The Problem With Weed

 

My brother and I attended the Iron Maiden concert at Capital One Arena last Sunday night in Washington, DC.  The prior show had singer Bruce Dickinson chastise the fans up front for heavy cannabis (flower) consumption, which upset not only Bruce Bruce himself, but also bassist Steve Harris, who hates marijuana (Robin Leach voice: I don’t know WHYYYY”).  Sure enough, there were stoners at the DC show, blazing up, and sure enough they got a similar lecture from the Singer.  To quote Alex Lifeson, “blah blah blah.”

For some reason, not everyone consuming cannabis at this show felt it appropriate to consume in the form of edibles – which these days usually means gummies.  Nope, vape pens and joints, with lots of smoke, was their preferred way of not only enjoying their bud, but also ensuring that everyone else around them had to put up with it as well, whether they liked it or not.

Dickinson himself urged the stoners to “smoke out back” – outside the venue, presumably in a back alley somewhere.  This strikes me not as a concession but more of a demand.  Had he been inclined to meet the stoners halfway, he might have recommended they use edibles.  But from what I’ve heard from him, earlier and more recently on this tour, Dickinson seems to share the common bemused contempt for stoners that the non-stoners often have, looking down on all MJ users collectively as the functional equivalent of opium addicts.

For my part, I was in that category for a long time.  The stoners I met in college were mostly jerks and assholes, cutting classes to get stoned, or going to class stoned.  With no personal familiarity with the drug itself, what I could perceive was a form of recreational stupidity.  Eventually I found a few stoners who would smoke on the weekend and go back to studying on Sunday night and attending class like everyone else – a minority who could be bothered to exert any restraint on their consumption and integrate it into a productive college education, the same way I was integrating my beer consumption.  So it inevitably dawned on me that that the problem wasn’t weed itself, it was the yahoos smoking weed.  The irony is that, just as it’s too easy for the stoners to simply blaze up every night of the week and avoid doing anything productive, it’s just as easy for nonstoners to fall into the trap of believing all stoners do this, and writing off cannabis itself as the modern equivalent of opium.   

Another irony is that marijuana itself is harmless.  Death toll?  ZERO.  That includes any form of lung cancer, which takes its toll on tobacco smokers every year – although Bill Hicks will remind us that “non smokers are dying…every day.”  Its major benefit is amplifying the awesomeness of any music you’re listening to, which is even better at a concert.  Yeah, we get it:  music and weed go together.  Oh, and it’s a major appetite enhancer, with even the worst, greasiest food elevated in enjoyment to any gourmet food you might imagine.  Whatever you might enjoy, you’ll enjoy it more stoned.  Finally, relevant to the concert context, unlike alcohol, which turns mean jerks into mean, violent jerks who ruin it for everyone else, weed makes people mellow and laid back, less inclined to pick a fight than they otherwise would.  So weed itself is good, m’kay?

So what’s the problem with weed?  Again, the problem is not the drug itself, it’s the stoners.  Evidently, too many stoners, especially the less intelligent ones, seem to have it on firm conviction that getting stoned is SO COOL, that you can be a total dick or asshole and hey!  It’s all cool!  We’re stoned!   Blow smoke up everyone else’s ass?  Yeah, that’s totally cool!   Treat people like shit because they don’t smoke weed?  Also 1000% absolutely positively cool! 

Here's a news flash:  if you were a douchebag before you lit that joint, or packed that bowl and blazed with the bong, you are STILL a douchebag:  now you’re just a douchebag who’s stoned.  The weed hasn’t made you cool, or not a douchebag.  But it has made you somehow believe you aren’t, and that whatever you do is cool. 

Granted, the straight edgers can be assholes too.  “Straight edge” means people who, as a lifestyle choice, don’t smoke weed, don’t drink, don’t do any drugs at all.  But a straight edge asshole is still an asshole.  So no real difference there.  I’ll also argue yet again that alcohol is more apt to cause actual violence.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen stoners actually fight. 

I’ll give my Marijuana Etiquette Rules here, though chances are most of the problem stoners will ignore it and go right on being the major league stoned assholes they are:

1.         Don’t give anyone shit for not smoking weed – even if you honestly believe they would enjoy it.  It’s their choice, so just f**k off.

2.         If you’re at home or a friend’s place among stoners, by all means blaze up on the flower.  Hot box if you want.  But in public, it might be a better idea to take edibles.   You’ve heard of them, right?

3.         Don’t be a dick when you’re stoned.   Less likely to happen than with alcohol, but don’t assume you aren’t being a jerk simply because you’re stoned.

4.         Lots of people do weed.  It’s not just Mexicans or jazz musicians anymore, and hasn’t been for decades.  The fact that you do weed doesn’t make you special, let alone cool.  Somewhat like tattoos:  by now they’re so common among Americans (if not Japanese) that having a tattoo, or multiple tattoos, is no longer special.

5.         Strictly speaking, cannabis consumers are not “brand ambassadors” and have no affirmative duty to behave appropriately among nonstoners solely for the purpose of not discrediting cannabis itself to would-be consumers.  Having said that, as a practical matter, they are.  And as much as concern over legality and health issues, poor behavior by clueless stoners acts as an effective deterrent dissuading otherwise sympathetic nonstoners from either trying it – a harmless act with more positive potential than danger – or giving them a negative impression of stoners themselves, which works to defame other stoners.  In other words, being a dick about it ruins it for everyone else – so don’t be a dick. 

Just to be clear: MJ consumption itself is not the issue, it’s doing so in a way which inconveniences others.  No free pass simply because you’re stoned.

We now return to Master of Reality, track 1.

