One of the greatest living thinkers discusses the world’s finest plant.

The US Federal Government has been waging war against us for over seventy years. Since the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act in 1937, marijuana has been considered an enemy of society. In 1969, President Nixon declared war on this enemy. Like all wars, the enemy has been demonized with such success that the original reasons have long been forgotten. Yet the war goes on.

When marijuana was first outlawed, the government used propaganda to convince non-marijuana smokers that the plant made people violent. When this claim was finally understood to be patently false, the justification for marijuana prohibition turned to a belief that God disapproves of marijuana. More recently, most Americans have moved away from justifying prohibition with religious dogma and have instead adopted a paternalistic view of State power. According to this view, today the war against marijuana is said to be fought on behalf of our health.

But the venom spewed by prohibitionists is much more extreme than would be warranted by a concern for the health choices of the marijuana user. It is a hatred that is so explosive that it must be based on something deeper than a heartfelt concern for our well-being. Afterall, there is no similar reaction to those who smoke cigarettes, drink martinis, or overeat to the point of morbid obesity. While marijuana activists publicly argue the effects of cannabis on our health, we should also be asking the question, “Why do they hate us?”

The answer is quite simple. They hate our freedom.

They hate the fact that we choose to ignore their demands on how we treat out own bodies. While they fear the consequences of contradicting Taliban-like laws that restrict personal choices, we embrace the same belief in personal liberty that made men like Patrick Henry and John Hancock famous. And they hate us for it.

They hate the fact that we do not respect the government’s right to decide how we may use the plants we grow. As the prohibitionists cringe at the thought of disobedience, marijuana users challenge the restrictions imposed on us from above. We identify with men like John Hancock, who saw his ship “Liberty” seized by his government when he was charged with smuggling in 1768. Back then, the forbidden substance was the tea leaf. While the Boston Tea Party may have ignited the flames of freedom in a single night, the less-violent Marijuana rebellion has taken decades. But, like the freedom fighters who contested the Divine Right of Kings, we will not surrender our personal liberty simply because the government demands it. The prohibitionists want us all to be loyal subjects. Like Patrick Henry, we demand our freedom. And they hate us for it.

They hate the fact that we believe in our hearts that we are the true owners of our bodies. The prohibitionists believe that the government has the God-given right to shackle the people with whatever rules it deems good for them. They continually demand new reasons why we should be free of their chains, and dismiss any reason offered with “you just want to get high.” They have turned their bodies over to the State willingly and are offended that we have not. Marijuana users have retained ownership of our bodies against the will of the State. And they hate us for it.

Marijuana prohibitionists hate that we have chosen to remain free. Like the loyalists who dared not question the authority of the King during the American revolution, they value obedience over liberty. They have barely noticed that the man chosen to rule over this area of American life is even titled “Czar.”

So while some marijuana activists spend their time and energy trying to convince the Czar to grant us our liberty, the rest of us should continue to challenge the legitimacy of having a Czar in the first place. We own our bodies. They are not the property of the Czar. And although we are not violent or confrontational the way the freedom fighters of the Boston Tea Party were, we value our liberty every bit as much.

That is why the government has declared war on its own citizens. It is not a war to protect us; it is a war to control us. And we will not surrender. If the prohibitionists choose to hate us for that, let them hate. Because, although they may attempt to spin their hatred into a concern for our best interests, it is clear that what they are really angry about is their lack of liberty. And they resent us for not joining them in bondage.

The following events actually happened. The story is not from a Saturday Night Live skit, a performance art piece, or a hidden camera television show.

During a pharmaceutical company pub-crawl, Captain America entered a bar in Melbourne, Florida. Inside, the symbol of America’s spirit began abusing a woman verbally before grabbing her between the legs. When the cops nabbed him, Captain America started destroying marijuana in the toilet.  Some news outlets reported that he also had a burrito hidden in his tights.

From nbc6:

Captain America Arrested For Alleged Bar Attack

Melbourne police officials said Raymond Adamcik, who was dressed as Captain America, made rude suggestions to a woman in the bar and grabbed her between her thighs.

Police said after Adamcik had his booking photo taken, he tried to flush a bag of marijuana and a rolled joint down the toilet.

Adamcik has been charged with battery, disorderly conduct, possession of marijuana and destruction of evidence, authorities said.

Melbourne police said the altercation stemmed from a pub crawl sponsored by a pharmaceutical company. Those who attended the crawl were wearing costumes.

From Canada.com:

A man who set up a sophisticated marijuana operation in his basement to pay off gambling debts will have to wait until May to find out the cost of his crime.

Trung Trinh had 287 marijuana plants in various stages of cultivation set up in four rooms in the basement of his Halifax Street house when police searched the residence in May of 2006.

Hal Wellsch, an agent for the federal Crown, said the man, his wife and their two children, aged 12 and nine, lived in the house, but the plants were kept behind a locked door downstairs. Trinh told police he started the drug operation early in 2006 as he struggled to support a family and deal with a costly gambling addiction.

The word ‘addiction’ essentially has two meanings. Originally, addiction was a scientific term referring to the need to ingest a greater dosage of a given drug to produce an identical effect. It referred strictly to a chemical response in the body and could be applied to substances like alcohol and tobacco.

The second definition is more of a weapon than it is an objective term. Today, a person who continues to engage in any behavior to a degree that society thinks is excessive is considered an addict. Now people supposedly suffer from porn addiction, sex addiction, and all sorts of other behavioral “problems.”

The new definition of addiction is medically meaningless but socially critical. It functions as the modern scarlet letter for those who engage in some behaviors, while it provides a convenient rationalization for those who prefer other “addictive” behaviors.

So when Rush Limbaugh is found to be living on opioids, we consider it an illness. When a Kennedy gets drunk or swallows a handful of sleeping pills and goes tooling around town in his car, we understand. And when a presidential contender states plainly that he was drunk until age 40, we applaud his strength of character.

Marijuana, it seems, is exempt from this public understanding. When a presidential candidate is found to have taken a single, uninhaled toke decades ago, it is a cause for national concern. And when a 41-year-old mother of two who suffers from an inoperable brain tumor, a seizure disorder, wasting syndrome, and other documented medical conditions treats it with cannabis, there is no concern or compassion. She is branded a common criminal.

