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Cannabis Yields

and Dosage

A Guide to the Production and Use of Medical Marijuana

— Chris Conrad —

Safe Access Now • Court-qualified cannabis expert

Cannabis Yields and Dosage

Contents

Introduction

Page i

Part I: The science

Federal Medical Marijuana

Page 1

History and usage

Effect on the body

Systemic effect, symptomatic relief

Daily therapeutic dosages

Usable medical marijuana and conversions

Federal cannabis yield study

Garden adversity and how it affects yields

Indoor and outdoor gardens

Measuring canopy to estimate yield potential

Part II: State of the law

Federal laws and rulings

California voter initiative Prop 215 and rulings

Senate Bill 420 basics of California statutory law

Patients, caregivers, cities and counties

Coops and collectives

Legal proceedings and challenges

Part III: The Safe Harbor

Safe Access Now sample guidelines ordinance

Part IV: Appendices

Medical marijuana laws outside of California

California statutory laws

Resources and reference material

About the author

More quotes

Back cover

Cannabis Yields and Dosage

A Guide to the Production and Use of Medical Marijuana

Chris Conrad

Court-qualified cannabis expert

Director, Safe Access Now

C REATIVE X PRESSIONS

PO Box 1716, El Cerrito CA 94530 • www.safeaccessnow.net

Introduction

A common understanding of cannabis could prevent

needless arrests and prosecutions, free up law

enforcement to focus on serious crime, and save

California’s communities millions of dollars. This book-

let explains the basics of medical marijuana. Part I

gives scientific facts about its uses, dosage and yields.

Part II explains the legal setting. Part III offers a model

Safe Access Now ordinance for guidelines, and Part IV

gives details of several States’ laws. It also includes

references and websites for the reader’s use.

The United States government has garnered some

very useful research during its decades of experience

in producing and providing medical marijuana. Its com-

passionate IND program has demonstrated that about

six pounds of cannabis per year is a safe and effective

dosage to alleviate chronic health problems, and also

how to estimate garden yields. Ironically, federal law

denies medical marijuana as a defense in court.

State law is a separate jurisdiction, however, and a lab-

oratory for medical and legal reforms. Since California

voters passed Proposition 215, the 1996 law giving

qualified people a legal right to cultivate and possess

cannabis for medicine, courts have grappled with an

issue left unresolved by the ballot mandate: How much

medical marijuana is a reasonable supply?

In 2003, Senate Bill 420 sought to reduce arrests and

provide better access by creating a voluntary ID card

program, adding new legal protections for collective

activities and distribution, and carving out a minimal

safe harbor from arrest for qualified people. The

amount protected is inadequate for many — eight

ounces of dried mature processed flowers of

female cannabis plant or the plant conversion plus

six mature or 12 immature plants per patient .

However, it also empowers doctors, cities, counties

and the courts to protect greater amounts. Case law

reiterates that those amounts are “a threshold, not a

ceiling” and preserves the Prop 215 right to a reason-

able supply of cannabis.

It is safest for patients and caregivers to stay within

those quantities. Unfortunately, this is not always pos-

sible or practical. California patients with chronic ill

health and safe access to high quality cannabis strains

often smoke three pounds or more of “sinsemilla bud”

per patient year, amid a broad range of dosages.

Patients who eat cannabis or ingest it in other forms

require several times as much raw material as the

smoked dosage. Outdoor and indoor growers cultivate

with very different garden techniques ranging from a

few large plants to scores of much smaller plants.

Data in the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s

Cannabis Yields provides a scientific method that lets

patients grow indoors or out in any format they wish,

yet makes it easy to gauge the output. Safe Access

Now proposes a compromise based on half the IND

dosage plus a proportionate canopy area. That

equates to a safe harbor per qualified patient of up to

three pounds of bud and as many plants as fit within

100 square feet of garden canopy. Be they large or

small, if the plants cumulative canopy covers less than

that area, the garden is a reasonable size.

