Elevate and Evolve | Cannabis & Psychedelic Culture Blog
I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs. – Carl Sagan
Joe Rogan talks about Carl Sagan’s essay on cannabis where he revealed that some of his best insights came from smoking marijuana.
Following the passing of recreational marijuana use laws, Colorado and Washington have started to plan for stoner friendly establishments. California is trying to catch up with a 2014 ballot measure that would legalize recreational use of cannabis for adults.
Amsterdam’s coffee shops are an example of how cannabis culture might change in the US.
Amsterdam’s liberal attitude toward drugs has created a subculture of coffee shops and stoner fans that chill out and eat magic treats or blaze the cannabis without fearing the fuzz. – Attack of the Show
A short film montage of the Original Dampkring Cannabis Coffeeshop. Filmed by Maaike Carree
The campaign behind the California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative, which would explicitly legalize cannabis for adults 21 and older, will begin collecting signatures in May, attempting to put their initiative to a vote of the people in 2014. – The Weed Blog
Here’s a breakdown of what the Jack Herer measure would do:
Van Styles is a visual artist with a focus on streetwear photography, directing and editing. He credits skateboarding for showing him how to look at things differently and always try a different approach rather then taking the easy road.
What makes Van Styles attractive to brands like LRG Clothing and The Hundreds is his style of photographing various subjects and settings and presenting them in a different light. Such is the case of taking well known adult actresses and capturing them in photos that show off his unique vision with streetwear and fashion styles.
The Fairfax and Rosewood area is really popular in L.A. While walking around one day, I noticed this game of s.k.a.t.e. going on and felt it would make a great shot.
This was taken when I shot for the LRG summer lookbook, as well as 2 ads. This was one of the final shots of the day, and Adam from the Workaholics decided to end it with this pool jump.
This is a double exposure shot with Kristina Rose. This reminds me of the beautiful accidents that can happen when shooting with film. It was shot on a Pentax K1000.
I don’t do much landscape shots, but when I drove by these tracks, I had to pull over. This was down in Huntington Beach area — the right place at the right time.
Tony Karr is an up-and-coming skateboarder who is just raw. I happened to be at the Brooklyn Projects ramp on Memorial Day, and he was there.
This was taken at the Paid Dues show this year. After the last set was done, I noticed this couple not caring about anything except each other. It was a real life moment.
Jessie Andrews is one of my favorite people to shoot photos with. I feel like this photo is just really fun.
I like this photo for a lot of reasons, but mainly that I randomly snapped it from my car while driving around downtown Los Angeles.
Alex Grey’s paintings can be described as a blend of sacred, visionary art and psychedelic art.
He is best known for his paintings of glowing anatomical human bodies, images that “x-ray” the multiple layers of reality. His art is a complex integration of body, mind, and spirit.
Trevor Moore (Whitest Kids U’ Know) reveals that the founding fathers were all stoned in this track from his new album “Drunk Texts to Myself”.
Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere! – George Washington
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption. – John Adams
Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country. – Thomas Jefferson
Sleep Sweepers by Flying Lotus is used as the background track for Terence Mckenna’s take on the psychedelic effects caused by eating cannabis edibles.
We in the 20th century tend to smoke our cannabis aside from the occasional holiday cannabis cookie, cannabis for us is something that is smoked. On the other hand for the 19th century and for all of European civilization cannabis was something that was eaten in the form of various sugared confections that were prepared and this method of ingestion changes cannabis into an extremely powerful psychedelic experience.
If you read the accounts of people like Theodore Gautier, Baudelaire and Fitz Hugh Ludlow written in the mid 19th century they are describing experiences that are obviously, or are for them as powerful as a 500 micro gram dose of LSD proved in our own life times, and we forget this, we tend to think of it as a social drug and a kind of a minor drug on a par with smoking a cigarette or having a cognac or something like that. Well in fact for the serious eater of hashish it is the portal into a true artificial paradise whose length and breadth is equal to that of any of the artificial paradises that we’ve discovered in modern psychedelic pharmacology.
