Jacob Bell
New Member
Jude grew up in a rough neighborhood on Detroit's east side and left home when he was 15.
Life hasn't been easy.
He's lost five of his close friends in drug-related deaths over the years – each to either an overdose or a violent end stemming from the use of heroin or methamphetamine. He's dabbled in an array of drugs himself, he admits, and dealt drugs like marijuana on Detroit street corners as a teen. He came out of it with a terrible driving record but no misdemeanor drug or felony convictions.
Now 30, the Ann Arbor resident is a caregiver – a person who grows and supplies medical marijuana to patients who qualify under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. It's unclear how many caregivers are growing statewide; state officials say they'll provide a figure when an accurate number is available. The state had registered nearly 50,000 patients as of Dec. 29.
In April 2009, it became legal to use and grow marijuana for patients with conditions like cancer, chronic pain, HIV or glaucoma.
With that change, Jude's background in various illegal drug ventures suddenly had a legal purpose. But like other caregivers, Jude would only agree to be interviewed if his full name wasn't used. Caregivers – citing legal and employment concerns – say state law may have legitimized the drug in part, but not in the minds of most people.
Jude said he learned how to grow marijuana when he was 20, as an apprentice of sorts in black market grow houses. He also has, at various times, been a theater or business student in college – endeavors that left him without a degree and $20,000 in debt.
"I ran out of money," he said of his choice to drop out of school.
At one point, Jude was a wedding DJ. Now he holds a professional day job and runs his own business – one that has nothing to do with drugs.
But he keeps a foot in his old life, growing marijuana in Ann Arbor and selling the product to those who are medically qualified.
Inside one caregiver's world
Jude, like other caregivers interviewed by AnnArbor.com, keeps the fact that he grows and distributes marijuana to himself. He only lets his landlord, a close circle of friends and patients know what's really going on in the basement of his rental home. State law may have legitimized what he's doing, but medical marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government.
Jude fears being exposed would make him a target for those who illegally deal marijuana. And there's a stigma associated with the drug that he fears will hurt him professionally.
Jude is exclusively a grower and is not a medical marijuana patient himself, as some caregivers are.
Jude, who talks like a botanist, learned most of the technical skills involved in growing marijuana indoors from reading books and papers on the subject – in addition to his work in the illegal grow operations of his past.
Plywood boards form a makeshift room in the basement of his small rental home. There, his marijuana operation is padlocked shut. The paperwork required of caregivers from the Michigan Department of Community Health, which runs the state's medical marijuana program, is affixed to the door.
His landlord supports what he is doing, he said.
"It's really been just like any other part of my life," he said.
A lighting system worth about $2,000 is switched on at 11 p.m. and runs for 12 hours overnight, when the electricity rates are lower than they are during the day. The plants are in darkness for the other 12 hours. On a recent night, three 1,000-watt light bulbs illuminated 24 marijuana plants in various stages of growth.
Inside the grow room, silver reflective material lined the walls to capture light – Jude casually uses the term lumens, a measurement of light streaming out of high-pressure sodium bulbs. He said he consulted an electrician when he set up the lighting system, which has to be vented to keep it and the plants from getting too hot. Fans and air conditioning control the temperature, 72 to 78 degrees, and humidity, 35 percent to 45 percent, inside the room.
Jude's growing system is homemade. A Rubbermaid container acts as a reservoir, and a submerged pump circulates water constantly through the soil-free system of PVC pipes propped up about two feet off the ground by a base made of two-by-fours.
Inside the pipes, sprayers disperse the water and keep the environment humid. Jude has added microorganisms to the water to help replicate what would be found in soil. He feeds the microorganisms sugar or molasses.
He keeps meticulous notes on everything he does, like the pH level in the water and the growth rate of each plant.
Where does he get them? That's tricky since nothing in the state law addresses seeds or seedlings, which can't be legally acquired. Jude said he trades cuttings – a trimming from a mature female plant – with friends. It takes about six weeks for a cutting to take root and start to flower. It takes months more before the buds can be harvested, dried and then cured to avoid molding. Once a grower harvests a plant, the plant is done producing. Each can produce between 0.5 and 2.5 ounces of marijuana.
All the plants grown have to be females; male plants would pollinate the buds, rendering them unusable.
