Free to Choose. A Tune for Revolution.

Hear Free to Choose here: 
https://soundcloud.com/cannabisrising/ftc-roughcut

Ten Reasons to Give Thanks for Cannabis

1.   Cannabis is powerful medicine with a sense of humor

2.   Cannabis is not toxic or physically addictive

3.   Cannabis helps people overcome toxic addictions

4.   Cannabis sparks clarity, imagination and creativity

5.   Cannabis crowds are famously peaceful

6.   Cannabis is an emerging enterprise frontier

7.   Cannabis hemp provides food, fiber and fuel

8.   Cannabis connects us with the spirit of all things

9.   Cannabis is an ancient, beautiful, exotic, sexy flower

10. Cannabis can be grown in the privacy of our own lives

Happy thanks and giving to all my friends in cannabis country!

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Stoners! Unite Us! Unite the Fans!

Recreational cannabis fans listen up.  There’s a war on in case you haven’t noticed, and thanks to the internet we're the first generation of cannabis consumers with the power to end the insanity and restore our right to choose.  How?  By using that device in your hand to quietly search for, discover, and share the medicinal truth.

Start the search with names like Shona Banda, David Trippett, Cashy Hyde, and Rick Simpson.  Every fan of the world’s favorite forbidden flower ought to be familiar with the work of these patients and pioneers, and be able to share those stories of cannabis healing with friends and family members who are ready to hear it.  On the political front, these names can be used to politely reveal, on camera, that our leaders are either full of shit like Obama, or taken in by the system like Romney.  

On the economic front, cannabis represents a clear and present danger to the bottom lines of some of the most powerful industries on earth, including energy, liquor, textiles, drugs, chemicals, paper, prisons, and Federal agencies.  After a reign of nearly eighty years, prohibitionists are well-practiced in the art of deception and delay.  Many of them still believe they can keep cannabis—from medicine to enterprise—out of the mainstream or at least under strict control.

This week, for example, our government is pretending to review cannabis for reclassification.  It’s a cruel sham, much like when Nixon asked for the report and then tore up the report.  Even if they do decide to reschedule (while claiming to be shocked that pot might be medicine), you can bet they’ll fight tooth and nail to hold back the flood of research and reveals that will surely follow.  

The whole charade is exposed by a seven digit number; patent 6,630,507, filed in 2003 and owned by OUR government.  It’s entitled Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.  Nuff said.  On the faith front, the lie runs so deep that Christians obediently ignore the Words of their Father.  Genesis 1:29. Cannabis is ours. God said.

Caught by surprise by favorable patient-use studies coming out of free states, the communication revolution, and by the rise of stealthy home cultivation for personal use, industrialists, with mighty assistance from Washington, are now scrambling as quietly as possible to deal themselves in and claim their share.  As usual, their share will be as much as they get using every means at their disposal, including our military.

It’s the freedom fight of the century, and we’re up against a regime that has managed to convince the world, with guns at the ready and big media on their side, that we smoke with tobacco, party with booze, and heal with pills.  Not in cannabis country we don’t.  Not all the time, anyway.

420 fans!  Closet tokers!  Marijuana moms!  Stiletto stoners!  Join the revolution, and by all means stick to the shadows.  Search, explore and share the medicinal truth in the privacy of your own lives.  And name names.  Because as the truth comes out, the walls come down.   

Baking with Mom

In the 80s mom's line of cheesecakes were voted Best in Tucson.

In the summer of 79 I got my mom royally baked.  At the time I was a sophomore at UMASS, Amherst, and as a newly minted cannabis fan, I was taking full advantage of the fine herb available in the Pioneer Valley.  Sensimilla was little known and rarely available, and almost everyone figured prohibition was here to stay.  The times they are a changing, but not fast enough to save some of our closest friends and family. 

My mom was a painter, photographer, a crewel embroidery artist, green thumb gardener, a great cook, and a functioning alcoholic.  She had a nice little condo down on the Gulf coast of Florida where I stayed with her between semesters.

Her core issue was depression, which she tried to overwhelm with alcohol and prescription medicines, the only legal choices she had.  Her generation was raised on coffee, tobacco and spirits.  Pot was very illegal and assumed to be worse than it appeared.  Pills were the modern solution people took for everything—including addiction to pills.  My mom believed in the system, and followed the advice of her doctors.

