Minnesota marijuana enthusiasts often spend ridiculous amounts of time debating the “proper” and “best” growing protocols to ensure the cleanest highs, the most perfectly calibrated and titrated doses of cannabinoids, and so forth. One debate that rages within the medicinal marijuana blogosphere is whether to “go organic” or “go hydroponic” or both. We’ll dive into the debate and give you the bullet-point summary.

Organic

Organic, natural cannabis is grown without the use of toxic pesticides, nutrient-challenged soil, artificial nutrients, and chemical fertilizers. People have different ideas about what exactly constitutes “organic” or “natural,” but essentially farmers eschew using mined phosphate, chloride, many mineral salts, many fertilizers, and other components that could harm the plant and environment. Unfortunately, beyond these fluffy definitions – which sound good on paper – various standards apply to various types of natural growing. So consumers may not know exactly what they are getting, even if something says both “natural” or “organic” on the label.

Hydroponic

Hydroponic is about growing plants without soil. The plants are grown in a relatively sterile environment, so pesticides are not needed, growing times and seasons are extended, and nutrition can be optimized. Hydroponic marijuana growers utilize nutrient solutions that are rich in refined minerals. Micro organisms cannot flourish, since there is no soil, so these organisms cannot contribute potentially dangerous anti-nutrients and chemicals. And finally, advocates of hydroponic growing suggest that fewer natural resources (e.g. soil) are needed; therefore, the process is gentler on the environment.

Does it matter whether your medicinal marijuana is hydroponic, organic, natural, or none of the above?

This is the $6 million question. And while there are advocates of various schools of thought about growth, the reality is that the science is relatively nascent. In other words, it’s difficult to judge what’s healthy and what’s not because there is a lack of carefully controlled clinical studies on this stuff. Perhaps these methods are healthier for you or will deliver a more controlled, titrated high, but the science isn’t settled. Individual tolerances and preferences may vary widely.

But one solution that you might not have considered – but likely should have considered – is medicinal
marijuana.
Marijuana has a history as a medicine that dates back centuries. Indeed, in 1937, when Congress passed
the Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively turned cannabis illegal, the only opponent of the bill was a
representative from the American Medical Association!

Marijuana’s active chemical compounds, cannabinoids, can help with a variety of health conditions,
possibly including chronic pain, fibromyalgia, nausea, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis. Active marijuana
compounds can limit pressure in the eyes of glaucoma patients, thus limiting damage.

And while some clinicians suggest that more conventional therapies are better for relieving intraocular
pressure – they may do so better than cannabinoids – drugs and conventional therapies also have side
effects that can make them inappropriate or even dangerous for certain patients.

If you are one of the more than 60 million glaucoma sufferers worldwide, you may be able to slow the
progress of this frustrating disorder – which has the potential to degrade and destroy the optic nerve –
with the proper, medically-supervised use of medicinal marijuana.

If you suffer from a chronic condition, such as pain, cancer, glaucoma, or arthritis, California
Proposition 215 Act allows you to consume medicinal cannabis to manage your symptoms. You
must get an official diagnosis and recommendation from a physician (or psychologist, podiatrist,
acupuncturist, doctor of naturopathy, etc) and submit records that verify the diagnosis.

Once you are approved, you can possess 8 ounces of marijuana legally in the state of California
(not including stems and leaves) and maintain six mature plants at your house (or 12 immature
ones). If your physician recommends it, you can actually possess more, per Senate Bill 420.  To
get a medical marijuana card in California, here are the steps:

1. Get a recommendation from your physician.

2. Submit form CDPH 9042.

3. Send your form to your county’s health department with an application fee, copy of your
doctor’s recommendation, proof of residence, and a government issued photo ID, such as a
driver’s license or passport.