Jude said marijuana caregivers bristle at the drug language used in manufacturing what the state now considers medicine. That's one of the reasons they sell it by the gram, he said. For his patients, one gram costs $10. There are 28 grams in an ounce.
Jude dismisses hydroponics as a general term and said he's combined several techniques. He described his process with a rapid-fire combination of horticulture acronyms and street terms like "bubble-ponics," which means pushing air into the water to add oxygen to the environment.
Buckets and other household containers hold the more mature plants, while smaller plants thrive in their respective pods cut into the pipe system.
A strain called Northern Lights was growing for one of Jude's patient in Folgers can. He said he likes to give each of them a free ounce of marijuana each month, and he's not making much money on the endeavor.
Jude said he simply likes to garden, and not just marijuana – his mother was a florist and he helped out with her flower garden as a kid. He also often grows his own vegetables.
The caregiver's patient
Dale Franz, 73, is one of Jude's patients. The retired journalist said severe sciatic nerve pain keeps him up at night.
Marijuana he inhales via a vaporizer helps with the pain and helps him sleep. The Northern Lights plant Jude was growing is for him.
"The difference between using something like medical marijuana and pharmaceutical drugs, for me, is that pain management is a more complex thing than just suppressing pain," Franz said. "It involves what your feeling about it is, your perception of pain, and I think that the marijuana allows you to examine that subjectively, with your own reactions, much more easily than if you just cover it up with some kind of powerful drug. You can feel the pain, but adjust to it somehow, rather than just try to make it go away, so you're aware that you're still on the planet."
Franz said one of the reasons he uses medical marijuana is to avoid opiate-containing narcotics with ingredients derived from the same plant that produces heroin. He appreciates the relationship he has developed with Jude and his product.
"I'm familiar with his operation," Franz said. "I've seen how he grows his plants. He's very careful. He's reliable he's consistent and he's very supportive. It's also a part of the local economy, and it's a program that ought to be provided for people."
News Hawk- GuitarMan313 420 MAGAZINE
Source: annarbor.com
Author: Juliana Keeping
Contact: Contact Us - AnnArbor.com
Copyright: © 2009-2010 AnnArbor.com LLC and its licensors
Website: How does his marijuana garden grow? Carefully and quietly, Ann Arbor caregiver says - AnnArbor.com
Life hasn't been easy.
He's lost five of his close friends in drug-related deaths over the years – each to either an overdose or a violent end stemming from the use of heroin or methamphetamine. He's dabbled in an array of drugs himself, he admits, and dealt drugs like marijuana on Detroit street corners as a teen. He came out of it with a terrible driving record but no misdemeanor drug or felony convictions.
Now 30, the Ann Arbor resident is a caregiver – a person who grows and supplies medical marijuana to patients who qualify under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. It's unclear how many caregivers are growing statewide; state officials say they'll provide a figure when an accurate number is available. The state had registered nearly 50,000 patients as of Dec. 29.
In April 2009, it became legal to use and grow marijuana for patients with conditions like cancer, chronic pain, HIV or glaucoma.
With that change, Jude's background in various illegal drug ventures suddenly had a legal purpose. But like other caregivers, Jude would only agree to be interviewed if his full name wasn't used. Caregivers – citing legal and employment concerns – say state law may have legitimized the drug in part, but not in the minds of most people.
Jude said he learned how to grow marijuana when he was 20, as an apprentice of sorts in black market grow houses. He also has, at various times, been a theater or business student in college – endeavors that left him without a degree and $20,000 in debt.
"I ran out of money," he said of his choice to drop out of school.
At one point, Jude was a wedding DJ. Now he holds a professional day job and runs his own business – one that has nothing to do with drugs.
But he keeps a foot in his old life, growing marijuana in Ann Arbor and selling the product to those who are medically qualified.
Inside one caregiver's world
Jude, like other caregivers interviewed by AnnArbor.com, keeps the fact that he grows and distributes marijuana to himself. He only lets his landlord, a close circle of friends and patients know what's really going on in the basement of his rental home. State law may have legitimized what he's doing, but medical marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government.
Jude fears being exposed would make him a target for those who illegally deal marijuana. And there's a stigma associated with the drug that he fears will hurt him professionally.
Jude is exclusively a grower and is not a medical marijuana patient himself, as some caregivers are.
Jude, who talks like a botanist, learned most of the technical skills involved in growing marijuana indoors from reading books and papers on the subject – in addition to his work in the illegal grow operations of his past.
