Inside City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Jim Wilcox explained his plan for a commercial marijuana farm. “My idea was a Silicon Valley of cannabis,” he told the city council recently. “An office park for pot.” The council has approved the creation, licensing and taxing of four such medical marijuana farms inside Oakland city limits.

Four hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles, it’s a completely different story. After four years running the Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center, Yami Bolanos fears her medical marijuana dispensary will be shut down. “The patients are the ones that are getting screwed royally by the city council.”

Los Angeles is cracking down hard on the number of “collectives”, which have grown like weeds in the last few years. By some estimates, there were 700 medical marijuana dispensaries a few months ago, more pot outlets than Starbucks in LA. A new law will reduce that number to 182. “The sale of marijuana has never been approved by voters,” says Los Angeles Assistant Attorney Asha Greenberg. “Cities have the ability to restrict the numbers of collectives.”

This tale of two cities reflects a divergence of opinion in California over the future of what may be its largest cash crop. Voters will decide in November whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.

The State Board of Equalization estimates that pot in California is worth $15 billion a year. Taxing it could bring in $1.5 billion in much-needed revenues. But that’s based on current prices. A Rand study suggests that if the November ballot measure passes, prices could drop 90 percent to $38 an ounce, while consumption could increase as much as 100 percent.

Jane Wells
CNBC Reporter

The November initiative, called Proposition 19, would allow California residents 21 years or older to grow marijuana at home for personal use, in an area no larger than 25 square feet. It would also allow adults 21 and older to possess and transport up to an ounce. Finally, it would allow local governments to license, regulate, and tax commercial growers and sellers. Like alcohol, sales to anyone under 21 would be banned.

“Look at all the people that are being killed in Mexico every day, as well as the home invasion robberies and other things that come from the inflated price that’s caused by prohibition,” says Richard Lee, who authored Prop 19. Lee runs Oaksterdam University in Oakland, a school which teaches people how to grow medical marijuana and run a dispensary.

Lee says the benefits of legalization go beyond sales tax revenues, and include “ancillary benefits such a tourism, jobs, and hotel rooms and transportation and food that would go along with the cannabis industry.”

“They will probably two, three, four to one outraise us financially,” says Covina police chief Kim Raney, leading the No on Prop 19 campaign, “but I think our message will be clear. I think our message will be the truth, and I think the voters in the state will understand that.”

What is clear is that Prop 19 will again put California’s marijuana laws in direct opposition to the feds. Because of that, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office says it’s impossible to know how much money the state might bring in.

The LAO says savings to correctional facilities “could reach several tens of millions of dollars annually,” and a new jobs-creating industry could let the state “eventually collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually in additional revenues.” But with the federal government poised at any moment to snuff out any legalized pot business, “the revenue and expenditure impacts of this measure are subject to significant uncertainty.”

Public opinion polls have delivered conflicting results on the initiative’s chances for success. “I think in November, (voters) will realize the consequences and devastation that this act will have on their communities, and I think the voters will turn it down,” says Chief Raney.

Richard Lee’s pro-Prop 19 group has hired an Internet fundraising company used during the Obama campaign, and its Facebook page has well over 130,000 fans. The political battle will be fierce, and opposition may come from unexpected sources. “Two groups that have come out against (Prop 19) are growers who don’t want to pay taxes,” he says, “and the cops who want to keep getting the forfeiture money and seizure money, and job security from it.”

Here is a brief backstory. Exactly four hundred years ago in 1610, Galileo Galilei published The Starry Messenger, a book that defined his monumental theory that the sun – not the earth – is the center of the solar system. Galileo’s theory flew in the face of long-established Catholic dogma that the earth does not move. Eventually, Galileo would collide with the awesome power of the Pope.

