This is awful. RIP Ken Gorman

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=50801&page=1&pp=15

Marijuana Advocate Ken Gorman Dies In Shooting

Raj Chohan
Reporting

(CBS4) DENVER A Denver man well-known in Colorado's medical marijuana community was shot and killed Saturday night after his house was broken into.

Ken Gorman, an outspoken advocate for legalizing marijuana, grew pot in his home on the 1,000 block of South Decatur Street.

Denver police said they are investigating the shooting, but were releasing few details Sunday afternoon. Family members told CBS4 Gorman was the victim in the crime.

Last weekend, CBS4's Rick Sallinger did an investigation on Colorado's medical marijuana law that centered on Gorman. Gorman had recently been giving seminars on how to use the law to obtain the drug even if you aren't sick.

Gorman was on Colorado's medical marijuana registry. He said he had been suffering chronic pain from bursitis.

A CBS4 employee recently approached Gorman with a hidden camera and told him he only wanted marijuana to get high. Gorman then filled a form designating CBS4's employee as one of his caregivers.

"When we passed the law we passed a great, great law," Gorman said to the CBS4 employee. "There are so many holes in it that for us, the patient, police can't do anything."

Gorman was also the host of an annual large marijuana smoke-out at the state capitol. He once ran for the state's highest office, and earned the nickname, "the governor."

Colorado is one of 11 states that has legalized the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

Yet more weedbay.net stolen content. Thanks Dopey!

End of the ride at the Harborside

Ah the Harborside grow class just ended. Another fine class to keep in our memories and the biggest at Harborside to date. The place was packed and most of the people there had screen names from around the forums, you all know who you are and it was nice meeting all of you.

Harborside is operated by a couple of principles who are responsive and share the burden of helping out the sick and suffering. Being the newest club they are still considered an upstart, but unlike the dot com companies from a few years ago these guys built their compassionate dream on a very firm foundation. Instead of merely making a dispensary for medical marijuana they instead built a shrine to worship this plant we love and just visiting seems to cleanse the soul. I think they spent appropriate time determining who their staff would be too. You always see the same friendly staff each visit and you begin to feel at bit more at ease dealing with them than other clubs where you might not recognize anyone from the previous visit. We thank Harborside for the best digs grow class ever had and for all they do providing us patients with safe access and a caring staff. Harborside is like my favorite restaurant, it’s consistently good and I always come back.


How soon can I flower clones, how long should I veg before flowering?
Scrappy sets up to do a whole class on how and when to take clones. But with people entering class for the first time today there were some questions. Today we found out that the clones you buy from clubs are sexually mature. Meaning you could commence flowering at 12/12 immediately after you get them home. In order to supply yourself with medicine under state guidelines more veg time is needed and 3 or 4 weeks is probably average indoors.

What about perpetual and rolling harvests, can I provide enough medicine that way? How about sea of green? Well in Santa cruz you are allowed a 10’ by 10’ flowering canopy making the sea of green a viable alternative. Under the normal 6 plant state guideline sea of green is out. It’s that simple, you need a lot of plants for SOG. But you can veg longer and stagger harvests weeks apart, but this is problematic. It requires nutrients for the separate phases and it doesn’t allow the garden to be cleaned while down, which over time is a factor. One solution is to flower 3 while 3 veg. You’ll flower larger plants that should provide enough, but it’s still tight coping with the six plant limit. Good luck and keep trying.

How important is length of the cure? Most of what the plant delivers you put into it while it’s budding. It’s easier to manipulate live plants than dead ones, and after a proper dry and a couple weeks of sweating you have what it is. We all want our pot to magically improve and sweat out all the chemy tastes simply by placing it in jars, but this is seldom the case. If a patient needs medicine he doesn’t wait 6 weeks for it to cure. We’ll never know the shelf life of pot because we’ll never leave it on the shelf long enough to see.

Are light movers a worthy investment? Yes, because cannabis only uses 10 seconds worth of light per minute of photosynthesis. So moving the light saves energy and allows your light a wider footprint. Another worthy technique is using 2 600’s instead of a single 1000. The overlapping you create that way penetrates deeper into the flowering canopy and you’ll get better bottom branch production. So get 2 600’s on rails. I have a friend with a 400 and 600 on rails, he loves it. If they stall they can burn your crop, so maintain them diligently.

