Culture

Movies are a huge part of the pothead society. We love to watch flicks, what can we say? There are tons of movies out there that people consider stoner classics but the market is a cutthroat one and rivaling for the short attention span of smokers is tough. But thanks to the director of The Fifth Element (another awesome stoner movie that you should watch if you haven't by now) Luc Besson, the new Scarlett Johansen movie may prove to be something that stoners really enjoy. Be careful reading though... This contains some spoilers that you won't want to read if you haven't seen it!

 

"Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it?" is what Lucy says during the opening scenes, over the prehistoric dawn of man. A question that stoners seem to ask a lot, this would definitely appeal to most of the potheads that I know. Be sure that you've got your weed stocked up before watching this movie, as I heard that it's not as good if you're not baked. But with the futuristic cityscape of Taipei, the movie does a good job of drawing you in so at least they've got your attention. It's a little futuristic, a little "today", and definitely for stoners.

 

Lucy is basically forced to work for Korean gangsters and starts to smuggle drugs, something that a lot of stoners may be able to relate to (not smuggling so much but almost everyone I know that smokes weed has also sold it at some point in their lives). Against her choice, Lucy is forced to ingest bags of magical drugs that look like blue crystals, called CPH4. The drugs cause mind bending experiences, rivaling the drug that the movie may or may have not been subliminally named after.

 

When the drugs enter Lucy's system, not only does she suddenly defy gravity as the transformation happens, her eyes begin to flash in crazy cosmic shifts, including galaxies, animal eyes, and other strange images projected. She begins to see how the trees grow, how cell phones operate, and how the human body functions. Flashback to the Matrix and Neo, the One, who could see bodies made of binary code. Lucy also gains the ability to slow down and speed up time, basically making her a remote control to the universe.

 

You may like the movie or you may not. Whatever the case is, it's definitely recommended that you give it a shot. Be sure that you get nice and baked to ensure that you have a somewhat good time. Grab your popcorn (medicate that shit if you can), maybe a medicated lemonade drink, and get to watching!

The older you get, the less worried you become about things like epilepsy, seeing as how disorders like that tend to develop earlier in life. This wasn't the case for Robert Pack, a manager of ticketing and audience services at the Monterrey Symphony Orchestra located in Carmel, California. It was at this time as a manager that Pack discovered that he had adult onset epilepsy after he had a seizure at work one day.

 

Of course, Pack was immediately prescribed multiple medications, non of which seemed to work except one. This particular drug gave Pack severe nausea, extremely bad anxiety, and insomnia. These effects began to have a toll and Pack's doctor recommended utilizing the cannabis plant in order to stem the bad side effects. When Pack started using marijuana, he noticed an incredible difference in how he felt. "Let me just say that cannabis is the absolute best anti nausea medication in the world. Absolutely the best. It immediately mitigated the nausea. It immediately took care of the anxiety and my appetite improved. It became more normal," he says. Pack used cannabis twice a day, every day without fail, since then. And because he lived in California, he was a medical marijuana patient. But he still didn't inform his employer of this new medicine and instead, kept it quiet while he wrestled with his health issues.

 

When Pack's mother died, he was driven back to Carlsbad, New Mexico where he was offered a job at Hastings bookstore as an assistant manager. The catch? He had to pass a drug test. But when Pack informed the regional management at Hastings about his medication, they didn't really say anything other than to go ahead and take the test. "They were kind of giving me the wink to go and get a masking kit and cover it up," Pack said. But as a proud medical marijuana patient, he didn't want to cover up his cannabis use. So he failed the test. "They withdrew the job offer because I did test positive for cannabis use and I pointed out to them that New Mexico was a legal state that didn't matter. I pointed out to them that I had no criminal record. That didn't matter. My work record. My experience. None of that mattered," he stated.

 

There are five states in the US that have implemented laws against employers discriminating against cannabis using patients. New Mexico still hasn't put those laws in to place. For now, Pack has retired but not by choice. He refuses to stand down and lives off of the family farm. He spends the majority of his time advocating employee rights in New Mexico, working to get employers to accept the medical marijuana users in to the empty jobs. It's sad to see patients be so discriminated against and hopefully, the laws adapt soon to protect patients from terrible employers that just don't seem to care

New information about the marijuana plant is discovered every day. From it's healing powers in the medical field to it's industrial asset status, marijuana is something that absolutely should not have been kept illegal for so long. Now, we have years of catching up to do in order to put ourselves where we should be. A society that (rather than being full of violence and terrible people) would help each other, assist the earth in sustaining it's beautiful environment, and just be a generally better place. Here's five facts that you may or may not already know about our favorite plant.

