THE ORIGINATION OF ALTRUISTIC STRAINHUNTERS AND THE CANNA CLATCH
An auto-biographical essay by the creator of Canna Clatch: Altrustic StrainHunters
SEPT 2018
THE ORIGINATION OF ALTRUISTIC STRAINHUNTERS
AND THE CANNA CLATCH
Dear Readers, Patrons, and Friends,
Introduction
Thank you foremost for taking an interest to read this auto-biographical regarding my flagship entrepreneurial pursuit "Canna Clatch: Altruistic StrainHunters". Many have come into contact with Canna Clatch via social networking, or through an event, and many times only get a veneer understanding of what it is or what it is about. Let this short essay help everyone understand more fully my intentions, and adaptation to the massive change in the Oregon Cannabis Ecosystem - this is not a past-tense story, but more of a "update from the field" that back-tracks to the start so that everyone can be on the same page with me and know my intentions are not only pure, but un-wavering.
In 2011, I felt the contorted overtures of the Tech-Bubble popping as I had been working for 5 straight years in the middle of the silicon forest for a splinter company of Intel. The writing was on the wall, and having worked in the communications and security end of the tele-com industry, the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 had a much more formative impact on our community than anywhere else in the American economy/society. I quit my job and decided to partner with Portland-based independent contractors who specialized in providing IT and security services and infrastructure to non-profits and small businesses and start-ups. The initial splash into non-corporate work, and a non-corporate work environment was extremely eye-opening to me. The start-up environment was erratic, unprofessional, and devoid of many basic resources we took for granted in corporate environments. People were disorganized, failed to use basic protocols for scheduling and resource management and many times couldn't keep appointments and follow through on commitments and project deadlines.
This migration to independent contractor status was a double edged sword for me and I quickly learned that I hated the non-professional environment and company culture of many of the IT-Support companies that I did work with, the company cultures I came into contact with to me was lacking on numerous levels and lacked maturity as a whole. The flip-side to this coin is that I came to respect the "start-up environment" and the freedom to be and act creative within start-up surroundings. Meetings were more lively, people were more liberated to engage ideas and troubleshoot in live time. Objections and devil's advocate questioning was a fully accepted aspect of meetings and creative sessions.
I came to understand that certain aspects of the start-up environment were actually massively useful and creatively uplifting and should be nurtured and consciously used to help streamline processes and mitigate waste. I enjoyed the freedom that came with being an independent contractor and the construct that I get to pick and choose my clients and if I change my mind at any time, I am only responsible to honor a contract, not prolong a relationship I do not care for. This alone felt entirely liberating to me.
Along came 2013 and the state of Oregon came slowly to begin formal management of the dispensaries that had been operating informally for a long time. HB3460 was passed and signed by the Governor and the ignition of a "legal industry" was taking place. Companies geared up to sign up for a license the day the online system was launched and many wanted to be among the first to say they licensed themselves within the Oregon Health Authority. This created a strong platform to bring my "small business support" services to dispensaries and begin helping them formalize their processes for various activities related to "intake of goods" and creating efficient inventory systems and secure database systems. I learned quickly that I enjoyed helping small businesses with their cannabis-related challenges and enjoy showing historically non-technical people how to utilize technical solutions for saving money and saving time. 2013 and 2014 were extremely busy years for me and I saw legalization as the correct trajectory for cannabis to move in, at that stage - we hadn't entered into Prop91 territory yet, everything was 100% medical, and patient enrollment was increasing.
In the winter of 2014, my parents gave me some bad news. My stepfather had been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and needed to get treatment done in Rochester MN at the Mayo Clinic. They requested that I come act as caretaker to their property and animals while they are away for over 45 days going through a treatment protocol. This put a direct stop to my activities within Oregon and pulled me out of several ongoing projects having to do with cannabis production and processing within the new post HB3460 landscape. In November, Prop91 was passed by 56% of the Oregon populace and I watched from afar, fellow Oregonians both celebrate and squirm in anguish over the newly passed legislation. Prop91 was extremely controversial and although I voted YES to pass it, I had more than a few reservations about handing over cannabis to a liquor control agency. I considered it a bad policy and only voted yes because it safeguarded OMMP and I knew taxed weed could never compete with untaxed weed.
More Unfortunate News
Another major wrinkle occurred in the winter of 2014 while I was away from Oregon. From 2011, for around 3.5 years, myself and another OMMP patient had been managing an online FB group that had upwards of 4500 members, a large majority of them were patients, caregivers, and growers within the state program - card holding members so-to-speak. This group came to be extremely popular because we ran it as a communication-hub for patients and caregivers to locate medicine and for growers to advertise their material for other members to reach them. Fraud within the OMMP community was extremely prevalent, testing was something that was not yet established and so "caveat emptor" was the only means to which you can use to procure quality cannabis, cannabis byproducts. Getting a reference from someone you trusted was a huge deal in those days and our group helped people who were naïve about the fraud, mitigate their victimization, save them time, and find them resources they would otherwise not have. This group was shut down by FB and we lost, overnight, all capacity to keep our community going. In those days, it only took a single reporting of the group to get it shut down. Almost 5000 people lost a major online resource and sense of community.
