“High Times would like you to present the award for Stoner of the Year. Do you want to do it?”
I laughed out loud, and told my manager, “Hellllllllllll Yeah.”
There ain’t no fucking way I’m passing this up. You can take your Oscars and your Emmys and stuff them deep up your ass as far as I’m concerned, but I’m not missing the “Stonys.”
I hosted the event about 4 years ago in NYC and spent the last 3 hours of the night laying in bed with my eyes closed watching magical elves performing a cosmic sitcom. My memory of the night before that point plays out like a slide show of cool music, cool people, lots of laughter, and one very obvious bookmark; like a little post it note that my mind left for my consciousness to let me know, “This is where you fucked up, dummy.”
It’s an image clear as day and forever burned into my mental hard drive where this dude wearing a TOOL T shirt and an army jacket said to me, “Hey man, you want a brownie?”
Of course I said yes, and I’m pretty sure I said yes at least twice.
Like my friend Joey Diaz often says, “If you’re gonna walk on ice, you might as well dance.”
Now, the big question is, can you get too high? Well, it’s impossible to die from it, but there’s a little known effect called the “one pass” that might just make you think you’re gonna.
The “one pass effect” is what happens when you eat cannabis.
I’ve known for a while that it was a completely different effect when you ate a pot brownie, and quite a bit stronger than smoking it, but I never understood why until my friend Todd explained it to me the other night. The deal is, when you eat weed the THC is converted as it passes through your liver and kidneys into something called ”11 hydroxy metabolite,” a completely different psychoactive chemical, and it’s five times more potent that way than smoking it.
Yikes!
Either way, even in it’s most potent form cannabis is still basically harmless.
It can freak you out, but it can’t kill you, and as soon as it wears off you’re good as new.
If that’s the case, then why is it illegal?
That’s a really fucking good question that’s got a whole lot of good answers, mostly dealing in economics, the business of busting and imprisoning people, and the reluctance of the government to ever change their stance on something that they once vehemently opposed.
It’s really the only way to control people; you have to REALLY control them.
The government is ALWAYS right, even when it’s wrong, because if they admit that they’re wrong about cannabis, one of the first things that’s going to happen is that a FUCK LOAD of people are going to go out and start smoking it.
The next thing that’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a massive chain reaction from what would essentially be an almost instantaneous shift in national consciousness.
Once people realize it’s safe, it will very quickly become the preferred drug of choice.
It’ll kill the liquor business, because you can grow it yourself.
Then of course there’s the problem of, “If they were wrong about this, what else are they lying to us about?” That could start a big, fat, chain reaction shit storm that no one in government wants to deal with.
There are a lot of people that are convinced that we’re going to see legalization in our lifetime. I’m not one of them.
I applaud all the efforts of the people pushing for legalization, and especially the folks that are working hard to provide medical cannabis for the thousands of people that benefit greatly from the use of this unusual plant – but I could see this thing play out the same way year after year. The medical movement will grow, and slowly it’ll be more acceptable, but I have a feeling we’re a long way from legalization.
Back in 1970 Carl Sagan was asked when he thought marijuana would be legalized, and he thought that it would be within the decade. The guy interviewing him called him a pessimist. I wonder what we’ll be thinking about it 30 years from now.
I have a feeling the same retarded arguments against it will still be around.
I mean, if they’re around now, with all of the access to information and all the results of the numerous medical studies on the innocuous health effects of smoking it, what’s there to make me think it’s going to change 30 years from now? Are the tests going to be any clearer? They ALL say it’s safe. What more do we need?
By the time we got to the High Times show the place was already reeking of the sacred plant. They were attempting to contain the people “medicating” to the green room, but that shit ain’t a vacuum, yo. The door opened and closed with regularity, and as it did the sweet smell of cheeba wafted through the club.
As the show started, the club security was working overtime putting out joints in the crowd.
