model might be West Hollywood, which operates a small number of heavily-regulated but thriving operations.

“What it’s going to look like in the future will entirely depend on the locals,” said Dale Clare, executive chancellor of Oaksterdam.

Clare also said that they’re set to pass half a million signatures on their initiative by next week. Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee has been quoted saying they will be able to marshal $20 million in donations to the initiative once it lands on next year’s ballot—a figure likely to be countered by millions from group’s opposing the measure.

Clare also points to an April Field Poll that found that 56 percent of voters would approve a legalization measure. This conflicts with a Capitol Weekly/Probolsky Research poll earlier this month that found likely voters opposed such a measure, 52 percent to 38 percent.

But the trend lines are clearly headed towards legalization. A February article on the popular political blog FiveThirtyEight.com said that support for marijuana legalization nationwide had passed the 40 percent threshold. Given greater support among younger voters and greatest opposition from older ones, “legalization would achieve 60 percent support at some point in 2022 or 2023,” according to author Nate Silver.

“If it goes to the ballot and fails, we’re that much closer for 2012,” Clare said. “This is an education campaign.”

 

Hemp Agriculture Doing Well in Canada

November 22, 2009 – Hemp is at the point where canola was 30 years ago.

That was one of the messages at the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance’s national convention in Winnipeg this week.

Keith Watson, Hemp Specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says the industry continues go grow.

He says they’ve seen an average of 20 percent growth in the hemp industry over the last five years.

While it can be said that hemp is at the same stage as canola was 30 years ago, watson predicts it will take half the time for hemp to become a staple in Manitoba crop rotations.

Meanwhile, grain yields were lower than normal for this year’s hemp crop.

Height was around average.

Watson says the cool weather set the crop back and yields would have been even lower if September had not been much warmer than normal.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 acres of hemp were grown in Manitoba this year.

That’s about twice as much as in 2007 and 2008 but nowhere close to the record number of acres grown in 2006. Source.

 

Building with Hemp in America: The Forefront of a New Green Construction Technique

November 22, 2009 – Leave it to Asheville N.C. to be the first place in the country to build not just one, but two houses largely out of hemp.

Well-established as a green building center, Asheville has two homes under construction – one in West Asheville, another off Town Mountain Road – that use hemp as a building material. The builders and Greg Flavall, the co-founder of Hemp Technologies, the Asheville company supplying the building material, maintain that they’re the first permitted hemp homes in the country.

“This area is known to walk the talk of being green,” Flavall said, adding that the Asheville area has by far the largest percentage of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, builders of anywhere in the country. Hemp is derived from the same plant that marijuana comes from. Although it contains very little of the active ingredient that gets people high and is completely impractical to smoke, it’s still illegal to grow it domestically.

But builders can import industrial hemp products like Tradical Hemcrete, the material Hemp Technologies sells. When mixed with water and lime, it makes remarkably strong, resilient walls. Some builders generically refer to the walls as hempcrete.

Clarke Snell, of the Nauhaus Group, a collaborative of local companies building the West Asheville home at 67 Talmadge St., describes the resulting structures as “forever” walls. Should you take a wall down, the hemp inside is also reusable.

“Basically, the only thing that can tear this wall down is water,” Snell said, adding that it would have to be a steady stream.

Flavall said the last study done in Europe puts the life span of hemp walls at 700-800 years.

“And even at the end of that, you can use it as fertilizer on a field,” he said.

How it works

The hempcrete mixture starts with 55-pound bales of Tradical Hemcrete brand hemp shiv, or ground-up hemp plant stalks. Workers mix it into a standard concrete mixer, four parts hemp, one part lime and one part water. They pour the resulting slurry into small containers and then pack it between plastic forms that raise a wall two feet at a time. The walls are built around standard stick-built framing.

It takes about a day for a wall to dry and about two weeks before it’s ready for exterior or interior coatings of lime stucco or plaster. Even with those coatings, the material still breathes.

“One of the main reasons I was drawn to the lime and hemp mixture is the breathability – there’s no mold, no mildew,” said Anthony Brenner, whose company, Push Interior/Architectural Design + BuildTechnologies, is building the Town Mountain home. “The lime is constantly taking in carbon, so it’s carbon-negative.”

