Hey buds…

Here’s what we’re puffing on today:

☘️ How ‘de-criminalizing’ weed still means it’s illegal.
☘️ Musk’s hot take on drug testing.
☘️ The facts of coca prohibition.
☘️ Royal Queen Seeds blunt advertising campaign.
💡 Carl Sagan: astronomer, visionary… secret stoner?

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Is "de-criminalization" legalization, and does legalization mean legal?

Words have power.

Which is why they are so often used as tools of distraction, misdirection, and sneaky propaganda.

Like how “collateral damage” conveniently coined to make us think of a building blowing up, actually means “innocent people were killed”…

The power to us comes when we’re able to interpret the information presented through a critical lens to understand what goes down behind the words.

In the past years, we’ve seen a surge of regions ‘decriminalizing’ and ‘legalizing’ weed, and while the terms are often used interchangeably, they are not the same (and they don’t always mean exactly what they say).

Everything beyond instant arrest could be considered as a step forward, but it doesn’t mean weed is suddenly legal, accessible, or fully accepted. We need to understand the difference to know what progress looks like really and what exactly we are trying to reach.

What Is Decriminalization?

Decriminalization is defined as “the action or process of ceasing to treat something as illegal or as a criminal offence.”

This means that cannabis is STILL illegal but instead of criminal penalties like jail time and a stained record, you would get a civil fine or alternative (for a first-time offense).

Decriminalization does not necessarily set up a legal marketplace, regulate product quality, allow licensed sales or stop discriminatory policies from existing in the workplace.

Also, unless the region has a medical marijuana program, there is no ‘legal’ way for the consumer to buy, let alone grow some at home.

What Is Legalization?

Legalization means weed is actually, officially, legally legal.

Which still doesn’t mean governments don’t have the right to step right in. Once legalized, cannabis is usually wrapped in regulations about where you can buy it, who can sell it, and whether you can spark up in public without a fine. Just like alcohol.

TL;DR: Decriminalization means they won’t throw you in jail for weed, but you still can’t legally buy or sell it. Legalization means the whole system is regulated and taxed (with strings attached).

So how does this gray area play out in real life?

Well, Washington was the first state to “legalize” recreational marijuana in 2012, yet over a decade later it is only now considering bills to legalize home cultivation and allow direct-to-consumer sales by farmers.

Another example of this is Germany’s legal weed landscape. As of April 1 of last year it is ‘legal’ for residents to possess and carry up to 25 grammes of dried cannabis and grow up to 3 plants. BUT, sharing your home grow with another person or breaking other rules can be met by hefty fines.

With the 2001 decriminalization bill, Portugal DE-criminalized all drugs, meaning consumers are seen as patients and not as a criminal. If you’re found with less than a 10 day personal supply, you will not be subject to a criminal offence but an administrative one.

Just realized… we’ve never seen a home bar stocked with only two bottles of ‘legal’ tequila at a time. 🤔

If you’re already pondering on it, here are some thoughts by Laurence M. Vance, author of “The War on Drugs is A War On Freedom” 👇

Elon Musk Has Another HOT Take: Mandatory Drug Testing For Federal All Workers

Yes, the same guy who turned Joe Rogan’s studio into a hotbox, but apparently “did not inhale”, now thinks federal workers should be drug tested.

Rooted in Colonialism, Coca Prohibition Could Be Nearing Its End

Chewing on coca leaves has long been part of Indigenous traditions, but colonial powers demonized it, banned it, and criminalized its users. The WHO is taking another their review could nudge the UN to reclassify it, while Filter Magazine gives us a look into the facts and hypocrisies.

Royal Queen Seeds Is Speaking to Germans

“Germany, let’s grow!” That’s the message Royal Queen Seeds is pushing as Germany takes the lead on cannabis reform in Europe. Their latest marketing campaign, rolling out across major German cities, delivers a snarky but spot-on take on legalization, highlighting how homegrow means safer cannabis in all aspects.

Carl Sagan’s High Thoughts…

Did you know that the famed astronomer Carl Sagan also had time to be a pothead?

Between writing a dozen books, working on NASA robotics missions, editing scientific journals, and creating the legendary TV show Cosmos… the man still found time to spark up and expand his mind.

Under the pseudonym "Mr. X," penned an essay about how cannabis expanded his thinking published in Marihuana Reconsidered:

“I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word 'crazy' to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: 'did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.' When high on cannabis I discovered that there's somebody inside in those people we call mad.

When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day. Some of the hardest work I've ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it's a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I've made the effort – successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.”

That’s it for this week’s puff!

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