Passing a social use initiative was just the start.

The world smiled when Colorado led the nation in legalizing cannabis, but the reality on the ground has been a little less kind for locals and visitors. There’s no shortage of good quality herb, and there are plenty of competent licensed retailers around. The problem has been that there’s no legal place where all this herb can be consumed by most adults.

[Ed. note: originally written as a preview of Ballot Initiative 300, which passed, it is worth reviewing what exactly was approved.]

Of course, consuming on the street can still catch you a court summons and a fine. Toking in your car can get you a DUI. Puffing at home is legal in a few municipalities, but is strictly forbidden statewide in a home with children, which can get you a visit from Child Protective Services. Even strictly adult households who rent their homes face stiff penalties and lease terminations for consuming at home.

[Ed. note: originally written as a preview of Ballot Initiative 300, which passed, it is worth reviewing what exactly was approved.]

This catch-22 on Amendment 64 has stung Coloradans and cost the state tourism dollars since January 2014. This November, voters in Denver approved Ballot Initiative 300, which approved a four-year pilot program for limited, neighborhood-supported social use of cannabis in the state’s capital.

It’s a pithy term, so let’s examine what’s really being allowed:

Limited means that consumption would be restricted to designated areas in permitted businesses. The standard 1,000-foot rule will apply, separating all consumption from places where children congregate, including playgrounds, schools and churches. All use must comply with existing clean air regulations, and public use in any place not 21+ would still be illegal. It is still a no-no to spark up a joint on the sidewalk or at your favorite restaurant, but they could install vaporizers at the local brewery. It also means that bars and other social gathering places can designate an appropriate area for adults to pass the dutchie.

Neighborhood-supported means applicants must receive support from a local eligible neighborhood association to ensure that the community approves of each proposed permit, a step beyond the strictly official approval required for places where alcohol is consumed.

The plan is to create an environment that allows adults who choose to consume responsibly with alcohol, or as an alternative to it, can find places to do so with other adults. It’s likely there will be smoking clubs a la the Dutch style coffeehouse, but Denver will take it a step further than Amsterdam. Initiative 300 allows for cannabis smoking sections at concert venues and galleries, truly placing pot alongside alcohol, as many voters intended by voting to legalize in 2012.

The local support base in the business community is large and growing — the Neighborhood Supported Cannabis Consumption Pilot Program (NSCCPP) website lists 72 Denver businesses that signed on, and at the grassroots level, eight Colorado-based cannabis policy organizations have gave approval and pledged their support. Most significantly, political figures signed off on the sensible approach as well, with political endorsements from the Democratic Party of Denver, Senator Irene Aguilar MD, Representative Jonathan Singer, Senate Candidate Lily Tang Williams, and New Era Colorado.

The participation of state-level political figures highlights the exciting potential of this campaign. Denver has often led the state in breaking new social ground thanks to the dense, diverse and educated population. In all things marijuana, from the earliest medical dispensaries through the recreational pot boom the city’s seen over the past two years, Denver has been the laboratory of the Colorado, just as Colorado has been the laboratory of the nation. A successful pilot program in Denver often foreshadows a detailed conversation in Boulder and Colorado Springs, generating the critical mass of public opinion to send ripples across the state.

In that spirit, the initiative is crafted to be common-sense, reasonable and adaptive. This measured approach is credited with garnering the 10,800 signatures that qualified the initiative for the ballot — more than twice the required 4,726. A similar measure, the Denver Responsible Use Initiative, failed to collect even 3,000 valid signatures. Though the two competing measures aimed to address the same issue, they took different approaches. While Denver NORML’s failed Responsible Use Initiative had envisioned a new type of establishment specifically for cannabis consumption, Initiative 300 is focused on defining appropriate spaces for cannabis in the city’s existing business and cultural landscape.

In terms of the ballots to be cast this November, Denver voters will certainly be focused on more nationally important concerns than where they can get high, but there’s little doubt great deal stands to ripple from this stone. On a local level, adoption of a common-sense approach to cannabis consumption will complete the foundation of the post-cannabis industry and economy that are revitalizing Denver. Statewide, it will trigger focused discussions on the place of cannabis in relation to alcohol in our communities. And of course, with the eyes of the nation forever on Colorado, this initiative could prove another historic step in the American public’s relationship with our favorite humble herb.

The post Blunt Talk: Smoking in the Boys Room (or at Least Somewhere) appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

People have been getting high since before recorded history, but in the last 25 years a growing subculture of aficionados has explored and defined the boundaries of the art of cannabis.

It seems virtually every gustatory pleasure can be refined into a craft variety, but the term started bubbling into our lexicon in connection with craft beer, where it came to signify a drastic departure from mass-produced beer.

Craft beers looked different, tasted stronger, and appealed to the imaginations of hardcore beer drinkers with educated palates and brewers looking to test their skills. Craft brewing was about being in love with the details — and the result was a new universe of beers and a new breed of beer drinker intrepidly exploring it.

When it comes to the beloved details, craft brewing and craft growing aren’t far off from each other. Craft brewing ties its emergence to the development of Cascade Hops and other relatively obscure ingredients being grown and released in small-batches. The high-end cannabis set prizes unique strains, with the most special cuttings fetching as much as $10,000 per plant.

Brewing and growing parallel in that they’re both dynamic processes. Brewers control the environment and feed the yeast to drive the fermentation process, and manipulate the product throughout the process to create a specific result. Great growers do very much the same, and the final product is the result of dynamic relationships and carefully refined processes.

The difference between craft cannabis and any old jar of schwag is the focus on aesthetic appeal. Sure — it gets you high — in many cases, a lot higher than commercial produce. But craft cannabis is special. The grower evokes the expression of the full gamut of sensory pleasures from the humble flower.

There is a clear focus on the aesthetics of the bud: the look, smell and taste, and even the mouthfeel come into play. The margin between good herb and great herb is careful attention throughout the grow process. While commodity flowers can be grown in massive populations, manicured by machine and rushed to market. True connoisseur cannabis starts with carefully and individually tended plants that are harvested and painstakingly manicured by hand, and slowly and carefully dried and cured to develop and lock in flavor.

When it comes to gauging good ganja, we consider four dimensions: how it looks, smells, tastes and smokes. A decent grower can create something special in one or two of these categories, but a jar of bud that’s spot on in all four virtues is a product worth celebrating.

Appearance is how you can determine the bud’s ripeness, how expertly it was grown, and how lovingly it’s been handled. Ripe bud will be made of swollen clusters, and the stigma (often mistakenly called ‘hairs’) should be dark and withered. Flowers should have organic shapes to them — machine trimmed herb can take on a rounded appearance from the way machines tumble the flowers.

Leaf material that’s not well-covered in resin should have been removed before the bud reached the shelf, and completely or partially remaining stems and leaves make for a harsher green-tasting smoke. When it comes to resin, a true pot snob will use her phone’s zoom to check that resin glands are intact (with a visible head rising above the stalk), and the heads’ color is becoming opaque. The heads of these mushroom-shaped glands are where the plant stores its magic, and they transition from clear to opaque as they finish their magnificent alchemy.

Cannabis is a perfumer’s dream, with a spectrum of smells broader than than any other flower’s. Aromas range from culinary herbs and exotic spices to diesel fuel and skunk, cheese and rotten meat to fruit, flowers and candy. Try to identify distinct smells in your herb — properly cured herb will permeate the jar and jump out when you crack it, and open up to a sharper more pungent smell when the flowers are squeezed or broken up. There are no wrong answers, and everyone’s olfactory apparatus is unique, but real high grade will smell like oranges or incense or baked goods far more often than it’ll smell like the weed you got in high school.

Great herb should taste like it smells, with layers of flavor catching your attention on the inhale and exhale. Really superior batches leave your palate and sinuses flooded with flavor long after your hit, and can surprise you with their nuance and complexity.

Just like the veteran cigar smoker appreciating the tip of his Cuban, the cannabis aficionado knows that for all the complexity of a flower, nothing can hide when it’s burned. Meticulously cured cannabis is remarkably smooth on the throat and lungs —  more smooth and herbal than smokey. Properly grown herb will burn to a snow-white powdery ash — darker colors can indicate residual fertilizers and pesticides, or water trapped by careless drying and curing.

If you’re ready to explore craft cannabis, ask your dispensary about how their herb is grown, trimmed and cured. Look for grower-owned shops where the bud may be a little pricier, but a lot more lovingly produced. And don’t be afraid to jot down notes and develop your tastes and standards — taking the time to examine and appreciate all of the elements of finely grown cannabis adds enjoyment to the experience and layers of complexity to the intoxication the plant has to offer.