Hempcrete is also a natural deterrent to insects, and it’s extremely fire-resistant, mainly because of the high lime content. It takes about 2 acres worth of hemp to do one house.

Cost calculations

Hempcrete is more expensive upfront than traditional building materials, mainly because of the shipping costs. Flavall says his company has to import it from Europe, which about doubles the cost.

For the Town Mountain home, he’ll use about 1,875 cubic feet of hempcrete, at a total cost of about $56,250.

That’s higher than typical construction, but Flavall says you’ll net a 30-40 percent reduction in framing costs because less lumber is needed. You also have the potential for a lighter foundation because the hempcrete walls are lighter. Also, homeowners may be eligible for a 10 percent reduction in insurance rates because the product is so flame-retardant.

Nauhaus partner Chris Cashman points out another major advantage: “With this, it’s your Sheetrock, insulation and Tyvek (moisture barrier) all rolled into one.”

Calculating the cost of a Hempcrete home gets complicated.

“We think we can build a house like our prototype for anywhere from parity for a high-end custom home – think Biltmore Village – to 5-15 percent more for a typical home,” Snell said. “However, that’s not the point because construction cost is not your monthly cost.”

He points out that a typical homeowner’s monthly home costs include the bank mortgage, utilities, maintenance, insurance and more. If you’re building a house that uses 15 percent of the energy of a conventional home, then you can take money saved on utilities and put it into construction and end up with the same monthly cost.

“Our mission is to provide carbon-neutral housing for the same monthly cost as a typical home,” Snell said.

Tim Callahan, another of the Nauhaus partners, puts it this way: “The reason it begins to be affordable is because we’ve reduced the energy loads so much.”

The costs over the long haul should appeal to the green-minded.

“The bottom line of this and a traditional house is it’s about cost-neutral,” Brenner said.

Labor-wise, it’s quicker to put up the hemp and plaster than all those other materials like Sheetrock and insulation. Brenner said it will take them about a week to get all the hemp walls up. The Nauhaus guys have put up a test wall and are waiting on the plastic forms from Brenner to do all their walls.

Model efficiency

The house Brenner is building will have 12-inch thick walls, while the house on Talmadge Street will boast 16-inch thick walls and will be 80 percent more efficient than code requirements – so efficient that Snell claims it could be heated solely by the body heat of 18 people.

Besides hemp walls, the 1,450-square-foot, four-bedroom house will have solar panels on the roof to generate enough electricity to power the home, with a surplus. It will have an earthen exterior made from the soil on site, rainwater gathered from the roof and a mostly edible landscape.

The home will be a prototype that the Nauhaus group will use for tours and education.

The house will be owned by the Nauhaus Group itself, although chief engineer Jeff Buscher and his family will live it for two years before it’s sold to allow for energy-efficiency analysis and other research.

Brenner is building the 3,100-square-foot Town Mountain home for Russ Martin, a former Asheville mayor and retired stockbroker, and his wife, Karen Corp. “We’re not afraid of trying something new,” Martin said. “We’ve always been adventurous that way, and this looks like it’s going to work out really well.”

Snell stressed that getting the Nauhaus going has involved a massive, collaborative effort involving multiple local companies.

Based in Asheville, the project is led by Think Green Building, Eco Concepts Development, Eco Concepts Realty and Green Plan.

Both Brenner and the Nauhaus partners want to expand hemp building far and wide.

Brenner said he’s working on a commercial project in Maggie Valley and another home in the Leicester area.

And they’d love to see farmers have a chance to grow hemp legally.

“Our feeling is: What a great crop this would be for North Carolina’s tobacco growers to get into,” said Callahan, the Nauhaus partner. “Bringing this in from England is probably not the greatest idea (economically). If local farmers can benefit from this, it would be great for them and great for the economy.”

Still, as Snell puts it, right now “what you have is a product that you can’t grow but you can buy” in the United States.

Brenner thinks the technology will take off when potential homeowners and developers come to understand its advantages.

