Nebraska voters might decide the fate of medical cannabis in November…but the governor had some choice words to say on the matter.

Striving for safety for our friends in the midst of a pandemic

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CAMP’s award-winning solvent-less rosin carts are here to blow your mind

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Scientists at the University of South Carolina have published three separate studies that indicate THC could be an effective weapon in the fight against COVID-19. 

Researchers in each study report that THC can prevent the onset of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), an immune system response also that has proven to be a deadly effect of the coronavirus. ARDS has an average mortality rate of 43 percent and, even if it doesn’t kill you, it can cause long-term scarring in lung tissue.

The studies also found that THC can also stimulate the growth of healthy lung bacteria. These discoveries raise powerful possibilities for THC as a treatment for the virus.

Published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, the British Journal of Pharmacology, and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, the studies document dozens of experiments that involved triggering ARDS in laboratory mice, and then injecting the animals with THC to monitor the results. 100 percent of the mice given THC reportedly survived.

The teams behind the studies were headed by USC researchers  Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti and Dr. Mitzki Nagarkatti. Prakash is USC’s VP of Research, while Mitzki chairs the Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology Department. The two scientists are reportedly married.

“The underlying mechanism [with ARDS],” Prakash Nagarkatti told The State, “is your immune system goes haywire and starts destroying your lungs and all your other organs. It’s like a car where you’re putting on a lot of accelerator, but the brakes aren’t working. Basically, what’s going to happen is your car is going to crash because you can’t stop it. And that’s basically what’s happening with ARDS.”

While conceding that results in mice can — and often do — vary when applied to humans, Nagarkatti said he was “stunned” at how successful THC repeatedly worked in keeping ARDS at bay. He has recommended to health officials that human trials should be undertaken as soon as possible, especially since, at present, no FDA-approved medicine exists to specifically deal with ARDS.

If you do contract the coronavirus, though, Nagarkatti warns that you should not simply spark up a joint and think you’re smoking a cure. “I just want to make sure our research is not interpreted as marijuana is good for COVID-19,” Nagarkatti said. “If you start using THC early on it might worsen the effect because it suppresses the immune system.”

The studies from University of South Carolina are yet another example of medical research that indicates how chemical components of marijuana may be useful tools in handling COVID-19. As always, though, do your own research and always be on the lookout for cannabis con artists.

Blunts have been synonymous with cannabis for at least 25 or so years, most popularized by rap and hip-hop artists from decades past. But these extra-large, tobacco wrapped versions of a joint have a hazy history. 

One of the most shareable ways to smoke, a blunt is formed from a pre-made wrapper, a broken-down cigar or whole-leaf tobacco, also known as fronto. Fronto is hugely popular in New York City, via the Caribbean where it is cultivated and used to roll cannabis, tobacco and cigars. It’s also sometimes crumbled and smoked in a pipe or a joint. 

It’s this Caribbean connection that likely bore the blunt — and there is a strong correlation between immigration from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico and the rise of this smoking method in New York City. 

Since we don’t have a written or oral history of the first person to smoke a blunt, based on these cultural intersections it was likely imported from the Caribbean to New York City.

Why are blunts a big deal in New York City? 

New York City’s love of blunts isn’t isn’t just an affinity for a particular brand of cigars like Backwoods and Swisher Sweets, the price hike has some cultural significance to the New York cannabis community. 

As Desus Nice explained on his podcast the Bodega Boys on June 25, 2018 “Listen, I’m from the Bronx. You got to smoke a blunt.” And it’s not just because blunts provide the extra rush of tobacco from the cigar paper, or that the thicker composition of the paper burns weed at a slower rate, but has more to do with “the communal aspect of it.” 

And much of that community comes from Caribbean descent. In the 1990s, the foreign-born population in New York City increased by 788,000, totalling 2.9 million. Data from the 2000 Census found that Caribbean foreign-born residents accounted for 20.8% of the city’s population. New York City’s community now included more Dominicans, Jamaicans, Haitians, and people of Trinidadian and Tobagonian descent than any other major city in the United States. 

And the wave Caribbean immigrants brought pieces of their culture along with them, including their rich culture of cigar smoking. 

