Green: The First 12 Months of Modern American Marijuana Reform

Green

The First 12 Months of Modern American Marijuana Reform

A Novel Memoir

By

Marguerite Arnold

Edited by Abul-Hasanat Siddique

© 2019, Marguerite Arnold

ISBN: 9780463295397

Distributed by Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite online retailer and purchase a separate copy.

To Aragorn

All that is gold does not glitter. All those who wander are not lost.

Contents

Preface

Timeline - Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away

Prologue

Chapter 1 - January: Rocky Mountain High

Chapter 2 - February: The Spanish Inquisition Meets Medical Marijuana

Chapter 3 March: Q1 – Real Time Market Update

Chapter 4 - April: Black, Refrigerated & Armored – The Biz Revolutionizes The Industry

Chapter 5 - May: E Plurabis Cannabis Conundrum Est – Federal Law & The Weed

Chapter 6 - June: Girls With Guns, Medical Emergencies & National Political Tinderboxes

Chapter 7- July: We’re Not In Kansas Anymore – The First Rec Only Market

Chapter 8 - August: Plumbing and Sewage

Chapter 9 - September: F*ck it, I quit and Other Aspects of Cannabis-Related Employment

Chapter 10 - October: I Love the Smell of Marijuana in the Morning — Veterans’ Affairs

Chapter 11 - November: The Midterms: States’ Rights, Voters’ Voices & New Horizons

Chapter 12 - December: Interlude Rather Than Epilogue

Notes

Post Script

Bios

Preface

This a republishing of a book first published in 2015.

It was my first published book and my first on the cannabis industry. That includes a retelling of some of the more momentous events of 2014, and of course profiles of a few of the people, organizations and companies that drove it forward. But it also includes its impact as an industry going the other way and the forces that created such an opening for a reform movement if not disruptive industry beyond that, a hundred years in the making, globally. It was a great project and allowed me to grow in many ways. That said, I took it down from its website and various online distribution portals during my time in business school for various reasons, including the fact that my classmates at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Frankfurt where I landed shortly thereafter publication, thought it was too radical a prospect (even in 2015).

Obviously time has marched on, I obtained my EMBA, and of course, the industry has exploded globally since then including in Canada, Germany and across Europe of course, but as of early 2019, far beyond that, into Africa and Asia.

The past four years have certainly been as revolutionary. It is interesting to me, reading back through the book occasionally, how much I got right. It is also still sad that so many of the same issues exist, at this point, far beyond the United States, globally. I wanted to write a book about a point in time in cannabis as well as world history, and to that extent, I did. The industry today is an entirely different animal, although similar issues and themes, in the world of cannabis and beyond, still face market growth if not patient access. That is true in the U.S., Canada, and of course Europe, where change is coming and fast this year and for the next several to come.

This is also happening as I also bring a disruptive blockchain-based startup into pilot in Europe and then hopefully the global market after that called MedPayRx. Inspiration for that came from my historical knowledge of the industry, as covered in Chapter 1 of this book, and in particular, the shortcuts made (before computerization or the internet much less blockchain) to the federal application and approval process in the U.S. for cannabinoids which helped AIDS patients obtain their medication thanks to the federal government. That, as well as the need to find ways to more safely introduce new drugs into the global market faster (including of the cannabis kind) as the population ages globally and the planet continues to warm, is an even bigger priority now. So is fixing the many issues inherent in a now often global drug supply chain. Not to mention overriding issues, like privacy, which has taken a unique new turn in Europe. I know from personal experience, how difficult life can be without access to the only drug that makes you function, feel better and be able to move if not live. Not to mention the prejudice that still exists for patients.

So therefore, dear reader, with a few edits and as I am writing the second installment: Green II: Spreading Like Kudzu in a unique partnership with Cannabis Industry Journal, and potentially a few others, please find the slightly tweaked version of the same.

There are many people who helped shape my thoughts and guided my research for the first book if not gave me the opportunity to focus so intently on the industry on a regular basis for the first time.

The first and most important person I want to thank is Ross Urken at Main Street. Ross opened a door of opportunity for me to cover the politics and market development of cannabis on a daily basis in March 2014. While I am very grateful to everyone who pays me to write and supports my Deutsch and higher educational habit, it was Ross who led the way and saw my potential at the beginning of the year.

