Thread: Marijuana Mom and the Cannabis Kid

Marijuana Mom and the Cannabis Kid

By Jim Spellman, CNN
December 14, 2009 9:18 a.m. EST

Diane Irwin describes going into the marijuana business with her son, Jason, as a "faith thing.

La Veta, Colorado (CNN) -- The crop has been harvested, and Diane Irwin's secret technique paid off.

"Every morning I would go out and talk to my girls," she said, "pray over them and ask them to provide good medicine."

Her "girls" are marijuana plants destined for her son Jason's medical marijuana dispensary in Denver. At 48, she has just wrapped up her first season as a pot farmer. Her 62 plants yielded 13 pounds.

Irwin spent most of her life as a hairdresser and salon owner in a Denver suburb.

"I was into makeup and high-heeled shoes and fancy clothes and working -- a lot," she said. "I sold my salon and moved down to the country. I wanted a change of pace."

While Mom was looking for a midlife career change, her son was building a medical marijuana business, legal in Colorado since 2000. Diane Irwin loaned him $10,000 from the sale of her salon, and he opened Highland Health, a dispensary where patients who have been certified by the state can buy marijuana.

Jason Irwin concedes he began his marijuana enterprise on the wrong side of the law, "just getting cheap pounds and flipping them to my friends," he said. He was working full time as an arborist and dealing pot on the side when he saw an opportunity to take his business aboveboard.

In 2008, he received state approval to open his dispensary. In March, he got a patient's card, citing chronic pain after a fender-bender. He smokes marijuana often.

The medical marijuana business has boomed in Denver during the past year. Jason Irwin's dispensary was in place early, building clientele long before many of the newcomers arrived.

He has about 200 regular patients, he said, and another 500 who come by from time to time. He employs four "bud tenders" and said he grosses about $5,000 a day.

Interactive: Taking your medicine But it's not always easy to keep the pot in stock. Though the dispensaries are legal in Colorado, the laws are vague about growing cannabis. Legislators want to clarify the regulations, but until then, the dispensaries are getting their marijuana through unconventional routes.

"The connections are underground. They're not mainstream at all," Jason Irwin said. "We can't call the growers union. There is no such thing.

"Instead of placing your order through a typical system ... you get a dude who comes down from the mountains and slaps a duffle bag on your desk. It's full of weed, and he's like 'Here, pick what you want. Do you want any?' And you've got to dig through it, inspect it for yourself, make sure it looks kosher, weigh it, pay thousands of dollars. It's all cash at this point."

See the different ways to take marijuana

Jason Irwin wanted to see those thousands of dollars stay in the family instead of going to the mountain dudes. Enter Mom.

"He called me one day and he said, 'Mom, I think we should buy this land' and 'How do you feel about growing medical marijuana?' And I said, 'OK.' It was just a faith thing."

Jason Irwin bought 37 acres in rural southern Colorado, tucked up against the Greenhorn Mountains. That's where his mom's new life began.

In June, they paid $3,000 for two greenhouses, supplies and marijuana seedlings. Diane Irwin lived in an old camper and tended the plants.

"It was like an Outward Bound course for me," she said. "Living off the grid, roughing it. We didn't have heat. We didn't have running water. We didn't have electricity most of the time. The batteries were always going dead. The greenhouse blew away a couple of times."

But at least she had company: First-time marijuana farmers occupy the plots of land on both sides of the Irwin operation. The trio formed an ad hoc collective, helping each other and learning from their mistakes. They spent their days tending to their plants and their evenings grilling food along a nearby river.

One of the trio's concerns was security. Their greenhouses are visible from the road and they worry about being robbed or hassled by police. So far they have had no trouble, but if one grower needs to go into town for supplies, the others keep a watchful eye.

I'm in for the long haul. I really do feel like we're pioneers bringing new life to medical marijuana.

--Diane Irwin on growing marijuana with her son

RELATED TOPICS
Medical Marijuana
Denver
By early November, the plants were ready to harvest. The Irwins filled several SUVs and pickup trucks with their crop and moved to a house they rented in nearby La Veta.

A closet in the house is filled with marijuana that is drying out. The radio is set to NPR as Diane Irwin's fellow farmers trim the stems and leaves off the plants. The leftover twigs are run through a screen to form a powder that is packed by hand to form hashish.

With only a few pounds left to process, Diane Irwin is already looking forward to next year. She hopes to triple their harvest.

