<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of today's (November 14, 2013) Spokesman-Review.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">---------------------------------</div><div><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 28px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">Doug Clark: Weed Wagon generates buzz around Spokane</h1><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cannabis is not normally associated with a word like “energy.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s one of those oxymoronic contradictions in the nomenclature, as in military “intelligence,” say, or Spokane “strong” mayor.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet Cannabis Energy Drink is as real as Reardan, my friends, and Doug Burke has the budding profits to prove it.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I was discussing this cannabis conundrum Tuesday afternoon with Burke while riding shotgun through downtown Spokane in his wacky Weed Wagon.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Weed Wagon (my nickname for it) is a chopped-and-lowered ’67 Volkswagen “squareback.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That’d be kooky enough. But this baby has been wrapped with an artsy jungle of green marijuana leaves and the logo of the aforementioned drink that Burke makes bank on.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke, 57, is clean-cut and well groomed. This husband and father of three could pass for a Presbyterian deacon rather than a purveyor of soda pot.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as Burke must regularly affirm to his growing clientele, Cannabis Energy Drink contains none of the buzz-producing THC that has made Grateful Dead music and Zig-Zag rolling papers part of the culture.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If the drink did contain THC, it would have to be renamed “Mountain Doobie,” one of my clever editors noted.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Or Kush-a-Cola, perhaps.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The point being that Cannabis Energy Drink is essentially Red Bull with a harmless dab of hemp seed extract.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke picked me up outside The Spokesman-Review, where his Weed Wagon immediately attracted some sidewalk cellphone paparazzi.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This phenomenon, as I would soon learn, happens wherever the Weed Wagon goes.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The car isn’t the definition of user-friendly. Squeezing my tonnage into such a cramped interior was no easy rider.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“This is like birth in reverse,” I groused, struggling to pull my legs inside.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It is a Volkswagen,” Burke replied, laughing as we rattled east on Riverside Avenue.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There was a time not so long ago when cruising Spokane in such a Cheech-and-Chonged-out vehicle (or Rogen-and-Francoed, for the youth of today) would have been an instant invitation for a traffic stop from Johnny Law.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That was then.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Marijuana has been legalized in Washington and Colorado. Well more than half the country now thinks pot legalization is a fine idea, according to a recent Gallup poll.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cannabis Energy Drink is just the latest sign of these high times.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We stopped at a red light near Macy’s. A dowdy, middle-aged woman sat behind the wheel of the SUV next to us. She turned, gazed at the Weed Wagon, and then flashed us a thumb’s up and a wide grin. Go figure.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke refers to his association with Cannabis Energy Drink as a pure “stroke of luck,” but that’s a bit of an exaggeration.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke, after all, runs Burke Distributing, a business that his father, William, started back in 1961.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With a warehouse near Spokane Community College, the company stocks quickie marts, supermarkets and bars with those munchies we Americans can’t seem to survive without: beef jerky, candy bars, Red Vines, chocolate, popcorn, bubblegum, Sugar Daddys …</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All those little sales add up. Burke said his business boasts a dozen employees and pulled in $18 million last year.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m adding this so you’ll realize that Burke was in a position to act on that lucky stroke last June when some of his customers asked if he had any Cannabis Energy Drink.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke had never heard of the stuff. But he soon learned that there was a local supplier who was having trouble filling accounts.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke stepped in. He made a deal to unload the product. And sold 150 cases in one day.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He arranged to have the company (it’s headquartered in Amsterdam, surprise, surprise) send him 12 pallets of the stuff. They instead sent Burke 20 pallets, or 170,000 cans.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">They flew off the shelves.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’ve never had anything this fun take off this fast,” said Burke, who is now the proud Cannabis Energy Drink distributor for Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Duuude, where’s my energy drink?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A can of Cannabis, by the way, retails for around $1.99, or sometimes two for $4.20.*</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><em style="overflow: visible !important; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(*Don’t get the joke? Ask the nearest teenager.)</em></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So far, the area’s large grocery stores have shied away from Cannabis Energy Drink as too controversial. Burke, however, believes time and our changing culture are on his side.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Truth be told, I’ve never had much of a taste for energy drinks. But I took some sips of Cannabis, which comes in regular, diet and mango.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was no match for the Clark beverage of choice, Diet 7Up. But to be fair, I found it tangy and quite drinkable.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Marketing being the conjoined twin of sales, wrapping vehicles with advertising was a no-brainer.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Brandon Donahue, Burke’s nephew and business partner, located the mutant V-Dub in Lewiston for $4,200.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Soon, the Weed Wagon was born.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If you want to be noticed, you want to be in this car,” Burke said as we pulled into a loaded – I mean loading – zone in front of the Spokane County Courthouse.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When Burke asked me where I wanted to go to give away samples, the courthouse came immediately to mind due to its human stew of law enforcers and law abiders, and lowlifes like lawbreakers and even lawyers.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And sure enough, a highly eclectic crowd began to gather moments after we parked.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke’s offer of “free samples” made him as popular as the pope handing out wafers.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A woman who swore her name was Betty Boop gave her phone to me. Would I snap a photograph of her with the Weed Wagon?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Can do. I’m always ready to serve the reading public.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Doesn’t have any THC in it, does it?” asked a longhaired earthy guy who seemed truly saddened to hear the answer.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Burke said he sent a text message to the sheriff’s department awhile back saying that if you happen to see the Weed Wagon running around, please understand: “I’m not selling pot.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even so, there’s a case to be made about the negative nature of a product that uses marijuana as a gimmick for selling what amounts to a soft drink.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Point taken. And it’s not a bad argument. But we are living a different world now.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Like it or not, this is the dawning of the Age of Acannabis.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And as for Doug Burke, well, he’s chuckling all the way to you know where.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’m having a blast,” he said. “They call me Mr. Cannabis.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Spike Perkins, 23, a mechanic passing by, pulls out his cellphone to snap pictures as he checks out the Weed Wagon as it sits in front of The Spokesman-Review on Tuesday in Spokane.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><img src="cid:F101547C-7F20-4A36-B165-2C8637F19F7F" alt="cop_clark14_t620.jpg" id="F101547C-7F20-4A36-B165-2C8637F19F7F" width="620" height="419"></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">---------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Coming soon . . .</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><img src="cid:B369E241-B804-4888-B0A5-A825602CF042" alt="Washingtons_Farmers_Market.jpg" id="B369E241-B804-4888-B0A5-A825602CF042" width="632" height="445"></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br><div>Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">There's room at the top they are telling you still</span><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </span></div><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill </span><br style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">- John Lennon<br></span></font><div> </div></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></body></html>