California has taken steps to address this mockery of justice. In 2000, we passed Proposition 36, which changed state law to allow some nonviolent, simple drug possession offenders the opportunity to receive substance abuse treatment instead of incarceration. This program has helped over 70,000 people and California has not erupted into anarchy. Hopefully, California can serve as a model for other states and nations to begin to reevaluate their policies regarding addiction.

Until then, most of us will go on accepting the common line on addiction. So when Trinh tells a jury that he was driven to grow marijuana by an uncontrollable urge to play poker, we will not laugh. We will not wonder if gambling is a “gateway” to marijuana cultivation. And we will not condemn him for his compulsive behavior – as long as it is only gambling.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

Stephen DeAngelo bent and sniffed deeply over a clump of frizzy purple nuggets in a petri dish, one of eight sitting in the middle of a long refectory table. They were not labeled or arranged in any particular order, although to the experts assembled in DeAngelo’s Oakland loft — “cannabis is my calling,” he says — their identity was no mystery.

“I would describe this as grapey, candy-like, sweet, with a slight undertone of spice,” said DeAngelo, a longtime activist and hemp promoter who is now chief executive officer of Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He was holding the tasting at home where he could properly and legally — at least in the eyes of California, if not the federal government — evaluate some samples. To prepare, he’d taken off his green tweed coat, loosened his tie and settled in a chair near his vaporizer, an apparatus that allows him to breathe vapor instead of smoke, because it’s less harsh.

“It is grapey, but I get flowers,” said Rick Pfrommer, the dispensary’s purchasing agent, as he inhaled a strain called the Purps. “I would use the word pungent. It has a pungent funk undertone.”

“It is grapey, with a hearty musty bottom,” added Elan, the center’s manager, who preferred not to use his last name despite the fact that he, like Pfrommer and DeAngelo, is a card-carrying medicinal user and dispensary member.

DeAngelo arranged the tasting to show how far marijuana has come since the 1970s when, as a common joke goes, there were two kinds of pot, good and bad. These days, especially in the years since California approved medical use, there are too many to count. Harborside offers about 40, each recommended for various ailments and conditions. Sophisticated growers, who can manipulate color and cannabinoids — pot’s active ingredients — bestow their seeds and strains with exotic names. Some have taken “landrace” or indigenous breeds from Burma, India, Mexico or California and crossed them to create, said Elan, “these crazy strains.” Center clients can swap reviews or seek information on the Internet at sites like weedtracker.com (for medicinal users) or newsstands about the burgeoning array of options.

There are glossy magazines and cannabis cups, including High Times magazine’s long-standing annual event in Amsterdam where pot smoking is legal. Marijuana guru Jorge Cervantes, author of a “Medical Growers Bible” and probably the closest thing the weed world has to the wine world’s Robert Parker, appears in an online High Times video where he talks about his contest judging “system.” Seated at a table covered with a white cloth and a few dozen samples spread in a semi-circle, he demonstrates how to squeeze the buds and rate olfactory nuance.

“Some of the fragrances you should look for are sweet, spicy and musty,” he says, dressed in a black jacket, a black beret covering his long black hair. “If it’s sweet, what’s it like? Is it like bubblegum? Is it like honey? … Is it minty? What does that mean? Is it like a rose? Or a cherry?”

As the quality and variety of marijuana products in pot clubs have grown, so too has an emerging marijuana connoisseurship or, as some call it, “cannasseurship.” “I guess,” said DeAngelo, when asked about the term after trying several samples, “I’m a cannasaurus.” In medical marijuana circles, the treatment potential of a certain strain, whether it produces a “body high” or a “head high” that dulls pain or stimulates appetite, treats pain, nausea, sleeplessness or other ailments, is paramount. But to a distinct and discerning subculture, there is another dimension.

And if there is a center in the United States for this breed of maven, it is California, particularly the Bay Area. In a region of wine and food buffs, where there is a constant quest for the best bread, cheese or olive oil, it’s no wonder that marijuana, in its semi-legal status, has become a new frontier for expertise. There are medicinal consumers who covet designer strains and varietals — such as the one grown and harvested only by women in a remote northern county — or who want organic products and say they can taste what soil or fertilizer was used and want to know the lineage of what they consume, as well as the expected effects.

“In the Bay Area if you hand a joint to someone, they’ll say, ‘What kind is that?’ “said DeAngelo. “In Wisconsin, they’ll just say, ‘Oh, thanks …’ It is a great time to be in the cannabis business.”
As in any industry, say some insiders, some of this is hype and bluster. Dale Gieringer, California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says smoking various strains and being able to tell the difference is “a mystery to me.”

“I’ve been to cannabis cups and I can look at them and smell them and judge on appearance, but when it comes to smoking it’s impossible to differentiate [between types],” he said.

Cervantes, who now lives in Spain, says part of the publicity about new strains can come down to “money, money, money” in America. Consumers in Northern California, for example, are crazy about purple strains, he said. In general, they’re not as high quality as green varieties, but someone has figured out that “purple sells.”

“People try and be bigger and better than someone else and they make a lot of it up,” he said in a phone interview. “Since it’s not a controlled industry people can use a good story to make money.”

And none of this makes any difference to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which doesn’t recognize the state’s medical marijuana law. Whether it’s called White Widow, Sour Diesel or Bubble Berry, grown organically, hydroponically or on Aunt Martha’s porch, it’s illegal as long at it contains tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. THC levels have soared since the 1970s as growers moved indoors and learned more botany, going from an average of 2 to 3 percent to as high as 20 percent, according to Greg Sullivan, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division.
“It’s a marketing thing, truly just marketing,” he said of dope diversification. “We know they are different strains, like with wines, but we don’t analyze that. … Marijuana is marijuana. They’ve gotten very good at growing marijuana. It’s become an art.”

The botanist

In the introduction of his book “The Big Book of Buds,” longtime Bay Area medicinal marijuana activist and writer Ed Rosenthal describes the history of cannabis, from its origination in the foothills of the Himalayas to making its way on caravan routes in Asia and the Middle East and then to Europe and America. There, he says, laws prohibiting marijuana cultivation are what pushed growers to become more skilled as they moved underground. The laws actually “inadvertently promoted a breeding program exceeded by no commercial plant,” he says. California’s medical marijuana law further pushed the pioneers, turning underground botanists into boutique producers who can market to licensed clubs.