Bad Behavior

Following up after Satan with some relevant issues.  In this case, poor behavior which is supposedly excused by certain factors which I consider NOT excuses.  The general topic is revisiting "things which piss me off."

Religious Nuts.   I go to church on Sunday.   Mass takes about an hour, then you’re done for Sunday and the rest of the week.  Are you only on your best behavior for that hour?   Or did you pay your dues by listening to a sermon and donating something to the basket, so you’re free to screw with people everywhere outside the church for the rest of the week, until you come back to church and apologize for all the crap you did?  Come on.

OH, and after we get communion, the remarks should be short and simple.   My dad considered us within our rights to leave after communion, but I prefer to wait until we’re excused (“Mass is ended, go in peace to love and serve the Lord”).  That being the case, I’d hope the pastor has the common sense not to ramble on.  Sadly, he didn’t get the memo.  SMH.

Being religious isn't a carte blanche to behave poorly.   Obviously Muslim suicide bombers are at the top of the list, but there are plenty of Christians who misbehave and have the nerve to expect us to excuse them because their religion induces them to behave this way.  If the behavior would be unacceptable from an atheist, it's unacceptable from you.  

Then you get these a-holes who argue that “’separation of church and state’ isn’t in the Constitution.”  Yes it is, and for making that argument I’ll put you in the same category as those who argue that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, the world is flat, vaccines don’t work, or 9/11 was an inside job, etc.   And guess which orange asshole they voted for?  Hint, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton or Gary Johnson. 

  

Mean Drunks.   What’s astonishing about these people is that they KNOW how alcohol affects them and they STILL get drunk and cause problems.   If it were possible to reinstate Prohibition selectively for these people I’d say make it so.   Drunk driving, spousal abuse, starting fights, the list of negative externalities caused by alcohol goes on.  Or maybe send them all off to a village by themselves.  After so many DUIs or A&B’s due to alcohol, we’ll send you to a special village or town exclusively for assholes like them. 

Similar are those who misbehave but blame their behavior on the drugs they do, as if that excuses them.  Again, if you KNOW drugs make you an asshole and you do them anyway, that still makes you an asshole for doing drugs.  Get clean.

Stoners.   Not stoners in general, but those who aren’t cool.  My first exposure to stoners were some jackasses in college who would go to class stoned and treat me like shit because I didn’t smoke weed.   Too many people think that blazing up entitles them to act like a dick because they’re “cool”.  No, you’re an asshole who smokes weed.   By now weed is so prevalent that smoking it is no longer noteworthy, much less an excuse to be a jerk.   Nothing about smoking it gives you ANY excuse to treat people poorly.   In fact, given weed’s tendency to mellow out and increase tolerance, if you’re an asshole on weed, or an asshole who smokes weed, that makes it that much worse.  NO BUD FOR YOU.

While I’m on the topic of things which piss me off, it’s becomes readily apparent that opposition to legalizing marijuana is motivated not by any good faith or legitimate concern for the effects of the drug itself, but pure spite.  The majority of stoners seem to be liberal Democrats or further left on the spectrum, so “screw them”:  let’s keep marijuana illegal just to cause problems for them.  This is why Nixon put it on Schedule I back in the early 70s even though, even then, the scientists and politicians were well aware that pot was less harmful than alcohol.  Do we have a right to ban things simply because we don’t like them?  If you asked Jefferson and Madison they’d tell you to get lost.  “We didn’t fight the British and establish a free country so you could legislate your own personal issues.  Get real.” 

Gym Pigs.  Ah, I didn’t comment on this one yet.  Those who super set with two exercises at once and claim to be using both, AND won’t let you work in.  Or they’re jerking off with their cell phone in between sets, not in between exercises.   Is your name GOLD?  Is this YOUR gym?  I didn’t think so.

Decriminalization < > Legalization

I’m trying to avoid incessantly blogging about drugs, but confusion about Denver’s recent action has induced me to revisit the issue again to clarify the issue, mainly because it pisses me off when people say that Denver legalized psychedelic mushrooms, because it didn’t.

Denver (the city) not the entire state of Colorado, decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms.   They remain illegal.  However, if you are caught with them, instead of going to jail, you are simply hit with a fine.   Since they’re still on Federal Schedule I, all bets are off for getting caught by the FBI, though I’m not aware that federal authorities are prosecuting anyone hit with civil fines on decriminalized drugs.   Decriminalization doesn’t mean legalization, it just means that possession of modest amounts considered plausible for personal consumption, incurs a civil penalty and not criminal sanctions.  Larger amounts still incur misdemeanor or felony charges and jail time. 

Legalization (except as noted below) means you can buy and sell it – and so far, that means in dispensaries which are heavily regulated and collect the state taxes on the transactions.  Many states have decriminalized marijuana but not legalized it, so people still have to either buy it from illegal dealers or grow it themselves.  As a practical matter, the police rarely bother to enforce the law once it reaches this threshold.  This is probably the #1 benefit of decriminalization:  while ordinary people with no source for these drugs can’t purchase them from a dispensary, those who do have a source can buy and sell with little or no concern about unwanted intervention by the authorities – at least the local authorities.   

DC and Maine legalized possession, but not sale, of marijuana.  This means you have to grow it yourself.  The police might be inclined to ignore sales IF the parties get clever by selling other items of nominal value and including the market value of MJ in the transaction as a “free gift”, e.g. buy this otherwise worthless sticker for $60 and we’ll throw in a quarter ounce of marijuana for free.  This seems to be the case in DC.  While it violates the spirit of the law, it does adhere to the letter of the law.  The lawyer in me considers this a form of corruption, while the libertarian in me, who believes all drugs – even heroin – should be legal, views this as a rare occasion when the authorities reach an accommodation with private citizens which moves in the proper direction and counteracts laws which are improper and immoral. 

