Picture of the Day: Peace Cross Joint

SO DOPE!

Super Criss Cross Joint (Picture)

Check out this double criss cross joint. Are you kidding me?
Send us your videos if you attempt to make this and/or smoke it!!!

So dope!!!

How To: Make Poached Salmon With Cannabis Butter Sauce

Ireland’s salmon is as legendary as its leprechauns, but much easier to find. This recipe is a simple and delicious way to prepare the flavorful fish. Serves 8.

1/2 cup white wine
1 cup fish stock or water
1 small carrot, sliced
1 stalk celery, cut into quarters, leaves left on
1 small onion, sliced
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
2 pounds center cut fresh salmon

Sauce
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons cold water
1/2 cup Canna Butter,* at room temperature diced
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Lemon slices, fresh dill and fresh parsley for garnish

Combine wine, fish stock (or water), carrot, celery, onion and dill in a medium or large saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Add salmon. Bring liquid back to a boil, lower heat, cover and gently simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, but do not remove the cover. Allow the fish to sit in the water for 10 minutes before gently removing to a platter. In the meantime, prepare sauce.
Put egg yolks in a double boiler or a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Add the cold water and whisk to blend. Add the butter, bit by bit, whisking constantly and adding a new piece as soon as the previous piece melts. The mixture will gradually thicken. Whisk in lemon juice.

To serve, skin the salmon and place on a serving platter. Garnish with parsley, fresh dill and lemon slices. Serve butter sauce on the side.

Sauce Tips:
If the sauce becomes too thick or the egg yolks start scrambling, immediately remove from heat and whisk in a teaspoon or two of cold water. On the other hand, if your sauce is slow to thicken, your heat might be too low. Increase slightly, continuing to whisk constantly, until you reach desired thickness.

What a Marijuana Judge Looks For When Reviewing A Strain

by Matt Mernagh – Monday, July 11 2011

On Tuesday, July 12 I will reach a marijuana review milestone. Having pen & published 150 marijuana reviews. That includes marijuana photo galleries too. The last two reviews published, Cindy Bubbles and DJ Short’s Blueberry were donation from cannabis growers I know. From their personal head stash. Review 150 is another personal grower donation. Their samples were awesome. l am developing an excellent nug network of people who want to show off their efforts. Always looking for more. You can send your product to be reviewed to 1161 St. Clair Ave West, Toronto, ON, M6E 1B2.
I always write my reviews under the influence of the marijuana being reviewed. Usually rocking out on Blip to get the beat of my words down. If I had it together I would return to my original career as a music critic and do cannabis and album reviews. Rock out to a album to be reviewed while vaporizing marijuana also being reviewed. My influence is to take a music critic approach to my weed reviews. With a bit of food critic thrown in. Note, the music critic is sent everything. Developing a pallet takes time. Publicists pester professional critics (not food ones), offer dinners, passes and the like to curry favor. If weed arrived around here at the pace music, movies and other culture sent to alt-weeklies like NOW I’d have to hire a staff.
It’s more difficult to be critical with weed because it’s generally all very, very, good. The people handing me buds are proud of their homegrown grass. They want to show someone who will appreciate it by photographing and blogging their senses. In other words I’m getting cream.
Rarely am I afforded an opportunity to review the same strain twice. I’ve had a few strains several times now. Especially my favorite Jean Guy. I can even identify her.
Then exactly what are we judging? The grower, the genetics or the bud. Or combination of all three. I believe all of the above. Some weed is well grown, but doesn’t do diddly for my health condition or have a solid marijuana high. Then there’s weed that works for me and isn’t well grown. Flush your plants! Breeders do produce strains that do just suck Cartman’s balls.
Marijuana grown by two different people will produce different results. Based on skill level, nutrients and soil. Presuming both received equal genetics. One growers seed maybe fresh and vibrant while another receives old tired beans.
A goal we have is to hold a grower competition involving the same strain. Everyone picks up their clone on the same day and returns 90 later with finished result. With the clone producer not allowed to compete as they grew the mother plant.

What’s On Your Marijuana Bucket List?

