Cannabis resin world capital Morocco is struggling to reconcile its historical but illegal cannabis production region with the emerging legal market.
According to the United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime, the northern Rif Mountains region is the world’s top producer of cannabis resin. Cannabis has been tolerated in Morocco’s kingdom for hundreds of years, however it has been illegal in all forms since the county’s independence in 1956.
In 2021, with a goal to improve poverty-stricken regions in Morocco, the kingdom’s ruling party decided to officially approve Law 13-21, a bill legalizing the production of cannabis for industrial, medicinal, and cosmetic purposes in the three provinces of the Rif while also creating a National Regulation Agency for Cannabis Activities (ANRAC) to monitor the production of cannabis.
Under the law, farmers in Morocco’s northern mountainous areas who organize into collectives will gradually be permitted to cultivate cannabis to fill the needs of the legal market. Abdeluafi Laftit, the Interior Minister of the Alaouite kingdom, Morocco’s reigning monarchy, said the legalization of cannabis is part of the government’s plan to create new “development opportunities,” according to a report.
Al Jazeerareports that black market cannabis production in the Rif mountains is thriving more than ever before, and tourists continue to flock to the area because of it. The mountainous and fertile area borders Tangier to the west, and runs along the Mediterranean to the north. Hippies have been traveling there for generations to get their hands on Moroccan hash.
“After the independence of Morocco, the hippies came to the mountains and taught us how to harvest the cannabis plants into cannabis resin [hashish],” Mourad, a father of six, told Al Jazeera. “Personally, I learned from my family and from my friends.”
But despite efforts to loosen laws in the area surrounding cannabis production, old habits die hard, and locals say illegal cannabis is more profitable.
“Official representatives came to the village in March to discuss the new bill with us and take the names of the people who might be interested,” Mourad said. “For my part, I do not really know what I am going to do. If I am forced to switch to legal production, I will, but if most of my neighbours continue to produce cannabis illegally, I will do like them.”
“Of course, I don’t like living in fear, and I would rather have a legal activity. At the same time, I honestly don’t think most farmers are going to follow the bill because we don’t feel like it will benefit us. But I am aware this might be my last year producing cannabis illegally. For my own sake, I will probably have to switch to legal production soon,” he added.
According to data from the Ministry of Interior given to the Agence France-Presse news in 2013, at least 700,000 people—including 90,000 families—lived off the production of cannabis in Morocco.
Al Jazeera reports that the Republic of the Rif was established by Abdelkrim Khattabi in 1921. For about 100 years, the Rif people are reported to be hostile towards the Moroccan state, saying they are left out of Morocco’s economic development.
“Switching to a legal production of cannabis would make us lose money because it is the government that is going to set the prices,” Anouar, a local in Bab Taza toldAl Jazeera.
“Producing illegally is not that dangerous when you have a trustworthy network of buyers. For our part, we sell the cannabis to four family friends only, whom we have known for years, and they deal with bringing it to other cities in the country and to Europe,” Anouar says.
This month marks six years since Uruguay launched legal recreational sales in the country, and newly released data illuminates how successful the cannabis program has been.
The South American country’s Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis released the figures, which were detailed by Forbes.
Cannabis pharmacies in Uruguay “have sold 10,693,210 grams of marijuana between July 19, 2017, and July 19, 2023,” according to the news outlet.
“Currently, 61,509 registered individuals are eligible to access pharmacies for marijuana purchases. Moreover, there are three companies producing cannabis, and the sale of marijuana is authorized in 37 pharmacies distributed across ten departments throughout the country,” Forbes reported. “Moreover, there are presently 14,592 registered users for domestic cultivation and 10,486 members of cannabis clubs across 306 clubs.”
Uruguay made history nearly ten years ago, when it became the first country to legalize all stages of the cannabis process –– growing, sale and smoking –– in December of 2013.
Reuters at the time called it “a pioneering social experiment that will be closely watched by other nations debating drug liberalization.”
In fact, Uruguay had decriminalized possession of cannabis all the way back in 1974. But cultivation and sales of pot were not made legal until the passage of the 2013 law, which was framed as a bid to stymie the power of drug traffickers in the country.
As Reuters explained at the time, although other “countries have decriminalized marijuana possession and the Netherlands allows its sale in coffee shops,” Uruguay became “the first nation to legalize the whole chain from growing the plant to buying and selling its leaves.”