Maryland has recently legalized medical marijuana, and the statute allows a physician to prescribe marijuana, full blown with THC as opposed to non-psychoactive CBD, if he/she believes that the benefits in treating the patient’s condition, whatever it might be, outweigh the risks.  Given there are no risks associated with MJ, that means literally any condition would qualify, not just cancer or glaucoma.  Medical marijuana dispensaries are now open, including two in Rockville alone.  Sadly, Maryland also ruled that having a medical MJ bans you from owning guns, but that restriction may end up overcome by court rulings – we do have the Second Amendment, remember?   Stay tuned.  Like the selling a sticker and a quarter ounce, these loosely drafted medical marijuana laws act as a de facto loophole to counteract an otherwise bogus law.  Yet again, the libertarian in me applauds this. 

Oddly, many recreational marijuana dispensaries, such as in Colorado and Massachusetts, will sell to non-residents.  In MA, the stipulation is that all such MJ sold must be consumed in Massachusetts.  There’s a dispensary in Springfield, just up the road from Connecticut, where MJ remains illegal.  MA also borders New York, Rhode island, Vermont, and New Hampshire.  Guess what – those states are now seriously considering legalizing now.  Because there’s really no effective way to make sure that no one takes all that MA-purchased MJ into a bordering state.  D’oh!  Do we want that tax money going to Boston - or Hartford, Providence, Concord, Montpelier, or Albany?

What’s funny is that I know people who live in Colorado – and none of them smoke MJ.   Same with my friends in Massachusetts, Nevada and Canada.  Simply because you legalize it doesn’t mean everyone will do it.  We’ll see what happens in Denver, which now has a marginally larger array of mind-altering substances to sample.  Shrooms won’t be sold in dispensaries – yet- but the penalties for possessing smaller amounts will be substantially reduced, at least in Denver.   :D 

As noted earlier, even marijuana is still illegal at the Federal level.  Under Obama, the Feds took the position that they would hold off on enforcing federal marijuana laws in states such as Colorado and Washington which had legalized recreational MJ.  Jeff Sessions, until recently Donald Trump’s Attorney General, made noises that he would change that, but to my knowledge the Feds have yet to do so.  For his part, Trump himself varies from one day to the next, so I’m ill-inclined to pay attention to his position (as it changes by the hour, it seems).  Moreover, Chuck Schumer and others in Congress are proposing to end the Federal ban on MJ, which will not only make this a moot issue, but also allow MJ sellers to enter the banking system.  I won’t hold my breath, but overall the trends seem to be positive.  

Texas Hippie Coalition

Back in high school in Paris in the early 80s, I discovered heavy metal.  AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc.   I’d also heard of this band called the Grateful Dead.

With a name like that, they had to be hardcore metal, right?  And all these album covers with skulls and roses, you know?  So I bought Reckoning, a double live acoustic album, and was …”HUH?”  A helpful friend, Sean C., observed that this material was in fact standard fare for the band and agreed to take this album off my hands.   Decades later, he still has the vinyl I gave him, and I replaced it with the CD version (with extra tracks).  Suffice to say that the Grateful Dead were not nearly as heavy as their name would imply.

Fast forward to 2018 and I found the opposite with regard to this band, Texas Hippie Coalition.  I suspect they wanted everyone to know they smoked weed and wanted a band name which fit tetrahydracannabinol (THC), which we all know is the active ingredient of marijuana and gives it the ability to make you stoned.  All well and fine, but while “Texas” and “coalition” don’t necessarily imply any particular type of music – except maybe ZZTop – “hippie” certainly implies the type of music hippies generally listen to, the #1 being…the Grateful Dead.   So with a name like that, the most obvious implication is that this is a jam band. 

Nope.  THC sound like Pantera mixed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.  They are definitely heavy and brutal.  Mind you, there is no law that says everyone who smokes MJ and listens to music has to listen to the same music.  Rappers love weed.  Deadheads love weed.  Floyd fans love weed.  And metal fans – particularly fans of so-called “stoner rock” (mostly highly influenced by Black Sabbath with about 25% Pink Floyd added in) – also love weed.  Not everyone, of course.  Plenty of us stoner rock fans are happy with a beer or two and don’t need a joint or bong to appreciate even songs like “Sweet Leaf”.  I enjoyed the THC show on Monday night with nothing more than a 16 oz Blue Moon consumed while the last opening act, Kobra and the Lotus, was playing.

Band Names.  While I’m on the topic…  THC is not the only band openly expressing its love for the weed.  Of course, Black Sabbath sang “Sweet Leaf”, pot leaves can be seen on the cover of Second Helping by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and of course many rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Cypress Hill are likewise open and notorious about their habits.  Many stoner rock bands make it a point to name themselves accordingly, such as Bongzilla, Weedeater, and my favorite (from Poland), Weedpecker.  The bands vary in how brazen they are about displaying the pot leaf – which itself is fairly distinctive and recognizable by now (and is NOT on Ohio State football helmets, by the way) – on their albums or t-shirts, Brant Bjork these days being the most so, competing with Wino in that regard.  This band’s pot leaf shirt is long sold out. 

As MJ legalization gains momentum I dare say we’ll see more of this.  Eventually I expect the straight edge crowd to follow suit to remind us that not everyone smokes weed.  (No, really?)  Anyhow.