I was cleaning out the inbox, and I found this in an e-mail from hailmaryjane.com.  I have never thought of my own stoner bucket list, but going to Amsterdam is definitely near the top of that list…Remember, this is A top ten list, not MY top ten list:

20. Use a vaporizer to get high

19. Build a giant “Scooby Doo”-esque sandwich

18. Buy your pot from the shadiest spot imaginable

17. Hit up a Bob Marley cover band show

16. Watch five classic stoner movies in one sitting

15. Paint or draw a picture while high

14. Eat a pot brownie, or, for the advanced, a fancy pot dessert treat

13. Smoke within 100 feet of a police station

12. Stare at a midget

11. Break out the Gravity Bong

10. Get high on a hot air balloon

9. Find someone new to smoke kiss

8. Take someones pot virginity

7. Smoke with a relative, preferably an older one

6. Have sex while high

5. Combine three “classic” stoner foods to form a Megazord snack

4. Get high at a transcendently beautiful location

3. See any of those big Vegas shows

2. Go to an amusement park of your choice, Disneyland being tops

1. Make the pilgrimage to the mecca of pot, Amsterdam

 

from http://www.theweedblog.com

Pot Drivers: Stoned Driving Is Uncharted Territory

Officers look for signs of drug impairment. Without a standard in most states for the amount of pot allowable in a driver’s system, police administer a lengthy 12-point examination. (Joe McHugh, CHP / July 3, 2011)

By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times

July 2, 2011, 3:46 p.m.

It was his green tongue that helped give away Jimmy Candido Flores when police arrived at the fatal accident scene near Chico.

Flores had run off the road and killed a jogger, Carrie Jean Holliman, a 56-year-old Chico elementary school teacher. California Highway Patrol officers thought he might be impaired and conducted a sobriety examination. Flores’ tongue had a green coat typical of heavy marijuana users and a later test showed he had pot, as well as other drugs, in his blood.

After pleading guilty to manslaughter, Flores, a medical marijuana user, was sentenced in February to 10 years and 8 months in prison.

Holliman’s death and others like it across the nation hint at what experts say is an unrecognized crisis: stoned drivers.

The most recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana.

In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.

“Marijuana is a significant and important contributing factor in a growing number of fatal accidents,” said Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy in the White House and former Seattle police chief. “There is no question, not only from the data but from what I have heard in my career as a law enforcement officer.”

As the medical marijuana movement has gained speed — one-third of the states now allow such sales — federal officials are pursuing scientific research into the impairing effects of the drug.

The issue is compounded by the lack of a national standard on the amount of the drug that drivers should be allowed to have in their blood. While 13 states have adopted zero-tolerance laws, 35 states including California have no formal standard, and instead rely on the judgment of police to determine impairment.

Even the most cautious approach of zero tolerance is fraught with complex medical issues about whether residual low levels of marijuana can impair a driver days after the drug is smoked. Marijuana advocates say some state and federal officials are trying to make it impossible for individuals to use marijuana and drive legally for days or weeks afterward.

Marijuana is not nearly as well understood as alcohol, which has been the subject of statistical and medical research for decades.

“A lot of effort has gone into the study of drugged driving and marijuana, because that is the most prevalent drug, but we are not nearly to the point where we are with alcohol,” said Jeffrey P. Michael, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s impaired-driving director. “We don’t know what level of marijuana impairs a driver.”

A $6-million study in Virginia Beach, Va., is attempting to remove any doubt that users of pot and other drugs are more likely to crash. Teams of federal researchers go to accident scenes and ask drivers to voluntarily provide samples of their blood. They later return to the same location, at the same time and on the same day of the week, asking two random motorists not involved in crashes for a blood sample.

The project aims to collect 7,500 blood samples to show whether drivers with specific blood levels of drugs are more likely to crash than those without the drugs, said John Lacey, a researcher at the nonprofit Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

In other projects, test subjects are being given marijuana to smoke and then examined under high-powered scanners or put in advanced driving simulators to gauge how it affects their brains and their ability to drive.

Federal scientists envision a day when police could quickly swab saliva from drivers’ mouths and determine whether they have an illegal level of marijuana, but that will require years of research. Until then, police are in the same position they were with drunk driving in the 1950s, basing arrests on their professional judgment of each driver’s behavior and vital signs.

If police suspect a driver is stoned, they now administer a lengthy 12-point examination. The driver must walk a straight line and stand on one leg, estimate the passage of 30 seconds and have pupils, blood pressure and pulse checked.

Chuck Hayes, national coordinator for the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police based in Washington, D.C., says the system works well to identify impaired drivers, and any future legal limit or medical test would be just another tool rather than a revolutionary change.

“We are not concerned about levels or limits. We are concerned with impairment,” Hayes said.

Indeed, even among law enforcement experts, the need for a standard is debated. Many support tried-and-true policing methods that can ferret out stoned drivers.

“Everybody wants a magic number, because that makes it easy,” said Sarah Kerrigan, a toxicologist at Sam Houston State University in Texas and an expert witness in numerous trials. “To have a law that says above a certain level you are impaired is not scientifically supportable. I don’t think police need the tool, but my opinion may be in the minority.”

But federal officials and local prosecutors argue that the lack of a standard makes convictions harder to obtain.

In October, a San Diego jury acquitted Terry Barraclough, a 60-year-old technical writer and medical marijuana user, on manslaughter charges in a fatal crash that occurred shortly after he had smoked marijuana.

