Colorado Newspaper Looking for Marijuana Reviewer

Westword, an "alternative" newspaper in Denver, has placed an ad for a medicinal marijuana reviewer. The paper has been running reviews by a staff writer, but the writer "wanted to return to the day job," opening up the position. Applicants must write a short essay on "What Marijuana Means To Me," and a MacGyver-like ability to make a bong out of common household objects is a plus.

Comments

Bong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a FYI, the medical marijuana community normally encourages the use of vaporizers instead of smoking. This involves heating the plant material just enough to vaporize the active ingredients, but not enough to ignite it and cause smoke/ash. The result is a smoother, easier administration of your medicine (or recreational drug) without the tar and carcinigans associated with smoking. It also doesn't stink up the house.

Re:Bong?

[spun]

The medical marijuana community encourages the use of techniques including vaporizing, tinctures, hash oil and other concentrates, pot goodies like brownies, and other methods of reducing harm. People with severe HIV or cancer often can't even use a vaporizer, so edibles or tinctures are called for. People using marijuana as replacement therapy for harder drugs sometimes don't have the money for a vaporizer, and need a longer lasting high, so they are encouraged to try edibles.

Remember, pipes and joints and even vaporizers spread hepatitis. Use a chillum when sharing.

Re:Bong?

[spun]

You are correct, a chillum is a straight pipe. It was designed to be held in a cupped hand, sticking up from between two fingers. Then suck from your cupped hand, rather than directly from the chillum. A bong must touch your mouth. Maybe not inside your mouth, but it must touch around your lips, so it isn't safe.

Re:Bong?

[xanadu113]

I believe you mean a positive feedback loop... =)

Re:Bong?

[mikael_j]

An even easier model is some kind of tube, a lightbulb and a lighter to heat it with. It does require some skill though and if you use it too many times the glass will most likely crack.

All it takes is to plug "lightbulb vaporizer" into Google and you'll get all the info you need.

/Mikael

Re:Bong?

[spun]

My guess is, you aren't making them right. When I worked in the business, my roommate, a chef with quite a bit of baking experience, made them regularly to sell to the clubs. He would use leftover trimmings that aren't really fit to be sold for smoking. His recipe consisted of a lot of clarified butter, a little vodka, and a lot of trimmings, simmer gently for 24 hours. Then squeeze through a cheesecloth and use the butter in recipes.

I'm a heavyweight when it comes to pot, but I wouldn't want to eat more than half a brownie or cookie of his. As they were made with leftover trimming that wouldn't get sold for smoking anyway, the large amount being used in each goody is a moot point.

Re:Bong?

[abigor]

Agreed, the most stoned I have ever been is from eating pot in one form or another - as in, not being able to move or speak stoned.

As a side benefit, I've always found after eating it that I take the most amazingly satisfying dump the following morning, and I walk away from the toilet feeling like I'm floating through the air.

Sounds like a great job

[u4ya]

But what would you do to relax after a long day's work?

Re:Sounds like a great job

[sanosuke001]

Morphine

Re:Sounds like a great job

[spun]

I did computer security for a major San Francisco medical marijuana club, a very well respected non-profit group that was instrumental in working with the city health department to craft guidelines and city card procedures, and with the police in sensitivity training. After a long day of product testing, I relaxed with some more product testing.

All in all, you'd be surprised by the high quality of work that got done. And so would I, as I can't remember any of it.

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you have to pass a drug test.

Re:I wonder

[xanadu113]

The bad news is, you tested positive for marijuana metabolites.

The good news, you've got the job.

Can you start tomorrow at 4:20?

Re:I wonder

[commodoresloat]

As for smoking cannabis, the worst I've managed there was when I was testing some freshly dried and cured, I smoked myself to a state where I was incapable of getting up from my chair without falling down and eventually fell asleep for a couple of hours, no hallucinations though.

Try eating the stuff. Preferably on an empty stomach (eat a couple slabs of bacon or something else fatty shortly after your space cakes if you want to get on the fast train). If you want to trip even harder do this right after giving blood.

Umm, or so I've heard.

Re:I wonder

[Ellis D. Tripp]

None of the classic psychedelics (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, etc.) really produce true hallucinations, at least in the vast majority of users.

To be considered an actual hallucination, the person needs to think that what they are perceiving is REAL. No matter how hard you trip on LSD, some part of your consciousness still remembers that you have taken a drug, and all the colors and patterns are simply the effects of that drug, and will wear off in a while.