Did I ever oil my inline fan? Nope, because you never looked in the instruction that shows you where the oil goes. Find the hole and use tri flow oil with Teflon every 6 months.

Hydro or soil? Growing in soil is like driving down a curvy mountain road at the speed limit. Hydro is like driving that road at full throttle. One mistake and you could be dead in hydro. See ya at the bottom.

There were other questions and the questions where coming fast enough they were stacking up. But everyone gets answered and everyone leaves happier. And scrappy looked like a confident happy pappy today. And he’s taking it all in stride and prioritizing properly and basically setting up his life he sets up his garden. He’s going to make a good dad and he has a bottle of whiskey that was a favorite of my dad. And that’s how I feel about that.

While on hiatus scrappy well still be answering questions from home at his med class 101 command center thread on ICMAG.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread....0184#post880184

And if anyone recognizes this lady, please step forward… (inside joke), pics to come..

Stay happy and keep growing

Alice B Toklas lived in oakland nearly sixty years ago, her pot brownies were made famous when she lived here. We should celebrate it as part of Oaklands lesser known history..

. It has been fifty-two years since the first edition of Alice B. Toklas’ Cookbook was published after the American publisher Harper’s had censored one recipe. While the recipe is often said to be for brownies it was actually “Haschich Fudge” misspelled as it was. The British edition featured the recipe and made the book infamous overnight. Alice couldn’t have done more for the lovers of Cannabis. Ironically, the British edition spelled it "canibus sativa,".

Alice’s lifelong partner was Gertrude Stein. She grew up in Oakland and is responsible for the often misunderstood saying,” There’s no there there.”. when she couldn’t find her childhood home that had been torn down. It is often misunderstood that the saying is an attack on Oakland or somehow compares Oakland to Paris, which was the expatriate home for Alice and Gertrude. The whole saying goes like this: “What was the use of me having come from Oakland, it was not natural for me to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.”

Oakland admittedly has an image problem. I remember the old city signs that said,” You are now entering Oakland” as if it was a border with an unsafe territory. Thankfully, the city changed the signs to “Welcome to Oakland.” That was a smart move. When I tell people I live in Oakland, they often dredge up images of sideshows or shootings or whatever the news in their town manages to throw out for public consumption. I have to say,” Oakland is the best kept secret in the East bay.” There are plenty of wonderful neighborhoods with plenty of nice folks.

Another famous Gertrude Stein saying is, "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." I’ll say this much, Oakland is hands down the best place in the bay area to grow roses. That might not sound like a big deal. It is. San Francisco roses look fine when the peak of summer hits but in the winter, they have black spots and rust on the leaves, powdery mildew too. In Marin County, they only thrive in the late spring and summer. In the east bay, Berkeley has a better climate but being at the foot of a hill makes it slightly colder. The south bay also has temperature issues. The part of Oakland where roses truly thrive is not the wealthier homes in the hills rather the great expanse of the blue-collar flatlands from San Leandro in the south to the north Oakland border. From pill hill to west Oakland, I’ve noticed roses blooming on Christmas day and even new years. All the geographical elements and endless cement retains warmth and keep the roses just warm enough to never enter a true dormancy. Cannabis too flourishes here too both indoor and out. It seems fate has bestowed Oakland with a quirky array of blessings. Oaklanders are fiercely proud of their city. During the L.A. riots, there was no violence in Oakland. Even if people agreed with the righteous indignation of the Angelinos they decided not to trash their city. Oakland is a great place to live.

My fellow activists hate when I ask why there are hundreds of liquor stores in Oakland and only four medical Cannabis facilities. They tell me their perspective is that liquor stores should be free to do what they want just as Medical Cannabis facilities should be left alone as well. Even as the city of Oakland shuts down a few problem stores here and there , there are hundreds left. I believe anything that becomes a magnet for crime must bow to some degree of regulation from the city it is in. At the peak for the Oakland Cannabis club scene there were eight or nine clubs operating with little or no trouble. Most clubs had security and tried to be good neighbors. All seemed well at that time. Even though there were grumblings from different factions in the medical scene, for the most part, all was well. The fact that patients were offered a choice brought the cost of medicine down. The city however focused on a now infamous Fox news channel two report regarding reselling in the so-called “Oaksterdam” triangle of Broadway, Telegraph Avenue and nineteenth street. Having owned a business there I never witnessed herb being sold rather vicodin, jewelry, car stereos, Raider tickets, sex, and anything else you can imagine. I wonder if the city ever called Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders and told him to have tighter control on those Raider tickets or heaven forbid a child might go to a Raider game.