Note that, once you get your medical marijuana identification card, also known as an MMIC, you
should use cannabis in a safe and legal way. Here are some tips:

• Avoid smoking marijuana where the law prohibits smoking (e.g. airports, restaurants, schools, et cetera)
• Avoid smoking around your children
• Prevent your children from accessing the marijuana
• Store your marijuana safely in your car’s trunk. Avoid keeping loose marijuana in your vehicle, as you could get charged with possession.
• Avoid giving marijuana to friends or family members – this is illegal.
• Do not operate your vehicle after ingesting or smoking marijuana.
• Educate yourself about use and abuse – how cannabis can treat problems like fibromyalgia, chronic pain, nausea, eating disorders, et cetera.

One Million Legal Medical Marijuana Patients!

According to a July 2nd article in the Huffington Post, “America’s one million legal marijuana users,” there arenow somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million people legally authorized to use marijuana in the U.S. This market generates between $2.3 billion and $6.2 billion worth of business a year. The author of this powerful piece, Russ Belville, serves as an Outreach Coordinator for NORML.org. Belville cites powerful statistics to support the idea that medical marijuana not only helps patients who suffer from chronic conditions like glaucoma, severe depression, and anxiety, but also makes America safer and more prosperous. Consider these stats that he cites about medical marijuana states:

• “Annual highway fatalities are down in every medical marijuana state, except Rhode Island;
• Incidents of workplace injuries and illness are down in every medical marijuana state;
• Monthly teen use of marijuana is down in every medical marijuana state except Maine.”

Different states use different systems, protocols, and laws to regulate the safe use of medical marijuana. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the dire — in some cases, cataclysmic — fears of medical marijuana have been forcibly refuted. As Belville notes, “after 15-years, 1 million patients and a million pounds of legal marijuana, few if any of the dire predictions by opponents of medical marijuana have come to fruition…. medical marijuana states like Oregon are experiencing their lowest ever rates of workplace fatalities, injuries and accidents. States like Colorado are experiencing their lowest rates in three decades of fatal crashes per million miles driven.”

Sure, more data would be useful. And marijuana can, indeed, have ill effects if taken improperly or without supervision or abused. (Of course, the same thing could be said of over-the-counter medications like Advil, Pepeto-Bismol and Preparation H, by the way.) But if you’re just trying to look at the data to establish the safety and efficacy of the efforts to legalize medical marijuana,the arguments are pretty powerful.

For medicinal marijuana users who prefer tinctures to smoking or using a vaporizer, decisions abound. One of the big ones is whether to use alcohol or glycerin tinctures. They are fanatical adherents of both “schools of thought,” and medicinal marijuana forums on the web are rife with debates over how/whether/when to use these tinctures.

According to most reports, alcohol tinctures are more potent in terms of leading to faster and greater absorption. Thus, per the amount of tincture you use, you will get a strongerdose of THC when you use an alcohol tincture.
That said, there are trade-offs.

First of all, some people complain that the alcohol doesn’t taste good or that it irritates the mouth. Others complain that the alcohol actually changes the character of the high in negative ways (although some people say the same of glycerin). Other patients may simply refuse alcohol because they’re recovering alcoholics, and they don’t want to toy with even minuscule amounts of ethanol for fear of setting off cravings for drinking.

Both alcohol and glycerin can release by products depending on heating, pressure, and storage conditions.  For instance, if you store an ethanol tincture in a plastic container, the ethanol can interact with the plastic to release harmful free vinyl chemicals, which can make some people sick.

Also, if you heat alcohol tincture above 300 degrees Fahrenheit, the cannabinoids (activemedical compounds) can vaporize, so you will lose the medicinal effects. Likewise, if you heat glycerin to high temperatures, harmful by products can be released. And if you overheat either tincture, you will lose the cannabinoids.

Probably the “alcohol versus tincture” debate will never be fully resolved, since in many cases, it comes down to questions of taste and your desire for a certain intensity/character of the high.

One of the reasons why some people “veer away” from the medical marijuana option is that they don’t want to get into the habit of smoking something – anything.

