High time I blogged about this!

The coffee shop had an interesting sign--CBD can be added for an additional charge.

CBD at a coffee shop?  Without any special licence?  At a place that minors are allowed?  What's going on?

There is a rapidly evolving market demand "for a hemp-derived extract called cannabidiol, or CBD"

CBD is popping up in everything from cosmetics to chocolate bars to bottled water to pet treats. One Los Angeles bar sells drinks containing the oil, massage therapists use creams containing CBD and juice bars offer the stuff in smoothies. Dozens of online sites sell endless iterations of CBD oils, tinctures, capsules, transdermal patches, infused chocolates and creams with no oversight.

CBD in coffee is a part of this trend.  And there is more CBD entering the market because of marijuana prices plummeting in states like Oregon that have legalized it.

A glut of legal marijuana is driving Oregon pot prices to rock-bottom levels, prompting some nervous growers to start pivoting to another type of cannabis to make ends meet — one that doesn’t come with a high.
Applications for state licenses to grow hemp — marijuana’s non-intoxicating cousin — have increased more than twentyfold since 2015, making Oregon No. 2 behind Colorado among the 19 states with active hemp cultivation.

And support for growing hemp is coming from strange corners:

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced The Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which would remove hemp-derived CBD from the Controlled Substances Act, freeing hemp farmers from many of the current federal regulations. For now, much of the hemp-derived CBD consumed in the United States is manufactured in Europe and Israel and imported into the country.

The turtle is on board with this!  But, as long as trump and sessions are in their offices in DC, we will be in a legal grey area. That does not dampen the market though.

Despite confusion around the legislation and some quality concerns, the legions of CBD devotees are growing every day. "It has become a trend since [CBD] is something new and exciting to the majority of the public," says Henry. "It's something that alleviates pain and discomfort, without the negative side effects of pharmaceutical drugs."

One of the reasons that the turtle also supports hemp production--helps struggling farmers.  Not because these farmers are users, but growing hemp can be profitable in an otherwise low-margin activity.

Hemp can be grown to harvest on about half as much water as corn can, for example. Hemp also tolerates a wide variety of soils and temperatures, requires no pesticides, and grows extremely fast, soaring to as much as 20 feet in 100 days.
Thus, if hemp eventually replaces other crops across large acreages, it could free up precious water supplies in the arid West for other uses. This could become especially important with climate change expected to shrink Western mountain snowpacks.

I tell students that this world is way too fascinating, and this entire hemp thing is merely the latest evidence for me.

Some U.S. farms are reporting revenue of $90,000 per acre from CBD oil alone. That compares to around $600 per acre for alfalfa. This makes hemp an enticing choice for any farmer.
And that doesn't count potential profit from the fiber in hemp stalks.

If there is money to be made, jeff sessions and his crazies will be powerless to stop the forces. But, they can take some CBD to ease their pain, or smoke some weed if they want to really chill out ;)

Keep calm ... and toke up!

It was about four in the afternoon when I pulled into the gas station a few days ago.  On the first of this month, if you want me to be precise about the date.  Gawd!  Can I continue with my story now?

So, anyway, I gave my credit card to the gas station attendant.  "Fill up regular, please" I said.  I always, always add that "please" even though filling gas is exactly what the transaction is all about.  He got the pump going and returned the card to me.

"What's with the crowd across the street?" I asked him.

"Oh, it has been there all day long, right from about nine in the morning.  People want their pot" he laughed.

I had forgotten that on October 1st recreational marijuana was becoming legal here in Oregon. But then how does it matter to me when I have never been anywhere near pot and potheads.

"They started lining up well before the store hours" he said with more chuckles.  I suppose he is like me who can be amused very easily.

The amount sold is, ahem, high ;)

Retailers sold more than $11 million of marijuana during Oregon’s first week of legal recreational sales, outpacing the early business done in other states that have legalized pot, according to the Oregon Retailers of Cannabis Association.
Oregon retailers had sales of $3.5 million by the end of opening day, saidCasey Houlihan, executive director of the association, the Statesman Journal in Salem reported. By contrast, Colorado’s first week of sales reached $5 million. In Washington, sales during the first month hit $2 million.

So, what made Oregon's sales so much higher right from the first day?  The same conditions that every other economic activity require:

 One reason Oregon posted stronger early sales was the existing medical marijuana infrastructure. More than 250 medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon have told the state they will sell to recreational customers. By contrast, Colorado had 24 stores on Day 1. Washington had just four, and a year later still has fewer than Oregon.
Oregon also has a robust supply of marijuana that’s grown to support medical marijuana users and the black market. Companies have invested in massive warehouses in Portland to grow the drug indoors, and Southern Oregon has some of the nation’s best conditions for outdoor cultivation of marijuana.
Growers don’t face strict regulations yet, so the supply can more easily flow into retail stores than it did in Washington and Colorado.

I guess the legalization has begun at the right season--it has started cooling down, the daylight hours are getting shorter, and soon the rains will be here.  All the more convenient, perhaps, to stay indoors and toke up.