Prop. 215 took effect on Nov. 6, 1996 as California Health & Safety Code 11362.5. The law makes it legal for patients and their designated primary caregivers to possess and cultivate marijuana for their personal medical use given the recommendation or approval of a California-licensed physician.
Prop. 215 explicitly covers marijuana possession and cultivation for personal medical use. Hashish and concentrated cannabis, including edibles, are also included.
SB420, a legislative statute, went into effect on January 1, 2004 as California H&SC 11362.7-.83. This law broadens Prop. 215 to transportation and other offenses in certain circumstances; allows patients to form medical cultivation “collectives” or “cooperatives”; and establishes a voluntary state ID card system run through county health departments. SB420 sets a baseline statewide guideline of 6 mature or 12 immature plants, and 1/2 pound (8 oz.) processed cannabis per patient. Individual cities and counties are allowed to enact higher, but not lower, limits than the state standard.
Under Prop. 215, a recommendation is valid so long as the doctor says it is. However, SB420 requires ID cards to be renewed annually, and many police refuse to recognize recommendations that are older than a year or so. Courts have ruled that patients must have a valid approval at the time of their arrest, though this can have been oral.
Patients are not required to get an ID card to enjoy the protection of Prop. 215. All that is needed is a physician’s statement saying that marijuana is “approved” or “recommended.”
As Medical Marijuana Laws continue to be progressive we still see entities such as the DEA and the U.N. fight to nullify the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado for fear of a domino effect across the nation. As we go through these changes remain knowledgeable on the current Medical Marijuana Laws, their guidelines and spread knowledge. Cannabis has uses beyond simply altering one’s state of being and the studies on cannabis continue to uncover more and more benefits. Our bodies are wired to intake cannabis, hemp can be used for a wide array of manufacturing purposes, and the relief brought to patients and the economy are indisputable.
For a deeper look into Medical Marijuana Laws check out the California NORML site.
The joint research of Pierre Desprez and Sean McAllister lead to the discovery of the relationship between ID-1, the gene that causes cancer to spread, and Cannabidiol, also known as CBD, a non-toxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. The cannabinoid CBD has the ability to send a death signal from the body to the ID-1.
Our body has two types of cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2. When Cannabidiol meets with CB2 receptors your body sends a suicide signal to the cancer cell.
This video shows the positive results of CBD’s cancer fighting properties in lab tests and on rats.
A clip from Terence Mckenna’s Under the Teaching Tree talk, about how cannabis compares to legal drugs such as caffeine, alcohol and tobacco.
Cannabis holds many benefits, not necessarily related to its properties as an intoxicant, but as a source of food, lubricants, plastics, fuels, etc. The reason the establishment is so hysterical on the subject of cannabis is because it erodes loyalty to the industrial state.
Why is caffeine enshrined in every labor contract negotiated in the western world as a sacred right for workers, twice daily? And why is cannabis…you can lose your house, car, bank account, art collection simply because you have six plants in the backyard. Why this disparity?
Well what is the effect of caffeine? It makes it possible for you to perform your duty during the last 3 hours of the work cycle with efficiency equal to the first 3 hours of the work cycle. It allows people to tolerate spinning widgets until hell freezes over without a thought ever rising in their mind that maybe this is a ridiculous way to spend your life
Cannabis on the other hand, people aren’t so interested in going to work. They’d rather lay around and make love. They don’t want to watch TV, they’d rather smoke a doobie and have a conversation with a friend. In other words (cannabis) promotes activates that don’t make anyone any money and cause people to question the institutions and the social philosophies that are being shoved down their throats.
George Carlin talks about a point in his comedy career where he was directing his message to the wrong people. The close minded and uptight war generation didn’t want to hear him, but the children of the 60s embraced his declarations of peace, love, and change.
Hallucinogens are value changers, so is marijuana. Like it or not, it changes your values.
It opens up your windows, doors of perceptions was what Aldous Huxley called them.
You see things differently and I suddenly was able to see my place and realize I was in the wrong place.
Marijuana Majority exists to help more people understand the simple fact that supporting commonsense solutions like regulating marijuana sales and ending marijuana arrests are mainstream positions and that there’s no reason those who support reform should be afraid to say so.
