Category: Cannabis

A Cannabis Consumer Review: Canndescent Charge (No 514)

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It was absolutely inevitable that the instant cannabis became legal, it also would become corporate. There’s a staggering amount of money to be made. What more do we need to say?

To be fair though, there’s really no “middle way” to come in from the cold. The whole idea of calling it “cannabis” instead of “marijuana” is to try and separate this amazing product from its outlaw past. Important caveat — that outlaw past was the product of racism; we did not “illegalize” marijuana because of what it did or because it was bad for anyone — a the time it was illegalized, even the AMA thought it was actually efficacious. It only EVER had to do with WHO was smoking it. At first Mexicans in the Southwest states (after the Mexican Revolution sent a wave of immigration across the border starting in 1910) but then, a little later, mostly Black musicians based out of New Orleans. These musicians — Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver — were inventing jazz and found marijuana great both for chilling but also for articulating the music in their heads. It was only after these musicians headed north — starting with the Great Depression in 1929 — taking their dope with them — that anyone started to care. The trigger: white people started smoking marijuana.

And that — per America’s first-ever Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger — was unacceptable. Anslinger changed from thinking “marijuana was harmless” to “marihuana [Anslinger’s preferred spelling] is the most wretched, most dangerous scourge on earth” specifically because this “non-white” thing was now “infecting” white people.

My long-winded point: none of marijuana’s bad reputation was deserved. Everything “criminal” about it is wrong and wrong-headed. Of course cannabis isn’t for everyone. What product is? Mis-use or profound over-use of any product — household or otherwise could put you in a hospital or morgue. And way faster than mis-use or profound over-use of pot ever will. It’s just a stone cold fact: cannabis is way more benign than alcohol. It causes far less death and destruction.

As drugs go, cannabis has one particular distinction that will always set it head and shoulders above every other drug: it is entirely natural. Aside from watering a pot plant and feeding it (organically of course), one can grow, harvest and enjoy cannabis all by oneself. If I got good at growing the strains I most enjoyed, I could (if I was really, really, REALLY obsessive-compulsive about it) become completely self-sufficient with my “drug-o-choice”.

While I may have smoked pot occasionally when I was in high school, my distinct impression of it was: it put me to sleep. That wasn’t appealing to me at the time. That fact remained a constant through my college, after college, early, mid and late professional periods. Cocaine got my business (in addition to copious drinking). Ecstasy (a very good drug under normal circumstances, an excellent drug under just the right ones). Mushrooms (just once but so memorable, so demanding of an encore!) Not being a smoker, marijuana wasn’t something I felt naturally drawn to.

But then a decade-long depression made sleep damned near impossible. That wasn’t helped by years of taking OTC sleep meds almost nightly. They produced little good sleep but plenty of memory loss. “Hey,” I reminded myself, “You live in California. You can buy marijuana legally — you know, that thing that always put you right to sleep when you were a kid?” Overcoming all that nonsense mythology that was planted in my brain, I went and got a prescription then went and got it filled with my first purchase of Skywalker.

I slept wonderfully that first night — as I have pretty much most nights ever since (edibles travel). Indicas, it turned out, produced real quality sleep with zero lassitude the next morning. That’s not just a benefit, it’s a life-saving benefit. You can’t get mentally healthy if you can’t sleep. But a sleeping med that impacts your productivity is no improvement. My First Big Lesson about Cannabis: it works as a sleep med like nothing else.

Then I learned my Second Big Lesson about Cannabis: sativas work differently.

That, I think, was the biggest revelation of all to me: cannabis really can be a useful product from the start of your day to the very end of it. The first time a hit of Durban Poison rolled gently across my mind, focusing my thoughts in a way I didn’t know I could be focused — well, it stood out in my mind. When I learned (about an hour and a half later) that I could keep that focus going (keep the snacks handy though), in fact, building on it slightly with the fresh hit? My whole life style changed.

Then, when I discovered that different sativas (and hybrids — most strains these days are pretty hybridized anyway) had discernibly different effects, I became fixated on trying everything I could — fascinated both that there were subtle but discernible differences between many strains and that those differences were pretty much repeatable each and every time I bought that strain.

Here’s the point. The first thing Legal Cannabis had to do — and it did — was to be as faithful as they could be to creating a uniform product. Within the context of a plant subject to local growing conditions and farming expertise, Legal Cannabis made strain specificity a “thing”. Whether grown from seeds or as clones, strains became distinct in the way that cabernet sauvignon clones become distinct statements of what we want that particular grape to be.

When I order cannabis from my favorite delivery services, I expect the Strawberry Diesel I get this time to be roughly on par with the Strawberry Diesel I bought last time from them. It might even be from a completely different grow — it probably will be (I buy large-ish quantities). But the effect the product produces should be pretty much the same.

I think of this as the “Big Mac-ification” of Cannabis. On the one hand, who wants to see something as wonderful as cannabis be “Big Mac-ed”? But, on the other hand, that is what real legalization will look like. What it probably must look like. That hurt to type. But, the truth is, if cannabis had never been demonized, never illegalized, never treated as a pariah or even as a bad thing, it would have been “corporatized” long, long ago.

Like tobacco. Or alcohol.

My natural instinct with cannabis is the same instinct I had with red wine. I was a collector and a “terroir” guy. My passion was for big, dark, inky reds that screamed their heads off about the grapes they were made from — the specific grape and where it was specifically grown. I told myself I was less interested in what we, in America, call “meritages” — blends.

But then, I had plenty of “meritages” in my collection. They didn’t call themselves that, they called themselves “Bourdeaux”. For instance — the couple of bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild I inherited from my dad were blends of cabernet sauvignon (70%), merlot (25%), cabernet franc (3%) and petit verdot (2%). I’ve bought and enjoyed bottles of each of those grape varietals. Know what? They were all great by themselves and great put together in that one bottle as a “meritage”.

Corporate cannabis produces plenty of good, reliable cannabis strains. The Big Mac-ificiation has already happened — like it had to. But there’s another corner of corporate cannabis — the meritage makers — who are busily carving out territory of their own in the growing legal marijuana marketplace.

Full confession: my gut instinct is to avoid meritages. My gut instinct is not trustworthy.

I recently broke down and purchased an eighth of “Charge (No 514)” one of the Canndescent Company’s 5 flower products. Now here’s the thing about Canndescent’s approach. They start out by asking the question “what do you want your cannabis experience to be?” They see five curated possible answers — Calm, Cruise, Create, Connect, Charge that mix and match the effects of body up or down and mind up or down — with the resulting experiences of working, socializing, exercising, meditating, . For instance, their “Calm” is meant to answer your “end of the day” cannabis needs — like sleep.

Being as I’m always looking for another sativa to add to my collection, I chose to try Canndescent’s Charge which, its label says “fires you up with rising energy that clears the head and activates the body so you can dine and dance the night away”. I wasn’t looking to dine or dance. I was looking to be productive.

Though Canndescent has a product “Create”, I tend to shy away from what cannabis reviewers call “creative strains”. Yes, they deliver plenty of psychoactive creativity, but I want focus with my creativity. Great ideas are great especially when they get flowing. But, if I can’t corral them, they’re not doing me the good I need them to do.

The benchmark for me will always be Durban Poison. DP delivers a smooth, even focus for a good 90 minutes to two hours with a gradual drop off and little to not tiredness. I use DP to play tennis because it slows my mind down — gives me a chance to “see” my timing and truly see the ball. I also use strains like the aforementioned Strawberry Diesel, Alaskan Thunderf*ck, Willy Wonka, White Buffalo, Ghost Train Haze, Kali Mist and Trainwreck. I want mental focus and a feeling of “energy”. I want the sense of contentment that sits beneath it all.

One more note: while I certainly don’t want my tongue to feel like I’m smoking ditch weed, I’m way, way more focused on what a strain does than on how it tastes. When I was still drinking, my cocktail of choice was a gin martini, served icy cold. A little paper umbrella in a drink for adults? You jest. Candy and fruit flavors — for alcohol? If you have to put training wheels on your drink, maybe drinking’s not your thing.

The bottom line for me — where Charge is concerned: how does it impact my productivity? The answer? This is a great product.

The “high” comes on quickly, suffusing the mind with an increasing sense of focus. Important details stick out a little more prominently. While some strains bring a little edge with their mental energy (the Alaskan Thunderf*ck for instance — which diminishes its value to me on the tennis court), the Charge absolutely does not. Not to me anyway. I would describe it as Durban Poison Plus.

Being a proprietary product, the Canndescent Company doesn’t say exactly what strains go into Charge. They intimate through their box copy and via their web site that they use a combination of known strains and proprietary strains, crafting the whole thing into a meritage-style blend that deliver a particular set of effects.

Charge platforms beautifully with itself, by itself. Meaning — if you kept re-upping the “stone” exclusively with Charge every 90 minutes or so, you could maintain a strong, even, cannabis focus the entire working day. But Charge also platforms nicely with other strains. This morning, I platformed some Casey Jones from my collection on top of the Charge (my second hit of Charge of the day — having waked and baked already to a full hit of Charge all by itself). The Casey was one of my go-to morning strains for a while. I haven’t found any Casey nearby in a while which sent it to “the bench” for occasional use.

