In a 1996 photo Dennis Peron, leader of the campaign for Proposition 215 and founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, smokes a marijuana cigarette. Photograph: Andy Kuno/AP
Dennis Peron, the activist who fired up the movement to legalize medical marijuana in California, died on Saturday in a San Francisco hospital. He was 72.
Also a prominent figure in San Franciscos gay community, Peron was credited as a pioneer in recognizing the health benefits of pot at the height of the Aids crisis in the 1980s.
A man that changed the world, his brother Jeffrey Peron wrote on Facebook. It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my brother Dennis Peron.
Peron, a friend of the murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk, helped push through a San Francisco ordinance that allowed the use of medical marijuana.
That was seen as a precursor to the statewide legalization of medical pot in 1996, with the passage of California Proposition 215, which Peron co-wrote. Today, medical marijuana is legal in most US states and Washington DC.
Peron suffered from lung cancer. He lost his partner, Jonathan West, to Aids in 1990.
Born in New York, he was drafted in the late 1960s to serve in Vietnam, where he first encountered cannabis, according to media reports his brother posted on Facebook.
At the height of the US war on drugs in the early 1990s, Peron founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the nations first public marijuana dispensary.
Not many people would have had the courage at the time that he took up the mantle, Terrance Alan, a member of the citys Cannabis Commission, told the newspaper.
When his medical cannabis operation was raided in 2008, Virgil Grant wound up in prison. Now hes back in business, and determined to make space for people of color in an industry thats fast being whitewashed
Pot entrepreneur and ex-felon fights for black role in California’s budding industry
When his medical cannabis operation was raided in 2008, Virgil Grant wound up in prison. Now hes back in business, and determined to make space for people of color in an industry thats fast being whitewashed
Virgil Grant, a runner, on the track at his alma mater Lynwood High School. Photograph: Noah Smith for the Guardian
They were two sides of Californias cannabis industry, ambitious operators who prepared for the day this state would become the worlds biggest legal market.
Eaze, a San Francisco-based startup, started delivering medical cannabis in 2014. Venture capital infusions enabled the company to hire dozens of employees, crunch data and refine a mobile app in advance of cannabis turning fully legal this month. It has been dubbed the Uber for weed.
A company photo posted on Twitter shows 47 employees smiling in front of the Golden Gate bridge. Almost all are white.
Official Kat Lady (@maybekatz)
Now that there’s fun weed, remember that while all those people are still incarcerated until they actually petition, this is what the team for the most popular weed delivery startup looks like
And I’m sure they’re decent folks and at least somewhat aware of the issues but damn pic.twitter.com/8FyuCWs0EJ
Virgil Grant came up a grittier way in Los Angeles streets. He ran track and studied psychology at university before dropping out to help run his fathers liquor store chain in Compton.
He started selling weed clandestinely, counting rap stars among his clients. I was on the same streets as the killers, the jackers, the police, he said. But, he added, I never saw myself as a drug dealer.
California legalised medical marijuana in 1995, allowing Grant to move out of the shadows.
By 2008 he owned six licensed medical cannabis dispensaries and trademarked his own brand, California Cannabis, for weed and spin-off products such as vapes, tinctures and clothing. Grant a driven personality who does not consume pot or alcohol envisaged rapid expansion, franchises and celebrity endorsements once California legalised marijuana for recreational use.
Then it all fell apart. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided his home and businesses in 2008 and indicted him on multiple counts of drug conspiracy, money laundering and operating drug-related premises within 1,000 feet of a school. His dispensaries were shut and in 2010 he was sentenced to six years in prison.
Grant considers his conviction a racial injustice. I was black and owned six locations. I was heavily targeted in the war on drugs.
Whatever the truth about his individual case, there is no doubt law enforcement disproportionately targeted African Americans. They comprise about a 10th of LAs population but from 2000 to 2017 accounted for 40% of cannabis arrests.
Grant emerged from prison in 2014, his budding empire extinguished. The Compton entrepreneur was a broke, convicted felon. The only job he could get was unloading crates with undocumented workers for $9 an hour. Eaze, meanwhile, marked 2015 with $10m in funding, juicing its expansion across California.
I cant let them beat me
That could have been the end of the story: a white-owned, well-funded company rides the legalisation wave while the African American felon is sidelined, a pattern repeated across California.
Grant, 50, however, has not quit. He has clawed his way back into the industry and fully intends to become a cannabis mogul. With his smart shirt and tie and Mercedes, he looks the part.