Band. Their prior bassist, John Exall, left the band recently and was replaced by a left-handed guy un-named on the website and in the show, who did a remarkably good job of looking cool and getting the job done.  Whether he earned the right to remain in the band after the tour remains to be seen.  Drums are done by Timmy Braun, twin guitars by Nevada Romo and Cord Pool, and – last but not least - the vocals handled by the large, verbose and unmistakable “Big Dad Rich”, whose mike stand was a double-barreled shotgun.  Like AC/DC, this band has one member who vastly outshines the rest of the band, and BDR is definitely that guy.  In addition to his powerful singing voice and imposing stage presence by sheer mass alone, he loves to tell the audience about his prior career smuggling weed from Mexico and selling it in the US at a profit.

Discography.  Pride of Texas (2008), Rollin’ (2010), Peacemaker (2012), Ride On (2014), Dark Side of Black (2016).  Of these, I purchased the newest and listened to the prior albums on Spotify in reverse order.  Pride of Texas could be considered a de facto Pantera tribute album, released 8 years after Pantera themselves released their last album, Reinventing The Steel.  Mind you, THC made no secret of their love for Pantera, and as fellow Texas metalheads it’s hardly a surprise.   As the band developed the material gets a bit looser and groovier, leaving Pantera not far behind but at least no longer being a verbatim copy anymore.

The point of all this is because on Monday night, April 30, I caught the band live at the Baltimore Soundstage, a small club in downtown Baltimore just north of the Inner Harbor.  Of the three opening acts, I caught the last one, Kobra & the Lotus, essentially a heavy hair metal band with a leather-clad female singer who looks like Britney Spears as a Motley Crue fan. 

With time and money in finite supply, we can’t see every show we want, and usually we end up seeing bands we’ve seen already because we know we’ll enjoy the show.  But every now and then we see a band we’ve never seen before, like this one.  [I say “we” but in fact I saw the show alone.]

I got there a bit early, and before sundown, so I took the liberty of parking on the street and walking around.  Although I’d been to a few shows at the Soundstage before, at those times I arrived just in time for the show, already dark, and wasn’t able to relax and look around.  I briefly cruised through Buns & Nubile in the power plant building, complete with huge smokestacks – no longer active – rising up through the store and up through the roof.  I had dinner at Chipotle (not much different there).  I walked around the pier, which is parallel to where the Pier Six Pavilion is to the east.  I recalled a date back in September 2006 with an annoying Filipino woman – right here at this exact place.  Then once all the random and restless nonsense was out of my system and I calculated that the last opening act was due to go on, I returned to the venue and checked in.

Before a band goes on to play, particularly a headliner, the venue plays songs on the PA specially chosen by the band the prep the audience for the upcoming musical festivities.  These aren’t random songs.  Before Clutch went on at Terminal 5 in NYC in December 2015, a few days after Lemmy had died, they played Motorhead songs in tribute to the fallen Hawkwind bassist.  See next entry…

Clutch.  Oh, this is funny.  I was wearing my Clutch hoodie to the show.  Clutch are from Germantown, Maryland, and with KIX long off the radar, are probably the premiere rock band from Maryland at this time.  THC put the Clutch song “Spacegrass” on the PA before they took the stage.  This is the song that starts off slow and includes lyrics about “Galaxie 5 0 0” and “Jesus on the dashboard” (often deliberately misheard as “Jesus on the dance floor”).  You would think a Baltimore, Maryland crowd would react to Clutch – and this being one of their most popular songs and most commonly played live despite set lists changing every night - but I was the only one in the audience wearing Clutch gear and the only one who recognized the song, prompting a high five from the security guy at the side of the stage – the only other Clutch fan in this place.  Anyhow.

Live.   Big Dad sings.  Nevada and Cord play guitar.  Drummer drums, bassist basses, and Big Dad belts out the tunes and tells us about weed in Texas.  All highly entertaining and worth enjoying at least once in a lifetime.

Happy 420

Yeah, more weed jokes.  But not from me.   I’ll just offer up more observations on the topic.

4:20 & 4/20.   It’s not just Hitler’s birthday, it’s the alleged time and/or date to toke up.  Really, you can toke up at 4:19, 4:21, or any other time of day, and any other day of the year.  By now it’s so well known it’s not even special or unique. 

Stoners have a bad habit of assuming because they’re stoned and find literally everything funny, that everyone else will too – and find their nonstop laughter and amusement endearing.  Nope.  Please, laugh at everything responsibly.

New Jersey.   Despite the promises now-Governor Phil Murphy made during his election campaign last fall, weed is still not legal in the Magic Garden State.  Remember, he’s the governor, not the NJ state legislature, so he doesn’t pass laws, he simply refrains from vetoing laws which Governor Fatso would have nixed.   As for when the legislature will pass anything, we’ll have to wait and see.

Decriminalization vs. Legalization.   Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has indicated he’ll try decriminalizing MJ at the Federal level.  In Virginia, decriminalization is what Ralph Northam promised.  A step short of legalizing, it means possession of modest amounts, typically under a half ounce, becomes merely a civil offense.  In Virginia, possession of a half ounce – a large amount for personal use but too small to be Costco quantity (try more like a pound) – is still a Class 1 misdemeanor, i.e. the worst misdemeanor short of a felony.   Doing so at a Federal level would get the FBI and DEA off everyone’s ass, nationwide. 

The following states have decriminalized marijuana: Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island

By the way, we associate Federal drug enforcement with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), but the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also actively investigating and prosecuting drug offenses.  It seems the two agencies had a brief turf war but eventually reached an agreement: the FBI hassles us at home, and the DEA goes outside the US. 