The platformed Casey and Charge got me into some very deep thinking. It was awesome. Every strain I’ve platformed atop the Charge has been goosed by it.

Charge’s flavor profile is pleasant. It doesn’t strike my palette in any particular way. There’s no harshness to the smoke whatsoever and the slower — well ground — burns cleanly and completely in my favorite glass piece.

As undeserved as cannabis’ criminal past was, the truth is, cannabis wore its outlaw status beautifully. It’s hard to let go of. Canndescent’s Charge makes it a little easier to see that, yeah, there’s another way to think of this product and sell this product. I’m sold on Charge’s ability to deliver on its promises. I will absolutely try their other flower products.

It wouldn’t shock me if Canndescent’s approach — selling cannabis by its desired effect — didn’t become a kind of industry standard. It couldn’t replace the strain-by-strain experience. It shouldn’t.

Thinking back to my former red wine collection, there was a good mix of everything — including mixes. Canndescent’s product line are a perfect complement to anyone’s cannabis collection.

An Ode To Waking & Baking

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

My mind’s a blur when I awake,

That is, until I let it bake.

The coffee’s strong and dark and hot,

A sip or two, a hit of pot.

The caffeine “turns the lights on”, sure,

But cannabis actually “opens the door”.

There’s no magic here, no “hocus pocus”,

Indicas make you sleepy; sativas give you focus.

There’s nothing like its mental clarity,

where thoughts are denser than a singularity.

Some Durban Poison, Mimosa or Kali Mist,

Put Casey Jones and Allen Wrench atop the growing list.

A hit of Trainwreck could never suck,

And neither could a bowl of Alaskan Thunderfuck.

The fact is there are dozens of extraordinary strains,

for getting one’s mind in gear and letting one’s ideas rain.

If your goal is “Be productive!”, if your goal is “Move & Shake!”

If your goal is “Get things done!”, then you should wake n bake.

The Joys Of Waking & Baking

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It ain’t the cannabis talking — I’m far more productive and focused after a couple of hits of sativa. These days, my morning go-to’s are Willy Wonka, Alaskan Thunderfuck, Strawberry Diesel and Durban Poison. I like variety, ya see.

I also like the way different strains work inside my brain. Yeah, they’re all variations on a theme but it’s a great theme. Willy Wonka produces a clean focus with good mental energy (as do the others). Wonka and Strawberry Diesel have a bit more “edge” to the focus. The Thunderfuck a touch less edge.

Durban Poison has virtually no edge. Its “high” is pure, even focus. That’s why I like it for working AND playing tennis. With a hit of DP in me, the ball slows down (everything slows down — but only in the sense that my mind isn’t racing to keep up with all the information coming at it; I feel like I’m seeing, hearing, processing it all just fine and in real time). So — when the ball comes off my opponent’s racket, I’m better able to focus on the ball and track it all the way to where I want it to be when I attack it. I’ll put it this way: I coach myself better and am coached better when the coaching is coated in Durban Poison.

It’s hard to describe to people who are fearful of pot that it’s not just one thing — a get you impossibly high product. Most people I know don’t use cannabis that way. I’m not sure I’ve ever been “high”. I’ve been focused. I’ve been relaxed. I’ve been asleep. When I sit down at my desk — usually around 5 am — I’ve got coffee in one hand and my piece in the other, the bowl filled with one of my go-to’s.

The caffeine does what it does. You feel awake but not necessarily focused. In fact, too much caffeine and it gets harder to focus my hypomanic mind. That’s where the cannabis works wonders — especially first thing in the morning. I prefer that first hit to come before that first sip of coffee but it really makes no difference. There’s nothing quite like that feeling — a few moments after you’ve exhaled — as the THC begins to filter down through your brain.

That’s when I really “wake up”.

Each strain feels a little different — where they seem to be filtering from. Some start at the crown and melt downward. Others seem to emerge like a thought from behind the eyes before slowly filling your whole head with a feeling of calm. Of peacefulness. Of focus.

Not a revelation: we live in a shithole at the worst of all possible times. It would be so easy to throw up one’s hands and toss everything but the indicas. The idea of sleeping through what’s happening until it’s over has definite appeal. But, it’s having cannabis in my life (and my family of course) that makes it all bearable.

Imagine For A Moment If They Stopped Selling Alcohol At Sporting Events & Sold Cannabis Instead

~ A L Katz ~ 2 Comments

Someday — probably not soon but some day — Americans will get to attend live sporting events again. There’s something about watching sports and drinking that — maybe it’s habit more than anything — goes together.

Or maybe we just think it does because we’ve never considered doing it another way. Human beings are like that — we get stuck thinking things will be how they are forever because they’ve always been that way. Not true and not true. Baseball didn’t always exist. Even within baseball, the designated hitter didn’t always exist (and it breaks my heart that it’s coming to the National League this coronavirus-shortened season). Things change and evolve.

People around the world drink alcohol at sporting events because that’s the only legal choice we have. We know from experience that alcohol prohibition doesn’t work (and it makes organized criminals happy). We also know from experience that drug prohibition doesn’t work but, again, human beings are slow on the uptake. We also know from experience that selling alcohol at sporting events can turn ugly.

Violent.

Destructive.

Alcohol does this to people. Cannabis doesn’t. THC doesn’t effect our brains the way alcohol does. THC may alter our perceptions — it refines & focuses mine — but it does not impact our motor skills. It can make us sleepy and hungry and a little dopey but it does not make anyone violent. And, please, let’s not go down the rabbit hole of “but some do”. Pick a subject and “but some do”.

If everyone at a soccer or football or baseball or basketball game was using cannabis instead of drinking, there would NEVER be violence at the end of a game. Fans from competing teams wouldn’t go at each other — they’d be too busy hugging (when that’s allowed again) or telling each other what a great game it was or laughing or sleeping even. But no one would be fighting because the whole reason one does cannabis in the first place is for the euphoria it delivers.

People experiencing euphoria together (as they would at a sporting event) do not fight with each other. It’s not how euphoria works.

When those sports fans head out into the streets — they won’t be violent there either. They won’t fight police, won’t riot or loot, won’t set fire to cars.

Cannabis is proof that selling lies is easy. Selling the truth — much, much harder. We may never completely clear the racist lies first Commissioner of America’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger invented while trying to justify marijuana prohibition. While Anslinger, as far as we know, didn’t coin the actual term “Reefer Madness”, the “gore files” Anslinger collected and used — all lies and misinformation about cannabis, some of it overtly racist — captured the spirit of “Reefer Madness”.

Not only does using cannabis (instead of alcohol) make watching sports better, as more and more athletes are realizing, using cannabis makes PLAYING sports better. That is, with some THC in your brain, you become capable of performing better. I play tennis using cannabis — I take a hit of Durban Poison just before I play and about halfway through. The DP slows my brain down just a little while also focusing it. I’m bi-polar and very hypomanic. My mind races along most of the time at a fairly supersonic pace.

But the THC in a bowl of DP helps me with that. As I said, the cannabis slows down my thoughts so I have a chance to consider them. I become better able to coach myself. When I tell myself “eyes on the ball” or “put the ball there” or “attack the ball now”, I do it more consistently than if I hadn’t smoked cannabis. Not only do I play with more technical finesse (I’ll flatter myself that I play with “finesse”), but I’m more consistent — and consistency is my biggest bugaboo of all on a tennis court.

I drive better with THC in me, too. I’m not delusional. And I’m not alone.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Authority and the National Institute of Health — the keepers of transportation & drug safety data — want desperately to prove that using cannabis makes you a bad driver deserving of punishment — just like with people who drink and drive. But alcohol and THC work differently in our brains. The data simply will not cooperate.

The data backs up what we know: drinking alcohol — even a little — impacts your motor skills, decision-making and ability to drive. Cannabis doesn’t impact them the same way.

Here’s what the National Institute of Health study says:

Driving and simulator studies show that detrimental effects vary in a dose-related fashion, and are more pronounced with highly automatic driving functions, but more complex tasks that require conscious control are less affected, which is the opposite pattern from that seen with alcohol. Because of both this and an increased awareness that they are impaired, marijuana smokers tend to compensate effectively for their impairment by utilizing a variety of behavioral strategies such as driving more slowly, passing less, and leaving more space between themselves and cars in front of them. Combining marijuana with alcohol eliminates the ability to use such strategies effectively, however, and results in impairment even at doses that would be insignificant were they of either drug alone. Case-control studies are inconsistent, but suggest that while low concentrations of THC do not increase the rate of accidents, [they] may even decrease them…

The data says having THC in them causes drivers to follow the speed limit, stay in their lanes and maintain safe following distances — the opposite of what alcohol would cause.

My brother-in-law called me the other day with his 17 year old son on the line. I’ve written a lot about pot. I’ve done research in order to write about it. My brother-in-law figured I’d tell my nephew how much marijuana impacted your decision-making and especially your driving skills. I told my brother-in-law before I responded that I probably wasn’t going to answer his question the way he wanted or expected.