This was hugely disappointing to me as my plan since 2011, when I created Canna Clatch: Altruistic StrainHunters to be a patient resource company and event management contractor, consisted of migrating a portion of these community patrons over to my newly launched business. My plan was to transition many of the members of the FB group to a 3rd Party online community and launch a membership subscription system that allowed members to buy cannabis and cannabis byproducts wholesale direct, and sign up for a CANNA CLATCH that is a monthly event that invites all members to come pick up their whole-sale orders and enjoy a curated assembly of innovative products, informational presentations, and lively music or entertainment.
With over 4500 members, I figured if I could get an 8th of them to carry over to a real membership subscription system, I would have an active core of trusted patrons that would help grow the business to help serve rural counties where dispensaries are few and far between and are run with limited inventories.
I had a business plan, a cost schedule, a profit calculation, and a forecasted schedule of growth and phases of expansion. This meant nothing though because the regulations being passed made my system of business largely unfeasible.
One thing that was abundantly clear to me, with my experience running a large, thriving cannabis community, is that people who suffer from chronic disabilities do not get enough interaction with other humans and basic human social time, and community in their lives. It was easy to see that many people used our online community to mitigate the loneliness that comes from living rurally, having limited access to resources, and simply being physically incapable. My fellow moderator and I attempted to create a humanistic community as well as a protective buffer for all members and try to mitigate harm that comes from dirty meds, or nefarious people.
Within my business plan, is the premise that a cannabis endeavor with no adaptation to culture or society, or community, is a bankrupt plan. Cannabis has to incorporate the human connection and Canna Clatch is a get-together around Cannabis for the purpose of sharing resources, know-how, and community. Every month, within every established county within Oregon, an event is scheduled and "Cannasapiens" can sign up to attend, can order wholesale-priced products for pick-up, and can invite a non-member guest to attend with them. "Cannasapiens" are members, and attend Clatches but "Altruistic StrainHunters" are people who are creating cannabis, cannabis products, and are sharing openly, information pertaining to cannabinoid homeopathy and folk medicine and self agency. Altruistic StrainHunters are humans who have realized the curative nature of cannabis and have taken it upon themselves to be enduring advocates for humans who have not yet had their self-realization concerning self agency, preventative health, and the many simple tools cannabis supplies to the human species for vitality and longevity.
What Is a Canna Clatch, Exactly?
A Canna Clatch is engineered in a three part system and occur monthly on the full moon.
The first phase of our get togethers, dubbed Clatches, are informational and a speaker(s) would be live-streamed into each location so that people can learn about cannabis innovation directly from the professionals who are at the forefront of the cannabis ecosystem. I have worked diligently to network myself with the most intelligent people throughout Oregon, so that I could invite them eventually to be speakers for our events, and to help spread knowledge and understanding regarding the plant and the incredible areas of innovation that we are engaging in.
The second phase of a Clatch is experiential and it is this part of the social where I get to show off my ability to curate the best, the most innovative, and most interesting cannabis strains, cannabis byproducts, and cannabis technologies and technological applications that are available throughout Oregon. I've tried to align myself with the smartest breeders and processors throughout the state so that I could eventually invite them to collaborate with me on helping showcase their most cutting edge creations and give people a feeling of "try before you buy" since many of the products and strains would be in a pre-production, or proof-of-concept phase of being and would get people excited for "what's to come". I envision collaborations between breeders, growers, and processors to bring about artisan quality traditional hashish and to cultivate a local appreciation for unique characteristics in plants, in processes, and in the end results that come from human creativity and human innovation. Edibles, confectionaries, libations, tinctures, and many other forms of cannabis products also gain tremendous fanfare when popular strains and hashing techniques get applied to them. My hope was to create excitement around these collaborations and seeing a collaboration through to the end where everyone can experience the end-result and give feedback as to whether a product should go into full production.
The third phase of a Clatch is entertainment based and a live DJ, live band, live drum set, or some form of music based entertainment is supplied to help support local artists/musicians and bring people together to move rhythmically and enjoy the cannabis experience with the addition of music and syncopation. This would give people a chance to network with each other, feel informal about communication and feel like there is a party atmosphere to feel liberated within. This is the phase where people who lack community in their lives can catch up on social time and make new friends who share their isolation, their chronic pain management, or chronic disability, among other things. Everyone deserves a community and everyone deserves a handicap-accessible location to fraternize together with like-minded cannasapiens, to consume cannabis together, and enjoy information and entertainment.
The Evolution of the Canna Clatch Blog
Prop91 was passed and had worded within it, in four separate places, a safeguarding of OMMP. This, in addition to limiting the system to residents until 2020 got me to vote yes. Quickly though, a consortium of lobbyists went to work modifying the execution of the law, first so that changes could be made to OMMP and its dispensary system, but later to admit non-residents into the licensing system. This lobbying, in addition to the "dry county" moratoriums that were being emplaced by prohibitionist county and city commissioners made for a highly erratic ecosystem within Oregon. We had to come to terms with the possibility that were going to lose our medical program to the Liquor Control Agency and that we had no sense of internal leadership in Salem to advocate for the good-will patient-members within OMMP.
