The most recent Pew Research Center poll shows that a majority of Americans nationwide, 53 percent, now support the legalization of cannabis. I’m actually surprised it’s that low, but then again, I’m a marijuana columnist.
But here is the most interesting stat from that poll: Of those surveyed who now support legalization but changed their minds on the issue (40 percent of the 53 percent), the main reason for the shift was self-interest. “The more that people learn about marijuana and look at the benefits of legalization,” noted Tom Angell, Chairman of the Marijuana Majority, “the more likely they are to support reform.”
Given this new info—and a desire to bring the 47 percent who remain prohibitionists out of the Dark Ages—I’d like to lay out some new bennies about cannabis.
Less drinking! Fewer hangovers! Weed’s been proven to help people cut back on their drinking. A study in Harm Reduction Journal showed that more and more drinkers are replacing booze, prescription drugs, and other harmful and illegal drugs with pot. Not only is marijuana safer than alcohol, it’s less likely to cause withdrawal problems, not to mention liver failure.
Game of Thrones. Imagine watching it while stoned to the BeJesus!
A catalyst for creativity. Ask Jon Stewart, Maya Angelou, Natalie Portman, Carl Sagan, Dr. Gupta, Rihanna, Bob Marley, Sergey Brin, or President Obama. Ganja has been shown to have positive creative effects—including better test results when individuals are asked to come up with new ideas. On the flip side, short-term memories tend to function worse when high.
Endocannabinoids fight brain aging. You can do the New York Times crossword, sudoku, or smoke a fatty. It’s a no-brainer.
One word: Nugtella. It’s a delicious hazelnut cannabis-infused Nutella treat!
Verbal fluency. Cannabis can create a cacophony of creative chasms for cogent cognitive communication (man).
Epileptic seizures are a downer. Almost 90 percent of Americans polled now believe that folks should have access to medical marijuana if a doc says it can help.
Vinyl. The chances of someone dusting off their record player and spinning some of the amazing vinyl records stored away in a crate somewhere increases 947 percent if the individual smokes herb.
We need the “War on Drugs” money. Fill in the blank: I’d rather spend the $41.3 billion per year on _____.
Cannabis is eco-friendly. Not only does the plant grow like a weed, but it’s able to suck up underground toxins (a process called phytoremediation), which makes for healthier and better farmland.
Legalization is a conservative cause. Smaller, unobtrusive government, states’ rights, individual liberties, etc.
Paying for prisoners is annoying. Half of the 1.6 million people currently in prison are serving time for drug offenses, at a cost of $25,000 a year apiece. Do the math. (It’s $40 billion.)
More time in sweatpants!
Sick of sucking up to the Saudis? Cannabis is an alternative fuel source. Both cannabis and the hemp plant crank out what is known as biomass. Biomass can be turned into all kinds of fuel, including biodiesel and ethanol. Not quite a solar Tesla, but close.
Add it to your smoothie. The cannabis plant is chock-full of disease-fighting, anti-inflammatory antioxidants. So even if you don’t want to get stoned, raw cannabis is a great additive to go with your wheatgrass and Super Blue Green Algae. The cannabis seed is rich in protein, fatty acids, and omega-3. And fiber! Don’t forget about fiber!
Cannabis causes job growth. Who doesn’t want more jobs (and tax revenue)? The marijuana market is filled with them: budtenders, trimmers, new cannabis-app designers, security guards, developers of seed-to-sale tracking software and weed websites, and of course cannabis columnists (thank you!).
Less familial strife. In a study of 635 couples over nine years (culminating in 2014), the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors found that couples who smoke weed together have lower rates of domestic violence.
Tax revenue. If we taxed marijuana at the same rate as alcohol and tobacco, it would bring in more than $8.7 billion a year nationwide. Pot can fix the potholes!
Weed makes ya skinny. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health studied 4,600 adults and found that “current marijuana users had significantly smaller waist circumference than participants who had never used marijuana, even after adjusting for factors like age, sex, tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity levels. They also had higher levels of HDL [i.e., good cholesterol].” A study from the American Journal of Epidemiology also found that peeps who smoke pot are less prone to obesity—even though they did indeed chow more calories from the munchies.
