Coma – Waking Up to Find Legal Cannabis (Video)

Coma - Waking Up to Find Legal Cannabis (Video) | Third Monk

A man wakes up from a five-year coma surrounded by his wife and doctor. As he deals with the blight of his new reality, including the surprise of an amputated leg and five years of his life down the tube, his doctor offers to write him a prescription for Vicodin, morphine or … marijuana.

The man in the hospital bed looks at the doctor with disbelief when he says, “Marijuana is legal now.”

“Coma” was created by IFC’s comedy sketch troupe Women

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The Positive Cannabis Scene in Colorado is Mind Blowing (Video)

The Positive Cannabis Scene in Colorado is Mind Blowing (Video) | Third Monk

The 60 Minutes broadcast crew profiles cannabis tourism in Colorado, one of the first states to legalize pot for recreational use.

In all of our lives, in all of our experiences, marijuana, except in some instances for medical marijuana, marijuana has been illegal.

You go to Colorado now and everything you thought about it is turned upside-down.

It’s legal. It’s mind-blowing.

You go into a warehouse and it’s a huge warehouse full of marijuana plants. And one we visited for our story is right across the street from a police station. You can smell it when you’re driving by.

You can smell the marijuana in the air. And it’s all legal.

– CBS Correspondent Bill Whitaker

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Canada Creates Scary Anti Cannabis Ad, The People Call Bullshit (Video)

Canada Creates Scary Anti Cannabis Ad, The People Call Bullshit (Video) | Third Monk

Canada’s latest anti-cannabis ad says the science on the plant is clear. Yet, the people’s verdict on the ad is even clearer. It hates it.

The ad, titled “Drug Prevention — Marijuana Use,” has drawn thousands of dislikes and a flurry of negative comments on Reddit since it was first posted on Youtube.

In the ad, a narrator declares over ominous music:

“Did you know that marijuana is on average 300 to 400 per cent stronger than it was 30 years ago?”

“Smoking marijuana. It can damage a teen for life.”

And while some users were supportive, others openly mocked it.

“TIL: my parents’ age bracket smoked terrible pot,” said Reddit user Snodgrass 82.

“Thanks for wasting tax dollars on telling people that flowers are bad,” said YouTube user Voluntary Kant.

The government’s science may not even be as clear as it claims. Marijuana’s illegal status in Canada means that there have been few controlled studies to determine its benefits and damaging effects.

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Harper Government’s Marijuana Ad Is Being Disliked To Hell (VIDEO) | Huffington Post

Brain on Weed – Less Gray Matter But Increased Connections? (Video)

Brain on Weed - Less Gray Matter But Increased Connections? (Video) | Third Monk

Using the above video as a quick reference to how cannabis may affect the brain let us move now to the present study at hand. Researchers state that they find a decrease in gray brain matter in the orbitofrontal cortex in chronic cannabis users, users who medicate at least 3 times a day, versus non cannabis users.

These same cannabis users also show more connections in the same region of the brain. What does this mean really? The results are basically (SPOILER ALERT) inconclusive in the way they describe it’s affect on the test subjects.

Although the above is true, neither the users or non users show a decreased quality of life or an inability to perform daily functions. Francesca Filbey, the author of this study, speculates that the increased connections may be the way cannabis users adapt to having less gray brain matter so that they may function with no issues in their daily lives.

I’m happy to find that we are diving deeper into how marijuana affects the human body. Some of the other findings, such as lower IQs for the marijuana users is also inconclusive because there is no correlation between IQ and the function of the orbitofrontal cortex.

This study was funded by Parternship for a Drug Free America. Even with their hopes to find a way to bury cannabis through science, no conclusive negatives were found through this study.

Regardless of the motive, I hope studies like this continue to pop up for cannabis and psychedelics so that we may learn more about how these substances affect us and how we may use them to our advantage.

Check out the source article below, the article contains plenty of sources to feed your need for scientifically generated cannabis info.

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Chronic Pot Smoking Associated With Reduced Gray Matter, But Increased Connections | I Fucking Love Science

Stoner Wisdom – Famous Quotes From High Times

Stoner Wisdom - Famous Quotes From High Times | Third Monk image 1

Since 1974, High Times magazine has served as a safe platform for public figures and celebrities to express their love for Mary Jane.

