Portugal's Drug Policy Pays Off

            Ten years ago, the Lisbon neighborhood was a hellhole, a "drug supermarket" where some 5,000 users lined up every day to buy heroin and sneaked into a hillside honeycomb of derelict housing to shoot up. In dark, stinking corners, addicts - some with maggots squirming under track marks - staggered between the occasional corpse, scavenging used, bloody needles.

            At that time, Portugal, like the junkies of Casal Ventoso, had hit rock bottom: An estimated 100,000 people - an astonishing 1 percent of the population - were addicted to illegal drugs. So, like anyone with little to lose, the Portuguese took a risky leap: They decriminalized the use of all drugs in a groundbreaking law in 2000.

            Now, the United States, which has waged a 40-year, $1 trillion war on drugs, is looking for answers in tiny Portugal, which is reaping the benefits of what once looked like a dangerous gamble. White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske visited Portugal in September to learn about its drug reforms, and other countries - including  Norway, Denmark, Australia and Peru - have taken interest, too.

            "The disasters that were predicted by critics didn't happen," said University of Kent professor Alex Stevens, who has studied Portugal's program. "The answer was simple: Provide treatment."

             Drugs in Portugal are still illegal. But here's what Portugal did: It changed the law so that users are sent to counseling and sometimes treatment instead of criminal courts and prison. The switch from drugs as a criminal issue to a public health one was aimed at preventing users from going underground.

Other European countries treat drugs as a public health problem, too, but Portugal stands out as the only one that has written that approach into law. The result: More people tried drugs, but fewer ended up addicted.

              Here's what happened between 2000 and 2008:

* There were small increases in illicit drug use among adults, but decreases for adolescents and problem users, such as drug addicts and prisoners.

* Drug-related court cases dropped 66 percent.

* Drug-related HIV cases dropped 75 percent. In 2002, 49 percent of people with AIDS were addicts; by 2008 that number fell to 28 percent.

* The number of regular users held steady at less than 3 percent of the population for marijuana and less than 0.3 percent for heroin and cocaine - figures which show decriminalization brought no surge in drug use.

* The number of people treated for drug addiction rose 20 percent from 2001 to 2008.

Top 5 Stoner Movies

(press title to go to trailer)

5. Cheech and Chongs Up In Smoke

4. Friday Trilogy

3. Super High Me

2. How High

1. Half Baked

Cannabis Documentaries

            Here are a few documentaries that I really enjoyed watching and maybe some of you people might like them too, so here are a few I picked out (there aren't a lot of them by the way), you can view full movies on Youtube or Google Videos.



The Union: The Business Behind Getting High



In Pot We Trust



How Weed Won the West

Cannabis Kills Cancer

...and it appears that our government has know that for quite a few years, well 36 years to be exact. There was a study in '74 that said  ” The researchers found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.” And guess why the research hasn't been that popular? Well the answer is simple - prohibition.

 Press here to read more.

Bud Shots

No news or something like that today, I'd thought I should upload some great bud pics, so here they are:

Cannabis Cup

       Today is something I'd like to introduce to you people, it's the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, in a nutshell it's a lot of people from around the world judging various cannabis strains, related products etc., and it's been going on for 23 years. The last 23rd cup ended about 10 days ago on November 25th.Some of the categories that people judge are Best Sativa\Indica, Best Product, Best Glass, Best Hash and some more.
The cup also includes live music, comedy and an expo for marijuana-related products from cannabis-oriented businesses. It's been my dream to visit it and be judge for a long time, hopefully I'll get there sometime.

Here's a video from the expo, as you can see it's pretty crowded there

Cannabis treated illnesses

            As some of you might already know, cannabis help with various illnesses, some of the main ones are treating nausea, vomiting, unintentional weight loss, insomnia, and lack of appetite. Cannabis also relieves symptoms of multiple sclerosis and spinal injuries by relaxing muscles and stimulating appetite. Other studies have shown cannabis or cannabinoids may be useful in treating alcohol abuse, arthritis, asthma, bipolar disorder, cancer, depression, epilepsy, digestive diseases , hepatitis C, Huntington's disease , leukemia, skin tumors, Parkinson's disease, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sleep apnea, and anorexia. So if you have any of those or you know anyone who does and is not satisfied with current treatments, look into cannabis!

