Quick Hits (page 3)
Tommy Chong May Appeal Sentence
By: Staff Reporter (AP)
PITTSBURGH (AP) - Attorneys for actor and comedian Tommy Chong are considering appealing his nine-month prison sentence for conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia on the grounds that a federal judge sentenced Chong based on the character he played and not the person he is.
"The United States attorney made a big deal about Tommy's movies and how he portrayed drug usage and law enforcement," Stanton B. Levenson said. "We didn't think it would be appropriate to consider his public persona. ... That's not him."
Levenson said attorneys were still researching possible appeal issues, but they were concerned that U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab didn't separate Chong from the hippie stoner he portrayed in movies he made with comedy partner Cheech Marin. An appeal notice has been filed.
At his Sept. 11 sentencing hearing, Chong, who lives in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said he got carried away with his fictional persona, but has quit smoking marijuana and wanted to use his celebrity to help people stay off drugs.
While not seeking a specific sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Houghton had argued that Chong, 65, grew wealthy glamorizing drug use and trivializing law enforcement in his films, adding Chong also used his characters to promote his business.
Chong's attorneys argued that he should be sentenced no harsher than any of the other defendants thus far in the national drug-paraphernalia investigation that netted the actor.
Levenson said a sentence of six months' house arrest, work release and six months of probation would have been suitable.
Instead, Schwab sentenced Chong in the middle range of federal sentencing guidelines, which called for six months to one year in prison. The maximum possible punishment is three years in prison. Chong also was fined $20,000.
Chong is not appealing his conviction. He pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia and pleaded guilty on behalf of his business, Chong Glass. The business, now defunct, is not appealing.
Prosecutors said the company sold thousands of bongs used to smoke marijuana. Authorities purchased paraphernalia and had it shipped to an undercover business in Beaver Falls, a city northwest of Pittsburgh.
Chong's home and business were raided in February as part of Operation Pipe Dreams, a nationwide series of raids in which at least 55 people were charged with trafficking in illegal drug paraphernalia. The U.S. Attorney's office in Pittsburgh and the Drug Enforcement Administration led the investigations.
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Mary Jane'z Novelties
Growin' Our Own (page 3)
Marijuana Beer in 15 Minutes
By: Bud Life
Have you ever wondered about marijuana beer? What would it be like to drink some marijuana beer? In this story we explain how to make your own marijuana beer and its really easy. All you need is a micro brewery home kit, water, and an ounce of marijuana. The rest is up to nature's process of fermentation and your patience. There are Hemp Beers and Ales available in the U.S. but these are no THC alcoholic beverages. Hemp is hemp, but if it's legal where you live you can make your own homebrew complete with a THC kick. The subject for this story came from one of our Canadian readers and we merely filled in some more details about brewing beer. Do not do this where it is illegal to do so and this is offered as an educational story about the home brew. We do not advocate doing this if its illegal where you are. You're on your own. Read on ...
Buying the brew kit
There are many kits marketed for brewing beer at home. These can be found on the net, or look in the yellow pages when you visit a larger city. These kits are simple and contain the malt-hops mix which is like dark, sticky molasses. There are two other packages one is brewer's yeast and the other is a sugar compound. Brewer's yeast is a fine white powder and looks like fluff cocaine or kitchen flour. Buy a kit that comes with bottles. Some outlets can set you up with small quantities of bottles and they will happily put a kit together for you from their larger supplies. A kit we saw a few years ago at Costco was the San Francisco Home Micro Brewery kit. We will use this kit as an example of how easy your home brew instructions are to follow since we are familiar with this kit. This kit had the contents mentioned above and contained six amber plastic 2 liter bottles with locking caps. We checked on the net and couldn't find this company. I hope they are still in business, however, many other kits are available.