After walking him through the data, I shared one final anecdote about cannabis. Just after the first cannabis cafe opened here in LA, a good friend and I went to it. We made reservations — we had to if we wanted to get in. The deal was 90 minutes then the table went to someone else.

There was a line to get in (even with reservations and timed tables). There was even a line of people wanting to work there.

Inside, it looked like a regular fern bar: lots of wood and warm touches. Ceiling fans whirred constantly, drawing the smoke upward. That was the first strange thing — though everyone at virtually every table was smoking cannabis, the room didn’t stink and it wasn’t smoky and acrid like a bar filled with tobacco smoke.

Second strange thing: the sound of the place. First — because alcohol wasn’t being served, the sound of glass was greatly reduced — the sound of glasses being clinked while toasting — of bottle necks clinking against cocktail glasses as the bartenders mixed away.

Third strange thing: also the sound of the place. When people drink alcohol — and lose their inhibitions — they get louder. The more they drink, the louder they get. Put a bunch of drinkers in a crowded bar and you get a distinct sound signature that only comes from people drinking.

Now throw in the glass sounds and the sight of everyone smoking dope at every table and you begin to sense what an unusual experience this was. The food was great — the perfect, snnacky, salty-sweet bites that the munchies crave.

After 90 minutes (including a gigantic cigar-sized, mostly sativa joint that my friend and I shared — back in the day when one shared a joint), we paid our bill and headed out the door. So did everyone else we came in with. Now, here’s strange thing number four: while my friend and I parked on the street, most everyone else pulled into the lot and handed their car keys to the valet.

Now that they were finished smoking dope and eating, these same people were now getting their car keys BACK from the valet guy, climbing into their cars and driving away — either back to work or home or wherever. If cannabis was like alcohol, there would have been a non-stop pileup of cars right in their driveway — of people just trying to get to the street.

And at the street? An even bigger pileup.

Except there wasn’t. Think about it. If we had spent 90 minute drinking steadily — instead of smoking cannabis steadily — there would have been accidents everywhere in and around that parking lot. But there wasn’t a one.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm…

It will take a while before we stop treating cannabis like alcohol — certainly where driving is concerned. Have I mentioned how slow human beings can be to adapt to new information?

In CA, I hope we have the smarts to allow people to consume cannabis at sporting events the same way they allow alcohol consumption. I hope we have the smarts to take notes when we do — so we can compare how cannabis effects people vs how alcohol does.

If the people making those decisions are all smoking dope when they make the decision? It’ll be dope.

Why Did We Ever Criminalize Drug Use To Begin With? Because Judging People Is Easier Than Helping Them…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The “war on drugs” was never a war on “drugs”. Like the drug laws it was meant to epitomize, the drug war was always entirely focused on drug users. And not just the users because they were using, but on their race.

First Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger spells it out: our drug laws are all about racism, racism & more racism.

The first drug law in America was written in 1875 in San Francisco — aimed at stopping the spread of opium dens. A noble idea. No one wants to live near an opium den. And, it’s a fact, opium is highly addictive. It needs to be approached with care; even doctor’s get prescribing it horribly wrong. But the law itself — as written — wasn’t concerned with anyone’s neighborhood getting ruined. It wasn’t concerned with anyone getting addicted. In fact, it had no data on hand to justify any concerns it might have about opium’s impact on its users’ health — if it had had any such concerns which it didn’t.

This is from the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy via Wikipedia —

The reason cited was “many women and young girls, as well as young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the Chinese opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”

This law and virtually every opium law that followed drew an important distinction that would ripple through history.

“Though the laws affected the use and distribution of opium by Chinese immigrants, no action was taken against the producers of such products as laudanum, a tincture of opium and alcohol, commonly taken as a panacea by white Americans. The distinction between its use by white Americans and Chinese immigrants was thus based on the form in which it was ingested: Chinese immigrants tended to smoke it, while it was often included in various kinds of generally liquid medicines often (but not exclusively) used by people of European descent. The laws targeted opium smoking, but not other methods of ingestion.

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy

Sound familiar? Depending on whether you snorted cocaine as most white people did or smoked it as crack as lots of black people did, the drug laws treated you differently. The laws punished smoking coke far more harshly than snorting it. Same drug, same basic impact on the user — but different law and (especially) different, harsher penalty. And still not a single concern for the user him or herself and the drug’s impact on their well-being.

The very illegalization of drugs has always been about judging the drugs’ users. Let’s face it — white Europeans are the biggest bullies on the planet. They’re professional hegemonists — spreading their culture and “true faith” like an STD. But, even when the Europeans weren’t judging others because they were “others”, they were judging other Europeans for being “weak” and punishing them for their weakness.

In America, prior to enactment of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, there were no federal laws regulating drugs of any kind. The very real health concerns about opioids aside, the drug laws simply didn’t consider them or even refer to them in its legislation. It wasn’t the point. Here’s the key to the Harrison act: “The courts interpreted [it] to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of normal treatment, but not for the treatment of addiction.”

What that means for this highly addictive drug — doctors could prescribe it to relieve pain but once the cause of the pain stopped (and who is to say whether another person is feeling pain or not?), so did the opioid — regardless of what cutting it off did to the user. The law willfully condemned people to suffer. It denied their physical pain — and then wanted to punish them for ever experiencing pain to begin with.

Where does that come from?

Look to your bible. America has always had a strange love for religion — especially a twisted form of Christianity that perverts “Do unto others” to “Do what we say”. The Puritans may have been seeking religious freedom in the Massachusetts Colony, but that was only for themselves. There were reasons no one back in England liked them (and so made them feel despised): they were judgmental. And, while the Salem witch trials were an anomaly, they did reflect Puritanism’s witchcraft-fearing id running wild.

The witchcraft trials were to women what drug laws would later be to black and brown people.

Jesus taught simply “Do Unto Others”. He didn’t say “judge them” or “force your way on them”. The meek, Jesus said, shall inherit the earth. He didn’t say they’d have to do it drug-free. Just as well, as drugs go, there are few as terrible as religion.

Marx got it wrong. Religion isn’t the opiate of the people. If all it did was sedate them, that would be bad enough. It incites them — like angel dust or meth — to mean, dangerous, soulless behavior. Religion (vs spirituality — a very different thing) doesn’t care about what’s hurting them, what’s causing them pain. It’s got its own rules and regs to push. It’s followers are there to do what they’re told not be attended to. They’re a flock of sheep after all. And no one wants an “uppity” sheep.

The painful irony is that alcohol prohibition sprang from a very progressive ideal. It was Europeans judging how Europeans behaved when effected by a European-approved intoxicant: alcohol. And alcohol was a very real problem for a lot of Americans in the latter part of the 19th century when support for prohibition began to grow. But, as we know, in the whole history of human beings, prohibition has never worked — not as intended.

In America, alcohol prohibition criminalized virtually the entire adult population and turned organized crime from a local problem to a national one. Criminal syndicates suddenly had a product to sell — alcohol — that everyone wanted but only they had. We’re still dealing with the mess.

Prohibition may stop people from using a substance because getting it is hard — but it won’t stop them from wanting it. It won’t stop them from gerryrigging ways to either get it or craft a replacement of dubious safety. In general, prohibition wants a grey world to be black & white regardless of how grey it’s always been and always will be.

In America, there was a twist: prohibition wanted the world to be white only. The opium laws (first written in San Francisco) were meant to punish Chinese people brought to America to work — who dared relax in the way they liked. Using the same racist playbook, the first marijuana laws were written to first punish “Hindoos” who “…started quite a demand for cannabis indica; they are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in California very fast; the fear is now that it is not being confined to the Hindoos alone but that they are initiating our whites into this habit.”

“Initiating our whites into this habit”. There you have it. No one cared about the Hindoos as people — just as later laws wouldn’t care about individual Mexicans or blacks using marijuana. The laws cared about the white people — about white people doing something “black” or “brown” or “yellow” did. And that was entirely unacceptable.

America’s drug laws have never, ever, EVER been about anyone’s health and always about racism with a side of hatred for “the weak”. Our drug laws mirror something demented in our religious fervor. They speak for it.

Racism is fear. Drug laws are that fear’s manifestation in the law. They’re legalized forms of institutional racism. Period.

In America, Christianity was used more as a cudgel than as a sanctuary. Slavers pointed to the bible to justify their cruelty. Bible thumpers continued pointing at their “good book” to justify miscegenation laws that prevented black people from marrying white people. They used their book to justify all sorts of racist claptrap.

Imagine the audacity of judging love. It’s as stupid and heartless as judging another person’s pain.

No wonder everyone fleeing religion needs a drink.

Blunt Truth — Marijuana Prohibition Was ALWAYS About RACISM And Nothing But

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

From the get-go, every impulse to regulate cannabis has been based on racism.

When the California Pharmacy Board amended the state’s Poison Act in 1913 to include marijuana in the “poisons” under its control, they were simply piling onto the racist legislation that began in 1875 when California passed America’s first anti-narcotics laws to “combat” opium dens. Translation: to legalize anti-Chinese racism and bigotry. Up until 1910, no one had an issue with marijuana because no one in America knew what it was.