The fact that The Street decided to create a section of the website devoted to just marijuana, not to mention hiring me to write for them is a callout I want to highlight here. The issues surrounding medical marijuana use — past, present or future — are those that the American workplace and employers must begin to tackle now. Thank you Ross and also Jim Cramer, the big boss, who ultimately deserves credit for leading the pack both ways.

The terrific direction my life is headed right now is also contrasted against what I went through in the immediate past. I was diagnosed with Dystonia at age 40. I could not speak at all for almost a year, and I could not do so without pain and significant effort for almost three. Even after fighting for medical marijuana in the form of Marinol (dronabinol), I spent a total of seven years without a paid job in the last decade and far too many of those without proper health care (or indeed any). I wasn’t rich by any stretch, but I was completely bankrupted by this experience.

While my experience might have been an extreme, contributed to in no small part by family members who acted shamefully if not criminally, the reason I left the United States for good starts and ends with the fact that America has not moved forward fast enough on reform. Not for some ethereal reason but a very practical one. I have no federal civil rights. I found this out as soon as I finally started to get well and tried to find a job. Or at least tried to create one. Despite being credited as one of the people who won the first HUD Sustainability federal grant awarded to North Carolina in 2011, I was summarily dismissed without pay because I happened to use a Schedule III drug as prescribed by my doctor. Either that or I exposed the wrong corrupt HUD developer in the right part of town. Whatever. I don’t want to live in a country that treats me this way.

My life, as a result of all of this, was mostly one of abject suffering if not several near death experiences over the last decade. There were significant periods during this time where I literally stood at death’s edge. That is too high a price to pay for anything, including living in a country where such things are even possible.

The experience of paying into a system for close to a quarter-century and having no help, even temporarily, when I got sick was a wakeup call which I hope rouses my generation (if not the ones who follow) in realizing that the platitudes of the Boomers in power are ones that require challenging.

That said, I am alive and incredibly lucky to be here now. The voice such experiences has given me has not only started to open doors of sustainable employment, but also a graduate degree never possible in the US. Having a voice again, literally, has pushed me to speak first on a topic that has profoundly and for a long time shaped my life, even if not because of my own health issues directly. I have known people since I was in my late teens who surrounded me and sustained my life as family, for whom such issues were also life and death. And while I focused this book on the unbelievable events of 2014, there are things I hope to connect in the starry night of history to the immediate light of day. They belong in the debate too.

I am grateful to those in the legalizing marijuana industry and those in the ranks of the reform community who grew to trust me. I could not have written this book without their insights. The stories within these pages are ripped from the headlines as well as the frontlines of the industry and personal histories, because the people who shared them with me decided to grant me access.

Some people have asked not to be named. Here is the list as I remember and have compiled in no particular order:

- National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws — NORML National Office and every state chapter, in particular Sharon Ravert, executive director of Peachtree Chapter in Georgia

- Mason Tvert, Bob Cappuchi, Morgan Foxx, Chris Lindsey, Heather Fazio and everyone else at the Marijuana Policy Project who has helped me

- Steph Sherer, Kris Hermes and the team from Americans for Safe Access

- Justin Hartfield, Weedmaps & Ghost Group

- Ata and Nicole Gonzalez, GFarmaLabs

- Joe Brezny, Nevada Cannabis Industry Association

- Marco Hegyi, GrowLife

- Joe Hodas, Dixie Elixirs

- Scott Murphy, Veterans for Safe Access & Compassionate Care

- John Morgan and Ben Pollara, United For Care and Yes On 2 Florida Constitutional Amendment Campaign

- Adam Eidinger, DC Cannabis Campaign

- Taylor West, National Cannabis Industry Association

- High Times Magazine and organizers of Cannabis Cup Amsterdam

- Jason Heller, Cannabis PR guy extraordinaire

I would also like to thank my new country, Germany, as I proceed upon another journey: to finally obtain dual citizenship as part of my Jewish heritage and paternally-inherited right. It is a wonderful country and a fabulous place to be a writer. But it is ultimately the people who define any state, not to mention make a place special. I would like to thank a few of them who have contributed to this book along the way in thought, word and deed.

