The Story Behind EZZUBThe EZZUB Story - Abbreviated Version In a Far Away Land - Know as California: The Founder is raised by two loving parents: a father who was a Korean War Veteran, Football Coach, Teacher, High School Principal and Eagle Scout; and, a mother who was an entrepreneur. Marijuana was completely "Taboo"! So, the Founder knows nothing of it until he reaches High School 1974 Founder graduates from Oroville High School. There, he was taught, preached to, told, lectured, etc. etc., that marijuana was a very dangerous "DRUG", and that all sorts of terrible things would happen to him if he smoked it. However, in reality . . . every athlete, honor student, and "want to be" hippy at the High School was smoking pot like it was going out of style. Many of the school's top Football and Basketball stars would smoke pot before a game. What was being said and what was being done did not add up. Still . . . after the Founder tried it, and he did inhaled, he did not think much about the experience (probably because he smoked Mexican brick weed). So, he stayed away from the awful substance, and actually helped propagate the status quo, by speaking out against the use of MARIJUANA. 1978 Founder graduates from UCSB, in California, with a degree in Aquatic Biology. Still no marijuana use. 1982 Founder graduates from Chico State, in California, with a degree in Civil Engineering. Still no marijuana use. 1983 Founder graduates from the United States Army Officers Candidate School (OCS) and is promoted from E-5 to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. Definitely no marijuana use. 1995 Founder leaves military service (6 years active, and 5 years active reserves) and starts engineering business. Has no interaction with marijuana, what so ever. 1996 The State of California passes proposition 215, known as the Compassionate Use Act. This allows the use of Marijuana by a recommendation from a doctor. Founder does not take notice of this new law. And, in fact, he does not even know that such a law exists. He still stanchly believes what he has been told, all of his life . . . that Marijuana is bad, evil, causes health problems, and leads to the use of hard drugs, etc. etc., and so on it goes. Ignorance is bliss! 2003 The State of California passes Senate Bill 420. Again, the Founder knows nothing about the use of marijuana for medical purposes. He continues to live in ignorance. The teachers, preachers, coaches, law enforcement officers, military leaders, and elected government officials that have presided over the Founder's life have done their jobs extremely well. The propaganda machine is extremely effective in spreading what it spreads best . . . PROPAGANDA! 2008 An Architect, who is renting office space from the Founder, asks the Founder to look at a grading violation job in Monterey County. Apparently, the Architect's clients have gotten themselves into hot water with the County, by grading on the land THEY OWN. They needed a civil engineer to prepare some plans and specifications and submit them to county officials to get them out of trouble. The Founder meets with the Architect, and the clients, on the property and discovers that the grading violation was issued due to some very minor grading done to set up temporary green houses. In short order, the Founder is told that the green houses are being used to grow MEDICAL MARIJUANA! At first, the Founder is completely flabbergasted, and tells the Architect and his clients that he wants nothing to do with anything involving growing marijuana. He tells them that, "only drug cartels grow marijuana". The Architect, and his clients, explain to the Founder the complete story about the "reality" of marijuana. They tell him, "marijuana is really called cannabis", and that it is, "completely legal, within California Law", to grow it for the use by medical patients. The Founder has a real hard time adjusting to this seemingly "new information". What they are telling him is completely foreign, and against everything he has ever been taught to believe about marijuana. Someone is lying, he thinks. He agrees to take the grading violation job, and begins to do his own research about the legal, and non legal, use of marijuana, which he now calls cannabis. The grading violation turned out to be a complete "misuse of power" by County of Monterey planning officials. The land in question was zoned for agricultural use, which permitted grading and erection of green houses for growing cannabis, and any other crop for that matter. Evidently, someone at the County of Monterey had a "hard on" about the fact that cannabis was legal for medical use in California. These officials were completely willing to "break the law" to enforce their own agendas. And, in their world cannabis was a worthless, evil, dangerous "DRUG"! They just weren't having cannabis being used in their county, no matter what the law said. They stanchly believed that both god and country was on their side, and that the use of cannabis for medical use was "just a fad" that would blow over. "BOY . . . YOU AIN'T GROWING THAT WEED IN OUR COUNTY"! "WE IS THE LAW, AND BY GOD, THE LAW IS THE LAW". Through this process, the Founder became an expert in the world of medical cannabis. 