But, a keen-eyed California racist named Henry J. Finger — a prominent member of the Pharmacy Board — saw something that needed to be stamped out quickly.

I wrote a series — Blunt Truths — for Weedmaps News (back when they were a going concern) about this very subject. I’m biased but I recommend it. At the time, Weedmaps News was being run by journalists including the former LA Times journalist who hired me to write for them — so long as I adhered to journalistic standards. In other words — I couldn’t rely on bullshit to tell the story I wanted to tell. Among the sources I relied on because of their reliability was Dale Gieringer, PhD., a NORML board member. I highly recommend his The Forgotten Origins Of Cannabis Prohibition In California. It’s loaded with fascinating information that will change the way you think about cannabis.

Considering the radical shift in how we see race relations in America that’s happening right this second — Gieringer’s insights take on greater resonance.

For a taste. Here’s Gieringer citing a correspondence between Henry Finger and Hamilton Wright (in 1911 when Wright is the chief architect of US narcotics policy) —

“Within the last year we in California have been getting a large influx of Hindoos and they have in turn started quite a demand for cannabis indica; they are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in California very fast…the fear is now that they are initiating our whites into this habit…”

Gieringer notes: “The “Hindoos,” actually East Indian immigrant of Sikh religion and Punjabi origin, had become a popular target of anti-immigrant sentiment after several boatloads arrived in San Francisco in 1910. Their arrival sparked an uproar of protest from Asian exclusionists, who pronounced them to be even more unfit for American civilization than the Chinese.” Immigration authorities quickly cut off the flow. The roughly 2000 “Hindoos” apparently became a threat. They were “widely denounced for their outlandish customs, dirty clothes, strange food, suspect morals, and especially their propensity to work for low wages… no one complained about their use of cannabis. To the contrary, their defenders portrayed them as hard-working and sober. “The taking of drugs as a habit scarcely exists among them,” wrote one observer.”

Henry Finger persisted. “By this time, another menace had appeared on the horizon: “marihuana” had begun to penetrate north of the border from Mexico, carried by immigrants and soldiers during the revolutionary disorders of 1910 – 1920 [aka The Mexican Revolution]. Though hardly known to the American public, marihuana or “loco-weed” was noticed by the pharmacy journals.”

And there you have it. The Pharmacy Board — a supposedly scientific body — was crafting legislation without an ounce of science in it. But there sure was plenty of racism.

Thus marijuana prohibition began. The legislation that followed — most of it with actual “Reefer Madness” in its heart — was driven by America’s first Commissioner of the Federal Narcotics Bureau Harry J. Anslinger — our first “drug czar”. And Anslinger behaved like a drug CZAR. Anslinger — once he came around to the “marihuana is a scourge” point of view (he started out insisting it was harmless) — invented most of what we still think about cannabis. He literally pulled it out of his ass.

His very RACIST ass.

Let’s be clear. Harry Anslinger is a villain not just because he was a racist. He’s a villain because he was also an excellent bureaucrat who knew how to manipulate the system to get what he wanted. Anslinger knew how to go to the press — as the respected, trustworthy Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — with lies (Mexicans and blacks are selling marihuana to our children) that the press would then print — which Anslinger would then hold up as proof that Mexicans and blacks were selling marihuana to our children.

Neat trick, huh?

It’s important to understand what turned Anslinger. What convinced him that cannabis was more dangerous than opium? It was the exact same thing that bothered Henry Finger — not the what, the WHO. WHO was using marijuana. So long as Mexicans and black jazz musicians kept marijuana to themselves, racists like Anslinger might have been able to tolerate it to a degree.

The trouble was white people started taking up the habit — and that was totally unacceptable to Anslinger. Cannabis was illegalized in America to keep white people from using it and to punish black and brown people for “poisoning Americans” with it.

In the 1950’s, after 20 years of selling marijuana prohibition with racism, Anslinger expanded the franchise. World War Two caused profound physical pain to a staggering number of people. In response, opioids exploded in availability. So did opioid addiction. With fear of “Reefer Madness” waning, Anslinger invented “the gateway theory” to reinvigorate the public’s passion for prohibition.

The “gateway theory” — that cannabis is a gateway drug to heroin — is based on zero research. It’s an abuse of statistics and nothing more. But, when the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics says it, so the public thinks, it must be so! The gateway theory gained traction and acceptance. And, racist bully that he was, Anslinger used the occasion to increase the punishments for drug-related crimes — knowing full well on whose backs these new, even more cruel punishments would fall most: black people and brown people.

Anslinger retired in 1962 — on his 70th birthday. But the racism Anslinger had instilled remained. In the late 1960’s, with American soldiers returning from Vietnam with cannabis in their duffel bags, Richard Nixon declared a “War On Drugs”. Nixon — a drinker — didn’t declare a war on alcohol (though he abused it). He declared a war on everyone else’s medication — marijuana especially.

The War on Drugs was (and remains) a war on People Of Color. When Anslinger went to legislate marijuana prohibition, he bumped into a problem: there’s no constitutional basis for making marijuana illegal. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 does not, in fact, make marijuana illegal (because it couldn’t). Instead, the act imposes a very steep (in fact onerous) tax every time one bought or sold marijuana or hemp. In order to prove you’d paid the tax, you needed a stamp.

Problem was — the stamp was not available. By design. Everyone who bought or sold marijuana (or hemp) would therefore break the rule 1) by not paying the tax (who were you supposed to pay it to anyway?) and 2) by not getting the stamp. The first two arrests for “tax evasion” — occurred within 24 hours of the act’s signing — two men from Denver (Sam Caldwell and Moses Baca) were caught, one for selling, the other for buying. They both went to prison.

Our drug laws are morally wrong because they’ve got nothing to do with drugs — and never ever have.

Musings On Marijuana

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t start out a pot guy.

When I was in high school back in the 70’s, marijuana was around. A guy I was friendly with was a hard core stoner; he stank of weed in class and watched us all with a strange, pleased detachment I now recognize as euphoria. On the occasions when I was in the same place and time as a lit joint, the stuff put me right to sleep.

In college, my friend Drew convinced me to use a big chunk of my semester’s money (the money my parents put into my bank account to pay for books and other incidentals) to buy a pound of marijuana that, he said, we’d sell, making both of us lots of money. I knew Drew was a fan of marijuana. I didn’t realize his fandom would cost us our profits. I made back my “investment”. Barely.

When I was in college — and in the years afterwards — coke was more appealing. It kicked things into a higher gear. That’s what we told ourselves. Frankly, considering how much that powder we were snorting was stepped on, I’d be shocked if there was anything stronger than aspirin in it. Ecstasy also was appealing. I had lots of great ecstasy trips. And one awesome experience with shrooms and a U2 concert at LA’s Colliseum.

Oh, and I drank. Wine mostly. And gin martinis. And beer. And single malt scotch. Yeah, I drank. Throw a decade-long depression into the mix and daily use of (utterly useless!) over-the-counter sleeping meds and it was probably no wonder that I couldn’t sleep for shit. I was asking too much of my poor brain.

This was about five years ago. I was beside myself for a number of reasons. Lack of sleep wasn’t helping any. I did not want to take anything pharmaceutical. That wouldn’t solve my problem; it would only exacerbate it. Living in California, where pot is legal — pot that always put me to sleep in the past — I figured, what the hell?

Long story short. From the first night where I used marijuana as my sleep aid, my life changed. I began sleeping. Now, I still don’t sleep a ton. If I can do five hours — I’m good for the day (with a couple of brief naps along the way). The mood stabilizer I started using five years ago — that helped cage my darkness, keeping it at bay — has an un-noted side effect: it gives all alcohol an unpleasant aftertaste — like grapefruit skin.

My first visit to my first dispensary put Skywalker in my hand (and in the little glass pipe I bought; I can’t roll a joint to save my or anyone’s life). On my return, I wanted to know what was in all the other glass jars filled to the brim with weed? It turned out the thing I now used every day to sleep was called “indica”. But there was also “sativas” and “hybrids”.

As I wrote about myself in Blunt Truths (the 13 part series I did for Weedmaps News), we were and remain bamboozled by a totally bullshit mythology about marijuana that was invented out of whole cloth by America’s first “drug czar”, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger. We — as a culture — are still almost entirely misinformed about cannabis — what it does to us, how it does to us, why it does to us. The law still treats cannabis like its effects on our brains was the exact same as alcohol’s.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As I’ve learned from experience — and what a wonderful experience it’s been — cannabis can be part of your whole day if you want it to be. And I’m talking about highly productive days. Yeah, if I did nothing but smoke Skywalker or King Louis XII or Northern Lights or 9 Lb Hammer (or any of the other indicas in my collection — I like to keep a dozen or so on hand — I really, really like having choices if I can afford to), I would get very little done.

But not nothing. Funny thing about indicas. Yeah, they put me to sleep. Eventually. But I’ve gotten used to a sudden creative blast — usually after I’ve taken my second or third hit. Whatever creative problem I was working on when I quit for the day? Suddenly the answer is there.