 

1. In 1978, medical marijuana cigarettes were dispensed by the federal government to people suffering from rare and deadly disorders. The Compassionate Investigational New Drug program only accepted a mere four members, majority of which have passed away from their afflictions. The program shut down in 1991, leaving the millions of other medically suffering patients to deal with their illness with the "help" of Big Pharma.

 

2. From 1999 to 2006, there were 8 out of 10 states that said with legal medical marijuana, there was a considerable decrease in the amount of teenagers using the plant. This statistic puts to rest the "more young people will smoke if it's legal" myth that anti-potters seem so amped up about.

 

3. Ingesting marijuana through edibles such as cookies, brownies, or teas magnifies the effect of THC because the human liver transforms the Delta-9-THC in to a much more powerful version, Delta-11-THC. This is why eating your marijuana can potentially cause you to pass out or for the user to experience extremely intense psychoactive responses.

 

4. The University of Mississippi grows marijuana for the federal government year round. The amount of weed grown depends on what the government wants but yes, the feds are directly disobeying their own laws and cultivating the plant. The project includes a version of the plant that contains no THC as well, something that could be a huge asset to patients suffering with epilepsy. The University has been growing government weed since 1968.

 

5. The United Kingdom released a cannabinoid based mouth spray called Sativex that helps people with muscle spasms. The spray was released in June of 2010 and is used to treat those with multiple sclerosis. Available through prescription only, Sativex has reached multiple countries since i t's release, showing that it must have some positive effect on the afflictions that it was created to negate.

On Election Day 2014, Florida voters will get the chance to legalize medical marijuana. Because the initiative is a constitutional amendment, the initiative will need at least 60% of voters to vote ‘yes.’ The battle in Florida has been fierce, with both sides raising millions of dollars. Polls show that the initiative is winning, but polls don’t always translate to reality on Election Day. However, I’m confident that victory will be achieved in Florida in November.

 

With marijuana reform on people’s minds in Florida, a question that I get quite a bit these days is ‘when will Florida legalize recreational marijuana?’ Unlike states like Texas and New York, Florida has an initiative process which boosts the odds of full legalization. States that have to rely solely on their legislatures to approve legalization face a much tougher fight. But just because Florida has an initiative process doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk that legalization will happen soon.

 

Florida’s initiative process, and what it takes to win on Election Day, is one of the toughest in the nation. In order to qualify an initiative for the upcoming election, organizers have to get enough valid signatures to equal at least 8% of the last Presidential vote in Florida. For the 2014 Election, this worked out to 683,149 signatures. And considering that not every signature is valid, a campaign would have to gather significantly more than that to ensure there are enough to survive the verification process. That’s a ton of signatures. Compare that to my home state of Oregon, which requires less than 90,000.

 

To make matters even tougher in Florida, there are district requirements for where signatures have to be gathered from. For the 2014 election, at least 68,314 valid signatures had to have been gathered from at least 7 different Congressional districts. Compare that to my home state of Oregon, where signatures can be gathered from anywhere in the state. It makes it much tougher to meet initiative qualification requirements. It’s hard to find seven different parts of any state that are sympathetic to a political cause, marijuana or otherwise.

 

But there is good news for Florida. Signature requirements are tough in the state, but the 2014 medical marijuana effort proves that it can be done for marijuana reform. Also, the 2014 medical marijuana campaign has shown that there is significant financial support for a marijuana reform campaign. Last I heard the campaign had raised over five million dollars, which is a very large amount for a campaign.

 

The last poll I saw from Florida showed 55% support for legalization. That’s enough for almost any other state to get funders on board, however, because Florida requires a 60% ‘yes’ vote, it could signal that Florida may have to wait until polling shows even higher support. Due to the signature gathering requirements, polling, and the 60% ‘yes’ vote requirement, I think Florida may not be a sure shot for 2016. 2018 is a mid-term election year, which is hard to get funders and organizations on board with. I think Florida’s best bet for legalization is 2020, but I’m hopeful that federal reform will have been acheived by then, which would make a Florida legalization effort unnecessary. I would LOVE to be wrong about 2016, but I think Florida will have to wait awhile before recreational legalization becomes a reality there.

