| Photo: Ben Watanabe/South Whidbey Record |
| Captn Blynd sets a pile of marijuana plants and buds ablaze outside his Freeland, Washington home after he said he received threats against his medical marijuana cooperative. |
The founder of Whidbey Island’s first medical marijuana cooperative has followed through on his pledge to destroy his supply of medical marijuana following perceived threats to his wife and himself.
Captn Blynd, of Freeland, Washington, stacked 11 juvenile and mature cannabis plants and a kilogram jar full of a half-pound of dried marijuana buds on top of a pile outside his home last Tuesday, poured a fifth of Monarch 151 rum tincture on it, and drenched it all with gasoline, reports Ben Watanabe of the South Whidbey Record.
“Do I look like a rich guy to you?” Blynd asked. “Somehow I don’t think I am. This is plant matter. It’s not money, it’s not power, it shouldn’t reflect wealth. It’s legalized to make sick people feel better. That’s what it did for me.”
“I’ve got nothing in the house anymore, guys,” Blynd said as reporters watched.
Blynd encountered a firestorm of controversy last month when he publicly announced his plan to start a medical marijuana cooperative, called MedBot, out of his Freeland home.
After critics online questioned his motives and added unflattering comments to his Facebook page, he had vowed last week to burn his medical marijuana.
Blynd stoked the burning pile of cannabis with a metal poker, occasionally kneeling down to restack the plants that were still green. He estimated the burning pile to be worth as much as $12,000.
Blynd said he didn’t burn everything, however.
“My reserves are now kept under lock and key in a safe deposit box,” he said.
He pointed at two motion-sensor lights he recently installed for security. “We’re not particularly concerned with the threats now that I’ve burned my plants,” he said.
Blynd said he now hopes to restructure his “utopian” cooperative idea into a nonprofit, where all profit is given to a community food bank.
He said he had no remorse or regret about burning the plants or proposing the cooperative.
“It’s just a plant,” Blynd said.