Necessity is the mother of invention.
Cannabis consumers have always needed and pined for an effective tool that would tell us where the best cannabis can be found, what is the potency and price (and pricing trends).
Medical cannabis patients in the 14 states and the District of Columbia with cannabis patient protection laws can now visit a single webpage and receive real time pricing, popularity and potency on over 300 cannabis strains at Weed Strain Exchange (which is a component of the successful WeedMaps…See below).
In reviewing more and more commercial webpages that are catering to the ever-growing and lawful medical cannabis industry Weed Strain Exchange differs from the recently released PriceofWeed in that more information is available for consumers to employ, in real time, when making their medical cannabis purchases.
The information can be deployed on mobile devices providing the ultimate in cannabis consumer empowerment…making the days of purchasing cannabis from open air drug markets, the dude on the corner or calling a ‘friend’ seem increasingly antiquated.
Great business story, right?
Wait a minute…
With over 90 million Americans living in the states with medical cannabis laws a cool application like Weed Strain Exchange is getting short-sighted and imprudent blow back from one of the country’s biggest Telecom providers, T-Mobile, who has decided it is going to censor WeedMaps’ commerce and is blocking their short code from showing up on T-Mobile devices.
The matter of a major cell phone provider blocking lawful information about lawful commerce is now in the federal courts where a number of public interest groups (notably Public Knowledge) are supporting WeedMap’s efforts not to be discriminated against by T-Mobile by establishing federal laws that treat text messaging (and other short codes) with the same privacy protections as all of our phone conversations enjoy (which can’t be interfered with unless a judge signs a warrant).
WeedMaps and its related webpages are not only on the cutting edge of cannabis commerce in America, the company is standing up for the rights of all of us to communicate free of corporate or governmental interference and/or censorship.
Kudos to WeedMaps!
Lastly, despite the current legal wranglings with T-Mobile, WeedMaps was acquired today in a friendly merger by LLUC.PL, further demonstrating the era of M & A (mergers and acquisitions) in the nascent, but fast-growing cannabusiness industry in America.
Looks like cannabis-related businesses are going ever higher.
Suit against T-Mobile for text blocking heads to federal court this week
By Cecilia Kang, Washington Post
September 27, 2010
A federal court will hear arguments this week on EZ Texting’s suit against T-Mobile for for blocking cellphone text messages. The case has spurred debate over the government’s role as a regulator of text-messaging communications on cellphones.
On Thursday, the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York will conduct a hearing on allegations that T-Mobile stopped sending texts for EZ Texting’s customer WeedMaps.com, a medical marijuana distribution Web site, because of the content of the site. EZ Texting said that T-Mobile’s action stifled free speech and that rules to protect phone users from blocking should also be applied to texts.
T-Mobile disputes EZ Texting’s claims in comments to the court, saying the New York-based messaging firm didn’t comply by T-Mobile’s best practices guidelines. EZ Texting was originally assigned the short code 313131 for cellphone users to call and receive text messages for promotions from bars and night clubs. When EZ Texting decided to add marketing alerts for WeedMaps.com, it didn’t inform T-Mobile of the change. T-Mobile said it and the cellular industry require such notification from its short-code partners.
Last Friday, EZ Texting responded to the court that it believed that Weedmaps.com texts were blocked because of the site’s content. Of T-Mobile’s best practices guidelines, EZ Texting CEO Shane Neman said, “This is not common industry practice, and T-Mobile never enforced this purported requirement until it learned about the Web site at issue here.”
Neman said that 4INFO, the firm that gave EZ Texting its short code, learned that T-Mobile would be blocking EZ Texting because it was “considered inappropriate.” An EZ Texting manager was given a similar message in a conversation with a T-Mobile employee, Neman said.
The case highlights a murky regulatory environment for one of the fastest-growing mediums of communications. Consumers sent 152 billion text messages last year, compared with 9 billion in 2005. The FCC doesn’t regulate text messages, which is considered an information service like broadband Internet, in the same way that it does plain old phone service.
Public Knowledge, a media reform group, said the unfolding details support their push for the Federal Communications Commission to clearly assert its authority to regulate text messages as a common carriage service, like regular phones. The FCC prohibits calls from being blocked in a discriminating fashion, and the same rules should apply to texts, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.
“The additional details in this case again make it abundantly clear the Federal Communications Commission must act to protect the legal status of text messaging and short codes,” she said.
**UPDATE as of 7AM, Saturday, October 2, 2010:
According to Wired, the parties settled out of court.
Soon, I hope, we will be able to buy cannabis as easily as we can now buy alcohol or tobacco products. I have always been uncomfortable with the process of buying marijuana. I refuse to deal with some stranger on a corner, and I don’t like imposing on friends but have been blessed with some who are able to get it and don’t mind getting some for me too. That happy circumstance comes and goes, however.