To the folks at Borsig11 in Nordstadt, Dortmund, who gave me a great co-working and writing space during my time there. Thank you Volker, Guido, Andre, Jasmine, Amanda and a host of others — you know who you are.

Larry McNeil is another brave chap who deserves thanks in these pages for his insights and help in deciphering those aspects of the German soul that seemed beyond my immediate grasp, if not other issues related to epilepsy on a very personal basis. You are a part of making this segment of the quest so special. Scotland does not know what it’s missing, but Deutschland is a better place because of you.

Thanks also go to Wolfgang, a native German of great courage and humor I came to know as a friend and neighbor, who also helped me a great deal with everyday Deutsch lessons — not to mention of the medical variety as I learned to discuss the symptoms of AIDS and heroin recovery in another language.

I also met amazing friends who have become like family here, including many I have met at the most intensive boot camp language drill on the planet (Germany) during my tenure at some of the language schools in Dortmund, including ASTA, TU Dortmund and Perfekt Deutsch. That includes Josquin Dejean (Joe), my favorite hyphenated Haitian-French (North Carolinian) American fellow expat, and Julia Kushnareva, the Queen of Flash Mobs in Russia or anywhere she is so inclined. It’s also great to talk about these issues with a few friends like Peter Walford and Bruce Rudy, who have now set their new horizons from a base in Germany. Fellows, friends and travelers all.

Inspiration also came from my growing circle of friends at Dortmund’s only synagogue under Rabbi Apel (now also in Frankfurt at the synagogue my family attended before they fled and one of the few in Germany to survive WWII). Thank you for allowing me into the large and active Jewish community flourishing again in a German city, which in and of itself is a cause for celebration if not a continual reminder of spiritual bravery. Shalom.

My gratitude also goes to the many, many Germans who are getting to know me and seem to find me at least mildly amusing. That includes Axel Pohlmann, anwalt (lawyer) extraordinaire, and Peyman Azhari who decided to tell a small piece of my story in his book, Heimat 132. I grew up in the pages of picture books if not their dedications. But for that reason, it is doubly strange to see yourself described in German, not to mention Jewish history that should never be forgotten. But that too is something that came out of this project.

On the final leg of making this book a reality, I started working with a wonderful British editor — author and journalist Abul-Hasanat Siddique — who has helped to make my work more readable. It was the first time I had a working long-form editor, and it was a great experience.

Cover designer (and author herself) Rebecca Treadway did a great job in making the book look the way I wanted it to. Thanks also to all the great folks at Smashwords, starting with Mark Coker, who helped guide me through the ebook publishing process. Ebook formatter Brenda Vniekerk at Triomarketers got us through the last steps to publication without hitch.

I would also like to specifically thank my cousin, Angela Hardie Baker for sticking with me through thick and thin throughout the years. She helped me understand the true nature of family, the kind that is biologically related at least. On that front, this dedication would not be complete without a mention of my nephews and niece, Michael, David and Sarah Arnold, in England who have expressed great interest in the topic. Hope this project meets muster.

And, of course, this book would not be what it is or aspires to be — or would have been attempted in the first place — without the influence and help of those along the long way.

One of those is a man whose name I think of often these days as events he predicted right before his death of supra nuclear palsy (an aggressive form of Parkinson’s) in 2012, come true. He told me before he died that major breakthroughs in medication for his condition would be available within years. He was right. I watched as a man I cared about, who protected me, bravely battle for his life not only against a terrible disease, but also against doctors who refused to treat his condition with anything close to the experimental passion that ruled his life. Jonathan B. Schaffran, JBS, Esq., etc., is a name on my Veterans’ Wall, just one of many memorials erected by those of us who have mourned for others less named and far more faceless who this terrible period has claimed. Yet however dear and recently departed, his life is only one of many who I have known personally whose lives were cut short because of the appalling delay on medical research caused by the War on Drugs. Buddy, you were right. This is for you, too.

Green is also dedicated in memoriam for my father, Arnold Arnold, who also died in 2012 — a Holocaust-era German Jew, US Army private and Purple Heart decorated combat vet, as well as an author, columnist, inventor, designer, cyberneticist and collector.