"I'm in for the long haul. I really do feel like we're pioneers bringing new life to medical marijuana," she said.

Diane Irwin got her patient card in May before starting the farm, also citing chronic pain. She rarely uses medical marijuana. Jason Irwin said that until the state better defines its law, he thinks it's wise for everyone in the business to have a patient card in case authorities question them while in possession of marijuana.

Colorado is one of 14 states that has legalized medical marijuana. Federal law still bans its use. But the Justice Department recently announced it would no longer seek to prosecute people using, prescribing or distributing marijuana for medical purposes as long as they're in compliance with local laws.

Jason Irwin wants to expand his operation based on the models of the two businesses he most admires: Whole Foods and Starbucks.

"We hope to develop a business model that proves to be successful, that we can expand upon, hopefully to other states and communities, become like a really reliable consistent supplier of safe, tested cannabis," he said.

For Diane Irwin, her new life in business with her son hasn't quite set in.

"It wasn't something I ever dreamed I would be involved in, " she said.

When her son was growing up, she adds, "I used to bust him all the time for marijuana. I used to flush it down the toilet."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/11/cannab ... index.html

"$5,000 a day". There's a lot of money in the drug trade. Wake Up America. Time to legalize/regulate/tax under the FairTax, the entire illegal drug trade. Beyond the need to end the War on Drugs for reasons too obvious to go into at this point, we need to let Americans own and operate this business that supplies other Americans. They'll do it right, they'll abide the laws, it will be good quality, they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free, no guns, no gangs, no illegal aliens, no black market, no smuggling, all clear, all above board, all taxed, all legal, all controlled.

For more information:

www.leap.cc
www.mpp.org
http://www.votehemp.com/mission_goals.html

they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free,

If you legally sell pot to an 18 year old how do you keep him from giving it to his 16 year old girl friend or his 17 year old brother, friends, etc.?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free,

If you legally sell pot to an 18 year old how do you keep him from giving it to his 16 year old girl friend or his 17 year old brother, friends, etc.?

I don't think the legal age for buying pot would be 18 would it? I wouldn't think so. I mean in most states you have to be 21 to buy beer, so it seems to me it wouldn't be any younger to buy pot.

As to someone who legally buys it in small quantities who then turns around and wants to share or give some of their stuff to other people who are underage, it would be against the regulations and if they got caught or someone turned them in, they'd both face a fine, the adult who shared and the minor who partook.

Once you get the illegal dealers off the streets, out of the schools, parks and neighborhoods, there is really no motivation to target kids for dope use. Legalization shuts all that down. If teenagers are begging older siblings or older friends to buy them some dope, then that's a family and friends affair and up to the families to work out amongst themselves. If someone turns them in, they'll all face a pricey fine, if no one does, then it's up to the parents to police what their children do, because it's the responsibility of parents to know where their kids are, who they're with and what they're doing.

With legalization, the quantities sold at any 1 time are going to be small for personal consumption only, so I don't think the ones buying are going to be too hep on sharing their stash with a bunch of teeny boppers.

Teens want to buy pot now. That will not change just because you allow adults to legally buy pot. A teen who can get pot can sell it at a profit to other teens. The same motive they sell it for now. Anyone could grow their own pot and sell it to teens or adults at a lower price than legal pot because there would be no tax on it and lower overhead than legal growing operations. So legalizing sales to adults will not solve all problems.

If the legal age is 21 how do you keep a 21 year old guy from giving it to his 17/18 year old girlfriend?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free,

If you legally sell pot to an 18 year old how do you keep him from giving it to his 16 year old girl friend or his 17 year old brother, friends, etc.?

How do we currently prevent a 21 year old from buying alcohol and then giving it to underage minors?

Originally Posted by NoBueno

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free,

If you legally sell pot to an 18 year old how do you keep him from giving it to his 16 year old girl friend or his 17 year old brother, friends, etc.?

How do we currently prevent a 21 year old from buying alcohol and then giving it to underage minors?

Not very well. Any teen who wants alcohol can get it somewhere. We could when I was a teen and I see car crashes on the news with drunk teen drivers every week so they must not have much of a problem getting it now either.

RELATED

CA. Marijuana legalization initiative headed for 2010 ballot

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-181514.html

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Originally Posted by NoBueno

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

they'll comply with the quantity and sales to minor restrictions, and it will be virtually crime free,

If you legally sell pot to an 18 year old how do you keep him from giving it to his 16 year old girl friend or his 17 year old brother, friends, etc.?