The post Blunt Talk: Craft Cannabis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

I once quipped to a friend who’d given me a sample of a strain called Brain OG that it felt to me more like Braindead OG. With so much herb that hits like a young George Foreman, I sometimes have to wonder, ‘Is this stuff ruining my brain in some way?’. Like every other child of the 1980s, I can’t fry an egg without mentally replaying Nancy Reagan’s This Is Your Brain on Drugs spot in my mind’s eye, and there’s the lingering DARE program fears that I’m lowering my IQ, killing brain cells, or otherwise irreparably damaging my thinking apparatus. So keeping with this issue’s smart theme, in this month’s column we’ll uncover the straight dope on just how dopey a dope-smoker might become.

Does marijuana lower your IQ?

When it comes to mind-numbing marijuana myths, wild theories about long term effects on intelligence are available in abundance. As Jonah Lehrer put it in Wired Magazine, “In popular culture, all it takes is one hit from a bong before people become ridiculously dumb, unable to solve the simplest problems or utter a coherent sentence.” But while a belief in the intellectual harm cannabis can do persists in the teetotaler set, the scientific research offers a bit more clarity.

Last year researchers at Cornell published a paper that takes a novel approach to looking at the issue. They did two studies on a total of over 3,000 sets of adolescent twins in which one twin used cannabis and the other abstained. They concluded, first, that “there was no evidence of a dose—response relationship between frequency of use and [IQ] change,” which means smoking more pot probably doesn’t do any more harm to your IQ than smoking less pot. They did find IQ decline in both the puffers and the passers, but they attributed the harm to “familial factors that underlie … low intellectual attainment,” because there wasn’t any real difference between the two groups.

But what if it’s April 21st and you’re still more than a little foggy after being tempted by one too many edibles? The good news is, even if you’re feeling a little dumber today, you’ll bounce back. A 2002 research article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concluded that there was a “temporary negative effect on global IQ score only in subjects who smoked 5 or more joints per week,” but since the effects weren’t observed in previous users, “marijuana does not have a long-term negative impact on global intelligence.”

Does marijuana kill brain cells?

Of course, as anyone who’s mentally reviewed the Nancy Reagan fried-egg commercial for three decades might, we need to consider whether the long-term effects of marijuana could be neurological, if only for the guidance counselors who insisted smoking herb would kill brain cells or cause permanent brain damage.

The Journal of Neurological Science has published a number of articles looking at brain volume and shape in daily cannabis users and non-users. In an article published last January, they looked at MRIs of both adults and adolescents and concluded that after controlling for “gender, age, alcohol use and other variables, there is no association between marijuana use” and changes in size or shape of any of the parts of the brain.

How does marijuana affect memory?

It doesn’t take peer-reviewed research for us to realize that cannabis has some temporary effects on short term memory—anyone who’s tried to remember where their keys are after a morning toke can tell you there’s some correlation. But the scientific literature does shed some fascinating light on how and why cannabis effects memory, and how some strains may remedy the scattiness others can temporarily evoke.

In 2003, researchers at Wake Forest University school of Medicine injected rats with “an initially debilitating dose” of a potent cannabinoid every day for over a month. For the inevitably curious, the dose was referenced as 3.75 mg/kg of bodyweight, or about 12-15 high grade joints worth of active ingredients injected at a time.

Predictably, the rats were really stoned for a while. But the researchers found that after around three weeks, the rats were starting to tolerate the dose and, “[their performance] recovered by day 30 and was stable at pre-drug levels.” So even rats getting heroicly dosed on the daily do develop a tolerance and come to function normally, so you’ll almost certainly make it out of your brownie haze, even if the indulgence becomes a regular thing.

The British Journal of Psychology did some novel research in 2010 looking at how smoking high THC herb affected memory when compared to herb high in both THC and non-psychoactive CBD. They tested 134 tokers in both stoned and straight minds, and then analyzed their herb to compare potency. The researchers found that while their subjects were consuming the same amount of THC, those whose herb also contained CBD showed “no memory impairment”, compared to “marked impairment of prose recall” in the THC-only group. If you’re concerned about even the short term impact of cannabis use on your memory, try some of the great high-CBD varieties most dispensaries have to offer.

Can marijuana boost cognitive performance?

With all the research on the impairment cannabis can temporarily bestow, are there any possible benefits? We know that creative and scientific geniuses like Louis Armstrong and Carl Sagan were big-time potheads, but was it coincidence or herbal inspiration?

The Journal of Psychoactive drugs studied creativity by looking at divergent thinking on standard behavioral tests among cannabis users, ecstasy users, and a control group of non-users. Ecstasy users had pretty average responses, but thought their own responses were more creative than average. Cannabis users, by amusing contrast, had “significantly more ‘rare-creative’ responses,” but thought they were pretty average.

After our brief survey of the literature—and with all due apologies to both former First Lady Reagan and my under-appreciated high school guidance counselor—it’s pretty clear that cannabis has no long term harmful effects on IQ, nor does it cause brain damage. As for your memory, even incredibly heavy daily use seems to stop impairing the user at some point, and with the right herb, your memory may not skip a beat. And when it comes to creativity, it looks like Armstrong, Sagan, and the rest could be on to something.

The post Blunt Talk: Cannabis and Cognition appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The Austrailan government won the world’s riducle six months ago when they posted a series of anti-pot commercials featuring a lazy Stoner Sloth character claiming, “Weed’s not exactly a performance enhancing drug.” Our own country’s reefer madness rhetoric hasn’t been far off: less than a decade ago, the Above the Influence campaign featured a girl melting into her friend’s couch, too lazy to move. Now that legalization is no longer theoretical, we can set the record straight — and there’s nowhere that smashes the lazy stoner stereotype like an old triathlon record the way that Boulder County does.

Our love for the herb is self evident. In 2014, Boulder County dispensaries sold 2.5 tons of herb. With a population of about 250,000, that’s equivalent to every single adult in the county toking about 9 grams that year. Of course, the actual reported adult marijuana use rate closer to around 15%, so actual Boulder dispensary customers probably puffed closer to 60 grams apiece. Some estimates add as much as 50% more home grown herb being produced and privately consumed in the county without state tracking, which would bring our per capita adult average closer to a half-ounce each.

If concerns about activity levels and herb consumption hold any water, we’d expect Boulderites to be lazy and unfit relative to areas with much lower consumption, but Boulder is consistently ranked among the fittest cities in the US. The Huffington Post ranked it the most ‘fitness friendly’ in terms of accessibility to fitness professionals and facilities as well as healthy food options. As for the laziness of our stoned neighbors? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s County Health Rankings reports that 90% of Boulder County adults make time to exercise. Need some contrast for reference? In Alabama, where no more than 4% of the population reports using cannabis, only about 62% of adults engage in leisure time physical activity.

Cannabis and Physical Fitness

Cannabis might not make you lazy, but what impact does it have on overall fitness? To answer this question, we’ll define fitness as a doctor or health pro might — if being unfit is having an unhealthy heart and carrying extra weight, fitness can be examined as a combination of cardiovascular health and body composition.

According to the American Heart Association’s reports from this year, “lifetime use of marijuana … was not associated with incident [coronary heart disease] or [cardiovascular disease] in middle age.” While herb is unlikely to hurt your cardio routine, it may actually protect your heart: a 2013 study in the Journal of Biochemical Pharmacology concludes, “A single ultra low does of THC before ischemia [inadequate blood supply to the heart] is a safe and effective treatment that reduces myocardial ischemic damage.”

As for the lungs, a 2015 Emory University study concluded, “In a large cross-section of US adults, cumulative lifetime marijuana use, up to 20 joint-years, is not associated with adverse changes in spirometric measures of lung health.” First, the term joint-years is a fantastic scientific way of discussing how long you’ve been puffing. Second, pot smokers can breathe easy—which is no surprise to anyone who’s seen a three-foot bong rip.

But what about obesity? Surely the stereotypical munchies have to accumulate somewhere. The American Journal of Epidemiology glibly concluded in 2011, “The authors conclude that the prevalence of obesity is lower in cannabis users than in nonusers,” finding almost 35% lower obesity rates among cannabis users as compared to non-users. A 2015 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found that while 29% of the subjects with healthy weights had used cannabis, an average of only 17% of the obese subjects had, leading to the conclusion that cannabis use may discourage unhealthy eating.