The movement to legalize cannabis is picking up momentum, these classic quotes from High Times shows that famous stoners always believed in a green future:

Bob Marley (Sept. ‘76)

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It’s time to let de people get good herbs and smoke. Government’s a joke. All dey wan’ is ya smoke cigarettes and cigar. Some cigar wickeder den herb.

Mick Jagger (June ‘80)

Cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. I can’t understand the fashion for it. Sitting and smoking grass is different.

Stephen King (Jan. ‘81)

I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There’s some pretty good homegrown dope.

Jack Herer (Feb. ‘89)

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I didn’t discover marijuana until 1969, when I was 30 years old. At the time, I was a successful businessman and a Nixon supporter.

Pot changed my life. I began to hear my own words back to me as judgments. I put on earphones and heard music in color for the first time.

Jello Biafra (Aug. ‘91)

You don’t have to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem is not the drugs, and that we can help solve our drug problem and a hell of a lot of our crime problems, environmental problems and racial problems if we’d all do our patriotic duty as Earth Patriots and GROW MORE POT!

Redman (Mar. ‘93)

I treat my music as an individual, you know, as a person, a human life. You gotta puff weed to get really deep like that.

Tom Robbins (May ‘94)

Marijuana seems to possess all of the benevolence, grace, clarity, insightfulness and calm that the state-sanctioned drug — booze — so sadly lacks.

Hunter S. Thompson (May ‘94)

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I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a staple of basic life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits — and millions of Americans agree with me.

Ken Kesey (May ‘94)

That old 1960s consciousness coming out of the beatnik years is the only path I see that is going to get us out of the mess that we’re in. And our gospel is that joint –That joint won’t lie to you. One joint will give you a different high than another joint, but they’ll be straight with you. Marijuana works.

Woody Harrelson (Nov. ‘00)

Everybody has their drug. The real hypocrisy of the Drug War is that it’s not simply a War on Drugs.

You can go to a drugstore in any city in the nation and you’ll find any drug you want, and they’ll be more addictive and worse for you than grass.

And there will be a smiling man there sanctioned by the government who’s allowed to give them to you.

Bryan Cranston (Sept. ‘12)

Marijuana started out with a bad connotation, as you know — but to me, marijuana is no different than wine. It’s a drug of choice. It’s meant to alter your current state — and that’s not a bad thing.

It’s ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We’re still fighting for it… There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don’t become criminals. So stop with that argument — it doesn’t work.

Roseanne (July ‘13)

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The first time I smoked, I was 17. I was with my sister, and we were sleeping out on our porch. I remember sitting on the porch with my mouth hanging open, looking at a tree and going, Jesus Christ, is that a tree? I couldn’t stop staring at it — the complexity of it, the patterning.

It opened up my mind to whole other conscious rhythms.

35 Celebs Sound Off on Marijuana | High Times

Trail Blazing – Cannabis Footprints Around the World (Map)

Trail Blazing - Cannabis Footprints Around the World (Map) | Third Monk image 3

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A new report describes how cannabis use originated thousands of years ago in Asia, and has since found its way to many regions of the world, eventually spreading to the Americas.

Cannabis plants are believed to have evolved on the steppes of Central Asia, specifically in the regions that are now Mongolia and southern Siberia. The history of cannabis use goes back as far as 12,000 years, which places the plant among humanity’s oldest cultivated crops.

Burned cannabis seeds have also been found in kurgan burial mounds in Siberia dating back to 3,000 B.C., and some of the tombs of noble people buried in Xinjiang region of China and Siberia around 2500 B.C. have included large quantities of mummified psychoactive marijuana.

For the most part, it was widely used for medicine and spiritual purposes during pre-modern times. For example, the Vikings and medieval Germans used cannabis for relieving pain during childbirth and for toothaches.

The idea that this (cannabis) is an evil drug is a very recent construction and the fact that it is illegal is a “historical anomaly”.

Marijuana has been legal in many regions of the world for most of its history.

–  Barney Warf, Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas

Marijuana became widely used in India, where it was celebrated as one of “five kingdoms of herbs … which release us from anxiety” in one of the ancient Sanskrit Vedic poems whose name translate into “Science of Charms.”

