WASHINGTON: Front Runner Data, a leading provider of business intelligence to Washington’s legal cannabis industry, sat down with Seattle-based pre-roll maker Stryps.
Enjoy this insightful interview from one of Washington’s pioneer legal cannabis producers, Scott Berdell, exclusively available on Marijuana Channel One and MJNewsNetwork
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkG7Hbf3acE&w=560&h=315]
OREGON: Cameron Yee opened a gallon-sized plastic bag of dried leaves from a popular strain of cannabis called Lemon Haze. He thrust his hand into the bag and gave the leaves a vigorous stir.
As recently as a few years ago, the small leaves snipped from harvested cannabis flowers ended up in the trash. After all, when it comes to marijuana, the flower is the star.
But when Yee’s fingers emerged coated in greenish dust, he was delighted.
“That is fantastic,” he said, eyeing the THC-rich crystals that will end up in one of his company’s concentrates.
OREGON: The Oregon cannabis community was rocked when The Oregonian’s Noelle Crombie released her in-depth report on the lack of standards regarding the testing of marijuana products in Oregon. Crombie, who regularly reports on all things cannabis was noticeably absent from the scene for a bit, causing many to wonder what she was up to. When “A tainted high” hit The Oregonian/Oregonlive, with the tagline “LAX STATE RULES, INCONSISTENT LAB PRACTICES AND INACCURATE TEST RESULTS PUT PESTICIDE-LACED POT ON DISPENSARY SHELVES”, we learned that the talented reporter was investigating the very essence of the medical marijuana industry–the safety of cannabis products consumed by sick and disabled patients battling debilitating medical conditions.
WASHINGTON: Puyallup police officers made one arrest Tuesday after discovering a butane hash oil lab at Northwest Best marijuana shop.
The lab was spotted by officers from the police department’s Problem Oriented Policing Unit. The officers were at the business located in the 1100 block of River Road NW to serve a cease and desist letter to the business owner, who had been operating within city limits without a valid business license from the City of Puyallup.
Detectives from the Special Investigations Unit took control of the scene and obtained a Pierce County Superior Court search warrant for the business. The lab processing is being conducted by the Pierce County Metro Lab Team, according to police.
OREGON: Amy Zimmerman’s left calf was covered in second-degree burns after a Memorial Day campfire accident. To help heal the burns, she applied a medicinal salve made with hash oil.
The results were better than she had expected.
“My doctor was impressed, saying, ‘What did you use?'” She flashed her calf, its new skin pink and glistening. Just a little bit of oil goes a long way, she said, “but it’s an extract from a plant. That’s all it is.”
Hash oil is an extract of the marijuana plant, and it’s highly concentrated. Just like marijuana itself, hash oil can be smoked or ingested, or as Zimmerman’s wound demonstrated, rubbed into the skin.
WASHINGTON: Federal prosecutors are seeking a 10-year, maximum sentence for a man who joined two tech workers in running a hash-oil operation that exploded in 2013, destroying a Bellevue apartment building and causing the death of a former mayor.
David Richard Schultz II is being sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court, and federal prosecutors say they want to send a message to others who might think Washington’s legalization of marijuana in 2012 gave them license to engage in dangerous home production of potent pot extracts.
“If Washington’s experiment in decriminalizing marijuana is to succeed, it is important to send a public message that merely because some marijuana-related activity is now tolerated, that does not mean that those who go too far … will escape prosecution and significant criminal sanction,” the U.S. Attorneys Office wrote in a sentencing memo.
Nan Campbell, an 87-year-old former Bellevue councilwoman and the city’s first female mayor, was sleeping in another unit when the explosion rocked the three-level building at the Hampton Greens Apartments on Nov. 5, 2013. She tripped as she escaped, broke her pelvis and died of complications two weeks later.
WASHINGTON: If you think you’re hearing more and more about hash oil explosions, it’s not your imagination.
Explosions typically happen when amateurs try to make hash oil — a concentrated form of marijuana that can be inhaled or used in edibles — by using a highly flammable solvent such as butane or propane gas or liquid. Without proper ventilation, gases can build up that require only a spark to explode. Some explosions have been so powerful they’ve lifted buildings off their foundations.
Although hash oil explosions have become common enough in the United States that FEMA has issued warnings about its dangers in apartments and hotel rooms, they’ve spiked in Washington and Colorado, where marijuana is now more easily obtained because it’s legal for recreational use.
In Colorado, there were 32 butane explosions involving hash oil in 2014 — three times the number reported in 2013, before marijuana was legalized.
COLORADO: Colorado’s top law enforcement official says manufacturing high-potency marijuana oil is not legal under the state’s first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana law.
State Attorney General John Suthers wrote in a court brief Tuesday that the law prohibits the dangerous production of hash oil, which has caused a number of fiery explosions and injuries this year as pot users try to make it at home. Some prosecutors have been charging individual hash-oil creators with felonies, while others have not pursued criminal charges at all.
Suthers filed a brief in response to a western Colorado man’s contention that Mesa County prosecutors improperly charged him with a crime for manufacturing hash oil. An attorney for Eugene Christenson argued in a court filing that the substance is legal under Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana.
COLORADO: Denver police have warned parents to beware tricks rolled inside Halloween treats this year: marijuana-infused candy.
The Denver police department posted a YouTube video on Monday that shows how difficult it is to tell ordinary candy apart from knock-off candy that edible marijuana manufacturers buy in bulk and spray with a hibiscus hash oil.
“Once that candy dries, there’s really no way to tell the difference between candy that’s infused and candy that’s not infused,” said Patrick Johnson, proprietor of Urban Dispensary, one of several marijuana retailers that have cropped up across the state since the substance was legalized for recreational use last year. “There’s really no way for a child or a parent or anybody, even an expert in the field, to tell you whether or not a product is infused or not.”
His recommendation? Trash any candy that isn’t sealed in a recognizable, brand-name wrapper.
WASHINGTON: The chemical process used to make hash oil — a method so fraught with volatility that police compare it to making methamphetamine — has come under attack by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan’s office filed criminal charges against eight people in connection with recent explosions attributed to the manufacture of hash oil in Bellevue, Seattle, Kirkland and Puyallup. One case involved a massive explosion and fire at a Bellevue apartment complex in November that resulted in the death of former Bellevue Mayor Nan Campbell.
While possession and consumption of hash oil are legal in Washington. However, Durkan said its manufacture is not.
“Under state law, there is no legal way to make hash oil right now. Every one of these home systems is a violation of federal law and state law,” Durkan said during a news conference. “If you’re doing it you should stop.”