Plywood boards form a makeshift room in the basement of his small rental home. There, his marijuana operation is padlocked shut. The paperwork required of caregivers from the Michigan Department of Community Health, which runs the state's medical marijuana program, is affixed to the door.
His landlord supports what he is doing, he said.
"It's really been just like any other part of my life," he said.
A lighting system worth about $2,000 is switched on at 11 p.m. and runs for 12 hours overnight, when the electricity rates are lower than they are during the day. The plants are in darkness for the other 12 hours. On a recent night, three 1,000-watt light bulbs illuminated 24 marijuana plants in various stages of growth.
Inside the grow room, silver reflective material lined the walls to capture light – Jude casually uses the term lumens, a measurement of light streaming out of high-pressure sodium bulbs. He said he consulted an electrician when he set up the lighting system, which has to be vented to keep it and the plants from getting too hot. Fans and air conditioning control the temperature, 72 to 78 degrees, and humidity, 35 percent to 45 percent, inside the room.
Jude's growing system is homemade. A Rubbermaid container acts as a reservoir, and a submerged pump circulates water constantly through the soil-free system of PVC pipes propped up about two feet off the ground by a base made of two-by-fours.
Inside the pipes, sprayers disperse the water and keep the environment humid. Jude has added microorganisms to the water to help replicate what would be found in soil. He feeds the microorganisms sugar or molasses.
He keeps meticulous notes on everything he does, like the pH level in the water and the growth rate of each plant.
Where does he get them? That's tricky since nothing in the state law addresses seeds or seedlings, which can't be legally acquired. Jude said he trades cuttings – a trimming from a mature female plant – with friends. It takes about six weeks for a cutting to take root and start to flower. It takes months more before the buds can be harvested, dried and then cured to avoid molding. Once a grower harvests a plant, the plant is done producing. Each can produce between 0.5 and 2.5 ounces of marijuana.
All the plants grown have to be females; male plants would pollinate the buds, rendering them unusable.
Jude said marijuana caregivers bristle at the drug language used in manufacturing what the state now considers medicine. That's one of the reasons they sell it by the gram, he said. For his patients, one gram costs $10. There are 28 grams in an ounce.
Jude dismisses hydroponics as a general term and said he's combined several techniques. He described his process with a rapid-fire combination of horticulture acronyms and street terms like "bubble-ponics," which means pushing air into the water to add oxygen to the environment.
Buckets and other household containers hold the more mature plants, while smaller plants thrive in their respective pods cut into the pipe system.
A strain called Northern Lights was growing for one of Jude's patient in Folgers can. He said he likes to give each of them a free ounce of marijuana each month, and he's not making much money on the endeavor.
Jude said he simply likes to garden, and not just marijuana – his mother was a florist and he helped out with her flower garden as a kid. He also often grows his own vegetables.
The caregiver's patient
Dale Franz, 73, is one of Jude's patients. The retired journalist said severe sciatic nerve pain keeps him up at night.
Marijuana he inhales via a vaporizer helps with the pain and helps him sleep. The Northern Lights plant Jude was growing is for him.
"The difference between using something like medical marijuana and pharmaceutical drugs, for me, is that pain management is a more complex thing than just suppressing pain," Franz said. "It involves what your feeling about it is, your perception of pain, and I think that the marijuana allows you to examine that subjectively, with your own reactions, much more easily than if you just cover it up with some kind of powerful drug. You can feel the pain, but adjust to it somehow, rather than just try to make it go away, so you're aware that you're still on the planet."
Franz said one of the reasons he uses medical marijuana is to avoid opiate-containing narcotics with ingredients derived from the same plant that produces heroin. He appreciates the relationship he has developed with Jude and his product.
"I'm familiar with his operation," Franz said. "I've seen how he grows his plants. He's very careful. He's reliable he's consistent and he's very supportive. It's also a part of the local economy, and it's a program that ought to be provided for people."
News Hawk- GuitarMan313 420 MAGAZINE
Source: annarbor.com
Author: Juliana Keeping
Contact: Contact Us - AnnArbor.com
Copyright: © 2009-2010 AnnArbor.com LLC and its licensors
Website: How does his marijuana garden grow? Carefully and quietly, Ann Arbor caregiver says - AnnArbor.com
