Month: January 2014

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

The Game Plan

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

The New Year’s challenge — a vow among a group of friends to eat healthier for six weeks — had a built-in implosion date: February 2nd. Yep, the Super Bowl and Super Bowl parties … all those dips and beers and wings and weenies were set to demolish all discipline and clothesline this challenge just weeks in.

But, then, one of the friends, Tara Jones, suggested that they have their own party and supply their own less-Rotel-y snacks. “I figured throwing a healthy Super Bowl party would be better than us all sitting around drinking Michelob Ultra and not eating wings,” Jones says.

Among the members of this group are Amy Lawrence and Justin Fox Burks, authors of the Chubby Vegetarian blog and The Southern Vegetarian cookbook. The couple has shared hundreds of recipes on their blog, and, inspired by the challenge and upcoming party, they share with us their ideas for super Super Bowl dishes.

Better Jalapeño Poppers ➔

4 large or 6 medium jalapeño peppers

(halved lengthwise, seeds removed)

2 ounces neufchâtel cheese

1 cup shredded cheddar

1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon chipotle pepper powder

Zest of 1/2 lime

1 large egg (beaten)

3/4 cup panko bread crumbs

1 teaspoon olive or canola oil

Sour cream and fresh chives (to garnish)

Place the seeded, cut peppers cut-side-up on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, mix the neufchâtel, cheddar, garlic, cumin, chipotle, and lime zest together until well incorporated. Divide the mixture among the peppers by stuffing them until the mixture is even with the cut.

In a medium bowl, mix the egg with the panko until well incorporated. Place the mixture atop the cheese stuffed peppers until all of the panko is used. Drizzle peppers with olive oil. Bake for 20 minutes or until  golden brown. Garnish with sour cream and chives and serve immediately. (Makes 8 to 12 poppers.)

Meaty Portobello Chili with Cold-Oven Sweet Potato Fries

1 tablespoon coconut oil

2 cups diced onions (about 2 medium)

2 teaspoons ancho chili powder

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 teaspoons granulated garlic

2 teaspoons Kosher salt

2 teaspoons cracked black pepper

1 teaspoons cumin

1 1/2 cups diced bell peppers (about 2 medium)

8 cups cubed portobello (about 6 medium)

1 large can fire-roasted, crushed tomato

1 tablespoon dried, crumbled porcini

1/2 cup vegetable broth

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

Sliced avocado to garnish

In a large soup pot or dutch oven over medium heat, melt the coconut oil and add the onion. Take your time with this step. You want to cook the onions for 15 minutes or so stirring occasionally until they are nice and brown. This is where much of the flavor comes from. Add the ancho, paprika, garlic, salt, pepper, and cumin, and cook for another 5 minutes or until a nice fond (the brown layer stuck to the bottom of the pot) has formed.

Add in the peppers, portobellos, tomatoes, crumbled porcini, broth, and vinegar. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up the fond from the bottom of the pot and stir it in. Bring pot to a low boil and then reduce to the lowest heat. Cover and cook for one hour.

Serve over Cold-Oven Sweet Potato Fries and garnish with sliced avocado and anything else you’d like. (Serves 6 to 8 as a main course.)

Cold-Oven Sweet Potato Fries

2 large sweet potatoes (peeled and cut into 1/4-inch batons)

2 teaspoons olive oil

Kosher salt and cracked black pepper (to taste)

In a large bowl, toss the sweet potatoes with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread the potatoes out in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place into a cold oven and set the temperature to 415 degrees. Check them in 15 minutes or so. They should be golden and ready in 20-25 minutes. (Makes 2 servings, so you’ll have to make several batches if you’re serving lots of people.)

Justin Fox Burks

Baked Cauliflower Wings with

Black and Bleu Dressing ➔

1/2 cup crumbled bleu cheese

1/2 cup Greek yogurt (2% or 0%)

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Kosher salt (to taste)

1 head cauliflower

(broken into large florets)

2 tablespoons canola oil

3/4 cup wing sauce*

1/4 cup ketchup

2 carrots (peeled and cut into matchsticks)

2 ribs of celery

(peeled and cut into matchsticks) Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together the bleu cheese, yogurt, vinegar, and pepper. Add salt to taste and set aside in the fridge. 

In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with the canola oil and place onto a large parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes. 