Rap and hip hop culture were also on the rise in the 90s and early 2000s. New York rappers in particular were glamorizing the fine art of smoking a blunt the way aristocrats fetishized drinking a fine glass of wine: 

• “Blunt smoke comin’ out the nose, is all a n–ga knows” – Notorious B.I.G., “N–gas”
• “Yo, 1992 begins a new wave for the blunt rollers” – Redman, “How To Roll A Blunt”
• “You can’t roll a blunt to this one” – Jay-Z, “Excuse Me Miss” 

“Growing up, we always heard rappers rapping about blunts, seeing them smoke them in music videos,” says Calvin Shepherd, a lifelong New Yorker. “It’s just a part of weed culture in the city.” 

As the children of Caribbean immigrants came of age in the city, influenced by both their heritage and pop culture, blunts became not just the preferred method of cannabis consumption, but a communal aspect of staying in touch with your roots, identity, and community. 

The infamous NYC/Backwoods price increase of 2018

Every so often, an economic injustice brings a community together to protect a cultural way of life. This was one of those moments — as New York city found itself in the midst of a weed disaster — the price of Backwoods cigars had risen to $16.99 a pack. 

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio signed a series of aggressive anti-tobacco bills in August 2017, all with the intention of reducing the city’s tobacco use. The legislative proposals intended to reduce the number of smokers in NYC by 160,000 and generate revenue for public housing.  One of those bills, 1544-B, called for a minimum pricing in cigar structure, raising the price of individual cigars to at least $8.00, and increased the taxes on little cigars, smokeless tobacco, suns, shisha and loose tobacco. 

That included Backwoods cigars, a brand of flavored cigars readily available at most gas stations, liquor stores and bodegas. The local law went into effect in June 2018, raising the tax on all tobacco products other than cigarettes.  

The weed smokers of New York City had a meltdown on Twitter. 

Anyone who regularly smokes weed in the form of a blunt can tell you that the tried and true tradition of blunt rolling involves purchasing cigars, cutting them open, removing the tobacco — often referred to as the “guts” — filling with dried cannabis flower, resealing, and smoking. 

This is the reason the blunt smokers of New York City collectively cried when the price of their beloved Backwoods spiked. Smoking weed had gotten three times more expensive. 

Desus Nice of Viceland’s late night show “Desus & Mero” was among the first to take to the virtual mean streets of Twitter and lament about the price increase:

The tax hike had some New York weed smokers considering alternatives, but others felt daunted by the thought of giving up blunts by switching to rolling papers.

Others — incorrectly — blamed and lashed out at the manufacturer.  

While some New Yorkers took the opportunity to show their true colors. 

When asked how Shepherd, as a native New Yorker ingrained in the city’s weed culture, personally felt about the new tobacco policy, he called the bill “a bunch of bullshit” that was meant to make people uncomfortable as recreational and commercial cannabis legalization looms. 

Ok, but who smoked the first blunt? 

One of the first tales of the blunt in the current cultural lexicon comes from weed saint Snoop Dogg. In an interview with YouTuber Nardwuar he dished, “Bushwick Bill was the first person to smoke a blunt with me, we had never seen that before.”

Bushwick Bill hailed from Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn with a large Black and Latinx population, some from the Caribbean, others from all over Central and South America. Blunt culture is very prevalent in Brooklyn, there isn’t a bodega for all of Bushwick’s four and a half mile stretch that doesn’t have some type of blunt wrap, cigar or fronto on offer. 

We can only hope that as cannabis completes its mainstream takeover that we can finally collect the stories of the past 40 years of culture, not just the past near-decade since Colorado legalized it for adult use. 

This gap in knowledge lets people think that cannabis culture or history isn’t important, but if alcohol’s time under widespread bans is any clue, it will continue to ascend into the dominant exchange whether prohibitionists like it or not. We can’t pinpoint the first person who decided to use tobacco’s fragrant leaf to wrap ground up flowers of cannabis, but it was pretty brilliant nonetheless.

Written by Danielle Guercio and Nic Juarez

The post Who was the first person to smoke a blunt? appeared first on Weedmaps News.

Is Transporting Hemp Really Worth The Risk?

Here’s why transporting hemp can be such a massive risk—even though hemp is no longer a controlled substance.