Another 2015 study found that chronic smoking may actually keep weight off. “Chronic THC treatment reduced energy intake and prevented high fat diet-induced increases in body weight and [fatty tissue].” In other words, rolling enough fatties may keep you from becoming a fatty.

Cannabis and Exercise

What about working out a little blazed? Anecdotally, some athletes say it helps them focus and ignore physical discomfort to push performance, while others say it saps their motivation to work out. Still, elite athletes from triathletes to UFC fighters swear by the herb as part of their fitness-focused lifestyles.

Athletic performance coach Ben Greenfield and Biomedical Engineering PhD Alyssa Siefert looked at the literature and concluded that because cannabis effects so many of the body’s systems, its utility on the activity. “[A]n endurance athlete may benefit from the pain-numbing and bronchodilatory effects of marijuana to get through a tough training session, and a UFC fighter who is using THC in moderated doses could actually be able to experience a combination of pain-killing, creativity and focus.”

In official terms, cannabis is considered an ergolytic (performance reducing) drug, because it doesn’t offer any short-term physiological advantages in terms of energy metabolism, muscle fiber recruitment or otherwise enhance the body’s performance. So while puffing pre- and post-workout can be beneficial, it’s probably best to skip the pre-competition tokes ‘til after the awards ceremony.

For training, though — especially long duration cardio like running and cycling — athletes are coming to swear by the herb. Men’s Fitness featured a past gold medalist of the New York City and South Beach Triathlons who says the right herb, “slows my thought process down so I can evaluate things as they come to me, one at a time. It gives me a beat in my head that I can follow when I run.” And when it comes to swimming? “I understand people who don’t want to race high because of the swim. But to be honest, there’s nothing better than swimming as high as a kite.”

When it comes to weight training, cannabis is an extremely popular option for rest and recovery. While there aren’t many strength athletes showing up red-eyed to attempt to break their squat records, and many lifters avoid cannabis immediately before and after workouts to prevent temporary testosterone disruption, weightlifting blogs and forums like Barbell Academy talk about using cannabis to increase focus and the mind-body connection while promoting more complete rest and stimulating an appetite for the increased caloric intake growing muscles demand. And who could forget the classic scene of Arnold Schwarzenegger puffing his victory joint in Pumping Iron?

So there you have it. Stoner sloths aside, there’s no conflict between regular cannabis use and an active lifestyle. In terms of physical fitness, research shows it’s unlikely to harm your heart and lungs, and may even be beneficial for your body mass index. When it comes to working out, it’s fast becoming a favorite for everyone — from yoginis to runners to body builders — for the herb’s ability to keep the mind focused while the body is under extreme exertion, so next time you’re taking your supplements before your stretching routine, consider trying out your favorite type of green to squeeze the best results out of your efforts.

The post Blunt Talk: Cannabis & Fitness appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

 
In keeping with this month’s greener theme, we’re taking a look at just how green our favorite green really is. Cannabis has had a long and strong association with nature-loving hippies, at least since the first California city kids moved north to Humboldt and Mendocino counties to get back to the land in the middle of the last century. The global movement and industry supporting hemp focuses especially on using the plant as a way to produce resources from fuel to fiber to food with means and methods that will avoid taking the environmental toll that the petrochemicals we rely on inevitably do. So when we think about the idea of “organic” cannabis, it may seem a foregone conclusion, but in reality most of the herb grown and smoked in Colorado is anything but.

Organic Certification: The Green Guarantee Caught in Red Tape

Before we can understand the implications of organic pot growing, we need to take a look at what organic farming actually means. Thanks to the marketing efforts of retailers, most of us are led to believe that organic means better quality, or healthier produce—and while organic produce is usually more flavorful and concentrated in healthful compounds, the goal of the farming practice itself is specific and unrelated to the quality of the produce.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, “[o]rganic agriculture produces products using methods that preserve the environment and avoid most synthetic materials, such as pesticides and antibiotics.” Specifically, USDA organic certification can be applied to foods grown “without the use of chemical herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, sewage sludge, and genetically modified organisms”.

There are two key takeaways here: First, that organic cultivation is about the environment, not the produce—specifically the environmental sustainability of the growing method. Second, that USDA only certifies food crops, which smokable bud is not.

As American Spirits smokers will note, the organic certification process has been extended to smokable tobacco, but due to the very crop-specific standards this can’t be extended to cover our favorite herb.

The other variable to keep in mind with all organic produce is the certification body and their process. In the US, most organic produce certification is done by the US Department of Agriculture (aka USDA Certified Organic). The rub here is that the USDA Certified Organic program didn’t start until the 1990s, and there were already bodies like the Oregon Tilth Certified Organic (OTCO) program that were engaged in a rigorous certification process. So when USDA Organic kicked off, they harmonized 90+ bodies under their set of rules and made them certification agencies under the USDA Organic banner. There is still some variation between certifying bodies—and some of these bodies, like Quality Assurance International (QAI) have been criticized for being more business-friendly than environmentally-friendly in their certification assessments and penalties—but the main point is that they all operate under USDA oversight.

Because the USDA is part of the Federal government, and because cannabis is still federally recognized as a Schedule I narcotic, the 90+ certification groups that operate under USDA oversight are handcuffed in the red tape of prohibition.

Certified or Not, What is Organic Cannabis?

Since no cannabis can actually be certified organic, it leaves room for ambiguity when growers and retailers call their jars “organic.” Depending on your understanding of the term and how important the specifics are to you, some herb that’s proudly labeled organic is anything but.

Recall that while most of us consumers interpret organic as representing the quality of the produce, from an agricultural perspective it’s all about the sustainability of the growing practices. As one organic farmer put it, “What organic really means is that we can keep growing this way for a hundred generations, and the Earth will keep its balance. If we try that with so-called conventional fertilizers, this soil will be dead and worthless before my great-grandkids plant it.”

When it comes to growing organic cannabis, there are two basic approaches: bottled organics or soil-based organics. While it seems every grower has their own acronym or catch phrase for their method, the difference boils down to whether the fertilizers are organically broken down and then bottled for retail sale, or they’re added to the soil in a raw state and broken down by the soil itself.

The debate rages between growers as to the relative effectiveness of the methods, but for the conscious consumer, the real difference is the sustainability factor that defines organic farming. For the most part, the flowers from bottled and soil-based organics are similar, in that they tend to be less swollen and more aromatic than their synthetically grown counterparts. For the true connoisseur, the depth and distinctiveness of terroir can’t possibly be matched by pre-mixed formulations, but the average consumer isn’t likely to notice a difference.

For tokers who care about the environment, though, the methods are worlds apart. Soil-based organics depend on attuning to nature’s principles and can be indefinitely continued because the cultivator doesn’t regularly add anything but water, and periodically refreshes the soil only in proportion to what it’s grown, modelling the way crops were grown for hundreds of thousands of years by our ancestors. Bottled organics are naturally sourced and use many of the same inputs at the start of their manufacture. However, they exert an ecological toll in their manufacturing, bottling, transportation, and disposal. By one estimate, if we had to grow all crops with this method, we’d run out of pure inputs to bottle in less than two hundred years.

But What About Pesticides?

Pesticide-tainted pot has been making local headlines this year as the State exercises holds and quarantines of contaminated crops, and a lot of folks turn to organics to avoid these concerns altogether. In theory, shopping for organic herb should steer consumers clear of these pesticide worries, but in these waning days of prohibition, things are rarely as simple as they seem.

Starting with the organic labeling issue we reviewed above, the regulators have made it clear to marijuana businesses that none of them is allowed to use the term ‘organic’, regardless of how they grow their product. For shops that go the extra mile and incur the added expenses of growing with soil-based organics, this rule prevents them from enjoying the marketing advantage their efforts deserve. Meanwhile, it leaves consumers entirely in the dark as to whether the product they’re buying meets their expectations.

Some of the unintended side effects of this gray area are even more harmful to businesses and consumers: because there’s no meaningful regulatory oversight or guidance on how to produce organically, or any government agency reviewing products marketed for organic cannabis cultivation, cannabis growers and their consumers are left at the mercy of product manufacturers. Manufacturers, seeing a gray area, are apt to take advantage for a quick profit.

As recently as December 2015, organic cannabis growers were enthusiastically endorsing a miticide called Guardian. According to the bottle, it was 100 percent natural and all of the ingredients listed on the label were plant-based, but the stuff was uniquely effective, especially compared to other organic options. By mid-January, it was revealed by a cannabis testing lab in Oregon the claims were too good to be true: Guardian secretly contained a synthetic pesticide that accounted for its effectiveness, and the manufacturers—never intending to actually disclose the active ingredient in their product—shut down their website and phone lines and effectively disappeared.