In the same large bowl, whisk together the wing sauce and ketchup. Toss the roasted cauliflower in the wing sauce mixture. Return the cauliflower to the parchment-lined baking sheet and cook for another 15 minutes. 

Serve with the “Black and Bleu” dressing, carrots, and celery.

(Serves 4 as an appetizer.)

*You can use store-bought or follow the recipe for wing sauce at chubbyvegetarian.com.

Justin Fox Burks

Avocado-Walnut Brownies ➔

1 avocado (mashed)

3/4 cup cane sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 1/2 ounces of a dark chocolate bar

(about 2/3 of bar; like Lindt 70%)

1/8 cup skim milk

2 large eggs

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon espresso powder

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (toasted)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a stand mixer, mix the avocado, sugar, and cocoa powder. Melt the chocolate and milk in the microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and melt for another 30 seconds. Stir again and add to the stand mixer ingredients. Mix until combined. Add eggs, flour, espresso, salt, and vanilla, and mix until combined. Stir in walnuts. Spread into a 5 x 8-inch pan that’s lined with parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes. Let them cool for 30 minutes then lift them out using the edges of the paper and cut. Store them in a container on the counter or in the fridge. (Makes 8 large brownies.)

chubbyvegetarian.com

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Drink Up

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

April 23, 2013: Kings Spirits, Inc. was on the verge of becoming Shelby County’s first sanctioned distillery, at least since the Prohibition era.

Ryan Hanson and Matthew Brown, who had parted a sea of red tape in the process, were before the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission as one of the final steps toward building Roaring Tiger, a vodka with an identity that centers around the Bluff City.

But they had to answer one question first.

Hanson remembers a commission member asking, “Why would you use that dirty Mississippi River water to make vodka?” In reality, the water comes from the sand aquifer, and Hanson says it’s the key ingredient to the smooth Roaring Tiger vodka.

The pair imports and filters base spirits, which they dilute to 80 proof in batches no larger than five gallons. They focus on clarity, aroma, taste, and especially texture. The Memphis water is so effective, they have to take care the vodka doesn’t go down too easy.

Justin Fox Burks

Roaring Tiger Vodka

“I want the burn to be in the right place. I want it to be just a little in the back,” Hanson says, rubbing his throat under his jaw. “People who are drinking want to feel like they’re drinking.”

Hanson and Brown have been friends since high school, bonding over clandestine home beer brewing in the ’90s. They knew they wanted to get into the beverage industry and they knew they wanted to use Memphis water. And then they waited.

When the Tennessee General Assembly amended a state law in 2009, expanding the number of counties allowed to support distilleries from three to 44, they paid close attention.

Three years later, they decided to create their own distillery and make a Memphis-based vodka, resulting in 18 cases ready for a test run at last year’s Gonerfest.

“Things have been blowing up since,” Hanson says.

Roaring Tiger Vodka now is available in about 100 bars and 30 liquor stores, almost exclusively in the Memphis area. They’re producing roughly 150 to 170 cases per month and plan to continue expanding.

Naming their product created much angst before the friends, passionate Memphis Tigers basketball fans, decided to name it after the program.

Graphic artist Ronnie Lewis created the distinctive logo, which features a fang-filled view inside a Tiger’s mouth and the Memphis skyline showing the Hernando de Soto Bridge to the left of the Pyramid. And, sure enough, there’s no sign of the Mississippi River. Turns out the creators of Roaring Tiger Vodka agree with the commissioner: Given the available options, who’d want to drink from that muddy gusher?

roaringtigervodka.com; info@roaringtigervodka.com

If you’re bored with your favorite cocktail or want an education in drink architecture, track down Big River Bitters co-founders Michael Hughes and Dustin Cann.

Hughes and Cann can teach you how to make your favorite adult beverage taste better, or at least get you to try something new.

Their business depends on it: Most people think “bitter” is an adjective, but in this context, “bitters” refers to sophisticated additives often used to liven up an Old Fashioned or Sazerac. One can theoretically drink potable bitters in small measures, but the pair likens cocktail bitters to salt and other spices used to enhance foods.

“You’re not going to just have a spoonful of salt,” Cann says. “If you were to taste it by itself, it absolutely wouldn’t be very pleasant.”

Creating the bitters takes between three weeks and two months and starts with 190-proof spirits or glycerin. Next comes a bittering agent like wild cherry bark or gentian root and a flavoring agent like Central BBQ pork rinds. A long soak and an occasional stir later, and the bitters are ready to add a few potent drops to your drink.