People are getting baked . . . whether it’s legal or not. Finally, for those who haven’t been stoned since college, weed is fun. Maybe you forgot. Maybe it made you paranoid, or you were concerned the DEA might break down your dorm room door. Forget all that—it’s time to party like it’s 2099! Come on over . . . to the green side!
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Fare Thee Well
The Grateful Dead celebrate five decades with five shows.
In this era of fly-by-night fame, one-hit wonders, and lame-ass reality “stars,” any group of artists who can create a true following over half a century needs to be recognized and respected. The Grateful Dead, the legendary improvisational stoner band, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a five-show “Fare Thee Well” tour, which started June 27 in Santa Clara, Calif., and will wrap up July 5 at Soldier’s Field, Chicago. The long-sold-out shows (which will be streamed on YouTube) offer a chance to reflect on what makes this band so unique and beloved.
The original Grateful Dead consisted of lead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, bass player Phil Lesh, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, a bluesy genius who played organ and harmonica. The group started under the name Warlocks in 1965, playing house parties during author Ken Kesey’s “acid tests.” (Drummer Mickey Hart and lyricist Robert Hunter were added in 1967, and Pigpen passed in 1973 when his liver gave out.)
Though I’m no Deadhead, I loved Garcia’s soulful, often mournful voice and damn fine picking (including his pedal-steel work on Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Teach Your Children”); so when Jerry passed in 1995 at age 53 from a heart attack (pretty good for a chain-smoking, fast-food-chowing heroin addict) I stopped paying attention. Not that the band needed me—hardcore fans have continued to follow the “Core Four” (aka the Walking Dead or Almost Dead): Weir, 67; Lesh, 75; and drummers Kreutzmann, 69, and Hart, 71. Joining them on the last hurrah will be singer/piano man Bruce Hornsby and Phish singer and kick-ass guitarist Trey Anastasio.
As has been well recorded, the Grateful Dead were most likely the original “jam band.” Never playing a tune the same way twice, the Dead performed songs that often went on for 30 minutes or more, filled with blues and hillbilly licks as well as spacey jazz and rock ’n’ roll. Though that formula may not fit the Top 40 format (the band’s only Top 10 hit was 1987’s “Touch of Grey”), the free-form nature of the sets dove-tailed nicely with the drug trips most listeners were taking. My favorite show was opened by Carlos Santana, and then turned into a strange journey of blurring colors and what I thought were flying sheep in the Tacoma Dome parking lot. (It should be noted that a sober group of Deadheads, the Wharf Rats, has been following the band for decades.)
Anyone old enough to be tripping and traveling the country in the ’60s has to be at least 60 by now, which makes Deadheads both a wonderful and dying breed. But behind the tie-dye and LSD and bootleg tapes comes a dedicated (deadicated?) vibe that’s still the backbone of the counterculture. Peace, love, and understanding are great notions for any generation. Tell me we couldn’t use a little more peace in the Middle East, love among our races, and understanding in our individual lives, no matter the situation.
And if ya think hippies are lazy stoners, take a hard look at the band members. They’ve toured pretty much nonstop in various forms since 1967 (including incarnations as the Other Ones, Further, RatDog, and the Dead), selling more than 35 million albums. Officially, the Guinness Book of World Records has the band etched in stone, with 2,318 live concerts (thus far) in front of a collective audience of more than 25 million, the most in history.
And if ya think hippies are a bunch of commie-pinkos, take another look. While they had wonderful progressive values (the loyal road crew were given both benefits and insurance), the gents were money-making ganjapreneurs long before the latest Green Rush. Led by Hal Kant, an entertainment lawyer who’s made Harvey Weinstein look demure, the Dead scored merchandising deals galore (have you tried the Steal Your Face wine?), and was one of the first acts to retain the ownership of its songs and all-important master tapes. The combo also didn’t put up with TicketBastards, forming their own ticketing company and raking in more than $300 million. The band was always socialistic when it came to bootlegs, allowing fans to record and trade at will . . . so long as they weren’t sold.
