Please look them over and comment below. I would like to work with you.
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Registered Maine Caregiver
Registered with the Maine Department of Agriculture:
Certified Basic Applicators Course
Dear Maine State Legislature,
Thank you for listening to public comments on the MMUMP.
Thank you for letting a small farmer have an opportunity to learn about and
begin to cultivate needed medicine for registered patients. The reason I
originally entered this program was to create affordable and useful non-pharmaceutical
medicine for my father, who is a cancer patient and Veteran being treated at
the TOGUS Medical Center in Augusta. He is 83 years old and has metastasizing
bone cancer. I am from Morrill, but my wife and I left a comfortable teaching job
in California two years ago to stay with my father at our home in Maine. We
live in an old farmhouse on un-zoned farmland in an un-zoned area. I am known as
an organic farmer with MOFGA, for having been awarded second place in the 2008 Organic
Squash Competition.
I do understand the need to regulate and “weed out” the
rotten Caregiver and Dispensary apples, and to find a way to conservatively accept
the MMUMP and the Peoples’ Recreational Mandate. It is apparent that many
caregivers are posing as essentially dispensaries, with untold numbers of
employees, co-op grows and so on. Not to mention numbers of plants being grown
in year-round cycles. However, there is a whole other side with the Clean
Caregivers. It is imperative to continue to license and monitor Clean Grows and
reward them. I grow exclusively beneath the sun, in an enclosed and secure
1,200 square foot indoor greenhouse, equipped with 24 hour security cameras,
and motion sensors. I only grow once per year. That means 36 plants in total, that
I grow to maturity ONCE per year. As having stuck to the rules by only having 5
patients and creating lasting relationships with them, the farm I have built is
improving people’s lives. Over the last 2 years, I have only treated a total
of 7 patients. At this rate, the MMUMP can only be an invigorating part-time
job at home. Since I am mostly homebound with my father, I beg that you continue
to keep me licensed, and grant me the ability to grow a realistic number of one
time per year harvested plants (i.e. 99 plants,
or allow me to have a 5,000 square foot grow space to use freely.
Furthermore, I and my Clean Caregiver colleagues, must have the ability to “sell”
our Boutique Marijuana along with taxes paid to the properly registered
locations for retail, both medically and recreationally. That will ensure a “Maine
Lobsterman” trade like industry in this field. With the MMUMP designation, I am
essentially permitted to have a home brewery crop for medical patients, and retail
it myself. With more reasonable plant numbers or space limits, the field
would be leveled, quality would be gained, an industry would be formed, and
Clean Boutique Home Brewery locations would have a chance to flourish.
Since I have visited Colorado, and entered one of their recreational
shops, I have seen how it is possible for a single shop to have 1,200 varieties
of buds, from over 80 Boutique growers. It was just like a regular wine
shop. Top notch, all the way down to budget. Tested, approved, taxed, and licensed
just like having a private vineyard, or home brewery. There could also be a
fixed amount of high dollar out of state “Walmart Weed” chains to be allowed in
to compete as well. However, right now, the future of a local Maine led industry
proposed by the people is at your fingertips, I ask that we be allowed to let
our businesses have the ability to be profitable, and Boutique (Buderies) Breweries
be permitted to grow enough marijuana to employee 3-4 staff and make a decent
living.
Thank you for your time. I do respect it. I would welcome
a friendly visit from any of the willing legislature or their emissary to
visualize a small, state of the art, organic medical grow, that needs your help
to stay in the saddle. Thank you again.
Sincerely,