Fortunately, there are other ways to enjoy the pot that you need to treat conditions like glaucoma, depression, and pain from chemotherapy. One delightful option is the edibles/ingestibles route. Today’s medical marijuana dispensaries have gone way beyond the simple (but effective) “pot brownie.” Today, you can find pomegranate tea, pecan chip cookies, granolabars, ice cream, and even olive oil with medically active cannabis. Note that these aren’t necessarily “swappable.” A pecan brownie designed to deliver a high to treat your depression may not be appropriate for someone who needs different kind of high.

As an LA Weekly blog post on the subject recently put it: “because such things have to be carefully considered, patients with doctors’ recommendations need the guidance of care givers at a marijuana dispensary.  [Each of the yummy edible/ingestible formulations], including “oral sprays, pills and tinctures …is made with a different strain of cannabis – sativa, indica and hybrid– which produce different effects and are beneficial to specific illnesses.”

The LA Weekly blog also notes that, believe or not, there is a restaurant in Denver called the Ganja Gourmet – a pot restaurant! The menu includes house pizza, tamales, hummus, spinach pie, bottled “ganjanade” and a plethora of delicious desserts, like giant chocolate bombs andstony road ice cream.

What constitutes an “organic” medium? According to a recent article in High Times, “an organic product can be broadly described as any product that’s derived from a recently living organism. To grow organic pot means that your growing medium and plant foods result from natural sources and not synthetic compounds dreamed up in the lab.”

Essentially, the medium in which organic pot grows contains things like guano, manure,composts, fruit vines, sea kelp, and even steamed bone. These different media yield up notably different flavors, textures, and buzzes. Organic marijuana typically grows slower than marijuana grown through hydroponic methods.

The process of cultivating organic marijuana is complicated, but more and more newer dispensaries are turning to these methods to design and deliver unusual products. Anecdotalreports suggest, at least, that organic marijuana packs a potent THC crystal count, burns “clean”and contains various nutrients and phytonutrients not typically present in marijuana grown using fertilizers, soil, or prepared with pesticides.

One reason why organics are becoming increasingly popular among medicinal marijuana users is that people who are sick and in pain from conditions like glaucoma, fibromyalgia, MS, cancer,and arthritis want to minimize exposure to toxic contaminants. Non-organic pot – grown, forinstance, with the help of heavy pesticides, anti-fungals, and other synthetic elements — couldquite possibly leach unwanted compounds into the marijuana.

Again, the science here is still relatively young. It’s hard to find conclusive clinical studies that show that this or that compound in the marijuana growth medium will hurt you (or help you). But it intuitively makes sense to avoid blatantly synthetic compounds in your medium.

A marijuana vaporizer is a device that heats up medical marijuana to temperatures of around 285degrees Fahrenheit to 393 degrees Fahrenheit for the purpose of boiling and vaporizing active compounds called cannabinoids. A user inhales thin vapors of mist instead of smoke. Differenttechnologies vaporize the marijuana in different ways, but the general principle is: you heat the marijuana at a much lower temperature than you would if you smoked it.

This leads to at least three benefits:

1. Relatively odorless and clean. Although the vaporization process does generate a residual resin, the process involves little burning, so the odor will be significantly contained.
2. Essentially smokeless – The American Lung Association and other public health institutions often warn people against smoking cigarettes, marijuana, and other herbs or compounds because the harsh chemicals in the smoke can damage lung tissue and lead to chronic ailments, such as emphysema, asthma, and worse. A standard marijuana joint will burn at extremely high temperature – one online resource says upwards of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. This extremely high temperature burning releases carcinogenic compounds (cancer-causing agents), and the smoke also can interfere with the taste and experience of the high.
3. Get more bang for your buck. Cannabinoids are the active compounds which deliver the medicinal effects. When you smoke a joint, the combustion destroys many of these compoundsVaporization, on the other hand, does a far better job of preserving these key cannabinoid compounds. So if you’re on a budget, vaporization therefore makes a lot of sense; you can stretch your supply and still get active healing.
For nearly 15 years – ever since Californians gained the right to use medicinal marijuana to treat ailments like glaucoma, anxiety, and chronic pain thanks to the Proposition 215 Act – patients around the Bay Area have been looking for reputable, experienced, and careful suppliers of medicinal pot.

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