Of course it wasn’t just the band that made money—an entire village of traveling artists and vendors (and dope-dealers and massage therapists) followed the group from town to town for decades on end. I’ve got the Tibetan prayer flags flying off my deck to prove it. For a band that spent so much time rocking in a bygone era, their music has been carefully preserved and modernized, going from tapes and reel-to-reel systems to a digital library called The Internet Archive (archive.org), which contains 8,976 recordings of the Grateful Dead. If you’ve never really heard the band, do yourself a favor and scroll to, say, 1973 and click on one of the concert links. You may find yourself on a long strange trip, indeed.
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Higher Ground: Weed in the Rose Garden
The legalization battle arrives at our nation’s capital.
Every single day there’s breaking news in the marijuana movement. Alaska officially legalized weed on February 24, making it the fourth state in the Union to toss aside the chains of prohibition, and the next day, at the stroke of midnight, our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., followed suit. #CommanderInSpleef!
But if ya think the “Just Say No” Nancy Reagan types are gently stepping aside, and the taxation and regulation of cannabis are going along swimmingly, you’ve been smoking too much of the recently legalized chronic.
In the District of Columbia, an hour before the city officially made recreational ganja legal, Republicans in the House of Representatives tossed a little fear-mongering into the mix.
“You can go to prison for this,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told The Washington Post—and the citizens of D.C. who overwhelmingly approved the initiative. ”We’re not playing a little game here.”
Reps. Chaffetz and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) sent a memorandum to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, threatening that if the city chose to move forward with pot in the District, “you will be doing so in knowing and willful violation of the law.” The right-wing reps were trying to nullify legalization—and the will of the people—through riders they’d previously attached to the unrelated trillion-dollar Congressional spending bill.
The letter went on to demand that Bowser create a list of all D.C. employees who participated in the enactment of the ballot measure, fork over their timecards, and share their salaries, apparently in an effort to create a sort of Green List. Joe McCarthy would be so proud.
Bowser’s no pushover (hell, in D.C., mayors often smoke crack just to deal with the toughness of their constituents); she let the world know she would do what more than 70 percent of her residents made clear they wanted when they passed the measure last summer. “My Administration is committed to upholding the will of DC voters,” she tweeted. “We will implement Initiative 71 in a thoughtful, responsible way.”
Police Chief Cathy Lanier is also on board, telling the American News Women’s Club, ”All those [marijuana]arrests do is make people hate us.” She added, “Marijuana smokers are not going to attack and kill a cop. They just want to get a bag of chips and relax. Alcohol is a much bigger problem.”
D.C.’s decriminalization law is a particularly big deal because of the massive racial biases behind marijuana arrests in the city. According to the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, nine out of 10 people arrested for drug offenses in D.C. between 2009 and 2012 were black. And while blacks make up slightly more than half of the city’s population, surveys show they’re no more likely than whites to use marijuana. The craziest fact of all, according to The Washington Post: White folks are more likely than any other race to be selling drugs. Let’s just say it loud and clear: The War on Drugs is a war on black Americans.
Beyond that, the new D.C. law is largely symbolic, as sales of any kind are not allowed (which also means they won’t be collecting any of those sweet tax dollars). Individuals are allowed to possess and cultivate up to six plants, but only three can be budding in the government’s backyard at a time. District residents can’t fire up on federal land (yes, that means the Lincoln Memorial), in bars or restaurants, or in public housing. Medical marijuana is allowed (it was passed in D.C. in 2010), and if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can “gift” an ounce to friends, family, and fellow residents, so long as they’re over 21. (“Mr. Speaker, I hereby offer this peace-doobie to break the gridlock . . . ”)
The road to national legalization will be paved with setbacks, scare tactics, and a social conversation about what it means to be high. As with moonshine, civil rights, and same-sex marriage, we’ll have to tinker a bit to get it right. Nebraska and Oklahoma are taking Colorado to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming legalization is causing massive drug-enforcement problems, with too many pickups full of Denver ganja entering their backyards. Last week all nine former DEA heads joined the brief. It points to red state/blue state differences, and serves as yet another reminder that, yes, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level.
But in a sign that we can all get along, a man walked into the Sixth District police station in D.C. last Monday and asked for his previously seized weed back. (He’d been arrested for a charge unrelated to drugs, and, along with a belt and a wallet, had his stash taken during processing.) As possession of two ounces or less is fully legal, an officer gave him his baggie of marijuana. Progress, apparently, comes in small doses.
This article first appeared in The Seattle Weekly.