The post Is Transporting Hemp Really Worth The Risk? appeared first on The Fresh Toast.

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In the first clinical research study of its kind to be conducted since the psychedelic heyday of the 1960s, researchers have discovered that small, non-psychoactive doses of LSD can provide immediate, effective pain relief. 

Researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands partnered with the Beckley Foundation, a British organization working to promote psychedelics research, to explore how LSD can affect the perception of pain. In the experiment, 24 healthy volunteers were given either a 5, 10, or 20 microgram dose of LSD, or a placebo. These dosages of LSD fall into the category of microdoses, as they are far less potent than the standard psychoactive dose of LSD, which would be in the range of 75 to 150 micrograms.

Each subject was asked to undergo a battery of tests after ingesting the LSD microdose or placebo. To test subjects’ pain thresholds, researchers used a standard pain evaluation tool called a Cold Pressor Test. In this test, subjects were asked to submerge their hands in freezing-cold water for as long as they could handle. Subjects who had taken the largest microdose of LSD were able to keep their hands in the freezing water longer than subjects who had taken the placebo. Lower doses of LSD did not provide the same effect, however.

“The overall pain tolerance on 20 micrograms increased by 20%,” the study authors wrote. “Subjects also reported a decrease in the subjective experience of painfulness and unpleasantness. Remarkably, changes in pain tolerance and subjective pain perception induced by the low dose of LSD under these circumstances were comparable in magnitude to those observed after administration of opioids, such as oxycodone and morphine to healthy volunteers.”

Each subject was asked to take the Cold Pressor Test twice, once 90 minutes after ingesting the LSD or placebo, and again 5 hours later. The subjects in the 20 microgram group showed the same boost in pain tolerance at 5 hours as they did at 1.5 hours, leading the authors to conclude that LSD microdoses “may have a longer-lasting ‘halo’ effect on pain management.”

Researchers also administered other tests to discover whether subjects were experiencing mood, cognitive, or dissociative effects after microdosing. Subjects who had taken the 20 microgram dose only experienced minor psychological and cognitive effects, indicating that this small dose of LSD would not interfere with a person’s day-to-day responsibilities.

“The present data suggests low doses of LSD could constitute a useful pain management treatment option that is not only effective in patients but is also devoid of the problematic consequences associated with current mainstay drugs, such as opioids,” wrote Amanda Feilding, Founder and Director of the Beckley Foundation, in a statement. “Over 16 million people worldwide are currently suffering from Opioid Use Disorder and many more will become hooked as a result of oversubscription of pain medication. I am encouraged by these results as I have long believed that LSD may not only change the sensations of pain but also our subjective relationship with it.”

This is the first research study to investigate the analgesic effects of LSD since the initial heyday of psychedelic research. This avenue of research was pioneered by Eric Kast, who published over a dozen studies in the 1960s exploring how LSD can influence the perception of pain. Kast’s work focused on large, psychedelic doses of acid, however, leading him to conclude that the psychedelic experience itself could help distract the patient from their pain.

The present study has shown that LSD’s analgesic effects can be achieved without any psychoactive effects, however. To explore the issue further, the authors recommend that “an extended dose-finding study is needed to determine the dose at which analgesic effects of LSD are optimal, i.e. when efficacy is maximal and mental interference is minimal,” New Atlas reports. “Such a study could potentially explore the trade-off between increments in treatment efficacy and psychedelic symptoms in a low to medium dose range (i.e. 20–50 µg LSD).”

Meanwhile, other researchers around the world are currently investigating whether LSD microdoses can treat Alzheimer’s, depression, or drug addiction.

House Will Vote On Marijuana Legalization Bill Next Month

The bill would allow states to decide legalization for themselves and expunge cannabis records for some.

The post House Will Vote On Marijuana Legalization Bill Next Month appeared first on The Fresh Toast.

Can Microdosing Help You Work From Home?

While microdosing marijuana won’t solve all of your problems, it could help you focus and provide you with a productivity boost.

The post Can Microdosing Help You Work From Home? appeared first on The Fresh Toast.

Congratulations to the winners of the Cannabis Cup Colorado: People’s Choice 2020!