Colorado Newspaper Looking for Marijuana Reviewer 171
Westword, an "alternative" newspaper in Denver, has placed an ad for a medicinal marijuana reviewer. The paper has been running reviews by a staff writer, but the writer "wanted to return to the day job," opening up the position. Applicants must write a short essay on "What Marijuana Means To Me," and a MacGyver-like ability to make a bong out of common household objects is a plus.
Bong? (Score:5, Informative)
Just a FYI, the medical marijuana community normally encourages the use of vaporizers instead of smoking. This involves heating the plant material just enough to vaporize the active ingredients, but not enough to ignite it and cause smoke/ash. The result is a smoother, easier administration of your medicine (or recreational drug) without the tar and carcinigans associated with smoking. It also doesn't stink up the house.
Re:Bong? (Score:5, Informative)
The medical marijuana community encourages the use of techniques including vaporizing, tinctures, hash oil and other concentrates, pot goodies like brownies, and other methods of reducing harm. People with severe HIV or cancer often can't even use a vaporizer, so edibles or tinctures are called for. People using marijuana as replacement therapy for harder drugs sometimes don't have the money for a vaporizer, and need a longer lasting high, so they are encouraged to try edibles.
Remember, pipes and joints and even vaporizers spread hepatitis. Use a chillum when sharing.
Re:Bong? (Score:4, Informative)
You are correct, a chillum is a straight pipe. It was designed to be held in a cupped hand, sticking up from between two fingers. Then suck from your cupped hand, rather than directly from the chillum. A bong must touch your mouth. Maybe not inside your mouth, but it must touch around your lips, so it isn't safe.
Re:Bong? (Score:3, Informative)
An even easier model is some kind of tube, a lightbulb and a lighter to heat it with. It does require some skill though and if you use it too many times the glass will most likely crack.
All it takes is to plug "lightbulb vaporizer" into Google and you'll get all the info you need.
/Mikael
Re:Why did the old reviewer quit? (Score:4, Informative)
Think you might have... (Score:4, Informative)
Think you might have mistaken marijuana for mushrooms.
Now if you were staring at your thumbnail, and suddenly realized you didn't know WHY you were staring at said thumbnail... now THAT'S marijuana.
Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time (Score:2, Informative)
This article pretty much covers why medical pot is having such a hard time. The cause has been co-opted by people trying to use it as a backdoor to get pot legalized.... It should be prescribed by a doctor for a legit condition and filled by a pharmacy, not by guys growing it in their back yard....
You have the dynamic exactly backwards. The medical cannabis has had a hard time because the law enforcement-prison industrial complex has refused to treat it according to law and science, seeking to keep it classified as the most dangerous drug in existence (more so that cocaine and heroin!) as a way to maintain criminalization for all uses.
If federal law and its own regulations were actually followed by the DEA cannabis would be listed as a Schedule V drug (the least restrictive category) rather than Schedule I (the most restrictive) since a commercial preparation of pure THC (Marinol) is listed at only Schedule III. This error in logic, science and law has not, by the way, yet been corrected by the Obama Administration.
A system of regulated access to cannabis could have been set up 35 years ago, treating it like any other pharmaceutical. But the hide-bound opposition of the happy drug warriors prevented that, leaving grass-root state-by-state initiatives the only option for gaining access. As a side effect of this process, overall acceptance of cannabis use has actually increased and resistance to legalization has decreased as more people have been exposed to this issue, as well as broadly disseminating cannabis cultivation experience among the population.
The press coverage usually does not acknowledge, by the way, the degree to which the drug enforcement sector of the economy has attempted to circumvent the state initiatives. Despite very misleading claims the cannabis is "almost legal" in California, the fact is state and local prosecutors, and drug police at every level of government have spent years trying to pretend Prop. 215 never passed: declaring that acquiring cannabis according to the law did not protect you from arrest and confiscation of property (you just got to use it as a defense once on trial), arresting people of federal charges as if they were DEA agents, numerous counties refusing to issue the required ID cards etc., etc.
The net effect of this unrelenting (and self-serving) war on medical cannabis has been to persuade a growing number to people that the only effective protection from harassment by lawless police forces and prosecutors is to go for outright legalization. The drug warriors have left no choice.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
As for smoking cannabis, the worst I've managed there was when I was testing some freshly dried and cured, I smoked myself to a state where I was incapable of getting up from my chair without falling down and eventually fell asleep for a couple of hours, no hallucinations though.
Try eating the stuff. Preferably on an empty stomach (eat a couple slabs of bacon or something else fatty shortly after your space cakes if you want to get on the fast train). If you want to trip even harder do this right after giving blood.
Umm, or so I've heard.
Schedule 1 Status (Score:3, Informative)
The root of the problem is that pot is still a schedule 1 drug.
This means it is "highly addictive with no medicinal value".
Until you get it reclassified, nothing can be done on the federal level in the US.
The British removed it from their equivalent scale last year.
Mexico recently changed their possession laws to match those of Amsterdam.
Bet you didn't hear that on the 6 O'clock news.
Re:Actually (Score:1, Informative)