Looking to get rich quick by cashing in on the Medical Marijuana green rush? For $99 you can order a book called "How to Start a Medicinal Marijuana Dispensary" from the Internet, and then realize you might as well have thrown your money in the garbage. Many similar pitfalls await you on your road to success.

Would-be entrepreneurs who don't already have green thumbs and a lifetime of experience in the pot world and a network of trustworthy friends and family should take their time and not jump into things. Things that the Federal Government still says are illegal and as dangerous as heroin, according to the Federal Controlled Substances Act. And if you are ready to join the game, keep it in Seattle: the rest of the State of Washington is fairly hostile to Medical Marijuana right now.

Cannabis Scammers Great and Small
Let's face it: people who get things done -- who start their own businesses, for example -- are scammers. You have to work every angle to get things done in this world; those that play by the rules fail. Remember Allen Long, the guy who helped popularize Columbian "Santa Marta" Gold in the 1970s? He and his cronies flew a modified DC-3 onto a jungle landing strip, loaded up bales of high quality weed and hightailed it back to the States, and soon he was doing million-dollar drug deals with volatile Cubans in Miami. Sure, the laws have loosened up since then, but if you really want to make a living growing and or selling marijuana, you should have the adventurous spirit and intestinal fortitude of Allen Long. He had some moral standards too: he never succumbed to the temptation to smuggle cocaine, to the bewilderment of his Columbian associates, who had the stuff lying around by the barrelful. Of course, he became addicted to the stuff himself -- he was no saint. Spent some time on the run and in jail.

There are a lot of Allen Long-type characters in the Seattle Cannabis scene -- large personalities with no fear. The majority of the Seattle Medical Marijuana people I have met are good people -- not paranoid and fairly cool, though certainly sometimes eccentric. It takes a special person to realize that starting a business is the American dream, and also the only option right now. Once you start grossing thousands of dollars per day in the Medical Marijuana world, your days as a wage slave at WalMart will seem like a hallucinogenic, existential joke, and there will be no turning back.

You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay
Last year I was calling myself Ray but my real name is Alex. Been involved in the underground publishing world since photocopying my first comic book "zines" in the early 1980s. Was keeping it low-key when we put out our first issue of Mary Jane in May of last year, but now I'm using my real (first) name. Although aliases are common in the MMJ world, a general acceptance by my friends and family for what I was trying to do (create a for-profit anti-prohibition marijuana advocacy publication) convinced me to just bail on being "Ray."

Doing it right: Johnny Mahalo and partners spent six figures launching Canna-PI in Georgetown.

Wow, our fourth issue!
Mary Jane Washington is now an International magazine -- we are Earth's marijuana magazine, as our tagline reads. I think "Earth" should cover it -- there's no need for a magazine in orbit right now or on Mars. We'll try to get copies up to the international space station ... no, they can just read it online. Which is what you are probably doing right now, since only 7,500 folks get a copy of our print edition, and those people have to be lucky enough to be visiting Seattle.

Dream on, sweet purple hazy child o' mine
Mary Jane wants to help make Seattle "ground zero" for the anti-prohibition movement. We are not affiliated with any political group, grower, dispensary, or any other entity, although in a broad sense we support anyone who is fighting to end prohibition, legally or otherwise.

No such thing as easy money
There are some bad actors in the Washington State MMJ world -- Mary Jane has been very quiet about some of the incredible stories surrounding said bad actors -- who seem motivated by cash and not the genuine desire to help people. Mary Jane Washington seeks to promote the industry and see it thrive, but also be an interesting read -- so look for more real journalism within these pages as we evolve. I think the Seattle MMJ scene, bad actors and all, would provide great fodder for a reality TV show, or maybe a gonzo documentary feature film. Have at it, creative types!