Legal marijuana sales began in July of 2017, when the new law made “pharmacists into dealers,” as The New York Times put it.
But as the Times explained back then, the new cannabis law’s implementation was not all hunky dory. The law had been “contentious for many Uruguayans,” noting that the “thorniest part of it — establishing a system for the state-controlled production and sale of marijuana — took years to work out.”
“Government officials worried that allowing a cannabis scene like the one in Amsterdam would make Uruguay a pariah among neighboring countries wary about legalization. So they developed an onerous registration process and ruled out marketing the country as a mecca for pot tourism. Under the law, only Uruguayan citizens and legal permanent residents are allowed to purchase or grow pot,” the Times reported then.
A report in 2020 found that legalization had not led to a spike in cannabis consumption among teenagers in Uruguay.
The study, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, found that there was “no evidence of an impact on cannabis use or the perceived risk of use” among youth in the country.
“Our findings provide some support for the thesis that Uruguay’s state regulatory approach to cannabis supply may minimize the impact of legalization on adolescent cannabis use,” the study said. “At the same time, our study period represents a period of transition: pharmacy access, by far the most popular means of access, was not available until the summer of 2017. Additional study will be important to assess the longer-term impacts of the fully implemented legalization regime on substance use outcomes.”
The study, which was billed as the “first empirical evidence on [the law’s] impacts on adolescent use of cannabis and related risks,” likewise found that there was not “an increase in student perception of cannabis availability” following legalization.
1) At London’s Gatwick Airport, I went straight to the cafeteria, stationed myself at a deserted corner table, put an opium pellet on my tongue and washed it down with two cups of tepid tea, apparently a catalyst.
On a jammed Laker flight to New York, I managed to read three novels undisturbed by the monster pushing my seat forward, the two monsters in front pushing their seats backward and the Frenchman beside me growing his beard, because airplanes make me feel secure. Soon they’ll have bedrooms again, and since the greatest American fantasy is sky sex, one can almost guarantee the runaway success of airplane bedrooms. They’ll be quite expensive, but that’ll make you want to make more money so you can do it.
Opium facilitates that magic-carpet effect; it completely relaxes your body, and hence your mind, without blurring it. You could function quite efficiently as a lawyer, doctor or bank clerk on opium. At Kennedy, I relaxed during the grueling hour it took to struggle through passport control, and baggage claim, and Customs. The opium cut out any concern. I languidly smoked a cigarette, leaning up against a post, confident that my torn, battered bag, peppered with pellets from a Colt .45 air pistol, would arrive intact. While gazing at the friendly crowd, all undoubtedly as relieved as I was to be back in the USA, I reflected on my escape from London.
The British have always been as cold and insular as their landscape. The only reason they can rock is because they are so pissed off with their sodden little plot in the Atlantic. How small, gray, inauspicious and powerless it is. The blond English youth rattles the bars of his cage before being given the national tranquilizer. Everyone was reading newspapers about sex murders and child pornography. London may be the first deathtrap to go.
The population is splitting the city’s resources at the seams. My memory presents turgid crowds trudging down Oxford Street inhaling stale little cigarettes. After visiting England three times in the last six months, this reporter’s firm conclusion is that the English bite it. Throughout Europe there still exists a distaste for the American way of life, and the English, who distinguish themselves by nothing so much as their colds, have based their reactions to America on an ignorance developed through centuries of insularity. A typical example is their preconceptions about New York, most of which are erroneous.
The first and most important is that it’s very expensive. New York is not a necessarily expensive place to live, but it can be a very expensive place to visit if you have to stay at a hotel and eat in restaurants. The visitor is urged to pry an invitation out of a friend. Otherwise stay at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street.
The second is that it’s terribly dangerous. New York is not particularly dangerous if you know where you are and pay attention to your surroundings. There are more than enough people walking around stoned and drunk to keep the muggers working overtime.
The point about where you stay in New York is that the people of the area tend to have quite an effect on your life. Most of the action in Manhattan happens at night (the best new paper in town is called Night and is just pictures of people dancing by the famous photographer of girls’ legs Anton Perich), and this is why you have to think about where you’re going to hang out. For example, if you live up at 103rd and Broadway, you have to contend with the sex and drug markets up there at 3 A.M.; and living on the Lower East Side is like living in India. On the other hand, if you stay in the West Village or on the Upper East Side, it’s quite safe to move around as long as you aren’t too crazy. All the people I know who’ve been attacked were either too drunk or stoned or careless to be out on the streets alone. But why go anywhere alone anyway, unless you’re going to kill someone?