Mixing alcohol with cannabis

            Sorry for not posting lately, been really busy, ok now own with todays post,  it's about mixing cannabis and alcohol, let get this through first - this isn't gonna be anti-alcohol or something like that. Now there's saying a saw around the internet a couple of times "Grass before beer you're in the clear, beer before grass you're on your a**" and it kind of makes sense,just a few days ago I had quite a lot of beer (Not a drinker by the way , I used to drink quite a bit before, but now I've almost stopped) and smoked a little bit of cannabis, at first I felt good, but after like 30 minutes everything was starting to go downhill, I felt really "heavy" and it wasn't that bad at first, after another 15 minutes I was barely able to stand up, sweating a lot, feeling extremely nauseaus, heart is pounding and just one of the worst feeling in the world, so, if anyone wants to try this, use alcohol in moderation (I'd say no more then 2-3 beers (6% percent in alcohol in my situation)). Best idea would be just not to mix the 2.

Prop 203 passed! (Arizona Medical Marijuana)

            So just recently the Arizona medical marijuana law passed with 50.13% Yes and 49.87% No, it was a really close one, it passed just by 0.26%. So congrats to you Arizonians on joining in on the states who allow MMJ. People with cancer, AIDs, HIV, Alzheimer’s, Hepatitis C and so on might really benefit from this, because conventional drugs are nearly not as good as cannabis, and doctors can now legally prescribe cannabis , quite a few have been doing it illegally to help their patients.

Uses of Cannabis

           Another chart, showing the different uses of cannabis.

Info

             Just some info today, getting educated doesn't hurt!

Hashbean420

            Just a quick post today, I just wanted to share this youtube channel of this guy called Hashbean420, I just love his videos, he does have some skills at smoking :D

Seeds

           If anyone has any interest in growing cannabis or for any other reason would like to know a good seed bank, press here. It's the Attitude Seed Bank, which ,by my standards, is one of the best. And remember - with seeds, you don't always get what you pay for, some people might just put on a huge price for genetics that you might get elsewhere for just a fracture of the price, a couple of good brands - Nirvana (good and cheap genetics, however there may be some variation between the plants),Big Buddha Seeds (mainly cheese strains), DJ Short, Dutch Passion Seeds, Paradise Seeds and so on. I might post some strain reviews later if anyone's interested.

Homegrown

            The thing I want to talk about today is homegrown cannabis vs. bought, now I'll be talking about the illegal market, will explain why later. Now the first reason to grow your own is quality, there's 99% chance that you won't find bud as good as some that has been grown for personal consumption, mainly because of the contamination that I explained in my previous blog, then the marijuana that people buy usually goes around quite a lot of hands and a lot of THC trichomes fall off (the mushroom like things on the buds) and the cannabis dries out in that time. Then there's a chance of getting ripped off and it's a quite high, who wouldn't like making more money and selling less or lower quality product? And there's dealing with the shady dealers, who would like that? But of course there are downsides, the constant fear of getting caught for example or putting in quite a lot of money into a grow setup and end up killing your plants (but practice makes perfect). And the reasons why I'm talking about the illegal market is that in a legal one, you're buying quality product (well mostly) ,it's legal and most vendors actually are friendly (duh...).

Prop 19 did not pass...

           So, sad news, today prop 19 didn't pass and as far as I read, about 50% percent of smokers in CA opposed this initiative, mainly because it wasn't their idea of legalization, it's a sad thing that Californians passed away a thing that might have changed a lot of this. However all is not lost, the "next big thing" is the "California Cannabis Hemp & Health Initiative 2012" it would've been up to voting yesterday, however due to lack of signatures and funding (probably because of Jack Herers health problems) it didn't go though, but even some smokers for some reason (regulations maybe?) oppose this one also, I'm starting to think that people don't even know what they want...

Marijuana - The gateway drug!

        Do you believe that cannabis is a direct cause of getting addicted to the hard stuff? Well you're wrong, in no way cannabis is a gateway drug, after using it no one will feel the need to get heroin or cocaine, and prohibition is probably making influence to this theory, in a bad way of course, if you don't have enough money for marijuana your dealer might offer you something else that is "stronger and cheaper" and sadly some people might get tricked into using other stuff. Anyway, I'm not going to babble about this for too long since it's already pretty self-explanatory.
        And today is November 2nd and Prop 19 and Prop 203 (Arizona medical marijuana ballot) are hopefully passing, we'll see if history changes today!