Seattle's Crazy Cannabis Cultivation Culture
Attention newbies -- you think all the Seattle hippies are gone? Think again! Not all the marijuana people out there are young and unusually healthy-looking. Seattle has a strong history of sophisticated cannabis cultivation culture. The locals treat fine strains of pot the way some respect fine wines. According to one well-connected guru: "I have not seen a seed since 1975. Mexican pot lost its market in this state by 1980. Who would buy that shit?"
In the sixties, enterprising students and faculty at the University of Washington began developing new, incredibly strong strains of cannabis, and began giving them brand names, such as Northern Lights. This Seattle-style pot became legendary, with orders coming in from the East Coast and beyond. The UW students distributed their seeds and cuttings (now called "clones" by pot hipsters) freely, and a small culture of indoor growers sprang up and immediately began raking in the big bucks. Organized crime has a relatively small presence in Seattle compared to other cities, giving some amount of protection by absence to a wide variety of grow-op folks, some long term, some short. You work at Boeing and get laid off for a while, and grow some pot. Then Boeing calls you back in. It's the Seattle way. Or at least it was until the 1990s, when Medical Marijuana took off. Now Boeing's not hiring, and you just grow pot.

And they want to start taxing you for the privilege. And as to Boeing: according to Citizens for Tax Justice, " Over the three-year period from 2008 to 2010, the company didn't pay a dime of its profits in federal taxes, and actually received a rebate of $75 million. Its pretax U.S. profits over this period were $9.7 billion."

"We'll fly you like you've never been flown before"
Boeing is a maker of missiles and drones and passenger jets too. Yet another large-scale example of Seattleites being scamming hustlers with great brains and money-loving hearts who create great things. From the billionaires and their massive corporate entities all the way on down to the guy with a tiny garden that supplies his own meds and enough overflow to make a decent side income -- and who is technically breaking Federal law and therefore putting himself at great risk -- everybody's trying to take advantage of the system to make extra cash, and avoid taxes. That's the American way, really -- not just a Seattle phenomenon, but the feeling is strong here in Seattle -- a town of gold rushes, wartime booms, tech bubbles ... and now the green rush.

For those about to weed: we support you
Again, we here at Mary Jane want to promote the idea of legalizing marijuana for personal use and cultivation, and in general we support anyone working toward that goal -- dispensaries, doctors, grow shops, consumers, those working the gray areas and the fringes -- everybody.

The Drug War - still one of our dumber wars
Revolution in the Arab world. A new war in Libya. Nuke crisis in Japan. And my biggest worry here in Seattle -- trying to figure out how to get the "Rock Band" game icon removed from my cell phone.

Seriously, though, I think Cannabis legalization is a worthy issue -- with legalization comes jobs, tax revenue to pay for social services and infrastructure, and a downsizing of the prison industrial complex. And marijuana is non-toxic, and makes people feel good.

Wild World News predicted that!
In Mary Jane #3, which we began distributing on Christmas Day 2010, we added a new section called Wild World News. I think it's great that the tagline for that said "Progressive Tabloid for the Post-Journalistic Age." And then we literally see the re-birth of the Progressive movement in Wisconsin -- the Republicans went too far in their war against working people and the tide has turned! Of course, last time I heard -- Obama, a Democrat, still supported nuclear power and tax breaks for billionaires -- the dude is no socialist unless you consider the "socialism for the rich, capitalism for everybody else" reality.

Also, in the Wild World News article "Bigfoot shot by Three Year Old," we called the fictional shooter "Ashlin Paar," an anagram of "Sarah Palin." Only a week later on January 8, 2010, whack-job Jared Lee Loughner went on his shooting spree. Palin is the washed-up former Governor of Alaska and hate-speech pioneer who you might remember from her "crosshairs" and "blood libel" musings.

Mary Jane wants you inside of her
Good luck out there -- if you are starting your own business, then that is the embodiment of the American dream. We hope you become successful enough to have an advertising budget that will include not just the local booze magazines (The Stranger, the Weekly) but our marijuana rag too.

Veto!
At press time (April 29, 2011) Washington Governor Chris Gregoire vetoed HB 5073 [See our interview with Senator Jean Kohl-Welles on page 8.] after getting threatened by the Feds. The ACLU and the Seattle Times (!) advised the Governor to ignore the threats and assert States rights. Oh well.

This story originally published in Mary Jane Magazine #4 , Spring 2011.