I quickly realized that my business plan for Canna Clatch could not be executed unless I heavily modified core components of how it operated, how it managed resources, and how it positioned itself outside of the newly minted liquor management system. I realized that Canna Clatch was dead in the water if we lost our medical community to prohibitionary laws. I realized quickly that my model was never to be launched if cannabis events that incorporate consumption are legislated against and discriminated against through the clean air act. I realized most of all, that the state was attempting to make it impossible to operate a "wholesale direct" model that circumnavigates the dispensary system and gives patients and caregivers and growers a direct means to interact with each other. Some people call them open-air bazaars, others call them farmers markets, others call them produce exchanges. I call it wholesale direct and the most pure way to employ "caveat emptor" in an ecosystem where lab testing is not universal and even if it was, still doesn't cover growing amendments and IPM protocols - things that patients will discuss if they can speak with the grower directly.
We rallied. We showed up to the public testimony hearings. We created activism rallies on the front steps of the Salem capitol to try to fight the legislature in their undermining the good-will participants of the OMMP. This is where my blog came to be. I wanted a platform to help spread information and rally schedules. I wanted a platform to interview patients and caregivers and growers to spotlight the hardship that comes from removing resources from the lowest common denominators among us - the sick and the financially impoverished. The Canna Clatch Blog was my way of writing about the frustrations that come from watching the lobby-machine successfully erode our medical program and render our community irrelevant. Big-corporate cannabis was on a charge in Oregon, and the medical patients were the first victims in a long procession of abuses by the Oregon legislature. We voted on Prop91 with the understanding that the law would be executed the way it was worded in the ballot box. This is called "Good Will". We have an executive officer who is the last safe-guard to the good-will of the people, the voters. This is the governor. They are tasked with signing a bill into law. Gov Kate Brown has shown a complete malfeasance towards the good will members of the OMMP, and a complete disrespect for the voters of Prop91, both yes and no.
I've written extensively about the subject of cannabis and self agency. Taking responsibility for your own health is a hugely important maturation step for any human. Cannabis helps people feel empowered to take this step. Putting a government between people and their self agency is called statism, prohibitionism and is an atheistic premise that forces the government to be brutal towards people instead of simply mitigating harm. In Oregon, we have been extremely fortunate to have a long-standing medical program that allowed people to opt-in to a community of people who have extensive experience and resources pertaining to cannabis holisticism. Many hundreds of thousands of people have healed themselves, gotten off of addictions, and improved their everyday life through the enrollment to the OMMP and even though it was not well run by the state, the community of people who made up the growers and caregivers and fellow patients picked up the slack and helped organize resources to help the most impoverished and most in-need. Humanism and charity were a big part of the program because the state was largely hands-off once you were enrolled. People had to "help themselves" and so private organizations picked up the slack and organizations such as Oregon Green Free gained popularity and had many copy-cat organizations that functioned all around the state.
Medical dispensaries, as well as access to processors, was mission-critical to a vibrant medical community. Not many people had formal growers and consequently, bought there meds from dispensaries who bought their cannabis and cannabis products from growers who had excess from their gardens and wanted to offset the cost of growing so that they could provide cost-free medicines to their designated patients. Processors served a critical function for growers and patients as not everyone got therapy from flower alone and needed potent oils such as FECO and BHO and so dispensaries worked in tangent with processors to inventory syringes of full-spectrum oil and vaporizable oils, edibles, and caplets. Topicals and balms were also a huge part of the inventory and there was a huge assortment of products and potencies to choose from.
These two aspects of our community, Dispensaries and Processors, were shoved aside by Salem legislators and dosing limits, packaging codes, and dispensary management was overtaken by OLCC. Processors were first "moratoriumed" (zoned), then they were forced to license under highly restrictive codification and bureaucracy - shoving the vast majority of processors underground and into the rainbow market. Only the most heavily invested and deeply pocketed of organizations could afford to license as processors and so the ecosystem in Oregon was modified overnight to satisfy the most highly corporatized.
I had a big problem with this because I had worked very hard to help entrepreneurs enter into 3460, only to be shoved by the wayside as heavier bureaucracy was forced upon medical dispensaries when we voted on a Prop91 ballot that safeguarded OMMP. Business owners that had spent lots of money to be compliant within HB3460 where going to lose their businesses to moratoriums, to bureaucracy, and to codification of activities that never produced a victim in the first place. I watched more than a handful of family-owned business be forced to go belly-up because of circumstances that were fully out of their control. The unfair execution of cannabis legalization was impossible to ignore in Oregon, we were being colonized by out-of-state corporatists and carpet-baggers, enabled by lobbyists and legislators who usurped the rule of law that we voted on within Prop91.
Around late 2015, I came to conclusion that no amount of activism towards Salem was going to save the OMMP, that no amount of trips to Salem, to public hearings, or to rallies was going to change the trajectory that the prohibitionists in the legislature set us upon. I had shored up all my activities within OMMP having to do with consulting, with business planning, and with activism. I was realistic to the fact that there was nothing we could do as a community to stop the erosion of our medical program and the rights of patients, caregivers, and growers. I stopped having hope for my Canna Clatch business plan and decided that I would rather be 3rd party to anything considered to be "cannabis industry related", stay on the sidelines and simply worry about how I was going to maintain access to the cannabis byproducts I need to maintain my health.
