Wowza how far in the hoary past do we start? We’uns three brethren spirits joined forces sometime around 2008, and our paths diverge considerably.
Graywolf joined this coterie sometime after professional retirement with his first OMMP card in 2007. His background included 27 years with an aerospace Fortune 500 company in various roles, with the final 18 years as Manufacturing Engineering Program Manager, designing and installing new processes, equipment, and facilities.
Eloquent Solution, aka Carla Kay, who I met in 2008, has an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Washington. She had just retired a second time from ski instruction to care for her late stage Alzheimer’s mother, having retired early the first time from Honeywell Building Systems Division as a Senior Systems Sales Engineer.
We snagged young Pharmer Joe while still purdy and in college pursuing his Bioscience degree, which he received from PCC in 2012.
It of course also included DNA cataloging and other thangs that we’uns had yet to conceive of at the time Carla and I last took any chemistry classes, which was in the previous century before Joseph was conceived.
We joined forces about 2008 at Cannabis Compassion web site, which worked out to be a good combination of the old practical and proven, inspired by the new and newly imagined.
We formed Skunk Pharm Research, LLC, which we funneled our research results into and shared with the public pro bono through publications, public lectures, and hands on classes, before subsequently taking Pioneer Holding on as a partner in 2016, and their assuming full control in mid-2017.
We subsequently opened The Alchemist Resource blog site, but temporarily closed it until our legal disputes with Pioneer could be resolved. Now that they are, and we are opening Graywolf’s Lair, which will include The Alchemist Resource, what will be different in our direction and goals in 2020?
We founded the original site in support of OMMP medical cannabis patients, whom had their OMMP card in hand, but no ready access to the cannabis concentrates critical to the success of their treatment.
We shared detailed information on DIY extraction techniques ranging from fats and oils, to SCFE CO2, including alcohols, glycerin, and LPG. Something for everyone, depending on technical skills and scientific proclivities.
We also shared that information in classes held at the Skunk Pharm Research wet lab that we literally built with our own hands and operated out of Eloquent Solution’s back yard.
Being more gifted with charm, ideas, and technical experience than financial resources, we also built much of our equipment and shared those designs, including some ground breaking LPG closed loop designs we named the Terpenator and I donated to public domain, so that no one else could patent it.
The original drive behind developing LPG recycle, was that we also extracted and donated concentrates from our own garden to end of life and other seriously ill OMMP patient’s pro bono. We also extracted donated material and passed on those concentrates pro bono as well.
The sheer cost of butane was a motivator to also consider the overall cost of the LPG to Ma Earth, starting with exploration, drilling, transport, and refining, before we vent it to atmosphere as ground smog.
Add to that more ill-advised brothers and sisters blowing themselves and others up open extracting with LPG indoors, At the time a serious enough problem, but which subsequently grew to such epidemic proportions despite recycle being available, that we removed all of our original site instructions on how to open blast using LPG.
With recreational legalization, came regulation, and now locally OMMP patients can no longer extract their own concentrates outside a licensed and permitted facility, with violation being a Class B felony, so the rules have changed and with it, what we are “About” now as well.
Today there are 29 legal medical cannabis states plus DC, and adult recreational use in 8 states. In those states concentrate supplies are more readily available than when we started the original SPR blog, as well as being more closely scrutinized for quality and heavily taxed.
The good news is that you can now more easily obtain high quality concentrates, and with the extra lab analysis and certifications, overall quality control has improved.
The bad news is that while inspection ensures quality, it doesn’t add any. Astonishingly, taxes don’t noticeably improve the quality either, so with the added inspections and taxes, we end up with the same quality material at a higher price.
The bad news is made “badder” locally by delays in testing lab licensing, with required independent sample collection, which have bottle necked source choices by limiting access, and thus product available to dispensaries.
That of course opens a window in the black market to compete with sometimes less quality at a nominally lower price.
Though us’n poor folks really can’t afford either dispensary prices or the black market for medical cannabis, because now prices are based on adult recreational use.
The number of patients a grower could grow for was cut in half, and while we retained our individual right to grow our own reduced number of plants and thus still control the mold and pesticide levels, with regulation went our right to extract our own concentrates outside a certified and permitted laboratory. Doing so is now a Class B felony.
The Achilles heel of brothers and sisters extracting outside permitted labs is of course the rash of home and motel explosions extracting BHO, which generally scares the shit out of the rest of us and ultimately drives more regulation.
With new experiences, comes new insight and new responsibilities. Part of our original About, was to send voters to the polls with their eyes wide open, in part by supplying free concentrates to seriously ill and end of life patients, and let them be the ones running through the streets waving their arms shouting, “It’s a miracle”, instead of us as non-medical professionals trying to sell what we observed to skeptical legislators.
The increase to 29 medical cannabis states ( plus DC) suggests that the cat is now out of the bag and beyond the tipping point of where it can be masterfully stuffed back in with Reefer Madness fabrications, and claims that cannabis has no medical properties.
Too many players for anyone to take credit for the increase in public awareness leading to the increase, but we salute the direction and will continue adding whatever part we play.
Alas, because of the reduced numbers of plants OMMP patients can grow, and the proscription on home extraction, our ability to supply surplus concentrates to patients is curtailed until we have a certified lab available to extract in, and abbreviated by the reduced number of plants allowed, with attendant reduction in surplus to give away.
Ostensibly that also curtails the number of miracle claims, but we will still try our best to send you to the voting polls with your eyes open with our articles.
Another pole in our original About tent, was to provide medical cannabis patients with the knowledge and insights to safely extract quality concentrates. Our original site drew international followers, so the audience has broadened, as have all the changing legalities at different locations.
As we can’t hope to provide only information that universally applies at all locations, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, by leaving some brothers and sisters without the medications they require.
You clicked on the button verifying that you are an adult, and we would like to make it clear that as an adult, the onus on you the reader to determine which of our articles are appropriate for your needs and legal at your location.
Above all, stay safe. This forum is above all about improving your lives using the medicinal properties of cannabis, not to further complicate your dis-ease by injuring yourself and/or others in the process.