DemonKia
Posts: 5521
Joined: 10/13/2007
From: Chico, Nor-Cali
Status: offline
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Okay, I'm in Northern Cali, in what I like to call the Emerald Triangle, lol. Not really triangular, but very emerald with forests & all the barely hidden cannabis growing operations, indoors & out, throughout the Pacific Northwest. But in particular, in Northern California cannabis is the number one cash crop, despite how big & significant all that other 'vanilla' agriculture is to the state's economy . .. . .
It's quasi-legal, all one needs is a recommend, which can be procured independent of the rest of one's health care stuff so as to avoid 'tainting' one's insurance profile, job stuff, etc. Tho' the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 provides legal cover for testing dirty for many occupations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. & recommends can be obtained for a wide range of physical & mental ailments.
There has been a lot of sequelae in the ensuing dozen plus years of cannabis being quasi-legalized.
Enforcement has been way stepped down. The police do not like to get their hands slapped by the courts & it didn't take much of that to get them de facto off of pot smokers in general. I have quite openly smoked pot all over the north state, with & without a recommend, & I know quite a few others similarly inclined. Even without a medical recommend, possession of under an ounce is the legal equivalent of a speeding ticket, it's a citation. $100 fine & seizure of the pot & any paraphernalia . . . .
Prices have come down slightly over that time frame, & prior to that they had been gradually inflating, alongside everything else. I suspect we're closing in on the 'legal pricing'.
Further, given the global, national, & state economic situations, I'm leaning optimistic that we may be the first US state to straight up legalize it. Mostly because of the not-insignificant costs of maintaining all that cannabis-related incarceration. Between all that newly-taxable legal economic activity & the savings of billions of dollars in law enforcement costs, yep, got my fingers crossed. If the state default on its debts, my estimation of those odds goes up a smidge. Each year of lingering economic malaise, my odds estimation improves. Circa 2012, 2013, could be . .. . . . We'll see .. . .
Ah, & as to quantities. & qualities, while I'm at it. Smoking anything is bad for the lungs, there are ways to reduce the harm of that. One of them is to eat the cannabis rather than to smoke it, tho' overdoses (which do happen, are unpleasant tho' not lethally so) are more likely with eaten & much less likely with inhalation methods. Typically, tho', eating takes more of the material to produce the same effect as a smaller quantity smoked or vaporized.
Cannabis extracts into fats or alcohol, so conventional extractions & tinctures can be made. I'm partial to (edible vegetable) oil extracts. Drizzle the oil onto food & voila . .. . .
& super-strong cannabis & cannabis concentrate (ie, hash, keef, & etc) are 'good' in that it takes less of them to produce the desired effect. This is especially crucial when inhalation methods are used.
Ah. & lastly but very far from leastly.
The US gov't. decided that they would 'prove' once & for all that cannabis is 'bad' by allowing it to be run thru the (gold standard science) Carcinogenity Assays funded thru the NIH.
Two studies were funded using mice & rats specifically bread to pop out tumors at higher-than-normal rates. They were fed cannabis extracted into corn oil, & their blood concentrations of metabolic breakdown products of cannabis was recorded, as were the resulting tumors compared to the expected rates . . . . . The results were published circa 1993 or 1994, I've got a hard copy around here somewhere, if y'all can't find the cite online, I'll dig it out . . .
& what were those results? Why didn't you hear about this? Well, because there was a dose-dependent decrease in all tumors, both studies. The more cannabis they gave them, the fewer tumors the little tumor-inclined rats & meese popped out . . . . No shit. Seriously.
If it had been some obscure Siberian grass that a multinational corporation could patent the genes of, it probably would have been hailed from the cover of Time magazine as a potential cure for cancer, but instead . ... . . Yeah . . . .
Oh, oh, must end this tirade with a Bill Hicks quote. Which one, which one? Oh, yes, but of course:
Why is marijuana against the law?
It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake.
Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation; perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest....
"Oh, my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere.
"I should never have smoked that joint on the third day.
"Hehe, that was the day I created possums.
"If I leave pot everywhere that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to...use it.
"Now I have to create Republicans."
"...And God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
- Bill Hicks
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Snarko ergo sum.
The Verbossinator
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