I was an enthusiastic novice stoner with no clue about the many ways cannabis might have been used to help my mom kick her destructive habits; recreationally, medicinally, and as an exotic, nurturing garden flower she would have eagerly added to her second floor balcony jungle of hanging and potted plants.  Whenever I suggested she try weed as a buzz substitute for hard spirits, her response was always the same; 

Marijuana is illegal.  We don’t break laws; we vote to change laws we don’t agree with.  When it’s legal maybe then we’ll talk about it…nuff said.

We got along great, and she fed me well, but her drinking was a painful source of friction.  The drama and deceptions were taxing, and after yet another incident, I drove down to The Oyster Shucker (Jimmy’s long-gone hangout), scored some decent weed and grabbed a little metal bong at the local headshop.  

The following day, my mom reluctantly agreed to give cannabis a try.  To make sure she felt enough to know whether it was for her, I had her blaze to cinders an entire party bowl (with my help to show her how…).  She spent the morning on her dock, drinking ice tea, fishing, and smiling.  

While she admittedly enjoyed the experience, using marijuana as a regular therapy (or ever again) was out of the question.  She was the ex-wife of conservative Boston surgeon, a law-abiding citizen from a respectable Yankee family with deep eastern roots; end of story.

I have since learned that cannabis—especially stealthy, non-smoked medicinal preparations—could have safely tempered her use of alcohol—a drug she typically reached for when she was feeling good rather than bad (then couldn’t stop).  Cannabis would have provided a safe new means for her to create, release, party and relax.  As a cook it would have been easy for her to treat herself with cannabis in the privacy of her own life; bake at 420, skip the cocktails at seven.

These days my mom might have found relief in a legal state, which is a sign of the great progress we’re making in the battle to restore the right to treat ourselves with cannabis.  As evidence mounts that patients are having success using it to safely overcome toxic addictions[1], a new approach to substance abuse therapy is in order.

Clean, not sober

Cannabis patients ought to be free to grow their own, and be supplied well enough to be able to explore the full range of therapeutic options; smoked, vaporized, edibles, wax, shatter, tincture, oil-filled gel caps, salves, and fresh juice, which by the way, is highly medicinal but not psychoactive[2]. Such is not nearly the case, and yet even in the face of relentless government aggression, cannabis is rising fast as a safe and therapeutic substitute for pills and alcohol.

Cannabis is not physically addictive and is famously non-toxic, meaning Western sobriety edicts can be unnecessary and counterproductive for patients with a fondness for weed.  Getting clean and staying sober is a formula that doesn’t work for them; so why do they have to stay sober like NONE of their friends and family? 

As cannabis is adopted as a therapeutic choice, addiction sufferers will learn how to make medicinal use of cannabis in the privacy of their own lives. They won't be sober, maybe never again, but they'll be getting back into their creative lives with a drug choice that won't ever kill them. 

With the truth online and in the streets, it’s only a matter of time before cannabis prohibition is little more than a sobering history lesson for all time to come.  The surgeon general recently drove a stake in the heart of Schedule One by declaring cannabis can be used as medicine. Has cannabis been taken off Schedule One; of course not. The US Government will drag this on for as long as they can; patients and healing be damned.


It might take a decade more, but in time cannabis healing strategies will be known to most and practiced by many, and psychedelics immersion spas will be all the rage. 

 

Imagine a cannabis retreat combining the nurturing, free-will ambiance of a luxury health spa with the cannabis supply and life-skills workshops of a top dispensary.  Since successful, driven types who respond well to cannabis are often very creative and like to learn, cannabis spas would feature hands-on amenities like a cannabis kitchen with lessons on the bench, a tincture lab, a greenhouse, music/recording studio, painting/sculpture studio, video editing suite, screening room, and time alone to ponder, imagine, create, and chill... a MacDowell Colony environment featuring the finest green, and no alcohol.

There’s certainly a need for such places, as evidenced all too often by high-profile substance-related deaths of skilled artists like Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse, and by the mercilessly exploited struggles of talented stars like Charlie and Lindsay.  Just like with my mom, when industrial age therapies and meds fail these people, they are the ones who always seem to take the blame.

Since cannabis spas would presumably need to be located on private islands and on secluded estates, well, if you have to ask the price… Still, it’d be money well spent if high-powered[3] patients left with the skills to substitute various preparations of cannabis for the stuff that’s hurting their careers and in some cases doing them in.  And if some of those recoveries happen to occur in the media spotlight, maybe then the truth will finally reach the masses: it’s not pot, it’s medicine.

