Dear Ed — Green Aid!

Hi all, hope this finds you all well. I’m fine, really looking forward to the 16th and praying they
reschedule. M.J. might get me a new trial or home sooner, can only hope. That said I finished the
books you sent and was hopting you would order me some more. The ones you got were in the “The
Legend of Drizzt” series, “The Hunter’s Blades Trilogy” (last ones in series you sent). There is another part of the series, it may be called “The Sellswords” but I don’t know. You could check by going to www.wizards.com written by “R.A. Salvatore.” Thank you so very much for the books and love. Sure praying it works out I can see you all soon. Please stay HAPPY, HEALTHY, and HIGH!!!

Love, respect,

Eddy

Dear Ed,

Just a note to let you know how very thankful I am for all you do for me. It means so very much. Might
get some action like Brian Epis did if I can find an attorney to help. Trying to get a hold of Tony Serra but no luck yet. But won’t give up. Once again thank you so very much!

Love, respect,

Eddy

Charles Lepp c/o 90157011
FCI La Tuna
P.O. Box 3000
Anthony, TX/NM
88021

I am a social scientist and PhD candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I have been engaged in research on cannabis for several years. In 2012, Colorado passed Amendment 64 to “regulate marijuana like alcohol.” Since marijuana regulation is new, it makes sense to base regulations for cannabis on those for alcohol, but it is important to remember that this does not make marijuana actually “like” alcohol” in its scientific properties. Cannabis does not work like alcohol, and for this reason, the THC/DUI bill is misguided in trying to set laws as if they are the same.

To justify passing the THC/DUI bill, three solid pieces of evidence are required. First, we should know levels that indicate intoxication. Second, there should be an accepted and reliable way to accurately measure that level of intoxication. Third: there should be proof of sufficient need to encroach on individual rights based on danger to the public. Please allow me to address these in turn.

1. Knowing levels that indicate intoxication. Marijuana is not “like alcohol” in terms determining impairment. The science is simply not there. A nanogram limit cannot yet be clearly and unambiguously linked to impairment. Based on the best evidence currently available (Grotenhermen and colleagues review of the literature in 2005, the Medical Marijuana Industry Group report in 2011, which responded to the first proposal of this law, and William Logan’s 2012 chapter reviewing the literature on marijuana and driving in Mahmoud ElSohly’s book Marijuana and the Cannabinoids), it is clear that we simply don’t know the correct limit over which drivers are impaired. It turns out that inexperienced or occasional cannabis consumers may be subjectively impaired at a much lower nanogram level than medical or social cannabis consumers with years or decades of experience. Logan (2012) summarizes the evidence we have to-date and is clear on the point: it is not possible to use blood tests of THC to distinguish between recent impairment and “more distant higher-intensity marijuana use” (286). For medical consumers or other chronic consumers of marijuana, heightened THC in the blood may last long after the subjective experience of impairment. In fact, maintaining higher levels of cannabinoids in one’s system may be related to medical benefit for those treating severe pain and serious illness.

2. There should be an accepted and reliable form of measurement that indicates intoxication. On the second point, it is crucial to acknowledge that marijuana and alcohol are not the same when it comes to how the body processes them. These two substances are metabolized in completely different ways by the body. Alcohol is water soluble. It is rapidly and evenly distributed throughout the body, and for this reason, breath tests can be used to approximate blood alcohol level, and both tests can be reliably used to indicate impairment. There is no such proxy for cannabis. it’s distribution in the body is based on the unique pharmacokinetics of THC, its distribution in the body and the way it is metabolized. Marijuana is lipophilic, it dissolved in fat, not water, and is metabolized quite differently than alcohol. We do not have reliable estimates that are consistent across different individuals, allowing us to measure levels of impairment with the same assessments we use for alcohol. In fact, breath tests cannot be used to measure cannabis for this reason. Instead, blood samples, the most intrusive type of test, would be necessary. Because blood tests are highly intrusive, clear and unambiguous evidence for such an intrusion on individual rights is warranted.

3. Finally, we should be able to link the use of the substance to a clear public health danger on the roads. Cannabis has not proven to present a similar level of risk in traffic accidents. On this final point, we have to ask, is a separate law warranted when marijuana intoxication is already included under existing DUI-D laws? The answer: no. There simply is not data that suggests cannabis alone greatly increases accidents or risks on the road at a level that warrants a new, separate DUI law specific to cannabis. In the case of alcohol, there are clear and well established relationships showing increased risk of accidents linked with blood alcohol levels. Less data exists for cell phone use and prescription drug use, but those studies have consistently shown significant risk ratios that indicate significant crash risks. The data on marijuana shows lower risks than these other factors. The exception is when marijuana use and alcohol use are combined. Again, Logan’s review of the data on relative crash risk following marijuana use, “studies that made odds ratio assessments based on the presence of the inactive THC-COOH metabolite uniformly failed to show significant differences at the p=0.05 level in rate of accident involvement for the drug-positive drivers” (287). Recent evidence suggests that accident rates decrease in states with regulated medical marijuana. This has been attributed to the reduction of alcohol use in favor of marijuana, resulting in fewer alcohol-impaired drivers on the road, discussed by Time magazine in an article by Maia Szalaviz from December 2011.