The only common drugs that produce true hallucinations would be stuff like Datura (Jimsonweed), scopolamine, or other atropine-like drugs. But for some twisted reason, "hallucinogen" is used for drugs that are properly termed "psychedelics", while the drugs that make you hallucinate are called "deliriants".

Probably the same reasoning that classifies cocaine and amphetamines as "narcotics"...

Re:I wonder

[hydroponx]

No, I'll be occupied, will 4:21 be ok ?

Re:Ironic use of a fertility idol...

[b0ttle]

Dude, Bob Marley had 13 children...

Re: Macgyver-like ability to make a bong

[spun]

And then MacGuyver would build a fractionating column to distill hash oil to use in his vaporizer, so the quality of the marijuana would matter very little to MacGuyver, and he wouldn't need these reviews.

Weeding out the candidates

[smitty777]

It's a tough job, so let's get rolling.

Why did the old reviewer quit?

[Locke2005]

Did he run out of new and interesting ways to say, "This is some good shit!"

Re:Why did the old reviewer quit?

[smellsofbikes]

For what it's worth (since I live in Denver and read the Westword every week) the problem is that a reviewer should have a recognized medical condition for which a doctor has prescribed medical marijuana. The previous reviewer had an injured back for which he'd gotten a prescription but A: he was already writing other stuff for Westword, and B: he doesn't actually smoke, so he questioned whether he was a good fit long-term. As such, they're looking for someone who fits the job better.

How to Get This Job

[jayspec462]

The first person who both desires this job and a) has a resume, b) manages to find the motivation to print a copy of the resume, put it in an envelope, and send it to the HR department, and c) remembers to attend the interview gets the job automatically.

I suspect the position will go unfilled for some time...

Does that mean

[zannox]

Staff meetings will be held at 4:20?

Sigh...

[blhack]

I am a HUGE advocate for medical marijuana. It find it absurd that I have a bottle of hydrocodone (which is an opioid [like heroin or morphine]) in my cabinet and can take it whenever I need to, but if a doctor wanted to prescribe me marijuana, she couldn't.

Guys, even if it's a placebo, even if it is really doing *NOTHING* to help people physically and it is all mental (although recent research suggests that placebos can produce physical results), it's still helping; it is still making somebody who might be in pain be able to feel just a little bit better.

A major frown to those who oppose the idea of giving medicine to sick people

Another major frown to this idiotic newspaper. Do you realize what you're doing? You're playing exactly into the fears that the people who oppose this drug have; that it's just a bunch of potheads that want it. Do you review xanax? Vicodin? Perkaset? No? Well then fuck off.

Re:Sigh...

[Just Some Guy]

You're playing exactly into the fears that the people who oppose this drug have; that it's just a bunch of potheads that want it.

For every chronic pain or nausea victim, there are 20 stoners saying, "right on, dude!" Know what? More power to 'em. If you can go out and get staggering drunk legally, you should be able to go out and get staggeringly stoned legally. I'm not a stoner, but I believe in your right to be one. So stocking caps off to Westword for admitting what everyone else already knows: a big chung of the legalization movement consists of normal, otherwise law-abiding people who want to get stoned.

And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[dirk]

This article pretty much covers why medical pot is having such a hard time. The cause has been co-opted by people trying to use it as a backdoor to get pot legalized. California is having a lot of problems and people are turning against medical pot because it is being abused so much. A lot of the prescriptions are handed out without an real medical exam for generic things like "chronic pain". Chronic pain is a real condition, but it is being used as an excuse for people to legally get pot.

I'm all for medical pot, but it should be handled like any other medicine. It should be prescribed by a doctor for a legit condition and filled by a pharmacy, not by guys growing it in their back yard. If a doctor is prescribing it needless, he should be prosecuted the same as if he was handing out Ritalin or some other drug to people who don't need it. Unfortunately, many people are more interested in getting high than actually helping people who actually need ti for medicinal purposes.

Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[spun]

No, it should be handled like alcohol and cigarettes, both much more harmful recreational drugs. Here's a news flash, medical marijuana was ALWAYS a back door to legalization because complete legalization, along with subsequent regulation and taxation, is the only legitimate action the government should take regarding such a harmless drug. No one has ever died from pot. No one gets high and starts fights. No one steals to pay for pot. About the worst you can say about it is that it makes dealing with boredom a little too easy.

I challenge you to find one legitimate reason, backed up by published science, that pot should be illegal.

Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[Anonymous Coward]

This article pretty much covers why medical pot is having such a hard time. The cause has been co-opted by people trying to use it as a backdoor to get pot legalized.... It should be prescribed by a doctor for a legit condition and filled by a pharmacy, not by guys growing it in their back yard....