The best circumstance for me has been those years when growing my own in the back yard has yielded a decent amount of quality herb…and it cost virtually nothing. But that also has been iffy from year to year because of the caution one must observe and the vagaries of gardening. Some years the plants weren’t so good for various reasons, and some years I’ve had to rip them up early because of increased possibility of detection…and once or twice someone hopped the fence in the middle of the night and took them.
So I welcome this recent shift in our culture that is finally letting go of the irrational fear of cannabis. It can’t happen too soon for me, but it will still take a bit of time before the new, cannabis prohibition-free world is in place.
the fastest way to get change is through the wallet.call.complain.and follow up by switching to another provider if they don’t listen.when they start loosing $$$ they will listen.
“T-Mobile EZ Texting was originally assigned the short code 313131 for cellphone users to call and receive text messages for promotions from bars and night clubs.” This is the best example why we need this fight and vote. Here again is just another company that want us to sit at the back of the bus. I like you am tired of this unjust hate crime behaviors from our Government and from Corp. America selling drugs. Hay!!!,T-Mobile that is why we switched carries when we heard about your practices of injustice. We the People of America have said this very clear, WE ARE NOT SITTING TO THE BACK OF THE BUS! We done with your acts of injustice.
Hear me folks of CA. your state is the tip of this great spear and please be ready to be thrusted deep into the belly of this evil beast once and for all. On Nov. 2nd we will put down this unruling beast and regain our FREEDOM & LIBERTY and with God’s help we will take back our country.
United we stand, if they break us, they will come upon each of us in the dark of night to do us great harm to protect their greed and profits of the prison states.
Hey Brandon, I know exactly what you mean. My girlfriend and I joke a lot when we see a beer commercial on TV or something. One night we were at the store and this elderly couple who was also shopping was picking up there 24pac of Budweiser for the weekend. We laughed and joked about someday picking up milk and bread and swing through to grab a moderate ounce of Alabama Kush, Or at a Farmers Market picking up some Purple Haze with a bundle of sweet corn and natural honey =) !!
I just hope when the stuff gets re-legalized, ya’ll(California) don’t let the big Corp.s take control of thangs…..especially when “they”(big Corp.s) never opposed drug-testing BS laws…nor have they risked being arrested for the cause. Remember, if big Corp.s get a hold of the industry–they will just ship those jobs overseas too…..just call it a HUNCH.
I’d like to suggest that price and THC content is not the only criteria. I hope that WeedMaps is consumer-driven and objective in its ratings system. There should be a comments section where consumers can give reviews, like on Amazon. Also, for cannabis dispensaries that oppose legalization, as in California, to protect their monopoly, there should be a way to identify them so that consumers can avoid them!
Who knew?
Well, it’s nearly 4 o’clock,
and you need to score,
you’re a stranger in a strange land,
and you can’t find your favorite brand.
Hey, there’s an App for that!
Thanks, Weed Maps dot COM.
Seriously I wish the head of T-Mobiles decicions wouldn’t have such an automated response to something that he/she has no personal information down. IMO T-Mobile could do big things if they embrace the pot culture of america!
Who knew?
It’s nearly 4 o’clock,
and you need to score,
a stranger in a strange land,
and you can’t find your brand.
Hey, there’s an App for that!
Thanks, WeedMaps dot COM!
I really have to blame the Obama administration for some of this nonsense. He has instituted the double standard in the name of states rights that support a liberal agenda. Our president needs to poop or get off the pot (no pun intended). Unless he’s hoping to legalize weed without having to vote on it or something.
Wait a minute !
If they are going to ban ” WeedMaps ” than i have a suggestion that makes even more sense . Ban all stores from any form of advertising that sells or promotes the sale of alcohol , tobacco & pharmaceuticals .
Examples : Grocery stores ,Pharmacies , Restaurants , liquor stores and anyone that sells / pushes alcoholic beverages , drugs & cigarettes . After all there are
more murders ,DUI’S ,family & spousal abuse ,assaults , robberies and misc. crime in a single 48 hour period in just Los Angeles County alone by the sales of alcohol , legal drugs & tobacco than what would probally occur in 5 years in the entire State of Cali. from sells of Marijuana at these dispensaries .
Just after i moved out of Eureka in , Humboldt County there were two armed robberies at Pharmacies over Oxycotin ( See ; The Times standard ) yet these same Pharmacies sell a ” Marijuana drug testing Kit ” . Great deception , huh ?
Meanwhile , i hope you’ll check out ” Issues ” by , Escape the fate ” It just came out . Enjoy !
http://www.vevo.com/watch/escape-the-fate/issues/USUV71001842
and me along with N.O.R.M.L. who are bringing you the truth ; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2881477/
T – Mobile……….there’s another firm that
deems – boycotting .
If your with T – mobile could you please DUMP THEM ?
I think the first thing any marijuana consumer in a non-medical marijuana state is going to do when they visit this website is notice that cannabis being produced and acquired legally in California, Colorado, and other places costs $22.50 for an eighth of shake.
