Easter eggs, spring spheres, and Canabis

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Seattle school renames Easter eggs 'Spring Spheres'

(no really)

 

By Stephanie Klein
MyNorthwest.com Editor

Listen: Easter eggs renamed spring spheres at Seattle school

Jessica, a sophomore at a private Seattle school, says while volunteering at a public school, she was required to call 'Easter eggs' 'Spring Spheres.'

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A sophomore at a local private high school thinks an effort to make Easter politically correct is ridiculous.

Jessica, 16, told KIRO Radio's Dori Monson Show that a week before spring break, the students commit to a week-long community service project. She decided to volunteer in a third grade class at a public school, which she would like to remain nameless.

"At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that," Jessica said.

She was concerned how the teacher might react to the eggs after of a meeting earlier in the week where she learned about "their abstract behavior rules."

"I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay," Jessica explained. "She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat 'spring spheres.' I couldn't call them Easter eggs."

 

Rather than question the decision, Jessica opted to "roll with it." But the third graders had other ideas.

"When I took them out of the bag, the teacher said, 'Oh look, spring spheres' and all the kids were like 'Wow, Easter eggs.' So they knew," Jessica said.

The Seattle elementary school isn't the only government organization using spring over Easter. The city's parks department has removed Easter from all of its advertised egg hunts.

 

And then this:

 

Cannabis farmers "green rush" in Seattle

When someone says "cannabis farmer's market" you probably have an instant image of what that event might be like. And your impression is based on your experience, or lack of it, with pot.

Those selling medical marijuana in the Seattle area say you shouldn't judge them.

"We're not loony hippies in a room making money," says one vendor at a recent pot farmer's market. They are business people who are on the leading edge of what another seller calls the Northwest "green rush."

I'm certain I was the only person at the Cannabis Farmer's Market near Lake Union Sunday who doesn't use pot. Never have. Even so, the more than 70 vendors took their time to show me the types of medical marijuana they offer. With names like Blue Dream, Illmatic, White Widow, and Dark Vadar, I'm told there are different strains and strengths of marijuana. Each vendor talks about their pot selections in the same way a sommelier describes wine - the aroma, the bouquet, the body.

Kathy Parkins, owner and founder of Medical Marijuana Freedom, works her marijuana into baked goods.

"This is what I call triple strength. They're layered so that your body's metabolism picks them up differently, so you get a longer lasting process," she says. "There everything from Chex mix to macaroons to lollipops to tea."

 

It's all for the benefit of people who suffer from conditions that don't respond well to traditional drugs, or for people who don't like pharmaceutical's side effects. Parkins suffers from fibromyalgia - long-term body pain in the joints, muscles, tendons.

"It takes away my pain. It helps me focus and cope. I can take one puff off my pipe and go and keep working for two hours," she says. "Pain's gone."

Parkins is one of the regular vendors. Dennis Phillips, representing a company called Green Aid, was there for the first time selling to more than 600 people who were only able to get through the door if they had a Washington State driver's license, and tamper-proof doctor's authorization. Every ID was checked at the door.

"We're using this as a safe and secure place for people to come and get this product for medical purposes - all kinds of different reasons why - and it's just a safe place for people to do it," says Phillips. "Plus, it's legal to a certain extent. As soon as the legislature makes up some rules, then we'll all know what we're doing."

Legal to a certain extent. While everyone selling and buying pot at the farmer's market agrees on its medicinal value, buyers and sellers weren't clear on the law.

Here's the law, the result of voter Initiative 692 which passed in 1998. It's illegal to sell marijuana. It is not illegal for farmers to donate their products to the patients, and patients in turn donated money to the growers. The range of pot from $84 to $300 dollars an ounce. There was easily a half-million dollar's worth of cannabis in the room.

Who's regulating it? Not the Feds, not the county, not the city. Seattle's City Attorney's office says: The Cannabis Farmer’s Market isn’t any more or less legal than any other dispensary under current law, subject to whatever zoning and business licensing issues they might have.

"It's very vague on how it's all done. Some municipalities are more lenient than other municipalities. They arrest you in some places and others they don't. There needs to be some uniform regulation to administer the whole thing," says Phillips. "I feel like we're in cahoots with the state now and they better not mess with me. I'm gonna pay them," he says.

Every jurisdiction has their own enforcement of the state law regarding medical marijuana. Michael Ormsby, the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for eastern Washington, doesn't want to be in cahoots with pot sellers. Last week he vowed to crack down on medical-marijuana dispensaries operating in the Spokane area. About 40 medical marijuana shops operate in Spokane County. Police have shut down some there, but elsewhere in the state, authorities have allowed business at pot dispensers.

The State Senate is working on clarifying medical marijuana legislation, and this week House lawmakers passed a measure that would reforms the state's medical marijuana law. It requires growers and dispensaries to pay sales and business taxes that could generate almost $1 million for the state next year and $6 million by 2017.

The state seems to know exactly how much money is in this for them.

Philip Dawdy, with the Washington Cannabis Association, says their trade association has no idea how large or small the medical cannabis industry is in the state. "There's simply no reliable way to quantify it right now," he says.

Kristi, who represents Cannabis Farmer's Markets, says they're operating within the law and will accept changes to existing laws because they want to be able to provide a "valuable, legitimate" service to as many people who need it.

"We do pay taxes. We run under a business license. We call it an event and we do event booth spaces and we make sure everybody's legal and we pay taxes on all the tables that are sold here," she says. "It is totally legal to do."

A few others admitted they're making a lot of money because they were among the first into the multi-million dollar unregulated medical marijuana industry.

"It's like the wild west in the Gold Rush. Legislation has yet to be done so we're operating in a wonderful gray area where we can still help people and we can still perform a service," says Raven McCracken. He calls it the "green rush" and with a smile he admits he's now doing legally what he had been doing illegally since the age of 12."

"Such a wonderful time in the Northwest," says McCracken. "I was once a criminal, and now I'm not."

 

There is DEFINITELY something different about the west coast of our nation . . . . .

Easter eggs are NOT spheres, they are orbs

Medical marijuana is NOT medical.

Wasn't it the state of Washington that outlawed wood burning stoves because of air pollution and at the same time outlawed smoking of cigarettes?