Mainstreamers do most of the living and dying in this world; many are suffering from ills cannabis cures.  So just you watch.  Any day now North Americans are going to wake up and see what cannabis really is and what it can do for them.  Then they’ll rise up and end the cannabis wars for their own good reasons.  Any day now... 

The Toss    photo by Elizabeth Wells (Hedberg) 1979

Carl Hedberg is a writer, speaker and cannabis use explorer with a note to film makers; help end this entrenched war of words and images by quietly delivering medicinal cannabis truth to the big screen.  Send me some material, I’ll show you what I mean.  Twitter questions and comments @cannabisrising or visit Carl on Facebook (thefinestgreen).

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[1] Research paper by Amanda Reiman at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley.  http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/6/1/35

[2] Here’s an informative article by Dr. Edward Group; http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/juicing-raw-cannabis-eating-raw-cannabis/

[3] I don’t do pot puns, but this one works on so many levels.

Lights! Camera! Cannabis!

In print and on screens large and small, we the people of this planet receive a steady dose of time-tested cannabis war propaganda that runs so deep that Westernized citizens distrust plant medicines, consume pills and alcohol to excess, and believe restoring the right to choose cannabis is a fringe issue orchestrated by stoners.  On the economic front, Washington drug warriors are sending in their troops to slow down and disrupt a growing enterprise frontier they say doesn’t exist.

What mainstream Americans don’t know about cannabis is hurting us all, and film makers are in a unique position to help.  As Mr. Gore demonstrated with his engaging documentary on climate change, the most effective way to get the attention of the masses is with compelling entertainment that delivers the truth—inconvenient or otherwise—in a manner that gets them to see why they should care. 

In light of the burden of installed negative perceptions and associations going back generations, cannabis truths are best delivered in small doses and within the lives of authentic characters.  Woven into the fabric of a scene like a pack of smokes or a cold one, fleeting images of regular folks making therapeutic use of cannabis in the privacy of their own lives could have an enormous impact on audiences raised to turn away and just say no. 

Truth Defines Character

Throughout the world cannabis is returning to its rightful place as a garden flower remedy with a sense of humor; exotic, sexy, inexpensive, effective, safe and easily to grow.  Fortunately for film makers, the lives of prohibition-era cannabis characters are often filled with danger, conflict and contradiction.

Patients are on the front lines of the long cultural migration back to natural remedies; treating themselves, exploring formulations, sharing strains and recipes.  Sources of conflict include disapproving friends and family members who insist they want what’s best for the patient, church, social and community groups that support the war on cannabis, disreputable suppliers, 'drug free' environments, legal entanglements, drug war invasions, and healthcare provider threats and actions, including refusal of treatment and transplant denials.

Medicinal Growers:  Seed masters and master growers of medicinal grade cannabis are a special breed of pioneer.  Their passion to explore and share is changing the face of healthcare one strain at a time.  Guys love hobbies and competitive sports, and this male-dominated field boasts a colorful cast of braggarts, botanists, tinkerers, black marketers and patients—all working to cultivate, share and sell some of the finest green the world has ever known.  Get a group of growers in a room and invariably the conversation will get around to how much they love their ‘girls’ and the work they do.  Grower conflicts are similar to patients, with added concerns of flood, fire, power outages, mites, nutrient mix, sales, and home invasions by pot robbers.

Partiers:  Ancient Egyptian wall carvings of wild, drug-infused festivals remind us that young men and women have always enjoyed a good party.  Cannabis festivals are filled with young folks smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and toking a lot of weed.  Edibles and tinctures are making the scene as well.  Partiers use cannabis in the same way they consume legal drugs; typically in groups, and often to excess.  A central conflict in their lives is that their choices are often at odds with the new age traditions they claim to embrace.

Closet tokers are well-hidden, well-off cannabis aficionados who love great weed and devote a good deal of their free time to pursuing and enjoying medicinal grade strains.  These mature cannabis fans—from stiletto stoners to senior bakers—are very good at keeping their interests a secret.  Since cannabis use is all but legal in their upscale surroundings, conflicts stem from workplace, family and social expectations.  In New England, weed is viewed as a slacker drug of the lesser classes—fine for prep school, but if you’re a fifty-something professional with teens in the house, you’re up in the master bathroom blowing hits into a damp towel while your wife is downstairs greeting guests and pointing them to the bar. 

Enterprisers from all walks of life are finding steady income and creating new ventures in the cannabis trades; care givers, scientists, growers, educators, inventors, entrepreneurs, publishers…Conflicts stem from the risky realities of quasi-legal environments, new age need/hate relationships with money, stoned, unreliable workers, skittish investors, and disapproving friends and family.

