Watch: Episode 2 of ‘Growing Exposed’—Growing to New Heights

This second episode of “Growing Exposed” features an impressive indoor garden with cannabis plants reaching a height of over 10 feet tall. Come harvest time, these plants, which resemble trees, have massive buds swelling to the size of two-liter bottles. Founder of Cannabis In Canada, Jason Wilcox leads you through this jungle of towering plants as your tour guide. From start to finish, Jason explains his perfected system and set up that allows for complete control.

“That’s the cool thing about this series” explained the show’s producer Jeremy Deichen. “The viewer gets a behind the scenes look at what other growers are doing. We don’t just show you a perfect bud on a dry rack; we break down the individual techniques used to achieve that final result.”

Jason begins his tour by taking us to the roof—where he reveals the high-tech equipment this grow uses to control their growing facility, from lighting, climate control, water filtration and more. Cooled by three 5-ton air conditioning units, the rooms are built inside of a warehouse the size of a football field.

By the end of the episode, Jason is climbing up ladders inspecting terminal buds of a cannabis variety called Moby Dick. Excited, he takes a moment to compare it to the size of his head.

“These are really chunky beautiful buds that are resinous and smell incredible.” Like a kid in a candy store, Jason goes on to explain, “I’m in heaven.”

Jason makes a point of showcasing the plant food this grower uses. It’s a 3-part base formula created by Green Planet called GP3. The grower explained that a 3-part formula gives him maximum control throughout the vegetative and bloom cycles. He was already using the most popular 3-part system in the industry for years until he learned about a cleaner formula on the market that did not contain carbonates. Carbonates are essentially fillers commonly used in the industry. No one likes salt build up around drip lines and reservoirs.

When we asked Green Planet’s owner Justin Cooper why we keep seeing this line of food behind some of the nicest grows we visit, he answered: “Green Planet Nutrients have been created from the highest sourced ingredients. We believe our formulas are the best in the world. We simply don’t cut corners by using anything artificial. We then take it one step farther by challenging ourselves to bring you the best value possible.”

The master grower I spoke to, made it clear, that this formula promotes healthy aggressive growth. This resulted in significantly boosted yields and really was an easy switch.

If you are already using a 3-part, then GP3 can be substituted even mid crop, and the only thing you will notice is your plants getting happier. I think another reason people like GP3 from Green Planet Nutrients is you won’t have a learning curve.  If you’ve ever used any other 3-part on the market, then you will easily be able to understand the feeding schedule and dial this one in to your liking.

The garden also features an activated charcoal filter to clean the air going out of the facility (known as a scrubber), a dehumidifier which recycles the water the plants transpire back into the system, a high-end water filtration system that removes both chlorine and chloramine (which is damaging to crucial inoculants), a water chiller to keep water at a steady 70°F and to top it off, each room is certified fire-safe. Every single component is wired for precision and efficiency.

This facility keeps a room packed full of mother of optimal phenotypes and hybrid strains; it is a forest of ganja. However, how do you select a mother plant?

The keen knowledge of David Robinson, the Garden Sage, explains this topic in the second episode of Growing Exposed.

Robinson explains that it takes roughly 6 – 9 months to identify the best phenotype out of a batch of seeds, which becomes your mother plant. The mother plant is sustained in vegetative growth, so it is kept under a constant 18 hours of light a day. This plant will never flower, but the clippings taken from the plant, which have a rooting hormone applied to the stem to encourage roots to form and thus create a “clone,” are grown to bloom.

Also featured in this episode is Keirton, a company that manufactures a product called the Twister. The Twister is a wet and dry trimmer for the cannabis industry, and it literally saves the day. With conveyor belts and all sorts of high-tech machinery, this trimmer can wet-trim an incredible 9 pounds of cannabis in an hour, which is a necessity for a grow operation of this scale.

We hope you enjoy the tour of this facility on Episode Two of “Growing Exposed” exclusively on HIGHTIMES.com.

Don’t Miss Episode 1 of “Growing Exposed”—Clandestine Gardens! 

For all of HIGH TIMES’ grow coverage, click here. 

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The Federal Government Is Cheating Young Addicts Out of Treatment

Adolescents suffering from the often-deadly grips of opioid addiction are not receiving the same level of treatment as their adult counterparts, according to the latest study from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Researchers say that while 26 percent of adult heroin addicts in the United States were given medication-assisted treatment back in 2013, in the form of methadone or suboxone, only two percent of the adolescent population received the same opportunity.