In short, harvest time 2015 is when I decided to "hit the mattresses" and disconnect from the patient communities and industry groups and become focused on what I needed to do to supply myself with cannabinoid products that will maintain my health. I couldn't be much help to anyone else if my health was failing, and my health was at risk now that I lost access to the cannabis byproducts that I had been using successfully for upwards of 6 years straight. Lets talk about my origins in OMMP, my start within "medical cannabis".
My Background and My Discovery of Cannabis Therapeutics
I am a statistical anomaly on many levels. Born with a rare congenital disorder that affects the immune system and muscle-skeletal systems of the body as well as the soft tissues of the fascia and ear drum and eyeballs, have been a long-term subscriber to allopathic medicine – run through the system so to speak. I was on a trajectory to be addicted to pain killers from a very young age. I grew up in a family where nobody else shared my disability and so I was largely mis-treated as a disabled person and given far less resources than I deserved. I struggled silently and suffered many instances of mis-diagnosis as well as medical malpractice. Without going into my adolescent years and college years in any detail, I first came upon cannabis as a 12 year old along with a 4 foot bong. I used cannabis recreationally by the age of 14 and the quality of what we had access to growing up was low-to-horrible and had very little medicinal quality. I found that cannabis had a therapeutic effect on my chronically upset stomach and made my chronically inflamed joints feel better, and also helped me sleep through agonizing pain. I used it socially through my early twenties, in tangent with alcohol, and then used it some more privately to mitigate hangovers and help me eat when I was chronically nauseous.
In 2002, I moved to Broward County Florida and came to be associated with ethnic Afro-Brazilians and ethnic-Jamaicans through my neighborhood on the beach and through my work in retail sales. I found that many of them had personal relationships to cannabis although they did not like to partake socially. I also found that many of them were extremely athletic and regarded their physical bodies with the utmost seriousness but also consumed cannabis for rehabilitation of their bodies and to feel more in the moment when engaged in practice or in actual sport. Many of these guys were semi-professional Mixed Martial Artists, football (soccer) players, or played a unique form of volleyball where only the feet are used that is played in Brazil. There were highly tuned athletes that took their fitness very seriously. This changed my perception of cannabis and forced me to realize that it's more of a nutritive resource and medicine than it is a recreational party drug. This also gave me an opportunity to see what well-grown cannabis looks like and was able to consume cannabis that was far more potent than anything I had ever come in contact with before. This well-grown cannabis forced me to realize how much it could make me feel better. Just a few puffs could take away nausea, reduce my joint pain, or render me able to sleep when my body is aching.
I also came to understand what hashish is and although I DO NOT recommend anyone else taking the route I did, in exploring the effects of hashish ingestion for the first time while snorkeling without a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, I do recommend everyone eating a formative dose of hashish at least once in their lives.
In 2007 I was offered a position within a tech company in Oregon and moved my life to the Pacific NW that summer. I didn't immediately take advantage of access to OMMP, it was another two years of buying black market cannabis before I enrolled, but it was a bag of bad medicine that finally got me to take the plunge, and concede that medical cannabis was different than black market cannabis and I wanted to make sure I never got sick again on the very thing that I was using to try to feel better. An adulterated bag of Chem D got me to enroll in the OMMP and from there I attended an Oregon Green Free event and met many other patients, caregivers, and growers, and found that I knew very little about cannabis overall, and had a lot to learn.
Between 2009 and 2011, I was able to use butane hash oil, procured through the medical community, to wean myself from nicotine. I had been a cigarette smoker since my early teens and had unsuccessfully attempted to quit countless times. During this time, I was referred to a rheumatologist and they attempted to funnel me into a prescription to a heavy duty anti-inflammatory when I wanted him to write me a prescription for acupuncture and massage. He conceded that he usually doesn't work with patients as young as me and suggested I find another doctor. Leading up to that point, I had not been seeing a doctor regularly and had not had a prescription since my late teens in High School for anything, let alone a pain-reducing pill. I decided on some level, along the way, after finding out that the samples that doctors were offering me were showing up on drug lawsuits and were responsible for various ancillary health conditions because they were not thoroughly tested before being released as exploratory drugs. This was a huge pharmaceutical market in the late 1990's and NSAIDs were being handed out like candy to anyone willing to take free samples. This is where I came into contact with cataflam, vioxx, and other drugs that were later removed from the market because of dangerous side effects.
I never found myself able to use pills for any duration of time because they upset my stomach and made my already chronically nauseous experience even worse. Furthermore, my lifestyle incorporated a frequent dose of binge drinking and the mixing of alcohol and these pills was horrendous on the digestive system. I found that taking the medication as early as 3 hours prior to drinking still had a deleterious effect on my body once I started drinking and this was a no-go for me. I would rather be in organic pain, than to be nauseous when I’m trying to let off steam.