I wrote the whole logline and concept premise for the TV show I’m about to take out a few weeks ago moments before I thought I was about to slip into bed. The wooziness was wonderful. And then the idea dropped. I walked calmly to my desk, sat down and wrote the whole thing.

Now, with alcohol, when one returns to the “genius” alcohol inspired the night before, it’s never genius. It’s barely legible ffs. With cannabis it’s the exact opposite. As I also wrote about in Blunt Truths, marijuana use spread slowly in the early 20th century. It started out mostly in the south west (California especially following the surge of people that entered the state fleeing the Mexican Revolution — 1910). By the 1920’s use had reached New Orleans where it was taken up by the mostly black musicians who were creating a new musical form called “jazz”.

Guys like Louis Armstrong (a self-avowed fan who was punished for being a fan) recognized that while you couldn’t create music or play music on booze or opium, you absolutely could on marijuana. Whereas alcohol dulled the senses and opium obliterated them, cannabis “excited” them. While it makes you feel calm and euphoric, marijuana also makes the senses more acute. You can smell more intensely, hear with more clarity and see more detail. Nuance does not get lost to a mind happily soaking in THC. If anything, a mind soaking in THC can get a little too absorbed in nuance.

If you’re creating things — a story, a song, an idea — nuance is everything. Creativity and cannabis go together brilliantly.

What scared Harry Anslinger into declaring war on marijuana (he insisted it wasn’t worth worrying about previously) was white people starting to use it.

The story of marijuna in America is another story about racism. The only reason cannabis was ever illegalized was racism. Not for two seconds did Harry Anslinger or any other moral scold determined to prohibit cannabis use ever research cannabis to prove its negative effects. They never cared about what it did to people (positive or negative). They only cared who was using it (originally).

As my wife recently told a friend who wondered what it’s like being married to a guy who’s stoned all the time, “I’ve never seen him ‘high’.”

That’s true. I know what’s meant by “high”. It’s the very real feeling of euphoria just before I fall asleep. In that sense, I get do get high every day. But, until that point, I have no interest in being “high”. I’m only interested in being productive. When I wake & bake, that baking needs to produce product. My creative day starts around 5 am with a cup of joe (I like it take-no-prisoners dark) and a bowl of sativa. In the mix this morning: Durban Poison (always!) Casey Jones, Ghost Train Haze, Willy Wonka & Alaskan Thunderfuck.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of your mind focusing in on something as the first waves of THC roll across your brain. When I really want to focus on the stuff I’m focusing on, I haul out the Trainwreck. Trainwreck’s a hybrid but there’s nothing quite like it.

Before I tried it the first time, I read somewhere that Trainwreck made you feel like cleaning your house. I thought that was funny. It’s goddamned true! Something about Trainwreck makes you super-focused and, yeah, you do get a sudden jones to clean the house. With a toothbrush (someone else’s).

It’s even better when used to write.

At the end of the day, since I no longer drink, the call goes out again to cannabis. It ain’t Miller Time, it’s Hybrids Time. Dutch Treat… Pineapple Express… Bruce Banner… Snowcap… White Widow. A friend gave me some home-grown Apple Fritter that’s awesome! Good hybrids produce feelings of calm. Of perspective.

A friend and I went to ss, LA’s first cannabis cafe not long after it opened. The line to get in was huge (this was pre-pandemic). So, interestingly, was the line to get a job there.

They didn’t serve alcohol then (don’t know if they did when they shut for the pandemic) but it wasn’t needed. The whole vibe inside the cafe was unlike anything I’d experienced before. Because there’s no alcohol, there’s less glass moving around. People aren’t there to drink (though staying hydrated is important). Consequently, there isn’t the constant clinking of glasses. Also missing — that manic edge that alcohol slowly asserts on a room.

Since I stopped drinking I have witnessed rooms filled with my friends (and rooms filled with strangers) as they devolved from easy-going coherence to alcohol-fueled testiness. The laughing gets louder and a little more crazed, uninhibited. There’s plenty of laughter in a room filled with cannabis users. Even more laughter than there is in a room filled with drinkers.

But the sound is different. Whether they were leaning forward or sitting back, everyone in that room was relaxed. Mellow. Their conversations — and their laughter — reflected the mellow more than anything. Being in a room filled with stoned people is nothing like being in a room with drunks.

Then, of course, everyone in that room (being as we were all given a 90 minute time limit after which we were vacating our table by rule), went out to the parking lot, got their keys back from the valet and drove home (or back to the office). If those people had all been drinking, there would have been the constant sound of cars smashing into each other right there where their parking lot met the street.

No such thing happened. I walked back to my car (I parked on the street), my friend walked to his car and we both drove home.

As I’ve also written about, the actual data — there IS data — says cannabis doesn’t effect how we drive under its influence the same way alcohol does. That fact befuddles researchers determined that cannabis does impact our brains the same way. As plenty of athletes already know, cannabis improves focus — which, in turn, improves performance. I smoke Durban Poison before I play tennis. It slows my thoughts down. Gives me time to process them. With DP in my head, my timing improves considerably. Seeing the ball (my bugaboo) becomes easier.

There’s a reason, once the opposition to cannabis started cracking, that the opposition fell to pieces quickly. It’s the same reason LGBTQ rights became viabe so quickly. And the same reason Black Lives suddenly Matter. The Truth has always been apparent.

Like the show X Files used to tell us, the Truth is “out there”.

The Truth also rests inside the bowl of Strawberry Durban Diesel I’m about to smoke. The one thing I know for a fact the Durban Diesel and its truth will do? They will set me free!

Sports & Cannabis — It’s Not A Good Thing, It’s A GREAT Thing

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment
Tennis (with cannabis) anyone?

America’s sports leagues are walking point on some very important realizations we’re all having about cannabis. The NFL, MLB, the NBA and the NHL no longer punish athletes for using cannabis. As ESPN put it, league attitudes — at the rules & regs level — is now officially “whatever”.

The leagues — all still holding onto bits and pieces of our old way of thinking about cannabis (the Harry Anslinger-inspired Reefer Madness way of seeing it) — told themselves that cannabis was good for pain relief. That’s why it was okay if their players tested positive for THC in their swabs or urine samples. For starters, not having to punish their stars for something they might be using themselves (knowing the effects) was a huge load off their, um, consciences. It also absolved them of having to justify test results that can’t tell anything beyond the presence of THC.

THC tests can’t tell you how much THC is in you. Can’t tell how long said THC has been in you. Can’t tell what exactly said THC did to your brain that makes punishment for it so important.

As I wrote in Blunt Truths, a thirteen-part series I did for WeedmapsNews (back when it existed as a thing), the story of cannabis prohibition is a story of racism and nothing but. At no point in our national conversation about cannabis did those trying to prohibit it ever back up their reasoning with science or data or anything remotely connected to them. Don’t you think they would have if they could have?

Oh, there’s “science” but it’s of the climate denying variety that could be picked apart by a kid working on a science fair project. The data — now that we’re collecting it — tells a very different story about (here’s the problem) a very different product. Different, that is, from alcohol. And other drugs that do things cannabis does not do.

Cannabis simply does not do to our brains what alcohol does. Or opiates for that matter. We need to stop acting — well, legislating and law enforcing — like it was. One of the things I wrote about in Blunt Truths was how marijuana became popularized in America. It more or less entered the country via the southwest. It had been used in Mexico for a long time already when the Mexican Revolution (started in 1910) sent a wave of Mexicans fleeing north to escape the violence.

In 1913, the very white California State Board of Pharmacy had noticed that Mexicans sometimes used marijuana to relax. Marijuana being foreign to them, these white guys decided it could only be bad — since Mexicans were already bad cos not white. They helped write the first anti-cannabis legislation. They claimed science but had none on their side. See how that works?

Anyway — in time marijuana use spread to New Orleans. It was taken up there at first by the mostly black musicians like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver who were inventing a new kind of music called jazz. Music was everything to these guys. They lived it and, well, breathed it. And they knew from experience that they couldn’t write music — couldn’t really play it — on alcohol. Opiates? Fuhgeddaboutit.

But, marijuana — that was different. Not “I want it to be different” different, DIFFERENT. On marijuana they felt both relaxed and deeply focused. The relaxed feeling — the euphoria — took the weight of the world from their shoulders. While the marijuana was caressing their brains — and smoking it gives you an hour-and-a-half or so of “prime time” and a few hours of much milder effect — they heard better. They articulated better the abstract musical ideas in their heads — reproducing it as notes on a trumpet or piano or glockenspiel even.

Marijuana really and truly makes its users more creative. Hell, I use indicas for sleep (I use sativas & hybrids the rest of the day). I mix & match from my collection (I like to keep a “rotation” of 8 or 9 different indica strains going) — usually doing two bowls of Skywalker or Hollow point or Paris or King Louis XIII or Afghani directly before bedtime. But, even as the indica’s sleepiness begins to envelope me in its delicious embrace, I can still get creative.

