US Cannabis Cup ?

[buddha]

just read this, thought i'd share the joy!

US STATE HOLDS MARIJUANA COMPETITION

A cannabis festival in the US ski resort town of Aspen this spring will allow growers to put their strains in a contest.

The Western Slope Cannabis Crown will have about 50 medical marijuana growers enter their strains of weed.

The marijuana strains will be diagnostically tested for their THC levels.

Growers will also be able to sell to medical marijuana patients and attendees can vote on a "people's choice" strain.

The Cannabis Crown organizer, Bobby Scurlock, says about 1,500 tickets have been sold for the two-day event, the Post Independent reported.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n067/a08.html?204

[kindgreenbuds]

Medical marijuana lab raided by DEA during introduction of Senator Chris
Romer's doctor-patient bill

By Michael Roberts

Full Spectrum Laboratories received some uninvited visitors yesterday.

’ÄãYesterday, Betty Aldworth, director of outreach for Full Spectrum
Laboratories, a marijuana testing facility, was at the State Capitol to
watch lab co-owner Bob Winniki testify about Senator Chris Romer's
just-introduced bill dealing with the relationship between doctors and
medical marijuana patients.

But before Winniki could speak, the twosome received an e-mail letting them
know members of the Drug Enforcement Administration had stopped by the lab.
And by the time they got back to the facility, Aldworth says, "it was full
of DEA agents" and other local law-enforcement types, who spent the next
several hours seizing all the marijuana testing samples they could find.

In October, the Obama administration issued a memo confirming that its
Justice Department wouldn't actively pursue prosecution of medical marijuana
businesses in states that had legalized the process. As such, Full Spectrum
should have been in the clear -- but in an attempt to preclude any problems,
the lab formally applied for analytical lab licensure through the DEA.

"We didn't need to do that, but we thought it was the right thing to do,"
Aldworth says. "We've worked really hard to make sure that everything we're
doing is above board. We've tried to get the best advice from the smartest
people about all parts of our business, and we're trying to follow their
advice as well as we can. And we're trying to be engaged in the community.
That's the reason we were at the Capitol. We think it's important that
people know what we're doing and why we're doing it."

Such transparency didn't help with the DEA. During the agents' first visit,
they "smelled marijuana, which prompted them to request a warrant," Aldworth
says. The document eventually arrived, but Aldworth and company had already
given the agents permission to search the premises, under the theory that
they had nothing to hide.

Nonetheless, she continues, "they confiscated all of the material on site --
even test tubes filled with extraction fluid that we run on our machines."

Fortunately, Aldworth says, all of the samples sent to the lab had already
been tested; it would have eventually been discarded. And agents didn't
seize the equipment, which Full Spectrum leases. However, plant material
used to set baseline standards for testing, provided to the lab by assorted
dispensaries, was taken as well.

Aldworth, who declines to speculate about the timing of the raid, says the
agents were "incredibly professional" during the hours-long process
"considering what an awful experience it was." But they weren't immediately
forthcoming with information about what was going on. It took some time
before Full Spectrum personnel were told that they wouldn't be arrested or
charged with a crime.

What happens next? Aldworth isn't sure as it applies to the DEA. But as for
Full Spectrum, "we're not shutting down," she emphasizes. "We are as
determined as we were at the beginning of the day yesterday to keep
providing this service to Coloradans who need it. We're not going anywhere.
We're still going to be here."