2) Here is a brief account of the natures of the people dwelling in the major residential sections:
The Upper West Side is noisy and dirty. Fat hairy people fall over in corners, sucking on paper bags, talking to themselves, coughing, spitting and dying. A friend recently moved to the Upper West Side. I said, “No, Linda, don’t go. You are in no condition to go up there.” But she went. Now she calls me up: “How could you ever let me come and live up here! Mandy’s already been assaulted five times! We’re moving. And it’s all your fault, because I had to move up here to get away from you in the first place.”
However, it can’t be all that bad, because a lot of famous people live up there, particularly in the Dakota, where John Lennon has a 17-room apartment.
The Upper East Side is where all the wealthiest people have their pieds-à-terre, from Jackie O. through Halston to Truman and Andy and Mick, and it’s easy to see why, because they have a lot of very nice accoutrements. The streets are clean, the area is heavily patrolled, the shops and buildings are exquisite. It feels like being up on a hill.
There are lots of places to go in the area, and all the best hotels are nearby. This is definitely the place, but since it’s so expensive a majority of the population is over 50, creating a slightly daffy atmosphere.
Greenwich Village. There is an East and a West Village. The West Village, where your reporter has one of numerous apartments at his disposal, must have the highest ratio of homosexuals in the world. This is basically gaydom. The battle over censorship has been won and so forth. It’s a very pleasant, completely peaceful area. I have never witnessed, heard of, or felt, any threat of violence. There are many attractive restaurants and stores. Everyone walks around hand in hand.
The East Village is inhabited by punks of all ages. They have always maintained that the East Village, also known as the Lower East Side, is the hip place to be, but a series of drug deaths, rapes and robberies in the late ’50s and early ’70s drove many tenants away. Now, however, with the emergence of punk on the rock scene, a lot of activity has been generated on the Lower East Side. Many people live down there, including Joey (“It sucks!”) Ramone, William Burroughs (who says he finds the people talking to themselves and dying in the street a useful contrast to his somewhat idyllic place in Colorado), Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell, who wrote “Blank Generation” in a kitchen overlooking the BoWery.
Soho/Boho/Nolio. The so-called “Soho” area has become famous over the last five years as a kind of extension of the Greenwich Village all-artists-have-to-Iive-in-the-same-place-so-there-can-be-a-scene mentality. Soho is basically a series of warehouses turned into loft spaces in which people live and work. Central Soho is a pleasant and expensive place. It broadens out in myriad directions, being so far downtown that it can’t be interrupted until Wall Street, and some lower Soho locations are quite dangerous. The streets are empty, poorly lit and hardly patrolled. Some maniacs live down there, and they come out at night.
Generally speaking, if you see someone lying on the street bleeding or not bleeding, vomiting or not vomiting, if you see someone staggering down the street on their last legs with eyes closed, if you see someone holding a heated debate with themselves while head banging, don’t do anything. These are leftovers from Ramones hits. They won’t hurt you if you don’t approach them.
3) The best places to go are parties. The fastest blood is connected by a never-ending flow of business parties, and everyone is always on the lookout for new people. Get invited to as many as you can. This could be difficult, but not impossible, if you don’t know any people. It probably isn’t hard to crash that big loft party downtown tonight. At most big parties the host only knows 25 percent of the guests, so you can always say, “1 came with Joan … DeMcnille. Barbara Braden?” A little cocaine will take care of any problem if the host should attempt to eject you. But really one of the best things about New York is everybody always wants to meet somebody new.
Suddenly, you’re staying with me overnight, as a houseguest, in my apartment in the West Village. There are two bedrooms. I let you have one of them to do whatever you want in because they’re far away from each other and there’s a separate bathroom.
You are extremely lucky. Tonight I have an invitation to go to Richard Avedon’s party at the Metropolitan Museum. The invitation, like all good invitations, admits two. It says black tie, so you have to get dressed up. You don’t have anything to wear?