While pesticides are scary on any produce, because we burn cannabis (and whatever chemicals on or in it), we risk a much more serious exposure to any compounds than we would by eating fruit treated with the same pesticide.

So is There ANY Clean Cannabis?

Fortunately, the answer is yes, but you need to do your homework. Ask your budtender for a sample ingredients label, and don’t hesitate to Google anything longer than three syllables. Feel empowered to ask questions about the business’s cultivation practices at the dispensary. If the staff can’t answer them, don’t feel bad about walking out and calling around for a place that can. If you had peanut allergies, you wouldn’t dare to eat at a restaurant that couldn’t tell you if your dinner was cooked in peanut oil—it’s good practice to apply the same level of scrutiny to what you smoke, and to hold the same expectations of any business offering product.

And What About Sustainability?

In an ironic twist on flower power, it takes about 285 times more energy to grow a pound of herb indoors than it does to mine and process raw minerals into a pound of aluminum.

Indoor pot growing was unheard of before the late 20^th century, when law enforcement surveillance and defoliation efforts drove growers inside to hide. In the decades since, breeders have honed in on varieties that would flourish under high power lights strung in basements and garages, and a lot of modern strains available in Colorado were never intended to be grown outdoors. While legalization removed the necessity of stealth, the state and local regulations on grow environments—from security to surveillance to odor control—lend themselves to the massive warehouse grows the state is becoming known for.

Energy consumption in these facilities is astronomical for the lighting, but every light demands even more energy for cooling: each 1000-watt lamp produces about 4,000 BTUs of heat, while the ballast (power supply) adds about another 3,000 BTUs. Colorado is home to facilities with hundreds, even thousands of lamps, and hundreds of tons of AC.

For perspective, the average 200-light Colorado grow consumes over 21,000 kilowatt hours of energy every week. Meanwhile, the average American household consumes less than 11,000 kilowatt hours in an entire year.

While large-scale indoor grow operations are burning through our dwindling fossil fuel supply at record rates, the growing media and fertilizers the industry uses often come with their own ecological toll.

Sphagnum peat moss, for example is the primary ingredient in nearly every commercially available brands of soil, but it’s a slow-forming resource that stores 110 million tons of loose carbon each year. The carbon that peat moss stores is prevented from building up in the atmosphere and contributing to the greenhouse effect, but harvesting peat for use in soil releases all of carbon it’s sequestered.

Given the popularity of peat moss in everything from commercial blends to Miracle Gro, the rate of peat mining is accelerating and we may soon see the last of the peat bogs (and the release of all that carbon to the atmosphere): peat deposits that take over three millennia to form are completely drained and harvested in just months or years.

Bat guano is another popular organic fertilizer, prized because it has an ideal nutrient mix for flowering cannabis plants. While guano is undeniably effective in growing great herb, and is noted by some cultivators for achieving the most excellent flavors possible, the industry that supports its mining and export is nothing short of ecologically disastrous. Guano mining harms not only to plant, animal, and insect species, but their surrounding ecosystems, not to mention the indigenous populations that are often enslaved and forced to mine the highly profitable fertilizer.

So Is Greener Cannabis Even Possible?

Before you boycott our favorite herb to save the Earth, there’s the good news: eco-friendly cultivation methods, fertilizers, and pest control measures grow in popularity each year, and are the most promising avenues for the plant’s industrial-scale future.

While overpowered warehouses are the production model of today, tomorrow’s herb will increasingly be sun grown in greenhouses, using only supplemental powered lighting to maintain the garden’s light cycles. The short-term cost savings alone have encouraged businesses to aggressively pursue these alternatives and to develop technologies to increase their production capabilities and efficiencies.

Although tons of peat moss and guano are still sold every day, renewable plant-based organic fertilizers are producing buds of stunning quality, and increasingly being implemented in commercial scale environments. These efforts result in cleaner herb, more ecologically friendly supply processes and more modest cultivation budgets as bottom lines only have to account for locally grown plant species rather than exotic fertilizer components.

With the state’s increasing no-nonsense attitude on pesticide use, the pressure has been on for cultivators to adopt pest management systems that incorporate multiple layers of natural protection to keep gardens clean. While the organic-inspired integrated approach is much more labor intensive than spraying chemical pesticides, it assures a clean, healthy crop without the risk of residual poisons.

And, though the Federal government still hasn’t flinched from its Schedule I classification, policy experts and Washington insiders unanimously observe that the prohibition model’s days are numbered. The rescheduling or descheduling of cannabis is all but assured within the next decade. This would thaw the regulatory freeze around the plant in all aspects, including USDA Organic certification, and could pave the way for true standards of cleanliness, purity, and sustainability in cannabis agriculture.

The post How Green Is Your Green? A Look at “Organic” Cannabis appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In keeping with our canine-loving theme this issue, we thought it’d be a handy opportunity to explore the relationship between our favorite four legged companions and our favorite five-bladed plant in this month’s Blunt Talk column.

With marijuana legalization becoming mainstream in dog-loving Colorado, more and more close encounters are being reported between dogs and pot, but research suggests this isn’t the first time the two species have gotten to know each other.  Scientists have found that dogs and cannabis have co-existed for at least as long as both have been domesticated.  For both beloved life forms, a close relationship with humans seems to have started to develop somewhere in Central Asia, and their co-domestication was certain by at least 6,000 years ago.  

That time your roommate’s dog ate his stash in college was probably not the first pairing of pot and pet, but that begs the question, what does herb do to dogs?

Can Dogs Actually Get High?

Dogs most certainly feel the effects of cannabis, but can’t appreciate it the way humans can.  Being higher vertebrate mammals, dogs have a fully developed Endocannabinoid System (ECS), the biological system that cannabis interacts with.  Like humans – and every creature that’s evolved since primordial sea sponges about 500 million years ago – dogs have CB1 and CB2 receptors in their bodies that interact with THC and the major cannabinoids, and are effectively modulated by CBD and other constituents.  According to current research, dogs have CB1 receptors in their intestines and brains like we do, but they’ve also been found in their major and minor hair follicles, which some researchers believe is a clue that indicates the importance of herb to your dog’s health.  But before you go feeding Rex some Trainwreck, consider some of the warnings veterinarians and animal health organizations have been issuing.

According to Dr. Sarah Brandon of Canna Companion, a company that provides cannabis medicine for pets, dogs experience “all the pros and cons of cannabis the same as humans.  They do get high if enough THC is administered, and they generally don’t like it,” because with their already-heightened senses, the increase in sensory perceptions is probably overwhelming.  Intoxicated dogs can “experience wobbliness and other gait abnormalities, and this can really scare them,” and poochie-paranoia isn’t all that different from human paranoia once it gets going, but with the added stress that dogs have no sense of why their cognition is different – as opposed to humans, who may vaguely remember eating that infused chocolate bar some hours ago – which can increase their panicked response.

The good news, though, is that cannabis is actually as non-lethal for dogs as it is for humans.  In fact, the 2002 study by the ASPCA that studied 250 cases of marijuana intoxication in pets found no deaths caused by cannabis or its constituents, and established no median lethal dosage.  Some YS readers may remember the two Labradors were found dead here in Colorado back in 2000 with cannabis-infused butter their digestive tracts, though no definite link was established between the cannabis and the unfortunate fatalities.

While it’s unlikely that your dog can be fatally poisoned by cannabis, there are still definite disruptions potent pot can cause to canine health and safety, such anxiety, including panting and agitation; abnormal heart rhythms or breathing; extreme lethargy, sleepiness, or “laziness”; seriously impaired balance, including staggering, stumbling, or falling; drooling, vomiting, or diarrhea; loss of trained or voluntary bowel or bladder control; and extreme responses to sensory stimulation, including trembling or jerking of the head or extremities.  The intensity of these negative responses depends on the dose and the size of the dog, and in higher dose, they can be terrifying to both the pet and the associated human.

These negative symptoms are the result of the dog ingesting the classic ?9-THC that gets us high, and which is created when pot is burned or cooked.  In raw herb, whether from a live plant or a jar, where this compound is still in its unheated form (THC-A), it doesn’t have the same intense psychoactive effect, while other cannabinoid and terpene compounds are actually earning reputations for helping hounds, not hurting them.

Veterinary Marijuana

While there are certainly concerns and risks to be avoided when we’re talking dogs and cannabis, there is also a great deal of promise in the field of veterinary cannabis.  For the same reasons that dogs’ endocannabinoid systems can yield undesired effects at high doses, more careful implementation is showing huge promise in increasing canine quality of life and even treating common maladies and ailments in dogs.

