marijuana

Jamen Shively is the former Microsoft Corporate strategy manager who would like to establish a national quality brand of marijuana. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox came to Seattle for a press conference Shively held on his new venture, Diego Pellicer, Inc. Ross Reynolds talks with the founder and CEO about branding and selling marijuana. 

Washington state expects to adopt final rules for the structure governing legalized marijuana under I-502 by next week. So officials with the state’s Liquor Control Board are touring the state to get feedback before the rules take effect.

With recreational pot legal in Washington state, the marijuana business is moving from back alleys to storefronts. Former Silicon Valley banker Brendan Kennedy wants to lead the way in the new pot economy. He is CEO of Privateer Holdings, a cannabis-focused venture capital fund. He’ll explain to Ross Reynolds why he sees it as a $50 billion legal business.

DEA Raids Puget Sound Pot Dispensaries
Federal drug enforcement agents raided marijuana dispensaries around Puget Sound on Wednesday afternoon. We’ll bring you the latest and speak with Alison Holcomb of the ACLU of Washington.

Art Of Our City: Precious Little
What are the limits of language? Sometimes we speak better when we communicate without traditional words or vocabularies. That’s one of the themes of Madeline George’s play “Precious Little.” It opens August 2 at Seattle’s Annex Theater. Director Katherine Karaus and cast members give us a taste of the play and talk about the role of language onstage and in life.

Update On Boeing
Boeing’s profit is up 13 percent, despite the troubles the company has been facing lately. The Boeing 787, 737 and 777 have all been in the headlines for fires and faulty landings. Boeing is looking for fixes to the problems as the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board continue to investigate the Asiana 214 crash in San Francisco, the 787 fire at Heathrow airport and the Southwest crash at LaGuardia. Christopher Drew, the Pentagon and aerospace reporter for the New York Times explains the latest news from Boeing.

What Does It Mean For A City To Lose Its Art Collection?
When the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy last week, creditors began to eye existing assets. One stood out: The art collection at the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts. Appraisers put its value at roughly $2.5 billion. But is it that easy to sell off a cultural collection to pay off a city’s debt? And what does it mean to a city to lose that cultural collection? Seattle Art Museum Director Kimerly Rorshach explains some of the intangibles when it comes to valuing art.

Cannabis is considered relatively benign, but that doesn’t mean there are no health concerns. Ross Reynolds talks with UW Professor Emeritus Roger Roffman about marijuana dependence. 

What will the future of legal marijuana in Washington state look like? Ross Reynolds talks with investigative journalist Doug Fine who has studied Mendocino County California, the first county in the nation to decriminalize and regulate cannabis farming. 

Even though marijuana is now legal here in Washington state that doesn’t mean putting smoke in your lungs is good for you. But there may be a technological solution: smokeless devices called vaporizers. Vaporizing heats the cannabis to a temperature between 180 and 200 degrees Celsius. That’s just short of combustion, which occurs at 230 degrees Celsius, and at that point the vapors are released. So vaporizers can produce the same biological effect as smoking – getting high – without the smoke. Ross Reynolds talks with Danny Darko of High Times magazine about some of the smokeless and less smoking marijuana options available to consumers.  

  UCLA School of Public Affairs Professor Mark Kleiman has been dubbed the pot czar of Washington state. He’s the president of Botec Analysis Corporation, a consulting think tank selected by the Washington State Liquor and Control Board to assist rulemaking for the new legalized marijuana industry. Ross Reynolds talks with Mark Kleiman about what it means to be Hemperor.

In draft rules filed Wednesday,  the Washington State Liquor Control Board laid out new regulations for advertising, packaging and labeling marijuana. The rules forbid ads by Joe Camel-type cartoon characters. But they don’t restrict marijuana-infused gummy bears.

After the state issued its initial round of marijuana regulations in May, drug abuse experts had a lot to say. They asked the state to beef up its rules around marketing, labeling and packaging of marijuana.

  Smoking marijuana may be legal here in Washington state, but it's still a federal crime. That certainly hasn’t stopped some of the people that we spend the most time with from lighting up: popular characters on television. Mad Men has even seen leading man Don Draper get stoned this season. What's the history of getting high on the small screen? Is casual pot use getting more common on TV? Robert Thompson is director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He talked with David Hyde.

  Licenses for marijuana sellers, processors and growers aren’t available until mid-September, but the Liquor Control Board says you should start getting ready to apply now.

Randy Simmons is deputy director of the Washington State Liquor Control Board, the state agency that oversees the recreational marijuana business. He recommends 10 things to do before applying for a pot license in Washington.