Ive been in this industry 30 years. I understood what the future looked like a long time ago. I cant let corporations in suits and ties step in and just take it. I cant let them beat me or out-think me. That aint gonna happen.
That may sound like bluster but the fast-talking former athlete, who still runs track, is picking up speed in his attempt to once again own Compton.
He became a regular visitor to LA city hall and the state capitol in Sacramento, buttonholing city councillors, state lawmakers, police, non-profits and regulators to help craft an enforcement scheme for medical and recreational pot.
The system put in place allows convicted felons to be part of the industry a sensible policy to let them work and pay taxes in a sector they helped create, said Grant.
The father of five has rebooted his brand, California Cannabis; launched a website; found a new supplier; and opened three dispensaries for medical pot to form the nucleus of an envisaged retail chain for recreational users, including tourists, once he gets licenses.
I lost six years but Im catching up. Perception is everything. If people see say 10 shops theyll think it must be a trusted brand, like McDonalds. Im aiming for high-end. Quality product and packaging, said Grant.
He spoke from one of his Compton stores surrounded by wares stamped with his slogan: Only the best grows in the west. In an adjacent room six workers sifted through cannabis heaped in 55-gallon containers, trimming it into 1lb sacks which Grant sells to other dispensaries.
Grant brushed off concerns that the Trump administration will crack down on an industry which is now fully legal in California, Colorado and six other states. He does, however, worry that federal threats will continue to deter banks from working with the industry, creating hassle and expense from handling lots of cash.
Above all he worries that African Americans and Latinos, having suffered disproportionately from pots criminalisation, will lose again if corporate America dominates the newly legalised market.
Hopefully we as people of colour will take our rightful position in this industry. Ill do my part, hiring and mentoring. I require two things of my workers: dont steal, be on time.
Apart from the trimmers and sales clerks Grants company is still largely a one-man operation he does almost everything. Once the money starts coming in Ill hire a marketing team.
Dont panic, legalization advocates say: Jeff Sessions anti-marijuana policy will have little practical impact and may even hasten the formal end of prohibition
Now that the dust has settled around attorney general Jeff Sessions promise of harsher federal marijuana enforcement, advocates of legalization have largely exchanged their initial disappointment over the move for one of long-term optimism.
I think there was a knee-jerk reaction of something approaching panic, but once everyone calmed down, theyve come to realize that practically this is going to have little impact, said Patrick Moen, a former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent who now works as council to an investment firm in the nascent legal marijuana industry.
Some, like Moen, even believe the decision could be the best thing for the growing marijuana movement, hastening the formal end of weed prohibition in the US.
There will probably a short term chilling effect, but this could ultimately be the best thing thats ever happened to accelerate the pace of change, Moen said.
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California’s marijuana muddle video explainer
The markets have reflected this somewhat counterintuitive sentiment. The United States Marijuana Index, which tracks 15 leading publicly traded legal marijuana-related companies, initially dropped 21% on the heels of the Department of Justice (DoJ) announcement, but it turned out to be a blip. By early this week the index had rebounded to within a few points of its one-year high.
Sessions announcement formally rescinded guidance, known as the Cole Memo, issued by the Obama-era DoJ that essentially told federal prosecutors to respect state laws with regards to marijuana. Importantly, though, Sessions decision did not direct or incentivize US attorneys to pursue marijuana cases, it just allowed them to if they so choose.
The Cole Memo guidance was eminently reasonable and was a common sense good policy, Moen said. I think that despite the fact that its been formally rescinded, federal prosecutors will effectively continue to abide by it.
The decision may ultimately precipitate another win, as Moen observed. Within hours of Sessions announcement, a bipartisan group of legislators had come out against the decision and some, including Hawaii senator Brian Schatz, announced that legislation was already being crafted that could overrule Sessions, by changing the extent to which Marijuana is classified as illegal at the federal level.
Its great that weve had a number of members of Congress over the course of the last six days last week step up and say what the attorney general did is wrong. Now time for every single one of those members of Congress to put their names on the pending legislation, Strekal said.
Adults can grow up to six plants and possess an ounce of cannabis as about 90 businesses receive licenses to sell pot in most populous state
The arrival of the new year in California brought with it broad legalization of marijuana, a much-anticipated change that comes two decades after the state was the first to allow pot for medical use.
The USs most populous state joins a growing list of other states, and the nations capital, where so-called recreational marijuana is permitted even though the federal government continues to classify pot as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.