2010 The Founder founded the Central California Cannabis Collective, in accordance with proposition 215 and Senate Bill 420. The collective began growing cannabis on his ranch in Carmel Valley. The collective began to grow very rapidly, and the collective began to supply many patients, other collectives, and dispensaries in California. Things were as "right as rain". 2012 In early July, the Founder gets a letter from Phil Hickenbottom, a County of Monterey code enforcement officer, stating that the Carmel Valley ranch has code violations. In the letter, Hickenbottom requests a site visit to the ranch to check out the situation. The Founder, having gone through this same situation with the Architect and his clients, and knowing there were no "code violations" on the ranch, and knowing the collective was growing cannabis in compliance with State of California Law, welcomes Hickenbottom and agrees to the site visit. Phil, and his female partner, come to the ranch. They cover every square inch of the ranch; look at all the legal paperwork regarding the collective; inspect the collective cannabis growing operations; and, personally meet, and interview, all 15 collective members, who are living and working on the ranch. Then, they tell the Founder there are no "code violations" on the ranch, and everything appears to be in order regarding the collective and it's cannabis growing operations. On November 5th, the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, consisting of 12 narcotics officers, 50 gang task force officers, 2 Blackhawk helicopters, and numerous support vehicles, raid the ranch. All are heavily armed with assault rifles, body armor, Kevlar helmets, and side arms. All collective personnel are slammed to the ground, weapons pointed at their heads, and told to not move. Next, they are put into Sheriff's vehicles, windows rolled up, for five hours, in the blazing summer heat. The raiding officers proceed to rip the ranch apart. All cannabis, currently being processed, is seized. 40 to 50 plants, yet to be harvested, are ripped out of the ground, roots and all, and stuffed into a Sheriff's trailer. In the end, certain members of the collective, including the Founder, were cited for "cultivation". According to the Sheriff's Office incident report, over 500 pounds of marijuana was seized into evidence. The raid was not reported in any local newspapers, even though it was one of the largest seizures of marijuana in Monterey County history. The Founder thought this was strange! 2014 All "cultivation" charges are dropped, and a Monterey County Superior Court judge orders the return of all seized property, including the 500 pounds of cannabis, to the Central California Cannabis Collective. The Founder, and his attorney, along with several collective members, go to the Monterey County Sheriff's office to retrieve their detained property. Once again, the court case was not reported in any local newspapers. And, the Founder thought this was strange! At the 2012 bust, raiding officers had seized one of the Founders storage trailers, and used it to transport the seized evidence (cannabis). Since then, this trailer had been used by the Sheriff to store the recorded 500 pounds of dried cannabis, carefully sealed in plastic packages by the collective, from the 2012 harvest. Upon entering this trailer, parked in the Sheriff's vehicle impound yard, the Founder, his attorney, and two female evidence officers discovered that all the cannabis had been removed from their original sealed packages and dumped into 6 large (24" x 24" x 48") card board boxes. All the evidence tags, so carefully written out at the time of the bust, were thrown on the floor of the trailer in a heap, along with the empty plastic bags. The trailer looked like a tornado had passed through it. The two evidence officers looked shocked! They looked at the Founder, and his lawyer, in disbelief. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Suddenly, one of the evidence officers looked at the Founder and said, "this is highly irregular; these evidence bags should not have been tampered with; we are suppose to go through each bag and account for them on our evidence log, and then you are suppose to sign for each of them as they are returned to you." She then said, "what would you like to do; do you want to file a report?" The Founder asked the officer what filing a report would entail. The officer told him that if a report was filed then the evidence would have to be kept, re-accounted for, re-tagged, and re-processed as a separate case, and that this process could take years to complete. In short, the Monterey County Sheriff's office was kind of committing the crime of blackmail. They knew they were walking on the safe side of the line, because whatever happened they were not the person making the final decision. That decision would fall on the Founder. Essentially, they were attempting to deny the Founder, and the collective, of their rightful property by instituting a potentially new legal technical problem. If a tampering with evidence report was filed, by the time the new