Licensed pot grower sees opportunities beyond medical marijuana
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
SASKATOON – A reputation of any kind, even for a business, is hard to shake.
And when your company is the only federally licensed medical marijuana producer in Canada, that’s the first thing people think of when 
they hear the company’s name, says Brent Zettl, the company’s president and CEO.
But providing cannabis to patients authorized by Health Canada isn’t the Saskatoon-based company’s only focus, even if sales of the CanniMed herbal treatment account for between 60 and 65 per cent of its revenue, Zettl says.
“It’s kind of like our gateway drug, if I can use that term,” he says in an interview. “It’s our gateway drug to these other compounds that we’re planning to have produced in plants.”
For nearly 10 years, PPS has been producing medical marijuana on a contract basis for the federal government. Originally grown in the deep depths of a decommissioned mine in Flin Flon, Man. – known unofficially as the Ganja Mine – PPS moved its legal hydroponic pot operation out of the town on the Saskatchewan border when the contract with the mine’s owner ended last summer.
Tags: Marijuana Growers
Tampa cops say man told them he sold marijuana because he couldn’t find work
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
TAMPA — Tampa police are advising a 27-year-old man arrested on drug charges to choose a different career.
Police pulled over Timothy J. Stewart’s white 1989 Pontiac Bonneville at Fowler Avenue E and Club Drive around 11:30 p.m. Sunday because of a missing tag light.
Officers said they smelled marijuana coming from the Tampa man’s vehicle, searched it and found 22 grams of packaged marijuana ready for sale.
Stewart, of 1205 E 140th Ave., Apt. A, said he began selling drugs two weeks ago because he couldn’t find a job, police said. But Hillsborough County arrest records show that in past years, he has been charged twice with intent to distribute cocaine and once with intent to distribute marijuana.
Tags: marijuana bust
Store in Providence would grow, package and sell medical marijuana
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The old warehouse complex in the Valley neighborhood has been many things to many people over the past 150 years. It was once home to the James Hanley Brewing Co., and Harry Houdini, the renowned escape artist, paid a visit and successfully
broke free from a locked beer cask.
In recent years, the fortress-like site has served as the Capitol Records Center, a storage facility for reams of archived state documents.
Now, the two vacant buildings at 431 Harris Ave. may soon take on a new historic significance: A group of investors is contending to turn it into the state’s first medical marijuana store. They would name it the Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center, after the late Providence state representative who championed the legalization of medical marijuana, to grow and applicants interested in operating a compassion center in Rhode Island under rules developed by the Department of Health. There are applications for other centers in Providence as well as for marijuana retail sites in Pawtucket, Portsmouth, the Warwick/Cranston area and northern Rhode Island. Several applicants have yet to secure an exact location while one did not respond to a request seeking a tour of its proposed facility. Another declined the offer, while Slater officials agreed to meet with a Journal reporter and photographer.
On Tuesday, the Health Department, which solicited the compassion center proposals, has scheduled a hearing in the Cannon Building, 3 Capitol Hill, Room 104, for the public to air its concerns or support for the various proposals.
The hearing begins at 10 a.m. Key issues are expected to be the location and the proposed security measures for the centers.
Tags: marijuana bust, marijuana for medical use, Medical Marijuana, medicinal marijuana
Ex-firefighter to spend 8 months in prison for growing marijuana
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
A federal judge in Maine, sentencing a 32-year-old former Boston firefighter on a marijuana-growing charge this week, noted that the man had admitted smoking about 2 ounces of the drug each week during the time he worked as a firefighter, prosecutors said.
The comments came when Sean Berte was sentenced Thursday by US District Judge George Z. Singal in Portland to eight months in prison for his role in cultivating more than 100 marijuana plants, US Attorney Paula D. Silsby’s office said yesterday in a statement.
“At the sentencing, the court noted that in addition to pleading guilty to cultivating the marijuana, the defendant admitted smoking approximately two ounces of marijuana [weekly] during the eight years the defendant was employed as a Boston firefighter,’’ prosecutors said. “The court noted that the defendant’s drug usage during his employment violated the respect and trust the public has in firefighters.’’
The judge was commenting on a presentencing report prepared by the US Probation and Pretrial Services System, said Assistant US Attorney Daniel J. Perry, who prosecuted the case. Such reports are not public documents. While the judge spoke of Berte’s using the drug during the years he worked as a firefighter, “There’s no information in the record to suggest that he consumed drugs while on duty,’’ Perry said.
Tags: Marijuana Growers
12,000 marijuana plants removed in hills above Centerville
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
CENTERVILLE — Police removed more than 12,000 marijuana plants on a rugged hillside above here on Forest Service Land on Sunday morning. The operation took several hours.
Centerville resident Troy Carlson, who lives about a mile below where the plants were removed on the 100 block of 700 East, said he was surprised to hear helicopters about 9:30 a.m. and then to find out that police had found the drugs growing there.
“We just watched all day,” he said. “Of course, we are concerned about it. It’s about a mile from our fence line. It’s not a long ways.”
Carlson said the area now is cordoned off with police tape.
But that yellow tape isn’t necessarily easing his fears.
LA police probe 2 marijuana dispensary killings
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
LOS ANGELES — Homicide detectives were trying to determine Friday whether deadly attacks on staff at two medical marijuana dispensaries were connected.
The attacks Thursday came amid concern about the proliferation of pot clinics and new city regulations that could shutter hundreds of them.
Four robbers gunned down an employee and wounded another at about 4:15 p.m. Thursday at Higher Path Holistic Care Collective on Sunset Boulevard in the Echo Park area, said Cmdr. David Doan, chief of detectives.
Killed was Matthew Butcher, 27, of Los Angeles, a coroner’s official said. The other employee, whose name was not released, was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
Five hours after the first attack, the owner of the Hollywood Holistic dispensary found the body of an employee at the Hollywood store, Doan said.
Tags: Marijuana Growers
Weed Control Part 1: MS sufferer finds relief with medical marijuana
Jun 28, 2010 Online Issue
Matt Young used to bust kids for smoking pot as a security officer in Calgary, but now it’s Young who’s trying to find a way to smoke marijuana in peace.
That search almost cost him his life.
Young, now living in Saskatchewan, is a former private security manager and amateur bodybuilder who wanted to be a police officer. He’s watched all that disappear as his multiple sclerosis advanced since his diagnosis at age 14.
The 28-year-old has tried every drug suggested to him by doctors in three provinces, but he said marijuana, which he only tried once or twice in high school, is the only drug that stops his spasms and lets him eat and sleep at night.
“Marijuana still doesn’t eliminate the problems, but it reduces them so I can get out of bed and play with my boy,” Young said, referring to his seven-year-old stepson.