The clubs then endured a process to “apply” for permits. Clubs renting buildings owned by absentee landlords in Hong Kong, had at their own expense, improved them, only to be shut down by the city. I personally witnessed rat infested structures, boarded up since the earthquake, cleaned, and then shut down by a city which was supposed to be bringing people downtown or as they call it,” Uptown” Ironically, tobacco companies tried unsuccessfully to market a cigarette called “Uptown” to African-Americans in the early 1990s. http://www.wclynx.com/burntofferings/packsuptown.html I wonder if the city knew this.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the clubs were only allowed to be in certain areas, away from schools. While this sounds OK on the surface, the city allowed schools to move literally next to existing, previously permitted clubs and then force the clubs to move at great expense. It seemed the charter schools were used as pawns in a real estate game. I am sure when the redevelopment kicks in to high gear, the schools will be moved out of the immediate downtown to make way for businesses. One unnamed club installed a very expensive air conditioning system to keep the mostly older crowd comfortable during the summer months only to be forced to another building with broken air conditioners and a building owner who lived in Hong Kong. The club was forced to buy yet another air conditioner. All clubs, which had passed the process, had to pay a permit fee, which was quite a few thousand dollars. Most clubs wouldn’t comment on the amount because they didn’t want to upset the city, which “allowed” them to operate. I wouldn’t have called myself a free market capitalist but after the city clamped down on the clubs, I noticed parking which had previously been very hard to come by was suddenly available. One fellow I knew who owned a small, beautifully remodeled club with a modest clientele called the area “Ghosterdam” after he was forced to shut down. The variety of choices at all the different clubs brought people in from all over the state. I met many medical patients who actually moved to Oakland so they could use their medicine in peace. I would witness people breathless from a long trek from some high sierra town, exit the car and ask where they could get their Cannabis card. They looked like runners getting ready to cross the finish line. They would exit the building, card in hand and go to a club. Afterwards, they would eat, shop and support local businesses. Much of that is gone now. Yes they still come for their Cannabis card but they don’t have as many choices and many of them leave. It’s ironic how a club can open in Santa Cruz or Los Angeles or San Diego using so called “Oakland guidelines” which were once viewed as cutting edge and now smack of a better time when the city of Oakland could do no wrong in the eyes of medical patients.

I wonder if Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas came to Oakland today what would they say? I’m sure Alice and Gertrude would like to visit the city center sculpture called “There” by Roslyn Mazzilli. I wonder though a half-century after her cookbook was published how Alice would view the city. Would she want to move back to Paris or would she see the flourishing art scene and all it’s ambitions? Would she see the gay and lesbian activists and their almost being able to marry? Would she cheer the Medical Cannabis activists? What would she make of a city, which made it so much harder for sick people to get their meds while truly bad businesses get a slap on the wrist? I wonder. Just like so many Oaklanders, I wonder.

Last grow class for awhile...