Recreational pot is one heck of a job-creation opportunity, argues this lawyer who is also the cho-chair of the legislature's committee overseeing the legalization:

 if we get the new industry right, Oregon could become for marijuana what Napa Valley has become for wine. Our economy would be more robust

Hey, if wine can not only be a huge industry but also spawn wine critics, connoisseurs, and sommeliers, then why not for marijuana, eh.  What a strange world in which we live!

I am so happy with the drug that I live for ;)

Caption at the source:
Co-owner Traci Watson helps a customer at Maritime Cafe in Gladstone
on the first day of legalized recreational pot sales in Oregon, October 1, 2015 in Oregon.

Is Nicholas Kristof a Libertarian Democrat?

I have blogging for a while on various issues that place me in a narrow slice of the political spectrum: Libertarian Democrat.

It is an absolutely fascinating political point of view that, unfortunately, does not get enough recognition. 
Here is a recent example of a libertarian-Democrat position--Nicholas Kristoff, who is well known for his coverage of all things painful that we would rather be in denial about, says it is time to legalize pot (I wonder if Kristof would label himself a libertarian Democrat):

on Tuesday, California voters will choose to go further and broadly legalize marijuana. I hope so. Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did, and California may now be pioneering a saner approach.

Unfortunately, it does not look like Californians will begin the end to this insane war on drugs.

Alcohol worse than heroin. Worst?

"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science."

 The libertarian Jacob Sullum quoting from a new study in The Lancet that "rates the harmfulness of 20 psychoactive drugs according to 16 criteria and finds that alcohol comes out on top."

Too bad this won't help the Proposition 19 vote in California, which seems to be heading for a defeat.

As usual, defenders of drinking are outraged by the comparison between alcohol and illegal drugs. Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, tells The Sun, "The vast majority of people know it's just not rational to say that enjoying a social beer with friends in the pub or glass of wine over dinner has the moral or societal equivalence of injecting heroin or smoking a crack pipe." Such reactions are based on the observation that the vast majority of drinkers are not alcoholics. Despite alcohol's very real dangers, they generally manage to consume it in a way that not only does not harm them or others but on balance enhances their lives. Here is the point that defensive drinkers like Simmonds miss: If this is possible with alcohol, it is possible with any intoxicant that large numbers of people have shown an interest in consuming.alc

Chart of the day: the failing war on drugs

The chart (ht) clearly shows that:

that even with increased crop eradication and constant “record seizures” of the drug by land and at sea are not accomplishing the stated goals of the policies and therefore calls into serious question whether they are worth the expenditures in question.  Indeed, it is quite clear that the ability of coca famers to produce enough coca leaf to overtake whatever successes that are accomplished in crop eradication and cocaine seizures is quite clear.  Such overproduction is simply the cost of doing business.  This is a lesson, by the way, that we need to keep in mind in Afghanistan, where the policy direction it towards crop eradication of opium poppies.  I predict now that even if thousands upon thousands of hectares or opium poppies are eradicated, that the poppy farmers will be able to out produce the eradicators.

Of course, libertarians like the folks at Reason have all along pointing out to the wasteful and costly attempt to keep the drugs out--and, of course, the infringement on the rights of American citizens ...  The war on drugs which is no longer confined to Colombia, and is now just short of a civil war in Mexico is, according to Jorge Castaneda all screwed up: "The Mexican drug war is costly, unwinnable, and predicated on dangerous myths." Going after the supply, without acting on policies that might address the demand in the US merely escalates violence, and Secretary Clinton echoed this as well  when she said:

"Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," Clinton told reporters on her plane at the start of her two-day trip, saying that U.S. policies on curbing drug use, narcotics shipments and the flow of guns have been ineffective.
"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she added. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians."

So, when are we going to end this war, that even pre-dates the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

All the talk about a "green economy" ....

Now it all makes sense :)

Oaksterdam University in Calif

Get it? Oakland + Amsterdam = Oaksterdam.
What is so special there?  Ahem, cannabis.  Yes, the old mary jane. weed.

Now, there are moves afoot in California to go further to fully legalise marijuana.

Evidence of the impact that the approval of medicinal marijuana has had on some areas of California is clear in Oakland.

Across the bay from San Francisco, it has come to be known as Oaksterdam, in a nod to the symbolic global capital of marijuana deregulation, Amsterdam.

It is surreal though to look at faculty listing at Oaksterdam University.  Why they don't have the .edu domain I wonder :-)  There are four campuses!!! I bet they are interested in some international locations too.

It appears that there is a de facto decriminalization of marijuana in California.  Of course, this is a state that is in deep,deep financial trouble.  And is releasing prisoners because there is not enough money to keep them in.

So, how do you get to Oaksterdam?  On the Pineapple Express, of course!


Update on Sep 28th:  Fortune has a cover story on pot legalization;

The acceptance of medical marijuana has implications that extend far beyond helping those suffering from life-threatening diseases. It is one of several factors -- including demographic changes, the financial crisis, and the widely perceived failure of the war on drugs -- reopening the country's 40-year-old on-again, off-again shouting match over whether marijuana should be legalized.