Quick, run down to Manic Panic, that store on St. Marks Place that sells all those punk clothes. Punks always look like jewels, so if you get something there, you’ll be okay. You could go to Trash and Vaudeville or Revenge; they all have lots of stuff for not so much money. That’s on the Lower East Side, and since it’s a picturesque and sunny day, you can walk.
4) Me: So you went and got a great outfit for $25, and what else happened?
You: I forget.
Me: You ran into William Burroughs on the street, didn’t you?
You: That’s right.
Me: And he was with a guy who you know from Kansas who’s his secretary now, that big Negro.
You: He is not a Negro, he’s a Swede.
Me: I thought he was from Kansas.
You: That’s where all the Swedes went.
Me: Why aren’t the stars in the sky tonight?
You: Because they’re all on the ground.
Me: Well, we got in at… what time was it?
You: I forget. I didnt look. Were you drunk again?
Me: No, not really.
You: Then why were you running down the street being chased by that girl in the black dress with the…
Me: No, I was just running away from her, because she started to say mean things about someone I like and I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t stand it. Did you enjoy the party? Who did you see there?
You: Oh, Linda McCartney. Um… Buck Henry.
Me: Buck Henry! Who was he with?
You: He’s been hanging around with Al Goldstein over at Death magazine.
Me: How come?
You: Search me.
Me: I don’t want to. So who else did you see?
You: Er… Carole Bouquet.
Me: Who’s she?
You: She was in that Buñuel film, That Obscure Object of Desire.
Me: How do you pronounce it?
You: I don’t know. She was also in that movie with Richard Hell about being a punk rock star, and then he’s her guru or something and they move to the Upper East Side.
Me: I thought he married Suki Love.
You: That was Ulli Lommel, the German guy who made the film. He married Suki Love, and they’re making a film right now called Cocaine Cowboys, starring Jack Palance and Tom Sullivan. It was a great party, I really liked it.
Me: What was great about it? Say something. Just talk about it, tell everybody.
You: Well, I liked it because it was the sort of beginning of the New York season, and a lot of people—I think 5,000 people—came, or something, and you had to wait 25 minutes just to get in, which was sort of great, because everyone was in evening clothes and rich and stuff like that, but they still had to stand outside, just like any jerk. Like us.
Me: Yeah, like us. We didn’t mind.
You: It was fun because all those people were so upset.
Me: Did Linda McCartney have to wait outside?
You: No, because she went to the dinner with Richard Avedon before the party.
Me: Was Andy there?
You: No, he went to see A Wedding instead.
Me: He went to see A Wedding! Who was he with?
You: Just a couple of beautiful girls, and they lost their limousine. But anyway, I also liked the party because you could stroll around the halls of the museum drinking and keep bumping into somebody. I noticed that A and B are back together.
Me: Again. I know. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. And what was… he has a mustache now and she’s got a scar.
You: Well, scars are nice sometimes. It depends where they are. But anyway, did anyone have any drugs?
Me: Only C. C always has drugs.
You: So did you take some?
Me: Yes, and then D grabbed me and dragged me behind the door where they keep the brooms, and I thought, “God, this is so great, this is so great, sex in a broom closet at the Metropolitan Museum during a party for Richard Avedon!”
5) The United Nations is located on First Avenue between 42nd and 46th streets. I went there in a taxi. The U.N. is very nice because when you get there suddenly you are in a big international atmosphere, and there’s even a lawn. It is good to smoke a joint on the way over in the back of the cab with a breeze blowing in off the river as you go up First Avenue passing a heliport at 34th Street. You’re beginning to see the streets in the daytime, with all their charming mystery, weirdness and variety.
The U.N. is free. For nothing you can go and feel important listening seriously to the speeches by the mad representatives of various countries. It is all nonsense, but it is very tasteful. They were discussing South Africa when I dropped in and taking hours to tell the detailed bio of Steve Biko. One thing I noticed was that although the men looked nothing more than ordinary, most of the women were very attractive. It’s great to go there, because all the speeches are in foreign languages and you have to have an earplug so you can get a translation. If I was the translator, I know I would break in and say, “This sucks… ”
For $2 you can take a one-hour tour of the U.N. I don’t know about this bit. I was going to do it, but suddenly a woman screamed out, “The next tour will be in French only!” and I had to split. I couldn’t wait for a bunch of despicable frogs to walk around while I cooled my heels. I had places to go, things to do, people to see. This is New York! You can’t suddenly have a bunch of frogs rushing in, taking your time in Manhattan. Just tell them you haven’t got that much time. They’ll respect you and treat you better. It’s like when you take a phone call, a lot of the time they answer it with a record, the premise being that you will sit idly by listening until they’re ready to talk to you. Hang up and tell them in no uncertain terms that whenever you hear machines you always hang up.