Preparing the marijuana
Place five quarts of good water into a large pot and put it on the stove to boil. We'll get back to this as it takes a while to come to a boil. Preparing the marijuana is also easy so you don't have to be a master chef to get this part right. Get your oz. and a blade cutting puree or blender appliance. Get the stems out of your pot. In fact, the fine shake or powder at the bottom of your stash is perfect for this. Save this up over time and use it for your home brew. The trimmed ends off your frosty buds is perfect for this too. Make sure this is fairly dry so it will cut otherwise you may be scraping hashish out of the appliance. Heaven forbid if this happens. Anyway, cut up the marijuana until it has the consistency of cooking flour. It will be totally ground up into a fine powder. If any small stems that were missed are seen pull them out and stick with the marijuana keif or flour. To be official you may decide to use a flour sifter to get any chunks out of your powder. You want this fine powder to dissolve into your beer.
Making the beer - boiling water - mixing the contents
Take the malt pouch (remember molasses) and microwave it according to the kit instructions. Cut a corner off the plastic package and pour about two inches into a coffee mug. Spoon or pour about an inch of your marijuana dust on top of the malt and mix with a spoon. Microwave for about 25 seconds and repeat this process by adding more keif. You want the sticky malt in your mug to be saturated with this keif powder. Each mug is microwaved for about 25 seconds and poured into the brew bag as you complete the saturation of the mixture. The mixture won't pour if it's cold. Do this again and again until your oz. is gone. This may take about four or five tries. Then microwave the bigger malt bag one last time. Make sure the cut corner is elevated and sealed so the malt doesn't mess up your microwave. Slowly pour the sticky malt liquid into your brew bag. A funnel helps and we recommend that a funnel be purchased beforehand. That brew bag hole is small but you might get lucky and get the sticky liquid in without a funnel, but it's a whole lot harder.
Next check your water on the stove. Is it boiling yet? If so take it off the stove and turn the stove off. If not it should be close to boiling. Let this cool for about five minutes so you don't mess up or melt the brew bag when you pour this in. However it still should be hot enough to melt the malt, hops and marijuana syrup already in the brew bag. Screw the pressure cap onto the bag and massage the malt mixture into the warm water. Shake it up and massage, repeating this for about one minute. Then take the cap off and put in about six liters of cool or lukewarm water. Six liters is about one and nine sixteenths gallons, but do yourself a favor and get a measuring cup that measures liters. Leave the future marijuana beer liquid level about two inches below the fill cap. This will bloat as it ferments and this little room may be too little room, check the directions for your kit. Some of this homebrew CO2 gas actually explodes if pressure isn't released. Same with the bottles. Always follow the directions in the brew kit. Wait till the mix cools down and re-cap the brew bag. Massage it some more and shake it up to mix this up. Then uncap the bag and add in the brewer's yeast powder. Recap the bag and mix one last time. Then hang the bag for a week or so according to the directions. This entire beer making venture, without the waiting time, has taken you about 15 minutes. If you didn't boil the water first you had a lot of waiting time.
When the time is right you bleed the CO2 gas out of the bag. This is burping the baby. All you do is release the pressure and, when safe, take the cap off. This may take five minutes or so as you're making a small batch of beer. You don't move the bag and haven't moved the bag for the past week, because if you move the bag you will disturb the sediment and have cloudy beer. Then you add in the special sugar. Wait the short time the directions say and from the lower pouring spout fill up your beer bottles with your home brew. Fill about two inches from the top and if its foamy, let the foam calm down. Cap the bottles and do not fill any bottles from the bottom of the bag, which is below the pour spout. Pour the unmixed contents out of the bottom of the brew bag and clean it out for the next batch of beer. Let the bottles set for about a week and then chill a few brews. After twelve hours or so of chilling try some of your own brew. Nothing will ever be like it and you have the satisfaction of making your own recipe beer. Try different amounts and methods until you become an expert brewmaster. Who knows, you may even get high. We don't know as we heard about this from our Canadian reader. He claimed to get high from his home brew while getting rid of cotton mouth. Your kit instructions may vary, so don't listen to us, follow those specific directions. It's your responsibility to brew safely and legally. Have fun and let us know how your brew came out.