Sadly, this lack of attention to the young drug addict also takes place when it comes to cases involving prescription painkillers.

In examining the data of nearly 140,000 patients, researchers found that 12 percent of the adult addicts were given federally subsidized medications to help ease them into recovery, with less than one percent of adolescents being given the same consideration.

These findings are detailed at great lengths in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

This is a problem that is going to require a great deal more attention, said lead researcher Kenneth Feder. Otherwise, the opioid epidemic could spiral into something far worse than what we are witnessing today.

“There’s more that needs to be done across the board to facilitate access to these treatments when they’re medically necessary,” Feder told Reuters Health. “The best validated treatment for somebody struggling with an opiate addiction is treatment that includes some sort of medication assistance.”

But the system is simply not set up to take care of youngsters grappling with a drug problem.

As it stands, methadone and heath care clinics cannot treat anyone under the age of 18 without written permission from a parent or guardian. What’s more is Medicaid requires adolescent drug addicts to actually fail a treatment program at least two times before it pays for them to get on methadone—a policy that is contributing to more sickness and death than healthy Americans.

In 2015, somewhere around 276,000 adolescents were using opioids, with 122,000 having an addiction to these substances, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Of these cases, thousand of them died from overdoses to heroin, prescription pain pills and methadone, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical experts, like Dr. Lisa Marsch of the Geisel School of Medicine in New Hampshire, say the federal government’s current policy on treating adolescent drug addiction is “a real disservice based on the science and the data.”

She believes it is imperative for youngsters to receive medication-assisted treatments the moment an addiction is identified.

“We want a chance to stop this problem early,” she said.

There is some concern that the situation will only worsen with the Republican’s plan to repeal Obamacare. The party’s newly drafted “American Health Act” would reportedly freeze Medicaid expansions and sever ties with some “essential” heath benefits under Obamacare, including substance abuse programs.

Medicaid, which presently covers around 70 million Americans, pays for more drug addiction services than any other insurer in the nation.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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Group Urges MA Lawmakers to Hold off on Cannabis Law Changes

The group behind a ballot initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in Massachusetts is now urging state legislators to keep the new law intact.

The post Group Urges MA Lawmakers to Hold off on Cannabis Law Changes appeared first on Leafly.

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Philippine Police Face Lawsuit Campaign Over Drug Killings

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A group of Philippine human rights lawyers filed murder complaints Tuesday against eight policemen accused of killing a father and his son last year at the start of a campaign to bring lawsuits against enforcers of the president’s deadly anti-drug crackdown for alleged extrajudicial killings.

Lawyer Maria Kristina Conti said the murder complaints her group filed in behalf of Mary Ann Domingo against the policemen led by Superintendent Ali Jose Duterte will be followed by more lawsuits from families of poor victims of alleged extrajudicial killings under President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown.

Domingo’s husband and son were gunned down in their house in suburban Caloocan city in metropolitan Manila by the policemen in September in what they claimed was a gunbattle with drug suspects but which she said was a brazen rubout.

Several protesters, carrying placards that read: “Stop killing the poor,” gathered outside the office of the government Ombudsman, who prosecutes officials accused of corruption and other crimes, as Domingo and her lawyers filed the complaints.

It’s not immediately clear if Duterte, the police officer, is related to the president. Conti said her group, the National Union of People’s Lawyers, did not pick the case to launch their campaign against extrajudicial killings because the main suspect was a namesake of the president.

“The filing of the charges against the policemen involved in the killing … is just the beginning,” Conti said. Other criminal cases would be filed “in coordination with community organizations and church groups as part of a mounting grassroots campaign against recent rampant human rights violations committed under the ambit of the government’s so-called war against drugs.”

More than 8,000 mostly small-time drug suspects have been gunned down by policemen and unidentified gunmen since Duterte launched his brutal campaign after taking office in June. Duterte has denied condoning unlawful killings but has repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death in public speeches.

Duterte has assured policemen he would defend them if they run into lawsuits while cracking down on illegal drugs.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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Radical Rant: Oklahoma Shenanigans (Or, What’s the Point of Democracy?)

Tight Budget Could Complicate Sessions’ Vow to Fight Crime

BY SADIE GURMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is promising his Justice Department will lead the charge in helping cities fight violent crime, and police chiefs are ready with their wish-lists.