Pot is now legal in California for adults 21 and older, and individuals can grow up to six plants and possess as much as an ounce of the drug.
But finding a retail outlet to buy non-medical pot in California wont be easy, at least initially. Only about 90 businesses received state licenses to open on New Years Day. They are concentrated in San Diego, Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Palm Springs area.
Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the many cities where recreational pot will not be available right away because local regulations were not approved in time to start issuing city licenses needed to get state permits. Meanwhile, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside are among the communities that have adopted laws forbidding recreational marijuana sales.
Just after midnight, some Californians were raising blunts instead of champagne glasses.
Johnny Hernandez, a tattoo artist from Modesto, celebrated New Years Eve by smoking Happy New Year blunts with his cousins.
This is something weve all been waiting for, he said. It is something that can help so many people and theres no reason why we should not be sharing that.
Hernandez said he hoped the legalization of recreational marijuana would help alleviate the remaining stigma some still believe surrounds marijuana use.
People might actually realize weed isnt bad. It helps a lot of people, he said.
For those who worked for this day, the shift also offered joyful relief.
Were thrilled, said Khalil Moutawakkil, founder of KindPeoples, which grows and sells weed in Santa Cruz. We can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the specific regulations, but at the end of the day its a giant step forward, and well have to work out the kinks as we go.
The state banned loco-weed in 1913, according to a history by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the pot advocacy group known as NORML. The first attempt to undo that by voter initiative in 1972 failed, but three years later felony possession of less than an ounce was downgraded to a misdemeanor.
In 1996, over the objections of law enforcement, President Clintons drug tsar and three former presidents, California voters approved marijuana for medicinal purposes. Twenty years later, voters approved legal recreational use and gave the state a year to write regulations for a legal market that would open in 2018.
Today, 29 states have adopted medical marijuana laws. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana. Since then, five more states have passed recreational marijuana laws, including Massachusetts, where retail sales are scheduled to begin in July.
Even with other states as models, the next year is expected to be a bumpy one in California as more shops open and more stringent regulations take effect on the strains known as Sweet Skunk, Trainwreck and Russian Assassin.
The California Police Chiefs Association, which opposed the 2016 ballot measure, remains concerned about stoned drivers, the risk to young people and the cost of policing the new rules in addition to an existing black market.
Theres going to be a public health cost and a public safety cost enforcing these new laws and regulations, said Jonathan Feldman, a legislative advocate for the chiefs. It remains to be seen if this can balance itself out.
At first, pot shops will be able to sell marijuana harvested without full regulatory controls. But eventually, the state will require extensive testing for potency, pesticides and other contaminants. A program to track all pot from seed to sale will be phased in, along with other protections such as childproof containers.
All it took was a little marijuana to lift this Canadian town’s spirits.
Smiths Falls, Ontario — population 8,885 — is seeing a revival of fortunes since medical marijuana producer Tweed Inc. set up shop four years ago in an abandoned Hershey Co. chocolate factory. The company, since renamed Canopy Growth Corp., has become the world’s largest publicly traded cannabis producer and is the town’s largest private-sector employer.
“We’re recognized as the pot capital of Canada — and we’re proud of that,” Mayor Shawn Pankow said in an interview from the town hall, a two-story brick building erected in 1859 on the main street. “The local economy is certainly far better today than it was before Tweed came to town.”
Smiths Falls is on the rebound, with more younger people relocating to this town 75 kilometers (47 miles) southwest of the capital in Ottawa. There’s renewed interest in commercial property, new businesses are arriving and there’s even the odd bidding war on homes.
“We’re seeing positive impacts really across the economy,” said Pankow, 52, who also runs a financial advisory firm. “People are recognizing that Smiths Falls is a community that’s on the upswing.”
Canopy has since become one of the darlings of the Canada’s benchmark stock exchange. It’s the S&P/TSX Composite Index’s best performer in 2017 with returns of more than 250 percent as of Friday at noon in Toronto, and is up 40 percent in the past week alone with pot stocks surging ahead of legalization both in Canada and in California.
Town Welcome
Tweed took over a former Hershey factory with ambitious plans to grow medical marijuana. Today, the firm has 360 employees — a well-educated workforce that runs the administration, research, growing operations, packaging and shipping from the facility that still has signage and other remnants of its chocolate past. Construction crews hammer away on the next expansion. The parking lot is packed.
