TheBongPlace: The Marijuana Blog

On-going medical marijuana busts through-out Mendocino County have been arresting local residents daily. I was one of five busts made and charged with two felonies (cultivation and intent to sell/distribute) last Friday, February 20, 2009, even though I had my doctor recommendation and was growing with the guidelines published at the Mendocino county web site.
My name is Laurel Krause. Last Friday (2/20/09) as I looked out my kitchen window I was shocked to see 25 Mendocino County Sheriffs/Deputies coming through my gate very quickly. The lead man, Sheriff (don’t know deputy, or what class) Jonathan Martin, showed me a search warrant, hand cuffed me and read me my rights. I was cooperative (I actually cried and begged for mercy, but that didn’t work) as they searched my home, my grow area on my five acres (behind my locked gate–so no probable cause) and seized all grow equipment related to 24 medical marijuana plants in full bloom. They chopped down the plants and hauled them away as I was being grilled and bullied in my home. This number is significant because if you google the Mendocino County Sheriff’s web page on MedMari guidelines it says 25 plants. You are probably aware of the ‘fuzziness’ of these guidelines. I have a recommendation from my doctor to allow me to grow med marijuana. They charged me with two felony counts, one for marijuana cultivation and another for intent to sell/distribute, carted me to Ukiah, CA to jail in handcuffs.

It gets worse. I was the #4 bust of 5 that day (Friday, Feb 20) and the guys let us know that they had five more for Saturday (yesterday) and five more on Sunday (TODAY!). Not individuals, but actual grows that might arrest multiple people. And most of the growers are women with kids (so now the children are possibly being taken away and bank accounts frozen). Real emotional and economic despair.

As I met others that were arrested in Ukiah, the county seat to jail (never before, first offense for everything for me) I learned they were my neighbors and not one had a ‘commercial’ size grow. So this Mendocino County Sheriff’s dept sweep is coming up short as the take is not producing the kind of busts they claim they are after (i.e commercial, 500 plants & up), unenvironmental grows that scar the land (we all grow organic), we all have our recommendations that we paid for and actually care about the quality of medicine we are growing (it’s in the past for me now).

I am in shock, but then I started getting mad yesterday. What is motivating this gestapo situation all of the sudden? DA Meredith Lintott or Sheriff Allman? NeoCons?

I keep to myself mostly so did not hear about this happening all over the county of Mendocino. Furthermore, most growers don’t let others know their business so as not to get busted. I’m coming forth as I have nothing to loose and I’m not backing down. I am a little afraid that if this doesn’t become a big story that I might be unsafe though……….so bust this story wide open. Help us in Mendo!!!

Since getting busted, I’ve learned that they were up and down my street (just outside Fort Bragg city limit, so in Mendocino County) busting and getting this sweep in order over the last month and logging on the computer even (wish I had known!). That they have also had busting sweeps in the towns of Covelo, Ukiah, Willits…….all within Mendocino county.

I’m sure you’re asking what is motivating me to come to you. This is truly an American story of our time right now, a devestating economic massacre for us personally and it has county-wide ramifications as at least 70% of the Mendocino economy is based on growing marijuana. Maybe even California as it’s the state’s largest crop. During these times of extreme economic hardship and 10% unemployment in Ft. Bragg, it just doesn’t make any sense to be busting and criminalizing tax-paying citizens, my neighbors and me operating within state and county guidelines.

We are considering moving forward with a class-action suit. I have calls out.

I am sounding this alarms as far and wide as I can. Please feel free to forward this to any of your interested colleagues. I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Laurel Krause

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation on Monday to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.

Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press secretary, confirmed to SF Weekly that the assemblyman’s 10 a.m. Monday press conference regarding “new legislation related to the state’s fiscal crisis” will broach the subject of reaping untold — and much-needed — wealth from the state’s No. 1 cash crop.

Mecke said Ammiano’s proposed bill “would remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21.”

The bill would additionally prohibit state and local law officials from enforcing federal marijuana laws. As for Step Two — profit — Ammiano’s bill calls for “establishing a fee on the sale of marijuana at a rate of $50 per ounce.” Mecke said that would bring in roughly $1 billion for the state, according to estimates made by marijuana advocacy organizations.

article by Joe Eskenazi

Cannabis is a safer drug than aspirin and can be used long-term without serious side effects, says a book by a leading Oxford scientist.