There’s also a really good dining room called the Delegates’ Dining Room where you can go and pretend you’re delegates, or trick your new girl friend, or something.
I didn’t know what to do next, so I went and had lunch at this restaurant called Mortimer’s on 75th and Lexington with Catherine Guinness, who works in magazines here, and she told me that more of the really elegant fashion mags were coming to Manhattan from Europe with a lot of money, because they really believe that people want to be more elegant, as Diane Von Furstenberg and Halston have proved. And then I went to the Stock Exchange, about which I apparently wrote: “One of the best things is the New York Stock Exchange, 20 Broad Street, way downtown. It’s pretty hard to figure out what’s going on here, but everyone is running around making or losing money, basically. The relative informality of the whole operation is a little unsettling. It looks like a vast betting shop, and 25 1/2 million Americans own stock. The most striking thing about my visit was how bad the women in the area looked. I think all that counting gets to them.
6) There’s no point in going to all the great in places in New York before you meet some people, some New Yorkers being New Yorkers around their local watering holes. You could go to CBGB if you like rock ’n’ roll. There’s always a lot of people there, and you can talk to them, pretty much. I mean, they’re nice people and you can be very straightforward and say, “I come from X and I just got here and where should I go?” If you choose the wrong person and he’s catatonic, don’t get put off, just ask the next person. If you go to CBGB, be sure to take a cab and to get into a cab as soon as you leave, because it is on the Bowery and sometimes the people down there get quite irate late at night and rush up to hit you or piss on you, an unnerving experience and not funny when it happens when there’s no one else around, no cops and so forth. But basically CBGB is a lot of fun, and lots of kids are standing around outside banging their heads against the wall.
If you think you can get in, go to Studio 54. There is a lot of ambivalent feeling about Studio 54, but as anthropologist Peter Beard says, “You’ve got to think of it as an animals’ watering hole—it’s the number-one water hole in the universe. There’s the anthropology corner, where you find the greeting behavior, displacement behavior; the bisexual bathroom hallway; the subterranean hardcore; and the theater balcony.” For other meeting places, look in the newspapers. About all the Village Voice and the Soho Weekly News are good for is their listings. Papers worth buying for information are Interview, Punk and Night.
Going out at night in New York, use cabs. If you can afford to do it, rent a limousine for one night’s entertainment, because it’s worth seeing Manhattan from that perspective. Also the limousine drivers can be very friendly. They’ll smoke a joint and take you up to Harlem in the middle of winter to look at the hundreds of junkies shuffling on the corners, and past the Apollo theater, or crawl around Hudson Street gay-barhopping, or cruise the streets for pickups. Just like in the movies.
After a while, New York becomes a movie set. Did we already use that quote? But it’s so good we can use it again. Why aren’t the stars in the sky? Because they’re on the streets. I mean, it’s amazing how many talented and wonderful people are wandering around, and you see them all the time. I bumped into Lou Reed only yesterday. He was looking for a new apartment. “Victor, meet the Moose,” he said. I turned around and there was this guy seven feet tall and broad with it.
Everybody thinks that New Yorkers think New York is the center of the world, and they’re always saying how New York thinks it’s such a big cheese. But that’s really not true. New Yorkers know that America is a great expansive country, fascinating, completely different all over, and they want to see Santa Fe and Minneapolis, Tampa, Fort Worth. No one in New York ever says anything bad about America or tries to put down Arizona. But, boy, you just wait till you get out to Colorado or San Francisco, and even the hotel clerk and the bellboy are congratulating you. “You made it out. You got away from Death City!” “That town of gangsters!” “Boy are you lucky!” And they shake your hand and insist you stay a while. Personally, I can never wait to get back to Manhattan.
You don’t get a good look at Manhattan when you fly in on a jet, because the airport is in Queens. Meanwhile, the secret of Manhattan is to see it from the air, because Manhattan is a city that grows upward. So, the first thing to do in Manhattan is get higher than the city.