A blood test showed he had high levels of active marijuana ingredients in his blood, but the jury heard conflicting expert testimony from toxicologists about the possible effects.

Martin Doyle, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Barraclough, said the acquittal showed that the lack of a formal legal limit on marijuana intoxication makes such prosecutions tough.

“We don’t have a limit in California and that made my prosecution very difficult,” Doyle said. “We have a lapse in the law.”

But defense attorney Michael Cindrich said the failed prosecution shows that the San Diego district attorney was targeting medical marijuana users and that any legal limit would be unfair to the people who rely on the drug to treat their problems.

Indeed, Anthony Cardoza, an attorney who represented Flores in the Chico accident, said his client was not impaired and that allegations about his green tongue were ridiculous. Flores’ guilty plea was prompted by other legal issues, including a prior conviction for a drunk driving accident that caused an injury.

Marilyn Huestis, a toxicologist and one of the nation’s top experts on marijuana at the National Institute on Drug Abuse who is directing several research programs, said she believed there is no amount of marijuana that a person can consume and drive safely immediately afterward.

Supporters of marijuana legalization agree that the drug can impair a driver, but argue that the effects wear off in a few hours. Huestis, however, said research was showing that the effects of marijuana can linger.

Marijuana’s main ingredient — delta-9 THC — stays in the blood for an hour or more and then breaks down into metabolites that are both psychoactive and inert. But the impairing effects can linger, even after the THC is no longer in the blood, Huestis said. Because it can be absorbed into body tissue and slowly released for days, Huestis believes that heavy chronic daily users may be impaired in ways that are not yet understood.

A complicating factor is the tendency of many marijuana users to also use alcohol, which can sharply amplify impairment. Very little research has been conducted to determine whether it is possible to set limits on a combination of such substances.

Paul Armentano, deputy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said some states had laws that can punish users even when they are not high, pointing to a tough Arizona statute that allows conviction for impaired driving when an inert metabolite is detected in the blood.

Arizona officials said they wrote the law because there was no scientific agreement on how long marijuana impairs a driver. But proponents see something more sinister: an effort to put marijuana users in constant legal jeopardy.

“We are not setting a standard based on impairment, but one similar to saying that if you have one sip of alcohol you are too drunk to drive for the next week,” Armentano said.

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

You can read more on this article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pot-drivers-20110703,0,3288424.story?page=2&utm_medium=feed&track=rss&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20MostEmailed%20%28L.A.%20Times%20-%20Most%20E-mailed%20Stories%29&utm_source=feedburner

High Times San Francisco Cannabis Cup Results!

Here are the results from the competition:

 

EDIBLES CUP

1st Place – Greenway Compassionate Relief’s Baklava
2nd Place – Bhang Chocolate’s Bhang Chocolate Triple Strength Fire Bar
3rdPlace – Vapor Room Co-operative, Om Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Truffle

CBD AWARD
1stPlace – Master Control Unit Collective, Alaskan Thunderfuck (9.23%)
2ndPlace – Elemental Wellness, Center, Jamaican Lion (8.10%)

BEST NON-SOLVENT HASH

1stPlace – Florin Wellness Center, Herojuana

CONCENTRATES CUP

1stPlace – Philips Rx, Mars OG

2nd Place – Berkeley Patients Group, Sour Diesel Wax
3rd Place – The Cali Connection Seed Company Collective, Regulator Kush Wax

HYBRID CUP

1st Place – D & M Compassion Center, OG Kush

2nd Place – Buds & Roses, Star Dawg

3rd Place – Leonard Moore Co-Operative, The Pure

INDICA CUP

1st Place – Harborside Health Center (San Jose), Boggle Gum

2nd Place – Elemental Wellness Center, The True OG
3rd Place – 7 Stars Holistic Healing Center, 7 Star Pure Kush

SATIVA CUP

1st Place – Granddaddy Purple Collective, Bay 11

2nd Place – OrganiCann, Alpha Blue

3rd Place – Happy Lil’ Trees, Sonoma Coma

Tommy Chong Rips Drug War Advocate On CNN

Legislation To End U.S. Marijuana Prohibition Coming Thursday

Graphic: Drug Policy Alliance

​The first bill ever introduced in Congress to end federal marijuana prohibition is coming on Thursday, June 23. Historic, bipartisan legislation which would end the United States’ war on marijuana — and allow states to legalize, tax regulate and control cannabis commerce without federal interference — will be introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Co-sponsors of the bill include Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)

The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or interstate smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal.

Leading critics of the war on marijuana will explain the legislation’s significance for state and national marijuana policy at a national press teleconference on Thursday.

A group of police and judges who fought on the front lines of the failed War On Drugs is announcing its support for the legislation, which is called the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011.