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Tommy Chong, Reconsidered
At 76, the pater familias of the legalization movement won’t slow down.Michael Stusser’s column appears weekly on HigherGroundtv.com as well as the Seattle Weekly and other newspapers around the country.
I’ll be honest. My expectations about a press conference with Tommy Chong, of the famous stoner duo Cheech & Chong, were that there would be some clichéd humor, some pantomimed puffing, and photo ops galore for hippies of a bygone era. And there was some of that. But there was also something I didn’t expect: a fresh perspective on the new pot movement.
The reason Tommy Chong matters—and the reason I’m writing about his recent visit to Seattle’s CannaCon—is that each and every time there’s a mention of legalization or the counterculture or pot smoking, there’s inevitably a reference to Cheech & Chong. Even if the name is never spoken, a haze of Cheech & Chong wafts through the mind. (See?!)
The new conventional wisdom is that the cliché stoner jokes that found purchase in the duo’s franchise are outmoded and of a different era. But what if the beliefs that undergird these jokes are not passé? What if they’re an iconic and important set of core values still relevant—values that should not be lost as we move into a ganjapreneurial era driven by economic and opportunistic rationales?
“We’ve got a great show going on here,” Chong noted at his February 20 press conference, “but everybody here is breaking the law and subject to arrest according to our government. Even though we voted legalization in, and the people spoke, we still have police and a government that’s out to arrest us.” The man knows of what he speaks: In 2003 Chong was arrested, convicted, and put in federal prison for nine months. Not for selling or smoking marijuana, but for having legally licensed his name to a company (Chong Glass/Nice Dreams) that made water pipes—bongs—that were sold across state lines. I can tell you that if I was tossed in the slammer for nine months, I would have exited one angry motherfucker. Not our friend Tommy Chong.
“I got singled out—and ya know what? I feel blessed!” Chong said with his infamous and mischievous grin. “I was looking for something to revitalize my career. Cheech and I were fading into the distance and I needed something. And then it came. It was like my prayers were answered: You’re going to jail! Great! That’s the way I looked at it.”
Today Chong puts his name on everything from hemp water (Chongwater!) to Chong Star marijuana to Smoke Swipes (for the parent who goes out to fire up and doesn’t want to return to the dinner table reeking of weed). But his philosophical attitude isn’t an act. He’s a product of the ’60s and walks the talk—mainly about pot.
“Pot’s only good if you give it to someone or you smoke it. You don’t have to hoard it. Because in a few months, you’ll have a new crop! So you gotta give it away! That’s what you gotta do with your life. That’s the secret! You gotta give love!”
The more I listened to this smiling, effervescent 76-year-old ramble, the more I realized why he is such a joyous inspiration. Sure, there are cliched truths about “hippies” that I don’t fully embrace: the lack of showering, the unkempt beards, and those Godawful tie-dyed T-shirts. But the core values of these counterculture beatniks? Peace, love, and understanding? An “It’s all good” outlook? Communal interests? Harmony with nature? Egalitarianism? Sustainability? Positive vibrations? Good lord! Tell me we couldn’t use more of the “Make Love Not War” mindset in this divisive FoxNews era of angry, trolling, Twittering punditry.
Chong was half an hour late for his news conference, and catching a glimpse of the icon slowly ambling down the convention hall, I saw why. He stopped for each and every stoner, head, hanger-on, and pothead who’d jumped at the chance to get a photo with the legend.
“It’s true,” Chong noted during his hour-long chat. “I’ll take a picture with anybody. And there’s a reason for that. We don’t have much time. We think we do—especially when we’re young. But we don’t.” Chong knows this better than most, after beating prostate cancer with the help of the CBD oils in, yes, marijuana. “When someone asks for a pic, that’s a compliment. They’re not asking everyone—they’re asking me! It’s not a burden. It’s a privilege! Most people my age will either be retired or limping around. Me? I’m going Dancing With the Stars!”
Four decades after Up in Smoke, Tommy Chong is hardly couchlocked, but still a relevant player in the marijuana movement. He’s been a vocal supporter of another group being singled out for using weed, the Kettle Falls 5. He may no longer be the official face of marijuana: the new Green Rush lends itself to sexy budtenders and Seth Rogan and Snoop. But I sure wish he was.
