Monsanto Poised To Take Over the Weed Industry

[Sam_Skunkman]

It is because even selling at $1 a gram the black market can sell other Cannabis and produce and sell Cannabis cheaper. The government wants a way to be able to tell legally produced Cannabis from illegal Cannabis. In Colorado they have from birth/seed/clone to harvest, to consumer, documentation requirements for the legal producer/Commercial seller, they are both trying to solve similar problems.
I am not supporting their use but I do think it is better then how it was.
You can focus on the half empty glass and say what a drag, or focus on the now half full glass and say I am happy they are moving Cannabis forward with legalization, step by step. The choice is yours.
-SamS

 

[Jhhnn]

It is because even selling at $1 a gram the black market can sell other Cannabis and produce and sell Cannabis cheaper. The government wants a way to be able to tell legally produced Cannabis from illegal Cannabis. In Colorado they have from birth/seed/clone to harvest, to consumer, documentation requirements for the legal producer/Commercial seller, they are both trying to solve similar problems.
I am not supporting their use but I do think it is better then how it was.
You can focus on the half empty glass and say what a drag, or focus on the now half full glass and say I am happy they are moving Cannabis forward with legalization, step by step. The choice is yours.
-SamS

I don't think that CO & Uruguay have the same intentions wrt weed tracking at all. From foomar's link-

Uruguay, on the other hand, is designing a registration and licensing system so complete that authorities hope not only to defeat illegal marijuana trafficking, but also to monitor drug users closely enough to get abusers into treatment and gradually decrease consumption.

Weed tracking in CO has an entirely different purpose, which is to prevent diversion of legally grown product into the black market, particularly across state lines. We don't monitor individual consumption of retail weed at all, nor do we restrict what personal growers can cultivate other than by numbers. On street possession of less than 1 oz is legal regardless of where the weed originated. Retail only weed shops just want to see ID- they don't enter information into a database. It's like buying beer. We abandoned all notions of limiting consumption.

In Uruguay, it looks like they're creating the marijuana version of our own methadone program, applying very much the same sort of authoritarian judgments & values. I find that highly objectionable.

In Uruguay, they'd probably put you near the front of the line for mandatory "treatment".

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

So the glass is still only half empty, not half full?
And if Colorado has abandoned all notions of limiting consumption, why only 6 plants for single home growers? I think some would say that is what that is for. I also thought that you can only buy an ounce and possess the same amount. Non-residents are limited to 1/4 ounce.
In Colorado I still only see a half empty glass.....
Which is better then it was.
Just like Uruguay is also better now, then it was.
-SamS

 

[Jhhnn]

So the glass is still only half empty, not half full?
And if Colorado has abandoned all notions of limiting consumption, why only 6 plants for single home growers? I think some would say that is what that is for. I also thought that you can only buy an ounce and possess the same amount. Non-residents are limited to 1/4 ounce.
In Colorado I still only see a half empty glass.....
Which is better then it was.
Just like Uruguay is also better now, then it was.
-SamS

Plant counts limit production, theoretically, holding down black market production & sales. The State wants their piece. Most people, particularly couples, can provide themselves with what they want entirely in an ongoing fashion if they're decent gardeners. We have plenty. We give it away. As a personal grower, I have the right to keep whatever I grow w/o any weight restriction at home. Purchase & on street possession limit is 1oz for everybody, but I can come back as many times as I want & can afford. Nobody keeps track. I'm sure tourists do that for their take home stash, which the 1/4 oz buy limit for them tries to discourage. We want to keep it here for people when they're here, like gambling. At a personal level, it's lightly authoritarian at worst.

I think that one side or the other is being played in Uruguay. If it turns out the way foomar's link offers, it's the MJ community. It can turn into only being able to buy just so much so often, & not much at that. into being monitored as abnormal/ undesirable. Into maintaining the black market. If it goes the other way, then it's people holding the authoritarian sentiment that stuff is designed to please getting the double cross. I wouldn't count on the latter being true.