“Smiths Falls welcomed us and we appreciated that,” said Chief Executive Officer Bruce Linton, who says he’s tapping local labor, suppliers and businesses as much as possible as the business gears up for the legalization of marijuana in Canada next summer. “The effect is the town becomes more desirable, and as it becomes more desirable my ability to recruit people who are senior or worldly increases.”
It’s a stark contrast from a decade ago, when Smiths Falls faced an industry exodus with the shutdown of a Stanley Tools Manufacturing facility and a shuttering of the Hershey plant. That followed months later by the closure of the Rideau Regional Centre for the developmentally disabled. The closures affected more than 1,500 people — one-fifth the population.
Smiths Falls has faced ebbs and flows of industry throughout its history, stemming back about 190 years when crews came to build the Rideau Canal connecting Ottawa with Kingston. Decades later, the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived to provide a rail connection to the outside world, helping support commerce.
Reinvents Itself
“It’s a town that constantly reinvents itself,” said Leisa Purdonbell, 33, who oversees the historical collections in the basement of an 1860s-era house that doubles as a museum. “Businesses have come and gone.”
Frost & Wood Co., which began making farming equipment in 1846, evolved into a munitions factory during the Second World War that once employed 1,200 people before it closed in 1955. Coca-Cola Co. bottler Rideau Beverages was around until the 1970s.
RCA Victor, which came to town in 1954, helped introduce The Beatles to North America: the band’s vinyl single “Love Me Do” was pressed at the plant in 1963. RCA Victor, which employed 350 people at its height, left in 1978.
Hershey came in 1963 and within 25 years had 750 workers and a bustling plant that drew thousands of visitors. At one point, the town’s water tower boasted an image of a Hershey bar and the slogan “Chocolate Capital of Ontario.”
Low Point
“When we received notification of Hershey’s leaving and pulling out, and then Rideau Regional quickly after that, we kind of hit that low point,” Purdonbell said. “Thankfully, at the moment, it seems that everybody’s changed their way of thinking into something more positive, and I think businesses see that as they’re coming into the community.”
Four Degrees Brewing Co. recently opened. European canal boat operator Le Boat has occupied an 1840s-era Lockmaster’s House on the waterway that bisects town. It’s ramping up plans to bring 16 rental boats next summer for tourists to cruise the Rideau Canal, a UNESCO world heritage site.
Linton, whose company has soared to a market value of more than C$4 billion ($3.1 billion), sees room to further improve Smiths Falls. He wants to expand a retail area at his plant to draw visitors — akin to days when busloads of tourists toured Hershey’s and bought broken chocolate bars on the cheap. Beyond that, he’d like to see more restaurants, meeting places and a hotel to make it a destination spot.
Hotel Needed
“What the town lacks is a really great place for people to actually stay,” Linton said.
Aside from the hubbub over weed, Smiths Falls has another claim to fame: It’s the hometown of Brooke Henderson, the 20-year-old golfer who ranks sixth in earnings this year on the Ladies Professional Golf Association circuit.
“We’ve been to Ireland and people there are not familiar with Canopy Growth Corp. or Tweed, but they know who Brooke Henderson is,” Pankow said. “Brooke has been really the face of the community over the last few years, and I would say she still probably carries a bigger presence.”
The state that is the worlds sixth biggest economy will legalise cannabis on New Years Day and expects a boom time for jobs and investment
While Arctic conditions gripped Americas north-east, balmy sunshine bathed Los Angeles last week but that was not the only reason denizens of the Venice boardwalk were feeling mellow. An astringent, earthy aroma infused the Pacific zephyrs wafting through the buskers, joggers, skateboarders, tourists and panhandlers.
Weed is part of the culture here, said Oni Farley, 30, perched on a sandy mound, watching life go by. Its part of the LA/California scene, the laid-back vibe. He ignored a police patrol car that inched through the throng. Ive blazed in front of cops and they dont say anything. To be honest, most of the time Im so high I dont notice them.
Pot wasnt hiding. In multiple different ways it was on display.
Addicted to weed, anything green helps, said a scrawled sign tilted against the backpack of Alexander Harth, 36, a dusty member of the boardwalks homeless population.
On the pavement, Marc Patsiner hawked wooden ornaments etched with Californian symbols: sunglasses, palm trees and marijuana leaves. Its pretty bohemian out here. People associate us with the leaf.