Social drinking was a big part of my late teens and early twenties and so I chose to remove the pills altogether because they made my issues worse while not taking away enough pain to be worthwhile.
Statistically, I should have been prescribed narcotic-based painkillers by the time I was in college. I had been given morphine in post-surgery situations as a young man, as well as Tylenol with codeine for going home after a surgery, but my body has never reacted well to morphine and so I never wanted to try any painkilling pills that used opiate-based pharmaceutical drugs. When I came to see my new rheumatologist in Oregon, and they suggested a strong pill-solution, I became disenfranchised completely and had very little hope that my corporate insurance plan was going to help me find alternative health solutions like body work, massage, and acupuncture. My solution was to join the OMMP and explore various cannabis-byproducts to help mitigate pain, help with sleep, help with eating, help with social anxiety, help with depression, and help with all the small challenges we are faced with day-to-day as humans. Little did I know that joining the OMMP would change my life, and change the way I look at the human body and the modern medical establishment. I am still learning today, around 10 years later.
A Past Born In Prohibition
I grew up in the Northern Midwest, where the Bible Belt meets the Rust Belt and it is widely known that alcohol culture is predominant in American culture in general, but extremely primary in rural states where agriculture and manufacturing have been gutted by corporate globalism and the local economies have endured long-term economic stagnation and cultural debasement. Alcohol is a coping mechanism to many social ills and is used as a social lubricant for just about all cultural activities in my part of the country. Drinking is ubiquitous and is a right-of-passage of any person. I grew up in a divorced family and my paternal side lived in the city, and my maternal side lived in rural dairy country five hours away from the city. My upbringing was largely rural, but I was forced to spend holidays and summers in the city and because my father was a raging alcoholic, gained an intimate perspective on drinking, alcoholism, urbanism, and how city kids differ from country kids.
My father left us largely unattended and so we filled our time as best we could by bike riding and exploring around. We met other kids from the neighborhood and sometimes found some fun groups of kids to hang with. I couldn't invite my friends back to my house because I never knew what condition my dad was going to be in. He was an erratic drunk and I stayed out of the house because I didn't want to see the rotating personalities, let alone invite other kids over to experience them.
My father didn't have constant access to cannabis, but when he did, he would smoke instead of drink, and I would notice that he was never intoxicated or rude when he would smoke, he would never do things he would later regret, and people didn't run away when he was smoking cannabis, he was pretty fun to be around as it turned out.
As a kid, I didn't know what cannabis was and only saw it when my father's friends would come over and share it with him. They consumed it right in front of me, sometimes drinking right along with it, I knew it smelt funny, very different from tobacco which my father used from sun-up to sun-down. My father never made a big deal out of it and very rarely had any of his own that he would smoke by himself.
Later, after moving to Oregon and having enrolled in OMMP, I was able to introduce my father to butane hash oil and the several times he was able to try it, it put him into a jovial mood and later induced him to take a refreshing nap. He loved the effect it had on him and although he was a bit intimidated by the potency of it, really saw the benefit it had on his manic-depressive state and also made him ravenously hungry, and made him sleep soundly and feel rejuvenated upon waking – something that is hard to do with a chronic hangover.
He couldn't get access to it where he lived, and struggled with alcoholism and nicotine addiction and ultimately killed himself through cardiovascular failure and liver failure from abusing both. He passed on in 2012 after 30 years of constant addiction and self abuse. He was never able to ingest cannabis oil or vaporize hash oil on a constant basis to try to mitigate the chronic harm it caused his body. He died in the state of Florida where prohibition keeps people from living healthy, cannabis-centric lifestyles. I left Florida in 2007 and had tried to talk my father into moving to Oregon on a seasonal basis every year until his passing. He never took me up on my suggestion, even though he knew it might save his life, due to access to cannabis and hash oil.
My family also has a multitude of combat veterans and my grandfather served in Korea and WWII pacific front and was wounded over 6 times. I also have great uncles who flew bombing raids over Italy and North Africa, something that was extremely traumatizing as Italian Americans whose parents just immigrated. PTSD was a very obvious condition within my family and every person had their own unique way of dealing with it. My grandfather conceded that it came and went, somewhat unpredictably. He used martinis to sooth his nerves and never became abusive to substances. My uncles decided never to talk of war, or of combat and chose to bottle up all of their past. They didn't drink or do drugs and struggled emotionally as withdrawn humans, unable to show free-flowing emotion.
My family has also lost members to the pharmaceutical scourge and the pill addiction economy that has been going strong since the mid-late 1990's. My cousins, being from Florida where pill laws are the most lax anywhere in the country, found themselves addicted to smoking pills, creating custom concoctions of painkillers, anti-anxiety meds and grinding them up together to smoke or "freebase". My cousins quickly became addicted and turned to crime to cover their need to "get a fix". I have second cousins born out of wedlock, and first cousins serving prison terms for violent crimes. The amount of relative-on-relative abuse within my family, due to pharmaceutical pill abuse, is staggering. Even my aunt and uncle have chipped front teeth from making a habit out of "microdosing" their painkillers and anti-anxiety meds by biting the pills in half and taking a titrated dose of all of them - effectively making a "cocktail" that affects you differently than taking the medications individually. I have relatives that have rendered themselves full-on zombies and can't account for whole decades of their lives.
