Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marijuana. Show all posts

May 23, 2023

Florida AG wants to outlaw weird orgies, wild weed parties, and unleashed passion

 I read the Raw Story article 

Florida AG — wife of a DEA agent — accused of 'not standing with the people' as she vows to fight legal pot

and was inspired to post this in the comments section:


The poster above, like some of the propaganda shown below, mixes the salacious and lurid with dire warnings of misery (above in a syringe). Notice the pointy fingernails on the hand, presumably of the Devil, holding lust, crime, sorrow, hate, shame, and despair. 


Whoever made this poster thought that nobody would be intrigued by this part:

I wonder how many people were more tempted to try marijuana by this propaganda than were scared by it. These warnings might have been about as effective in their intended purpose as the well-known "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" frying eggs public service ads.

Who knew that John Wayne was in a marijuana movie with James Arness?

Even though Lady Gaga (“The pot leaf is the new peace sign”) proclaims “Baby let’s get high, John Wayne” in her song John Wayne (2016), it is highly unlikely that the actor would have accepted her invitation to smoke a joint together. John Wayne (1907-1979), who still holds the record for the Hollywood actor with the most leading parts (142), was known for his conservative, anti-communist and anti-drugs political view. A clear example of this is his movie Big Jim McLain (1952), where he hunts down communists in Hawaii. The version released in Italy and Germany was retitled Marijuana and has John Wayne chasing drug smugglers instead of communists. From The Hash Museum
Back to Florida...

The campaign to stop the pot legalization ballot petition is the latest, and possibly the most likely to backfire shot in the Florida culture war. It makes more sense politically to fight the initiative than to rail against all the woke issues DeSantis is hysteria hyping. He is going on the assumption that the alleged horrors of children been lured into changing their gender orientation by being dragged into drag shows by their Commie parents will lead to mobilizing voters to help him win the GOP primary. Obviously other Republican governors and legislators are buying into this assumption as the recent Montana ban on gender affirming care shows.

Fred Grimm wrote this in Florida GOP would like pot amendment to go away “Republicans don’t want pot as a running mate to Joe Biden on the Florida ballot because marijuana can do what Joe Biden can’t — rouse the apathetic wing of the Democratic Party... The GOP’s faux populists know ballot questions like these would have coattails long enough to blow up an election.”

The marijuana issue seems to currently be a Florida issue without national implications. If DeSantis wants to beat Trump in the primary he could lose in Florida and if he wins in enough other states he could end up as the GOP presidential candidate.

What will be interesting to see is how robustly DeSantis supports his attorney general in fighting the demon weed ballot measure. If he adds fighting pot to his culture war it could make his fight against Disney look like a minor blunder. Consider the following:

An overwhelming share of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use by adults (59%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (30%). Just one-in-ten (10%) say marijuana use should not be legal, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Oct. 10-16, 2022. These views are virtually unchanged since April 2021. From Pew Research article
So far Donald Trump, either out of political savvy or just because he really doesn't care, has not gone all-caps manic on an anti-woke crusade. He may observe what DeSantis is doing and realize that the anti-woke act does not play well on a national stage. 

I think Trump is reading the sentiment of GOP voters accurately in that he knows his route to victory is to keep doing what he always has done. He basks in knowing that he is the potentate of personality politics and he sees DeSantis in being as bland as unsalted butter. I think Trump thinks the anti-woke DeSantis deluge is dumb.

Assuming Trump is the GOP candidate I'd like to see him include the war against woke in his repetoire since it is a loser.  He's already come out and blamed DeSantis for Disney's cancelling its expansion in Florida. I doubt becoming a DeSantis style anti-woke warrior would give him any more votes than he already has. 





December 3, 2022

Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon

 Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon
by Hal Brown

Two slightly related stories caught my eye on the website of a local Portland area TV station. Once I started writing about them my mind wandered far afield to cover other subjects.

Former employee reveals details about Shroom House’s operation




The use of psilocybin mushrooms will be legal in Oregon next year but apparently they are available now - the article concludes:

“I’ve never even seen this stuff before. So I’m trying,” said Scott Yon, a customer at Shroom House. “I understand it may not be legally up yet, but in Portland, it doesn’t seem like people get arrested for anything.”

Even though the Oregon Health Authority and police say this is not legal, the long lines seen outside the store show the simple economics of supply and demand.

I've considered trying psilocybin mushrooms once the clinics, where someone trained to help you navigate the experience will help you, to see what unexplored part of my mind was opened to my consciousness. 

Since the psychedelic era there were two groups (not mutually exclusive) of people who used LSD and similar substances. Some belonged to the "turn on, tune in, drop out" group, a term popularized by Timothy Leary, and the others wanted to discover more about themselves. Some eventually followers of Richard Alpert who was Leary's partner, who became Baba Ram Das, and led a movement aimed at spiritual enlightenment.

When I was in college during the height of hippie and counterculture psychedelic times (1963-1967) I knew lots of people in the former group. There was a people's park I often walked through at Michigan State where students camped out and got stoned. Reference. 



I have concluded that I don't want to take the risk of using psilocybin. I am leery of any substance that leads me to be out of control of where my mind goes. Once a psychoactive drug is in your brain there's no "off" switch. You have to ride out the experience.

I like to be able to embark on unstructured  mental journeys to see where my unconscious leads me, but I want to be able to exert some conscious control.

I have friends who meditate using one or another technique. Almost everyday I spend time just letting my mind wander freely. I am not sure whether this would be considered mediation but I like the experience.

Since my mid-teens I paid a lot attention to my dreams, what Freud called "the royal road to the unconscious" and in fact read two paperback books by Freud when I was in my teens. One was his "Introduction of Psychoanalysis" and the other was "The Interpretation of Dreams."
Karl Jung agreed and wrote that “the dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche.”

These readings led me to understand that there was much more to people, including myself, than they were aware of. This understanding always informed the kind of therapy I practiced for 40 years. I feel the crucial way therapy helps is the relationship between client and therapist, but that there are times with certain clients when it is helpful to facilitate insight into why they are distressed. 

The following article should be both cautionary and reassuring to those using cannabis, which is legal for recreational use in Oregon:

While I've tried high in CBD cannabis edibles to help sleep through the night I find that I don't like the effect that even the amount of THC, usually about a third, has on me. I makes my mind race and causes near hallucinatory images. I don't use any cannabis at all now, but I live in a senior community where many friends and acquaintances use it. If you visit any of the  560 + Oregon pot stores you will see customers ranging in age from 21 to 91 or older.  You will see hipsters looking for a better high to elders with bad hips relying on budmasters, the pot store version of your pharmacist, suggest varieties to help with different ailments.

It should be reassuring to cannabis users that the state is testing the products, but it seems to be common sense that anyone trying a new variety realize that the testing takes time to find contaminants so they need to make changes with caution.

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