More technology to trace guns after shootings. More grant money. More intelligence analysts to help dismantle gangs. More protective gear and equipment. As the head of one police officers’ union put it, “We need more of everything.”

But Sessions, who cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war in the 1980s, has inherited a federal government that built itself to fight terrorism since 9/11 and, more recently, to combat cybercrime.

Since taking office, Sessions has spoken repeatedly about a spike in murders. He and President Donald Trump ordered the creation of a crime-fighting task force, bringing together the heads of the major law enforcement agencies. And they seem to be counting on tighter border security to stop a flow of drugs and reduce crime.

But they have yet to offer new money for crime-fighting, especially in the face of Trump’s plan to slash nonmilitary budgets. More clarity could come Thursday when the administration unveils its budget proposal. Sessions also has not said how federal law enforcement will be able to juggle priorities.

“He’ll find out very quickly that you can’t pull people off all these other things just to go do that,” said Robert Anderson, who was the FBI’s most senior criminal investigator until his retirement in 2015. Anderson joined the bureau in the 1990s, when combating violence and drugs was its top challenge. “Now he’s walking into a much different Justice Department and FBI.”

Kerry Sleeper, assistant director of the FBI office that works with local law enforcement, said that after decades of declines in violence, police chiefs are coming to grips with a new uptick and asking for federal help.

What they’d like to see:

– In Milwaukee, Police Chief Edward Flynn said he would like an expansion of the work done in that city by the Justice Department’s Violence Reduction Network. It teams officers with deputy U.S. marshals and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration to target high-crime areas. “It’s encouraging to have an incoming administration take an interest in the spikes in violence in central cities,” he told The Associated Press.

– In Baltimore, which recorded 318 homicides last year, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has said he would like federal agencies to double the number of agents assigned to cities experiencing spikes in violence.

– In Chicago, singled out by the White House for its surge in shootings, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has said he would welcome more agents and money for mentorship and after-school programs to help kids in violent neighborhoods and, in turn, reduce crime.

Other cities want help processing evidence, tracing guns and prosecuting drug traffickers and dealers as they combat heroin and opioid addiction.

More chiefs are asking the FBI for its help with intelligence-gathering to thwart crime, said Stephen Richardson, assistant director for the FBI’s criminal division.

Making violent crime a priority is a departure for a Justice Department that has viewed as more urgent the prevention of cyberattacks from foreign criminals, counterterrorism and the threat of homegrown violent extremism. And while local police say they want more help fighting violence, such a plan could put new pressure on Justice Department agencies already strapped for resources.

“Our budget’s been eroding,” Thomas Brandon, acting ATF director, told a congressional committee last week. The ranks of the agency’s special agents hit an eight-year low in fiscal year 2013 and have not grown dramatically since then.

Sessions’ focus fits his background. His career as a prosecutor began when there was bipartisan agreement in Washington that the best way to fight crime was with long, mandatory prison sentences. And he views today’s relatively low crime rates as a sign that those policies worked. Just last week, he underscored his priority telling the nation’s federal prosecutors they should use all available resources to take down the worst offenders.

In contrast, the Obama administration’s Justice Department focused its aid to local police on improving community relations.

The federal government has long played a role in fighting crime through grants and partnerships. Agents assigned to field offices work with local police to share intelligence on gangs and shootings, hunt fugitives and probe bank robberies. Constance Hester-Davis, special agent in charge of the ATF’s field division in New Orleans, said her agents routinely work alongside local counterparts, even attending community meetings.

“At the end of the day, crime is a state and local concern,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. “However, what police chiefs say is the federal government does have a responsibility, particularly when they prosecute.”

Such cooperation can work. Oakland, California, police saw killings fall from 126 in 2012 to 85 in 2016, two years after FBI agents were embedded in the homicide unit. Ten agents share an office with Oakland detectives, offering help gathering evidence, collecting DNA, chasing leads and bringing federal prosecutions that carry longer sentences in far-away prisons. Detectives solved at least 60 percent of their cases last year, compared to about 30 percent in 2010, said Russell Nimmo, FBI supervisory special agent on the Oakland Safe Streets Task Force.

“It’s very complementary to what our mission is,” Nimmo said. “We’re a big organization. The challenge for our leadership is determining how many resources to allocate to each of those competing priorities.”