Flying is an elegant sport, and you could benefit from doing it more, anyway. The first thing to do in Manhattan is jump in a cab and tell the driver, “The heliport at 34th Street and East River Drive.” Anytime between 9:30 A.M. and 4:30 P.M. a four-seater helicopter will take you up. It is a good eye-opener. You see big blue swimming poois and big green tennis courts on top of high-rise apartment buildings. You note the very different looks of the different sections of Manhattan: an incredible array of architectural forms in the variety of buildings on the Upper East Side; the bombed-out look of the Lower East Side. You fly directly past the tops of skyscrapers. As the chopper cuts across the East River to touch down on the island’s edge, the buildings rapidly move up at you and develop into their frames just like in famous pictures. You see the whole island through a kaleidoscope as the planes of the buildings tilt. It’s a quite different view, and the seven minute ride is more than a bargain for $9 (minimum of two people).
There is also a boat (the Circle Line at 43rd Street and 12th Avenue) that goes around the whole island while a loudspeaker tells what you’re passing. It takes two and one-half hours and costs $6. I slept through the first half of the trip, but there were two good parts: when you go around the top of the island, it’s pretty fucked up; and, when you sail past the Upper West Side, the line of apartment buildings along the edge of the island looks like the forbidding wall of a giant medieval fortress. Manhattan is a fortress. As you walk along the streets you will feel as if you are “inside” the city. It even has a moat.
As soon as you get off the boat, head east toward 34th Street until you come to the Empire State Building, which is at Fifth Avenue. Take an elevator to the 86th floor ($1.70) and go out on the observation deck, where visibility runs up to 25 miles on a clear day. The observation deck faces north, south, west and east. Take a good look in all four directions and you will get a pretty firm hold on the layout, which will be useful when you think you’re lost.
7) Another lens to look at New York through is provided by the lobbies, bars, restaurants and—if you can make it—rooms of our most elegant hotels. Start at the Carlyle, tea between four and four-thirty in the afternoon. This is where the Kennedys stay. Warren Beatty has a home on the top floor so he can be three blocks away from Diane Keaton. You can’t stay there together unless you’re married.
The Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland, situated next to each other between 59th and 61st Streets, are the two major hotels for the major celebrities. Their majestic towers rise like sentinels of elegance over Central park, and as you look up at them from the avenue, you know that on any given day Mick Jagger, Francis Ford Coppola, David Bowie or Max Von Sydow may be gazing down upon you.
Go to the Sherry-Netherland for an evening cocktail and make use of their telephone-at-the-table service to call somebody up and impress them by having them call you back. Try and sit in the lobby of the Pierre for as long as you can some mid-week afternoon, just to see who’s floating through. The rich look different because they keep different hours and can afford invisible makeup. If you look like you’re waiting for someone seriously (carrying a tape recorder, for example), no one will bother you.
Across the street from the Pierre you will see the Plaza, which you may remember, as you stand gazing at it, used to be the home of Eloise, a very sophisticated girl who lived there on her own and liked it very much. Unfortunately, Eloise has long flown the coop, and the Plaza has recently been computerized. And word has come out that even the music of the violinist in the Palm Court Lounge has been bowdlerized. Go instead to the St. Regis, hidden in the shadows of 55th Street just off Fifth Avenue. This is where Salvador Dali lives in the winter. And I met Sissy Spacek there once. She was standing in a green velvet lounge wearing a green velvet dress…
Manhattan is 12 1/2 miles long and 2 1/2 miles wide at its widest point, covering an area of 23 square miles. It has what a clerk at the census bureau described as “an incredible population density of 66,923 people per square mile.” A square mile—consider stuffing 66,923 people in it. 1,416,700 people live in Manhattan, but the population is gradually decreasing. The per capita income is $6,307. An interesting figure. The island is connected by 19 bridges, four tunnels and 11 subway lines to the mainland.
Lo que hizo el docente e investigador Chris Duvall con Cannabis es, de entrada, como para prestarle atención. Su libro, esta tesis, no antepone una matriz ideológica ni se ensancha en sus conocimientos previos para afirmar que la marihuana es así o asá.
Y si el manual obligatorio del “buen divulgador cannábico” obliga a los autores a ser “demasiado políticos” en su mirada, Duvall le esquiva al bulto y se vuelve deliberadamente meridiano.