In 1632, Galileo faced trial for heresy, a capital offense. During his trial, Galileo was threatened with the instruments of torture that were maliciously brandished in his face. Under duress of the dual threats of torture and execution, Galileo recanted – but he lived under house arrest for the rest of his life in a form of suspended animation rather like Aun Sang Suu Kii, and he became the Renaissance icon of injustice and the overarching powers of the Papacy. For these reasons, Galileo is indisputably the most iconic figure of scientific persecution, a genius whose ideas displaced religious orthodoxy with reason and fundamentalist fantasies with rational analysis.

Today in Britain, the tabloids are unfolding yet another case of scientific inquisition. In the Information Age, the Tabloid Editor has replaced the Papal Inquisitor. Instead of astronomy, the field of pharmacology is the latest battleground between the forces of fundamentalist orthodoxy and the scientific community.

Targeting Dr. Les Iversen, a scientist with impeccable credentials and the Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, The Mail on Sunday published a sensationalist diatribe against the scientific analysis of drugs that would abolish the entire field of drug reform. The slanted story pointed out that Dr. Iversen published a book about the medical uses of marijuana, The Science of Marijuana, and is an advisor to the Beckley Foundation, a scientific research organization that has established the gold standard for objective analysis of existing drug laws with the publication of The Global Cannabis Commission Report of 2008 that called for sweeping drug reform.

To tarnish Dr. Iversen with the taint of political controversy, the deeply conservative tabloid quoted a right-wing member of parliament named Ann Widdecombe (Britain’s answer to Michelle Bachmann) who had the effrontery to say, “The fact that he was prepared to lend his name to a body pushing for softer policies on drug use means he should not be advising the Government on this issue.”

There we have it. Because of his scientific research, Dr. Iversen stands accused of thoughtcrime. According to Widdecombe, only malleable simpletons who are willing to agree with orthodox policy should be appointed to the post of scientific adviser to the government for we have no need for rationality and no respect for divergent viewpoints – none whatsoever.

In the case of Dr. Iversen and the Beckley Foundation, we witness the collision of inveterate orthodoxy versus scientific analysis exploding in the pages of an inquisitorial tabloid that fortunately does not possess the power of physical torture. In 2010, we have advanced from the unspeakable tortures of the Inquisition to psychological torture by tabloid.

The head of the Beckley Foundation is Amanda Feilding, Lady Neidpath. One decade ago, Lady Neidpath and her husband established the Beckley Foundation for the scientific analysis of the mind and the broad spectrum of human consciousness.

In addition to work on cannabis-marijuana, the Beckley Foundation has obtained official licenses from the government to conduct the first research with LSD in decades. LSD is one chemical along with many others that can alter human consciousness. For a quarter of a century, LSD and other psychedelic substances were the cornerstones of research into altered states of consciousness, but religious orthodoxy merged with political pressure – and government repressed this rich field of scientific research – much to its discredit.

The current situation is rather like the 16th century, when Copernicus published his revolutionary work to inform the public that the sun was the center of the solar system. Copernicus’ book was banned, and it was over 60 years before Galileo published his much more lucid and convincing scientific analysis based on astronomical observations with a telescope.

In the clash of orthodoxy versus science, the future of civilization is literally at stake. From evolution to global warming to drug reform, the scientific community confronts orthodox dogmas to help guide civilization toward justice and survival.

By accusing intellectuals of thoughtcrime – such as Dr. Iversen and Lady Neidpath – the modern inquisition threatens our very existence.

In America in a parallel development, Michelle Alexander has just published her eloquent call for drug reform, her highly acclaimed book, The New Jim Crow. Alexander argues very forcefully that the drug laws do little more than legitimize racism via the premeditated and systematic incarceration of racial minorities. In America, the drug laws destroy the lives of a disproportionate amount of racial minorities where up to 50% of the young male population is permanently engraved with the indelible stain of criminality. The same is undoubtedly true in Britain.

In 2010, four hundred years after the rise of Galileo, science must reject the yoke of orthodox dogma. Not only our survival, but justice itself depends upon it.

