Ed Rosenthal's Blog

Hydroponics Company flies banner half the size of a football field with giant MARIJUANA BUD to protest San Francisco Indoor Gardening Expo censorship that's hurting medical marijuana patients and growers in California.

Note from Ed - This is not an endorsement for Advanced Nutrients, but the honesty about the hydroponics industry here is essential. I agree with Mike about the self-righteousness of the industry as a whole, they not only profit heavily on medical marijuana growers they target them while simultaneously shunning them. Also, I do not endorse any negative opinions against General Hydroponics... they are pretty cool.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) July 26, 2009 -- San Francisco is playing host to the 6th annual San Francisco Indoor Gardening Expo, but this year's Expo will be greeted by an aerial protest bud banner so huge and in your face that only a powerful helicopter is big enough to tow it around Fort Mason Center on Sunday afternoon, July 26th.

This year's San Francisco Indoor Gardening Expo promoted by Maximum Yield Magazine occurs at a time when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators are actively considering full marijuana legalization, and the city of Oakland just announced its definite plan to tax medical marijuana sales.

But according to Michael Straumietis, co-founder of the Advanced Nutrients (www.advancednutrients.com) hydroponics company that's flying the huge protest banner for six hours during the Expo's public-invited day on Sunday, the Expo is tainted by a "cadre of good old boys who make tons of money off medical marijuana growers and patients but lack the courage and honesty to allow open and honest discussion of medical marijuana."

"The hydroponics industry has long relied on medical marijuana growers for its profits," Straumietis insists, "and I'm most focused on four companies- Hydrofarm, Sunlight Supply, Botanicare and Technaflora- who sell nutrients, equipment or supplies to legal medical marijuana growers in California and other states where medical marijuana is legal, but who absolutely won't even talk about medical marijuana."

According to Straumietis, these companies and several others advertise their hydroponics wares in Maximum Yield hydroponics magazine (the magazine runs and sponsors the Expo), but the magazine and its advertisers hypocritically pretend that its readers, advertisers and customers are growing cucumbers, lettuce and daisies, instead of herbal medicine sold in hundreds of medical dispensaries throughout California.

Worse yet, Straumietis says, if a retail hydroponics store or its customers so much as mention medical marijuana, the good old boys' companies will put the store out of business by refusing to sell products to the store.

"Unfortunately a handful of hydroponics manufacturing companies and distributors have acted like brutal dictators," Straumietis charges. "They've hurt stores, growers and patients by refusing to allow them to openly and honestly discuss how their products are used."

Not only did Advanced Nutrients shake up the hydroponics industry, it also brought sophisticated, modern plant science into an industry that was selling repackaged tomato fertilizer instead of the most powerful formulas available.

"What the good old boys have done is inappropriate, disrespectful, hypocritical and untimely," Straumietis says. "But Advanced Nutrients has gone a different route by designing nutrients specifically tested on medical marijuana that give growers and patients the highest quality medicine they need. We've run a Cannabis Care program that donates hundreds of thousand dollars in nutrients to help needy sick and dying people grow the best medicine for them.

How did the good old boys respond? They've used every dirty trick in the book to vainly try to shut us down, while at the same time using monopoly intimidation, smoke and mirrors, and nods and winks to rake in the money from medical growers and patients. It's reprehensible."

And that's why Straumietis has created an airborne banner half the size of a football field to fly over the Expo for six hours this Sunday. It's too big for a plane to fly it. So he hired a helicopter. The banner features a massive picture of a glistening marijuana bud, along with the rhetorical question: WANT BIG, SUGARY BUDS?

"With California leading the way for safe, legal herbal medicine, it's time to stop the good old boys' hypocrisy and talk openly about how hydroponics is used to grow the best medicine in the world," Straumietis says. "I just issued a million dollar nutrient challenge for any of the good old boys to have a grow-off with me and see whose nutrients grow the biggest, most potent buds. They're all silent and scared. They just sit there like fat cats, taking in the dough. But the patients, the medical dispensaries and the growers are seeing through their lies. And when they look up in the air on Sunday above the Expo Hall, they'll see it spelled out quite clearly."

Want to get yourself the inside scoop on the medical marijuana industry and the hydroponics cartel that's hurting marijuana growers and patients? Call Michael Straumietis right now, at 425 422 3423.
Ref: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2680434.htm