Prominent Los Angeles veterinary doctor Doug Kramer – known in his field as the “Vet Guru” until his death in 2013 – was a vocal advocate of the appropriate use of cannabis to relieve animals.  Though the American Veterinary Medical Association hasn’t given any green light to the treatment, Kramer and dozens of vets in states that offer legal access recommend cannabis to improve dogs’ quality of life, especially as they age.

Marijuana is promising for treating a range of symptoms in pets, starting with basic pain and discomfort, especially the type of joint pain experienced by older dogs.  Experienced vets recommend cannabis – especially high CBD/low THC treatments – for cases of canine anxiety and restlessness, and anecdotal evidence suggests that these remedies can chill-out high strung pets without introducing the possibility of intoxication that might further panic a pooch.  Doggie doctors are also recommending marijuana treatments to increase older dogs’ appetites, to ease inflamed bowels, to treat all forms of canine seizures, and to fight canine cancer and diminish the side effects of cancer treatments.  Breed-specific problems, including eye problems like cataracts and glaucoma; skin irritations, sensitivities and rashes; and metabolic problems like obesity and canine diabetes also show promising responses to cannabis-based treatments.

Of Canines and Cannabis

So there you have it—Yellow Scene is the introductory guide to Canines and Cannabis.  To recap, we found that your dog can get high just like you, but can’t understand or appreciate what’s going on in the same way.  High doses of herb can cause all sorts of issues, so there’s not much ground to stand on when it comes to recreational marijuana for Man’s Best Friend.  But because dogs have endocannabinoid systems very similar to our own, veterinary medical marijuana can be extremely effective in relieving some of the most common ailments dogs deal with.  Ultimately, it’s important to know what you’re giving your dog, for what reason, and in what dosage, so pet owners should remain vigilant.  But as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals President Ingrid Newkirk explained in announcing PETA’s support of the administration of medical marijuana to pets, “Our position is that anything that can help animals – if it’s truly, properly administered in the right amount [and] can relieve a dog’s pain – then they should be given the same consideration that humans in pain are given.”

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Valentine’s Day is the perfect occasion to ignite a romantic spark with a new love interest, or to rekindle the heat into of your burning flame. The gifts you exchange with your lover can set the mood and drive your amorous experience, but you’re going to have to do better than heart-shaped milk chocolate and boring roses, so in this month’s column, we unite our love of Do-It-Yourself kitchen cannabis projects and our appreciation for gifts especially suited for the holiday.

Cannabis has been used as an aphrodisiac for at least 3,000 years. In India, cannabis was a key component in remedies formulated to stimulate the libido, and played a central role in Tantric sex practices by 700 AD, where its use carried over into Tantric Buddhist practices spread across the Himalayas. In Europe, Serbian men were known to blend high grade hash with almond butter, dried flower petals, spices, roots, and sweeteners to make an aphrodisiac reputed to restore youthful vigor, while in North Africa, the locally harvested kif is prized by women for it’s value in loosening inhibitions. But the fun doesn’t stop long ago and far away. Research conduced in the US in the 1970s and 80s found that combining cannabis with intimate experiences led to an enhanced sense of touch, a heightened intimacy, stronger orgasms, and better sex.

A New Take on Flowers and Candy

Let me save you the time and trouble: she doesn’t want basic flowers and chocolate. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want any flowers or chocolate.

A Bay Area company has hit the news recently with their brand of herb called Sexx-Pot, which claims to set a relaxed and erotic mood for laid back fun that’s “akin to vacation sex” according to one user. The secret seems to be that the herb is lower in THC—somewhere around 14%—making it relaxing and enhancing, but not outright intoxicating. The strain is derived from Mr. Nice—a sativa-dominant cross of G-13 and an old-school Hashplant, but you don’t have to travel to the Bay to pick up flowers to set the mood—anything in your local dispensary the mid-low THC range that has sweet earthy, slightly floral aromas should do the trick.

Edibles can enhance your evening as well, but steer clear of anything with more than 25 milligrams of THC if your goal is just to sharpen the senses without getting stoned. Infused hard candies and mints have light fast-acting effects that can turn a make-out session into a heightened experience, while richer chocolates have a longer onset that washes over you after just the right amount of foreplay.

Sensual Relaxation

For experiences that will last past the evening, consider some gifts that will loosen your lover up any time. Cannabis-infused spa treatments are all the rage, with new offerings and articles appearing weekly. Combining sensuality and relaxation, cannabis oil can be infused into everything from facial masques to bath bombs, but you can skip the spa and prep the pampering in your own kitchen, and stage it in your own bathroom, so the bedroom is close by.

Massage Oil

Heat ¼ cup of sweet almond oil in a double boiler set to medium-low and add 2-3 grams of finely ground cannabis. Look for a strain that’s got a dark blossomy aroma like Lavender or Dawg’s Waltz to get the most out of the plant’s aromatic synergy. After about an hour, strain this mixture through cheesecloth into a dark glass jar and let it cool completely. Add 5 drops each of sandalwood oil, rose essential oil, and bergamot oil, swirl well to combine, then seal the jar and let the oil cure for 24 hours. The oil will be good for equal parts arousal and relaxation for about two weeks, and your partner will certainly find a special way to thank you for an enhanced rub down with this fragrant blend.

Infused Coconut Oil Base

For the rest of our spa recipes, you’ll need to make cannabis coconut oil as a base—luckily, it’s amazingly simple. Heat 1 cup of coconut oil on low in a slow cooker until it’s liquid, then add 2 ounces of finely ground herb and 5-6 cups of distilled water. Turn the crock pot up to high for an hour and stir the mixture a couple of times, then turn it to low or warm for 4 to 24 hours. Strain the herb from the mixture and leave it in the fridge overnight—the coconut oil will form a hard layer on the top that can be easily removed, and the water can be dumped down the sink. To remove the bits of herb left in the coconut oil, just melt it over low heat and strain it through a fine sieve or coffee filter, and collect your refined oil.

Facial Masque

Combine ¼ cup of your infused coconut oil with 2.5 teaspoons of cinnamon and 2.5 teaspoons of nutmeg—stir well, and seal. To use, apply gently to the face and allow to set for up to 30 minutes, applying a warm washcloth to steam.

Bath Salts

Combine 2 cups of Epson salts with 10 drops of tea tree oil and 10 drops of lavender oil in a large bowl, then fold in ¼ cup of your infused coconut oil and mix well. Add directly to bath water, or bundle into cheesecloth to make a sachet.

Bath Bomb

Sieve together 1 cup baking soda, ½ cup citric acid, and ½ cup corn starch in a large bowl, then in a separate bowl, add 1/8 cup infused coconut oil, 1 tablespoon of witch hazel, 20 drops of lavender essential oil, and a few drops of purple food coloring. Wearing gloves, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in the large bowl a little at a time, kneading the mixture well until it has the texture of wet sand and a uniform color. Use small bowls to mold the mixture into bath bombs, and lay them out on a cookie sheet to dry for a day or two before use.

Luxurious Lotion

Use a clean glass jar to combine ¼ cup of your infused coconut oil with ½ cup almond oil (you can infuse a little extra when you’re making your massage oil if you want to add an extra boost), ¼ cup beeswax, 1 teaspoon vitamin E oil, 2 tablespoons Shea butter, and 3-5 drops vanilla extract. Place the jar in a medium saucepan with a few inches of water warmed over medium heat, stirring while everything melts and combines, then remove, allow to cool, and cover.

Herbal Personal Lubricant

When it comes to cannabis concoctions for an erotic evening, nothing has gotten more recent attention than infused lubricant. The reviews are mind-blowing: focused relaxation, increased lubrication, and more, stronger, and longer lasting orgasms for her. And best of all, you can make it at home easily and affordably.

Start with medium chain triglyceride oil (liquid coconut oil). It’s important not to use the normal coconut oil you used for your spa treatments, because you want to be sure this is liquid at all temperatures. Add 1 cup of MCT oil, 1 cup of finely ground cannabis, and 1 tablespoon of liquid sunflower lecithin into your trusty slow cooker and heat it on your lowest setting (Warm, if you have it) for four hours, stirring every 15-20 minutes. After letting the mixture cool, strain it through a cheesecloth or fine sieve, and store it in a pump spray bottle for easy application.