“Marijuana in the last 20 years has undergone an incredible change, more than at any time in history,” says Andrew, a landscaper, who only wanted to be known by his first name because he has a “side job” as a gardener for medicinal marijuana patients. “It is in its golden era now … Marijuana does not look like it did when I was young.”

K, another grower, who wants to be identified by his first initial because of security concerns, also has watched the transformation of the marijuana industry. In many ways, he embodies it. At 42, he is the co-owner of Trichome Technologies, a 10-year-old company that produces plants for medicinal clubs, and an award-winning grower who’s been voted the best producer in the history of High Times. “I’m not boasting, just stating my credentials,” he said when we first spoke.

When we met a few weeks later, he asked if I was surprised to see him, not in hippie or Rasta raiment, but in an ordinary pair of jeans, white tennis shoes and baseball cap. We talked at the Sea Breeze Market & Deli near the Berkeley Marina because he said he couldn’t “at this time” show his growing operation, although he has not been shy about his business. A recent High Times spread showcases his high tech warehouse and research facility, with its custom light, exhaust, temperature and irrigation systems.

K traces his fascination with marijuana to his childhood in Napa Valley. “I’m familiar with the wine world and that’s why the genetic makeup of things has always piqued my curiosity,” he said. “I’ve always admired George Washington Carver and Luther Burbank.”

He started cultivating on his own at 13, he said, when he ordered his first hydroponic kit, the Hydropot. It was not exactly a smashing success, but an endeavor which kept him out of the “perils and pitfalls that befall an average teenager.” While his cohorts in middle school were out discovering drugs and alcohol and sex, he was hunkered down at home studying horticulture and botany on his own. Saying he had a green thumb would be an understatement. K couldn’t even discard house plants. He still has a philodendron — named Herman — that someone scavenged from a funeral 20 years ago and gave him to take home.
He admits he “smoked my crop” in the early years, but only after school and homework. His parents, although not thrilled with his personal science project, respected the fact that he didn’t let it interfere with school. He graduated, he said, at the top of his class.

After high school, he continued studying botany on his own, forgoing college to focus on home study of marijuana. “I got my education the hard way,” he said. “No mentors, no professors.”

He eventually started experimenting with aeroponics, suspending the plants in air instead of in soil. “It was magnificent,” he said. “I loved the process. It requires someone who really likes playing with it.” Ultimately, however, the system was too complicated.

In the mid-’80s, he continued growing quietly, never becoming a big distributor or seller, but producing “for information.” Around him he watched as government surveillance pushed more growers underground and indoors. He was experimenting with variables — soil, water, light and temperature — to grow “better, simpler, more efficient.” He went from using conventional soil to rocks (”the rock revolution”) to rockwool, a substance that looks like cotton candy pressed into tubes and is less time consuming than rock to decontaminate. And he started collecting varieties only available by clone and not by seeds, until he had a dozen different plant clones and 250 seeds varieties. Today he grows all boutique varietals, he said, known for their nuances of color, potency, flavor, aroma and density of flower.

It is the aroma that most intrigues Rosenthal these days. He wants to isolate the odor molecules that produce fragrances in cannabis. These molecules, he said, can have “profound effects on whether it’s an up high or a couch lock” and what the marijuana can be used to treat. Different odors in the herb can increase acuity or relaxation, much like aromatherapy, he said. He’d like to develop marijuana stripped of these odor components, then be able to add them back to create products targeted for specific uses.

K’s company produces about 10 strains at any one time, but he said he is proudest of something called G13, a type “unique to us,” and purple kryptonite (”kryptonite is proprietary too”). What spurs him on is not commercial success, he explained, but the excitement of learning. If he didn’t have a crop to check on each morning, there would “be a hole in my soul,” he said. As one of the first 300 people to get a medical marijuana card himself, he uses the herb for pain related to sports injuries in his shoulders and knees.
But he has too much to do to use marijuana all the time, he said, returning to how he contradicts the stereotype of the hippie pothead grower. He would rather work, pursue his interest in race cars or play with his English bulldog.

“I dream about being able to map the genomes of each and every variety of marijuana to find out why one is purple or has high THC,” Rosenthal added. “To me, it’s never been about wanting to make money.”

The taste gurus

The viewing (”you have to look at it carefully and lovingly,” said DeAngelo) and smelling over, the tasters were ready to begin the penultimate test, tasting. The buzz, of course, is the final quality to register.
“What do we try first?” asked DeAngelo, surveying the petri dishes.

The group settled on something called Satori. DeAngelo put a pinch in a special grinder with tiny spikes and then loaded the grounds into a small chamber in his Stinel vaporizer, which he calls “the Cadillac of heat guns because of its digital temperature gauge.” When he fires up the heat gun, the THC in the marijuana vaporizes, ending up in something that looks like a plastic vacuum cleaner bag. Users inhale the vapor by sucking on a mouthpiece attached to the bag.

“The first thing I look for is how the vapor feels in my lungs,” said DeAngelo. “If it’s really good, it will expand.”

He inhaled and let out the air slowly. “Is it spicy or flat?” he said. “You’re looking for something a little spicy. Then I gauge the amount of aftertaste. I think this is spicy, neither sweet nor pungent.”

The others inhaled after him and concurred. Next they tried Sour Diesel.

“This is good,” Pfrommer said. “Oh my. What a difference.” Then he started to cough. “The flavor, it numbs your tongue and lips.”

“It’s not numbing, it’s tingling,” said DeAngelo. “I get more citrus notes out of this. With this particular Diesel I can taste the lineage from the citrusy parentage.”

Next they sampled some hashish called Mr. Nice, which they inhaled off a hot coal, avoiding the use of a butane lighter.

“Top shelf,” DeAngelo and Pfrommer said together.

“It has an incredible exotic taste that evokes oriental carpets and brass chandeliers,” continued DeAngelo. Then, turning to his visitors, he added, “This is what we do. We sit around and smoke weed and talk about work.”