Of course, addicts are not born, they are made. It is my opinion that prohibition creates addicts, not drugs. People are victim of their circumstances and turn to drugs, then the drugs get blamed instead of the circumstances. People are culpable for their actions 100% but within American prohibition, people are rendered slaves upon birth, and are given an existence that is largely handicapped. Poverty and drug abuse are so synonymous in our culture that we need to realize the error of our ways and remove prohibitionary laws so that people can have open access to any substance under the sun, removing all illicit drug trade overnight.
Statistically speaking, states that have legalized cannabis have seen opiate addiction decrease and this alone shows that free and open access to cannabis therapies lead people away from alcohol, nicotine, pharmas, and other hard drugs like meth and heroin.
We know emphatically that Americans become addicted to pharmas through being prescribed them by a doctor to get through an injury, heal from surgery, or mitigate pain that occurs chronically. Many Americans had no intention of being a "drug user" and found themselves hopelessly addicted to narcotics when they originally intended to mitigate their physical pain. The modern medical establishment creates addicts. We know this, and this is the way many families are ruined when a member becomes addicted and loses their productive life to a drug.
Statistically, I should be among these people who are addicted, using narcotic based painkillers to reduce my severe chronic pain. Statistically, most everyone with my condition, by the time they are an adult, are taking, full time, some sort of pharmaceutical drug or drugs for pain, depression, anxiety, and the side-effects that these drugs create, such as digestive issues and ulcers.
I have remained free of any prescriptions and have never taken a narcotic based pill in my life. I am a statistical anomaly.
How Did Canna Clatch Come About?
Having come from the midwest to Oregon by way of South Florida, I found the progressive culture around cannabis in the Pacific Northwest to be particularly welcoming. I learned about personal culture around cannabis from a few unique friends in South Florida, because they came from an external culture that has a positive understanding of cannabis, but I learned about cannabis holisticism and cannabis cultivation in Oregon. I learned extremely quickly because I was able to surround myself with people who had vast amounts of first-hand experience and had multi-generational relationships with the plant. I found that I was able to gain so much from people who were willing to share, and once I understood what they were imparting to me, wanted to share the same information to others so that they could implement self agency and preventative self-care in their lives. I learned quickly about cannabis strains, cannabis cultivation and harvesting, about cannabis processing for hashish and ingestive oils. I learned about terpenes and holisticism regarding the minor attributes of cannabis including minor cannabinoids and thiols.
I found other people immediately within the OMMP who shared my enthusiasm for plant holisticism and self agency and attempted to learn everything I possibly could about folk medicine related to cannabis. It was around this time in 2009, that I learned about a book written by Robert C Clarke called “Cannabis Evolution and Ethnobotany” read it, and had my life changed forever more by it. My understanding of human history was forever changed.
During my initial networking phase after joining the OMMP in 2009, I learned something else. I learned that the program was not patronized by 100% patients and that there were many people who were members of the program because they wanted to be weed dealers, and use the system as a profiteering scheme and their wholly selfish goals. I found that other patients had a difficult time finding humanistic growers who would help them by supplying a cleanly grown strain that helps them with their health. I found that patients were chewed up and spit out by growers while they used the OMMP to profiteer and export cannabis to metropolitan markets in other states. I found that I could not locate a grower who would allow me to pay them a flat fee for giving me all six plants at harvest time. I found that largely, patients were given 1-2 ounces of flower per month and asked to look the other way as growers played brokers on the dispensary market, on the rainbow market and acted as profiteers using their patient’s medicine, calling it theirs because they grew it.
I was appalled at the way patients were victimized. I was appalled at the way caregiver cards were stacked up and vast grower facilities were stacked together as massive profiteering schemes that moved cannabis in all different directions outside of our state.
I was disappointed at the way that so many people were enrolled into a system, but left to fend for themselves to find a grower or caregiver that was acting fairly and with a humanistic approach. There was narcissism and predation going on in every corner of the state, under OMMP, and patients were getting the poopy end of the stick.
I networked extremely heavily and ended up meeting some of the most gifted growers, breeders, and caregivers in the state. I never found a grower who would grow six indoor plants and then give them to me at chop time for a pre-agreed price. I never found myself an actual grower who was not also a profiteer! Of course they existed in the program, plenty of them, but they were already growing for other patients and perhaps I never got lucky enough to find a slot with a humanistic-garden. I was disenfranchised because I have always been a renter in Oregon. I have never had a legal premise to grow my own medicine and so I have been largely victimized by Oregon laws that do not prioritize patient status above renter status.
This visceral feeling of disenfranchisement is what led to the creation of Canna Clatch: Altruistic StrainHunters. I observed how brutal our medical program could be towards patients and suspected that legalized cannabis was going to be 10x more brutal towards basic medical aspects of the plant. I suspected that capitalism and corporatism mixed with prohibitionism would lead to an even more narcissistic environment in Oregon and the loss of basic resources for patients. I assumed, since the state had very little to offer patients before legalization, that they would have even less to offer after legalization and it would be up to private organizations to pick up the slack, for the least represented, the chronically sick and least financially capable.