Hughes and Cann scrounge local farmers markets for a multitude of ingredients for their creations, which include syrups, shrubs, tonics, and rim salts. Among the lineup is Big River’s signature bitter The Classico. Other items are seasonal depending on what local produce is available.

Big River Bitters are available for sale online at bigriverbitters.com and are used in drinks at South of Beale, Blind Bear, the Silly Goose Lounge, and the Second Line.

Hughes mentions the term “flavor balance” as a description of what the products provide, and the pair hopes to add to the discourse of drinks around Memphis. They gave a presentation at Ignite Memphis last summer titled “Bitters: The Salt and Pepper of the Educated Boozehound.”

“I like to see the light bulb go off for someone who has discovered a new culinary experience,” Cann says.

bigriverbitters.com

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Funny Business

Larry Clark says he has a very clear picture of who he is and who he isn’t. The lifelong performer who once juggled chainsaws on tour with Nine Inch Nails has been a sideshow geek, a circus clown, a daredevil, and a burlesque performer. A Memphian through and through, he got his start in show business working at Libertyland performing a jungle-themed comedy act.

“I’ve never really seen myself as an illusionist,” says Clark, who has been the host clown for Ringling Brothers and has driven nails up his nose for Jim Rose. “I’ve just never seen myself like that — up on stage with the wind blowing my hair around like David Copperfield. But when you’ve been doing something for a long time and you know who you are, you start to ask, ‘What if that was me?’ What would that sort of thing be like if I did it?'”

Clark will answer that question and give audiences a taste of life inside a circus sideshow when he opens “Theater Bizarre!” this week at TheatreWorks. It’s his second one-man show.

“There won’t be as much juggling this time,” says Clark, whose previous shows have attracted capacity crowds to see this world-renowned clown do his thing. “Most of the things I’m doing this time around are brand new. They’ve never been road-tested.” So there may not be any flying chainsaws, but there will be glass walking. And while there may be no wind machines to muss Clark’s pompadour, there will be illusions.

“JustLarry’s Theater Bizarre!” at TheatreWorks, Friday-Saturday, January 31st-February 2nd, 8 p.m. $10. theaterbizarre.brownpapertickets.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Poor Relations

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There has been much written and said recently about Mayor A C Wharton‘s problems with his city council — problems which, partly at least, involve the council’s negative reactions to a host of proposals made in the last year or two by the Wharton administration.

As a reminder: These negative reactions, which boiled over toward the end of last year, involve a growing feeling among council members that administration proposals are 1) ill-considered, or 2) incompletely explained, or 3) financially askew, or 4) all three.

As a corollary, propositions emanating from the city, especially those that require some form of assent or financial participation from the Shelby County Commission, have begun to exacerbate another divide — that between the Memphis city government, per se, and Shelby County government, which, increasingly, especially among certain members of the commission, is regarded as an undependable and mooch-minded poor relation.

Jackson Baker

John Pontius makes his case for the AutoZone Park deal.

Here is part of what Commissioner Steve Basar said Monday afternoon on the city’s alleged sins of omission and commission:

“I’m glad at least that they’ve finally acknowledged that they are taking money from education, one, and, two, that even their attempts to try and make things even aren’t coming close to making things even. … They’re making promises. They promise to give us money for schools. They owe us $57 million there. They promise to pay for EDGE. They haven’t fully funded that one. I just see a lot of empty promises from the other side of the street.”

This was apropos the latest of several developmental propositions that have floated over from City Hall under the auspices of the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, Robert Lipscomb, who, under Wharton and mayoral predecessor Willie Herenton, has become something of an all-purpose planning czar. Indeed, there is an edgy saying in local government circles describing Wharton as “the second mayor to work for Robert Lipscomb.”

In fairness, Wharton sees himself as struggling to move the city forward in a time of contracting local revenues. As he acknowledged during a conversation at the Shelby County Democrats’ recent Kennedy Day Dinner, that means a certain dependence on funding from elsewhere, and that’s where Lipscomb comes in.

Highly leveraged so as to capture available state and federal funds, Lipscomb’s proposals often involve the partial diversion of local sales-tax revenues to help fund this or that ambitious project. To the extent that these revenues — usually based on “incremental” increases of sales-tax money in the target area — are re-routed from state coffers, they generate no great hue and cry locally.