I'm not much for being an alarmist, but Uruguay could easily become one of those "be careful what you wish for" deals.

We'll see, huh?

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

I sill say it is better now then the way it was in Uruguay last year.
Maybe it will get worse in time,
or maybe it will get better in time.
I say the latter.
Time will tell....
And Colorado is far from perfect, regardless of what you think.
Don't you think Colorado could get even worse? Or is it just Uruguay?
I think the whole world is slowly going to get better about Cannabis.
Each different model will have its own advantages or disadvantages, depending if you are a consumer of cheap weed, consumer of epicurean weed, medical user, small grower, giant commercial grower, wholesaler, retailer, but as long as they are moving in the right direction I support all the efforts.
I think in the end Cannabis will be much like tobacco and alcohol, that in the USA is taxed, and regulated FOR COMMERCIAL USE, and yet legal to grow/make for personal use with little to no controls.
-SamS

 

[devilgoob]

Monsanto doesn't have to use a genetic modification technique, because they could just as well use biomarkers and breeding.

Within a couple of generations, they will know how the plant puts together it's traits.

They can also unlock the power of the phenolic compound by possibly creating a strain that drops off from making THC or CBD and focuses on making something else. Whatever that something is, out of the 60 cannabinoids, it could have something in store for us, like increasing short-term working memory.

Using genetic modification, and gene splicing or any mad scientist things would not be as dangerous if they only targeted the genes containing the information on which chemotype would be derived from the changed metabolic pathway of CBG.

Please read this, it may or may not give you any information, like the 1:2:1 ratio of the chemotypes: CBD-pure / THC-CBD hybrid / THC-pure.

It gives the metabolic pathways, and which changes occur at which levels.
http://www.genetics.org/content/163/1/335.full.pdf

 

[Jhhnn]

I sill say it is better now then the way it was in Uruguay last year.
Maybe it will get worse in time,
or maybe it will get better in time.
I say the latter.
Time will tell....
And Colorado is far from perfect, regardless of what you think.
Don't you think Colorado could get even worse? Or is it just Uruguay?
I think the whole world is slowly going to get better about Cannabis.
Each different model will have its own advantages or disadvantages, depending if you are a consumer of cheap weed, consumer of epicurean weed, medical user, small grower, giant commercial grower, wholesaler, retailer, but as long as they are moving in the right direction I support all the efforts.
I think in the end Cannabis will be much like tobacco and alcohol, that in the USA is taxed, and regulated FOR COMMERCIAL USE, and yet legal to grow/make for personal use with little to no controls.
-SamS

Please, Sam. I never offered that CO was perfect. I just point out some of the features that make it an improvement to a CO majority, straights & stoners alike. Only federal intervention or a vote of the people to rescind A64 could change that. Neither seems likely, given current trends. The recent NYT editorial, public polling & congressional rumblings show that legalization has become mainstream & is moving fast.

Uruguay? Dunno. I wish them well, hope they can work it out.

 

[Hottish]

Correct,
Gene markers do not even have to be added like in the case of GMO's.
You can find and use naturally occurring markers, or add a few to the variety to be grown from another Cannabis clone that has the markers, and just use classical breeding techniques to breed them into the variety to be sold and made identifiable via the markers.
This is all normal breeding, not GMO.
-SamS

So these questions arise ,

Are the Uruguayan Gov doing this in house? or who is supplying the genetics , mapping the markers , advising & growing for them?

There can not be to many people / grow teams in the world with the required experience that can build and manage green houses on this scale!