Elan said he tries to help each patient — the Harborside Health Center has 3,000 members and about 175 visits a day — find the right product, either to inhale or eat. Pfrommer chooses the center’s pot, arranged in three glass cases and marked to sell for about $35 to $60 for an eighth of an ounce, from a select group of small “vendors.” As many as 40 a day, all center members with medicinal pot cards, come to show him their buds or cloned plants, but he buys from perhaps 10 percent of them, he said. He examines each specimen with a scope to look for resin, an indicator of strength and quality — which under close inspection should look like a dusting of snow. He smells and palpates them to find the best. “The rest leave with advice on how to make their medicine better,” he said. “The new generation of younger growers has a lot of energy. The older ones who used to make a living can’t do it anymore. I explain how the market has changed, that they need a niche or a strain that people want or they should get another job.”

DeAngelo said he sees Harborside, which already resembles a spa, with its high ceilings, turquoise walls, stainless steel cabinets and soft jazz, as a holistic health center. It offers yoga, hypnotherapy and medical qigong and he wants to add acupuncture. A marijuana activist since his teens when he participated in “smoke-ins” in Washington, D.C., DeAngelo said he dreamed of having a state-of-the-art dispensary. And now he has one.

The group eventually worked its way through five samples, then quit because everyone had to go back to work. They were not used to getting “medicated” during work hours, they said. Besides, they admitted, it was getting hard to evaluate the buzz. They were noticeably quieter as the tasting drew to a close. DeAngelo suggested a trip to a nearby Starbucks, hoping the caffeine would help them focus for the rest of the afternoon.

“I have another thought about the development of cannabis connoisseurship,” he said as we were about to leave. “It’s a classic story of American innovation. Marijuana has been around for thousands of years until it crossed our shores and we examined it and made it better and invented new ways of ingesting it. That’s in the mainstream of American values.”

For lovers of both Mary Jane and Mother Earth, the tragedy of global warming has rendered their affections incompatible, even hypocritical. At the halting speed at which any painful truth is disseminated, the role which marijuana smoke plays in the degradation of our earth’s atmosphere is finally being acknowledged.

Today’s unprecedented rate of CO2 emissions is one of the greatest concerns for environmentalists and other combatants of global warming. Most artificially produced carbon dioxide gas enters the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, waste and wood. And further down the list: burning of marijuana. Each and every joint toke, pipe puff and bong hit contributes to atmospheric CO2 emissions, and drives the knife a little deeper into the heart of our environment.

A study performed by the Institute of Medicine in 1988 shows that 57.3 mg of CO2 is released on average when a marijuana cigarette weighing 1115 mg is burned. At first this statistic may seem inconsequential, but by multiplying 57.3 by some very large numbers, like 999,898,989,707 and 84,999,999,999,999,999, and then performing a few more arbitrary calculations, I derived an enormous, undeniably consequential number - 8,549,343,023,499,999,999,999,999,999,999,934,983,532,948,234,982,342,498,533,498. Then, following simple deductive logic, I concluded that marijuana smoke is responsible for 8,549,343,023,499,999,999,999,999,999,999,934,983,532,948,234,982,342,498,533,498 teragrams of CO2 emissions every year, which is a frighteningly large statistic, and should impel all rational green-minded people to wean themselves from marijuana as quickly as possible.

When I shared my discovery with a well-known Cannabis connoisseur and environmental activist - who asked that I use the pseudonym “Geff Jibson” to shadow his real identity - he responded, “That sucks, man. That really stresses me out. I love the earth, because it’s so natural and stuff. But weed is natural, too. And it’s fuckin’ awsome. You know what I mean? What would Bob Marley do? This is so hard, man. Real hard. I need a joint. Wanna’ smoke?” Once I reminded Geff that smoking his joint, however cathartic it might be, would probably kill a whale, or at the very least annoy it, he conceded his marijuana cigarette and decided that he would just have to start eating more brownies.

Unfortunately, Geff’s proposed alternative to smoking marijuana would still aggravate the problem of CO2 emissions, albeit to a lesser extent. All plants, including marijuana plants, sequester carbon dioxide into the earth, converting it from its gaseous phase into harmless biomass. Every time a marijuana plant is damaged - an unavoidable result of cultivating it for its narcotic uses - less CO2 is sequestered from the atmosphere. Thus, even eating pot brownies, pot salad dressing, pot tomato soup and pot-basted chicken indirectly leads to the “deforestation” of marijuana plants and an increase of greenhouse gasses.

Indeed, all aspects of the “Pot Warming” disaster have been ignored by politicians, the media and even conservation organizations for quite some time. There are hints of change, however. There is a rumor, for instance, that Al Gore is working on a documentary, “An Inconvenienter Truth, Dude,” that will bring the issue international attention.

In our purportedly “progressive” community, ignorance of the effects of marijuana use on the environment is widespread. This was illustrated in Isla Vista during the past week with the nearly contemporaneous celebrations of Earth Day, 4/20 and the Joint Rolling Contest - events that attracted many of the same people.

Hopefully, people who get high and simultaneously advocate the conservation of the environment will begin to question the spurious harmony between their actions and their beliefs. Supporters of both the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Environmental Affairs Board will have to make a tough decision and pledge their allegiance to either one or the other. Like Geff, they will probably ask themselves, “What would Bob Marley do?” and then go get stoned and listen to “No Woman No Cry,” and forget about whatever they were thinking about earlier. But all the while, the earth will be crying.

Daily Nexus columnist Zach Phillips is “high” and mighty.

There is also the experience, known clinically as “Hung-upedness,” which strikes everyone regardless of race, creed, color, political posture or place of national origin of the grass. Small tasks or insignificant things take on tremendous importance and interest. Often you find yourself doing some little thing over and over, like scratching, or picking lint off of your dog, or staring at a tiny spot on the wall. Sometimes when you run into the kitchen to find out what happened to your friend (see above if you’ve forgotten about your friend), you’ll find her closely examining the tiny splashes that the dripping water makes in the sink. She probably has forgotten all about the Tab that she wanted so badly - which is just as well. Dietetic soft drinks are for the weak in spirit anyway.

Time distortion and hung-upedness act together quite often, and you find yourself doing something inane for a long time and thoroughly enjoying it, even though every now and then you think you’ve been doing it forever.