But, as Basar and others have protested, there is often the risk — as in the Wharton/Lipscomb proposal for a Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) project to develop the fairgrounds site for retail/sporting purposes — that the revenue net is cast too wide, not only potentially cannibalizing incremental tax revenues from adjoining areas (Cooper-Young and Overton Square in the case of the writ-large Fairgrounds TDZ), but actually reducing the portion of such revenues destined for local schools.

Basar sounded the alarm about such a prospect back in October and was backed up by Mike Swift, Shelby County director of administration and finance, who agreed that both the state’s portion of sales-tax proceeds in the TDZ and the local-option sales-tax portion could be claimed by the proposed TDZ area. Swift added, “To the extent that it would impact the local-option sales tax, half of that off the top goes to schools, and therefore it would be a reduction in what goes to schools.”

That reduction could total as much as $1 million a year over a 30-year amortization period, and the city has, as Basar indicated, acknowledged the financial impact to school funding. Accordingly, city officials — offering a new gym and a multi-purpose building for the schools by way of compensation — had asked the commission to postpone action on a Basar resolution on Monday’s commission agenda.

The Basar resolution would have put the commission on record as asking the state building commission to reject the city’s application for the Fairgrounds TDZ. The resolution won a majority of 6 to 4, with one abstention, that of Chairman James Harvey, and narrowly failed, as seven votes were needed for passage.

With Republicans voting yes and Democrats voting no, the vote was taken in the wake of the defeat of an outright request for deferral by Commissioner Steve Mulroy and amounted to a sort of back-door deferral. City officials, given largely pro forma support by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell on Monday, had asked the commission for additional time to negotiate aspects of the TDZ package.

“Fine, great,” Basar had said, somewhat sardonically, about the prospect of further negotiation, essentially between the two mayors. “But … it’s our resolution. I’m kind of offended that no one from the County Commission has been included in those talks at all.”

Earlier in the meeting, the commission, easing off last week’s committee decision to defer action for two weeks on supporting the city’s arrangement to purchase AutoZone Park, had voted, as a partner in the original 1998 stadium package, to acquiesce in the deal. “Good luck for baseball,” Harvey pronounced after the vote.

That outcome, more reluctant than is indicated by the vote total of 10 to 1, with one abstention (that of Mulroy, who, with Henri Brooks, wanted more concessions for low-income Memphians), was influenced by pleadings from John Pontius, treasurer of the Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation, that the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals, whose purchase of the Triple-A Redbirds is a contingency of the deal, had other suitors.

But the bottom line — despite a residual pocket of sympathy for city undertakings, by commission Democrats, especially — is that the County Commission, heading into an election year, is increasingly dubious about proposals coming from City Hall and inclined to assert its statutory powers as a local governing body.

––––––––––

A Mayoral Donnybrook?

As the filing date of February 20th for countywide offices approaches, it begins to appear that the Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, among other offices, could be a highly competitive affair.

Some name politicians are among those who have drawn petitions to compete in the May 6th Democratic primary for the right to oppose incumbent Republican Mayor Mark Luttrell. Former Shelby County Commissioner Deidre Malone has long had her hat in the ring. But she has been joined of late by such petition-pullers as County Commission Chairman James Harvey and former (and possibly future) Shelby County Schools board member Kenneth Whalum Jr.

Not to be too coy about it, a line-up of such prominent African-American Democrats increases prospects for an entry by Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, especially inasmuch as Mulroy has himself received private commitments of support from significant black political figures.

The term-limited Democratic commissioner, a law professor at the University of Memphis, has focused of late on applying for open federal and state judgeships but has long considered the possibility of running for county mayor.

Another spirited race is developing in new commission District 9 between incumbent Commissioner Justin Ford and three Democrats with public names of their own — former Memphis school board member Patrice Robinson, current Memphis-Shelby County Education Association President Keith Williams, and veteran educator and frequent candidate James O. Catchings.  

The new commission format of 13 single districts will undoubtedly result in highly contested races on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the ledger. Watch this space.

Categories
Music Music Features

Opus One: Big Star

Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO)Opus One series tackles the music of Big Star on Friday, January 31st, at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale. The show is part of a tsunami of local adulation for the band and a return to concept for the groundbreaking Opus One series.