You have the dynamic exactly backwards. The medical cannabis has had a hard time because the law enforcement-prison industrial complex has refused to treat it according to law and science, seeking to keep it classified as the most dangerous drug in existence (more so that cocaine and heroin!) as a way to maintain criminalization for all uses.

If federal law and its own regulations were actually followed by the DEA cannabis would be listed as a Schedule V drug (the least restrictive category) rather than Schedule I (the most restrictive) since a commercial preparation of pure THC (Marinol) is listed at only Schedule III. This error in logic, science and law has not, by the way, yet been corrected by the Obama Administration.

A system of regulated access to cannabis could have been set up 35 years ago, treating it like any other pharmaceutical. But the hide-bound opposition of the happy drug warriors prevented that, leaving grass-root state-by-state initiatives the only option for gaining access. As a side effect of this process, overall acceptance of cannabis use has actually increased and resistance to legalization has decreased as more people have been exposed to this issue, as well as broadly disseminating cannabis cultivation experience among the population.

The press coverage usually does not acknowledge, by the way, the degree to which the drug enforcement sector of the economy has attempted to circumvent the state initiatives. Despite very misleading claims the cannabis is "almost legal" in California, the fact is state and local prosecutors, and drug police at every level of government have spent years trying to pretend Prop. 215 never passed: declaring that acquiring cannabis according to the law did not protect you from arrest and confiscation of property (you just got to use it as a defense once on trial), arresting people of federal charges as if they were DEA agents, numerous counties refusing to issue the required ID cards etc., etc.

The net effect of this unrelenting (and self-serving) war on medical cannabis has been to persuade a growing number to people that the only effective protection from harassment by lawless police forces and prosecutors is to go for outright legalization. The drug warriors have left no choice.

Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[Anonymous Coward]

Co-opted or not, it should be legalized. It should have never been prohibited in the first place, just like alcohol should have never been prohibited in the 20s. It was a very large, costly, and deadly mistake. Everybody loses, except the architects of prohibition at the top of the power pyramid who cash in big time.

The US now has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world -- even higher than totalitarian regimes such as china -- and this is largely the result of drug prohibition. A very large percentage of those inmates were convicted on non-violent marijuana-related offenses. To lock these people in a cage like animals isn't just inhumane, it's orwellian and reeks of self-interest, rather than community interest (which government claims to serve).

And let's not turn a blind eye to the violent crime, widespread corruption of law enforcement, and giant misuse of public funding that is a direct result of prohibition.

If medical marijuana provides the stepping stone to legalization, all the better. To think that you deserve a say in who has the right to use marijuana and who doesn't is just immature and self-centered beyond belief.

Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[melikamp]

When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well – you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort.

-Bill Hicks

Re:And this is why medical pot has a hard time

[spun]

Hey, I can tell you all about pot addiction. I'm an addict. I also smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. I've also, at one point or another in my life, given up all three for at least a year in each case, so I can compare withdrawal symptoms, and negative versus positive effects.

You say it's on a par with a junk food addiction. I'd guess that's about right. Comparing it to cigarettes, quitting cold turkey, you will get a lot of the same symptoms. Irritable and maybe some cold like symptoms for three days or so.

As for the physical harm associated with the addiction, it's probably less than cigarettes or junk food, but more than coffee. Lung damage is the major thing, but cigarettes are far worse in that respect.

The major negative effect of pot is amotivational syndrome: it makes it far easier to deal with boredom, and therefore one is less likely to get up off one's ass and do something interesting. However, most people, including myself, who turn to pot already have some sort of motivational problems, so it's kind of hard to properly judge cause and effect.

As far as your bullet points go, I agree. But, and maybe I'm just lucky in this, I've never had to deal with thuggish dealers. They've all been fine, upstanding individuals.

Think you might have...

[Petersko]

"oh, God there's a whole universe in my thumbnail man."

Think you might have mistaken marijuana for mushrooms.

Now if you were staring at your thumbnail, and suddenly realized you didn't know WHY you were staring at said thumbnail... now THAT'S marijuana.

Missing an opportunity for synergy...

[MiniMike]

They should also make this person the restaurant critic!

Schedule 1 Status

[BlueBoxSW.com]

The root of the problem is that pot is still a schedule 1 drug.

This means it is "highly addictive with no medicinal value".

Until you get it reclassified, nothing can be done on the federal level in the US.

The British removed it from their equivalent scale last year.

Mexico recently changed their possession laws to match those of Amsterdam.

Bet you didn't hear that on the 6 O'clock news.