You can click on any of the headings to sort the table by that heading – that’s how I found the $180/oz shake price was the lowest price on the board. The next best shake ounce was $29 an eighth. Third best is “Early Girl” at the $39.38 ($315/oz) – that is, the cheapest non-shake you can find on the board.
The board displays fifty strains per page by default. On the page with the shake (the cheap page) numbers 4 through 50 range from $39.80 to $47.00 an eighth.
Meanwhile, on the top end is “Jupiter OG” at $62.80 an eighth. The #10 strain goes for $59.00 and the #100 strain goes for $52.72. That’s a range of $421.76 – $502.40 per ounce for the top 100 strains offered at dispensaries.
To be fair, dispensaries pay taxes, rent, utilities, payroll, insurance, advertising, and a host of things a dealer doesn’t pay. But the dispensary has to pay the grower and it has to be a reasonably better deal than selling that pound to the market supplying the places that don’t have dispensaries.
Only legalization will ever bring prices of cannabis down to something reasonable, like saffron, the world’s most expensive legal agricultural product. I can get an ounce of it freeze-dried and next-day-aired here for $101.45 an ounce.
Brilliant! Who needs to look in an alternative paper any more for one’s meds when I can us this webpage?!
They animated my arms in this video in almost every scene except when i was walking alone but even then they flattened my nose & what looks like even my face ( through animation ) to make sure i was not the star of the shoot and Escape the Fate was .
At first i wasn’t going to take this gig but by the end of the day I was glad to have worked with this talented group of musicians to create this fantastic one of a kind music video .
Hope you enjoyed it .
these prices are way 2 high!
VOTE! I could not say more to anyone living in CA. Vote! I can tell you folks in CA that what your doing is for us all. Your action have been heard and talked about throughout this fine Nation. The voters in SD, MO, and Kansas are watching and praying for your State’s citizens victory over a wayward government.
Again from the bottom of my heart I thank all of CA for standing up and getting that vote out.
I can tell you that state legislators are running for cover. No one in government will want to stand for those unjust laws once CA has put this government on NOTICE. We the people stand united against our wayward unjust greedy government employees. There is nothing wrong with our Constitution or Common Laws of the Land, the problem has always been our employees, they are wayward and greedy and care not for their employers, US! Let them have it on Nov. 2nd, let that day become a holiday, a day we started to regain our stolen liberties.
I like to think that voter in this Nation has had enough. Time to open up our voting power and given them a little hell and send them a running all the way down to Mexico.
Right now strong apponets of prop 19 are patitioning Eric Holder and President Obama to take proposition 19 off the california ballet. And if it does pass they are demanding that Holder And Obama Immediatly overturn it.
What are the chances of that happening???
Its not just you guys in US that are taking heightened interest. Over in the UK the debate is starting to hot up thanks to your push for prop19.
In the UK someone has just found a way to import (from Holland) legal raw cannabis for medicinal use backed up by a UK Home office personal licence. Our gov dont know what to make of it and are so far refusing to clarify the position.
Many thanks go to all the activists out there in the US.., your making a marked difference in the UK.. keep it up people.
What are the chances of that happening???
Times are chainqing
Change is in The Air
Take a deep breath
Consider “your” place
Proposition 19 is a beginning
When you have a place where you lay your head down
Dream of The Future
Just a question: for those medical users who can’t afford $465 per ounce, will there any aid available to supply them? My disability income will be about $1800 a month. I tried this herb for a few days and it really helps with my problems, better than some of the legal drugs I take but my perscription co-pays are under $100 a month now. How can I afford this herb if I need 1 or 2 ounces a month? Will the insurance companies cover it? Growing and curing it would be doable when I was younger and healthy but now standing and walking is painful. Suggestions?
Thank you bob from the UK to remind us, me that this is bigger than anyone person, bigger than anyone state and bigger than anyone country. This goes across cultures, nations, and land markers. The people of this planet want what is in the properties of cannabis as they have for the last 12,000 years minus the last 70.
I know CA is going to make a landslide vote in Nov, it is going to be just shocking. CA we the world wait for you, count on you to vote and make it a strong clear vote that no person, no state, no country will be able to ignor.
My prayers and thoughts are with the people of CA and that they have the courage to stand and stand strong united in undoing the great harmful injustice that has darken our world so far. CA brings light upon liberty and freedom, for that I am most thankful.
I definetly think that it should be legalized.It is way past happening.It reminds me of proabition in the late twenties.Good luck California.Do the right thing and pass legalization for recreational use..Thanks
I hope California will do the right thing in november and approve recreational use.
I live in a state that prohibits marijuana so I have to grow it myself. I grow no more than 4 plants to create a steady supply that is concealable enough to not get caught. For those of you lucky enough to leave in the right state, there are medical marijuana dispensaries where you can get cannabis… http://www.marijuanadoctors411.com/weedpedia-home/where-to-get-marijuana