The Science of Marijuana, by Dr Leslie Iversen of Oxford University’s department of pharmacology, found many “myths” surrounding marijuana use, such as extreme addictiveness, or links with mental illness or infertility are not supported by science.

He also found cannabis is an inherently “safe drug” which does not lead to cancer, infertility, brain damage or mental illness. Legalisation of the drug for medical conditions should be considered, he says.

Dr Iversen’s findings will increase pressure on the Government to reopen the debate about the decriminalisation of marijuana.

The author, a fellow of the prestigious Royal Society, found cannabis was far less toxic than other drugs and had “an impressive record” compared with heroin, cocaine or tobacco and alcohol.

His study showed that the active element of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ), which made users high, had a lot of potential as a safe drug to treat Aids patients and people suffering severe pain.

He also found “stoned” drivers were less dangerous and able to co-ordinate than people who were drunk. “By any standards, THC must be considered a very safe drug both acutely and on long-term exposure,” he writes. “The available animal data are more than adequate to justify its approval as a human medicine, and indeed it has been approved by the FDA [American drug authority] for certain limited therapeutic indications.”

The book says “alarming claims about the harmful effects of long-term exposure to cannabis” should be “put to rest”, and there “is no evidence the drug causes any impairment in fertility or sexual function in men or women”. He says people who stop using cannabis do not suffer long-term side-effects.

“Cannabis does not cause structural damage to the brains of animals as some reports had claimed, nor is there evidence of long-term damage to the human brain or other than slight residual impairments in cognitive function after drug use is stopped.” The author says many adverse effects of cannabis are related to smoking the drug.

But cannabis itself did not appear to cause cancer. Compared with alcohol and cigarettes, which led to more than 100,000 deaths a year, cannabis had a far better record.

“Tetrahydrocannabinol is a very safe drug,” he said. “Despite the widespread illicit use of cannabis here are very few if any instances of people dying from an overdose. Even such apparently innocuous medicines as aspirin and related steroidal anti-inflammatory compounds are not safe.

“Thousands of people die every year because of the tendency of these drugs to cause catastrophic gastric bleeding.”

via wise perception

There still seems to be a lot of confusion with growing medical marijuana in the states, the growing laws seem to vary significantly.

To make things more confusing we need to consider state and federal law as well.

San Francisco was considered to be a safe state for medical marijuana growers. Unfortunately Stephanie Lander has been sentenced to 41 months for growing medical marijuana in San Francisco.

Stephanie was under the impression she had approval from the police to grow medical marijuana in San Fransisco, to help people with a range of illnesses.

Please watch the following growing medical marijuana video which reviews the plight of Stephanie Lander.

via medical marijuana blog

Found this on CraigsList recently and it’s just amazingly awesome! -

You: the guy who answers the phone at cottage inn pizza
Me: Hungry and stoned out of my gourd

I called you from my cell phone but had completely forgot who I was calling by the time you answered the phone. Of course, you were also baked to bajeezus and forgot to tell me that I had called Cottage Inn.

When you answered and said, “Whatsup?” I thought about it, and after a 20 second pause I told you that was hungry. You suggested I try a pizza, and I agreed that it was probably a good idea.

Then I asked you if you sold pizza and you said that you could make me one. I said I wanted anchovies and something else on my pizza. You asked me what that something else was.

We spent five minutes listing toppings until we figured out that I was trying to remember how to say: “Sun dried Tomatoes.” When you said: “We’ll bake that right up for you,” we both started laughing uncontrollably.

It was the best pizza I ever had; I just wanted to thank you for helping me out.

AP) — A tiny southwest Missouri hamlet has passed an ordinance allowing residents with a doctor’s approval to grow and possess marijuana for medicinal use. The mayor of Cliff Village says the law is aimed at showing grassroots support for a measure that has repeatedly failed in the state legislature. From the Kansas City Star:

Cliff Village is no college town. It’s barely a town at all. It has no employees and levies no taxes. It gets about $1,300 a year in distributions of state fuel taxes for road repairs and $120 to $200 more in cable TV franchise fees. The 30-year-old mayor, Joe Blundell, said the law came from his own frustration with pharmaceutical painkillers to deal with the aftermath of a train accident that left him in a wheelchair. “When I got introduced to this flower, it not only alleviated my pain, it got me out gardening,” Blundell said. “I’m not just stoning myself out. It allowed me to function.”