I created Canna Clatch in 2011 but didn't launch it until the spring of 2014. I was ready to begin putting resources behind the plan in fall of 2014 but was derailed by my family's fight with a rare blood cancer - but was ultimately derailed by the lawyer lobbyist who railroaded the Prop91 legislation for something far more prohibitive and racketeered by OLCC.
No wholesale direct open air markets, no medical dispensaries, dosing and packaging regulations on medical cannabis and cannabis products made it impossible for me to execute my plan. I was legislated out of the industry just like many families who live in the wrong county, or are not able to cover the expensive front-end taxation that occurs within the over-regulated liquorhuana system.
During my Testimony in Salem
While we observed the usurpation of our medical program, by legislators and the lobbyist bedfellows, we came to Salem to testify publicly. During these open public forums, I submitted testimony in writing, in addition to verbal testimony. Many of us could never get our full point across in 3 mins and so I did my best to distill down my message. During several of these visits, I looked the legislative panel in the eyes and let them know that over-regulating our medical program will force us to embark on first-amendment cannabis and begin to preserve our inalienable right to practice a personal religion and to congregate freely with others. I told them flat to their faces that we are not ignorant to the fact that this medical program is simply a legal cover for something we are already born with the right to do - grow, consume, and trade freely cannabis.
These legislators likely were not moved by my testimony but they had to take note of my intensity and the uniqueness of my message. Nobody else was claiming the birth-right to cannabis and nobody else was threatening to use the constitution to safe-guard their participation in self agency and preventative health. They likely didn't make the connection that when I said "first amendment cannabis", I was not referring to a church, I was not referring to a freedom of speech rally, I'm talking about the ceremonial use of a natural plant, and the free and open congregation with others for the sake of consumption and ceremonial sharing of the plant. This is protected under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
I did not ask them whether they thought I should be able to have the right to decide my own dose of cannabis. I did not ask them whether they thought I should consume at home alone or in a private location with others. I did not ask them whether they think I should get access to all six of my medical plants or if I should only get a portion of them.
I informed them that they are to preserve rights, to use legislation to mitigate harm, and by modifying the medical program, they are forcing us to act privately, and by acting privately, we are technically acting within our constitutional right.
What Acting Privately as a Group Entails
Fast forward to September 2018 and we have been recently hit with a regulatory code that limits patient purchases to a maximum of 1oz of flower. This codified regulation was put in place unilaterally by the Liquorhuana Cartel that goes by the name "Oregon Liquor Control". This severely limits the ability of any patient or patient support group to pick up flower-based material and currier it to where it is needed. This makes it very hard for rural-based patients to pick up enough medicine to last more than 3-4 weeks. Simply speaking, this rule severely disrespects the medical community and the people who are still trying to make use of it after it has been made largely useless.
Not only can we not consume, but we also cannot procure flower from a dispensary in any meaningful amount, as patients. We are largely marginalized across the whole state and I saw this potentially happening way back in 2011, and again in 2015, and as we went through 2016, 2017, 2018, it was clear to even most naïve among us, that the state has no intention of safeguarding the OMMP nor its goodwill participants and that patients, along with their humanistic caregivers, and collaborative growers, would need to set up PRIVATE MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS to create meaningful resources for people in need.
PMA's (PRIVATE MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATIONS) are protected under the first amendment and was exactly what I was referencing to the legislators when I was testifying about their mis-treatment of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.
I told them that it was only a matter of time before we would organize ourselves in such a way that legislation would be useless against us unless you were willing to attack basic constitutional rights, under the freedom to freely associate with one another.
Banking and tax codification is far more simple for 501c charters and although the IRS is not a constitutionally lawful institution, branding yourself as a non-profit is a basic move towards preserving your first amendment right as a membership association.
We already have several PMA's operating within the cannabis sphere in Oregon and all have been successful in circumnavigating any persecution. Lounges, private subscription clubs, and event centers are run under the umbrella of PMA and this is what I suggest should be the trajectory for the whole medical community.
Cannasapiens and Altruistic StrainHunters UNITE FINALLY!
I have been negatively affected by cannabis legalization. I have lost access to high potency butane hash oil that I used to mitigate my chronic pain, chronic depression from pain, and my severe tinnitus from having a hearing impairment. I used BHO copiously from 2009 through 2016 to get off of nicotine and live an active and productive lifestyle. I lost access to what I needed and can only create ingestible hash oil for myself from ethanol. I have been attempting to cope without access to what I need and it has been hellish going through the Portland winters without access to terpene holisticism and fresh frozen butane hash oil. My rheumatic flair ups are quickly handled by being able to dab, and without access to affordable hash oil, my quality of life has been negatively impacted.
I am not alone, and I know there are thousands of other people who have lost access to their grower, to their most-prized strains, and to their most beneficial medical cannabis products including edibles and high potency ingestible oils.
