| Tucson Citizen |
| Eighteen bucks a gram, $60 an eighth for “Lin Sanity OG” in California |
By Bob Starrett
It is March Madness, still, I think. As I understand it, that is a college basketball tournament of some sort. It seems to happen every year. Now I don’t have a bracket and I don’t know anything else about it other than I try to avoid it as best I can.
I had to read three articles before I determined that the Final Four was Kentucky and Louisville, and Kansas and Ohio State, I think it is assumed that all Americans know this. I couldn’t have told you any one of the four without looking it up. So let me write one of the comments here preemptively:
“Starrett is so stoned that he doesn’t even know that the final four were decided on Sunday and he is so baked that he doesn’t even know the teams!” All I can say is no, I am not stoned and yes, I had no idea that the final four teams were decided yesterday and no, I did not know what teams had won until I looked it up today. And finally, I don’t care.
| RealGM |
| Jeremy Lin’s lawyers are seeing red (and green too) over the medical marijuana strain named after the hoops star |
But with everybody (except me) thinking and talking about basketball, I guess it was inevitable that medical marijuana and basketball would collide. According to The Huffington Post, Jeremy Lin’s attorney team, the Washington D.C. law firm Arent Fox, has sent cease and desist letters to several California dispensaries who are selling a Linsanity OG strain.
Pamela Deese of Arent Fox noted that, “[The dispensaries’] enthusiasm for Jeremy Lin got ahead of their understanding of the law.”
The strain name has apparently concerned Lin’s attorneys because they are trying to trademark both his name and the term “Linsanity.” Dispensaries in California have indeed renamed the strain, dropping the “L.” Apparently the attorneys want apology letters, too.
Strain names are of course associated with product branding. Names may be descriptive of one or more properties of the product, or of it’s heritage or of a number of other things. The first for sale listing on today’s Denver Craigslist shows several strains on sale at a local dispensary: OGxNYC, Sage, Mazar, Jamaican, Skywalker, Sweet Cindy 99. Those sound benign enough.
| Avvo |
| Pamela Deese of Arent Fox: The dispensaries’ enthusiasm for Jeremy Lin got ahead of their understanding of the law |
But strain names like Green Crack, Escobar, Herijuana, AK-47 and Killing Fields all bring forth images of exactly what medical marijuana and the way it is grown and distributed in this country when done under a responsible, regulated framework DO NOT represent.
Here is a description of AK-47 on kindgreenbuds.com “Despite it’s aggressive name, AK-47 has many peaceful tendencies. First bred in 1992, the name suggests the power packed in its dark, resinous, compact buds that bristle with red hairs and glistening trichomes.” That is all well and good and it sounds delicious, but that damn name.
Nothing to do with Cambodia, Killing Fields is described this way: “The Killing Fields name originated from the expectation that this strain will yield fields of killer big buds.”
And kindgreenbuds.com gives the following explanation of the origin of the Green Crack name:
“Don’t let the name put you off, this strain is high quality cannabis. It was originally bred in Athens, GA in the 1970s with the birthname of Cush. It was later renamed ‘Green Crack’
by none other than Snoop Dogg because of its extreme potency and the crave to keep smoking it.”
Well, maybe the Dogg had a craving to keep smoking it but I doubt that it has that effect on most people. It’s just marijuana. But there’s the ammunition for the prohibitionists.
It seems important that dispensaries always be aware (and most are) that they are the face that the public sees, the retail face of medical marijuana. These types of names do in fact have public relations effect on dispensaries, growers and the industry as a whole.
With a rather big legislative year grinding along and medical marijuana bills pending in many states, I would hope that we don’t see medical marijuana opponents using these few unfortunate names to attempt to metaphorically link the medical marijuana industry in the U.S. to drug cartels and violent criminals.
But it is inevitable that someone will want to have fun with a strain name and we may soon see “Tebowlicious” and “Peyton’s Pleasure.” That would all be in good fun, but it’s not going to fly with the lawyers. Call it what you want, but the sports names aren’t going to last long before the cease and desist letters show up, and renaming Green Crack to Green Candy, as I have been told some dispensaries do, that’s not helpful either.
So think nice thoughts and find nice names. They don’t have to be completely innocuous, but they shouldn’t evoke those images; it is just not helpful.
And to answer the question I posed: Is Jeremy Lin top shelf? I can tell you, despite my self-imposed ignorance of March Madness, I do know who Jeremy Lin is but I do not think he is worth $60 an eighth.
Editor’s note: Bob Starrett, with 22 years of experience with Optical Disc and Drive technology, is co-author of six books on CD and CD-ROM technology, and his published magazine work includes more than 250 articles, reviews and columns on CD-ROM, CD Recordable, DVD-ROM and DVD Recordable technology for publications including PC Magazine, EMedia Magazine, CD-ROM Professional, Digital Video Magazine, Digital Content Creator, One To One, Online, Tape-Disc Business and others. He holds a J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law.