The Cliff Village ordinance passed by a 3-2 vote. - KSPR News

When ZUG recently asked me to be a student intern for the summer, I asked all the usual questions. Was it a paid internship? (No.) Would I get course credit? (No.) Could I list it on a resume? (Probably not.)

But when they told me they needed a “Student Stoner Intern” to review the high-tech smoking device called the Volcano Vaporizer, I jumped at the chance. If you haven’t heard of the Volcano, this is a state-of-the-art, precision-engineered German smoking machine. It normally costs $539, which is about $519 more than I paid for my last bong. In exchange for a few articles, I’d get to try it for free.

But there was a catch: since this is a comedy site, I would have to smoke weird foreign substances through the Volcano. No problem. Like everyone, I tried smoking catnip in high school. I also smoked a page from a Victoria’s Secret catalog, on a bet. Once, when I ran out of rolling papers, I even smoked burning toilet paper. I have more foreign substances in my lungs than a traffic cop in downtown Bangalore.

As an English major at Harvard, this assignment gave me the chance to combine the two things I like doing most: writing, and getting mind-numbingly high.

The Volcano Vaporizer arrived at my Cambridge apartment, packed discreetly in this cardboard box. The vaporizer itself is legal to own, so I wasn’t worried about holding it at my place. Besides, when I opened it, I was blown away (so to speak) by the sheer beauty of the device. German-engineered by Storz & Bickel, who I think also were Hitler’s law firm, this is a high-tech appliance that would be at home between your Sub-Zero fridge and Viking range. You could leave it in the kitchen and tell everyone it was a blender. Which, in a sense, it is.

I needed someone to help take pictures, so I enlisted the help of a relative we’ll just call “Creepy Uncle Rick.” Rick is, let’s say, an arborist. He brought over some rare specimens of his work, as well as a 5-pound box of Cheez-Its.

Opening the Volcano box, we found that some assembly was required. There are over a dozen pieces that need to be put together, so this part is best done sober. It was a little like putting together a bong from Ikea.

After a few minutes, our Volcano Vaporizer was ready to go. “This thing looks like Sputnik,” Creepy Uncle Rick observed.

“Get ready to go to outer space,” I said, plugging it in.

How to use the Volcano Vaporizer:

* Plug in the device. A red light turns on, indicating the heating coil is warming up.

* Grind your plant material using the high-quality German herb grinder that is included. (The grinder alone is worth the purchase price.)

* Fill the chamber with a small scoop of material and place on base unit.

* Fit the large plastic bag onto the chamber, which clicks in place.

* The Volcano heats the material to a temperature just shy of burning. This vaporizes the active ingredients out of the material, like cooking onions on a stove.

* Now press the green button, and a small fan blows the vapors into the bag, which inflates like a balloon, or possibly a giant inflatable penis.

* When the bag is full, remove it and snap on the mouthpiece.

* Push the mouthpiece to your lips to unlock the sweet, heavenly vapors.

We found that a little material went a long way: one “scoop” was enough for several balloonfuls. Though, to be honest, we kind of lost count after the third.

What amazed me, besides the fantastically detailed ridges on the side of my Cheez-It, which I ended up writing a poem about, was the way the mouthpiece was engineered. Vapors stay in the bag until you press it to your lips. You’ve got to experience this to appreciate how amazing it is. You’d think the vapors would dissipate after a few minutes, but those crafty Germans have figured out how to store it.

he instructions say you should use the vapors within five minutes, but we found that the vapors stayed active for, well, I don’t know how long. It could have been an hour, or it could have been five years. I had a watch, but it went all Salvador Dali whenever I looked at it.

I looked over and saw he was laughing at a Robot Chicken clip on YouTube, not my brilliant wordplay. Undaunted, I continued taking notes.

SS: How would you rate the smoothness of the Volcano, on a scale of 1 to 10?
CUR: Are you kidding? It couldn’t be smoother, or it would be like inhaling milk.
SS: Right? It would be like sitting in a sauna, with someone ladling half and half on the hot coals.
CUR: Smoother.
SS: [cracking up] Smoother still?
CUR: Yes. It is not smoke, it is pure heavy cream.

Needless to say, our first 14 impressions of the Volcano Vaporizer were extremely favorable. This was an ultramodern appliance featuring cutting-edge toke-nology. If these guys made a food processor, or coffeemaker, I’d buy it. I actually suggested to ZUG they sell a combo called the “Coffee-Pot”:

Unfortunately, we were about to ruin our smoking experience by testing out the Volcano on a variety of awful substances. Stay tuned for the results.

