Marijuana activist dies following explosion

Don Appleby died of his injuries suffered in an Oct. 12 explosion while he was trying to make a concentrated oil using marijuana and butane.

Don Appleby's fight against the aids virus that was sapping him was made more difficult by a tragic paradox. While the Ottawa man was one of the few Canadians who could legally smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, he could rarely afford it due to his minuscule disability pension.

In the end, he was killed in the struggle to produce the drug that was helping him survive.

On Oct. 12, Mr. Appleby was in the bathroom of his Blake Boulevard apartment, trying a dangerous method to get some use out of the non-smokable parts of his marijuana plants.

By injecting butane into a plastic container with the plant in it, he hoped to make a concentrated oil he could use. Friends suspect he then tried to light a joint, igniting an explosion that blew the bathroom door off its hinges.

Residents of the apartment above his heard the explosion, and rushed him to the Ottawa Hospital's General campus. It's where he remained in intensive care since the incident, and where he died Thursday morning.

Ron Whelan was Mr. Appleby's close friend, and was living under the same circumstances. He said yesterday that Mr. Appleby never should have died the way he did.

Both 44, they received about $900 a month on disability, not nearly enough to pay for both marijuana and food. While the government would pay for the $1,500-$2,000 of aids medication Mr. Appleby needed, they wouldn't pick up the cost of the marijuana. Nausea was a side-effect of the pills, and without the drug, he couldn't keep them down.

Forced to buy marijuana himself and pay rent, his friends say Mr. Appleby was reduced to scrounging through dumpsters to find the food he could no longer afford. He would go searching behind restaurants late at night so nobody would see him. At the same time, he wasn't shy about asking people with marijuana gardens to help him.

"You do what you have to do to survive, whether it's beg, borrow or steal," Mr. Whelan said. If one had a bag of dry macaroni from the food bank, he would often go to the other's place to share.

Mr. Appleby decided to try and save some money by growing his own marijuana, and after two failed gardens, things were starting to work out for him. Still, the cost to grow was still high. With no other source of medicine, he resorted to the butane method. He never recovered from the burns that covered 75 per cent of his body and his scorched lungs.

Mr. Whelan said although Mr. Appleby experienced difficult times in the past, he really blossomed after meeting people similar to him. He loved participating in marijuana rallies, and helping others.

"The world needs more people like Donny," he said. "He was there for the underdog, and it's a terrible loss for everyone who knew him."

Mr. Whelan said he doesn't blame the government for what happened to his friend, but said it should take more responsibility and provide for people like him.

My personal consistent principle? I would say, "1) According to the manner in which the product is advertised for use, and/or 2) According to the manner in which the product is actually used. When applying the above, I take into consideration the scope (if any) of the legitimate use of the product. Remember the McDonalds plastic coffee stirrers that had a little spoon at the end? Turns out that the spoon was exactly .1 cc, the ideal heroin dose. That met my #1, but failed #2.

Okay. So for a dual-use product that is used by some for legitimate purposes, and by some for illegitimate purposes, what do you do? Do you ban it for everyone? Do you ban it for only the people who are using it illegitimately? If the latter, how do you enforce this?

"I know! What I'm asking you is why not."

You haven't yet told me why I need to consider banning it to begin with.

There may be some time in the future where maybe someone markets a "make you own hash oil kit" containing a copper pipe and a can of butane. OK, I'd ban that kit.

Or they re-label an 8 oz. can of butane "Tommy Chong's Hash Gas" and sold it with instructions on how to make hash oil. I'd ban that.

Or, in my other example, I'd advocate the addition of impurities to butane. But I can't envision a scenario where I'd advocate banning butane altogether.

So to answer your question, there are better ways to solve the problem, that's why.

"So for a dual-use product that is used by some for legitimate purposes, and by some for illegitimate purposes"

"Some" is what, a few? Less than "many", certainly not "most".

I'd say keep it legal.

But we usually have either most-legal, some- illegal (PVC pipe than can be used to make bongs) or some-legal, most-illegal (Tommy Chong's bongs).

Can you give me an example of a dual-use product that is some-legal, some-illegal?

Can you give me an example of a dual-use product that is some-legal, some-illegal?

It's a good question -- quantifying this is exactly the problem. The media hypes something, and all of a sudden the banning hysteria kicks in, with no rational investigation about whether the product is being used mostly for legal purposes. To come full-circle, hemp was mostly legit use before it was made illegal. Even though one can apparently extract hash oil from it, it was much more widely used in textiles. So by your criteria (mostly used for legitimate purposes), it shouldn't have been banned, correct?

"it was much more widely used in textiles. So by your criteria (mostly used for legitimate purposes), it shouldn't have been banned, correct?"

I'm not aware that it was banned. It just went away.