I know that I was in a much better position than many patients at the start of Prop91, I was making good income and could purchase what I needed at first from the medical dispensaries as we began losing direct access to processors because they were falling off the radar or going into the liquorhuana licensing system and could no longer interface with patients directly.
Eventually the regulations became too onerous and kept me from being able to procure what I require affordably from dispensaries and I could not contract with a processor directly.
Eventually, everyone I knew had split for the rainbow market or for the liquorhuana system. Both places kept me from being able to interface with them because I could not risk getting arrested for trafficking a controlled substance, nor could I risk getting my friends in trouble for trying to help me while being enrolled in a state-regulated system that disbarred them from helping me. The amount of oil I consumed per month would put me at risk for distribution charges.
This feeling of disenfranchisement is as strong as ever in September 2018 and it is my intention to continue to network with other activist-minded patients and caregivers and growers. There is still a strong sense of right vs wrong within our community and many people are extremely steadfast in their position that cannabis is a medicine, a food, and a strategic resource for all humans to adapt into their lives. Many people have realized with this most recent unilateral change to our regulatory environment by OLCC, that there is nothing that the state will sacrifice to create tax revenue, including the health of the sick and impoverished.
I have bone spurs in over 90% of my joints. I suffer from scoliosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a severe form of osteoporosis and rheumatism and am officially eligible for full federal disability. I have always been gainfully employed and able to lead an active, full time work load. It has never occurred to me to sign up for disability when I am able to provide for myself. The last two years have been incredibly challenging and full of tormenting pain and pain-induced depression. Losing access to the strains that contain beneficial terpenes in their oils that I require has been a huge detriment to my ability to function as a healthy adult. I have considered signing up for disability and I have considered asking for some sort of prescription to help me through my worse pain-spikes. My family advises me to do this constantly and many relatives think I'm just a simple prescription away from leading a productive life again.
I personally don't want to move to a state that has a working medical program just so I can mitigate my health challenges. I want to stay an Oregonian and work together with others to form a grassroots network of support PMA's that can take in flower material and turn it into valuable oils and cannabis byproducts that can help patients mitigate their health challenges.
I personally don't want to give up on Oregon Medical Cannabis when I've already given up on the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. I’ve given up on the state, not the community.
I see many people mirroring my sentiments and ready to act in a way that will help mitigate these longstanding shortcomings of the State-run system. I see many people ready to act in a way that preserves their constitutional rights and establishes a wholly new structure for which cannabis material can be efficiently run through a process so that it can be distributed to needing participants in a clean and efficient method. I see people mirroring my sentiments that craft-grown cannabis comes from small gardens and small gardens are owned and operated by private growers. Small footprint gardens produce the highest quality cannabis and no successful legalization scheme is going to alienate small-format growers. Equality and egalitarianism is lost within the execution of "marijuana legalization" and it is my intention to begin honoring both small format growers and processors and the artisan processes they bring to the ecosystem.
I wanted legalization to bring the cost of cannabis through the floor so that more and more people could experience extremely cheap, extremely effective cannabinoid products. I wanted legalization to help EVERYONE have the same access to cannabis that I had as a patient. I wanted everyone to be able to buy 14 grams of butane hash oil for $115 dollars, or buy 30 grams of ingestible oil for under $200. I wanted everyone to have equal rights to effective medicine. Flower is great to have around, but flower is not what severe discomfort asks for, it's just not enough.
I lost my online community to a nefarious person who reported it and got FB to close it. I lost my in-person community to a group of scared mother legislators who were cajoled by a scared mother lawyer-lobbyist and I lost my access to the cannabis medicines I need to a liquorhuana taxation system that does not respect the rights of patients and does not respect the rule of law.
I've lost my health - but I haven't lost my pole star. My directional navigation system is still intact. I haven't lost sight of the human reality where people stop trying to prohibit others of their pursuit of health and happiness. I haven't lost sight of a cohesive system of humanistic collaboration that brings growers, caregivers, processors, patients, and dispensaries into a cohesive pattern of assisting the least capable among us. I haven't given up on the idea that Oregon still has a core community of people who truly believe in the curative nature of cannabis, and are willing to stick up for our natural born right to pursue happiness and health, integrating any resource we wish to help us, insomuch as we do not create a victim.
When I began Canna Clatch, I took for granted my healthy status and ability to help others. I wanted to create a system that could help others the way that the OMMP helped me.
Now, after having my health taken from me, I can only ask that we try to implement the system I created to help others, and with some luck, I can help myself in the process.
I am not giving up, and I refuse to act alone.
Join me in this process; I invite you to graduate from Cannasapien to Altruistic StrainHunter and to join me in a mission of self-help, for others.
I truly believe altruism and self-acceptance has to be applied intrinsically before you can be any help to anyone else. Cannabis and other entheogenic partners assist us humans and our huge egos to realize this. Since there is no destination within self-realization, all we can do is ask for greater self-awareness while we lend our helping hand to other humans. Many of us realize along the way that helping others feels fantastic, and frees us to experience greater aspects of ourselves. It’s a cyclical, self-feeding system of love and giving. This is just my humble opinion. I would like to incorporate cannabis into this cycle. Thank you for reading.
