Janean Chun

 
As far as Derek Peterson sees it, Wall Street can’t compete with the marijuana business.
After a decade in investment banking, in late 2009, Peterson learned that a friend’s marijuana dispensary was clearing $18 million a year, dwarfing Peterson’s $300,000 to $400,000 annual salary at Morgan Stanley.
“The place was the size of a Starbucks and had about 900 patients a day,” said Peterson, now 38. “I was a finance guy, always analyzing different industries. I started looking at the products and services utilized in this industry, the economics behind it and how I could prosper from a peripheral business.”
Peterson launched GrowOp Technology in May 2010 as a side business, selling “plug and play” mobile hydroponic trailers equipped with everything necessary to grow medical marijuana.
Morgan Stanley fired him seven months later for his pot side business — unfairly, Peterson claims. He said saw many of his colleagues running side businesses.
“Morgan Stanley Smith Barney believes it treated Mr. Peterson fairly and appropriately, including in its application of its well-established policy requiring disclosure and approval of outside business activities,” a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney spokeswoman told The Huffington Post.
Rather than joining another Wall Street firm, Peterson decided to get serious about weed. Through one of GrowOp’s investors Peterson had the opportunity in February 2012 to merge with Terra Tech Corp., a publicly-traded firm that was getting out of the voice IP industry.
Besides selling hydroponic trailers for $30,000 to $80,000, his company makes hydroponic equipment, acquiring smaller retailers and creating new technology, including an iPhone app that allows growers to monitor crops remotely. Terra Tech projects 2012 revenues of more than $1 million.
HuffPost Small Business recently asked Peterson what it’s like to go from Wall Street to weed.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/20/derek-peterson-terra-tech_n_1812851.html

By Steve Elliott

 
Moms For Marijuana, a grassroots network of parents and other citizens across the world who are concerned with the ignorant war being fought against the cannabis plant, is sending a Cannabis Quilt across the United States in a show of solidarity and unity, demanding the legalization of marijuana.

If you mention “hemp,” most people are going to immediately assume you’re talking about marijuana. However, the two are actually quite distinct. While hemp is a strain of the cannabis sativa plant, it is a variety which is extremely low in THC, and thus would not be terribly satisfying to smoke. It is a very useful plant, however. It’s environmentally friendly and it can be harvested for its use in textiles, paper, and biodegradable plastics, among other things.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.louisville.com/content/hemp-america-production-launches-tonight-hemp-heals-music-festival-movies

By: Martin Cash

COLE BREILAND / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Simon Potter of the Composites Innovation Centre shows off a prototype of a speaker made with Manitoba hemp.
 
ARENA concert sound systems deliver a much cleaner sound than they did back in the day.
But there’s room for improvement. For instance, who can ever actually hear the words of the lead singer’s between-song banter?
Daryl Lazarescu thinks he may have a solution and it comes from an unlikely source — Manitoba-grown hemp.
Lazarescu’s company, Pro Sound & Communications, and the Composites Innovation Centre are developing a large-format speaker horn using a hemp-fibre mat to replace the fibreglass material traditionally used in audio speakers.
“The target market is aimed primarily at venues that are a bit more difficult acoustically, like arenas and large churches with reflective walls and surfaces,” Lazarescu said. “The idea is to get the sound on to the listener and away from the reflective surfaces.”
The 96 cm X 66 cm X 117 cm speakers are large enough to contain all of the speech range so that the listener won’t hear the reflected sound.
Simon Potter, a product innovation specialist at the Composites Innovation Centre in Winnipeg, said the CIC has developed all sorts of prototypes — everything from bus doors to motorcycle parts to spectacles and caskets — replacing items made with traditional materials with bio-fibres made with locally grown hemp or flax.
“We’d never done anything with sound-reproduction systems, but we thought it would be very cool,” Potter said.
“We knew hemp had some unique acoustical properties and we thought it might have a warmer sound quality to it.”
Lazarescu says he thinks the results are better than what is commercially available, but he’s waiting for the actual scientific data to compare with traditional systems.
“I’m very happy with the results. It sounds a little better than conventional fibreglass, and once we get the data we will know more,” he said. “Warmer is subjective. Data is quantifiable.”
And Lazarescu knows what he’s talking about. For the past 12 years he’s been in the business of designing and installing audiovisual systems for large facilities from his business, formerly based in Bellingham, Wash.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/a-little-hemp-may-help-that-concert-167004395.html

And avoid ending up at the hospital, or in jail.

By David Downs
 

 
Don’t scarf down pot brownies, and be careful mixing weed with alcohol.
Abide by those two simple rules, and you’ll avoid becoming a freshman cliché at the hospital or the city jail, said Amanda Reiman, a lecturer at Cal who has a Ph.D in social welfare from UC Berkeley.
 
Complete article here:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/how-to-smoke-weed/Content?oid=3317973

 
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Brazilian painter is making an art out of smoking pot.
At his studio in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Fernando de la Rocque (pronounced hockey) took a deep drag on a marijuana joint and blew onto a stencil overlaying paper. After several puffs an image began to appear — a golden-hued version of “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” by Italian sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo.
Read more: http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Brazilian-artist-makes-art-with-marijuana-smoke-3802090.php#ixzz24L2leSAc

By Dimitar.Miscevic
 
In June the National Cancer Institute added text to its online resource “Cannabis and Cannabinoids” highlighting the role of herbal cannabinoids in killing cancer cells (apoptosis).
“We’ve known for quite some time the Cannabinoid System (CS) fights cancer,” noted Steve Young, member of Publius and author of Maximizing Harm: Winners and Losers in the Drug War (2000). “We’re happy to see NCI publicize this profound information 37 years after NCI first noted the anticancer properties of cannabis and the CS.”
 
Complete article here:
http://eyugoslavia.com/featured/17/publius-deciphers-update-from-national-cancer-institute-2243726/

This is an incredible list that everyone should have. She will send a free PDF copy to anyone who sends her an email at stormcrow@greenpassion.org .

By Mark Frauenfelder

 
“How can you have 56 percent of Americans in support of fully ending the drug war, and zero senators in support of it?” asks Doug Fine, investigative journalist and author of new book, Too High To Fail.
Fine sat down with ReasonTV’s Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss his time spent in the cannabis capital of California, Mendocino County, and why he thinks this drug can help save the American economy. And it’s not just about collecting taxes.
“The industrial [uses] may one day dwarf the psychoactive ones. If we start using it for fermentation for our energy needs, it can produce great biofuels,” says Fine, “already, cannabis is in the bumpers of Dodge Vipers.”
 
Complete article here:
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/21/video-interview-with-doug-fine.html