Jody Stephens

“Jody [Stephens] — I think wisely — wanted to keep it all acoustic,” said Sam Shoup, who arranged the songs for the orchestra. “There’s not a drum kit. There are no electric instruments at all. The only instruments other than the symphony orchestra are the guitars that Van Duren and Josh Cosby are playing. That’s just the way he wanted to do it. I thought it was wise.”

Big Star’s main virtue was the songwriting. Following the losses of founders Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, and Andy Hummel, there has been continued demand from fans to hear the music performed live. Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow have stepped in for full-band renderings. But there has been further opportunity to experiment with the songs.

“In the Big Star Third performances, they are using Carl Marsh’s charts,” Stephens said. But the MSO will be using Sam Shoup’s arrangement. It’ll be a nice, new twist to them.”

Shoup had done some smaller Big Star arrangements for a Recording Academy event.

“This is a bigger version of that. Instead of a string quartet, I have a whole orchestra now,” Shoup said.

Stephens is excited to sing in the new acoustic environment: “That’s what’s going to make it a lot fun for me. I won’t have to sing over anything. With a band, singing from behind a drum kit, I feel like I have to sing over things. That’s fine with that electric energy there. You just kind of sing out. But with an orchestra or acoustic and upright bass or something, the songs lend themselves more to interpretation.”

The show will also mark collaboration with many of the band’s old friends.

Duren and Vicki Loveland record and perform together as Loveland Duren. They will perform several songs with Opus One on Friday. They each knew the band from different angles.

“My partner, Vicki, worked in the studio with Alex several times. She has the connection to Alex, and my connection is with Chris and Jody,” Duren said. “I worked with Chris and Jody after Big Star. I didn’t work with Alex. I knew Alex back in those days. I was a friend of Jody. We were writing together after Third was done. Eventually, late 1975 or ’76, Chris and Jody and I put together a band and played some gigs for about a year as the Baker Street Regulars. After Big Star, Jody and I did three sets of demos at Ardent, including one set that Andrew Oldham of the Rolling Stones produced. We tried to get a deal, but we never did.”

Duren is excited to continue working with this community of writers and players. Many of whom were essential contributors to the latest Loveland Duren release, Bloody Cupid. He has enjoyed working with Jessie Munson in particular.

“She’s just one of these rare birds. She can read and do classical music and then turn around and improvise unlike anybody else,” Duren said. “It’s usually one or the other, you know. Vicki and I have known Sam for a long time. We go see his outfit Den of Strings. So it’s not just a bunch of strangers. We brought Jessie and Jonathan Kirkscey, the cellist, into the studio when we recorded the most recent album. They played on that extensively, and that was cool.”

Munson is a Minnesota native who moved to Memphis to work with MSO 11 years ago. She’s played with Kirkscey in Glorie and with Harlan T. Bobo. Munson enjoys the Opus One concept and the concerts.

“There may be some places trying to do what we do,” Munson said. “But I know we were the first to do something like this. That is pretty cool. They’ve been well-attended. A few of them weren’t. But rather than looking at that as a failure, we were just proud that we did something new. That’s kind of the cool thing about Opus One, that it’s always a little different. We’re always trying something new.”

Also on the bill are Cosby of Star & Micey and Susan Marshall, who could not be reached for comment because she was at the Grammy Awards with her husband, Jeff Powell. You will never be as cool as them. If you need to sit down and come to grips with that, we understand. Shoup is particularly excited about Marshall’s portion of the program.

“I think it’s going to sound really cool. Susan is doing ‘Nighttime’ and ‘September Gurls.’ We completely departed from the Big Star versions. She has an arrangement of “Nightime’ on her Honey Mouth CD. The ‘September Gurls’ is totally different: The string session starts out kind of Eleanor Rigbyish. It seemed like a good idea. But everything else is pretty close to the original feel of Big Star.”

Shoup has been involved with Opus One since its inception and sees this show as a return to the original intent of the series.

“It’s more bare bones,” Shoup said. “Opus One has been playing with bands. This time we decided to get back to the original concept: to have the artist just with the orchestra. We did the first couple like that. This time the orchestra is more of an integral part of the show. I like that we’re getting back to the original concept of the series.”

This groundbreaking MSO program is as much fun for the rockers as it is for the orchestra pros.