When you do do something dumb, such as to watch “The Price Is Right,” or “The Flying Nun” on T.V., another symptom is revealed. After staring like idiots at the show for eighteen minutes, someone will ask, “Why are we watching this stupid nonsense?” You will all turn and smile and nod at the one who asked the question, then resume your watching, as will he who spoke, until the show has concluded. Why? Because a basic truth about being stoned is that everything is good. Nothing is bad. Some things are phenomenally good, but nothing is phenomenally bad (except getting arrested - but even that’s a learning experience.)

Funnyness

This is one of the most pleasant and exciting psychological changes which occurs. There’s a little spot in your mind which tells you when you think something is funny and grass expands that little spot until that little spot takes over and everything is funny. Everything. Your friend’s teeth are a riot. A simple “Hello”brings on storms of laughter. And something which is genuinely funny, like hearing a good joke or watching the Marx Brothers can turn you into a convulsive maniac, writhing in agony and pleading for help. Going out in public in this mood can be a risky act because of the laughing problem, as you find yourself laughing at people who are not stoned and fail to see what is so amusing. Sometimes they hit you.

Passivity and Inertia

Passivity is another of the signposts of the stoned condition. Everyone is more passive when stoned than when straight. This does not mean that everyone is passive when stoned in the pure sense of passive. Hell’s Angels get stoned a lot and they’re not passive. They’re mean and nasty. But imagine just how mean and nasty they’d be without grass. They’d probably get rid of their little bikes and buy tanks and steam rollers to run you over with.

The story which capsulizes this passivity isn’t very funny, but it’s valid. If you haven’t heard it before we claim to have made it up. Three men come to a walled city at midnight. A sign on the bolted door on the wall to the city reads, “This Door Will Remain Locked Until 9 A.M. Tomorrow Morning.” Just by coincidence, the three men happen to be an alcoholic, an acid head, and a user of grass. (Yeah, you guessed it. It’s one of those rotten three part jokes.) After reading the sign, the alcoholic says, “Let’s break down the door.” The acid head says, “Let’s just float through the keyhole.” And the grass user says, “Let’s sit down and wait for tomorrow morning.”

See, we told you it wasn’t funny, but it’s true. And true is more important than funny. Of course, when you’ve got a funny truth, then you’ve got something.

One of the reasons for this passive feeling is the law of inertia, which results from the fact that whatever you’re doing at the moment is too good to leave.

If you’re lying quietly in bed listening to music and enjoying your ecstatic joy, someone invariably says, “Let’s go out.” They want to take a walk, or eat, or whatever. This becomes the last thing in the world you want to do. All you want is to lie there and listen to the music. But finally you get up, put on your clothes, and start to go - and now you’re filled with excitement about your adventure. Nobody, no matter what, could ever get you back into that bed. Well, maybe not nobody.

The rule is that your body, if in motion, will tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force; and if it is at rest, it will tend to stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force. Say that’s pretty good.

This whole thing could be very dangerous to your budget if you happen to wander into a store while stoned. Because you will like everything, you’ll want to start buying things. And once you start, it’s hard to stop. So avoid stores of any kind, especially supermarkets. They are the deadliest because they combine these qualities with that of the importance of food. Enter a supermarket and you will ram things into your shopping cart that you never noticed before, like Pez candy or banana flavored Maypo. You can’t possibly pass by the smoked oyster section - those pleading eyes and those little tails wagging with joy at seeing you. And at the checkout stand you’ll probably make an offer on the shopping cart because it’s fun to get pushed around in. And you’re going to be very confused the next day as to what to do with twelve pounds of mangoes.

Our friend Ernie once let this buying tendency get the better of him. One day when we were in his posh Highland Avenue apartment, we noticed a hundred and twenty assorted little glass pigs sitting on four walnut bookshelves hanging on the wall. You know, the kind you buy along with a pole lamp, just after you graduate college. We didn’t think Ernie was the kind of guy who’d collect little glass pigs, so we asked him about them. “I don’t collect them,” he said sounding slightly angry. “I bought them all at once last week when I was stoned.” “What do you do with them?” we asked in unison. “Nothing,” he answered. “Don’t you ever look at them?” “Yeah,” he said, “sometimes. But only if I’m stoned.”

The next installment of ‘A Child’s Garden of Grass’ will be posted next weekend. A single post containing the complete running-copy will be online soon.

PHYSICAL EFFECTS

The first mild sensations may be felt instantly after smoking half a joint, or an hour after having eaten some. Usually you creep slowly into a stoned condition, inch by inch sliding upward, but if you’ve eaten it, it may come on you suddenly, and strike you full force in the middle of a word. If the latter happens, it may sound like this: “So while I was shopping in the market I saw this fantastically beautiful chick, and I wanted to meet her. I was just about to use the ‘drop the jar of mustard on her foot’ ploy, when she…uh…what? What were we talking about?” And if the people you’re talking to are stoned, they won’t remember either.

Getting stoned suddenly and with full force most often is typical of having eaten rather than having smoked the grass. The reason is probably that an hour after you’ve eaten the grass, you’ve partially forgotten about it, and are therefore unconscious of the early barely perceptible signposts of being stoned.

The first sensation you will feel will be physical; a new tingling of some sort, a band of light pressure around your temples or in your shoulders or back. You become aware of your knees or your instep, or your head seems heavy and filled with chopped brown paper, or it might feel empty and floating farther above your shoulders than it’s supposed to. You might also become aware of your anus or genitalia. (If this happens, concentrate on it. Get to know it. Make it your friend.)

Your body might become warm or cold, but rarely enough to cause any real discomfort. And you will relax. This relaxation almost instantly melts into a quiet contemplative euphoria, and a soft muting of everything from the corners in your room to the texture of your chair. Suddenly you’re through the looking glass. It’s your bedroom or living room all right, and everything is exactly the same, but everything is exactly different than it ever was before you were stoned. And suddenly you don’t care about your arthritis, or that you have to appear in court the next day because of a speeding ticket, or that you’ve got a mid-term paper due in two days, or that you’ve only got one ear. Because suddenly you’ve discovered that the grain in the wood in the paneling on the door looks like the ripples of water when a rock is lobbed into a calm pond. And the photograph with the black border is suddenly given an interpretation because of the black border which now signifies something. And there’s a feeling going through your entire body that is sensual and exciting and you start to dig it. And everything is great and you just want to sit there and enjoy it.

