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Hemp Headlines

1. Home destroyed and dog murdered, but no marijuana found in police raid
2. Reefer Madness: Cannabis damages your DNA
3. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• What are the health effects of smoking “blunts” (marijuana in a hollowed-out cigar)?

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards

• Reggae Wednesday – “What a Thing” by Don De Man

High Times New Issue Preview with Sr. Editor Dave Bienenstock

• June 2009 (August ‘09 issue): Dave reports back from Bonnaroo, new issue is all about seeds vs. clones.

ASHLAND – Two Webster men who went to the Police Station to bail out a friend on Monday were arrested after police saw them with a marijuana-filled cigar while parked in front of the station.

Jason Barry, 22, and his cousin, Brian Cherry, 18, were arrested at 6:17 p.m.

According to a police report filed by Sgt. Gregg Wildman, the pair had come to the station to bail out Akeem Atkins, 23, also of Webster, who was arrested at 12:57 p.m. and charged with breaking into a car on Central Street.

Barry and Cherry were waiting in their car, when Wildman, who was in street clothes, walked by the car and saw what appeared to be a blunt — a cigar emptied of tobacco and filled with marijuana — in the car, Wildman wrote.

Upon questioning, Cherry said there was a black shoebox in the trunk.

Wildman said he found a digital scale and a plastic bag “containing a significant amount of green herbal substance” believed to be marijuana in the box.

When it comes to bailing out friends, I recommend the bus or a taxi.  I never like to drive to a police station or courthouse in my own car.  I’m not stupid enough to bring along a shoebox full of weed, blunts, bags, and scales, but who knows when your taillight is going to go out or a plainclothes policeman walking by thinks he sees or smells something?  In Massachusetts you have a bit of leeway because even if they found a little weed in your car it is just a civil fine, but if you’re in a place like Oklahoma or Idaho or Florida, that little seed that rolled out of your hand when you bought a bag and rolled underneath your car seat three years ago could be enough to put you in jail.

Cannabis Smoke Condensate II: Influence of Tobacco on Tetrahydrocannabinol Levels

Medicinal cannabis has attracted a lot of attention in recent times. Various forms of administration are used, of which smoking is very common but the least desirable. Smoking cannabis generates a large amount of unwanted side products, of which carcinogenic compounds are the most dangerous.

A common practice among recreational drug users, and to a lesser degree patients who uses cannabis as medicine, is to mix the cannabis material with commercially available tobacco in order to increase the burning efficiency of the cigarette and to reduce the overall costs of the cigarette.

In this study cannabis material has been mixed with tobacco in order to determine whether tobacco has an influence on the amount of and ratio between tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabigerol (CBG), and cannabinol (CBN) administered while smoking. A small-scale smoking machine has been used and cannabis mixed with various ratios of tobacco was smoked. The trapped smoke was quantitatively analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the amount of THC, CBG, and CBN was determined for each cigarette.

We have found that tobacco increases the amount of THC inhaled per gram of cannabis from 32.70 ± 2.29 mg/g for a 100% cannabis cigarette to 58.90 ± 2.30 mg/g for a 25% cannabis cigarette. This indicates that tobacco increases the vaporization efficiency of THC by as much as 45% under the conditions tested.

Shorter: Blunts pack a bigger buzz.  However, if you’re looking to increase the vaporization efficiency of THC, just spend the extra dough on buying a vaporizer and lose all of the carcinogens from any kind of smoke.  I hear that tobacco stuff is addictive and dangerous.

Council Bans Sale of Single Cigars in Bid to Curb Youths’ Marijuana Use – washingtonpost.com
The Prince George’s County Council adopted one of the nation’s most sweeping restrictions on the sale of cigars yesterday, an effort to curb a growing trend among urban youths of using hollowed-out cigars to smoke marijuana.

The council voted 8 to 1 to ban the sale of single cigars, requiring stores to sell them in packages of at least five. The new law will also make it easier to charge someone possessing a cigar with a drug paraphernalia offense.

Tobacco stores that specialize in cigar sales, and often sell high-end cigars for as much as $5 apiece or more, are excluded from the legislation’s restrictions, as are other locations that are sometimes age-restricted, including golf courses, fraternal lodges, bars and restaurants.

Sylvia Quinton, who works with the Suitland-based Substance Abuse Treatment Education Prevention Network, said use of short fat cigars, often called blunts, to smoke marijuana has “become embedded in youth culture.” Blunts make frequent cameos in rap music and movies.

She said the new law cannot stamp out the glorification of blunts, but raising the price might discourage some youths.

Excuse me, but aren’t tobacco sales of any kind restricted to adults 18 years and over?  If you’ve got a problem with youths buying single cigars at convenience stores, maybe you need to crack down on ID enforcement.  Or how about promoting the raise of the tobacco age to 21 along with alcohol?  Funny how nobody ever wants to propose that!

It’s also funny to me that it is the hollowing out of the addictive, deadly tobacco and replacing it with non-addictive, non-toxic cannabis is what has driven these do-gooders to want to restrict black kids’ – er, I mean “urban youths” – access to cheap fruit-flavored single cigars in convenience stores.

If you’re Rush Limbaugh or Bill Cosby, feel free to enjoy one of our fine $5 single cigars at the exclusive lodge, but if you’re a young black man in the city, you’ve got to cough up the dough for five cheap-ass cigars at a time, otherwise you’ll just use them for blunts.

Am I the only one who thinks that this won’t have any effect whatsoever on how many “urban youths” in the Washington DC-area will be smoking blunts, while also creating a great new way for dealers to make even more money by buying cheap cigars in packs of five and selling them in singles for a markup?

The law was opposed by tobacco distributors and the Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris. Last year, Altria bought the company that makes Black and Mild cigars, a popular brand for single sales, Dachille said. Bruce C. Bereano, a lobbyist for the distributors, said the intent of the law was “laudable.” But, he said, the law will only create a cottage industry of people who buy cigars in packs of five and then sell them individually on the streets.

Oh, great, now I’m agreeing with a tobacco industry lobbyist.