Scene Selection

This is a passive aggressive approach to advocacy designed to deliver the truth in a way that is as subtle and crafty as drug war propaganda itself.  That means not every film will work, and the truth must occur in a flash and leave a lasting impression, like a wink from Marilyn, a Bette Davis pose.   To illustrate, here are some favorite films with a dash of cannabis truth.

The Shootist (1976)

Genre: Western

Message: Cannabis tincture was a popular and valued medicine in the 1800s.

Means:  In the wonderful You’ve got a cancer scene between the country doctor (Jimmy Stewart) and his dying patient (John Wayne), the doctor hands over the opium tincture (laudanum), and one other corked medicine bottle.  The cannabis tincture, he explains, will help a lot with sleep before the pain gets too bad.

The Beach (2000)

Genre: Adventure

Message: Cannabis is safe and serious medicine that individuals and intentional communities can make for themselves.

Means: As Sal guides the newest arrivals through the resort for people who hate resorts, she points to a device simmering with emerald green liquid.  A medicine maker is filling a cobalt dropper vial from a tiny brass spigot. 

Sal says, “Of course we make all our own medicines like cannabis oil, salves and this tincture…edibles too if you like...”

Later, during the tooth extraction scene, the patient is given a shot of scotch turned green with a squirt from the cobalt dropper vial.

Firefly (Joss Whedon’s single-season marvel; 2002)

Genre: Post-apocalyptic/post-prohibition

Message: Cannabis is medicine and prohibition is a war that will end.

Means: Introduce cannabis tincture as the medicinal treasure that it is.

Episode:  The Message

Scene:  The postal warehouse

In a brief delay while an attendant fetches the boxed body, the postal officer shows off a hot item he’s hoping Mac will take off his hands.  It’s a black metal suitcase.  Inside, protected by foam are rows of large cobalt blue dropper bottles.  The labels are English: Cannabis Tincture.  Mac is impressed. Jayne looks confused as the postal worker explains

“This is prohibition era tincture made on earth during the Cannabis Wars—around the turn of the 21^st Century.. Very rare.  Probably still fine as medicine but worth more in the bottle.”

Mac nods; “Nice find but no thanks, we don’t meet up with too many collectors or museum types.”

As the black case is closed up and the body box arrives, Jayne still looks confused:

“Hold on a sec; cannabis was illegal?”

Kill Bill: Vol 2 (2004)

Genre: Action

Message: Cannabis tincture is liquid weed.

Means: In the fabulous trailer scene, Elle is watching from the couch as Budd blends a killer smoothie and slops it into a pair of jar glasses.  Now imagine that he reaches up into the cabinet for a tinted dropper vial.  He gives his jar two squirts and a swirl. 

Elle squints her eye at the deep green tint; “What was that shit?”

Budd shrugs; “It's cannabis tincture, liquid weed...takes the edge off...and you know, sometimes it makes me smile...”

She takes a long drag on her cigarette; “Yeah?  No thanks.”

The Descendants (2011)

Genre: Family drama

Message: The cannabis trades offer income and opportunity for struggling building contractors.

Means: In the scene introducing the cast of descendants, the narrator describes one as being an unemployed carpenter planning to use his share of the proceeds to move his family to a cannabis legal state where he plans to set himself up as a grow-room builder.

Let the Re-enculturation Begin!

Cannabis prohibition continues to be a supremely effective war of words and images, and the best defense against those dark arts is an equally crafty film response that doesn’t make waves before it gets to the theater; subtle medicinal tells, authentic patients treating themselves for common ailments, and broke-down Americans crawling out of the recession by way of the cannabis trades.  The battle to restore the right to choose and responsibly use cannabis is at the pain center of an arc that will play out like all modern freedom revolutions do; as the truth comes out, it gets on film, and the walls come down.

Related Articles: Cannabis in times of crisis

http://cannabisrising.blogspot.com/2012/10/cannabis-in-times-of-crisis.html

Set of three medicinal cannabis use character and plot sketches (Series 1) http://cannabisrising.blogspot.com/2012/11/medicinal-cannabis-use-pot-plots-series.html

 

Carl Hedberg is a writer, speaker and cannabis use explorer.  The plan is to help film makers deliver historical and medicinal truths to mass audiences by way of big screen movies.  Twitter questions and comments @cannabisrising or visit Carl on Facebook (thefinestgreen).  This piece was adapted from earlier blogs.