A vape shop offered glass pipes and other pot paraphernalia. T-shirt stores peddled images of Barack Obama smoking a joint alongside other herb-themed garments saying best buds and just hit it.
On Monday, California, the USs most populous state, and the worlds sixth biggest economy, will officially hit it by legalising cannabis.
Think Amsterdam, but sunnier and vaster a watershed event for the legalisation movement. Overnight a shadow industry worth billions of dollars annually will emerge into the light, taking its place alongside agriculture, pharmaceuticals, aerospace and other sectors that are regulated and taxed.
It will answer to the newly created Bureau of Cannabis Control bureaucratic confirmation that a day many activists did not dare dream of has indeed come to pass.
A product pilloried in the 1936 film Reefer Madness will become culturally normalised and economically integrated, said Philip Wolf, an entrepreneur who runs a cannabis wedding company and a firm that pairs pot with gourmet food. Its going to help destigmatise the plant. Theres going to be a lot of people making money and people will want to tax those dollars. This is going to spread. California is a trend-setting state.
California legalised pot for medicinal purposes in 1996, ushering in a web of dispensaries, spin-off businesses and creeping mainstream acceptance. That culminated in voters last year approving proposition 64, a ballot initiative which legalised pot sales for recreation. History will mark the date it came into effect: 1 January 2018.
It is expected to unleash profound changes across the state. The Salinas Valley, an agricultural zone south of San Francisco nicknamed Americas salad bowl, has already earned a new moniker: Americas cannabis bucket. Silicon Valley investors and other moneyed folk are hoping to mint fortunes by developing technology to cultivate, transport, store and sell weed. Entrepreneurs are devising pot-related products and services. Financiers are exploring ways to fold the revenue estimated at $7bn per annum by 2020 into corporate banking.
California is not the trailblazer. Colorado grabbed that mantle in January 2014 when it became the first jurisdiction in the world beating Washington state and Uruguay by months to legalise recreational cannabis sales. California is one of 29 US states where pot is legal for medical or recreational use. With medical certificates you can criss-cross the country getting legally stoned.
But cultural, political and economic heft makes California a landmark in the global legalisation campaign. This is the state that incubated the political careers of Richard Nixon, who launched the war on drugs in 1971, and Ronald Reagan, who continued hardline prohibition policies under his wife Nancys slogan just say no.
Californias path to yes wound through Venice, a gritty beachside haven for beat poets, artists and musicians long before hippies wore flowers on their way to San Francisco. The Doors, among others, kept the counterculture torch lit in Venice: here they wrote Light My Fire, Moonlight Drive and Break on Through. A giant mural of a shirtless Jim Morrison still peers down from a wall. It was in Venice that generations of Angelenos and tourists toked illicit spliffs. They still do, though it is now a gentrifying tech enclave.
When California legalised pot for medicinal purposes many cities and neighbourhoods refused to issue licenses for pot dispensaries. In Venice they popped up like toast, as did clinics where for a fee ranging from around $20 to $40 doctors issued pot recommendation letters to ostensible patients. Some were genuine, with ailments and pain alleviated by the herb. Many just wanted to get high. Pretending you have an affliction just to smoke, thats ridiculous, said Farley, the boardwalk observer. Having served in the navy, he claimed to have post-traumatic stress disorder. I dont, but thats what I said.
The California Alternative Caregivers dispensary set up shop in 2005 on Lincoln Boulevard, on the second floor of a maze of little shops and offices. It was by design, upstairs, all the way to the back. We didnt advertise, said the manager, Jim Harrison, 46. Pot, medicinal or not, still needed to be discreet. If asked about his profession Harrison would say he was a healthcare professional.
The sky failed to fall in on Venice, or other areas with dispensaries, and little by little pot became more mainstream, even respectable. Harrison, who wears a white coat and calls his patrons patients, is proud that his dispensarys protocols, such as sealing and labelling bags and containers, have been replicated in the new state regulations for recreational pot.
Full legalisation feels historic, he said. Its pretty amazing. The cats out of the bag. His dispensary will create a new space for recreation customers and keep a separate room for patients. Tax on medicinal pot is lower so dispensaries expect that market segment to dwindle but not disappear.
The new era may begin with a whimper. State authorities have given counties and cities authority and responsibility to govern the new industry. The result is a patchwork. Some places, such as Kern county, are still banning all commercial pot activity. LA and San Francisco only recently approved local regulations so it could be weeks or months before newly licensed pot shops start sprouting. Oakland, Santa Cruz and San Diego have licensed operators ready to open on Monday.