“Clearly the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, and nowhere is that more clear than with respect to marijuana,” said Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore narcotics cop and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). “It baffles me that we arrest nearly 800,000 people on marijuana charges in this country each and every year at taxpayer expense when we could instead be taking in new tax revenue from legal and regulated marijuana sales.

“Making marijuana illegal hasn’t prevented anyone from using it, but it has created a huge funding source that funnels billions of dollars in tax-free profits to violent drug cartels and gangs,” Franklin said. “More and more cops now agree: Legalizing marijuana will improve public safety.”

Photo: Jimmy Carter Library & Museum

Former President Jimmy Carter: “Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help bring about a reform of America’s drug policies”

​

Last week marked the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaring war on marijuana and other drugs. In an op-ed in the New York Times last week, timed for the 40th anniversary, former President Jimmy Carter called for reforming marijuana laws.

The legislation also comes on the heels of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which released a report on June 2 calling for a major paradigm shift in how our society deals with drugs, including calling for legal regulation of marijuana. The report sent a jolt around the world, generating thousands of international media stories.

The Commission is comprised of international dignitaries including Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations; Richard Branson, entrepreneur, founder of the Virgin Group; and the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Switzerland. Representing the United States on the Commission are George P. Shultz, Paul Volcker and John Whitehead.

More than 46 percent of Californians voted last year to legalize marijuana in their state, and voters in Colorado, Washington and possibly other states are expected to vote on the issue next year. In the past year, five state legislatures have considered legalizing marijuana, including California, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington state.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use, but the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continues to arrest people under federal law, and U.S. Attorneys have in recent months sent threatening letters to state policymakers in an apparent attempt to meddle in state decision-making.

Rep. Frank’s legislation would end state/federal conflicts over marijuana policy, reprioritize federal resources, and provide more room for states to do what is best for their own citizens, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).

You can write to your Representatives by using this handy form; just enter your state and zip code, and mention that you support the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

What: Tele-Press Conference on the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011

When: Thursday, June 23, 2 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST

Call-In Info: 1-800-311-9404; Passcode: Marijuana

Who:

• Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

• Rob Kampia, executive director of Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

• Aaron Houston, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP)

• Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

• Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

Has Marijuana Legalization Gone Mainstream?

Has the Movement Opposing America’s Drug War Broken Through to the Mainstream?

By Jesse Levin

“Call off The Drug War” says former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in an op-ed for the New York Times. His article is released on the 40th anniversary of the day that President Nixon declared America in a “war on drugs.”

Carter aligns himself with a report released this month by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. That report argues that current strategies of imprisoning non-violent drug users and small time dealers has cost one trillion dollars, and led to 40 million arrests, but not reduced the availability or use of drugs. In short, the report says the drug war failed.

The report was endorsed by 16 world leaders, including former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, former US Secretary George Shultz, and the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The 40th anniversary of the Drug War might well be remembered as the moment when the debate about Drug Policy shifted, and opposition to the drug war became main stream.

African American leaders have been historically conservative about the drug war but that seems to be changing. Jesse Jackson, a long time supporter of the drug war shifted sides and wrote in support of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report this month. Regarding the drug war, he writes in the Chicago Sun, “it would be impossible to invent a more complete failure.”

Leaders from African American and religious communities, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Dr. Ron Daniels, held a forum Friday at the National Press Club in Washington DC to denounce current drug war policies and their racial bias. Despite the fact that the use and sale of drugs is no higher among African Americans than among white Americans, black men are sometimes jailed at rates 20 to 50 times higher than white men – for the same nonviolent drug offenses.

In his op-ed, Jimmy Carter explains how the prison population jumped from 500,000 when he left office in 1981 to 2.3 million in 2009. Carter blames the war on drugs for this trend. He says, “The single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelve fold since 1980.”

In 1977 President Carter told congress, “the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana” and he “cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society.”

Today, in places like New York City the police are arresting record breaking numbers of young people for simple possession of marijuana. New York City has arrested 350,000 people for marijuana possession since 2002. About 70% percent of those arrested were under 30 years old.

A woman named Alika, a 26-year-old single mother in Brooklyn made news this week after being fired from her job with the New York City Housing Authority as a result of being arrested for possessing a small bag of marijuana in her purse. Criminal records are instantly accessible on the internet and the collateral consequences of drug arrests — like job loss and deportation — are routine and severe.

The drug war is deeply entrenched in our society. Systematic reforms will require support and courage from current politicians and not just former ones like Jimmy Carter. And our elected officials will not budge until the people who vote for them make their opposition to the drug war heard clearly.

The 40th anniversary of the war on drugs became an opportunity for leaders from diverse backgrounds to emerge with the unified message that the drug war failed. It is unusual and thrilling to see support for an issue that has been taboo for so long. We are witnessing a shift of opinion on drug policy. Is it too much to believe that we may also be seeing the beginning of a social movement?