Sir Smokealot, the ZUG student stoner intern, is a second-year English major at Harvard University.

I bought cocaine, heroin, crack, weed, and ecstasy and had them forensically analyzed by a chemist at MIT because I thought they would all turn out to be poison. Guess what? Drug dealers don’t cut drugs with cement and ground glass. They barely even cut drugs at all, because they don’t need to. Relax, I’ll explain later.

The samples were analyzed by a PhD chemist at MIT (we can’t say his name or he’ll get fired) using acid/base extraction, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, and thin-layer chromatography. Acid-base extraction is the method used to isolate the chemicals. Once they’re isolated, the nuclear magnetic resonance machine is what you use to analyze and identify stuff. Basically, the kind of NMR done here tells you about the hydrogen atoms in the molecules in the drugs. So it’s like, the spectrum of heroin has 20 lines in it, all at different positions and heights, and you basically look for that particular set of lines. If you see another set of lines, you go, “Oops, there’s something else besides heroin in here.” Finally, thin-layer chromatography is a quick method that tells you how many components there are in a mixture. MIT guy says it’s “like that experiment you did when you were a kid (if you were a geek) where you put ink on a paper towel and, when the water diffused up the paper towel, all the colors separated.” It tells you how many components are in a mixture but not what they are. That’s what the NMR is for. Still confused? Show this to a smart guy and have him explain it more.

COCAINE
The cocaine was the first sample to come back from the lab. It was 98 percent pure. When everyone was done high-fiving, we started to wonder what was going on. According to the movies and NYPD Blue, you can only get cocaine like that from pharmacies. Street cocaine is basically poison, right? It’s all strychnine and gasoline and nail polish remover or something.

I was not going to go buy 50 more samples of coke, because that would be a waste of money and drugs, but there’s this guy named Peter Cohen who did his thesis on just that. Actually, his work is even better than that, because he not only analyzed 50 samples of cocaine, he also interviewed the 50 cokeheads who had bought the samples. So he got the perception and the reality, see. He asked the cokeheads whether they thought their coke was pure, and 80 percent of them said no. Of those, 75 percent thought their stuff was adulterated with speed. They also commonly figured their drugs were diluted with ground glass, Drano, laxatives, and dirt. Cohen took samples from these cokeheads to the lab. The average purity was 65.1 percent. Second of all, the coke samples Cohen had were cut with speed, Daro, vitamin C, caffeine, sugar, nicotinamide, lidocaine, mannitol, and sodium bicarbonate. Daro is an anti-headache powder. Nicotinamide is vitamin B. Lidocaine is a topical anaesthetic. Mannitol is the sugar they put in diabetic candy. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. These are all innocuous things that bulk the drug out— most evidence of dangerous cutting agents is anecdotal. There’s no glass in your coke, you fucking psycho.

I guess that doesn’t mean that drugs are never cut with poison. The Drug Prevention Network of the Americas reports on a gang in Dublin that cuts coke with Phenacetin, a carcinogen that causes cancerous tumors in urinary tracts and nasal passages. Of male rats. There are a hundred million stories like that, and they get picked up eagerly by anti-drug sites, druggies, and editors who want sensational copy because that is the world we live in.

Findings: Most coke is way over 60 percent pure, and our coke is especially good. Thank you, Rico.

HEROIN
Our sample was 60 percent heroin, 20 percent acetaminophen, 10 percent caffeine, and 10 percent unidentifiable chemicals. Even though that sounds like a lot of additives, it’s about right. New York heroin is 63.3 percent pure on average. Oh, forget the whole idea about heroin being cut with Drano. Heroin is most often cut with acetaminophen, caffeine, malitol, diazepam, methaqualone, or phenobarbital. Diazepam is a sedative hypnotic. Methaqualone is Quaaludes. Phenobarbital is a sedative used to stop seizures and treat insomnia. See, they just cut it with stuff that makes you sleepy but doesn’t cost as much or cause as much hassle to get as dope. That’s all. If you want some better shit, move to that shithole London. Ross Coomber of the University of Greenwich, London, analyzed 228 samples of heroin and found that 44 percent of them weren’t cut with anything at all. The rest were cut with the same stuff as above. Coomber did another study where he gathered information from 17 heroin dealers at varying points in the chain of distribution. He asked them if they adulterated (that is the word for adding other drugs to) or diluted (that is the word for adding inert substances to) the drugs they sold. Eleven said that they never adulterated/diluted at all, four adulterated/diluted only sometimes, and only one (dealing four to five ounces a month) said he always diluted the heroin (with glucose, by around 10 to 20 percent). Asshole.