And finally this book is for all those who are still here, and those who are with all of us more ethereally, who have never given up on the hope of change. My eternal thanks go to the people who have and still do teach others, and for those who lead the charge, large or small, toward full and final legal reform if not belated justice.

Be the change!

Marguerite Arnold

Dortmund, Germany

Hanukah/Christmas 2014

Timeline

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away...

1854 - The US Dispensary lists cannabis compounds as suggested remedies for a multitude of medical problems, including neuralgia, depression, hemorrhage, pain relief and muscle spasm.

1870 - The US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) lists cannabis as a medicine. The USP is a scientific nonprofit organization that sets standards for medicines, food ingredients and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide. USP’s drug standards are enforceable in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The standards set by the organization are used in more than 140 countries.

1906 - Congressional passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The act bans interstate transport of tainted or mislabeled food and drugs.

1914 - Congressional passage of the Harrison Act, allowing the federal government to tax and regulate the distribution and sale of narcotics. This statute is used to make the non-medical use of heroin and cocaine illegal (read Coca Cola).

1919 - The Treaty of Versailles is signed between the winning and losing sides of World War I. The harsh terms of the agreement bankrupts Germany and are directly linked to both the massive depression caused by sanctions as well as the rise of Adolf Hitler. The treaty also bans the import of cannabis from India, which seeks independence from Great Britain and joined Germany and Austro-Hungary in its fight against The Allies.

1922 - The Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act is passed in Congress. It is designed to make narcotics available only for medical use.

1937 - The Marijuana Tax Act is passed by Congress. Modeled on the Harrison Act and originally conceived to make marijuana illegal, it becomes the basis for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hemp for Victory campaign when industrial hemp is later grown during WWII for ship hawsers in the American South.

1938 - Passage of the US Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The first attempt at regulation and codification of drugs on the legal medical market. Certain existing drugs are grandfathered in (read morphine); particularly if there had been no change in chemical makeup. This is the birth of the generics industry.

1941 - Marijuana is officially removed from the US Pharmacopeial Convention.

1951 - Congress passes the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the FDCA, which defines prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

1959 - Passage of the Unruh Act in California. It is the state civil rights bill and what the national civil rights bill was modeled on, in part, five years later. However, the act contains stronger protections, including under litigated case law, than either the federal Rehabilitation Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act when it comes to the protection of the civil rights of people with disabilities.

1960 - The Manufacturing Act is passed by Congress. Its purpose is to regulate the manufacture of medications, in particular narcotics and both natural and synthetic versions.

1961 - Fifty-four nations, including the United States, become party to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Heroin, cocaine and marijuana all become scheduled drugs. The sale of barbiturates, amphetamines and hallucinogens of all kinds are regulated internationally.

1962 - The Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments require FDA certification of all drugs sold as medicine within the US.

1970 - Passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The CSA declares that all cannabinoids (hemp and marijuana) are Schedule I substances with no medical efficacy along with cocaine and heroin.

1973 - Passage of the Rehabilitation Act, the first federal civil rights statute protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The promise of the act is never fulfilled, starting with the percentage of people with disabilities that the federal government promises to hire. People with disabilities represent approximately 20% of the entire workforce and have, as of this writing, about a 90% persistent unemployment rate.

1974 - Passage of the Privacy Act. The underlying premise of the statute is that the violation of basic rights to privacy undermine constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms, including the right of due process. Congress passes it in the aftermath of Watergate and the Nixon administration’s attempt to use the psychiatric records of Daniel Elsburg to discredit his release of The Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

1981 - The government agrees to sell the patent for Marinol, a synthetic form of THC, to Unimed Pharmaceuticals, a private company. Marinol is later approved by the FDA in 1985, despite a delay on approval due to deficient test results. It is originally designated as a Schedule II drug. In 2010, Marinol is rescheduled to a Schedule III.

1988 - DEA Administrative Judge Francis Young hears 15 days of testimony and concludes that marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. He recommends that marijuana be rescheduled to permit medical use.

1989 - DEA Director John Lawn orders that cannabis remains listed as a Schedule I narcotic, having no known medical use.

