Pot Dealers Peddle Sugar High

[palmspringsbum]

U.S. News & World Report
January 18, 2007

Pot Dealers Peddle Sugar High

More marijuana-laced food products are showing up in underground markets. This week, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided marijuana distribution centers across Los Angeles County. After serving 11 federal search warrants, DEA agents seized quite a haul: Along with several thousand pounds of cannabis, pot plants, weapons, and cash, they found "large quantities of marijuana-laced edibles." These "edibles" seem to be a growing trend among the medical marijuana crowd and other stoners. The feds are finding the items "especially on the West Coast," says one, but they're turning up as far away as the United Kingdom. Check out some of the products seized this week:

<table class=posttable align=center width=450><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/canna-candy_1.jpg></td></tr></table>

These candy bars make use of something called "cannabutter." Hmm ... I don't like to rely on Wikipedia, but it seems a good starting point for this sort of definition: "an oil/fat/butter based solution which has been infused with cannabinoids"–cannabinoids being the active ingredients responsible for "the plant's peculiar pharmacological effects."

<table class=posttable align=center width=450><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/canna-candy_2.jpg></td></tr></table>

Here's another one: Grape Ape Soda. Note the advisory, "For Medicinal Use Only." Somehow I don't think this is FDA approved.

<table class=posttable align=center width=450><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/canna-candy_3.jpg></td></tr></table>

This picture above and the photos below are from a similar Bay Area outfit, busted last year. It was manufacturing all kinds of pot-laced candy and soft drinks. Among the products seized: Stoney Ranchers, Munchy Way, Rasta Reece's, Buddafingers, and Pot Tarts.

<table class=posttable align=center width=425><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/canna-candy_4.jpg></td></tr></table>

<table class=posttable align=center width=450><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/canna-candy_5.jpg></td></tr></table>

As one DEA source put it, "The dealers are becoming very creative." And while it may seem cute, folks, bear in mind the penalties are serious: The guy who ran the Bay Area operation is now serving a 70-month jail term in federal prison.

Photo credits: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

Posted at 07:30 PM

[palmspringsbum]

Mailbag: Cannabis, Cancer, and Bad Guys

U.S. News & World Report
January 23, 2007

Our posting of marijuana munchies seized by the DEA generated lots of mail, much of it critical. Many first-time readers were irate that medical marijuana users would be discussed in a blog called Bad Guys, feeling that this implied they were criminals. For the record, that wasn't our intent.

The column wasn't meant as a judgment on the rightness or wrongness of medical marijuana but simply as a quick item about the growing popularity of pot-laced foods. As we wrote in our first column, the Bad Guys blog is indeed about bad guys but also good guys "and the just plain folks caught in the middle. ... The blog's name 'Bad Guys' is meant as a general topic, not a description of every person mentioned in the column."

Enough from me. Here's what our readers wrote:

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Mr. Kaplan,

Have you no regard for those suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, MS, epilepsy, glaucoma, chronic pain, or Alzheimer's? The list gets longer but I think the point is made. Your "Pot Dealers" are merely employees and proprietors of what are called compassion centers. Places where, after being referred by their physician and registering with the state, patients can obtain ... medicine. And your so-called "Sugar High"? Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe ingestion of Cannabis may provide better, longer lasting relief of symptoms than smoking it? These aren't candy bars for kids and compassion centers do not sell them to kids.

Compassion makes our streets safer by providing the patient and the patient ONLY a safe place to purchase their medicine. To gain access to a compassion center you must be a member first. To join you must have a doctor's recommendation, a state issued MMJ card and a photo ID. Not an easy task for anyone, especially when they will verify all of the information. The Feds are wasting our hard earned tax dollars hassling real people with serious medical conditions instead of trying to get crack/cocaine or heroin off the streets ...

I suffer from Neurofibromatosis Type 1. To paint a picture, try shoving hundreds of little pebbles down your nerve canal till they're spilling out the nerve openings at the bottom. Now add hundreds more all throughout your body and waking up every day in excruciating pain. Pain so bad you can't help but to cry. Not so easy now right? I chose not to spend my life addicted to pain killers sucking money up a government straw. I chose marijuana as my medicine and I chose to make something of myself. I am pursuing a degree in biotechnology. I am NOT a stoner. Thank you God for this wonderful plant, I now have my life back.

Name Withheld

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David,Re: Pot Dealers Peddle Sugar High

You're serious? Wow. I'm sorry. Perhaps you're supportive of the War On Drugs? If so there is help available. Perhaps a visit with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition might assist you in understanding how fatally flawed Prohibition II is.The DEA actions against cannabis are based on illusion and the perpetuation of 7 decades of lies and propagandizing.Thanks for listening ... I can refer you to specialists in the field if you desire.

Allan Erickson

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Hi, I read your report and I have a couple of comments.

I would have thought a little space about what these products mean about the success or failure of the federal government's get tougher policies on cannabis would be a little more balanced and informative to the reader, a reader who is confronted with a public policy that appears to be failing.

Additionally, the item shows a brand of drug war journalism that has become a trite and endlessly repetitive form of propaganda for the last twenty years. Since when has U.S. News & World Report become the new National Lampoon?

Steve Pen

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David, There are many people who benefit from marijuana and I am one of them. You mean to tell me that you sincerely believe that medical marijuana dealers are "bad guys?" Is it because the drug is not "approved by the FDA" as you mention in your article. Why do you not mention the billions of dollars earned by American pharmaceutical companies for the off label use of drugs. Is Genentech also a "bad guy" because it earns millions from the off label use of Avastin? How come you neglect to mention that the same "bad guys" in your article actually help save many people the pain and suffering caused by a variety of disease states. Your simplistic and fundamentally flawed analysis is the kind of poor journalism I have come to expect from U.S. News.

Name Withheld

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Fascinating article from Jan. 18, 2007. Excellent pictures too. However, I must object to the lumping of cannabis users, medical users, and their providers as big red lettered "bad guys," being equated contextually with "police spying, Saudi financing of jihad groups, and the growing use of organized crime by terrorists." It is cannabis laws that make cannabis criminals and though the simplest logic equates outlaws with being 'bad' people, law is clearly not always the path to goodness.

Whether or not violent jihadi murder is illegal, it is clearly "bad." Cannabis use is not. There is ample scientific, medical, and sociological evidence that cannabis prohibition is terrible public policy. Millions of harmless and productive citizens are incarcerated yearly and billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on misguided causes that in many cases, besides failing to accomplish their stated objectives, result in tragic, unnecessary collateral damage ...

I highly (pun intended) recommend that you further research the medical, legal, and sociological effects of the drug war and marijuana prohibition in particular. If you are interested in intelligent, pointed topics and studies, I would be more than happy to provide you with them.

Name Withheld

Posted at 06:02 PM