For these reasons, those who have studied the issue and reviewed all available evidence do not recommend the use of per se limits without better science. To the degree that such policies are used, they urge great caution, and suggest that other methods for assessing impairment not be discarded or demoted given the lack of credibility on the currently available objective measures.

The current bill under consideration belongs to a dying breed. “Get Tough” policies have been popular among politicians because they have equated with success in the polls, but as more and more people acknowledge that the War on Drugs approach to drug control is a failure, these nonscientific approaches are bound to lose traction with the voting public.

Clearly no one wants impaired drivers on the road, and no one is arguing for that. This THC/DUI bill will do little to help prevent that, and it may end up punishing people who are not impaired. Until objective limits for cannabis intoxication can be clearly determined, measured, and linked to a genuine risk to public health on the roads, we should stick with our existing DUI-D law that already covers drug impairment.

Sincerely,

Shelli Newhart Walker

This is visually apparent in the winners from the video competition that the Entomological Society of America sponsors annually.

Hornworm Meets Alien opens with the hornworm’s voracious demolition of a tomato and concludes with the equally destructive capabilities of predator wasps decimating the large green caterpillar from within.

I’ve always been in awe of ants. They have colonized every continent except Antarctica.  The Ants Africa video shows ants on the march. They are organized, focused, and successful hunters.

After watching these videos, you will think differently about what most of us regard as “pests”.  And although these creatures can undermine your crops, it’s also possible to protect your plants in a way that respects their role in the ecosystem we all share.

Enjoy the film fest:

Hornworm Meets Alien

Ants Africa

CHECK OUT ALL THE SPECIAL OFFERS!

 Shop now.

When you look at the geology of the U.S., Romania, Kenya, Japan or almost any other country and see the splendors and vistas that the land offers, you may be tempted to exclaim what beauty nature created. When you look at the land in Holland, you see land that was reclaimed from the North Sea and from cold-water marshes. You would be looking at land that humans have created.

This history gave the Dutch a head start in their journey to a secular culture. Instead of churches encouraging people to pray for God to stop the flooding, local governments designed and created the dams used to drain the land and the windmills used to pump water from flooding it although it was below sea level.

In the early 17^th century, the Dutch freed themselves from the yoke of superstitious, myth-driven Spanish rule and soon embraced the enlightenment. It had a profound effect upon the Dutch psyche and they created a nation that used rationalism and available science to guide them.

As the centuries passed, the Dutch contributed to world science and philosophy and have been guided by rationalism and real politic. Then, in the 1960’s, the Dutch looked at the marijuana laws and created a marijuana tolerance policy. By all measures it has been a successful policy and accomplished the goal of separating “soft drugs” from narcotics.

Now the enlightenment is on trial in Holland. The legislature outlawed the sale of marijuana to foreigners because towns along the borders didn’t like people crossing over to spend money in their towns. That sounds a little crazy to me too. I would pass a local law that coffee shops had to be at the furthest point inside a shopping center, sort of like milk at the back of the grocery store, so people would have to pass other shops to get to the buds.

The “morality fascists” probably didn’t consider the fact that Holland has lower marijuana and narcotic use than any of its prohibitionist neighbors. Nor was the fact that the tourist boards surveys show that 26 percent of visitors to Amsterdam make use of coffee shops. That’s why the tourist industry fears the imposition of the new law beginning January 1.

When I was a child, the inference around my world outlook was that science and technology, rather than faith and belief, were being used to make decisions regarding our lives. Now I see that the post-apocalyptic scenarios of science-fiction novels have come to reality. Cults, called religions, are brainwashing populations with lowered expectations into massive movements of irrationality. We can look at what is happening in Pakistan,  Afghanistan and in African countries such as Sudan, Somalia and Mali, torn asunder by religious and ethnic conflicts.

We look at those countries and say but it can’t happen here, but it is happening here. The anti-abortion movement, climate change deniers, evolution deniers and  marijuana prohibitionists are just as much part of the anti-enlightenment movement as the mobs who riot over insults to their prophet,  now dead more than a 1000 years. Most of these reality deniers follow the supposed beliefs of a hermit who they claim lived in the desert 2000 years ago although there are no factual proofs of his existence or that he wasn’t really a mushroom.