You’ll also discover that grass is an analgesic, and will reduce pain considerably. As a matter of fact, many women use it for dysmenorrhea or menorrhagia when they’re out of Pamprin or Midol. So if you have an upset stomach, or suffer from pains of neuritis or neuralgia, smoke grass. If pains persist, smoke more grass.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS
Sometimes the early psychological changes coincide with the early physical changes experienced while stoned, but the famous mind-expansion (defined by us as pushed out of shape) comes after the first physical sensations.

One of the important things to remember when stoned is that grass distorts and heightens your awareness of both the outside world and your own psyche. This heightening and distortion sometimes work together, often resulting in confusion because you’re not sure of whether you’re seeing something more clearly than before or just differently.

Profound Revelations

Here comes another one of those conclusions that will send a lot of people into fits of pique: there is not such thing as a profound revelation while stoned! At the time of the thought, you may think that when you reveal it the universe will shake, but if you can recall it later when you’re straight, you’ll laugh at its insignificance.

The definitive story of false profundity concerns a well-known writer who, one evening while stoned (on something other than grass - but the principal is the same) was struck by a revelation of universal truth. He was overwhelmed by its significance and managed to bring himself back to reality long enough to scramble to his writing desk and frantically scribble his new-found wisdom on a scratch pad. The next morning our hero awoke, remembered that he had had some kind of vision and leaped out of bed to read what he had written. He picked up the piece of paper and read: “There’s a funny smell in the room.”

For those of you who still disagree with us, ask yourself this: In all the thousands of hours you have spent stoned out of your mind, have you ever once conceived of or invented something, or combined things in a new way, that had permanent substance and meaning? Oh, you’ve probably found a new way to interpret Dylan’s “115th Dream,” or you may have discovered a hitherto invisible burst capillary just beneath the skin on an inner thigh of a friend, or you may have drawn a groovy flower - but really profound, never. Ginsberg is right. Grass is fun. (That’s Allen Ginsberg. Ralph Ginzburg is also right.)

The fact that Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw a vision of the fragmented “Kubla Khan” while under the influence of laudanum (a liquid opiate), was shaken from the vision by a knock on the door, and, when he returned to write, the vision was there no more, weakens our argument not at all. Coleridge was a phenomenally gifted poet when he wasn’t stoned on opiates; “Kubla Khan” is one of his least important poems; laudanum isn‘t grass; and who knocked on the door?

Here are two “profound” revelations revealed to our friend Ernie while he was stoned: “Survival of the species is everybody’s business,” and “No matter how much you dislike pickles, it is, after all, the only thing that you can do with cucumbers.” At the time, Ernie was quite excited with these revelations and made an attempt to call the President to tell him about them.

What may cause this magnification of the importance of certain things is that your mind seems to be racing along, and, sometimes, operating on a number of levels at once. Coupled with the fact that you often have a tendency to forget everything almost as it happens, certain thoughts take on secondary and even tertiary meanings, and the whole thing can become very confusing.

Let’s listen in on a quiet scene in the house down the street. Andy and Virginia are very stoned, and spending the evening listening to their collection of old records and giggling a lot. Right now “The Syncopated Clock” is on the gramophone. Shhh, Virginia is going to speak:

VIRGINIA: Are you hungry?
ANDY: No. (Long reflective pause.) Wait a minute. Did you mean am I hungry for food, or am I hungry in the abstract, like hungry for knowledge or adventure?
VIRGINIA: What were we talking about?
ANDY: You asked if I were hungry.
VIRGINIA: Did I?
ANDY: Yes.
VIRGINIA: Well, are you?
ANDY: Am I what?

Time and Space

Your awareness of time and space also becomes confused. Things seem to take an unearthly long time, although sometimes, much less often, things which should take a long time, seem to have zipped by in an instant. Zipping slips by in an instant. Unzipping seems to take forever.

Our friend Ernie says he’ll never forget his first experience at a rock music concert while stoned. The group playing was the Doors and the first number was an eleven minute song called, “When The Music’s Over.” Two minutes into the song, Ernie leaned over to his girl friend and asked, “How many songs have they played?” “This is the first one,” she replied. “Oh,” Ernie said, but two minutes later he leaned over again and asked, “How many now?” “How many what?” she asked. “How many songs have they played now?” “One. Just one,” she said. “Come on!” Ernie said, in disbelief. “No, really.” “Oh,” Ernie said, unsatisfied. Two minutes later, Ernie leaned the other way and asked the stranger next to him, “Say, how many songs have they played?” The stranger answered, “Uh, wow, uh, you got a cigarette?” A minute later the stranger leaned over behind Ernie and began talking to Ernie’s girl friend, and before the song was over the two of them split.

Space alteration is totally unpredictable. Sometimes the room looks longer or shorter. The ceiling is three floors above you or an inch from your head. Maybe there will be no space alteration in your room whatever, but get up and walk down a flight of stairs and that flight of stairs becomes infinite.

It should be obvious that things which require good judgment of time and space should be scrupulously avoided when stoned. Things to especially avoid are cooking an egg, driving a car, and tightrope walking.

Time disorientation can sometimes cause you needless concern. Who hasn’t experienced having his girl friend say that she is going to the kitchen for some Tab, and then not see her again for two days? After concern that she has accidentally locked herself in the refrigerator, or been spirited away by Caryl Chessman, you run into the kitchen and yell, “What’s the matter?” only to realize that she’s been gone a minute and a quarter.

Since this weekend is 4/20, let’s start early…

NOTE: We have never smoked marijuana, and never will. But our friend Ernie Lundquist, has. He told us all the stuff that’s in this book. Ernie lives at 2120 North Highland Ave. Apt B Los Angeles, California 90028. He keeps his stash in his shower curtain rod. Now that the book is finished, we don’t need him anymore.

I – THE HISTORY OF GRASS

Grass was first discovered in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1907 by a small Polish immigrant by the name of Wayne Krulka. The discovery occurred in early May, while Wayne was working late in his study one evening, trying to find a shorter route to India.