Anyhow.  Decriminalization is NOT legalization.  The latter exists in several states right now, the pioneer being Colorado.  In that state, officially sanctioned dispensaries sell recreational marijuana.  An adult – and you don’t even have to be a Colorado resident – can go in and purchase modest amounts of high quality, THC-laden marijuana with colorful names like Ghost Trainwreck, Green Crack, Soul Diesel, OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookies, AK-47, and so on.  [Maybe the Trump crowd would be more tolerant if someone named a strain AR15.]

The following states have LEGALIZED recreational marijuana:  Alaska, California, Colorado (the first), Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Washington State.   Leave it to the District of Columbia (Washington, DC) to screw things up:  possession and growing is legal, but buying and selling is not.  Either you live there and figure out how to grow it yourself, or you play games bartering with people.  The MA law is in effect but their dispensary system is not yet operational – they hope to have it going by fall 2018.  They will sell to non-residents but all weed has to be smoked in MA.   How about a reboot of Cheers?  Woody would be the perfect budtender. 

Outside the US, Uruguay was the first country to legalize recreational MJ.   Canada did so recently, but their system isn’t online yet.  FYI, weed is NOT legal in North Korea.  What is are some hemp cigarettes with no THC, and which the locals will not sell you.   

Medical vs. Recreational.  Marijuana has two major ingredients:  THC and CBD.  THC is the active ingredient which gives it psychoactive effect and makes Pink Floyd albums so awesome.  CBD is what cures cancer.  Recreational strains emphasize THC and ignore CBD, whereas medical strains have almost no THC and instead maximize CBD. 

The medical laws vary.   The more liberal laws simply allow a doctor to issue a prescription for MJ if he/she believes you have some condition for which it would help.   California’s law, passed back in 1996, was this type, which acted in some ways as de facto legalization.   Other states were stricter, specifically narrowing this to certain unpleasant conditions like cancer, epilepsy, and other nasty diseases which most people don’t have.  Moreover, they often limited the patient to CBD oil which has no THC – i.e. you can’t get high off it.

Flower vs. Edibles vs. Hash.  Generally we think of MJ as the leafy herb people smoke in joints (horrendously inefficient), pipes, bongs, or more recently, vaporizers. 

Edibles are weed-infused cookies, brownies, gummies, etc.  The MJ has to be specially treated into butter or oil and then cooked normally into food you can eat.  The effects come on in two hours – instead of relatively instantaneously for smoked herb – but are 4 times what you could expect for the smoked version.  This has screwed up people who had never smoked and suddenly munched down on cookies and wondered what happened.  Even experienced smokers are warned to start slowly and take into account the two hour delay.  A major benefit of edibles, however, is not having smoke and smell everywhere.   With more places banning indoor smoking these days – e.g. literally everywhere in DC – that makes edibles more convenient.

At the top end is hash, wax, shatter, etc., essentially highly concentrated marijuana.  This can be consumed in a bong or special pipe.   See The Hasheesh Eater, by Fitzhugh Ludlow (1850s account by a verbose New Yorker).  It’s available wherever legal marijuana is available and probably best for those who have “been there, done that” and ready to maximize their MJ experience. 

Vape Shops.  These have sprung up like wildfire.  It seems every time I drive down the street I notice a new vape shop open.  Ostensibly these are for tobacco smokers who use vape pens and vaporizers to smoke their traditional herb, but they sell bongs and other items which are almost exclusively associated with marijuana.  Do NOT refer to marijuana, even if you’re buying a bong. 

Other drugs.  California is now debating legalizing – or at least decriminalizing – psychedelic mushrooms.  These are usually psilocybe cubensis – though there are lots of different psychoactive varieties – and considerably stronger than marijuana.  Mushrooms are a good approximation of LSD, though not exactly the same;  mushrooms sometimes induce nausea and other unpleasant physical effects which are absent with LSD.  Both cause intense hallucinations when consumed in sufficient quantity.   Even if these were fully legalized for recreational use – an outcome I’d consider optimistic even for California – the sheer intensity of these drugs makes them much less appealing and desirable relative to marijuana.

Heroin.   Rather than go on about meth, ecstasy (MDMA), cocaine, etc. I’ll simply head to the top.  Heroin is by its nature physically addictive.  Bayer invented it in 1895 as a safe, non-addictive alternative to morphine, only to find it was neither.  It was criminalized in the US in 1924.   As too many people have found out the hard way, you can die of a heroin overdose – which is not true of marijuana.

Despite that, I would argue that heroin should be legal.  While legalizing it would not make it non-addictive, it would be safer, though not completely safe.  The #1 thing making heroin dangerous, though, is its illegality.  Available cheap, in known doses and quality, the risk would be brought down to manageable levels.  As a practical matter, I would argue that demand for cheap, legal, top quality heroin would still be a fraction of demand for any other drug, especially marijuana. 

Moreover, if heroin can be legalized, all those drugs between marijuana and heroin could also be legalized.  The biggest concern for doing so is the consensus – an unproven assumption but taken as irrebuttable fact – that if you legalize something, literally EVERYONE will do it.  Legalize gay marriage, and overnight all these happily married heterosexual couples will abandon their opposite-sex spouses and hook up with same-sex partners.  Legalize cocaine and everyone will snort it.  Legalize heroin and we’re all stabbing our arms with needles.  Legalize LSD and we’re all flying jumbo jets into rainbows.  You get the idea. 

I know several people who live in Colorado.  How many of them smoke marijuana? NONE.   I don’t know anyone who left their opposite sex spouse to go get married to a same-sex partner simply because their state suddenly legalized gay marriage.  I know nobody – myself included – who would even try heroin if it were legalized tomorrow.  And if you really think about it, very few people actually would.  

   

For those of you who do toke, enjoy today while it lasts.  And tomorrow, and the next day….