This system is simple, yet it works. It eliminates the

need to train police to assess complicated medical

needs, calculate yields, distinguish male plants from

female or immature from mature flowering, determine

what part of a crop is usable, or understand consump-

tion, processing or storage. Counting plants is never

required. To check compliance, all an officer needs is a

scale and tape measure.

This booklet shows how and why those safe harbor

guidelines can and should be expanded by localities,

doctors, and by the legislature. You can help advance

this process. Whether a patient, physician, policy

maker, prosecutor, police officer, or concerned citizen,

please take a stand for the principles of reason, com-

passion and the rule of law.

Special thanks to doctors Michael Alcalay MD, David

Bearman MD, Philip Denney MD, Jeffrey Hergenrather

MD, Claudia Jensen MD, Frank Lucido MD, Tod

Mikuriya MD, Ethan Russo MD, and other physicians

for review of medical issues; to Eric Sterling and attor-

neys Joe Elford, Omar Figueroa, William Logan, David

Nick, Robert Raich and others for review of legal

issues; and to Dr. Michael Baldwin, Andrew Glazier,

Richard Muller, my wife Mikki Norris, SAN co-founder

Ralph Sherrow, DrugSense, MPP, NORML and others

for their help in researching, preparing and publishing

this document. For more information on what you can

do to help, visit these websites: safeaccessnow.net

and chrisconrad.com. Thank you.

Chris Conrad, Court-qualified cannabis expert

NOTICE : This booklet is not a substitute for medical care or

legal counsel. It cannot list every law or court decision, but care

has been taken to select and characterize key cases. This

information is current as of August, 2007. Laws and rulings

cited are subject to change or reinterpretation at any time.

Page i • Cannabis Yields and Dosage

Part I: The science

Federal medical marijuana

Cannabis: Legally grown and

provided in daily smoked dosages

Marijuana ( Cannabis sativa ) is a treatment for pain and

other symptoms of many diseases; its medical use

goes back some 5,000 years. Sometimes cannabis can

halt the development of a condition. It is medicine with

a safe and effective dosage demonstrated by United

States government research. The National Institute on

Drug Abuse provides by prescription a standard dose of

smoked cannabis to patients in the Compassionate

Investigational New Drug (IND) program. This is about

two ounces per week — a half-pound per month —

mailed in canisters of 300 pre-rolled cigarettes con-

sumed at a rate of 10 or more per day.

“Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of

the safest therapeutically active substances

known to man.”

— DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young

Docket No. 86-22. 1988.

This six-inch diameter canister held 254.89 grams, about nine

ounces, of federal medical marijuana for an IND patient. This

is a typical monthly supply mailed from the federal cannabis

research garden in Oxford, Mississippi.

the annual dose comes to between 5.6 and 7.23

pounds of cannabis. The documented federal single

patient dosage averages 8.24 grams per day — that’s

more than 1/4 ounce per day, two ounces per week or

6.63 pounds smoked per year.

This long-term dosage has proven to be safe and effec-

tive, with no unacceptable side effects. As seen below

in Table 1, from the Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics ,

Table 1: Chronic cannabis IND* patient demographics

* The Investigational New Drug (IND) program is overseen by National Institute on Drug Abuse: NIDA

Patient

Age /

Qualifying

INDApproval /

Daily Cannabis /

Current Status

Gender Condition

Cannabis Usage

THCContent

Glaucoma

I988

8 grams (0.28 oz)

Disabled operator / singer /

25 years

3.80%

activist / vision stable

Nail-Patella

1989

7 grams (0.25 oz)

Disabled laborer /

Syndrome

27 years

3.75%

factotum / ambulatory

Multiple

1982

9 grams (0.32 oz)

Full time stockbroker /

Congenital

26 years

2.75%

disabled sailor / ambulatory

Cartilaginous Exostoses

Multiple

1991

9 grams (0.32 oz)

Disabled clothier / visual

Sclerosis

11 years

3.5%

impairment / ambulatory aids

Source: Russo, Mathre, Byrne, Velin, Bach, Sanchez-Ramos and Kirlin. Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics , Vol. 2(1) 2002. p. 9

Cannabis Yields and Dosage • Page 1

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