II – THE EFFECTS OF GRASS

I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow;
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie,
And, watched by cockatoos and goats,
Lonely Crusoes building boats;
Where in sunshine reaching out
Eastern cities, miles about.
Are with mosque and minaret
Among sandy gardens set,
And the rich goods from near and far
Hang for sale in the bazaar;
Where the Great Wall round China goes,
And on one side the desert blows,
And with bell and voice and drum,
Cities on the other hum;
Where are forests, hot as fire
Wide as England, tall as a spire,
Full of apes and cocoa-nuts
And the negro hunters’ huts;
Where the knotty crocodile
Lies and blinks in the Nile,
And the red flamingo flies
Hunting fish before his eyes;
Where in jungles, near and far,
Man-devouring tigers are
Lying close and giving ear
Lest the hunt be drawing near,
On a corner-by be seen
Swinging in a palanquin;
Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
All its children, sweep and prince,
Grown to manhood ages since,
Not a foot in street or house,
Not a stri of child or mouse,
And when kindly falls the night,
In all the town no spark of light.
There’ll I’ll come when I’m a man
With a camel caravan
Light a fire in the gloom
Of some dusty dining room;
Heroes, fights and festivals;
And in the corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys.

THE BEGINNER

Because of the controversy regarding the subject of grass, very little has been discussed about the effects derived from its use, and what has been discussed has given the wrong impression. This is probably because the effects achieved are very subjective and very allusive. Using grass is somewhat like making love or going to St. Louis (to use two extremes), you really have to have done it to know what it’s about. We will, however, try to illuminate as many areas as possible to the best of our ability, which, you will quickly find, is extraordinary.

We assume our audience to be both those who have never used grass and those who have tried it, perhaps many times, but still want to know more about it. (We also notice in our audience a bus load of small elderly women from Schenectady, New York. Yu may stay with us, if you like, but please don’t speak out or rustle papers.) We will thus try to cover all phases of grass from the very first time one tries it to the time when one learns to use it as a tool not only for euphoria, entertainment and joy, but also as a tool for learning and understanding the world around him, and the world within him, too, if you want to be cute.

The first time a person tries to get stoned he may not feel any effect whatsoever. Many people, even after smoking themselves blind, and on good grass, feel no effect for the first two or three times – and there are some who report no effects even after ten times. It is, of course, possible that out of 3.4 billion people in the world, there must be some whose system just will not react with grass. For those we recommend needlepoint, weightlifting or any of the other traditional methods of reaching nirvana. We believe that except for these two or three weirdos, everybody can feel the effects of grass if they simply get over their fear of losing control. Your mind, if sufficiently motivated, can keep you from feeling the effects of grass just like the minds of fanatic mystics can keep their feet from feeling the hot coals they like to walk on so much.

Aside from the problem of fear of losing control (which is relatively rare), there are other barriers. Getting stoned, strangely enough, is a learning experience somewhat like swimming. While some people take to the water right away, others struggle for a long time. (Read our book, A Child’s Garden of Water, wherein we compare swimming with getting stoned.) Fortunately, there are known reasons why some people can’t seem to get high, and these barriers can be easily overcome.

The first barrier to overcome is the person’s belief that smoking pot gives one a “kick.” It does not. There is no jolt or sudden overflowing all encompassing feeling. There is not instant or major change. The effects come on slowly and smoothly. Many neophytes thus don’t think that they’re stoned simply because they’re waiting for the non-existent kick.

The second barrier is that there is no way to know how you are “supposed” to feel. Unlike being drunk, the effects which are achieved when stoned on grass are subtle and nearly limitless in variety, and may differ each time you get high.

We once asked our friend Ernie Lundquist what the difference in feeling was between being stoned on grass and being drunk on alcohol. His answer was probably quite profound and very revealing, but unfortunately we can’t remember what it was. At the time he was stoned and we were drunk.

You can usually predict approximately how you’re going to act and feel when you get drunk: loss of control, dizziness, tight numbness, inarticulation, and nausea. With grass there are no predictions other than that you will depart slightly from reality. Right away, a whole bunch of people are screaming, “What is reality? Getting stoned is reality!” To these people we have one piece of advice: Don’t confuse us.

The areas of reality which are departed from are physical, psychological and spiritual, but since the spiritual world is highly individualistic and purely personal, and is also inhabited by scary things like ghosts, goblins, and gods, we’ll discuss only the first two. (Once when Ernie was stoned, he saw his Uncle Dave, who was over six feet tall and weighed 300 pounds. And what is worse, Dave was living in Butte, Montana at the time.)

If you are having difficulties getting stoned, you might be afraid to let yourself go. It’s easy to control a grass high, and the fear of knowing yourself may be overwhelming the high. As a great man once said…now what was it that he said? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the best way to learn what it is to be stoned is to have a teacher or a guide to help you. (The term “guide” was stolen from LSD Manuals, which in turn stole it from the Boy Scout’s Handbook.) Unlike LSD guides, a grass guide really doesn’t have to be smart, sensitive, or extremely experienced. Any friend will do, the only requirement being that he or she has used grass before and can articulate his feelings.

A good guide will help a neophyte to feel the grass fully on his first trip. This is because one of the effects of grass is to cause a person to become suggestible, and when the guide tells the neophyte what he should be feeling, it will most often be felt. Usually, at this point, the neophyte says, “I do feel that, but only because you told me to. The grass isn’t doing it.” When the guide answers that the heightened degree of suggestibility has been brought about by the grass, the neophyte will have a tendency to disbelieve him. For some reason many people prefer to believe that grass will have no effect on them, and this is another barrier which keeps the neophyte from getting high the first time.

The guide, besides commenting on what is going on physically with the neophyte, should also give him something to eat, and let him listen to music, all the while pointing out various phenomena. The guide, too, should be stoned because his empathic abilities will then be increased, and because he won’t have to relate the feelings he had from memory.

