Gawker: Pot

Dutch Potheads Threatened by Anti-Tobacco Goons

ian spiegelman — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:42:36 EDT

It's still cool to buy some weed and smoke a joint in one of Amsterdam's fine coffee houses, but the freedom-hating health nuts at the European Union have shoved their anti-tobacco agenda down that fair city's throat! This is a real problem for Amsterdam's stoners, since they enjoy the European tradition of mixing tobacco with their hash and Mary Jane.

"This city's famed marijuana bars have weathered many challenges over the years and are still smoking. But now they face an unwelcome blast of fresh air: On July 1, the Netherlands will be one of the last European countries to ban smoking in bars and restaurants in compliance with EU law.

"The Health Ministry says the ban will apply to cafes that sell marijuana, known as coffee shops. But this being Holland, which for centuries has experimented with social liberalism, there's a loophole: The ban covers tobacco but not marijuana, which is technically illegal anyway.

"But that still leaves coffee shops and their customers in a bind. Dutch and other European marijuana users traditionally smoke pot in fat, cone-shaped joints mixed with tobacco. 'It's the world upside down: In other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette. Here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana,' said Jason den Enting, manager of coffee shop Dampkring.

"Shops are scrambling to adapt. One alternative is 'vaporizer' machines, which incinerate weed smokelessly. Another is to replace tobacco with herbs like coltsfoot, a common plant that looks like a dandelion and that smokers describe as tasting a bit like oregano.

"But most shops are just planning to increase their sales of hash brownies and pure weed - and are hoping the law isn't enforced." [AP]

2 Catch A TXT MSG Drug Deal

rebecca — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:19:50 EDT

"In New Hampshire, a Concord High student is fighting a suspension after being lured to an alleged drug deal by the principal of another school who was posing as the student's friend through text messages." This is exactly why TV newsmagazine shows should die. [AP]

God, What I Would Give For A Hit Of Tagalongs

rebecca — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:46:06 EDT

Buying Girl Scout cookies is a little like buying drugs: there's no real regulation, the prices are wildly inflated and it's all about having connections. If Tagalongs were sold at bodegas, the whole culture surrounding them would be different. Instead, buying Girl Scout cookies, which are no worse than regular cookies (and in fact are a treat that some people enjoy, in moderation, more than regular cookies) has its own stigma: the stigma of hanging out with 11 year-old girls. So now some decent citizens, who just want to provide ordinary people easy access to Thin Mints, have started selling them eBay, which some people are taking issue with. Look, "girls" can't corner this market forever. Legalize.

Are There Really No Lady Potheads?

Emily Gould — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:55:29 EDT

According to an article in The Stranger, "Smoking pot is a guy thing. Guys are the ones who deal, buy, and smoke. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that adult males were 50 percent more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month than females." Could be! Or maybe it's just that women lie more about their stonerosity because it's so much less acceptable for women to look lazy.

Feministing advances this theory in response to the next bit of the article, which talks about how:

Men are allowed to be lazy—being stoned is part of their farting, pajama-wearing, video-game-playing pantheon of acceptable male relaxation techniques ....Their sloth is even kind of adorable. But modern women are not allowed to be lazy, adorable stoners. Women have to go to college (which they're now doing at higher rates than men), and then get their careers going quickly, before their biological clocks run out. Then they have to have kids and take them to all of their activities. There is no time for women to be slovenly and relax—and if women do relax, it has to be at a gym.

Huh! So smoking pot is a feminist act? Personally, I'd hesitate to classify it as such. After all, smoking pot is retarded, and everyone knows that men are stupider than women. Want an example of why smoking pot is retarded? It took me like fifteen minutes to think of the name of the movie that Bridget Fonda is a stoner chick in so that I could image Google it for this post, and I ended up needing to enlist outside help.
Toke Like A Girl [The Stranger via Feministing]

Study: Pot Smoking Leads To Schizophrenia, Renting Of Adam Sandler Movies

abalk — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:50:51 EDT

Hey potheads! Wake up already! Got some scary news for your indolent, dope-smoking asses! A report commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom shows that "a single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent." There's a silver lining, though, for teenage dorks: The study suggests that the risks are higher for those who start smoking up during the formative teenage years rather than later in life. So you know that annoying athlete friend you had in high school who was always telling you that drugs were bad and only started smoking herself during college when she suddenly decided to be cool? She was right. And now you're crazy. Life can be so unfair sometimes.

Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40% [Daily Mail (UK)]