Suddenly, I’m sitting down and writing. Spewing an idea in all its glory as if I hadn’t been sleepy a minute before. I’ll sketch the thing out. Put down the pad or close the computer — and marvel at how the sleepiness, in a moment or two, returns. As if I hadn’t just been experiencing a vibrant, creative outburst.

And then I slip between the covers and sleep wonderfully. I started using cannabis a few years ago because of insomnia. Because OTC sleep meds weren’t doing anything for me. I had been using them for years and could count the number of “good” nights’ sleep on one hand. I was experiencing memory loss, too — a side effect of those drugs. Living in California, I figured what the hell. Dope had never been my thing when I was a kid — it put me to sleep. If that was the problem I was trying to solve — why not?

After putting my sleep problem to bed, I began to wonder what was in all those other jars at my local dispensary — that weren’t indicas? I had no concept back then what an indica was versus a sativa or hybrid. Like most people, what I knew about cannabis was mostly bullshit colored by Harry Anslinger, America’s first drug czar (he served as first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 all the way to 1962 when JFK shitcanned him). I had no idea that sativas had a very different effect from indicas. And what were these “hybrid” strains?

Then I discovered Durban Poison.

DP is a great working strain because the “high” is so focused but also so “smooth”. Other sativas (or sativa-dominant stains) like Crystal Coma or Green Crack deliver the same mental focus but with a little more edge. It’s kind of like feeling “extra curious” about things. Your mind wants to dig deeper still into whatever you’re thinking about. DP doesn’t prohibit one’s mind from going there, but it doesn’t automatically put your mind there.

Again — what sativas deliver to our brains is focus. It slows everything down. Think of our brains as being like digital circuits: our synapses are either open or closed. A zero or a one. THC causes more of our synapses — our digital circuitry — to be open. It’s not making us see more or hear more, but it is allowing our brains to process more. More visual input. More smell and taste input. That’s why people feel paranoid — their brains are receiving more information in real time. Some people perceive that as threatening. They think the information flowing to them means someone is watching them. It’s not a rational thought, it’s a feeling. But we go with it.

That additional flow of information to our brains also is why food tastes incredible when you’re high. It’s why smells are stronger and things just seem… funnier. That’s why people laugh so much on cannabis. You don’t just see the humor in things, you REALLY see it. And then you really, REALLY laugh.

If the fans attending a sporting event smoked cannabis instead of drinking beer, there would never be a fight in the stands because one drunk got pissed off at another. There would never be rioting after a match. People would be too busy hugging each other and saying “good match!” And the players?

Yeah — what of the players — and their experience using cannabis on the pitch or field or tennis court.

I’ve played tennis all my life. I hated it most of the time. Not tennis’ fault, that. Mine. I didn’t realize until a few years ago that I was dealing with a monstrous depression. A few days before Christmas 2016, I came within literal inches of killing myself. In the long, slow march toward oblivion that I was on, I would torture myself weekly with tennis.

My depression was filled with self-destructive loathing. If I played badly, it was because I sucked. I sucked because I always played badly — and I always played badly because I beat myself up instead of coaching myself. Long story short, my depression’s in remission. My mood stabilizer stops me from beating myself up — especially about tennis.

When I stopped beating myself up and started coaching myself instead — I got better at tennis. Well, I started to live up to my tennis-playing potential and that was awesome. It was fun, too. A shitload of fun.

Imagine it being a revelation that the sport you’ve played all your life can actually be enjoyable to play. Cannabis is the icing on that cake.

As it does with my work, cannabis focuses my brain on tennis. It relaxes me. Slows everything down. “See the ball”, I tell myself — and I find it as my tennis partner hits it and follow it all the way to my racket. “Where’s the ball?” I ask also. The ball needs to be in a specific place for me to attack it — and I need to be attacking it (rather than being attacked by it). I need to have a strategy in mind — and the cannabis does that too. I pick a spot. I attack the ball accordingly (racket back ASAP), stepping into the shot, striking the ball in “the zone” and then (most importantly but too often forgotten) following through.

I wish I was more consistent. But I’m waaaaaay better than I was — and I’m always keenly aware of exactly what I do wrong when I do things wrong.

The advantage cannabis gives me on the tennis court isn’t physical. It’s mental. I’m not being pumped up, I’m being focused. I’m being relaxed into a better performance.

And a fun experience becomes exponentially more fun.

Does cannabis give me an unfair advantage? That’s a science question, really. I sometimes think it does. But then I lose focus momentarily — because I’m still me — and I’m not so sure.

Dear Legal Cannabis Business: Here’s What I’d Like You To Be When You Grow Up

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Legal Cannabis is here and it is not going away. All those dire predictions of society’s collapse? Ummmm, not quite. Just the opposite actually.

As the coronavirus pandemic proves to us every day, some people can’t be dragged kicking & screaming to a good idea even if that good idea could save their life. Full cannabis legalization is a very good idea on myriad levels. Making it illegal in the first place — one of the worst decisions EVER.

It WAS a “decision” remember. We didn’t have to do this. We shouldn’t have. But, as I wrote about extensively in the 13 part series “Blunt Truths” that I wrote for WeedmapsNews, the story of cannabis prohibition is a story of racism and nothing but. The only reason first Commissioner of America’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger sought to make “marihuana” illegal was because white people started smoking it — and racist that he was, Anslinger could not tolerate a “colored vice” infecting white people. Here’s a basic fact: at no time in the process leading up to marijiuana’s “illegalization” did Anslinger EVER look to science or medicine to back him up. That’s because science & medicine (the AMA for example) disagreed with him. Completely.

Anslinger literally INVENTED “Reefer Madness” — the ludicrous notion that marijuana turns people in to raving lunatics. In the 1930’s, as cannabis use spread (following the African American jazz musicians heading north from New Orleans to Memphis, Nashville, Chicago), Anslinger (as America’s respected Narcotics Commissioner) would go to the newspapers and tell them — no, LIE to them — that black and Latino marijuana users were turning into drug-crazed killers who were selling their poison to school children. The newspapers would then dutifully report what the august Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had told them — and Anslinger, in turn, would hold up those very newspapers as PROOF that what he was saying was true.

Anslinger’s problem: there’s no legal basis in the Constitution to criminalize cannabis. In fact, when America was founded, farmers were REQUIRED to grow hemp because it was that important a crop with multiple uses. Consequently, Anslinger was forced to circumvent the Constitution and the will of the people (via medical science) by creating “The Marijuana Tax Act Of 1937“. The act didn’t make marijuana illegal. It did however impose an onerous tax on the sale and purchase of hemp and marijuana. In order to prove that you paid the tax, you also had to have a stamp to verify your transaction. The stamp however was impossible to get.

Therefore, anyone who bought or sold hemp or marijuana — without paying the tax and without getting the stamp — was breaking the law. The first marijuana arrest came within 24 HOURS of the Tax Act’s passage. Samuel Caldwell of was arrested on October 23, 1937 in Colorado for buying a joint and not paying the tax. So it began.

Racism worked well for Anslinger for a long time. When racism’s spur began to wane however — after WWII when opiates began to wreck American lives in rising numbers (wars cause a lot of physical pain), Anslinger invented “The Gateway Theory” that said marijuana was a “gateway” to harder, worse drugs like heroin.

Mind you — to get to the idea that marijuana was a “gateway to worse” required the leap that marijuana wasn’t the scourge WORSE THAN HEROIN that Anslinger himself had TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS that it was. But, hey — what’s a little perjury between racists, amiright? Especially when those racists are in Congress and legislating their racism.

The Gateway Theory became “accepted” as real. It’s not. Never was.

Then, in the late 60’s as the Vietnam War began to come apart — with tens of thousands of American troops returning with marijuana in their duffel bags — Richard Nixon declared “The War On Drugs”. Quick side note — as the African American jazz musicians in New Orleans had quickly learned, while one cannot create on alcohol or harder drugs like heroin, one becomes extraordinarily creative with THC in your brain. THC and alcohol do not work even remotely the same way when inside us.

American soldiers found that with a few hits of marijuana in them, as they went out on patrol, 1) they were calmer, more collected, 2) they were focused, 3) they were more sensually aware. Our thoughts occur as electric signals flowing across synapses. Our synapses are like digital circuits — they’re either opened or closed. Open they receive information, closed, they do not. THC causes more of our synapses to be open — and receiving information (visual, aural, taste, feel — whatever). That’s why people often feel paranoid when using cannabis. What they’re actually experiencing is an increased rush of information inside their heads. They perceive all that information coming in as someone watching them and knowing everything they’re doing.

If you don’t experience the paranoia reaction, that flow of information is nectar. Ambrosia. Gold dust.

This is the bottom line. Our brain chemistry and THC work extremely well together. Emphasis on the word “WORK”.

Here’s the part, Cannabis, where we talk about how you need to WORK for people.

For comparison’s sake, picture a sports stadium filled with people. Remember them? Remember what happened pretty regularly every time one of those stadiums drank too much and then spilled out onto the nearby streets?