Another common occurrence on the first, second, or even third trip, is that the neophyte may be obviously stoned and do or say some strange and amazing things. Someone will ask him, just as a gag, “Are you stoned?” “No,” he’ll insist, and the insistence that he is not stoned will persist until the grass wears off, at which point you remind him of what he did or said. When he remembers, an embarrassed look will creep over his face and he’ll admit that maybe he was stoned. However, the next time out, he’ll once more reject the possibility of any effect taking place. Don’t worry about him. He won’t worry about you.

Then there’s the neophyte who, throughout the entire time he is stoned, keeps asking, “Well, am I stoned?” Be kind to this person, he is reaching out for love.

If you’re worried about where to find a guide, don’t. It has been a sustaining rule of mankind that one will always appear. It’s been in all the folklore, mythology and theology for over 2000 years. One day a tall stranger will come into your village and talk you into trying some, and you will. Grass smokers are the world’s greatest proselytizers, and should be out hustling for “The Watchtower.” They are relentless. If you have a friend whom you know uses grass, and this friend knows you don’t, and he has never offered to turn you on, look for a new friend. This one doesn’t really like you.

To be continued…

The first 1:05 is intro music. Buffer the video past that point before playing and enjoy.

Another great grow-op has been discovered.

In Cheech & Chong’s movie “Nice Dreams,” a character named Weird Jimmy had set up a marijuana grow room inside a swimming pool. Now some Brits have been caught doing the same thing.

From the Manchester Evening News:

Cannabis farm in swimming pool

A PRIVATE swimming pool stuffed with cannabis plants worth £800,000 was discovered by police by chance.

Officers were “speechless” when they stumbled upon the massive cannabis factory in the grounds of a large detached house in a well-to-do area of north Preston.

The pool outhouse was decked out with infra-red lighting, heaters and ventilation equipment and there was a sea of marijuana greenery instead of water.

The raid was launched on Monday morning after a court official told Lancashire Constabulary he had seen a man running away from the property when he had gone to question the occupants about an unrelated unpaid fine.

Officers who attended the Tudor-style house on Durton Lane drafted in search dogs, forensic teams and a police helicopter.

They found more that 1,000 mature cannabis plants, with a street value of between £700,000 and £800,000.

This haul led officers to raid a second property in the Queen’s Road area of Fulwood, where they found a large number of cannabis plants being cultivated. But these plants were mostly immature or seedlings.

‘Speechless’

Detectives are now hunting the group of men and women they believe rented the Durton Place mansion.

Chief Inspector James Lee said: “I am speechless at the level of this discovery.

“We have had experienced search-trained officers working at the scene and they have never seen a drugs cultivation operation like this in over 20 years.”

He continued: “‘We know that the property on Durton Lane was rented to four people who have been described as oriental in appearance, two men and two women.

“We urgently want to trace them and would urge them to come forward and speak with police.”

A Lancashire Constabulary spokesman said neighbours told officers they had no idea of the drug den operating in their midst.

“They’ve said they thought the noise from the lighting and heating equipment was simply caused by machinery needed to run the swimming pool.”

British stoners rented this mansion for their grow-op.

The swimming pool was turned into this pot farm.

Lesson from Cheech: When the police come, you’ve got to get up on a ladder and pretend to be swimming.

I’m pretty sure that the first guy I saw stoned was Greg Brady from ‘The Brady Bunch.’  At the time, I had no idea.

Barry Williams was a 17 year-old star on his day off. In his biography, I was a Teenage Greg, Williams recalls:

“I was introduced to a thin, hand-rolled, yellow joint. ‘Listen, man’ said one of the buds, ‘toke slow — this is some real heavy shit.’”

“‘Cooool,’ I thought… Several drags later, the stuff had kicked in hard.” Which is when the Brady Bunch’s assistant director called him back to the studio “to shoot the driveway scene”…

Possible good news for Catholic stoners with erection problems:
Pope Benedict XVI has reviewed the annulment practices of the Vatican judges. He has warned them to stop being so willing to annul Catholic marriages.

According to The Hindu:

The Pope ordered the clampdown after figures showed that the church’s appeals court allowed 69 annulments in 2005 for reasons which included husbands being too attached to their mothers.

The court, known as the Sacra Rota, considers petitions from couples claiming their marriages were never truly valid.

Apart from the get-out clause for women married to “mummy’s boys”, an “inability to assume conjugal obligations”, usually due to a childhood trauma, appears among the successful reasons for annulment in 2005, as do alcoholism, use of cannabis, infidelity and a serious lack of “moderation in judgment” by a partner.

Whether or not cannabis use will be accepted as a justification for future annulments has not been announced.

The way “scientists” arrived at this conclusion is outrageous.

Almost 2000 students aged 14 and 15 were studied since 1992 to determine what effect alcohol and cannabis use had on the rest of their lives.

To determine students who were in “very high risk levels” for cannabis and marijuana use, scientists had to determine what a high level of use would be.

Using any amount of cannabis every day was determined to be highly risky. No justification was given for this. One single toke and a student was placed on this list.

To qualify as a heavy user of alcohol, scientists decided that 14 year-old children would need to be consuming more than 43 drinks per week for boys and 28 drinks per week for girls.

The fact that the alcohol parameters did not immediately disqualify all of the children was not mentioned as being of concern.

It is difficult to believe that after thousands of years of use, marijuana would suddenly begin turning people into losers. In the US, prohibitionists have been promising this pandemic of marijuana-induced idiocy for decades, yet the boardrooms of today are filled with the stoners of the 60s.

If this is true, it is curious that, in the US, the most well educated regions of the country are almost always the most marijuana-friendly, while the least productive segments of society are almost always involved with alcohol. Under bridges and in old refrigerator boxes across America, homeless alcoholics are under no threat of being displaced by a hoard of broken stoners.

The real reason that people with problems are often found to smoke marijuana is simple: many people smoke marijuana. If we were to study marijuana use among creative people, this logic might allow us to conclude that marijuana leads to artistic ability. If scientists were surveyed, one might think that marijuana use leads to inquisitiveness. We could announce that marijuana use leads to winning Olympic gold medals in snowboarding, recording platinum albums, or becoming the President of the United States.

When a person does one thing before he does something else, we cannot automatically assume that the first thing caused the second. If we could, we would probably think that refusing to smoke marijuana turns one into an uptight liar. And although there is ample evidence for this, it has never been proven.