Mixing gourmet food and premium cannabis was a hot topic for white-collar America after the New Yorker‘s April feature story on the “Martha Stewart of edibles,” a Portland food writer who holds cannabis-infused dinners at her home. The story was nothing new to us in the Mile High, of course, where there have been plenty of edibles, both legal and illegal, to choose from for quite some time.
But what if you want to separate weed and food while still enjoying them together?
Most users consider marijuana addiction a myth, but Colorado State University’s psychology department takes it seriously…so much so that it’s focusing on marijuana in its new master’s program on addiction counseling.
“Historically speaking, people thought you couldn’t get addicted to marijuana. We know that’s not true in the scientific community, but that hasn’t penetrated public opinion yet,” says Bradley Conner, associate professor and director of addiction counseling at CSU.
According to Conner, a shortage of certified addiction specialists and a rise in drug addiction have created a gap in accessible treatment. With his team’s undergraduate and master’s programs at CSU, he hopes to fill that void while teaching students counseling methods tailored for marijuana abusers. That’s something that hasn’t been covered enough since Colorado’s legalized marijuana industry started in 2014, Conner adds.
At the close of the 2017 legislative session, marijuana remains illegal to produce, possess, use or sell in Texas. While cities like Dallas have moved to implement cite-and-release policies, which allow police to send people holding marijuana home with a court summons, the state maintains its stiff penalties for drugs.
This year, however, legislators on both sides of the aisle made progress toward loosening and removing those restrictions. While Texas Gov. Greg Abbott won’t have any bills coming across his desk in 2017 to reform the state’s marijuana policies, there are signs that he or his successor might get an opportunity to do so in 2019. With an eye toward what’s coming, let’s take a look at how several marijuana bills performed this session
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Dear Stoner: What sort of hash am I legally allowed to make? I know butane is illegal, but what else?
Gene
Dear Gene: You’re allowed to make concentrates that don’t require butane, like bubble hash, kief, QWISO hash from rubbing alcohol, and other concentrates extracted with water. As I’m sure you know, butane hash oil or any concentrate made with an open flame is illegal because of that whole explosive thing. If you had a few
thousand dollars lying around and a brain for chemistry, you could make Co2 hash oil, but your best bet is probably bubble hash, QWISO hash or boring old kief — all of which you can learn how to make through stories in our archives.
Most sensible Americans these days believe in ending the War on Drugs. The facts are clear that low-level drug arrests ruin lives and tear families apart. Some day, selling weed in Florida will no longer feed thousands of new prisoners into the state’s broken criminal justiceBus system.
The City of Miami might want to consider testing Barnaby Min for drugs. The deputy city attorney must have been high when he compared legalizing medical marijuana to legalizing pedophilia during a Miami Planning Board session last week. He was arguing against dispensaries in the city. In the tape of that meeting, Min comes off like that college stoner kid who takes massive bong rips before giving a speech in class.
Often times, newer growers tend to believe that if you put up some lights and feed your plants good nutrients, you will get big yields. While these are factors in plant growth, the reality is that maximizing yields is about fostering photosynthesis and plant metabolism. That means maintaining temperatures, humidity, and adequate carbon dioxide levels. It is a delicate dance between balancing environmental factors, providing rich nutrients and listening to your plants that will ultimately lead to a bountiful harvest. Staying on top of CO2 levels while growing cannabis indoors, when combined with the right cultivation technique, can deliver you truly enviable yields.
Understanding the Basics of Photosynthesis
Anyone can throw together a rudimentary cannabis grow room, however, to get the most out of your garden, you have to understand the basic processes that lead to happy and healthy plants. Photosynthesis is the process by which all plants take in carbon dioxide, sunlight and water and convert them into energy. It is this energy that turns all of your hard work into the dense buds that you will come to harvest later. Increasing yields are all about maximizing the energy that your plant metabolizes from the nutrients you feed, and the environment that you create.
The Benefits of Increasing CO2
Optimal conditions for a cannabis grow are between 75 and 85 degrees, depending on strain, stage and a handful of other factors. Humidity levels should remain around 40-50% during flowering. There is an intimate relationship between temperature and humidity, however, the one thing that often gets left out of this equation is CO2. Carbon dioxide has a direct impact on the rate of metabolism in your cannabis plants. As temperatures rise, in order to keep up with the demand for increased metabolism, there has to be an injection of CO2. Increased CO2 facilitates the process of photosynthesis, and as a result can not only affect plant size, but the quality of cannabinoids contained within.
The Luxury of Indoor Cultivation
Indoors you have the luxury of being able to boost CO2 levels at will. This is one benefit to indoor cultivation. Increased CO2 levels, besides facilitating metabolic process, also aid the plant in fighting adverse environmental conditions. In a manner of speaking, CO2 helps to immunize the plant from things like air and soil contaminants, adverse reactions to physical damage, shifting temperature shock and a host of other potential problems. Carbon dioxide levels will often be the determining factor as to whether or not a plant pulls through in rough conditions.
Finding a Balance
Outdoors, the carbon dioxide levels are about 400 ppm, or parts per million. Plants themselves can handle a much higher concentration. To achieve optimal growth, indoor cannabis grow rooms should maintain a CO2 ppm of around 1200-1500. This means having sufficient light to bring temperatures up enough to balance the increased CO2. Finding the right balance between temperature, humidity and CO2 levels is the key to maximizing your plants’ metabolic processes and achieving the yields of which you once only dreamed.
Remember when 72 percent of Floridians voted to usher in a new era of open access to medical marijuana? That triumphant moment for medical weed was just in November, but for Florida patients this morning, it feels like a lifetime ago.
Late this past Friday, a bill to regulate the new weed industry imploded in Tallahassee. Then medical marijuana’s two biggest champions — über-lawyer John Morgan and United for Care campaign consultant Ben Pollara — viciously turned on each other in a spicy Twitter beef.
Three days after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill establishing rules for medical marijuana, Miami Springs Vice Mayor Bob Best shook his head at a council meeting Monday night as the city attorney explained it was time to extend the city’s moratorium on dispensaries.
Pro-marijuana activist David Wisniewski pointed out repeatedly last year that Prop 205, the adult-use marijuana initiative, did not have the full support of the cannabis-consuming community.
Now he’s running a new legalization campaign that has the same problem.
The Safer Arizona 2018 recreational-marijuana initiative campaign has been getting positive press lately, including an article in Saturday’s Arizona Republic that claimed “Recreational Marijuana May be Headed Back to the Ballot.”
The reality, though, is that key legalization proponents believe Safer Arizona isn’t likely to collect enough signatures to make the ballot — and they have little or no intention of helping to make it happen. The Phoenix New Times has the story…