Paul Stanford first tried cannabis when he was just 11-years-old. The year was 1971 and he was in his babysitter’s basement in Dallas, Texas. The offending “pusher” was the babysitter’s son, a 26-year-old who had just returned home from serving in the Vietnam War. Stanford didn’t start using cannabis regularly until he was 13 and able to scrape together $110 to buy his first pound. His intent at the time was to make a little extra money while stocking his own stash. He lost money on that first buy but a budding infatuation for the cannabis plant was sparked inside him. At 17 he moved to North Carolina and began selling cannabis and turning a profit.

OLCC visits Bend for the first of seven workshops

Raised hands quickly shot up from potential recreational marijuana business owners who had plenty of questions for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission at a meeting Thursday.

The state agency’s first of seven workshops about licensing and temporary rules was at the Riverhouse Convention Center in Bend. The other workshops will take place in Medford, Eugene, Salem and Portland. About 250 people filed into the downstairs Exhibit Hall at the convention center to hear from OLCC officials and ask about the licensing process moving forward.

The OLCC will begin accepting license applications Jan. 4. The state agency will regulate growers, retailers and laboratories, wholesalers and processors.

Despite a decades-long federal ban on the production of hemp, in recent years several states, including Oregon, have begun legalizing hemp cultivation for industrial purposes. This is because while hemp is related to cannabis, the plant marijuana is made from, it does not have the same high-inducing properties. Instead, it is used to make several types of goods, and has been for centuries. 

New clean air rules prohibiting marijuana smoking and vaping in work and public places may spell the end for Portland's cottage industry of lounges and clubs where people light up and hang out.

A Multnomah County tobacco program specialist visited the World Famous Cannabis Café in Southeast Portland earlier this week to follow up on a complaint about a member of the public about smoking in the establishment. During the visit, Erik Vidstrand told café owner Madeline Martinez that cannabis smoking and vaping won't be legal in her club starting Jan. 1.

Russ Belville of MarijuanaPolitics.com recently unveiled a disheartening announcement issued by the Oregon Health Authority: indoor cannabis cafes, like Portland’s World Famous Cannabis Café and The Other Spot will be forced to shut down come January due to unfortunate changes to the Oregon Clean Air Act.

Lawmakers have introduced the following changes to the law (bolded emphasis courtesy of Mr. Belville):

As more states legalize marijuana in the US, pot cultivation is sucking up an ever-growing amount of energy from the grid.

Since most of the legal weed is grown indoors, the pot industry burns through large quantities of electricity used to power lamps, ventilation systems, and air conditioning. A square foot of planting requires some 200 watts of electricity (pdf, p. 20), about the same as a data center, according to a report this year in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law.

The paper notes that marijuana plantations soak up at least 1% of the country’s electricity at a cost of $6 billion a year.

The U.S. Postal Service office in Portland delivered some potentially bad news last week to Northwest newspapers: If news outlets run ads for the region’s booming marijuana industry, they might be violating federal law.

The Friday memo pointed out it was illegal “to place an ad in any publication with the purpose of seeking or offering illegally to receive, buy, or distribute a Schedule I controlled substance,” according to a copy sent to the editor-publisher of the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, Wash.

“If an advertisement advocates the purchase of clinical marijuana through a Medical Marijuana Dispensary, it does not comply with” the law.

Thanks to the infamous West Idaho Compromise, licensed cultivation, processing, distribution, and retailing of marijuana – also known as marijuana businesses – are banned in 52.7 percent of the state of Oregon.

Starting next spring, Oregon will require all marijuana products sold in dispensaries or recreational shops to undergo testing for nearly 60 pesticides.

Until the new rules take effect, the state plans to allow the marijuana industry to continue to operate as it does now, with broad pesticide regulations that allow tainted products to end up on store shelves.

But on Monday the Oregon Health Authority signaled that it is willing to consider tightening up current pesticide rules until new, tougher regulations go into effect next June.

An Oregon government agency refused food donations from a pro-marijuana group. The Women Leaders in Cannabis in the city of Eugene made a food donation to the Thanksgiving food drive for homeless people, but it was declined, KOMO News reports.

The group says Oregon's Department of Human Services (DHS) accepted its offer at first, but changed its mind due to the group's involvement in the pot business.