This, however, is at odds with recent research which concludes that in a susceptible minority, cannabis use can push the brain towards long-term psychosis requiring mental health treatment. Susceptible young people who use cannabis increase their risk of developing a chronic psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, and the more cannabis they consume, the higher the risk.

Additionally, people with schizophrenia who have a history of cannabis use tend to go through their first breakdown up to five years earlier in life than those who do not use the drug. Psychotic patients who fail to give up cannabis experience more symptoms, more relapses and end up in hospital more often.

These discoveries about the link between cannabis and psychosis have been widely reported in the media, often accompanied by warnings that street cannabis has risen in strength in recent years and therefore poses a major health risk to the susceptible minority.

This, however, is too simplistic: the type of cannabis taken is an important factor. Street cannabis has indeed changed over the years. So-called “skunk” does contain higher than normal concentrations of the main psychoactive compound, a molecule called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What is less well known is that another constituent, cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content.

The elimination of CBD may play a key role in the development of psychosis. Laboratory studies have shown that pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people. In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect, at least in animals. Studies in humans, though few in number, have produced similar findings.

The elimination of cannabidiol from skunk may play a key role in the development of psychosis

In one human study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/npp.2009.184), Sagnik Bhattacharya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in London used functional MRI brain scanning to study the effects of THC and CBD on the brains of healthy volunteers. They found that THC and CBD acted in opposition; in brain regions where THC increased neural activity from a baseline, CBD decreased it, and vice-versa.

In a further experiment, a group including one of us (Morrison), in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation, compared the effects of a mixture of synthetic THC and CBD, (to mimic traditional cannabis) with THC on its own (to mimic skunk). The aim was to find out if CBD offered protection against the psychotic effects of THC.

Healthy volunteers were given the molecules intravenously for two sessions. They received the same amount of THC during each session; the only difference was whether they received CBD as well. Thirty minutes after injection a consultant psychiatrist interviewed the volunteers and rated their experiences. Overall, volunteers were rated as being significantly less psychotic after being given THC and CBD compared to THC on its own. The implication is that the presence of CBD in cannabis counteracts THC’s tendency to trigger transient psychosis.

Another study from the Institute of Psychiatry by Marta DiForti and colleagues reached similar conclusions for chronic psychosis. They compared the cannabis habits of 280 newly diagnosed psychotic patients with those of 174 healthy volunteers who were matched for age, sex, educational attainment and socio-economic status. Both groups were equally likely to have tried cannabis, but, strikingly, psychotic patients were seven times more likely to have been skunk users. So in real life, as well as in the lab, THC unopposed by CBD appears to be particularly hazardous for mental health (British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 195, p 488).

This research has important implications for both street and medical marijuana. On the medical side, the question is whether CBD will be a useful antipsychotic in its own right.

To help find out, the Beckley Foundation is setting up a research project in collaboration with University College London and a leading medical marijuana dispensary in California which supplies over 30,000 patients. The study will analyse different strains of cannabis for their THC and CBD content. Patients will be asked which strains they find most effective, how they compare with conventional drugs, and to rate other effects, both beneficial and negative.

As for street cannabis, the Beckley Foundation hopes that this research will be used to make it safer. Skunk, with a typical THC content of 15 to 19 per cent and a CBD content of zero, has come to dominate the street market. Ironically, many consider skunk’s market dominance to be a consequence of prohibition, as illegal drug markets have always tended towards higher potencies.

The Beckley Foundation sees this as yet another argument for regulating the recreational cannabis market. Only in a regulated market can the knowledge from this research be used to create strains which are less hazardous for users.

The evidence supports the idea that nature knows best, and that the reintroduction of CBD would be beneficial. Two molecules are better than one.

Amanda Feilding is director of the www.beckleyfoundation.org Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust based in Oxford, UK, that promotes the investigation of consciousness and its modulation.

Paul Morrison is at the Institute of Psychiatry in London

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