Imagine how it might have been if, instead of drinking, those crowds had been using cannabis instead. No one’s rioting. No one’s fighting. At the end of the match, more likely, people are hugging (remember that) or high-fiving each other (opponents included) for having played so well and so hard. Cannabis does not make people angry or hostile the way alcohol does. We all know a few angry drunks.

I dare you to find an angry cannabis user. That is one of the reasons we use cannabis. To mitigate the triggers that make us angry and destructive. That’s why so many people use it now as part of their psychotherapy wellness regimens. I absolutely do.

The legalization process had myriad hurdles to clear. The largest unfortunately was marijuana’s bandit history. It sucks seeing the mom n pop cannabis shops die because the cost of all the regulations is so steep that only corporate players can survive. This is the price of moving cannabis from a criminal-owned-and-run business to a legitimate business that plays by The Rules.

There’s no middle ground sadly. There shouldn’t be a need for a “middle ground” but history forces things on us that reason would prevent. For now, we’ll have to endure over-regulation of the business side (who can sell, how can they sell, in what quantities, in what format) until we achieve a “critical mass” of acceptance where we realize that the overwhelming majority of our caution and regulations weren’t necessary. There’s more money to be made — via tax dollars — by letting the legitimate, mainstream marijuana marketplace find its way.

A big “for instance” — I sometimes use edibles at night. I do smoke indicas every night before bed. I used to use over-the-counter sleeping aids like Simply Sleep. But the sleep was never very good; I always awoke from what sleep I got groggy and lethargic. From the day I switched over to medical cannabis instead (I have and keep a prescription), I have slept wonderfully most nights. The smoked cannabis is great for getting me to sleep and keeping me asleep for a few hours. If I want longer sleep — that’s when edibles are good — as an add-on to the smoked cannabis.

If we were talking any pharmaceutical product, it wouldn’t even be a thought that someone with no involvement in my medication-taking would be telling me how much of a dose I can take vs how much I can’t. Prior to the crack-down on legit dispensaries here in CA, one could buy edibles with huge THC levels (pot brownies with 1000 milligrams of THC in them). Now — because of the regs — everything’s capped at 100 mg of THC. Why? No reason. Someone chose a number and there we are.

This is what I’m talking about, Legal Cannabis Business. That’s bullshit and YOU (especially you) know it.

It’s not the legal cannabis business itself that’s causing itself (and all us legal users) frustration and heartache. Yes, heartache, because cannabis IS a medicine. I use it not only for sleep but to moderate of my hypomania. I am bi-polar. I use 25 mg of lamotrigine a day to manage my depression. To manage the manic side of my brain — I use THC. It works. It works over short periods of time so that I’m never waiting to “come off it” when I need to. Hell, at any point, if I did feel I’d consumed too much THC (this has never happened to me and I doubt it ever will), I can always down a little CBD to eliminate the THC’s impact.

When you grow up, Cannabis Business, I need you to see yourself in a multi-faceted way befitting your multi-facted uses.

You need to position yourselves not so much as an adjunct to alcohol use (one really shouldn’t use the two concurrently as they cancel out each others’ effects — it’s really just humans being piggy about their indulgences), but as AN ALTERNATIVE. In the three years since I’ve stopped drinking (the lamotrigine gives all alcohol a grapefruit skin aftertaste making it completely unpalatable — an unintended, unexpected side effect), my eyes have been opened about alcohol: we (myself included when I drank) abuse the hell out of it. For real.

Cannabis also needs to get way better at messaging. It’s a big ask, I know, but the science is on cannabis’ side here. We need to get straight on something — since alcohol and THC act very differently in our brains, it follows that alcohol and THC impact us differently when we, say, get behind the wheel of a car. Alcohol impairs our motor skills. There’s data. THC? There’s no such data.

Let me be clear — where cannabis data is concerned, there’s far more we don’t know than we do. When they measure THC in experiments, they treat it as a generic when the way that THC acts in my brain depends entirely on the rest of the package it entered with (its terpene structure). Speaking entirely for myself here — since I can only speak from personal experience (365 days X 7 years of daily data gathering) — I become MORE physically coordinated with THC in my brain than when I don’t have it in me.

Example — I play tennis (well, I did before quarantine). I smoke cannabis before I play (and often during). The sativa Durban Poison is my preference. Within a few moments of a hit, after a feeling of calm descends on me, my brain focuses. The calm slows me down. The focus allows me to see the tennis ball with remarkable clarity. I can literally see the fuzz and the spin on the ball as it speeds toward me. I can break down the timing with precision. Move now. Racket back. Choose a spot across the net. Step into the shot. Follow through. Move to where you expect the “reaction shot” to go.

I just don’t play that way without the DP in my brain. I play appreciably better because I’m more focused. Alcohol does not work that way.

Just as sativas focus my brain for tennis, they focus my brain for work. Remember all those black jazz musicians from New Orleans. Louis Armstrong was one of marijuana’s first great champions (until the man took it away from him and put him in jail).

I drive with THC in me all the time (on the few occasions when I drive anymore). Hell, when we (used to) go to parties or out to dinner? My wife drinks alcohol. She’ll drive TO the party or bar and then I (because I don’t drink) do the drive home. I will have been smoking at some point during the evening. Keep in mind — marijuana doesn’t do to me what alcohol does to you. I’m not slurring my speech at the end of the night. I’m not bumping into things.

The National Highway Transportation Administration aches to tell us cannabis use causes traffic accidents. But read their own analysis of their own methodology — BEFORE looking at any numbers they throw down:

“Compared to that of alcohol, the contributions of other drugs to crash risk were minimal. In the initial data analysis, THC seemed to be a significant contributor to crash risk. However, with more sophisticated analysis controlling for variables known (based on previous research) to be associated with age, gender, race/ethnicity, and alcohol, drugs did not show a significant crash risk. The findings from this study may be surprising in light of some studies that have reported crash risk to be significantly related to drug use and driving.”

The moment you do “sophisticated analysis”, “drugs do not show a significant crash risk”. Bias shows more risk than the cannabis does.

Another NHTSA document “Marijuana-Impaired Driving: A Report To Congress” makes THIS statement:

Challenges in Estimating Crash Risk from Drug Use Conducting case-control studies to estimate the risk of crash involvement from drug use presents many difficulties. The first challenge is obtaining reliable and accurate estimates of drug use. Many studies rely on self-reporting (which have obvious inherent problems) rather than actual measurement of THC in blood or oral fluid. Also, the extent of care regarding the matching of crash-involved and control drivers varies to a large extent among studies. The more carefully controlled studies, that actually measured marijuana (THC) use by drivers rather than relying on self-reporting, and that had a high degree of control of covariates that could bias the results, generally show low risk estimates or in a few cases no risk associated with marijuana use (Elvik, 2013).

Another recent report published by the National Institute of Health says this:

Although cognitive studies suggest that cannabis use may lead to unsafe driving, experimental studies have suggested that it can have the opposite effect. 

And, in conclusion, it also says this:

Because of… an increased awareness that they are impaired, marijuana smokers tend to compensate effectively for their impairment by utilizing a variety of behavioral strategies such as driving more slowly, passing less, and leaving more space between themselves and cars in front of them. Combining marijuana with alcohol eliminates the ability to use such strategies effectively, however…

If we compare apples to apples — marijuana smoking to marijuana smoking and not stupid male behavior (per the studies) or stupid behavior combined with alcohol consumption to marijuana smoking — a very different picture of cannabis, cannabis use and cannabis users emerges.

A little while ago I went to the first cannabis cafe that opened here in LA. It was AWESOME! Strange, too. In such an atmosphere, one expects to hear the hush of human voices and laughter — and the clinking of glasses. That’s missing here. The “CLINK!” because no one is toasting each other.

But the voices are there. And the laughter. But the laughter doesn’t have that increasingly manic edge that comes after alcohol use. Instead, the voices and laughter had an intimacy to them. No one needed to shout. Everyone was cool and sober and social and feeling good. The cannabis made the food taste really, really good — as cannabis (which, remember, is feeding more sensual input to your brain) invariably does.

And then, when the meal was done (diners were allotted 90 minutes and then given the heave-ho cos people were waiting to get in), just about all of us went out to the parking lot, got our keys from the valet guy, got into our cars and drove away. Some of us went home but others WENT BACK TO WORK.

Here’s the key. We drove out of the parking lot — every single one of us — with THC pumping through our brains — and (to my knowledge) not a one of us had an accident. If there WERE a string of accidents, we’d all know about it. But there weren’t. And there aren’t. That’s because cannabis effects our brains differently from how alcohol effects them.

There’s actual data — from the government no less — from the National Highway Safety Bureau that backs this up. When they actually measure how cannabis effects people behind the wheel, what they invariably get is this: while alcohol makes people drive erratically, changing speeds, swerving from their lane, cannabis has the exact opposite effect. The data says people with THC in them maintain the speed limit (consistently) and they stay in their lanes. They keep safe following distances.

In other words, unlike with alcohol, cannabis users drive mindfully.

But then, cannabis users mostly know this about cannabis. We know what cannabis does for us — and what it doesn’t do. We know how good it makes us feel and we know how productive we can be with cannabis in us.

