Well, I guess it’s fitting that it took this long to get our NORML Convention coverage up. But we did it, and we hope this little montage of interviews is informative and perhaps even reassuring for all you folks who are tired of an irrational attitude towards drugs in America. After all, demonizing drugs clearly doesn’t work given the rates of drug abuse in the U.S. compared to places where drugs are not so publicly hated on.

If you’re a cop in Michigan recklessly discharging your weapon and shooting a weed-selling college student gets the same punishment as the weed dealer, who got caught with the reefer.  College student, Derek Copp (20), was shot by in the chest by a cop, Ryan Huizenga, after the police raided his off-campus apartment.  Copp sold 3.3 grams to an undercover officer for $60, meaning he shorted the cops .2 grams, but that’s obviously not the reason they decided to raid his apartment. Continue Reading

When people hear hemp they immediately think hippies and bongs and the apocalypse.  Well, some people think that–mostly idiots.  Fortunately, U.S. states are starting to abandon antiquated assumptions about hemp, and instead, are starting to realize it as a legitimate and budding industry with great potential to not just create jobs, but lessen the load on the environment by saving trees.  Oregon and Vermont have both taken the plunge into legalizing the plant, and in these times when new industries are needed, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to start placing bets on the next state to see hemp as more than the thing hippies weave into necklaces. Continue Reading

You want to know how marijuana is going to get legalized?  It’s going to happen on the state and local level; and we have California and their defiance of federal law to thank for starting the localization movement.  The federal government, which has become nothing more than a finely tuned group of organized criminals, makes far too much on marijuana being illegal that we should just give up hope of them ever legalizing it–at most they’ll legalize medicinal marijuana, even though it looks like the pharmaceutical companies will get to push their THC pills on everyone before that happens.  But given all the fines and fees that the government pulls in from every pothead cuffed and processed, it makes zero sense to sit back and hope the aliens in Congress will ever let common sense override greed and tradition.  Besides, on the local level people actually have the ability to affect change. Continue Reading

Lebron James’ new book, Shooting Stars, written by himself and co-author, Buzz Bissinger, reveals to the public that Lebron did smoke marijuana.  He claims it was done in response to the overwhelming media coverage he was getting in high school, and in part, due to the inflated egos of himself and his teammates.  I guess this is just another name of a successful and talented athlete that could be added to the list of people who smoke(d) weed and aren’t a living Above the Influence commercial.

(via ESPN)

I’m really surprised there was ever research done in regards to the dangers of heroin use. They could’ve saved the money. All they really needed to do was ask drug users how they take their drug of choice. Continue Reading

A recent article on RasmussenReports.com entertained the idea that legalizing marijuana might actually do some good for the struggling economy. While the main focus of the piece is a recent poll stating that 40% of Americans favor legalization, it was the following excerpt that was the most interesting nugget of information in the article:

The World Health Organization estimates that 42% of Americans have tried marijuana, the highest usage level in the 17 countries it profiled. Some researchers contend that marijuana is the number one cash crop in the United States.

Three Nobel Prize winners including Milton Friedman were among the more than 500 economists who endorsed a 2005 Harvard study that concluded that legalization of marijuana “would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods. If, however, marijuana were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually.”

Given Obama’s public support for decriminalization in 2004 as well as his appointment of former Seattle police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, as drug czar, there is hope that rational thought rather than demented ideology will dictate America’s drug policy in the future.

For more information check out the following articles: Continue Reading

Since marijuana is always a popular subject, here is a historical look at marijuana’s illegalization.  Enjoy, pass it along, comment.

The Weed Controversy

Once the 1930s rolled around, and the prohibition of alcohol had failed tremendously, there was a feeling of defeat in most prohibitionists’ minds.  One of the jaded prohibitionists, Harry J. Anslinger, quickly found himself at the forefront of yet another prohibition movement in the United States.  During the latter years of alcohol prohibition, many Southwestern states were pushing for a law against marijuana as a means to persecute the Mexican immigrants who offered cheap labor during the Depression.

In response to the public’s outcry for action, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was founded in 1930 as an agency of the United States Department of Treasury.  Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, felt his nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, was the perfect candidate for the job of FBN commissioner.  While Anslinger was upset over the failure of the prohibition of alcohol, the cries for action against marijuana enabled Anslinger to focus his attention on a new scapegoat substance: Marijuana. Continue Reading

I know what you’re thinking–I’m thinking it as well.  “What the? But how? No fucking way!”  Thanks to the internet, I have managed to find what can only be regarded as a mind blowing proposition: salvia as medicine.  If you never smoked salvia then check out my essay, The Salvia Chronicles, but if you have experienced salvia, then you are just as baffled as I am right now.