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Morgan Freeman, Academy Award-Winning ActorIt’s just the stupidest law possible… You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s stupid – The Daily Beast |
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Danny Devito, It’s Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaEven if one doesn’t smoke pot one has to see the benefits of decriminalising it! – Twitter |
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Joe Rogan, Comedian & UFC CommentatorPeople say, ‘Well you can abuse marijuana’… You can abuse cheeseburgers too, you don’t go around closing Burger King… If people…commit crimes while on those drugs they should in fact be punished, but you can’t punish someone for something that hurts no one. – YouTube |
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Rosario Dawson, ActressI’m for the legalization of marijuana, absolutely… We’ve got a lot of things that we need to be putting our focus and attention on and it’d be really great to take it off of joints. – CNN |
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Carl Sagan, AstrophysicistIs it rational to forbid patients who are dying from taking marijuana as a palliative to permit them to gain body weight and to get some food down?… That’s a highly irrational official government position – YouTube |
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Elijah Wood, Actor WilfredThe whole notion that marijuana is illegal is past the point of ridiculousness... To be honest, I’m not really much of a pot smoker… But I’ve always been an advocate. I just feel it should be decriminalized. – High Times |
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Quentin Tarantino, FilmmakerIt’s slavery… All the reasons that they have for keeping this going are the all same reasons they had for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that it was immoral. It’s an industry. – George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight |
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Bill Maher, Comedian & TV HostIt’s like gay marriage. These things that we believe are third rails, and then somebody has the guts to challenge it and they find out, ‘Wow, the American people actually are ahead of us. – HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher |
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Seth Rogen, ActorThere are probably 400 people getting murdered at this second, and these two cops are taking an hour to write up my court summons for smoking a joint... That just seemed so…ridiculous to me. – Playboy |
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Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor of CaliforniaThese [recreational marijuana users] are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it… These laws just don’t make sense anymore. It’s time for politicians to come out of the closet on this. – New York Times |
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Brad Pitt, ActorThe drug war is actually being used to hold a portion of our society down... It’s criminal in itself… The only way to end the war on drugs is to take the profit out of it… We have to look at the what-if-everything-was-legal and people were allowed to make their own choices. – Huffington Post |
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Bill Clinton, 42nd PresidentI think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be. We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment. – Rolling Stone |
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Snoop Dogg, RapperGo to Amsterdam where it is legal and you see that the crime rate is nonexistent. There are people riding on bicycles being happy and it’s because of the environment that’s provided by the legalization of marijuana. Hollywood Reporter |
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Jack Nicholson, Academy Award-Winning ActorThe illicit drug market funds terrorism and — this is a huge problem in America — fuels the foreign gangs. More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offenses. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization. – Daily Mail |
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David Duchovny, ActorI’m all for legalization. I don’t think it would lead to any more use. Everybody I know, if they want to, has smoked pot. The fact that it’s illegal doesn’t stop anybody I know, so why not allow everybody to benefit from it? It would be billions of dollars of tax revenue. – Shockya.com |
> Support Marijuana Reform | Marijuana Majority
Futurist Jason Silva provides examples of psychedelics being used as tools for problem solving and creativity during a discussion at the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas – Sydney Opera House, 2012.
That quote from Tom Robbins where I said that “We need to pull ourselves out of context in order to gawk in amazement at the wonders of the world.”, he was talking about psychedelics, but I think it applies to everything we in our lives.
He says, “It’s not that psychedelics manufacture wonderment or that they can automatically make us more imaginative beings, but what psychedelics does is pull us so radically out of comfort zones, they decondition our thinking, they thrust us out of everything we thought we knew about the world in order to see things as if for the first time and form new synaptic connections.
Marijuana induced a state of hyper priming. It expanded their “associative net” so that they were able to make more far reaching connections among things and ideas. Perhaps that’s because it dissolved usual separateness, categorizations, and other compartmentalized ways in which we store information. If that’s not reason enough for cannabis to be used as a tool, at least for creative people, I don’t know what is.