Well there you have it, lovers—with a few ounces of herb and a little time in the kitchen, you can concoct a full line-up of classy gifts to take you and your Valentine to a higher plane of sexy delights. Have fun, play safe, and happy V-day! xoxoxo

The post A Blunt Talk Valentine’s Day Gift Guide appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

With medical marijuana gaining political traction throughout the country, physicians are turning to the cutting edge research that’s being done on cannabis at the world’s top institutions.  Twenty-three states and Washington DC now permit the use of marijuana in medical treatment—when Colorado passed its medical marijuana regulations fifteen years ago, only six had preceded us.

In the early days, the limited available research indicated that cannabis looked promising in treating a wide range of illnesses, but no explanation was delivered.  Today, we have a much finer and more nuanced understanding of exactly how cannabis (and its constitutent subcomponents) actually functions in the body.  Thanks to a great deal of research undertaken in the past ten years, we know that cannabis affects a system called the endocannabinoid system, a network of receptors that keeps the body’s functions in balance.  The unique compounds found in marijuana called cannabinoids interact with this system in a number of ways to allow the body to heal itself.  We’re just now coming to understand the powerful healing effect of terpenes – the plant compounds that give herb (and any other scented plant) its distinctive aromas.  Taken as a whole, cannabis medicine can be used to treat hundreds of different conditions.

The Endocannabinoid System

Our bodies are composites of integrated systems, each serving its own purpose and contributing to a whole greater than the sum of its parts.  Each system consists of networks of specialized cells and organs adapted to suite a specific function: the nervous system pushes hyperspeed data to the brain and muscles; the endocrine system modulates gene expression with hormones for long-term adaptation; the circulatory system maintains a constant supply chain of the essentials of life throughout the body; and the endocannabinoid sysem (ECS) coordinates the whole show, from the fundamentals, like body temperature and appetite, to the higher level defenses, like immunity and stress response.  It accomplishes this by making its own chemicals that are remarkably similar to those found in marijuana, and using those to activate receptors throughout the body.

The ECS works through two types of receptors: CB1 receptors, which are mostly found in our brains, and CB2 receptors that are essentially part of the immune system.  The body produces a number of compounds that are referred to as endocannabinoids—that is, they’re physically and chemically in the same class as the unique compounds otherwise found only in pot.  This system is constantly at work in our bodies, but can become imbalanced or deficient.  Over time, uncorrected imbalances can cause our systems to stop functioning normally and result in a range of conditions.  This has prompted researchers to label a number of commonly suffered conditions—including fibromyalgia, migraines, and irritable bowel syndrome—as endocannbinoid deficiencies.

Cannabinoids in Marijuana

Cannabinoids (cann-AHH-bin-oids) are the unique compounds formed only in the cannabis plant.  They start out as a precursor compound that lots of aromatic plants use to make their smells, and mix with a plant metabolite that’s thought to help plants suppress fungus, and another compound that’s produced in bark-dwelling lichens.  Each of these substances is found in nature on its own—but cannabis is the only species that produces all three, and when they combine, they form the remarkable chemicals that give the herb its magic.

The first cannabinoid to be discovered in the lab was D9-tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as THC.  This is a big part of the psychoactive effect of the plant, and is key to the healing effect of cannabis for the role it plays with our CB1 and CB2 receptors.  THC binds to these receptors and activates them, signaling the body to correct the balance on its systems.  It has mild pain-relieving potential, and offers relief for suffering thanks to its euphoriant qualities.  Of special interest, it has proven directly effective against cancer in the lab—in vitro and in animal models, THC selectively kills tumor cells without damaging healthy ones.

More recently, even mainstream press has been interested in the medical promise shown by another cannabinoid, CBD.   CBD is the yin to THC’s yang—it doesn’t bind to either the CB1 or CB2 receptors.  Instead, it keeps the cannabinoids the body produces from breaking down quickly, extending and enhancing their balancing effect.  This turns out to be especially important in preventing the spread of cancerIt also works on a range of specialized receptors in the brain, slowing down signals in ones related to anxiety, excitation, and pain perception, and speeding up ones that deal with pain relief and anti-inflammatory response.

While CBD is the “it” cannbinoid of the moment, dozens of other more recently discovered compounds are showing incredible promise in medical research and are waiting in the wings to steal the spotlight.  CBG is a non-psychoactive substance that works as a counterpoint to THC by interacting with the CB1 and CB2 receptors.   It’s proven effective in decreasing anxiety and muscular tension, and has strong anti-inflammatory properties, making it effective in treating inflammation in the GI tract and glaucoma. It’s also an effective anti-depressant and, like THC, has been proven to shrink tumors in animal models.

CBC is another promising cannabinoid that’s proving effective in stimulating bone growth while it blocks inflammation and pain.  While THC and CBG directly attack tumors to shrink them, CBC works like CBD to prevent cancer from spreading by keeping the body’s interally produced cannabinoids from breaking down.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

All of these substances (and dozens more naturally produced in herb) work on the body in tandem, balancing and enhancing each other.  Alongside terpenes—the compounds that are responsible for aromas in plants (from oranges to geraniums and coffee to cannabis)—they have the ability to balance the body all along a spectrum.  For example, limonene (the plant chemical that’s responsible for the citrus smell) works with the cannabinoids to give a bracing, stimulating effect; on the other hand, lavendin (which gives lavender its distinct scent) works with the same group to bring relaxation.

Thanks to this versatility, cannabis has seriously beneficial effects in everything from serious diseases like cancer and HIV to difficult to treat imbalances like multiple sclerosis and seizure disorders.  It addresses a lot of common chronic pain conditions, like fybromyalgia and migraines, that seem to be caused by a deficiency of the cannabinoids the body should be producing on its own.

Since it causes the body to balance its systems, it helps arthritis and glaucoma by triggering anti-inflammatory reponses, and prevents osteoporosis by tapping the breaks on the body’s hyperactive bone reabsorption mechanisms.  By regulating the systems behind energy and appetite, it regulates the metabolism, making it the new hot research trend in treating diabetes and obesity.

One Size Cures All (sort of)

With all the promise pot’s shown in helping conditions ranging from the irritating to the life-threatening, there’s been a renaissance in developing formulations to make it available to more folks who aren’t particularly into smoking it, and who don’t particularly appreciate its recreational aspects.  Medical dispensaries across Colorado carry everything from time release capsules and under-the-tongue drops to topical lotions and transdermal patches, and can offer technical expertise and guidance that doctors often can’t.

The post Marijuana as Medicine appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

With the outdoor harvest behind us and the Jack O’ Lanterns added to the compost heap, we caffeinate against the short days, turn our collars up against the cold, and prepare ourselves for this year’s holiday season.  As autumn turns to winter, many of us embrace holiday traditions and symbols that have been handed down for generations.  And at least a few of us focus on keeping it fresh, turning stodgy convention into an herbally enhanced holiday extravaganza.  This month, Blunt Talk invites you to join us in our annual Danksgiving celebration.

The First Danksgiving

For many of us cannabis devotees, Thanksgiving was a bit of a lost holiday.  Since 1987, the third week of November has played host to the annual Cannabis Cup event in Amsterdam, bringing us all across the Atlantic to celebrate our festival.  The American attendees usually made it a point to gather at the most nearly American restaurant they could find (typically a British pub), doing our best to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday in a country that doesn’t farm—let alone serve—turkey, cranberry, or the rest of the usual fixing Some of us decided it was worth returning to the States early to make it home in time for the festivities, but we soon discovered there was simply no way to shake off the residual stone that tends to linger for a few days after the epic indulgence of the Cup.  If we couldn’t get ourselves into the same state as the rest of our guests, we reasoned, we might as well use the Thanksgiving meal to bring them up to ours.  And with that in mind, we planned and celebrated the first Danksgiving.
As you’ve probably put together, the basic concept is to incorporate a little ganja infusion into each course of the meal.  While planning a holiday menu is always a challenge, Danksgiving raises the stakes: you’ve got to plan the menu—and, especially, the extra herbal seasoning—so that everyone makes it to pie without anyone ending up face down in the mashed potatoes.

The two keys to a successful Danksgiving are pacing and potency: start slow, and build the potency over the course of the meal.  To cook with cannabis, we either need to extract it into something like alcohol or infuse it into a fatty substance like butter or oil, or to add an already infused ingredient off a dispensary shelf to a standard menu item.  Whenever we cook with herb, the goal is to heat it enough to activate the THC, but not so much that it breaks the good stuff down.  A lot of folks like to use a double boiler to make sure the temperatures stay in the target range, but as long as you don’t cook your infusion a second time, it should get you the desired effect.