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Pipeline (page 3)
To all Parties Interested in Medical Marijuana and SB 420 --
By: John Vasconcellos (Senator, District 13) & Mark Leno (Assemblyman, District 13)
We are well aware and appreciate that some persons have expressed concerns regarding the final version of our SB 420 - designed to fulfill the directive of the people of California (when they in 1996 enacted Proposition 215) by creating a state distribution system for medical marijuana. We hope by this statement to make utterly clear our intentions with respect to this bill.
1. Both of us are profoundly committed to the full implementation of Proposition 215 (in fact, John Vasconcellos carried similar legislation decriminalizing medical marijuana before Proposition 215 - only to have it vetoed by Governor Wilson, and Mark Leno led the battle in San Francisco to create their medical marijuana program).
2. We have crafted SB 420 as the result of three years of intensive negotiations among all key stakeholders (including patients, providers and physicians) and believe it is both good sound public policy and the very best we could hope to get signed into law by the Governor to provide the best protections within our reach.
3. Fully appreciating that Proposition 215 cannot be amended by the Legislature, we have resisted all efforts to make the new identification card system created by SB 420 mandatory - at least two times our SB 420 contains specific language declaring our intent that the program is wholly voluntary.
4. Insofar as SB 420 now contains any language which might be interpreted to the contrary.
a) We are submitting for publication in the respective Assembly and Senate Journals a letter attesting our legislative intent that our SB 420 system is purely voluntary;
b) We are requesting opinions from the Legislative Counsel and the Attorney General regarding whether the language of SB 420 could be interpreted as other than voluntary; and
c) However these opinions are rendered we will introduce legislation in January 2004 to do whatever is necessary to confirm that this SB 420 system is voluntary.
5. As to the final version of our SB 420 regarding the amounts permissible for possession and cultivation:
a) We took the guideline setting authority away from DHS because they did not want it and to eliminate their high cost estimates that would likely have led the Governor to veto the bill;
b) We tried to incorporate NIDA guidelines, but learned that they do not really exist in any form we could incorporate into SB 420;
c) We chose guidelines we believe best meet our search for balance between patient?s needs and practical results in getting SB 420 signed into law;
d) In addition we allow localities with higher possession or cultivation amounts to retain them, and other localities to establish new guidelines which exceed what is set forth in this bill. No jurisdiction may establish guidelines lower than those set forth in SB 420;
e) In addition we provided individuals the option to get in excess of the guidelines upon a doctor's recommendation for amounts exceeding the cultivation and possession guidelines set in this bill. Our letter in the Assembly and Senate Journals expresses legislative intent that these guidelines are intended to be the threshold, and not a ceiling;
f) We made a judgment call that if we removed all guidelines from our SB 420 we likely could not get it signed into law;
g) Our SB 420 guidelines are the most generous of all the states that have legislative guidelines for possession and cultivation of medical marijuana;
h) We note that these guidelines are endorsed by several credible knowledgeable supporters of the medical uses of marijuana: Dr. Marcus Conant (well respected HIV/AIDS doctor), Scott Imler (long-time medical marijuana patient advocate and president of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center), Marsha Rosenbaum (medical sociologist and director of the San Francisco office of Drug Policy Alliance), and Jerry Uelman (Professor of Law at Santa Clara University and medical marijuana defense attorney).
6. Altogether, while we do not see our bill to be perfect or ourselves to be infallible, we sincerely believe that our final version of SB 420 is the very best we could hope to get enacted into law ? and that it provides broad protection to tens of thousands of ill Californians without jeopardizing any ill Californians.
We thank you, and we wish you well.
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Josephine's Reptile Nail & Body Wrap - for information, write to:
P.O. Box 2536
Sun Valley, Idaho, 83353