Over the next centuries, cannabis migrated to various regions of the world, traveling through Africa, reaching South America in the 19th century and being carried north afterwards, eventually reaching North America.

Path of Cannabis Map – From Asia to America

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Marijuana’s History: How One Plant Spread Through the World | Live Science

How Does Cannabis Create the Munchies? (Study)

How Does Cannabis Create the Munchies? (Study) | Third Monk

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Researchers from the Université De Bordeaux suggest that the desire to consume food after ingesting cannabis stems from how THC, the herb’s psychoactive compound, meshes with the olfactory bulb in the brain.

Weed magnifies our sense of smell, which in turn stimulates the appetite (munchies) and makes food more attractive – a major benefit for those patients suffering from eating disorders.

Marijuana can be salvation’s wing for people inflicted with conditions like anorexia nervosa, which has a tendency to contribute to the perception that food is evil.

However, by using cannabis to put a patient’s sense of smell into overdrive, they experience an increased appreciation for food that is typically lost with these types of disorders.

– Lead Researcher Giovanni Marsicano, Marijuana and Food – Nature Neuroscience

The study monitored several groups of stoned and sober mice by watching how they reacted to the presence of almond and banana oils. The stoner mice consumed a lot more oil than their sober counterparts.

In a special group of stoner mice genetically engineered without olfactory bulbs, THC did not cause them to crave food anymore than the sober mice.

Why Does Pot Make Food Smell and Taste Better? | High Times

The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science – Letters from Carl Sagan

The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science - Letters from Carl Sagan | Third Monk image 6

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Carl Sagan never got to see the day when people could go to a store and purchase weed without fear of the law. But thanks to a collection of his papers recently made available by the Library of Congress, we now have Sagan’s personal writings on cannabis.

This 1988 Sagan letter shows why a government-funded scientist might be reluctant to draw too much public attention to his views about marijuana in the midst of President Reagan’s drug war.

Writing to Dr. Grinspoon (editor of Sagan’s famous essay on the benefits of cannabis), Sagan expressed outrage about language in a congressional funding bill for NASA that required contractors like him to adopt written anti-drug-use policies:

The oath required seems to smack of prior restraint and is unsymmetrical with respect to other crimes.

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Annie Druyan confirmed Sagan enjoyed marijuana “frequently.” She made it clear just how important cannabis was in their life together: “We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.”

Druyan also described how Sagan utilized marijuana’s medicinal properties to experience a measure of relief. He used cannabis to treat “not only the lack of appetite and the nausea [from chemotherapy]but to refocus on the beauty of life in the midst of such torture.”

The plant’s effects directly impacted the couple’s work over their decades of collaboration on everything from “Contact” to the 1980 PBS series “Cosmos” that Sagan hosted and that they wrote together. The 2014 Fox reboot of “Cosmos” — hosted this time by Neil deGrasse Tyson and again co-written by Druyan — not only took home four Emmys, but made mention in one episode of 17th Century scientist Robert Hooke’s use of cannabis while describing him as “possibly the most inventive person who ever lived.”

War on Drugs or War on Consciousness?

This disconnect from science was among Sagan’s chief concerns about the criminalization of marijuana. It was “something that particularly infuriated Carl as a scientist,” Druyan says. He was troubled by not only the “bad civic engineering but the very bad science behind prohibition.”

In 1990, Sagan wrote to leading drug policy reform campaigners suggesting they organize a rebuttal to the propaganda being spread by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America:

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In another letter from 1990 Sagan laid out these fundamental philosophical questions underpinning America’s drug war:

Why are all “drugs” lumped together in American rhetoric and public policy questions?

Why are hallucinogenic drugs so widely distributed among the cultures of the Earth?

Do research findings that indicate a given drug to be safe get as much public attention as those that indicate it to be dangerous?

How do social and economic inequities drive the underprivileged to drug use?

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With the success the Cosmos reboot and with more states voting on legalizing marijuana in November, the newly unearthed Sagan documents add to the growing consensus that marijuana prohibition is not grounded in science and is not supported by leading thinkers and prominent people.

“We are going at warp speed toward getting rid of that prohibition now,” says Grinspoon.

Carl Sagan’s Long Lost Deep Thoughts On The War on Drugs | Marijuana News