“We’ve been seeing interest from all over the country,” Brenner said.

“People are truly interested in green construction and green building, and I don’t know how much more green you can get than this.”

Flavall said another hemp house will start up next year in Franklin, and he’s receiving strong interest in other projects.

“I’m seriously of the belief that we’re making history here,” he said.

By John Boyle Source. On the Net:

 

Employers Wonder If They Have to Chill Out Over Medical Marijuana Use

Medical marijuana laws are having an odd effect on many employers: They’re dazed and confused about their obligations to workers who use pot for health reasons.

Employment lawyers say employers are unsure about how far they have to go to accommodate medical marijuana users. Many question whether they’re even required to tolerate medical marijuana use, which is now legal in 13 states. Another six additional states, including New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, are considering medical marijuana bills.

Adding to employers’ concerns is the U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement last month that it would no longer prosecute medical marijuana users, which leaves such matters in the hands of state and local governments.

“It has really come onto everyone’s radar screen,” said Danielle Urban of the Denver office of Atlanta’s Fisher & Phillips. “I’m getting calls from employers saying, ‘I have an employee who tested positive for medical marijuana. What can I do? Can I fire that employee?’”

Her answer? It depends.

Urban said that under federal law, employers are not prohibited from taking adverse actions against someone who tests positive for marijuana. But Colorado permits medical marijuana, and another state law says it’s illegal for an employer to fire someone for engaging in legal, off-duty behavior.

And then there’s the Americans With Disabilities Act to consider. Under the ADA, an employee fired for using pot for health reasons could file a discrimination lawsuit.

“It’s a gray area to know what you can do,” Urban said. “But I think it’s still risky to just fire someone for using it.”

Richard Hurford of the Bloomfield Hills, Mich., office of Ogletree Deakins, has spent the last several months fielding calls from employers inquiring about Michigan’s new medical marijuana law, which went into effect in April. Since then, more than 5,000 Michiganders have registered as medical marijuana users.

He said a key issue for employers is what to do with their zero-tolerance polices. “Those zero-tolerance policies, particularly if someone has been prescribed marijuana, will obviously need to be modified if doing so is deemed a reasonable accommodation by a court or a jury,” Hurford said.

To date, no one has challenged Michigan’s law, Hurford said. But courts elsewhere, he noted, have favored employers in medical marijuana cases.

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that even in states with medical marijuana laws, an employer can refuse to accept medical marijuana as a reasonable explanation for a positive drug test. Then in 2005, the high court ruled that the federal government may enforce the Controlled Substances Act’s prohibition on medical marijuana against those who use the drug under state laws.

In 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that employers can fire workers who use medical marijuana under the state’s Compassionate Use Act—even if they are off duty and even if job performance is not affected—because it’s illegal under federal law.

“Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees,” wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdeger. “Under California law, an employer may require pre-employment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions.”

 

Cannabis Cures Prostate Cancer

November 21, 2009 – Chemicals found in cannabis leaves can be used to stop prostate cancer cells. The researchers hope that cannabis leaves can be used as a remedy for the treatment of prostate cancer.

After focusing on the network on human cancer cells,Ines Diaz-Laviada and colleagues from the University of Alcala in Madrid, also investigated the effects of the chemicals on canabis leaves on mice and the fact that the substance is capable to reduce the cancer growth significantly.

The study is published in the British Journal of Cancer. Now in the world of research, there have been many studies that examine the medical uses of cannabinoids, the chemical substance found in cannabis.

This experts focused on the research done over the years devoted to seeking the best care in dealing with cancer in humans.

“This is an interesting study that opens the way to develop a potential drug. But this is only new in the early stages, “said Lesley Walker, Director of Cancer Information, Cancer Research UK, England.

She also explained that this does not mean that the men who use cannabis can automatically avoid prostate cancer.

The cannabinoids substances are investigated by the Spanish team which is requested to conduct the research in the fight against prostate cancer. This substance can block the receptors, the entrance of molecules, which is on the tumor cell surface. It is able to stop tumor cells to break away and growing.

“These chemicals can stop the division and the development of prostate cancer cells.” Source.