“The symphony musicians started it, and they love it,” Shoup said. “I think it’s the coolest thing ever to walk into a rock club like the Hi-Tone or the New Daisy and see a symphony orchestra set up. I just think it’s the coolest thing in the world. I thought the Al Kapone show was a real classic. Everybody really enjoyed that show. It gives us a chance to play with musicians that we normally don’t get to play with. You have a whole new sense of respect for what they do. And I think it goes the other way too. The pop and rock artists are always freaked out to work with the symphony. I love seeing their faces the first time they hear an orchestra play their music. It’s fantastic. They just light up.”

Stephens is excited to hear the arrangements and is moved by the recognition.

“The interest and the care in doing this is pretty awesome,” he said. “It’s neat how we’ve been recognized in the community, and I’m really grateful for that. It’s amazing.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Never Too Late

CREDIT: Lindsey Butler

Local filmmaker Clayton Hardee, aka Clay Otis, openly admits that he more or less stumbled into his musical career.

“I had no intentions of doing music. I didn’t do my first record until I was 30, and that was because a movie I was working on got turned down,” Hardee said. “I sang a song to Jake [Vest], and the next thing I know we started doing a record.”

Recorded at High/Low Recording over three days last spring, Hardee’s third full-length, Citizen Clay, sees The Sheiks joining his longtime backing band, Dream Team, providing more depth to the improvisational music that serves as the backdrop for Hardees’ vocals.

“From the get go, the Dream Team has been on everything I’ve ever played on,” Hardee said. “My backing band has always been Greg Faison on drums, Brent Stabbs on bass, and Jake Vest on guitar. But then I got to be friends with The Sheiks and fell in love with them a couple years ago, and they’ve been killing it since we asked them to join the band.”

Described by Hardee as his biggest sounding record yet, Citizen Clay is equal parts “bloated ’70s rock and the punk rock response to bloated ’70s rock,” which is Hardee’s way of saying it’s diverse. Lyrically, Hardee said that Citizen Clay unfolds like a news program, examining social issues like pharmaceutical drug abuse and wealthy excess. Approaching his lyrics the way he approaches film-making, Hardee said that Citizen Clay is also his most thematic album to date.

Clay Otis and The Dream Sheiks celebrate the release of Citizen Clay this Saturday at the Hi-Tone, with the recently reunited Chinamen and Perfect Prescription opening. Doors open at 9 p.m., and admission is $5.

Categories
News

DA on the Defense

Toby Sells reports on the controversy over D.A. Amy Weirich’s support of censured assistant D.A. Thomas Henderson.

Categories
News

San Francisco on the Fly

Bruce VanWyngarden writes about an internet newspaper conference in San Francisco.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Up in Smoke?

On January 1st, the nation’s first marijuana retail stores opened in Colorado. This landmark event came approximately 14 months after Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment in November 2012 to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Washington State has enacted similar legislation, and Washington, D.C., and at least 20 states — including Colorado and Washington — have authorized the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

This month, state Representative Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) introduced HB1385, legislation to allow people suffering from certain diseases to use marijuana to treat their symptoms, if their doctor states that its benefits outweigh its health risks to that patient.

Here’s a caveat: Despite new state laws liberalizing marijuana use, it is still illegal to possess and use marijuana under the federal Controlled Substances Act, which lists marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance, indicating it has high potential for abuse and has not been accepted as a safe form of medical treatment in the U. S.

More recent guidance suggests that the Department of Justice will prioritize the prosecution of marijuana-related crimes of national significance, which excludes many individual recreational users. However, the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged. Employers may therefore take comfort in the fact that both medicinal and recreational marijuana use continue to be prohibited under federal law.

In Colorado, employers will also be insulated from employee claims of discriminatory practices or privacy violations by the text of the enabling legislation — Amendment 64, itself. The Act specifically states that employers reserve the right to continue drug testing and similar practices. It further states that employers may restrict the possession, distribution, or use of marijuana on company property.

Recent litigation involving marijuana in the workplace has focused on whether employers in states that have decriminalized medicinal marijuana can restrict its use outside of working hours. Despite Colorado’s legalization of medical and recreational marijuana, much controversy has centered on whether these uses can be properly described as lawful.

Employers in Colorado have the authority to enforce company policies restricting employees’ lawful activities when the policy relates to an occupational requirement; when the policy relates to an employee’s particular job responsibilities; or when a conflict of interest may result. If any of the three statutory exceptions apply, employers have firm legal grounds to administer drug tests and terminate employees who test positive.