Reefer Madness, Alice in Acidland, and Smoke & Flesh

I’ve already blogged on Thanksgiving, so I’ll go for something “completely different”: In other words, a horrendous trio of anti-drug films.  

“Reefer Madness”.  This is the original, from 1936, when marijuana was still called “reefer” and not yet (1937) illegal.  The characters look like typical characters from a contemporary film but generally tend to smoke pot and then everything goes downhill from there.   Apparently they all get addicted, go insane, and commit all sorts of crimes.  At the most benign, they laugh hysterically, play piano fast, and jump in bed with each other.  It’s so sensational as to be unbelievable.   Stoners seem to enjoy it precisely for that reason.  I find it more annoying than entertaining, but it has some inherent charm due to its age and unique implausibility.

Incidentally, they remade the film more recently (2005), with the remake being a full parody.  I watched it once and immediately erased it from my memory.  It’s in full color with fairly mainstream actors, follows the original plot loosely, but isn’t all that entertaining. 

“Alice in Acidland” and “Smoke & Flesh”.   Fast forward to the late 60s and LSD makes its debut.   If the first movie is any indication, it’s a powerful aphrodisiac which will make everyone have sex with everyone else – male and female.  More likely they would vegetate and watch the wallpaper scroll, or venture out in public to see what happens with the visuals.  Some might freak out – paranoid and overstimulated - and stay at home.  But chilling at home with lava lamps and music doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s LSD agenda in this film. 

            The second movie features marijuana but remains just as implausible.  Bikers and orgies.  Both have lots of skin – but if I wanted that, I’d watch something else.

The sad part about this is that as of 2015, very few people take these seriously, and the only people who watch them are looking to be entertained rather than warned.   As “warnings” they are too ridiculous to be credible.  As entertainment?  Scarcely even that, as the novelty wears thin almost immediately and they lose whatever entertainment value they might have.  They wind up as simply annoying.  Of them all, I’d say “Reefer Madness” is strange enough to be somewhat entertaining, while the other two have some nudity which may arouse some people.  None need to be permanent additions to your movie collection.  

Listening to idiots like Chris Christie – dude, NO ONE wants Fat Jerk from New Jersey as President – champion the drug war even now, it’s clear that some people are still stuck in the backwards mindset which produced these films.   

The Hasheesh Eater

What with the recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, and the increasing likelihood that other states will do the same, it might be a good time to review a major work on a related topic, dating from the mid 1800s, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater (Annotated).   Reading his work gives us a vicarious experience without actually partaking of the drug(s), although filtered through Ludlow, the book itself is somewhat of an experience.   Thus, hopefully my readers will forgive me if I adopt Ludlow’s ponderous prose to address this topic.

Who was this man, Ludlow?   He was an American (1836-1870) who lived in New York state.  He went to Union College in Schenectady, New York (northwest of Albany), wrote their “fight song”, and is still mentioned on their virtual presence.  Judging by his appearance in photographs, were he to be portrayed in a modern film, I would suggest that Jared Leto do the job.  In 1857 he published this book, which chronicles his hashish consumption, habit, withdrawal, etc.   Some experiences take place in Poughkeepsie, some in Schenectady, and some in New York City.  However, the NYC he saw bears more resemblance to the depiction with DiCaprio and Lewis, or the London of Dickens, than that of Douglas & Sheen, or the Seinfeld Quartet. 

I read the book in annotated format, meaning a modern writer, Gross, made little footnotes addressing some esoteric topics which Ludlow and his contemporaries would take for granted, yet those of us in the twenty-first century would draw complete blanks on.  The same writer also compiled a Companion.  This includes Ludlow’s later writings on the topic of opium, to which he became addicted after abandoning hashish – surely, out of the metal skillet into the flame over which it hovers – and de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, which served to inspire Ludlow to give us his own story, and both are equally tedious and ponderous with too much explanation of things which have absolutely nothing to do with hashish or opium.

Attempting to avoid the same vice, I share: what did Ludlow experience?  The cannabis adventurer of a Dickensian context and demeanor, describes a vast and deep journey into visions, hallucinations, and dreams.  Fantastic landscapes, exotic locales, plunges into the depths of Hell and ascendency into the skies of Heaven, even disembodied voices of both regions loudly barking either praise or condemnation for his audacity to sample the pleasures out of the ordinary mien of mere mortals.  His own source of inspiration was the literature and stories available to him, obviously including Milton and Dante.   Unfortunately for him, no recorded music existed at that time.  To experience such, a music lover would have to consult sheet music and produce the music himself on an instrument, or attend a classical concert or opera at a major concert hall in a large city.  Nor, of course, were moving pictures even conceived of at that time.

It may not be too ambitious of me to suggest that a contemporary adventurer, equipped with a like amount of hasheesh, could be transported to Middle Earth, Hogwarts, or Westeros, or perhaps travel to Rigel, Tatooine, Degobah, or Arrakis, or maybe a distant future when vicious robots adopting human form vied with humans themselves for control of a post-apocalyptic Earth.  Add to this our vastly improved resources for enjoying a wide variety of music in the privacy our own homes, on equipment of unheard of power and quality.  The possibilities for a modern hasheesh user are of several orders of magnitude vaster than what Ludlow could experience.  We might even weep in sorrow for the poor soul, were it not that he had no idea what he was missing.

There may be those of you wondering how Ludlow was able to experience all this.  If you are familiar with the stories of Mr. Marin and Mr. Chong, or the more recent adventures of the Indian and the Korean questing for meat products in New Jersey in mid-morning hours, or even have personal familiarity with cannabis and its effects, the question is even more acute.  Indeed, his accounts resemble more those of Professor Leary and Dr. Hofmann than these other individuals.  The answer lies in hasheesh itself.