legal process had run its' course, there would be nothing left to fight over. The value of the cannabis would, from a practical standpoint, be a total loss. By the Founder choosing this option, the County of Monterey, and its' "no marijuana in our county" policy would have won over state law, and the will of the majority of California citizens, and further deprived the members of the collective from the medicine they so desperately needed. The Founder, after consulting with his attorney, decided to sign for the returned evidence as it was, unaccounted for, untagged, and unsealed. The Founder put his initial, in the evidence log, next to each entry, just as if he had been given the returned evidence in a sealed bag, nice and tidy. The two evidence officers did not blink an eye. Upon examination, and weighing of the returned cannabis, the Founder knew exactly what had happened. The total weight came in at just under 200 pounds. That meant, according to the Sheriff's own evidence log, over 300 pounds of cannabis was missing. Further, by the way the returned cannabis had been packed into the 6 boxes, the plot seemed to thicken. All boxes had been packed as follows: an 8 inch layer of crushed cannabis duff on both the top and bottom of the box, and pure cannabis bud in between. So, if someone was to look in the box it would look like a box of worthless duff. This way, if the evidence would have been ordered by the court to be destroyed, the person doing the deed of destruction would be able to sift out the good bud and only destroy the duff packed on the top and bottom of the box. This would give the thieves in the Sheriff's office the opportunity to greatly profit by selling the cannabis (a process the Sheriff's Officers call co-opting) to dispensaries, or other such connections. The Founder was told about this process on the day of the 2012 bust by a gloating county narcotics officer. The officer told the Founder, with a "shit eating grin" on his face, "we're going to take all your hard work and turn it into cash for our Widows and Orphans Fund. " At the time, the Founder could not believe such a callous, and condescending, attitude coming from someone in such a position of authority. He did not want to believe that law enforcement could stoop so low. Then, he thought back on what he had been told about cannabis by every teacher, preacher, law enforcement officer, and other government official, throughout his life. All lies! All propaganda, and misrepresentation of facts! Now, he thought, all the bull shit about marijuana was true. Either the Sheriff's evidence records were in error, or someone had just made off with a boat load of cash. He thought, someone had to know about all those bags of cannabis being opened and dumped into the 6 boxes. Someone had to have come up with a plan to cover up this deed. It was a mind blowing experience. The Founder contemplates quitting the cannabis business. However, after careful thought and consideration, he decided to persevere. Quitting was not in the Founders' blood, and he was not going to be lied to again, regarding the wonder of the cannabis plant. Now, he had very personal experiences as testament to the wonderful healing properties of cannabis, as well as testament to the criminal behavior of everyone who had ever tried to cover up the benefits of this harmless plant. It was a joke! He would find a way to continue the course. 2015 The Founder begins to work on a recipe for EZZUB. He wanted to develop a cannabis product that would give a person a slight caffeine lift, and at the same time would give them the subtle, muscle relaxing , effects of cannabis. He coined the term EZZUB to mean "energy buzz". Traditionally, the Founder felt that edible cannabis products had been made too strong, and most people had shied away from using them, opting instead to smoke, rather than to eat, cannabis. For health concerns, he was dead set against smoking anything. The doctor who had recommend the use of cannabis to him told him to eat, rather than smoke, cannabis. The doc told him to, "try and dissolve the cannabis in a glass of milk, and then drink the milk." The Founder tried this method, but it was a complete disaster. Who wants to drink milk with a bunch of bud floating in it? I just did not work! There had to be another way, and using milk just was not it. Why can't someone come up with a simple way to drink cannabis? This question was constantly on his mind. He looked at cannabis products in the local dispensaries, but did not find a single product that was easy to use. It must be a drink, he reasoned. But, being an edible, it must not be too strong, and it cannot take away mental clarity. It must be like an energy drink, but yet, not an energy drink. He reasoned, safe relaxation and pain relief is what people want. They don't want to be rendered comatose. They want energy and relaxation at the same time. Cannabis effects with timed released caffeine effects. The goal was clearly defined and the development process began. It must be 100% natural. So, the Founder went into the lab (his home kitchen) and after months of trial and error, the goal of EZZUB has been achieved! |