Venices bohemians helped pave the way to Californias big experiment but it is another California, that of boardrooms and city halls, which stands to gain.
Based on Colorados experience politicians across the Golden State are expecting tax windfalls. Labour unions are hoping to recruit tens of thousands of workers to cultivate and sell pot.
Wealthy investors are snapping up land in Salinas and other cultivation areas with a view to mass production. Others are forming pot-focused business accelerators and management firms. Start-ups are devising new apps, products and services.
Corporate expansion felt a world away from the patch of sand that Harth, the Venice panhandler, called home. Despite the sunshine drawing big crowds to the boardwalk he stuffed his sign Addicted to weed, anything green helps into his backpack. The dollars werent coming.
In a 1996 photo Dennis Peron, leader of the campaign for Proposition 215 and founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, smokes a marijuana cigarette. Photograph: Andy Kuno/AP
Dennis Peron, the activist who fired up the movement to legalize medical marijuana in California, died on Saturday in a San Francisco hospital. He was 72.
Also a prominent figure in San Franciscos gay community, Peron was credited as a pioneer in recognizing the health benefits of pot at the height of the Aids crisis in the 1980s.
A man that changed the world, his brother Jeffrey Peron wrote on Facebook. It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my brother Dennis Peron.
Peron, a friend of the murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk, helped push through a San Francisco ordinance that allowed the use of medical marijuana.
That was seen as a precursor to the statewide legalization of medical pot in 1996, with the passage of California Proposition 215, which Peron co-wrote. Today, medical marijuana is legal in most US states and Washington DC.
Peron suffered from lung cancer. He lost his partner, Jonathan West, to Aids in 1990.
Born in New York, he was drafted in the late 1960s to serve in Vietnam, where he first encountered cannabis, according to media reports his brother posted on Facebook.
At the height of the US war on drugs in the early 1990s, Peron founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the nations first public marijuana dispensary.
Not many people would have had the courage at the time that he took up the mantle, Terrance Alan, a member of the citys Cannabis Commission, told the newspaper.
Mayoral candidate near San Francisco seeks signatures to put decriminalisation on statewide ballot next year, saying drug could offer healing at time of crisis
As California prepares for the legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2018, one man is pushing for the state to become the first to decriminalise magic mushrooms.
Kevin Saunders, a mayoral candidate for the city of Marina, just south of the San Francisco Bay, has filed a proposal that would exempt adults over the age of 21 from any penalties over possessing, growing, selling or transporting psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms.
Saunders thinks that now is the right time because, he says, the drug can help bridge the current political divide and restore a sense of community.
The world is really hurting and everybody is at a loss about whats going on right now with Trump, Brexit, the refugee crisis and everything else. Im at a loss at what to do politically, but the only thing I feel like we could do is get psilocybin into more peoples hands, he said.
It deflates the ego and strips down your own walls and defences and allows you to look at yourself in a different light, he said, adding: It could allow people to figure out what to do and could revolutionise the way we treat those with depression, addiction and cluster headaches.
A profound magic mushroom experience helped Saunders get over a debilitating five-year heroin addiction in 2003, when he was 32. I got to the root of why I made a conscious decision to become a heroin addict; Ive been clean almost 15 years.
California is one of eight states where voters have legalised marijuana for recreational use, even though its still included in the federal governments list of schedule 1 drugs. Saunders and Kitty Merchant, who is co-author of the measure and his fiancee, believe that magic mushrooms also listed as schedule 1 drugs are the next logical step.
I think we have learned a lot from marijuana and we are ready as a society, he said.
So far, they have about 1,000 signatures, but plan to ramp up signature-gathering efforts in early December at college campuses and events like the medical marijuana summit The Emerald Cup. Eighty-five thousand signatures will trigger hearings at the state capitol.
They have taken a more conservative approach than Saunders has, aiming for a 2020 ballot and seeking to legalise the drug to be taken only in licensed centres under the supervision of a certified facilitator. Individuals would not be able to just buy the mushrooms and consume them at home as they can with marijuana.
Its not only amazing for mental health, theres also a lot of potential for self-development and creative work, Tom Eckhert told Vice in July.
Their efforts run in parallel to several promising clinical trials in which psychedelic mushrooms have been used to successfully treat severe depression, anxiety and addiction.
Robin Carhart-Harris, who has been studying the use of psilocybin to tackle treatment-resistant depression at Imperial College London, believes that it is a logical inevitability that the drug will become available to patients.
