Sunday, June 25, 2017

The Maine State Legislature heads to Discuss the Future of the Maine Medical and Recreational Programs 6-26-17

These are my comments to the State's legislature to help us "Clean Caregivers" stay afloat, and be able to earn a living and to create an industry.
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,

Johnny