Category Archives: cannabis

MPP: UN "meddles" in US marijuana legalization fight

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Photo: Salvatore Palange/Flickr CC

The UN is sticking its nose into the business of individual US states, by complaining that any trend toward legalization of weed will have a domino effect, globally, says the MPP:

“The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) attempts to meddle in marijuana reform in the United States were denounced by the Marijuana Policy Project on Thursday.

The INCB, which is currently meeting in Vienna, Austria, said in a recent report that they were ‘deeply concerned’ that the 14 U.S. states that have medical marijuana laws are sending the ‘wrong message to other countries.’”

via Toke of the Town – Cannabis news, rumor and humor.

Latin America to UN drug warriors: Put this in your pipe, and smoke it

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Photo: Esparta Palma/Flickr CC

Mexico, Argentina and Brazil are winding-down their roles in the no-win-scenario, war on drugs being waged (purportedly on Latin America’s behalf) by the United States.

And the UN is frustrated:

“The Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), in its annual report released today, stated its concern over Latin America’s “growing movement to decriminalize the possession of controlled drugs, in particular cannabis.”

via UN: Latin America undermining drug war by decriminalizing drugs / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.

Pot as "miracle drug": It's complicated

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Andrew Sullivan. (Photo: Trey Ratcliff/Flickr CC)

Marijuana not only doesn’t kill brain cells, as do alcohol and heroin — and depression –   it grows ‘em back, Andrew Sullivan asserts.

He quotes some recent rat brain research:

The team found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis – the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. This region of the brain is associated with learning and memory, as well as anxiety and depression.

The effect is the opposite of most legal and illicit drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine. “Most ‘drugs of abuse’ suppress neurogenesis,” Zhang says. “Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis.”

For me, the key phrase in this excerpt (above), is “drugs of abuse.” No doubt, pot is one of them — experience tells us this. (There is also massive anecdotal evidence of pot’s benefits.)  And the drug’s effects on the brain are more complex than Sullivan’s post suggests.

Still, as Lester Grinspoon says, that pot will eventually emerge as the gold standard among anti-anxiety medicines.

I also agree with Sullivan: Reason dictates that pot must be made legal, and fully available to scientists, if we are serious about relieving human suffering.

via The Miracle Of Marijuana – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

Pot legalization: Domino effect ain't "NORML"

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Photo: Ricardo Liberato/Flickr CC

CelebStoner publisher asks why pot activists can’t all “just get along”:

It’s time for all of the marijuana activists and supporters to stop bickering and focus on the big picture. Together, in all our shapes and sizes, colors and religions, political beliefs and ideologies, we’ll eventually achieve the ultimate goal. Then we’ll have a big celebration and everyone will shake hands about a job well done.

via Why’s Everyone So Pissed Off at NORML?.

Bloom attributes the differences between NORML and the Marijuana Policy Project to stylistic choices. (“MPP is content to do its work behind closed doors, lobbying legislators to initiate bills,” he writes.)

But I submit that the MPP’s backroom dealing is eclipsing NORML’s parties and rallies, because MPP is what George Soros & Co. are paying for.

To be more specific: I believe nationwide marijuana legalization is already a “done deal,” and something akin to Big Tobacco is laying the groundwork for creating a generation of stoners.

It’s a blow to libertarians (think $50 taxes on legal, $250 ounces of pot, rather than being able to grow your own, for less than $15 per ounce), and to the medical medical marijuana. (More about the latter, later.)

Steve Bloom is the publisher of CelebStoner and co-author of Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language & Life

Snoop and Martha collaborate on edibles

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Score one for the soon-to-be-out-of-the-shadows pot industry, and its efforts to win the hearts and minds of mainstream studio audiences.
In this clip (Snoop Dogg on Martha Stewart), the rapper reminds Martha they’re missing the main ingredient.
Posted to New York Magazine by crovzar on December 17, 2009
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// Via Toke of the Town

Weed watch: Globe column backs vaporizing

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Photo: CC/Chuck Coker

Photo: CC/Chuck Coker

Globe columnist Judy Foreman has a fine piece on medical marijuana, and says, if she need to use the stuff, she’d vaporize:

Vaporizing vs. smoking: The push now among proponents of medical marijuana is toward inhaling the vapor, not smoking. Vaporizing is a safe and effective way of getting THC, the active ingredient, into the bloodstream and does not result in inhalation of toxic carbon monoxide, as smoking does, according to a study by Abrams published in 2007 in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

via The pros and cons of medical marijuana – The Boston Globe.

Vaporizing is healthier than smoking. But, as I noted in a previous post, there is no free lunch: One study (and there have been far too few studies, altogether) found that vaporizing releases toxic gases.

Also, I am concerned about the quality of vaporizers on the market. These are effectively unregulated medical devices, made with parts that–when heated–may expose users to even more crap.

Birth of a fetish: Boston's Girls 4 Ganja

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One of the Girls 4 Ganja. Photo: Scott Gacek

One of the Girls 4 Ganja. Photo: Scott Gacek

Scott Gacek has a stoner’s dream job: Taking pictures of attractive young women, and getting blazed with them on New England’s beaches, and in other interesting spots around Boston.

Gacek started his website to raise money for MassCann and others fighting to legalize pot in Massachusetts.

But Gacek, a professional photographer who’s shot for virtually every major Boston news outlet, is just not doing Girls 4 Ganja for the money–at least not for himself.

Gacek wants folks to know that the “girl next door” might just be a toker, too:

New friends. Photo: Scott Gacek

New additions to the G4G lineup. Photo: Scott Gacek

“They are courageous, willing to come out of the “cannabis closet” and tell the world “I SMOKE MARIJUANA”. And hell, they look great doing it.

The models featured on Girls4Ganja come from all walks of life. Some are students, some are working professionals. Like most marijuana smokers, they are contributing members of society, who are viewed as “criminals” only because of the plant they choose to smoke

via Girls 4 Ganja :: Real Girls. Real Ganja..

Gacek is also working on a 2010 G4G calender, which will feature a mix of his own photos, and self-submissions.

PNormal's 2009 Mass. marijuana predictions

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Bud girl. CC/Shreyans Bhansali

Bud girl. CC/Shreyans Bhansali

Now that pot possession (<=1 ounce) is a mere civil infraction in Massachusetts, here’s what we can expect…

CC/Sushiesque

Are they high? And what will those wacky Davis Square folks do next? Photo: CC/Sushiesque

(1) Davis Square becomes home to the Hub’s first (if not widely publicized) “pot café,” where people can light up and munch out, and drink coffee. Odds: 50-to-1

CC/ASach

Sasha Shulgin, speaking at the opening of the Picower Institute at MIT (in this image, he is at a different gathering), said psychedelics will help scientists understand human consciousness. Cannabis studies might be a precursor to these studies. Photo: CC/ASach

(2) University administrators, at Northeastern, MIT, Brown or Harvard, quietly green light  at least one cannabis research project. (Graduate students are being grossly underutilized for this type of thing, by the way.) Odds: 4-to-1

(3) Attendance at MassCann’s 2009 Freedom Rally (Boston Common, Sept. 19)  tops 100,000. Odds: 4-to-1

(3) A hipster doofus at the Freedom Rally moans as cops write him a $100 ticket for possession. The cops rough the kid up a bit, and YouTube video-makers are there. Odds: 3-to-1

(4) The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids  a Mexican weed smuggling operation in Eastern Massachusetts. Odds: 10-to-1