However, such legalisation will only take place once final phase 3 clinical trials are completed and the drug is approved by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. To standardise the dose, the psilocybin would have to be administered in capsule or pill form.
Depression is such a major problem and its not being treated effectively at the moment. A lot of patients arent seeing results with traditional antidepressants, Carhart-Harris said, adding that psilocybin could be a legal medicine to be administered in clinics within the next five years.
They are drugs with very low toxicity and very low abuse potential, said psychiatrist Adam Winstock, founder of the Global Drug Survey, who said that if you take into account how often people take them, they are safer than cannabis.
The only difference being the potential for mushrooms to distort your perceptions, cognition, emotions in a way that is totally outside of most peoples real of normal experience. For a minority of people, taken in the wrong situation, that could be terrifying.
Winstock is inviting people to fill out the 2018 Global Drug Survey, an annual anonymous survey that analyses international drug use patterns.
Winstock said hed prefer to see a well-regulated market for magic mushrooms where youd have to show a letter from a doctor saying you were not receiving any acute mental health care or medications. Buyers should also be given advice on how to use the drug, what the effects are and given links to online services to manage difficult situations if they arise.
I would get people to treat mushrooms with the respect they deserve, he said.
The Drug Policy Alliance, a not-for-profit group focused on ending the war on drugs, would not comment on the specific proposals in California and Oregon, but its director of legal affairs, Tamar Todd, said: We certainly agree that nobody should be arrested or incarcerated simply because they possessed or used drugs.
An earlier version of this article mistakenly stated that Robin Carhart-Harris works at University College London. He is at Imperial College London.
When his medical cannabis operation was raided in 2008, Virgil Grant wound up in prison. Now hes back in business, and determined to make space for people of color in an industry thats fast being whitewashed
Pot entrepreneur and ex-felon fights for black role in California’s budding industry
When his medical cannabis operation was raided in 2008, Virgil Grant wound up in prison. Now hes back in business, and determined to make space for people of color in an industry thats fast being whitewashed
Virgil Grant, a runner, on the track at his alma mater Lynwood High School. Photograph: Noah Smith for the Guardian
They were two sides of Californias cannabis industry, ambitious operators who prepared for the day this state would become the worlds biggest legal market.
Eaze, a San Francisco-based startup, started delivering medical cannabis in 2014. Venture capital infusions enabled the company to hire dozens of employees, crunch data and refine a mobile app in advance of cannabis turning fully legal this month. It has been dubbed the Uber for weed.
A company photo posted on Twitter shows 47 employees smiling in front of the Golden Gate bridge. Almost all are white.
Official Kat Lady (@maybekatz)
Now that there’s fun weed, remember that while all those people are still incarcerated until they actually petition, this is what the team for the most popular weed delivery startup looks like
And I’m sure they’re decent folks and at least somewhat aware of the issues but damn pic.twitter.com/8FyuCWs0EJ
Virgil Grant came up a grittier way in Los Angeles streets. He ran track and studied psychology at university before dropping out to help run his fathers liquor store chain in Compton.
He started selling weed clandestinely, counting rap stars among his clients. I was on the same streets as the killers, the jackers, the police, he said. But, he added, I never saw myself as a drug dealer.
California legalised medical marijuana in 1995, allowing Grant to move out of the shadows.
By 2008 he owned six licensed medical cannabis dispensaries and trademarked his own brand, California Cannabis, for weed and spin-off products such as vapes, tinctures and clothing. Grant a driven personality who does not consume pot or alcohol envisaged rapid expansion, franchises and celebrity endorsements once California legalised marijuana for recreational use.
Then it all fell apart. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided his home and businesses in 2008 and indicted him on multiple counts of drug conspiracy, money laundering and operating drug-related premises within 1,000 feet of a school. His dispensaries were shut and in 2010 he was sentenced to six years in prison.
Grant considers his conviction a racial injustice. I was black and owned six locations. I was heavily targeted in the war on drugs.
Whatever the truth about his individual case, there is no doubt law enforcement disproportionately targeted African Americans. They comprise about a 10th of LAs population but from 2000 to 2017 accounted for 40% of cannabis arrests.
Grant emerged from prison in 2014, his budding empire extinguished. The Compton entrepreneur was a broke, convicted felon. The only job he could get was unloading crates with undocumented workers for $9 an hour. Eaze, meanwhile, marked 2015 with $10m in funding, juicing its expansion across California.