SalviaSociety.org is a website that deals with everything salvia, and that includes the potential health benefits of using salvia.  According to their site, salvia has the potential to treat the following problems: Continue Reading

Dear Michael Phelps,

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but you shouldn’t have to apologize for smoking the cheeba. Anyone and everyone who have become key influential figures and pop icons have all tasted Mary Jane. I’m sure the mainstream media has you feeling pretty down, but I just want you to know that you’re not alone.

Here’s 200 of your fellow celebrity-status midnight tokers: Continue Reading

Remember when Michael Phelps said he eats 12,000 calories a day as part of his training?  Well, based on a photo that was printed in a British tabloid, it appears Phelps’ ability to eat so much is the result of a performance enhancing drug, marijuana.

His typical wake-and-bake breakfast consisted of a five-egg omelet, two cups of coffee, three fried egg sandwiches, three chocolate chip pancakes, French toast with powdered sugar, and a big bowl of grits.

The photo surfaced after Phelps attended a party in South Carolina on Nov. 6, where he was propositioned by what can only be murdering rapists to go in a back room and smoke marijuana.

According to sources at the party, Phelps understood exactly what he was doing, ripping the bong just as well as he swims.

His publicist begged the tabloid, News of the World, not to run the piece, but they did, prompting Phelps to make your standard, ass-saving PR statement.

Phelps said: “I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.” Continue Reading

You know that feeling when you stumble upon a bag of weed on the street and you look around for someone walking over to claim it, but there’s no one in sight? Well, imagine how researchers in China felt when they found what is said to be the world’s oldest stash of marijuana. 789 grams of 2,700 year old marijuana was discovered inside the tomb of a Gushi shaman.

According to globeandmail.com:

The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.

The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.

A battery of tests? More like the researchers rolled a couple spliffs and packed a couple bowls! Regardless, one thing is for sure… with pot stashes found in over 500 excavated Gushi tombs in northwestern China, these researchers will be busy working for awhile.

So I was skimming the interwebs and I came across this website, the war on drugs clock.  Basically it breaks down just how much money our government is spending to put away non-violent offenders, and just how many of them are in jail, arrested, and a bunch of other pretty staggering numbers.

Now look at these numbers, and tell me why we are in a massive economic crisis. 17 Billion Dollars?!?!? Are you fucking kidding me? That number is absolutely unreal to me, and that is only on a Federal level.  States have spent over 27 Billion on the drug war, do they realize it’s easier than ever to walk out one’s front door and have a bag in your hand within 10 minutes?  Do they realize that this will NEVER change?  Some states have, 13 at last count, with Michigan and Massachusetts on the way.  We are slowly catching on, but it certainly isn’t fast enough.

Am I asking to completely decriminalize the plant and put it in the hands of anyone and everyone?  No, absolutely not, it could easily be regulated at least as much as alcohol is to keep it out of the hands of the younger generation before they have developed to a point where they can responsibly use the drug.  But isn’t throwing almost 40 billion dollars a year at a losing battle absolutely gut wrenching?  I’d say so, especially for the number 2 cash crop in our nation.  Marijuana and hemp could easily be MAKING us billions of dollars in taxes, and stimulating our floundering economy.  Instead we choose to sit back and be robbed blind by our governments; state and federal, on a war that is more hopeless than Iraq and Afghanistan could ever imagine to be. Continue Reading

I’m not going to bore you at the moment with all of the other reasons that marijuana should be legalized, I think that most people believe that anyway. But here is another perfect example of the drug war having adverse effects on the lives of everyone in this country, and it isn’t going away. Grow operations on public land all over the country are completely unregulated, and in turn growers are using rat poison, other illegal chemicals, and poaching to make sure that their harvests yield the highest possible amount of marijuana.

The drug cartels that illegally grow aren’t going anywhere in the current situation. They will continue to find new locations to poison our environment to get their precious harvest. If we would just take a minute and think about this, it could all easily be avoided if the government opened marijuana and hemp up as a cash crop, tax it, and make sure that growers are not adversely effecting our environment and public health. Continue Reading

The above video is a clip from BBC’s documentary Should I Smoke Dope? Through intravenous injection, this journalist is pumped with the two active ingredients found in marijuana: THC and Cannabidiol. The findings of the experiment show that when both are combined it produces a happy, pleasant and giggly high. THC alone produced psychosis inducing effects such as paranoia.

Should I Smoke Dope? documents BBC reporter Nicky Taylor’s experimental trip to the pot smokers’ European paradise; Amsterdam. The film details her 30 day cheeba toking investigation of the science, culture and legal aspects surrounding marijuana.

Watch the full documentary on YouTube (6 parts): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Thanks to Amy for the tip!

(Via MindHack)