First, a word of warning: eating herb is always stronger than smoking it, effects can take up to two hours to set in, and overindulgence can be temporarily unpleasant.

Planning the Danksgiving Menu

There are plenty of great tutorials online on how to make standard cannabutter, and there are even foolproof kitchen gadgets for it like the Magical Butter machine.  This works out great for Danksgiving, because so many of our traditional holiday dishes are rich comfort foods.  We usually start off with crescent rolls and corn bread, served with our homemade cannabutter.  Since the butter a go-to for the entire meal, we always make a double batch—but like the dishes themselves, it’s easy to underestimate how many times you’ll go back for seconds, so we make our Danksgiving butter one-quarter the usual potency.

Around this time, the first glasses of wine get poured, and if we’re already preparing a mulled holiday wine, we like to add some herbs along with the spices.  Just pour your choice of red table wine it into a saucepan on low heat, and add a cheesecloth sachet with one sliced orange, four cloves, a pinch of nutmeg, a pinch Of cardamom, and cinnamon to taste.  For your infusion, add 7-14 grams of your favorite strain finely ground.  Tie off your sachet, drop it in, and let the wine simmer covered over low heat for about 2 hours.  Then just remove your sachet and allow the wine to cool and you’re ready to serve.

For hors d’oeuvres, our family does baked brie wheels.  Short of making our own cheese from infuse. Fortunately, there are a few companies making hash infused honey, and it fits the bill perfectly: spread a nice layer of infused honey on the top of each brie wheel after they’re removed from the oven and serve them with warm bread and fresh berries.

No Thanksgiving is complete without heaps of sides.  Since every family has its traditional lineup, here are some general guidelines: for mashed potatoes, glazed yams, green bean casserole, and macaroni and cheese, use your infused cream and butter, but remember not to re-cook with infused ingredients or you’ll break down the good stuff.  This usually means cooking the dish, then blending in your butter or cream.  When it comes to cranberry sauce and other condiments, adding a dropper or two of tincture from your local dispensary is the best way to add some buzz without ruining the dish by spontaneously adding butter.

When it’s time to talk turkey, many of us fantasize about deep frying a bird in a few gallons of pot infused oil, but the high temperatures involved would ruin all the fun.  If you like to rub butter under your bird’s skin to get it to crisp when you roast it, there’s no harm in working in your homemade cannabutter here, but the best way to turn on your turkey is to make some groovy gravy.  Unfortunately, the chemistry doesn’t work out to allow you to just extract your bud into your pan drippings like you would with butter, so substitute infused coconut oil for half the drippings in your favorite gravy recipe.

And with that, you are initiated into the traditions of Danksgiving.  Let us know if you give it a try this year—and look forward to your most restful post-feast coma, and most memorable (or hardest to remember…) Thanksgiving yet.

The post The Danksgiving Holiday appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

To celebrate 15 years of YellowScene we’ve compiled our 15 for 15 – the Top 15 facts about marijuana that have come to light since 2000.T

Colorado’s 15th Herb Anniversary
When we talk about marijuana legalization nowadays, we usually mean Colorado’s historic vote in 2012 on Amendment 64 to legalize recreational marijuana. But our YellowScene editorial staff weren’t the only ones who were ahead of their time in 2000 – that same year, Colorado voters approved Colorado’s Amendment 20, legalizing the medical use of marijuana in the state.
At the time, Colorado became the 7th state to legalize medical marijuana, and within a decade surpassed its counterparts in regulating and formalizing the industry.
As a result of Colorado voters’ foresight and legislators’ willingness to have serious discussions with activists, we established the framework that would lead the nation and, fifteen years later, we’ve seen sixteen more states follow our wise example.

Higher Usage Rates
Back in 2000, only about 8.3 percent of the US population reported to have used cannabis in the past year. This year, the figure is 12.6 percent – about 1/3 more than at the turn of the millennium.
Colorado has been ahead of the curve the entire time: in 2000, about 1 in 8 Coloradans toked up each month – today that figure is closer to 1 in 5.

Strain Name Game
Names for pot strains became a part of American vernacular in the 1970s when varieties like Northern Lights and Skunk joined geographically named varieties like Panama Red, Columbian Gold, and Maui Wowie.
In the 1980s, the Dutch cannabis industry continued the tradition of coining catchy names, and by the 1990s, Americans capitalized the marketing potential of domestically homegrown name brands like Sour Diesel and OG Kush.
The newest genetic studies have found though that names may not mean much in terms of actual lineage, probably due to a combination of opportunistic brand marketing and honest stoned mistakes.

Men & Women
Noticed you’re not on the same level as your significant other after you share a joint? Before you rush to any hasty conclusions that your partner is a lightweight, check out some of the research on the how cannabis effects men and women differently.
Research conducted at Washington State University in 2014 concluded that females are more sensitive to the pain-killing qualities of cannabis. So if your beau is still puffing away long after you’re feeling the effects, don’t judge him – he may still be catching up to you.
The same study found that women are also more likely to develop a tolerance to the effects of cannabis, which means you ladies may need to salvage the end of the joint from the ashtray after all.

Like Hops? You’ll Love Herb!
The Front Range is a cradle of craft brew and cannabis, but many hopheads don’t know that cannabis and hops are close cousins.
Those familiar with both plants will no doubt recognize similar leaf shapes, and have probably noted that hops cones look remarkably like buds. Of course, both are rich in terpenes, which explains the similar flavor kick, and genetic research in the last few years has confirmed the relationship.
Both cannabis and hops are in the Cannabinaceae family of plants – which is probably why they’re so compatible with each other.

THC Kills Cancer
While it’s a lot of fun to talk about the recreational nuances of cannabis, let’s not forget its serious medical properties.
THC specifically kills cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone. It’s not a theory. It’s not fringe science. It’s not hippie magic. It’s an absolute fact, and as of this year, it’s being touted by the National Institute of Health’s National Cancer Institute.

Edibles Were all the Rage in Victorian-era France
Today’s infused chocolates, jewels, and cookies are certainly more sophisticated, but eating a good dose of hash is nothing new for high society. Distinguished French artists, intellectuals, and scientists gathered regularly to feast and indulge in hashish confections.
The group, known as the Club des Haschichins, featured such illustrious members as Theophile Gautier, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, and other greats of Western literature and philosophy.

The Original E-Commerce
Savvy dispensary shoppers can finally save time by pre-ordering their herb with smartphone apps, but electronic orders for ganja are nothing new according to What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2005).
In the early 1970s, students at Stanford used their old-school internet connection to their geeky counterparts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to conduct the first-ever electronic business transaction. Across the early and not widely-used network, the students arranged a coast-to-coast pot deal, and racked up an impressive list of internet firsts.

Tai Chi, Acupuncture, and White Widow
Traditional Chinese Medicine and myriad other ancient Eastern arts and sciences are wildly popular across the Front Range, but the most popular of all might be medical marijuana.
The first evidence of cannabis in Chinese culture was in the form of hemp dating to the Stone Age. By around 5,000 years ago, Traditional Chinese medicine was formalized, and included the dried cannabis herb, said to possess both yin and yang properties.

Shakespeare’s “Noted Weed”
When South African archaeologists analyzed pipe fragments they unearthed from Shakespeare’s garden in 2001, eight of the fragments from twenty four pipes had traces of cannabis.
While there’s no definitive proof that these were Shakespeare’s pipes, lit students have been pointing to 420-friendly Shakespeare lines for decades, like Sonnet 76: “Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed.”

Jeepers Creepers Where’d You Get Those Reefers
Kerouac and the Beats were one of the main vectors for cannabis consumption into American culture, and they largely got turned on by the Jazz scene. Jazz culture embraced reefer smoking, and the artists spread the good green wherever the music took them.
Jazz great Louis Armstrong was a vocal cannabis supporter, and a daily user. His biographies are full of notable pot escapades, but one of the greatest is captured in a book about Richard Nixon, Nixon’s Secrets (2014).
In 1958, Armstrong was returning to the US as a Goodwill Ambassador and was stopped at customs in New York. Then-Vice President Richard Nixon happened to be in the airport and seized the photo op with the cultural icon. Seeing Armstrong’s delay at customs, Nixon offered to carry his bags to speed him along, and Armstrong gratefully accepted. A musician traveling with Satchmo mentioned to a Nixon aide that Louie had three pounds of grass in the bag the Veep had handled through customs.

