Browsing: Culture

Photo: NORML
Seattle Hempfest crowd at 2009’s event enjoys the beautiful setting and good vibes at Myrtle Edwards Park

​With unprecedented Pacific Northwest activity on the cannabis law reform front, and at the request of Hempfest supporters, the world’s largest marijuana event, Seattle Hempfest, is launching a new membership campaign to promote cannabis education and social networking throughout the year.

Prospective members are invited to the February 20 kickoff at Columbia City Theater in Seattle, the first of many events to socialize and discuss the latest in pot reform with local activists, attorneys and cannabusiness entrepreneurs.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
7:30 pm – 11 pm
4916 Rainier Avenue, South
Seattle, WA 98118
$25 and up membership purchase gains entry to this and all year-round Hempfest events
(21 and over)

Photo: www.doitnow.org

​It was inevitable: When the Baby Boomers hit middle age, they brought along their buds and bongs. Americans over age 50 are using marijuana in record numbers, according to new survey data.

And those numbers are going to go even, well, “higher,” the government admits.
“High rates of lifetime drug use among the baby boom generation (persons born between 1946 and 1964), combined with the large size of the cohort, suggest that the number of older adults using drugs will increase in the next two decades,” the study says.

Marijuana use was more common than the “non-medical” use of prescription-type drugs both for adults 50-54 (6.1 vs. 3.4 percent) and those aged 55-59 (4.1 vs. 3.2 percent). This shouldn’t come as a great surprise; after all, it stands to reason that folks this age, with a wealth of life experiences on which to base decisions, would make safer choices.

Photo: Stefan Rousseau/AP
British Home Secretary Alan Johnson holds two prototype pint glasses designed not to break up into dangerous shards on impact. The British government wants pubs to try out the shatterproof glasses to cut back on alcohol-related violence.

​From time to time, we as marijuana users may find it instructive to look across the aisle, as it were, at our alcohol-imbibing brethren.

These glances almost always serve to remind us why we choose pot instead.
Such is the case with today’s news from the United Kingdom, where those booze-loving Brits have invented a new, shatterproof pint glass, according to The Associated Press
That’s right: Limeys will still be able to get smashed, but their pint glasses won’t.
A proud British government unveiled the shatterproof glasses Thursday. Officials claimed the country would save billions in health care by coming up with a glass that doesn’t double as, you guessed it, a lethal weapon.

Graphic: OC Weekly
Vegas loves a drunk… But not so much a pothead.

​Sin City loves a drunk, but it’s apparently not nearly as fond of stoners.

Cannapalooza, a three-day cannabis convention scheduled to have been held in Las Vegas March 19-21, has been canceled by Mandalay Bay casino, reports Nick Schou in the OC Weekly.

Cannapalooza Executive Director Louis Woznicki was told by one law enforcement official that “potheads” were bad for Vegas.
“We made our money with people who drink alcohol and gamble,” the officer told Woznicki. “People who smoke pot don’t drink and gamble.”
“They were scared,” Woznicki said. “The event was going to be open to 50,000 members of the public and was growing, if you pardon the expression, like a weed.”


Graphic: ABC News
If you voted for marijuana as a CitizenTube question, then your vote didn’t count.

Yes, questions about marijuana were the most popular in the CitizenTube voting Monday afternoon.
But YouTube, in a gutless move, decided at the last minute not to present the highest ranked questions to the President.
Initial reports that the President had ignored the marijuana questions were inaccurate; YouTube took pot, the top vote getter, out of the running.
President Obama never even got an opportunity to answer the most popular question of all.
Wait, what?

Photo: Jeanie Mackinder
Bastard’s stoned out of his gourd! Look at him!

​Michael Bublé, he of the wholesome image and music, may just be a regular guy after all.

The clean-cut singer’s embittered ex-girlfriend is doing a lot of talking to the U.K. media. Tiffany Bromley told the press that Bublé regularly smoked marijuana, then would stuff himself with biscuits and cakes to assuage the raging pot munchies.
Yeah, I know; seems like pretty tame stuff to the rest of us, but remember: This is Michael freakin’ Bublé, dudes.
“Michael smoked up to three joints a day when I was with him,” ex-girlfriend Bromley told News of the World.
“He always had a couple in his wash bag ready to go,” the ex-model turned hairpiece maker told the press. “He insisted it was his way of winding down at the end of the day. But sometimes he started the day with one.”
Oh, horrors. Michael Bublé wakes and bakes!
Thing is, Bublé himself beat his pissed-off ex-girlfriend to the punch, a couple of months ago.
Late last year, the singer confessed his marijuana use and partying ways in an interview published in Britain’s The Sun tabloid.

Graphic: Aural Wes
Wesleyan students chose Giant Joint over two human competitors for the student assembly.

​Wesleyan University students have elected “Giant Joint” to the student assembly, beating out two human competitors for the seat.

In the election last month, Giant Joint, a consistent vote-getter in representative elections since 2006, finally achieved victory with 416 votes, reports Aviva Markowitz of The Wesleyan Argus.
The genesis of Giant Joint took place in 2006 when Bev Allen, who graduated from the Middletown, Connecticut university in 2008, walked around the campus dressed as a giant joint.
The first year Allen ran for the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) as Giant Joint, she got 50 votes.
What began as a protest against a Student Health Advisory marijuana safety campaign resulted in a new Wesleyan write-in tradition: Giant Joint for WSA.
“I am proud and excited,” Allen said in an email to The Argus. “I definitely wanted Mr. Joint to live on after my graduation.”

Graphic: Rock101
South Central has gangsta rap. Mexico has narcocorridos.

​Dudes, if you don’t like the song, maybe you should just change the station. A new proposal by Mexico’s ruling party could result in prison sentences for musicians who perform songs that “glorify drug trafficking.”

The proposed law would mean up to three years behind bars for those performing or producing songs or films that the government deems “glamorize criminals,” reports The Associated Press.
“Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless — but they are the opposite,” claimed Oscar Martin Arce, a National Action party Member of Parliament.
There are so many of the drug ballads, there’s even a name for the genre — narcocorridos. The songs often describe drug smuggling and related violence, and are increasingly popular among some norteño bands.

Photo: www.hollywire.com
Where there’s Willie, there’s weed. Let’s just all come to terms with it.

​Willie Nelson was supposed to play a gig in Kenansville, North Carolina Thursday night, but he had to cancel the show because of an illness.

But you know how it is on the road. The show got canceled, and the probably bored and stir-crazy members of his band managed to get themselves into some trouble there in little old Duplin County.
Agents with the North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement Division issued citations to three members of Nelson’s band for having moonshine whiskey and small amounts of marijuana, reports Laura Phelps at WNCT.com.

Photo: Courtesy Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight
From left, Jason Ramey, 30, Travis Stock, 31, and Garrett Houchins, 30, picked up their medical marijuana from the Red Bluff Police Department on Wednesday.

​Three California men Wednesday picked up their medical marijuana from the Red Bluff Police Department, where it had been since being seized in an October raid.

Garret Houchins and Jason Ramey, both 30, and Travis Stock, 31, along with another man, Corey Perkiss, were growing 11 plants at Stock’s home, reports The Redding Record Searchlight.
They were arrested on suspicion of possessing marijuana for sale, processing marijuana and conspiracy.
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