Marijuana bust of 105 tons

              Mexican authorities caught some people with 105 tons of cannabis, supposedly heading for US, which as they say is worth about 1 billion $, but since anti-drug agencies like to overstate things, it could be more like 250 million $ (since Mexican brick weed costs somewhere about 2-3$ per gram), but still that is a huge amount of money that would've bought some drug lord a quite few villas and a lot of guns, It makes me wonder how much cannabis is actually shipped in from Mexico to US...

Read more here.

Prohibition

                  After the alcohol prohibition in 1933, the marijuana tax prohibiting the use of cannabis took place, destroying the hemp industry, the head of Federal Bureau or Narcotics (formaly DEA) Harry J. Anslinger stated "Marijuana is a drug causing most violence, people smoking it are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes." People thought that Anslinger was a marijuana expert,in reality he had no expert knowledge of the effects of cannabis. In 1936 the liquor industry funded the creation of propaganda film called "Reefer Madness" or "Tell Your Children", the plot is that a student started smoking cannabis and he went insane and started killing his family. There is a theory that cannabis was banned because it would destroy the timber and fuel industry, even after the prohibition Henry Ford illegally grown cannabis and used them as fuel.

Cannabis Plant

                Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants, it produces a psychoactive substance called THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), the reason cannabis plants started producing THC is self-defense against herbivores and it also absorbs UV rays and protects the plant from harmful UV radiation. Cannabis was first used somewhat 5000 years ago in Asia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Greece and such for medicinal, recreational purposes or as hemp (industrial cannabis that has very low percentages of THC in it) and in modern world it was banned in mid 40's.
Recently more and more states begin to legalize medicinal cannabis, as of now 15 states in the US have legalized medical use of marijuana and few states are trying to legalize it for recreational purposes.

The Lazy Stoner

               There's this thing coming around saying that every stoner is lazy, doesn't do anything all the day. Well in my opinion laziness isn't something that cannabis is responsible for, the person smoking it is, if the person is lazy already, marijuana doesn't change that, and if the person is active, he'll will probably active even after smoking. Of course the strain of the cannabis smoked may be the the "sedative" type, especially the really strong ones, do put you down, however there are strains that are complete opposite, making you motivated and it makes you want to do things. Then the unemployment, I know quite a lot of people who used cannabis and had a perfectly normal lives with good jobs etc.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents for this issue.

Contaminated cannabis

             Yes, the contaminated cannabis...the "Grit-weed" as known on the street, it's usually cannabis mixed with really small glass shards, silicone, ketamine and so on, this is happening mainly in europe. The reason for this is that it's an uncontrolled market, the sellers do whatever they want to with their product, add various unhealthy (when inhaled) substances for weight, more weight - more money, it's that easy, they sometimes even add heroin for the user to get hooked and come to the dealer more often, and when the buyer doesn't have enough money, offer him real heroin and probably get him hooked for life. Well that's another reason for cannabis to get legalized, in a regulated and controlled market such things wouldn't be happening.

Pro tip: Grow your own.

CA Prop 19

This is my first blog so bear with me if it this blog is not something you'd expect. So, the California Proposition 19 , The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act, let me just get this through first: I think it should pass, and I definitely would  vote YES for it, but I'm not a resident of CA, not even US, but if this prop would pass, it would affect me. Why do you ask? Well it's simple, US is a super-country (or how should I call it...) and other smaller countries will probably follow it's path after legalization, after all, US started the prohibition of this plant (Harry Anslinger telling everyone that it's the most dangerous drug, and it "makes white women seek sexual relationships with Negroes and Mexicans") and I think that they are the ones responsible of stopping it. Now on with the advantages \ disadvantages. The first and the biggest plus would be personal freedom, people wouldn't have to be afraid of getting caught and serving jail time for something that they enjoy and don't do harm to anyone else (Have you heard of someone using cannabis and going out to have a fight or something like that?). Then there's revenue, it's estimated that California would receive about 1.4 billion dollars from taxation of cannabis, now I'm not sure if that's the exact number or if CA would receive that much money, but it's an estimate. There are numerous other advantages, which I'm not going to write about now, since there's quite a few of them. With disadvantages, I don't really know them, although I'm not saying that there aren't any, I'm sure there are but I do really think that in this situation, advantages outweigh the disadvantages heavily. This prop is going to be settled on November 2nd.