How do we currently prevent a 21 year old from buying alcohol and then giving it to underage minors?

Not very well. Any teen who wants alcohol can get it somewhere. We could when I was a teen and I see car crashes on the news with drunk teen drivers every week so they must not have much of a problem getting it now either.

I think you're exactly right JD! In fact, alcohol is arguably the most dangerous and available drug in our society today. I don't smoke marijuana (nor drink) but if we are going to keep alcohol legal(despite the know accessibility to minors), then I really don't understand the argument against the legalization of marijuana from the perspective of protecting minors.

I'm not saying you made that argument JD. I'm just saying i'm confused by those who do whenever I hear it.

Study: Pot, painkiller use up, meth use down in teens

DETROIT (AP) — Smoking marijuana is becoming even more popular among U.S. teens and they have cut down on smoking cigarettes, binge drinking and using methamphetamine, according to a federal survey released Monday.

More teens also are getting high on prescription pain pills and attention-deficit drugs, according to eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders surveyed by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The increase of teens smoking pot is partly because the national debate over medical use of marijuana can make the drugs seem safer to teenagers, researchers said. In addition to marijuana, fewer teens also view prescription drugs and Ecstasy as dangerous, which often means more could use them in the future, said White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA: Users socialize, smoke at Oregon cafe

The "continued erosion in youth attitudes and behavior toward substance abuse should give pause to all parents and policymakers," Kerlikowske said.

"These latest data confirm that we must redouble our efforts to implement a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to preventing and treating drug use," Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in remarks prepared for his Monday speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

Marijuana use, while well off peak levels of the late 1990s, has edged up. According to the study of 47,097 students, among 12th-graders, 20.6% said they used it within the past month, compared with 19.4% in 2008 and 18.3% in 2006. Among 10th-graders, pot use in the past month rose to 15.9% this year from 13.8% in 2008.

In the past year, the share of eighth-graders who smoked pot was 11.8%, compared with 10.9% in 2008. Tenth-graders' use was 26.7% this year and 23.9% in 2008. The percentage of 12th-graders was 32.8% compared with 32.4% in 2008.

"The upward trending of the past two or three years stands in stark contrast to the steady decline that preceded it for nearly a decade," said Lloyd Johnston, who has directed the annual survey since it started in 1975.

A group backing legalization of marijuana said the figures show the futility of trying to ban pot, rather than regulate its use.

"Clearly, regulation of tobacco products has worked to curb access by teens, and it's time to apply those same sensible policies to marijuana," said Bruce Mirkin, spokesman for the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project.

Marijuana's growing popularity is tied to how risky teens think it is.

The percentage of eighth-graders who saw a "great risk" in occasionally smoking marijuana fell from 50.5% in 2004 to 48.1% in 2008 and 44.8% this year. The perceived danger of using Ecstasy once or twice fell among eighth-graders, from 42.5% in 2004 to 26% in 2009.

"When the perception of the danger goes down, in the following years you see an increase in use," said National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora Volkow.

Volkow said teens falsely reason it's less dangerous to get high on prescription drugs "because they're endorsed by the medical community." But she said prescription narcotics like OxyContin and Vicodin are highly addictive and can act as gateways to heroin, a cheaper high.

Use of both prescription narcotics rose among this year's 10th-graders, with 8.1% saying they had used Vicodin in the past year compared with 6.7% in 2008. For OxyContin, the figure rose to 5.1% from 3.6%.

Recreational use of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin was lower than five years ago. But the attention-deficit drug Adderall had figures similar to those for Ritalin at its peak, which for 12th-graders was around 5%.

By all measures, alcohol remained the most widely used illicit substance among teens, with 43.5% of 12th-graders reporting taking a drink in the past month. That's a little change from the same period last year, but down from 52.7% in 1997 — a year that showed high percentages of substance abuse. All three grades reported drops in binge drinking from 2004 to 2009.

Cigarette use continued its dramatic drop from a decade ago. In 1997, 19.4% of eighth-graders reported smoking within a month. That fell to 6.8% last year and 6.5% this year. The rate for 12th-graders dropped from 36.5% in 1997 to 20.1% this year.

"There's not going to be much further improvement unless policies change," such as higher taxes to discourage kids on a budget and further limits on public smoking, Johnston said.

Only 2.4% of this year's 12th-graders said they'd ever used methamphetamine, down from 2.8% in 2008 and 8.2% in 1999.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/200 ... rugs_N.htm