 

Source: http://www.theweedblog.com

Stoners are pretty much always portrayed as lazy bums. Even though we've been pushing the successful stoner idea for years, people still think we're just sitting around eating chips and watching cartoons. I mean, we like to do that more than most people but we still get shit done as well. Stoners should be recognized for their incredible efforts, especially in the film world. While most people see some goofy comedy, us potheads understand the stoner struggle and the challenges that come with being a pothead.

 

1. The Half Baked Trio

The guys from Half Baked should be honored for their efforts! Their friend gets taken off to jail and these three friends create a super elaborate plan to bust him out. They get the plan set up, put it in to action, and get it done, managing to not only get their friend out of jail but accomplish basically every goal for each of the friends. Hell yeah, you potheads.

 

2. Pineapple Express

Staying high and busting the bad guys? Seems legit and Seth Rogan and James Franco nailed it in this flick. Plus, the added hilarity of Danny McBride? The two start off as just dealer-buyer and end up being best buds by the end of the film, having stayed stoned and (mostly) safe throughout the entire movie. They get rid of the bad guys and even McBride makes it out alive... Kind of.

 

3. Cabin In The Woods

In this creepy, brutal, gore filled horror, Fran Kranz plays a "typical" stoner. He becomes dismissed about halfway through the film and you think that his witty comments are at an end but he reappears later, killing monsters like a boss. Since the end of the world is inevitable, there's no "day saved" moment for this pothead. But he proved to the masses that the dumb stoner isn't always the first one to die and may actually be the smartest one in the group.

 

4. Scooby & Shaggy

They may not seem that heroic but they definitely do help out a lot. Even though they spend a lot of time eating their munchies, they still work hard with the group to track down the bad guys. A scruffy hippy and a talking dog are an odd duo but they seem to work out pretty damn good.

 

5. How High

Silas P. Silas and Jamal King bust their asses to get through college... Kind of. They are pretty smart and manage to outdo all of their rivals, managing to even plant weed that can make you see dead people. I definitely haven't tried that strain yet... But these two guys are definitely hardworking to say the least and manage to provide a comedic laugh in there as well.

The cannabis industry stands to make people a whole lot of money, once it is allowed to be a regulated substance. With the amount of taxes to be made, plus the revenue itself from sales, the plant has the potential to pull us out of a massive amount of debt. Not only that but the release of non-violent marijuana offenders would save states millions on prison money and law enforcement, letting police and jailers spend their time attending to actual criminals, not a bunch of stoned out youths. But how badly is the government really screwing up by not allowing this plant to flourish?

 

Let's talk money... After all, the language of green is one that everyone speaks. In this case, each state would make money from legalizing cannabis. Some states stand to make far more than others because of their heavy density of cannabis usage. For example, California stands to make $105 million in tax revenue due to legalized weed. All of that money going to help schools, roads, and public programs, not to mention the massive amount of jobs that would come from a legal marijuana industry. Following not-so-closely behind California is New York, which comes in at a staggering $65 million (California, what are you DOING?!). Imagine all of that money going towards better roads and nicer schools, free lunches for kids and hundreds of jobs? Not to mention the positive effects that cannabis has on society as a whole.

 

There is someone getting arrested for cannabis use once every 38 seconds. So by the time I finish writing this blog, at least ten people will have been arrested for smoking a plant. Doesn't that just seem a little messed up? In addition, there will be $14,100,000,000 spent on preventing marijuana use per year. That includes the money that Feds need to raid dispensaries, grow houses, and homes of the people that it should be protecting. Plus the money that is spent on housing these "criminals"? Absolutely ridiculous. All of that could be spent elsewhere, on making the world a better place for the ones that will follow in our footsteps.

 

Marijuana has been here for thousands of years. It was here long before us and it will be here long after we've killed ourselves off. It is a part of this planet and is not to be treated like some man made monstrosity, like cigarettes, alcohol, and pollution. Arresting innocent people for smoking a plant is just simply a waste of time, We can only keep our fingers crossed in hopes that the government will just let marijuana go and study it for the miracle plant that it is.