Similarly, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado agreed that the Colorado State’s Lawful Activities Statute does not extend to an employee’s firing due to medical marijuana use. In Curry v. Miller, the court held that employers are entitled to implement and enforce written drug policies, and Colorado’s statute does not shield an employee from the company’s standard practices. Put simply, the plaintiff employee had been terminated because of his misconduct, rather than because of his disability.

Since individuals with severe illnesses and disabilities are afforded more protection under the law than healthy people, it is unlikely that the courts would afford protection to employees who use marijuana recreationally. We can therefore expect courts to lean just as heavily in favor of employers once disputes arise in the wake of Amendment 64.

Colorado’s growing body of case law serves as a reliable indicator of how other jurisdictions will treat the same or comparable issues. Washington State — which is expected to open retail marijuana shops this year — has similarly dismissed medicinal marijuana users’ claims against employers. The Supreme Court of Washington explained that allowing such actions for wrongful termination directly conflicts with the state’s long-standing at-will employment doctrine.

While public policy may in some instances overcome the state’s deference towards employers in termination decisions, the court found that a clear public policy existed against forcing employers to sanction their employees’ illegal activity.

In sum, Colorado’s Amendment 64 has not resulted in the complete legalization of marijuana in Colorado. As a best practice, all employers should reiterate to employees that violations of federal controlled substance laws are still grounds for termination and revise their corporate policies as necessary.

While it may be some time before medical or recreational use of marijuana is legalized in Tennessee, employers should keep an eye on this developing trend.

Robert Meyers and Meghan McMahon of the Glankler Brown law firm focus their practice on representing employers. Neither smokes marijuana nor advocates its use.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Alive and Well

For some decades, the medical world — and those lay people whose destinies brought them in contact with it sadly, apropos potential responses to cancer — has been acquainted with a phenomenon called HeLa cells.

These were malignant cells — used for research and medical experimentation the world over — that derived originally from a single tumor that had belonged to a patient whose name was believed to have been Helen Lane.

The cells were unusually virulent — so much so as to serve so distinct and widespread a purpose. Indeed, they were, and are, regarded as immortal, and by now have been cultivated and dispersed so widely for so many different purposes as to weigh, by informal estimate, the equivalent of 150 Empire State Buildings.

So far the story is interesting, even uniquely so. But it gets more so, in numerous ways. In 2010, an author/researcher named Rebecca Skloot published a book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, that transformed the way in which both the ubiqutous HeLa cells and the supposed “Helen Lane” herself were regarded.

Skloot was in Memphis this week as the featured speaker of the Memphis Rotary Club’s regular Tuesday luncheon — which this week was also a climactic focus of a “big club” national Rotary conference for which the Memphis club served as host. The conference began Sunday night at The Peabody with a spirited keynote address to the attendees by Dick Enberg, the well-known sports broadcaster.

Skloot, though, was the piece de resistance. Reminding those attendees who had read her book and explaining to those who hadn’t, she noted the first basic fact — that the soap-opera-sounding “Helen Lane” was a figment of some researcher’s imagination. The actual — unintentional — donor of the HeLa cells was one Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman from an impoverished family in Maryland who developed cervical cancer and was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore as a charity patient.

The dime-sized tumor that was extracted from Lacks was a godsend to medicine. HeLa cells were vital not only in cancer research but in numerous other medical breakthroughs, including the development of early polio vaccines. But as Skloot documents, the saga of Henrietta Lacks (who died within six months of initial treatment) had analogues to more sordid medical researches — like that of the African-American syphilis patients in Tuskegee, Alabama, some of whom were purposely infected with syphilis, and all of whom were allowed to die without treatment while the progress of their disease was tracked.

Nothing that graphic happened in the case of Henrietta Lacks. Nor did such malpractive affect the members of her family, who subsequently also become medical subjects. Eventually — thanks in part to the efforts of Skloot, who now runs a foundation to benefit unwitting former subjects of medical experimentation — a protocol has been accepted in medical circles that expands the rights of such patients and has firmed up the concept of patient consent.

But ethical questions remain, and, considering the astounding number of ways in which medical samples are routinely collected from all of us, it remains true, as Skloot reminded the Rotarian conferees, that “in some way, everyone is a potential Henrietta Lacks.”