1990 - Passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which recognizes both societal and structural roadblocks that exist in preventing people with disabilities in having full civil rights and access to society. The act deals with matters of employment, in particular private employment, physical infrastructure and also mandates that the states follow federal requirements when it comes to meeting constitutional civil rights, as well as federal standards and regulations. At passage, language is added that strips such protections from patients if they use medical marijuana. Despite being amended in 2008 to try expand protections stripped by the courts as well as add a much larger list of qualifying conditions, the medical marijuana provisions remain to this day.

1991 - Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, updating post-reconstruction civil rights legislation. This update gives full contractual implied rights of American citizenship to those with disabilities. It means that a person with a disability must be treated equally in provision of all rights, services, contractual agreements such as wages and pay and access to medicine to treat their disabilities, regardless of the ability to pay if that alone would impede their ability to partake in American society and the full rights that vest as a result. It is never litigated that way.

1991 - The Compassionate IND Program for medical marijuana is suspended after receiving a surge in applications from AIDS patients.

1996 - Passage of Prop 215 in California, legalizing medical use.

1996 - Passage of HIPAA, which mandates that law enforcement may not routinely access the health records of individuals in any kind of health insurance program without a warrant. The background checks now common in most state programs may represent a nationwide class action violation that has yet, because of the Schedule I status of marijuana, to be filed with any chance of reform.

1998 - The District of Columbia and Alaska pass medical marijuana laws. The District, with no home rule, is overruled by a federal Congress for the next 15 years.

1999 – Two Canadian patients become the first to obtain the right to consume cannabis.

2000 - Colorado and Nevada vote to change their state constitutions to legalize marijuana for medical use in state.

2001 - The Supreme Court decides, in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative that, There is no medical necessity exception to the Controlled Substances Act’s prohibition on manufacturing and distributing marijuana. In the meantime, in Canada, patients win their historic court case mandating that the right to consume cannabis medically is a constitutional right and even more importantly, to grow their own.

2002 - The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules 3-0 in Conant v. McCaffrey that the federal government may not revoke a doctor’s license to dispense medications, or investigate a physician, for recommending marijuana to sick patients.  The Supreme Court refuses cert. to the federal government on appeal.

2003 - The US federal government obtains a patent on THC.

2005 - The Supreme Court rules in Gonzalez v. Raich that there is no medical defense for patients who have obtained marijuana under a doctor’s prescription.

2012 - Washington State and Colorado voters approve recreational use legislation during the presidential election returning Barack Obama to the White House.

2013 - Uruguay passes legislation legalizing marijuana. Canada also changes its federal law that begins the commercialized, licensed, medical market.

Prologue

The year 2014 was a remarkable moment for marijuana reform. Marijuana did not just become a mainstream cultural phenomenon in the United States. It became an economic and political force with implications that reached far beyond the actual use of the cannabis plant itself — as an industrial product, medicine or recreational diversion.

Marijuana and human beings share a very long history together. Archaeologists have found evidence that pot and people have a 12,000-year-old relationship. It is only in the last 200 that it has gotten so contentious. For the last two centuries, pot has increasingly been used as a convenient tool by powerful forces to shape world history. The events of 2014 were just a microcosm of that reality packed into a period of time so short it was clear that change of a decidedly green hue was a tidal wave not on some distant horizon, but landfall. Where this tsunami could still go is anyone’s guess, but the conversation is far broader than cannabis and always has been.

This much is true of what has happened to date in what appears to be a ganja-scented revolution that will not be abated. As described by The Cannabist, the special marijuana-focused online extension of The Denver Post, 2014 could be summed up by 12 simple statistics about the medical and recreational markets in Colorado. When made available more or less legally under state law, about 9-10% of the entire resident population over 21 years old consumed 130 metric tons of pot in a year. That said, here are some more stats: 23% of Colorado residents claimed to use marijuana daily or near daily; 90% of sales in ski towns went to out of state tourists, or about 7% of the total in state pot consumed overall; 94% of all medical sales were for patients in chronic pain. Edibles remained a wild card, but also comprised between 45-50% of the entire market in 2014. ¹

But beyond the raw data, what does this all mean besides the fact