You can google up any 'History of Hemp' site and you'll see that hemp was a dead industry just after the turn of the 20th century. It rebounded during WWII when we couldn't get it from overseas, but then it quickly died again.

Quite frankly, there is no reason for it to be making a comeback, other than one.

But hemp is not banned for textiles or any other non-human-consumption uses. Growing hemp is legal; however, it requires state and DEA licensing.

I should have been more specific -- growing hemp is illegal in the US by federal law. The only exception is a DEA registration grant; the DEA has never granted one.

That hemp can be used in many, many different useful ways is well-documented. We've just seen that it's possible to extract THC oil from hemp through a process that involves butane.

You've stated that you don't believe dual use products such as butane should be banned, because more people use it legitimately than use it illegitimately. My question is why this doesn't also apply to growing industrial hemp, given that when it was legal to grow many, many people grew it for legitimate purposes?

"the DEA has never granted one"

I believe they recently granted one in Hawaii.

With the exception of WWII, hemp hasn't been grown (as a viable industry) in the US for the last 100 years.

Please ask yourself, "Why now?" "With all the other materials out there, including synthetics, why hemp?" "Even if it were legal to grow, why grow it rather than import the finished hemp product?"

With the fairly recent push for medical marijuana, marijuana decriminalization, and even marijuana legalization, it's highly suspicious to anyone with an IQ greater than room temperature that suddenly we're told that everyone wants hemp. I don't buy it.

Question: Why did hemp activist Woody Harrelson join the NORML Advisory Board?

We're discussing dual use technologies that by definition some people will want to use legitimately and some will want to use illigitimately. You've said that you don't believe that every product that is sometimes used illicitly should be banned. For every Woody Harrelson, I can show you an article about farmers who want to cultivate it as a legitimate crop for everyday products such as fabrics, paper, etc. These farmers have been asking the government all along to lift the ban on industrial hemp -- this is not a recent phenomenon.

So, my question remains: why do you believe that cultivating hemp should remain illegal, since it is a dual use product with many legitimate uses? This stance is inconsistent with your belief that other dual use products should be legal.

USDA Study Sees Little Market for Hemp
-- The Associated Press (via globalhemp.com)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Industrial hemp, the non hallucinogenic cousin of marijuana that can be used in both clothing and food, will never have anything but a “small, thin market” in the United States, a government study says.

All of the hemp fiber, yarn and fabric that the United States currently imports could be grown on less than 2,000 acres of land, says the study by the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service.

Nine states—Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Virginia—passed pro hemp bills last year that provide for research, study or potential production of the crop, and the first U.S. test plots were planted in Hawaii last month.

Some 35,000 acres were grown last year in Canada, which legalized hemp production in 1998.

The USDA study, which was released Friday, doesn’t see much demand for any of hemp’s uses:

As a fiber, it’s main competitor is linen, which is made from flax. There is little textile flax production in the United States, despite the lack of legal barriers, and that suggests there wouldn’t be enough demand for hemp fiber to make it profitable, the study said.

" This stance is inconsistent with your belief that other dual use products should be legal."

I don't see much of a use. I haven't seen much of a use for the last 100 years (with the exception of WWII). This is a non-issue. This is a non-product.

I see more potential for harm (the above story) than beneficial uses, quite frankly. At this stage, I'm content to leave the issue as is -- apply for DEA approval to grow it. Let's see what happens with that first.

The DEA has granted one permit, for one quarter-acre plot of industrial hemp in Hawaii, in the past thirty years. It just shut down because the DEA granted temporary 12-month permits that they were processing 11 months late - forcing the plant geneticist running it to operate in limbo and his funding to pull out. So, the DEA permit option really isn't actually an option.
http://starbulletin.com/2003/10/01/news/story6.html
http://www.industrialhemp.net/mydomain/hempreport/newsreleases/west093003.html

Meanwhile, hemp has become a big crop in Eastern Europe, and is gaining fast in the UK and Germany. It grows very quickly, yields much more paper per acre than trees, and takes excess nitrogen out of the soil. It's highly heat-resistant and can be made into biodegradable plastic and building supplies such as insulation. Its use is relatively small here because we have to import it, which adds too much to the cost. So, we're losing a growing world market to Europe, even though our US farmers are looking for a new viable crop.

When the UK allowed hemp cultivation, there were a few initial thefts of plants -- then the problem stopped as people realized they couldn't get high on it. There may be specialized things you can do with butane, but it doesn't seem to be a problem even in areas where hemp is legal.

http://www.gametec.com/hemp/hawaii.rpt.html

The facts show that the good uses far outweigh the bad; they also show that the DEA non-permit process is another example of the feds overruling activities that belong to the states per the Constitution. I continue to contend that it's inconsistent for you to support some legitimately dual use products but not others. Obviously we're not going to agree on this, though....

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