Saturday Bulldog grow class blowout Grow class in Oaksterdam has been a tradition and blessing for the last 4 years. During those 4 years there’s ‘regulars’ that attend 95% of the classes. There’s a pretty strong comradery with the quality of affording easy familiarity and sociability amongst the old timers. Today’s grow class was just that with the usual mixing of ‘someone’s grandma’ and ‘up North crop wizard’ that has to be seen to be believed. The diversity of the 20 or so attendees at today’s grow class was a macrocosm of the bay area. Some are good at rolling joints, others are good at smoking them, and so it goes and everyone more than tolerated everyone else. We’ll now observe a moment of silence for the clones grandma had that perished….. (sniff) For the noobs, they are in for a real treat, and as one fellow expressed to Scrappy after class as he was leaving “Man, I’m new and you just blow me away with how much you know and how well you explain it.” I knew that made Scrappy’s day and some regular grow classer’s day too because we know we turned a light on in that guys head that’s going to be burning quite brightly for years to come. The last grow class at the Bulldog Coffee Shop? You know that was the first question for professor Scrappy as class gathered. For those that don’t know Scrappy is riding off into the sunset with his soon to-be-bride. My crystal ball sees children, moving, marriage and the need for a Hiatus from the rigors of 4 years of grow class. Scrappy has expressed an interest at returning in a couple months and if it’s longer the fire will still be evident and grow class will continue. It’s possible the venue will change to a bigger Oaksterdam location, possibly the gift shop on 15th as it was mentioned. Richard Lee sure was a gracious host and the consumate humanitarian. He’s a fellow that always has concern for helping the welfare and happiness of people and grow class offers him our heartfelt thanks. How do I grow thick dense buds? Ahhh… now there’s a question to ponder. The short answer is to show up at grow class. The real story is growing big buds involves optimized climate control, and the process got as technical as any question ever posed at class. And this particular class was as technical as I’ve ever seen it get. No wonder the noob left ‘blown away’. What the hell is going on outside? Sounds goofy but good question! Just as grow class convened you could not help but notice police orbiting the area. “Oh No” thought I. The police have uncovered our sacred secret grow class and fire and damnation will wreak havoc in our world! Then the odd occurrences started to develop. Sirens would blast and then cars rigged with Hollywood action camera booms started driving down Broadway, right in front of our view as we were seated towards the white board and with the front picture window facing Broadway making an interesting backdrop. Well the first couple times it appeared this boom was some sort of backhoe or something but after the third time it dawns on us they are filming a movie and it’s a camera at the end of the boom. From the looks of the beater car they were using this movie critic is thinking ‘low budget’. But it’s one of the cool mystique happenings of Oaksterdam much like Tommy Lee getting a new tattoo across the street from the SR-71. If anyone knows what they were filming inquiring minds want to know. Any gossip is good gossip. What an intro for the next question. Where is Mars? Did Mars go to Mars to get the candy bars? I doubt it. But rumors and gossip ensued as the Oaksterdam medical marijuana community put their collective minds together to 'hash' out the possible scenarios. Some say she was asked to leave by the admins as her other responsibilities could create the old conflict of interests with Icmag. It’s possible that’s what happened, but my opinion is they still need a moderator and she was good at it and they’ve been tolerant to content like this I’ve developed for weedbay that gets cross posted over several sites. My gut tells me Mars is simply taming wilder frontiers than the civilized comforts of California perhaps due to her work with the ASA. Maybe she’s in Colorado amid huge egos and little experience in grassroots organization and is simply too busy to baby sit us any longer. Maybe she’ll be back, I sure hope so. Much respect in any case. Journalistic rumor mongering is just too tempting in this topic, excuse me. Cannabis Cruise, wtf? Sounds sick, I didn’t know Oaksterdam had it’s own navy but…. YES! In case Oaksterdam succeeds from the union we do have a small navy based – where else? – at Lake Merrit. On loan from the city of Oakland one vessel and one vessel only is allowed to have a motor. That combined with the savy 21 year old sea dog of a captain your vessel is free to smoke out while blasting ‘smoke on the water’ by Deep Purple on your Ipod. But wait a sec, aren’t there navigational hazards like sunken battleships leftover from when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor and aren’t those waters haunted by the ghost of Long John Silver? Of course they are, that’s why a life preserver is required. Coming soon and priced ‘affordable’ I’ll see you cruising matey. What about that story on weedbay? Yeah, this question was brought up and caught me a bit off guard but the stories I select for weedbay sometimes are not the run of the mill sources. My story content tends to ebb and flow much like the bay itself but I was asked by someone I admire to bring more light onto some of these stories where patients are in need of help. People like Richard and Vanessa and sites like Hempevolution.org and medicalmarijuanaofamerica.com are trusted news sources and I recommend them. Here’s some of the more current articles. http://www.weedbay.net/comments.php...=1&shownews=176 about Nathanial Archer and http://www.weedbay.net/comments.php...=1&shownews=176 that is Stephanie Landa holding the sign, btw. And the point is to keep blogging and posting in the forums. Small blog sites like Scrappy’s http://growlove.blogspot.com/ get picked up by Google and they attain a page rank which is a rating of how important Google views your site’s worth. His small site which he doesn’t spend much time creating has attained the same rank as much bigger sites, currently tied with weedtracker. So keep blogging and posting and do whatever you can do to spread the word and the love. Oaksterdamnews.com is another good site I should mention. They are doing Jury Education at the federal court house. Oddly I was summoned for Jury duty on the day jury selection was to take place for the Ed Rosenthal case. His jury selection was however postponed, and comes in March I think. I wasn’t required to show up that day, but think about it. You could be on a jury where a patient needs help and the jury system was designed with this check and balance for over aggressive laws. Sorry for rambling. What’s the new strains I keep hearing about? I’ll spill the beans, errr, clones. SR-71 is going to start stocking: AK-47 (nice plant) Black Widow ( Shanti Strain?) Strawberry Cough (amazing) And some other stuff, hell I can’t remember. Now is a good time to buy clones at SR-71 and the other clubs as Spring is approaching and supply dwindles then. So buy them now, veg them indoors and they will be taller than your neighbors when you put them outside. If I put 2 plants in the same pot everything is cool, right? Oh hell no, stand back, in fact. Cannabis will try to kill another plant on it’s turf and it’s quite the bitch fight. The larger plant can even employ chemical warfare to gas the weaker opponent. Who knew? Grow class rolls on for one more episode. Meet us at Harborside and well send this off properly. Not that we didn’t try at the Bulldog. I’ll speak for everyone and let you know we all enjoyed it. This report didn't really even scratch the surface of what all was discussed and I for one will dearly miss grow class. But Oaksterdam is still a happening place and if it wasn't a secret I could tell you more, but that's for another article. Spread the love and stay safe.