They did a pretty admirable job at first, but eventually the sheer volume was just overwhelming. I mean, it’s the fucking High Times Stony awards. The odds of keeping that place weed smoke free are about the same as Brittney Spears winning mom of the year.
Plus, I’m sure most of those dudes working security caught a serious contact high.
They went from grabbing people’s wrists and warning them for the first half hour, to just looking at them and making that “cut it out” hand motion across the neck for the second half hour, to completely ignoring it about an hour and a half in.
Seth Rogen from the movie “Knocked Up” won stoner of the year. Absolutely well deserved, and the dude is fucking hilarious. That was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time, and Seth is cool as fuck.
Highlight of the evening for me had to be meeting Tommy Chong.
I was always a huge fan of his movies when I was a kid, so it was a real treat to meet him.
Plus, Tommy was arrested and jailed on some bullshit case years ago when John Ashcroft concocted a sting called “operation pipe dreams.” His son was selling bongs with Tommy’s name on them, and to keep his family out of jail, he agreed to plead guilty and do time. It’s a pretty fucked up story where 20 federal agents showed up at his house, guns drawn to arrest him in front of his loved ones, all for selling glass.
Talk about overkill.
Tommy spends a lot of his time now giving pro marijuana speeches and telling his story.
They went into detail about it in this documentary I appeared in recently called “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High.” It’s all about the marijuana business in British Columbia and the ridiculousness of the prohibition.
You can get information about it here: http://www.theunionmovie.com/TheUnionWeb.html
And here’s a trailer for the movie:
All in all, the evening was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with some of the leaders in the cannabis movement, like the great Jack Herer, author of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,”
THE definitive book on marijuana and the history of it’s use, a fantastic, eye opening resource that’s changed the way a lot of people look at the plant.
See, that’s one of the main problems with cannabis; public perception.
The anti-cannabis propaganda was so overwhelming that even a lot of people that enjoy pot are embarrassed by it, and think it’s bad for them.
What’s left is essentially two groups of people that use it; Group one: the retards that saw the propaganda, and said, “Who cares about brain cells, I wanna get FUCKED UP!” and Group two: those that have been educated to see beyond the bullshit, and enlightened as to the nature of this amazing and beautiful plant. I don’t think I need to tell anyone that’s capable of reading this far into this little blog entry that there’s a FUCK LOAD more folks in group one than two.
Such appears to be one of the strangest rules of life; some of the best things remain a mystery to most, despite all of the access to information and communication we have.
And we’re just talking about pot, don’t even get me started about DMT.
The propaganda hasn’t stopped, either. Only now they’re targeting kids, with weird commercials that aren’t really saying anything. They can’t quote any facts because there really are none, so they’re just putting it in your head very early that pot is bad.
How about this fucking commercial where this chick’s dog starts talking to her and telling her that he doesn’t like it when she gets high:
“Hey Lindsey, I wish you didn’t smoke weed.”
“Really? Well I wish you didn’t freak me the fuck out by talking to me with no warning. You know how to talk? How about a heads up first, motherfucker? Why don’t you start off slow, like maybe write me a note or something? How long have you been able to talk? You could talk all this time, and the first words out of your mouth are criticism? How about ‘hey, I’m your dog, and I can talk!’ Wouldn’t that be a better way to start? Right away with the complaints?”
What’s the message here? Don’t smoke weed or your dog will be disappointed in you?
The same dog that I have to yell at every day to keep him from eating shit out of the cat’s litter box? Is that really a deterrent?
I mean, it’s your fucking dog. Even little kids get to yell at the dog. The dog is the bottom of the food chain when it comes to pull around the house. Who give a fuck what he thinks.
Meanwhile, the craziest thing about the video is that after the dog is done talking, the chick just stands there and thinks about what the dog said.
She doesn’t scream, or call her brother over so he can see, or even ask the dog any questions. She just drops her head in shame over her weed smoking.
Whatever that chick is smoking, it ain’t weed, and keep it the fuck away from me.
Puff, puff, pass, pass…
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