The large and growing number of us who use and enjoy and rely on cannabis — we know for a fact that everything we were ever told about this product is bullshit. Yes, yes, yes — cannabis isn’t good for everyone. It’s not good for kids to use. And not everyone drives well on cannabis (they might not drive well without cannabis in them — the cannabis might not be the issue with their bad driving). Nothing in this world is uniform or perfect. Not even physics.

The cannabis business, being a business — will do what it needs to do to stay a business. They will respond to whatever they perceive the marketplace for its product to be. If we act like a mature, responsible, data-driven market, the cannabis business will eventually catch up with us.

First though, we have to get the rest of the culture on board with us — with the truth. I guess what I’m saying is, it isn’t so much the cannabis biz that needs to grow up here, it’s us.

Question: What’s The Proper Cannabis Strain To Go With A Coronavirus Quarantine? Answer: Pretty Much ANY Cannabis strain

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

You know shit’s strange when real time is as plastic and fungible as time while you’re high. I don’t think it’s just me. The deeper we’ve plunged into the coronavirus quarantine, the weirder “time” has become. If you smoke as much dope as I do, you’re kinda used to thinking suddenly “Wait– where am I? What day is this again?” Those can be offputting to some people. I’m used to plunging into “other worlds” when I write screenplays and TV scripts. And I’m used to re-emerging from them (at quitting time) and being genuinely discombobulated upon re-entry.

Yeah — the way that time in general now feels a lot like “cannabis time” — that’s strange.

We will get back to a facsimile of our former lives but nothing about them will be untouched by this first run-in with the novel coronavirus that produces Covid-19 disease. Our lives will have to acknowledge, going forward, that we’re not done with this particular coronavirus and, now that it’s here, it will not ever be done with us. The motherfucker knows where we live.

First major impact on us — on the lives of Americans (different cultures will react to this change differently): we will slow down. We won’t stop living to work (instead of working to live like most civilized cultures). That’d be a bridge too far. But we’ll recognize — after much twisting in the wind — that we’ve all become a bit like Jack (Jack Nicholson’s character) in “The Shining”. He’s come to the terrible realization (too late) that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

America will emerge from this far more socialized than when we went in. That fact scares the living shit out of Mitch McConnell, the remaining Koch Brother, the Mercers and libertarians everywhere. And there they’d come sooooooo close to stealing the future out from under America — literally kidnapping the 2016 election result. By a large margin (larger than we know because voter suppression), Americans voted one way versus the other. We voted Democratic. And yet we got Republicans.

I won’t rage/argue about how exactly that happened (how the Republican Party made a dark calculation based on demographic extinction to hitch their wagon to Donald Trump and Russia so as to assure themselves of permanent minority rule. Election 2016, with Russia’s profound influence on the result, was literally a soft coup d’etat. Every single Republican knew what REALLY happened that night.

Every. Single. One.

So — slowing down — one has time to think. One has time to organize.

I’ll go through our library eventually, I’ve no doubt. But that hasn’t occurred to us yet. Early days. For now, my big reorganization project (okay — after the garage — one of our “do everything NOW” projects when the quarantine began) was my cannabis collection.

Yeah — I have a cannabis collection. As in “collection”.

I used to collect red wines and single malt scotch (before my mood stabilizer gave all alcohol a terrible, grapefruit skin aftertaste). When I put all my “self-medication eggs” in the cannabis basket — and saw the incredible variety of strains that existed, all with slightly different properties — I automatically began collecting. While cannabis will never be as “terroir specific” as wine grapes (cannabis will always be more weed than anything else), some very real science has gone into the creation of most commercial cannabis strains (imagine having “commercial” cannabis to begin with — that will never stop being awesome).

As of this morning (I did some “housekeeping”), I have 60 different strains in my cannabis collection. That breaks down to 10 indica strains (my night time meds), 14 “hybrid” strains (genetic mixes of indicas, sativas and other hybrids that mostly I use in the late afternoon to manage my hypomania (they all give me varying degrees of mental energy and focus) and 35 sativas (give or take) that I use from the start of my creative day (usually around 5 a.m.) until I finally switch over to straight hybrids in the late afternoon.

Sativas are my workday strain. They focus my mind like nothing else. The flow of thoughts is clear. The thoughts themselves feel organized and purposeful. And my senses are far, far more alive and attuned. I hear better. Smells are more distinct. Taste is sharper (and food tastes amazing as a result).

I’m completely strain specific when it comes to cannabis. Having experimented with “Let’s see what it does” in my early cannabis days (about 2 years ago), I learned that there are plenty of cannabis strains that leave me cold. My brain chemistry can tolerate a shitload of THC. I never feel paranoid. I’ve never experienced anything I would describe as “unpleasant” while using cannabis. And I mix and match strains, I “cocktail” them together and layer one on top of the other — looking to see what the cumulative effect of various strains causes to happen inside my head.

As I said — I absolutely discern subtle, distinctive differences between most strains. Yes, yes — lots of sativas are incredibly similar to each other in their effects. Other qualities differentiate them also — smell, taste, quickness of onset, duration, quality of high and duration of same. I know I’m not the only one who feels these subtle differences — other users have written extensively.

Though I have 60 strains in my collection (by “in” my collection, I mean I have at LEAST a half-gram of it left; enough for at least two bowls), I actively use only a third. A third of my collection are strains I’m not sure I’ll ever see again — and I really liked them (Alaskan Ice, Britberry Cheesecake, Lucid Blue, Bay Dream, Jack The Ripper) so I hold onto them with a mixture of hope (that I’ll see them again so I can buy more) and acceptance (that I never will see them again and might as well just smoke them cos they won’t live forever).

First thing you need to know — I grind all my own flower then put them into little 10 dram containers (that I label myself). I’m weird that way. Entrepreneurial too.

I use a fishing tackle box for my “collection” and various other jerry-rigged plastic containers as my prototype day collection holder & night collection holder. There’s a market here to sell real shit like this to people like me. Did I mention I’m entrepreneurial? Call me!

Quick caveat here. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten “high” off of cannabis. I’ve gotten intensely focused. I’ve gotten intensely chill. I’ve gotten intensely asleep. I’ve never behaved (or felt) like a “stoner”. And I smoke dope from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep.

My current day time collection — my go-to’s for working, thinking deeply and getting maximum shit done to the very, VERY best of my abilities — feature these awesome strains:

1 DURBAN POISON — If I were to “Desert Island Disks” cannabis — If I had to chose one or two strains to live with and nothing more, I’d pick Durban Poison first. It’s my go-to go-to strain (if that makes sense). The mental energy it creates is focused and “clean”; some of the other sativas on this list have a bit of “edge” to them. That makes them ideal for some tasks, less ideal for others — once you appreciate how to use those effects. Durban Poison works for every work day situation. You simply cannot go wrong with it. The “high” is usually fairly long-lasting (upwards of two hours) before another hit may (or may not) be needed or wanted. Bonus Goodness — Because of its “evenness” and the quality of its focus, I find DP GREAT for sports. I take a hit before (and sometimes during) tennis. The DP allows me to actually keep my eye on the ball (something I’m terrible at) which right off the bat improves my game immeasurably. The DP improves my timing. It slows the ball itself down too. I can see the spin on the ball. I can see its fuzz. DP rocks!

2 GG 4 — My other go-to strain though I don’t use anywhere near as much of it as I do Durban Poison. Most days, I may take one hit of GG4. I may not have any. And that’s at the very start of my writing day — when I transition from sleep to work-head. In times of financial hardship (my collection fell off for a while — it got as low as 25 strains at one point — most of those my “hold onto cause you’ll probably never see em again” collection), GG4 was both my wake up strain and my wind down strain and, ya know? As a wind-down strain it’s super! Most people use it for that apparently. By the time I figured that out, I had already found various “end of the day but not quite ready for bed time” strains so GG4 wasn’t necessary for that. It starts my day in a particular way that no other strain does. It starts with a slowly creeping sensation rolling from the crown of my head forward to my eyebrows — where it seems to dive into my consciousness and swim effortlessly, buoyantly, contentedly. That’s GG4’s greatest strength — that platform it creates. You can ride it all by itself or you can “build” on it — platform a sativa to launch into work mode or an indica to give extra heft and tug to the sleepiness it produces.

3 STRAWBERRY DURBAN DIESEL — A fairly recent find and one that’s become staple whenever I can find it. As the name implies there’s a lot of Durban Poison in the mix — and it’s wedded to some strawberry-flavored genetics (there’s a sweet, berryishness to the smoke) and another classic strain Sour Diesel. It’s got every bit of Durban Poison’s focus plus a little extra pop. I’ve never tried using this strain before playing tennis but maybe I should — the day they start letting us use the tennis courts again here in LA.

4 ALICE IN WONDERLAND — A great strain especially after the day has gotten rolling. There’s nothing wrong with starting a day with AIW but, in my experience, it’s like a brilliant middle-reliever on a baseball team. His job: get you from here to there. Not an opener exactly or a closer (for sure) but anything and everything in between. The buzz is distinctive and heady. Thoughts almost seem to pulsate with clarity.