Richardson, who formed the first FBI task force in the Western District of Louisiana to combat violent criminals, said the new focus will mean shifting resources in ways that are yet to be seen. The FBI is finalizing a strategy to “surge” resources, including agents, in certain cities this summer.

“We won’t be able to do all the cities we’d like to at once,” Richardson said. “I firmly believe it will make a difference.”

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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What the Mass Purge of U.S. Attorneys Means for Weed

Last week, the Justice Department announced what sounded like a drastic, desperate overhaul of how it does business: 46 local U.S. attorneys appointed by Barack Obama were asked by current Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign.

Some went quietly; others, like Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan (who said that Donald Trump had personally asked him to stay on in November), refused and later publicly announced that Trump had him fired.

You can be forgiven for forgetting—so much has happened in the last few weeks—but this is a regular occurrence. United States attorneys, who head up district offices throughout the country and set policy, are political appointees; the prosecutors and investigators who work under them are career officials and stay put. Every president over the past few decades has cleaned house in this way, removing the past president’s political choices in favor of his own.

But since this is Donald Trump, nothing is regular or normal.

As The New York Times noted, the firings came a day after Fox News host Sean Hannity suggested that Obama holdovers were “saboteurs” that needed a “purge”—and that it could be Justice Department officials who are responsible for leaking to the public the latest embarrassing revelations of how bad of a shit show Team Trump is running.

As we know, Trump consumes knee-jerk news like Hannity religiously, and on at least one occasion, conservative news talking points have preceded Trump policy statements (and tweets).

Bharara’s firing also follows news that he may have begun investigating whether Trump’s business ties and worldwide real-estate holdings violate rules prohibiting the president from using the office to make personal profit.

For marijuana, this means a total changing of the guard.

Only two U.S. attorneys survived the purge, according to the Times, and they serve in Virginia and in Maryland. Everywhere commercial sales of adult-use marijuana is legal, everywhere a robust (or even barely effective) medical marijuana distribution system can be found, a new federal prosecutor is coming to town. They will be appointees of Jeff Sessions, and we can be confident they will share his views and be empowered to carry out his policies.

The irony is that past U.S. attorneys under Barack Obama haven’t been necessarily all that friendly. In 2010 and 2011, before marijuana legalization became a mainstream view across the country and a near-certainty almost everywhere the question was considered, Obama appointees did much to muck things up.

In the summertime, California’s four federal prosecutors announced sweeping raids of medical marijuana cultivation sites way up in the foothills and mountains; in fall 2011, they started cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries in the cities. Hundreds across the state shut down after their landlords received threatening letters from federal prosecutors; not one was ever accused of breaking state or local law.

More recently, a U.S. attorney disrupted the HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cup in the Nevada desert, informing organizers that no cannabis could be sold; other federal prosecutors have taken cracks at the massive gray-area grows proliferating in Colorado. These were all Obama appointees.

What happens next will hinge heavily on who Sessions installs in each district.

If the past is any indication, the retrograde Sessions will go backwards, just like George W. Bush did. In San Francisco, the rotation went like this: after firing his initial choice for U.S. attorney for rank incompetence, Bush picked to succeed him Joe Russoniello, an old-school hard-liner who did the job under Ronald Reagan.

But here’s where the good news is buried.

U.S. attorneys need nomination and confirmation by the Senate. As drug-policy advocates point out, there is a procedure in Washington, though not often used, that gives U.S. senators the power (at least in theory) to block unwanted attorneys from taking office.

Senators from legalization states have the power to “blue slip” & stop anti-marijuana U.S. Attorney nominees https://t.co/cGfHBCZGao

— Bill Piper (@billjpiper) March 10, 2017

Under Senate tradition, members of the Judiciary Committee ask a nominee’s home-state senators whether they approve or disapprove of the nominee. Senators are asked to mark their preference on a blue-colored piece of paper. Whether the committee cares what the home-state senators think or even bother to read the slips depends on who chairs the committee.

The current chair is Sen. Chuck Grassley—the same Chuck Grassley who thought it a good use of power to violate the Constitution and deny Barack Obama’s nomination for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, so much as a confirmation hearing.

So Sessions will likely get his people. They will be Trump people—they will be Steve Bannon people. Who they are and how effective they’ll be remains to be seen, but it’s safe to assume they won’t be marijuana people.

That, at least, will be consistent with Obama.

RELATED: Jeff Sessions Admits He Can’t Stop Marijuana Legalization (Sort Of)

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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