Findings: Heroin is a little more cut than coke, but ours is average. And dealers don’t want to poison their customers. It’s bad business, and if you’re dead you can’t buy any more smack from them. The most important finding to us in this section was this great new dealer who got us a bundle of smack, delivered to our door in 20 minutes in the middle of the workday. Too bad we’re in recovery.

CRACK
Our crack, purchased from some human garbage in Bushwick, was about 95 percent pure, and the impurities were likely by-products of the synthesis, not contaminants. That means they weren’t added after the crack became crack. Rather, they were a part of how the crack came to be. Crack is actually one of the purest drugs you can buy, usually about 85 to 95 percent, because it gets washed with solvent before or after heating. Just because of the way it’s made (by “freebasing” it—or removing the active chemicals from cocaine from their base), you can get high-purity crack from only moderately pure coke.

Findings: Crack is a good bet. If you think your coke guy is stomping on your shit at all, cook it up and you’ll take out all the dirt.

WEED
So according to an article published in the New York Times in April 2004, “Law enforcement officials said they are also seeing more examples of marijuana laced with other drugs, like cocaine, a narcotic; LSD, a hallucinogen; and PCP, a hallucinogen also known as angel dust.” Our sample didn’t have coke or heroin or PCP or anything in it. It was just normal. Sucks.

Now read that New York Times quote again. “Law enforcement officials”? I like cops and I trust them to protect me from getting raped. Journalists are liars though. Why would police give quotes about drugs and not give their names? Is this a top-secret thing that the “law enforcement officials” are afraid to go on record about? Seriously, there are a million alarmist accounts of PCP-dipped weed being sold as regular weed (just google it), but not one systematic analysis to back up the claim. Just look at the slang terms for weed laced with other drugs and the whole thing starts to seem like a priest dreamed it up: “Boat, Loveboat, Chips, Donk, Lovelies, Love Leaf, Woolies, Zoom, Boat, Caviar, Champagne, Cocoa Puff, Gremmies.” What? Reporters are pussies that barely know what drugs are so if they talk about the pervasiveness of embalming-fluid-dipped pot you’re not going to ever find any evidence of them actually finding some. Hence quotes like, “Finding embalming fluid to buy on the street is not easy because most street drug dealers make more money selling individual joints soaked with embalming fluid for about $10 to $20. However, if found on the street to purchase, a two-ounce sample of embalming fluid costs about $50.” Oh really?

Findings: PCP-soaked marijuana that is sold as PCP-soaked marijuana doesn’t actually have PCP in it most of the time. There is no evidence at all I can find that marijuana sold as marijuana is soaked in PCP. However, if you want to deck your weed out, sprinkle some coke on it. It’s called a snowcap and it gets you laced.

ECSTASY
Our sample was pure MDMA. Once again, that’s because we have good dealers. We all know that E is often cut with dope, because we’ve all seen those little brown freckles in pills that we’ve taken. That’s heroin, stupid. So while E can be dirty, it is not as dirty as a 1993 Time Out magazine article, “Bitter Pills,” made it out to be. In that article, it was reported that E dealers spike tablets and capsules with heroin, LSD, rat poison, and crushed glass. That story was repeated all over. Stephen Beard of the Newham Drugs Advice Project was the source for all this, and he said he got his info from a single dealer. This single supposed dealer said he made fake ecstasy by crushing light bulbs. The word for that is “hearsay.” There was no supporting evidence such as lab tests or reports from doctors who had treated users. Oh, but again, it does happen that there is poison. In London, in 2000, there was an unmarked, half-scored, yellow-flecked tablet that was 8 mg of strychnine. The lethal dose of strychnine is 10 mg.

The verdict: It’s not hard to get good shit. Drug dealers figure, I can sit here trying to figure out how to dilute this shit or I can get it on the street and paid for as soon as possible. If my shit is too pure—great. All that means is I’ll have a reputation as Bobby PurePants and more people will want to buy from me.

ANN HIGGINS