The contemporary maconheiro consumes the cannabis by smoking.  He purchases a quantity for personal consumption most likely in the amount of a quarter of an ounce.  This lasts him for several weekends, perhaps three months, depending on how frequently he consumes and how generous he shares with like-minded companions.  In no event, however, could he possibly consume that quarter ounce quantity at one time (well, he could mix that quantity with a cup of butter and use that to cook “consumables”, but that is another story).

However, the special ingredient which makes cannabis so popular is contained in resins within.  These resins can be extracted and concentrated into a more potent form called hasheesh.   Ludlow speaks of “grains”, and consuming hasheesh orally.  The annotator made careful calculations and estimated that Ludlow’s largest doses at a single session equate to an ounce and a half of smokable cannabis herb.  In other words, a year and a half of smoking – at once.  No wonder his escapades were so dramatic and intense. 

As of now, it appears that hasheesh will be regulated in the same form as cannabis.  Of course, the days of simply stepping into the local apothecary and purchasing hasheesh or opium from the proprietor, without so much as a physician’s recommendation, are long gone.  However, events in Colorado and Washington suggest that a return to Ludlow’s apothecary environment, at least as regards cannabis, may not be so far off, as to require consumption of said products to even imagine the reality.  What lies for us in the future?  

Weeds & Breaking Bad

These are two remarkably similar shows, both on cable, and both continuing for several seasons.

 Weeds (Showtime).  Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is a widow living in Agrestic, California.  Her husband Judah, who had been the brains and breadwinner of the couple, abruptly died of a heart attack leaving her to raise their two sons Silas and Shane all by herself.  Apparently she has no high school diploma or college degree, or the slightest skills of any nature, as she delved right into the marijuana trade immediately and hasn’t looked back since.  I’ve just finished Season 3.

            Along with her children, there is also the city council’s goofball treasurer Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), Nancy’s BFF Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), her husband Dean (Andy Milder) and Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk).  Her primary source of weed is a quasi-Jamaican criminal godmother Heylia (Tonye Patano) and her (son? Nephew?) Conrad (Romany Malco) who is the real genius in growing the weed and is consistently the man who makes it happen.  He reminds me a lot of Montel Williams.

            Naturally, even being able to grow a decent crop means little without the means to sell it off and make money, and when the money does come in (as it tends to do) then the challenge is how to launder it.   And when the operation grows impressive, that attracts not merely law enforcement attention – e.g. Peter Scottson, the “Agent Wonder Bread” corrupt DEA agent who marries Nancy but can’t win her heart – but also competing gangsters, be they Armenian, black (U-Turn and Marvin), hispanic (Guillermo) or biker/redneck.  Everyone wants a piece of the action, it seems, and even non-gangsters, when they learn of the operation, then try to charge for their silence. 

 Breaking Bad (AMC, the same people who bring us “Mad Men”).  Almost identical plot, but considerably darker, especially with no comic relief from characters like Nealon or Kirk to lighten the mood.  Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a long-suffering, overworked and underpaid chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who develops terminal lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.  When his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) alerts him to the vast cash made by crystal meth dealers, Walter rides along on a bust and realizes he can cook far better meth than these clowns.  He quickly corrals former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) into a 50/50 partnership, with Walter producing the finest, purest meth anyone’s ever seen, and Jesse taking care of sales and marketing.  They cook in a used camper out in the desert, and Walt insists that they wear yellow hazmat suits and gas masks.

            Of course, keeping this a secret from his ugly wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and cerebral palsy-suffering teenage kid Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte – looking like Steve Martin’s long-lost love child) is a challenge.  By the end of Season 2, she’s left him, convinced that his secrecy is hiding an affair, not a lucrative crystal meth business.   Hank himself is beginning to suspect him at this point.  What saves Walter is that NO ONE can imagine this bald, super uncool high school chemistry teacher – who eventually code names himself “Heisenberg” - is a crystal meth cook.

            As in “Weeds”, the challenge is to hide the cash and account for its results: how can Walt explain how he pays for expensive chemotherapy without the help of his former university colleague?  And the other huge problem is how to deal with nasty competitors who either try to shake them down or put them out of business.  For his part, Walt gets progressively more ruthless and aggressive about expanding the business and begins losing his patience with would-be competitors and his scruples about fighting back.  If he has to be a killer to make this whole thing work, damn it, he’s facing terminal cancer and is not about to back down from what has to be done.  This freaks out Jesse, who considers himself just a sales and marketing guy – if a bit of an unusual industry he’s in – but not a killer at heart.

 Nancy doesn’t smoke any of the marijuana (though practically every else does – even Shane tries it) and Walt never samples his own product, but Jesse has tried it enough to be able sell his customers on its quality.  Neither show glorifies the drugs, but marijuana still comes off as pretty harmless and crystal meth as a recipe for rotten teeth and terrible hygiene. 

 Neither show goes into enough detail to explain HOW to grow marijuana or cook crystal meth.  The former involves growing lots of plants, some form of fertilizer in big white containers, and lots of lights.  The latter involves chemicals and equipment and a fair amount of occupational hazards (e.g. poison gas or explosions) if not done properly.  While neither marijuana nor its by-products prove the least bit dangerous, Walt has managed to make phosgene gas, ricin (from castor beans) and thermite, an intense  burning substance useful for cutting holes in big thick steel doors.  No one is going to be able to watch the shows and know enough to go into business for themselves.  The real kicker to both these shows is that they show how dangerous and unpleasant both businesses are not merely for meek souls such as Nancy Botwin or Walt White who might be inclined to enter them to make some extra cash and solve their financial problems (and exchange them for a whole host of much more dangerous ones), but also the hardcore criminals who frequently wind up dead.  Very dead. and in some particularly nasty ways.  Enjoy both, and be warned.  

Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness

My computer at my old office crashed, along with the next few planned blog entries, so I have to adlib here and come up with something quickly. As it happens, I finished off Reefer Madness, a book by Eric Schlosser, best known for Fast Food Nation. I may as well review both of them.

I went into FFN expecting it to be an all-out crucifixion of McDonald’s and the fast food industry: nasty, obnoxious artery-clogging filth; and evil, soulless corporations enslaving millions of hapless workers in hopeless, dead-end McJobs. I was wrong.

First off, nowhere in FFN does Schlosser condemn fast food as unhealthy. Sure, he doesn’t claim that it’s healthy or good for you, but simply the absence of positive nutritional value is not, in itself, an indictment of this class of food as poison. He falls well short of that. In fact, he goes into considerable detail about the conscientious efforts of the various chains – particularly Jack-in-the-Box – to guarantee that its food is safe and free from bacteria and other impurities which could cause food poisoning or disease. Any discussion of the long-term effects of a lifetime of McDonald’s consumption is outside the scope of his book.

He was particularly impressed with the skill of the industry at developing artificial colors and flavors, centered in their chemical plants located along the New Jersey Turnpike (which any of us familiar with that strip of highway has surely seen at some point). Note: artificial almond flavor is actually LESS dangerous than natural almond flavor, which contains trace elements of cyanide. Yep. Though the amount of cyanide in an almond is so small, you’d have to eat literally thousands, or even millions, to have a chance of dying. Death by almonds? Not likely.

He was also impressed with the scope, organization, planning and efficiency of McDonald’s. As I recall from my days as a business student in college, practically every management professor and textbook was impressed by the thoroughness with which McDonald’s structures its operations. The machines in each restaurant are specifically designed to work in a certain fashion with zero discretion left to the 16 year old no-experience, bad attitude slackers who make up the workforce.

Granted, that makes the job itself as soulless and dull as any on an assembly line in a factory – after all, the goal is to mass-produce fries, burgers, etc. and quickly serve them to hungry, impatient customers – but it means we, as customers, can count on the same food, in the same quality, and the same quick service (if not sincerely pleasant!) whether it’s a McDonald’s in New York, L.A., Paris, London, Moscow, or Tokyo, allowing for regional variations in menu and taste, which is by design, not any failure of the local operation to meet corporate standards.

Naturally the personnel practices of McDonald’s and other chains are never going to impress Michael Moore, but Schlosser falls far short of condemning the industry as feudal. That is reserved for the next book….

Despite its title, Reefer Madness is not just about marijuana, though 1/3 of the book is devoted to that subject. The theme of the book is America’s underground economy: marijuana, illegal immigrants, and pornography. Here is where Schlosser takes closer aim at questionable employment practices, particularly among illegal immigrants in California’s strawberry farms (and to a lesser extent Florida’s fruit industry). Not only does he roast the growers in California who mercilessly exploit the Mexicans, he explicitly questions the Invisible Hand of capitalism and invokes Adam Smith to specifically invoke the dreaded words “market failure”.
Unfortunately, he does little to suggest what the solution to that market failure is, beyond a passing idea of paying the workers a penny more per unit. But consider this: first of all, we already have minimum wage laws; second, these are illegal immigrants, who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place, much less working. What exactly is the argument that people who entered the country illegally and are violating the laws by working (albeit with the obvious cooperation of their employers) should receive the benefit of our labor laws? This issue was completely ignored.

On the other hand, these people do provide a valuable service, and they do something which no one else in the country is willing to do -"it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it". In fact, the growers may have a difficult time hiring Americans to pick strawberries even if they were willing to pay a decent wage and America's strawberry consumers were willing to pay a higher price. The guest worker solution - proposed by others and criticized by Schlosser - seems to be the most appropriate recognition both of the need for these workers in our economy and their illegal status.

Given how heavily he slams not only the industry but capitalism as an economic form, this is all the more reason why he should have spent an equal amount of time providing a solution – one which would not have caused more problems than it solved. I didn't hear much of that from him besides his cursory rejection of the guest worker proposal. All very well to sneer at “the invisible hand” and write off the Libertarians as naïve children who fail to recognize the true complexity of modern society and economics, but if you can’t propose a realistic solution, or a better alternative to other proposals, you should just shut up. Two words: RENT CONTROL.
The other two thirds of Reefer Madness concern marijuana, with a strong emphasis on how stupid many of these mandatory minimums are, and the hypocrisy of politicians who demand the death penalty for drug dealers – except when their own children are caught selling pot by the pound under their very noses. He’ll get no argument from me: amen, brother, he’s preaching to the choir…. Obviously marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, yet gets hammered as if it’s cyanide. Come on. Both the idiocy of the harsh drug laws and the rapant tyranny of the asset forfeiture laws (discussed briefly therein) could fill entire books.

The third part is porn. The majority of this section is a lengthy biography of Rueben Sturman, the man who singlehandedly created the US porn industry; covering Sturman basicially describes how the porn industry itself got started here. Here’s where Schlosser is more simply informative and isn’t up on his Marxist-Socialist soapbox. It's hard to tell whether Schlosser considers him a victim or a hero; on one hand he developed an important industry, on the other he evaded taxes until an IRS agent finally brought him down. Perhaps he's neither - or both.

Entertaining, on both counts. Unfortunately the porn section didn’t provide any samples…