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!

Unprecedented SF study finds pot helps ease pain

Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer

Monday, February 12, 2007

(02-12) 12:59 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported today that HIV-infected patients suffering from a painful nerve condition in their hands or feet obtained substantial relief by smoking small amounts of marijuana in a carefully constructed study funded by the State of California.

Although the study itself was small, it is the first of its kind to measure the therapeutic effects of marijuana smoking while meeting the most rigorous requirements for scientific proof -- a so-called randomized, double-blinded placebo-controlled trial.

As such, the results of the trial are being hailed by medical marijuana advocates as the most solid proof to date that smoking the herb can be beneficial to patients who might otherwise require opiates or other powerful painkillers to cope with a condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

Federal agencies oppose the use of marijuana for medical purposes on the grounds that it is harmful and that there is no scientific evidence to support medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States.

"It's time to wake up and smell the data,'' said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group advocating legalization of medicinal use of the drug. "The claim that the government keeps making that marijuana is not a safe or effective medicine doesn't have a leg to stand on.''

The study found that most volunteers who were given three marijuana cigarettes a day experienced a significant drop in the searing pain of peripheral neuropathy, which patients liken to a stabbing or burning sensation, usually on the bottoms of their feet.

On average, the participants in the experiment reported at the start that their pain was roughly at midpoint on a 100 point scale, where zero was no pain at all and 100 was "the worst pain imaginable.''

At least half the volunteers who smoked the active marijuana experienced a 72 percent reduction in pain after smoking their first cigarette on the first day of the trial. Over the course of five days, the median reduction in pain reported by the marijuana smokers was 34 percent, compared to 17 percent reported by those who smoked placebo cigarettes that had the active ingredient THC removed in a process akin to decaffeinating coffee.

"This is evidence, using the gold standard for clinical research, that cannabis has some medicinal benefits for a condition that can be severely debilitating,'' said Dr. Donald Abrams, lead author of the study released today by the journal Neurology.

The trial was conducted over a two-year period during which 50 volunteers each spent a week at a secured laboratory at San Francisco General. After a two-day orientation period, during which they stopped smoking marijuana they may have been using, they were given one cigarette three times a day. Half of the volunteers received marijuana containing about 3.5 percent of THC, the active ingredient of the drug; the other half received the placebo.

Abrams said that the placebo cigarettes looked and smelled identical to the ones containing active ingredients

Because of the unusual nature of the experiment, Abrams first had to receive clearance from eight different government agencies, including the University of California, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The cigarettes were made from marijuana grown on a federal marijuana farm in Mississippi, and stored in a locked freezer at San Francisco General.

E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.