Feature
Selected bites of cannabis news sliced from the headlines, with a legislative flavor and sweet Ohio twist. Sources are linked.
Editor’s Note:New tables of pending cannabis legislation: federal, Ohio and Ohio decriminalization.
The Feds
This month the Ohio Senate’s Energy and Public Utilities Committee held the second hearing for a bipartisan billthat would repeal yet another unnecessary ratepayer-funded bailout implemented by the historically corrupt HB 6. SB 117 ends the costly bailouts going to two Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) coal plants – one called Kyger Creek, which is in Ohio and another called Clifty Creek, which is in Indiana. For anyone who needs a visual aid of how Ohio is different from Indiana, I recommend looking at a map and checking it out, especially if you’re a Republican state legislator.
As with many other aspects of government policy, overfishing and other fishing-related environmental issues are a real problem, but it’s not clear that government intervention is the solution. Indeed, it might be one of the main drivers of overfishing and other conservation and sustainability issues stemming from commercial fishing. Much like drone fishing, there are serious ethical issues of interest to the average angler.
There’s another commonality that overfishing has with environmental issues more broadly: The Western companies primarily concerned with serious efforts to curb overfishing are not the ones who are most guilty of overfishing. What this means is that the costs of overfishing are disproportionately borne by the countries least engaged in practices that are counter to efforts to make commercial fishing more sustainable while also promoting conservation of fish biodiversity.
Projects like Ohio State University’s natural gas plant, Columbia Gas’s Northern Loop natural gas pipeline and its Marysville Connecter natural gas pipeline are all due to be completed in the coming years. This comes at a time when climate scientists say aiming for net-zero emissions is essential for stopping the irreversible consequences of climate change.
Ohio continues to invest in renewable energy, but both the state and private sector are still largely pushing natural gas as essential for economic growth and championing it as “clean energy.” But, as a 2019 study found, natural gas is not a cheap or clean energy source.
Simply Living is excited to announce a partnership with solar developer Art Yoho on the People’s Solar Project, a demonstration community solar and microgrid that will generate 5 MW of solar energy to power 80 homes, five churches and two city schools in a 300-acre area on Cooke Road. Eventually the Cooke Road Solarhood will include a resilience hub with energy storage, an attractive solar park, and an Energy Academy.
Currently in Ohio, community solar is difficult to set up in territory served by an investor-owned utility such as AEP, because the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has not clarified regulations and Ohio has not passed enabling legislation. However, municipal utilities are not subject to the same limitations and can do community solar projects.
April 20, 2021
Happy 420! Lamenting last year’s largely cancelled “4:20 on 4/20/2020.“ Here are selected bites of fresh cannabis news sliced from the headlines, with a sweet Ohio twist. Sources are linked.
Your 420 History Lesson
To stand on the top of Observatory Mound at the Newark Octagon – to see the massive Native American earthwork stretch out in the distance – can be a mind-bending experience. It transforms one into the Great Shaman of the Hopewell, experiencing what their spiritual leaders saw and lived roughly 2,000 years ago.
The problem is, getting to the Observatory Mound requires trespassing on private property. (pictured above).
What’s worse, once at the Observatory Mound, it’s hard to ignore the par 4 on the right – one of many golf holes that cut through what is arguably the most significant pre-historical site in Ohio, perhaps more compelling and mysterious than Serpent Mound.
A few days per year the golf course, the private Moundbuilders Country Club, does allow visitors to walk the entire Octagon.
The Ohio History Connection (OHC) owns the Octagon’s property, but why the OHC in 1997 renewed Moundbuilders Country Club’s lease until the year 2078 perplexes anyone who loves the state’s ancient Native American earthworks. Some say that at the time, the OHC needed money or didn’t have the wherewithal to save the Octagon from developers.
“Waiting is full.” That’s what my husband Eric always says: waiting is full of whatever we put into it. It could be irritation, anxiety, excitement or boredom.
We are all in a waiting game here. Waiting to see what’s going to happen next. Hour by hour things change and evolve; that outcome uncertain.
Not only are we waiting, with all of its baggage, but we’re being told to do it inside, away from others. “Shelter In Place” is what it’s called, really hard is what it is. “Stay home, when you’re out, stay 6’ apart and wear a mask.” For many, your jobs are on hold and for most that is a scary prospect. So, there’s fear in the waiting.
But you know what? There’s so much love in there too. It’s everywhere from the balconies in Italy to our own neighborhoods. People are singing and howling to one another saying “I’m here, too. You’re not in this alone. We’ve got this!”
The story of how medical marijuana helped one man's virus symptoms and how Michigan is whupping Ohio
From December 2019 to mid-February of 2020, he was a long hauler. It’s just the flu, he told his concerned family. Anyway, he had to keep working at his warehouse job at Rickenbacker.
Luckily he had health care, this fan of the Free Press told us. But two rounds of antibiotics didn’t help. Five to ten days of illness, a few days of what seemed like a recovery, but over and over it crept back. The coughing, the body aches, the constant sweating, the stomach issues refused to cease.
He remembers how his doctor wasn’t sure if it was the flu or possibly that new virus emerging on the other side of the world. The doctor shook her head, asking again, “Have you left the country?”
“I can’t afford a trip overseas,” the former long-hauler told us.
Finally, our unnamed source was fully back to feeling normal. It was the end of February 2020, suffering through three months of a COVID-19 infection.
Those days were a blur, says the source. But he does remember this –there was only one medicine that helped the symptoms. A natural remedy. In some ways like a mask. So simple, so effective.