More than THC & CBD
While THC (tetrahydrocannbinol) and CBD (cannabidiol) receive a lot of media attention as the Yin and Yang of herb, they are just two of at least 85 unique compounds isolated from cannabis. These compounds, called cannabinoids, all work on the endocannabinoid system in their own way.
While most of these compounds are just being understood, some of the less talked about compounds that have come into recent scientific discussions for their medical promise are CBN, CBG, CBC, and THCV.
Some of these are like CBD, in that they’re totally non-psychoactive. Others are more like THC, in that they’re psychoactive and work directly on the body’s CB1 receptors.

Indica and Sativa… Or Are They?
Since the proliferation of medical marijuana culture, and its evolution into recreational cannabis culture, we’ve seen the inception of the Indica/Sativa divide.
We can all agree that some herb makes you sleepy, and some herb makes your mind more active, but for about 25 years, we’ve been tempted to oversimplify the reasons for the differences. Common wisdom has it that Sativas are the equatorial plants that produce an uplifting high and Indicas are imported from mountainous regions and pack a heavy stone.
The most recent genetic analysis found that paradigm to be based on little more than stoned imaginings. Strains as far reaching as the African landrace Durban Poison and the Pakistani Hindu Kush varieties aren’t nearly as genetically separate as the old theories suggest according to 2015 genetic studies.
So if it’s not the Indica/Sativa paradigm that accounts for different highs, what’s the story? Research increasingly appoints to the synergy between cannabinoids and the plants’ aromatic compounds.

A Rose by Any Other Name
With high quality cannabis freely available, casual pot smokers are tuning in to the evolving science surrounding the herb’s broad ranging smells. A long way from the generically pungent basic “skunk weed” of the old days, todays strains exhibit a mind-boggling array of aromas. From citrus to pine, geranium to menthol, holiday spices to strawberry candy, cannabis exhibits a broader range of smells than any other cultivated flower.
The substances that produce these smells, known as terpenes, are the exact ones that give all plants their telltale aromas, from limonene in citrus to geraniol in geraniums. So if your latest bag smells a bit like lavender, it’s because both plants produced the same smell compound.
Recent research strongly suggests that it’s the differences in aromatic compounds – rather than in THC – that gives each strain its unique character of high.

Pot & Pets
The cannabinoids and aromatic compounds in the good herb aren’t only effective on humans: 2002 research found that all vertebrate animals have endocannabinoid systems. While this may not be all that practical for your pet goldfish, your furry best friend can benefit from a little cannabis therapy.
Whether in capsules that will inevitably wrapped in cold cuts or High CBD dog treats, companies offer all sorts of cannabis derived goodies aimed at your aging pooch.
Local dispensaries even offer non-psychoactive tinctures and transdermal gel pens to help with a host of maladies that effect older pets.
Before you go blowing a bong hit in your collie’s ear to calm her nerves, it’s important to realize that the products offered for pets aren’t heat activated, and won’t get them high, but your second hand smoke is and will.

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There’s a long and venerable American tradition linking academia and marijuana. For half a century, college towns have been the sole business communities to form a stable symbiosis with the unique ecology of used record stores, coffee houses, pun-laced pot-themed late night food establishments, organic vegan grocery stores, and head shops that support a thriving marijuana community. Official US government reports track herb smoking from the heady Berkley scene of the late 1960s through 1970s academia where they determine, “It is commonly hypothesized that marijuana use first burgeoned among college students”. T

University of Colorado’s Boulder campus has its own special and storied relationship with the good herb. In 1991, students staged a hemp protest on campus after the local head shop, the Pipefitter, was raided by the US Customs Service. By 1999, the campus had embarked on its course as a Mecca for student stoners nationwide, the annual 4/20 Smoke-Out growing to draw over 10,000 participants to the campus each spring. A decade later, the Boulder campus was a spearhead leading the barely sprouted Colorado industry, with CU NORML hosting a two-day industry forum on campus in April 2009 that would lay the foundation for the first wave of Boulder County dispensaries and ancillary businesses.

Unofficial reports claim that by 2015, CU application rates surged over 35 percent thanks to aspirants looking to delve either professionally or personally into Colorado’s fabled herb stash. The academic departments are even getting in on the fun, offering courses to cater to the changing times. The administration, on the other hand, is as committed to clamping down on the party as the stodgy dean in How High.

Since 2005, the CU administration has deployed countermeasures ranging from a hyperactive sprinkler system to dozens of gallons of ultra-stinky fish fertilizer, and rewards for snitching out on-campus stoners to a small army of private security agents to clamp down on puffing on school grounds. As legal standards softened statewide, the state school found itself dancing awkwardly between facilitating off campus housing for medical marijuana patients in 2008 to an outright ban on all forms of smoke on the grounds just five years later.

The complicated and ambivalent relationship between Mary Jane and the Buffalo is drawn tauter than ever by the growing demand for new cannabis-centric academic programs.

The course catalog for CU Boulder Law School is for the first time this fall offering LAWS 7718—The Regulation of Marijuana—which “is based on state and federal law regulating marijuana in Colorado. Topics include medical and recreational legalization, state and local regulation and taxation of marijuana commerce, and practical issues for marijuana businesses.” The paradox between Colorado law and Federal law is increasingly relevant statewide, and especially on campus, where researchers are working to conduct the first legitimate scientific studies on cannabis since the lifting of the shroud of prohibition.

“It’s impossible to get Federal grants to study the products available in Colorado. Research can be very expensive, and it becomes exceedingly difficult when those federal institutions turn away,” explains CU Neuroscience graduate and researcher Andrea Sobel. In general, Sobel explains, “There are a lot of concerns regarding cannabis research and our affiliation with the University of Colorado. At the time of the approval of our [research] protocols, cannabis remains classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the DEA.” The illegality at the Federal level means Sobel and her team can’t conduct any controlled laboratory research on the products available all over town.

Even the mighty Colorado buffalo, a majestic symbol of frontier freedom, is cowed by the screeching bald eagle of the US Government.

“The University has considerable Federal funding,” explains Sobel, “and they abide by all of the Federal laws and regulations.” When the Feds’ policy disagrees with the taxpayers who fund the University, the Feds win. Sobel and her team would face “major infractions for having illegal substances on the property”—meaning they couldn’t actually have legal cannabis in their research facility. “The biggest hesitation from the University was making sure that absolutely no cannabis or paraphernalia were in our lab, on the property, or anywhere near the property. This makes it harder for us, as researchers, to eliminate variables like potency, strain type, and quantity.”

This highlights the strange paradox of the research Sobel and her team are conducting. The project was inspired “mainly from the lack of solid, reliable data available,” which she acknowledges, “makes it very difficult for public officials to develop new policies regarding cannabis.” The school can’t stand behind cannabis research on site because they don’t have enough research to support that position—but the research they’d look to support the position is hampered by the lack of support. A classic Catch (four) Twenty-two.
The research team had to approach this issue in the grand tradition of all collegiates chafing under the yoke of a prohibitionist administration: by thinking outside the box. While the standard dorm room practices of wedging a bath towel under the door and exhaling through a paper towel tube stuffed with dryer sheets were out of the question, the team had to figure out how to get subjects high, and get them into the lab for analysis.

The University had made it clear they couldn’t have research subjects blazing in the lab, but it’s not illegal to be under the influence on campus, just to get under it while you’re there. So the research team devised a workaround. “We had our participants use cannabis in the privacy of their own home before coming into the lab for tests.” Once the research subjects get themselves irie in privacy, the lab sends a driver to pick them up to prevent any chance of them driving under the influence.

Despite the blatant buzzkills, Sobel and her team are a big part of the University of Colorado’s continued—often unwitting—leadership in cannabis policy reform. “It makes complete sense that the Universities in Colorado should be jumping all over this unchartered territory. I am beyond ecstatic to tell people that I am part of the beginnings of cannabis research in this state.”

And while it would seem the administration isn’t quite getting funky on the pot brownies like How High’s Dean Cain, the future of serious cannabis research at Colorado schools is looking brighter. “I absolutely know that more cannabis research will come out of the University,” Sobel is excited to tell me. “Earlier this year, researchers at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus were awarded close to 5 million dollars for cannabis-related research, including epilepsy in children.”

The on-again off-again affair between Mary Jane and the buffalo has run cold at the 4/20 Campus Smoke Up, where revelers and protestors abandoned their traditional plans this year, foregoing the gathering entirely. With the quad absent of its usual bongs and bongos, the law school discussing the nitty gritty of hundreds of pages of marijuana law, and the research facilities shuttling stoned subjects, a new relationship between college and cannabis is blossoming on campus: after decades protesting prohibition, it appears that a couple hours past dawn of the new day of legalization, pot is becoming passé at CU.

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