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Cannabist: Cannabis philanthropy helps heal Drug War wounds

As marijuana businesses continue to assimilate into America’s traditional corporate world, philanthropy and responsibility have become key initiatives for some ganjapreneurs

While most Americans in the 1980s learned about AIDS on television news years after it erupted into a legitimate epidemic, Matthew Huron saw the virus on the faces of his friends and family while growing up in San Francisco’s vibrant Castro neighborhood.

“A lot of those men there were very sick and dying, and that included my father and his partner and all of their friends,” Huron said. “Every week my dad was going to another funeral, and it was just a really challenging time.”

It wasn’t long before Huron was that socially conscious teenager volunteering at an AIDS hospice in the heart of the Castro. Philanthropy was important to his father, and so it was also important to son. And as Huron grew up and started noticing how cannabis was helping his friends and family living with the disease — restoring appetites, diminishing pain, remedying nausea and generally treating the patients’ wasting syndrome — he opened a medical marijuana co-op in 2000.

“The fundamental reason we started that co-op was to give, not sell, medical marijuana to sick men dying from AIDS,” said Huron. “That’s what we did. We delivered to a variety of hospice care and assisted living facilities around San Francisco.”

Huron’s involvement in cannabis these days is more official. But the CEO of Good Chemistry Nurseries’ cannabis businesses in Colorado and Nevada is still donating medical marijuana (and leafy-green cash, as well) to those in need.


The Ally Award video tribute to Matthew Huron


He donates to One Colorado to support their political work on behalf of the LGBTQ community; In 2016, the organization bestowed upon Huron an Ally Award. He assembles a team for, and sponsors, the AIDS Walk every year. He also donates to the Denver Police Brotherhood, the Comitis Crisis Center of Aurora and the Harm Reduction Action Center.

To boot, Good Chemistry’s Compassion Program is a direct descendant of the co-op he started more than 16 years ago.

“We’re one of the only dispensaries in Denver that has an organized and internal compassion program, which gives free and low-cost medicine to low-income and terminally ill patients,” Huron said. “My father passed away in July of ’09 (to complications from AIDS), and I moved the business here in December ’09 … It was important to me and to his legacy, and it was why I got into this industry in the first place — to continue the Compassion Program.”


Read the full article here.

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The Cannabist review Sour Diesel from Good Chemistry


Recommending Sour Diesel as a weed critic is like a music writer extolling the virtues of The Beatles or a historian making a case for George Washington as a great president. In fact, Sour Diesel probably belongs on a Mount Rushmore of marijuana — a fake monument that I desperately want my picture taken in front of. You’d be hard-pressed to walk into a Colorado dispensary and leave without seeing some form of Diesel on the shelf, so I’d be remiss if you didn’t know how to spot it.

Sour Diesel by the numbers: $30 per 1/8 at Good Chemistry, Denver & Aurora.

I usually refer to Sour Diesel as the Campbell’s Soup of pot because it’s one of the chunkier strains out there. The calyxes are typically much rounder, giving it the appearance of more body. If most strains are a soft-serve cone, Sour D is Dippin’ Dots. Almost always pale to lime green with dark sugar leaf in contrast, you’ll notice the pistils range from faded peach to a fiery orange.

Some people legitimately enjoy the smell of gasoline. I’m not here to judge. What I had a hard time understanding was where the “sour” part came in. I immediately thought Warheads candy for many years, but couldn’t place that in the herb. No, sour here is a noticeable funk that has little sweetness to it. Think lightly expired dairy and not a full-on fridge science experiment.

My fiancee (yes, I’m recently engaged!) and I have a pact when it comes to cleaning. She’s great at the day-to-day, make-sure-this-place-doesn’t-fall-apart maintenance. Every few months, I do an OCD-level sweep of the premises loaded up on coffee and sativa and the futuristic sounds of Glitch Mob radio on Pandora.

As it turns out, Sour Diesel and I make a great maid service.

Gearing up for her surprise birthday party (don’t worry: she doesn’t read my column) I smoked a quarter-gram and began ripping couches away from walls to find whatever Sheltie hair and menacing spiders had been calling the space home. Our guests can’t know these things exist. Compared to a haze strain, the energy was much more focused as I methodically worked through the living room with the precision of Jack Bauer clearing a building of potential threats. I went full “24″ on it.

Usually anything I do that emulates Kiefer Sutherland takes a toll on my back. This was no exception. Only, I didn’t seem to notice until I was two hours in that a dull ache had crept up. Sour D isn’t the best at knocking out heavy pain, but this was a good example of a time when simply being distracted was enough to win the day.

Sour Diesel is the ultimate in what I call a nice “vacation sativa.” It’s not as mentally engaging (or paranoia inducing) as a strong haze, but isn’t as heavy as a Trainwreck or Jack strain. You can smoke a bit and still have a head on your shoulders for exploring the city. Plus, chances are you’ve smoked it before.

via Sour Diesel (marijuana review).

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