The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

One of our readers alerted us to this account from a chemotherapy patient about their use of marijuana (from the LA Times.)

While it's absolutely heart-wrenching to hear about the pain and suffering caused by cancer (and its subsequent treatment), we think that Mrs. Wagman's account of her medicinal use of marijuana provides an excellent example of the value of cannabis. The article also contains several items of interest:

Marijuana use is more frequent than many people expect:

No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. [...] Across the ideological spectrum, a lot of my buddies are stoners. Who knew?

Merry Christmas from The Straight Toke. I hope your holiday season is filled with joy and happiness -- especially if you did some planning earlier this year and have a smokable Christmas tree. In that case, we hope you stay merry throughout the holidays, and happy until the new year.

Love,
Julius
The Straight Toke

If you are looking for information on how to smoke weed, look here!

Since a couple people have e-mailed me asking how to avoid getting caught smoking pot, I've decided to pass on this guide from NORML:

All in all, the instructions are pretty good. The easiest way to avoid jail, of course, is to smoke where the cops won't arrest you for pot. Failing that, the above guide is a pretty solid way to avoid trouble.

What's a waterfall? I hear they're awesome to smoke out of but I've never seen or used one.

A waterfall is basically the reverse of a gravity bong. Instead of breathing in smoke directly from the burning pot, waterfall bongs use a change in pressure to fill a bottle with smoke. Advantages: cooler smoke, cooler way to smoke, more efficient use of marijuana. Disadvantages: needs water, requires you to make (or buy) one.

If you'd like to know how to make your own, I'll point you to Ralph Moritz's blog, where there's a dead-simple explanation of how to make a waterfall:

does sinthetic (sic) pot really work?

There are a lot of misconceptions about "synthetic marijuana", namely that it exists! When people refer to synthetic marijuana, they're almost always referring to synthetic THC, an "alternative" to medical marijuana that's gained quite a bit of popularity amongst the medical community. Synthetic THC is THC -- it's just that instead of being created as part of the natural growth cycle of marijuana, it's man-made. Since the active ingredient is the same, synthetic THC is often given in situations where a doctor might otherwise prescribe medical cannabis. The most common form of synthetic THC is Dronabinol (sold under the brand name of Marinol,) and is a Schedule III drug.

A while ago, we posted an article about the DEA's actions against Californian medical marijuana patients. Recently, there's been a pretty big development regarding medical cannabis: the police are giving it back!

Yep -- it's true: in two separate cases, in California and Colorado, police have been ordered to return confiscated medical marijuana. In California, Felix Kha was returned 1/3 ounce of medical marijuana, as his possession was found to be legal under California's Proposition 215. Needless to say, this sets a strong legal precedent in favor of Proposition 215. Cases like this can do quite a bit to strengthen existing laws, so this is a major win for Californian medical marijuana users. The best part of the decision? The courts stated that marijuana is important to the "health and well-being" of citizens:

From time to time, I like to take a moment out of my life to think of all the things I should not do if I were to have marijuana:

1. Carry 32 ounces of pot around at a time.
2. Doing #1 in the United States.
3. Go 20mph over the speed limit, while carrying two pounds of pot.
4. Carry a gun in my vehicle while doing #3.
5. Carry four guns in my vehicle while doing #3.
6. Take my son along with me while doing all of the above.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what Jimmie Cumbee did:

Is Dutch weed really that much stronger than what's available elsewhere? If so, why?

Marijuana's strength is measured in terms of the available concentration of THC. The strongest commonly-available strain of Cannabis contains 22.1% THC -- quite a lot, considering that naturally occurring Marijuana only contains somewhere between two and five percent THC.

Dutch Cannabis typically contains more than 15% THC, but that figure fluctuates from year to year as demonstrated in a report by the Trimbos Institute:

The average level tested in 2007 is 16% compared to 17.5% in 2006.