The enlightenment didn’t fill in the knowledge gaps. It gave us a map to get to where we are today. Then, in the last 200 years, our world-view was reshaped again. When the U.S. Constitution was written, its creators didn’t have an inkling about atoms, electricity and electro-magnetism, evolution, biological causes of infections, the universe much beyond the solar system, which was discovered to rotate around the sun just 200 years earlier, genetics or much of the information that we absorb as background knowledge and which gives us a rational basis for understanding how the world works .

Now the Dutch government wants to reject the information it has developed for creating a better society in favor of a moralistic, belief centered policy that will wind up wounding society. And here in the U.S. there is an election going on, after the worst storm ever to hit the Northeast portion of the country, and the term “climate change” is never mentioned, not even by Obama.

Time to dust off those mid-twentieth century science fiction novels. Their authors might be the true prophets.

One solution is to suspend their fiscal activities for periods of time that a temporary would be imprisoned.  The one rogue Goldman Sachs executive prosecuted by the government for insider trading just received a prison tem of two years. Let’s say GS had been found guilty and all of its trading and activities for its own and its clients’ accounts were suspended for two years. Clients of course could move their accounts, but the Goldman accounts could only be liquidated for two years. No new deals. Corporations could soon learn how disruptive even a short sentence can be and some of the big wrongdoers would be broken.

Every so often every corporate charter comes up for renewal. Up to now this has been a routine procedure. Wouldn’t it be better for the government to determine whether re-incorporation of some some of these big felon corporations should take place. “Wells Fargo, you’ve messed up so many families that we are not renewing your charter and not allowing you to transfer funds to an associated entity, You can disburse your assets to your shareholders but you are out of business. We are executing you by not renewing your charter and you will die a legal death. You are no longer immortal”.

Sounds good to me. Too big to fail? No the biggest corporations are just stopping cleaner, more innovative companies from getting started.

Meanwhile, however, some cannabis advocates won’t admit that Obama is to blame for federal prosecutors’ actions or that the crackdowns defy the Ogden memo, which discouraged U.S. attorneys from interfering with state laws regarding medical marijuana. Says Alison Holcomb, drug policy director of the ACLU in Washington State:

“The people who think that Obama has let them down have read too 
much into the memo and have laid too much at the feet of the federal
a dministration. Each U.S. attorney may be acting independently. The
 federal prosecutor in eastern Washington has aggressively closed 
dispensaries while the one in the western part of the state left nearly 
100 open in and around Seattle.”

Holcomb, also the director of Washington’s flawed, pro-prosecution cannabis control
initiative 502, just doesn’t get it. The U.S. Department of Justice is 
directing a nationwide campaign against marijuana and patient access 
all over the country. The U.S. Attorneys didn’t all decide on their own 
to go after marijuana rather than corporate crooks; they got direction 
from Central Headquarters.

This explains why she produced an initiative with the help of 
prosecutors and former prosecutors and other prohibitionist types: She 
just doesn’t get it.

Holcomb is an embarrassment to the ACLU and to Civil Libertarians 
everywhere. Her actions show no common sense and no understanding 
of the true opposition. The criminal justice system is unwilling to
 give up the lucrative drug prohibition business. They sometimes make
 strategic retreats, but have never given up their goal of continuing
 prohibition.

Washingtonians deserve better – not worse. 502 continues the war.

Cory Moe said to cover them with a piece of plastic.

Pot Smoker advised to shake the water off in the morning.

Hubert Savage wrote about building a temporary greenhouse.

I disagree. None of these solutions deals with the real problems: high humidity and cool temperature. These conditions stop plant growth and promote the growth of botrytis, the cause of brown or grey mold. Unless you can lower the humidity and raise the temperature, the plants will be susceptible to attack.

The various preventatives, both chemical and biological, will not be able to protect 100% against disease organisms under severe environmental stress. Although the thought of having to harvest early is a disappointment, the reality of rotting buds is even more depressing.

A: Anywhere it is warm enough or in other areas using a greenhouse you can still grow.

Interrupting the dark period

The major problem is that the long nights signal the plants to flower. Interrupting the dark period once or twice a night so that the plants do not get an uninterrupted dark period longer than four hours prevents them from flowering. Momentary period of a warm white fluorescent light or a metal halide (MH) or high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamp breaking up the dark period keeps the plants growing vegetatively. Just having the light on for just a minute does the job. When you want the plants to flower, stop the supplemental lighting. Then the plants will flower.

In more northern areas the sun may not provide enough light inside the greenhouse. Supplement the sunlight with MH, HPS or fluorescent lights.

A. Cut the plants. If you leave them up during the cool/overcast/rainy period the probability is that the buds will be attacked by botrytis (brown mold) and powdery mildew.