Have you had any input , been head hunted , you seem very sure that Monsanto are not on the ground

 

[axxess]

GMO Weed? Connections Alleged Between Uruguay Marijuana Legalization, Monsanto and So

GMO Weed? Connections Alleged Between Uruguay Marijuana Legalization, Monsanto and So

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News
Uruguay earlier this year became the first nation in the world to legalize the cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana. Now one German researcher is alleging that billionaire speculator George Soros supported legalization in that South American country as part of a plan for corporate agribusiness giant Monsanto to move into the cannabis trade.
Engdahl alleges, on the website of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD) that Monsanto is already quietly at work on a project to patent a genetically modified cannabis plant in Uruguay. Since Soros played a pivotal role in Uruguay's legalization drive (he sits on the board of the Drug Policy Alliance), and also owns considerable Monsanto stock, Engdahl believes those two things are connected, and they point towards Monsanto involvement.
Soros' Open Society organization distributed $34 million last year, according to Engdahl, nearly $3.5 million of which was dedicated to marijuana legalization. Open Society funded the group Regulacion Responsable ("Responsible Control") in Uruguay; the group ran a nationwide advertising campaign for the successful legalization drive.
Engdahl alleges that Soros' involvement in Uruguayan legalization "is part of a much larger global project," and further than Monsanto quietly conducts research projects on marijuana and its active ingredient, THC, and how the plant can be genetically manipulated. Monsanto is, after all, the world's largest supplier of genetically modified seeds.
Back in 1998, the British firm GW Pharmaceuticals, which markets Sativex oral spray, containing THC and CBD, signed an agreement with Dutch seed company Hortapharm (owner of the world's largest collection of cannabis seed varieties). The agreement gives GW Pharmaceuticals the rigbht to use Hortapharm cannabis strains for their research, according to Engdahl.
The German pharmaceuticals company Bayer AG in 2003 signed an agreement with GW Bayer AG agreed to an exchange with Monsanto, where both companies agreed to share the results of their research. Monsanto thus has, according to Engdahl, "discreet access" to scientific studies on the cannabis plant and its genetic modification.
In 2009, GW announced it had succeeded in genetically altering a cannabis plant and patented a "new breed" of cannabis, Engdahl writes.
With cannabis cultivation now legally allowed in Uruguay, Engdahl says "one can easily imagine" that Monsanto sees a vast new market opening -- one they could potentially control with patented GMO cannabis seeds much as they currently do with the current market in soybeans.
President Jose Mujica of Uruguay has made it clear that he wants a unique genetic code for government-approved marijuana so that legal weed can be distinguished in order to "keep the black market under control."
GMO cannabis from Monsanto would, of course, make such control possible. Monsanto has for decades been researching genetically modified soybeans and corn.
Is Monsanto paving the way for the corporate giants of Big Pharma and Big Agriculture to replace natural strains of cannabis with their own patented GMO varieties?
Moving into marijuana could be seen as a logical next step for Monsanto. The company is reputedly investing millions of dollars into a new technology known as RNA interference (RNAi), which could be used to manipulate everything from the color of the plant to making it indigestible to insects, or resistant to certain herbicides (like the "Roundup Ready" versions of crops that Monsanto produces to withstand the herbicides the company sells).
Genetic modification through RNAi or other methods could, of course, be used to create larger, more potent marijuana plants -- and plants that could be distinguished from unauthorized, "black market" marijuana through genetic testing.
- See more at: http://hemp.org/news/content/gmo-we...ation-monsanto-and-soros#sthash.p3AGj7HL.dpuf


http://hemp.org/news/content/gmo-we...uay-marijuana-legalization-monsanto-and-soros

 

[Skinny Leaf]

From what I have read there is only 5 clones that will be allowed to grow and distribute. There is no seeds only clones. Uruguay does allow people to grow but only those 5 clones. Radio tagging is fairly straight forward, but, the genetic markers are not. Is there a quick and easy portable test for the genetic marker(s)? Like getting a stamp at a club and passing it under a black light? They have some easy way to tell if its government weed besides radio tracking.

I haven't found what the penalties are for possessing unapproved government weed. There are major red flags in Uruguay's legalization efforts. This is how you corner the marijuana market.

On a side note there are some very interesting uses for plant genetic markers. In one use a plant genetic marker is used in conjunction with an ink to mark IC chips. There seems to be a huge black market for electronic components. What basically amounts to a barcode but with a unique plant genetic marker added guarantees the authenticity of the electronic components. They are even in the process of trying to add these genetic markers to the silicon itself that makes up the bulk of the component.