I cant let them beat me
That could have been the end of the story: a white-owned, well-funded company rides the legalisation wave while the African American felon is sidelined, a pattern repeated across California.
Grant, 50, however, has not quit. He has clawed his way back into the industry and fully intends to become a cannabis mogul. With his smart shirt and tie and Mercedes, he looks the part.
Ive been in this industry 30 years. I understood what the future looked like a long time ago. I cant let corporations in suits and ties step in and just take it. I cant let them beat me or out-think me. That aint gonna happen.
That may sound like bluster but the fast-talking former athlete, who still runs track, is picking up speed in his attempt to once again own Compton.
He became a regular visitor to LA city hall and the state capitol in Sacramento, buttonholing city councillors, state lawmakers, police, non-profits and regulators to help craft an enforcement scheme for medical and recreational pot.
The system put in place allows convicted felons to be part of the industry a sensible policy to let them work and pay taxes in a sector they helped create, said Grant.
The father of five has rebooted his brand, California Cannabis; launched a website; found a new supplier; and opened three dispensaries for medical pot to form the nucleus of an envisaged retail chain for recreational users, including tourists, once he gets licenses.
I lost six years but Im catching up. Perception is everything. If people see say 10 shops theyll think it must be a trusted brand, like McDonalds. Im aiming for high-end. Quality product and packaging, said Grant.
He spoke from one of his Compton stores surrounded by wares stamped with his slogan: Only the best grows in the west. In an adjacent room six workers sifted through cannabis heaped in 55-gallon containers, trimming it into 1lb sacks which Grant sells to other dispensaries.
Grant brushed off concerns that the Trump administration will crack down on an industry which is now fully legal in California, Colorado and six other states. He does, however, worry that federal threats will continue to deter banks from working with the industry, creating hassle and expense from handling lots of cash.
Above all he worries that African Americans and Latinos, having suffered disproportionately from pots criminalisation, will lose again if corporate America dominates the newly legalised market.
Hopefully we as people of colour will take our rightful position in this industry. Ill do my part, hiring and mentoring. I require two things of my workers: dont steal, be on time.
Apart from the trimmers and sales clerks Grants company is still largely a one-man operation he does almost everything. Once the money starts coming in Ill hire a marketing team.
Dont panic, legalization advocates say: Jeff Sessions anti-marijuana policy will have little practical impact and may even hasten the formal end of prohibition
Now that the dust has settled around attorney general Jeff Sessions promise of harsher federal marijuana enforcement, advocates of legalization have largely exchanged their initial disappointment over the move for one of long-term optimism.
I think there was a knee-jerk reaction of something approaching panic, but once everyone calmed down, theyve come to realize that practically this is going to have little impact, said Patrick Moen, a former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent who now works as council to an investment firm in the nascent legal marijuana industry.
Some, like Moen, even believe the decision could be the best thing for the growing marijuana movement, hastening the formal end of weed prohibition in the US.
There will probably a short term chilling effect, but this could ultimately be the best thing thats ever happened to accelerate the pace of change, Moen said.
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California’s marijuana muddle video explainer
The markets have reflected this somewhat counterintuitive sentiment. The United States Marijuana Index, which tracks 15 leading publicly traded legal marijuana-related companies, initially dropped 21% on the heels of the Department of Justice (DoJ) announcement, but it turned out to be a blip. By early this week the index had rebounded to within a few points of its one-year high.
Sessions announcement formally rescinded guidance, known as the Cole Memo, issued by the Obama-era DoJ that essentially told federal prosecutors to respect state laws with regards to marijuana. Importantly, though, Sessions decision did not direct or incentivize US attorneys to pursue marijuana cases, it just allowed them to if they so choose.
The Cole Memo guidance was eminently reasonable and was a common sense good policy, Moen said. I think that despite the fact that its been formally rescinded, federal prosecutors will effectively continue to abide by it.
The decision may ultimately precipitate another win, as Moen observed. Within hours of Sessions announcement, a bipartisan group of legislators had come out against the decision and some, including Hawaii senator Brian Schatz, announced that legislation was already being crafted that could overrule Sessions, by changing the extent to which Marijuana is classified as illegal at the federal level.
Its great that weve had a number of members of Congress over the course of the last six days last week step up and say what the attorney general did is wrong. Now time for every single one of those members of Congress to put their names on the pending legislation, Strekal said.