“Los autores escriben cosas como: ‘Confía en mí, conozco bien el cannabis y creo que es un veneno que debería prohibirse para siempre’ o ‘Confía en mí, conozco el cannabis y creo que es un regalo de Dios que resolverá todos los problemas’. Estoy exagerando, por supuesto, pero con demasiada frecuencia las personas han tratado de ganarse la confianza de los lectores al avanzar puntos de vista políticos sobre el cannabis, en lugar de exhibir una investigación sólida”, arremete Duvall, en exclusiva para El Planteo.
Va: “Tengo sentimientos encontrados sobre la legalización. No me malinterpretes, la prohibición ha sido un fracaso masivo que ha desperdiciado miles de millones de dólares y destruido la vida de millones de personas. El cannabis es mucho menos dañino que muchas sustancias, especialmente el alcohol, el tabaco y muchos medicamentos de venta libre. Y los costos sociales son astronómicos al encarcelar a personas por posesión y uso de cannabis. Y en los Estados Unidos, donde vivo, el cumplimiento de la ley sobre drogas ha sido profundamente racista. Así que definitivamente estoy a favor de la legalización”.
Sin embargo: “Al mismo tiempo, cuestiono por qué el consumo de drogas, en general, no sólo de cannabis, ha aumentado tanto en las últimas décadas. Este es un dato a nivel mundial, pero los Estados Unidos tienen niveles más altos de consumo de drogas que la mayoría de los países. Las historias y estudios sociales sobre el consumo de drogas muestran que está asociado con diversos problemas sociales, como la pobreza, la marginalización, los sistemas de atención médica deficientes, la desesperanza y así sucesivamente”.
¿Entonces? “La actual popularidad del cannabis tiene razones complejas, por supuesto, pero me gustaría que se dedicaran más esfuerzos y recursos para abordar algunos de los problemas subyacentes que llevan a muchas personas hacia el consumo de drogas. Entonces, sí a la legalización, y un sí más firme a encontrar formas de reducir el consumo de drogas en general”, revuelve Duvall.
El hombre y la planta
Explorando la historia cultural y geográfica de la planta, Duvall encontró un objeto de estudio escandalosamente rebuscado y profundamente humano.
Por caso, su formación en Estudios Africanos y Geografía y su docencia como profesor adjunto de Geografía en la Universidad Nuevo México le otorgan una perspectiva que recorre –con suavidad y hasta con un “enfoque pop”- espacio y tiempo.
Su vida profesional se ha centrado en entender cómo las personas interactúan con las plantas: partió con agricultores en Mali, siguió con el “tabaco angoleño” y fue metiéndose con el cannabis y sus olvidadas raíces africanas. De hecho, inicialmente quiso escribir un libro sobre cannabis en África pero, dice, “no pudo”.
Con ese envión, Cannabis se erige como una historia mundial del cannabis. “Estoy realmente contento de haber estudiado la historia mundial, que es fascinante y compleja porque es realmente una planta global”, cuenta Duvall.
Mitos y verdades cannábicas
En ese sentido, el autor escribió Cannabis para dos audiencias posibles: la primera, para quienes saben de cannabis pero desconocen su historia y su geografía; la segunda, para quienes creen saber mucho de historia del cannabis y los obligue a retroceder y repreguntarse sobre hechos históricos.
“La mayoría de la literatura popular sobre la historia del cannabis se basa en datos falsos sobre el pasado de la planta que se originaron en medios populares pro-marihuana en la década de 1970. La evidencia para muchas anécdotas pro-cannabis es inexistente y, al mismo tiempo, se omiten hechos muy bien documentados en las historias recientes sobre cannabis. La Reina Victoria no usaba marihuana, pero los africanos esclavizados sí lo hacían. Cada libro popular sobre cannabis parece mencionar a Victoria como prueba de que la prohibición debería terminar, y se ignora el significado de las experiencias africanas”, detalla Duvall.
A la sazón, los libros de defensa política cumplieron su propósito eficazmente: la prohibición está llegando a su fin.
Por lo tanto, como propone el autor, ahora es momento de aprender que el cannabis tiene una historia documentada que veces puede ser, digamos, incómoda de reconocer.
Un libro accesible
A lo largo de Cannabis, que forma parte de la colección “Naturalezas”, el autor desafía los lugares comunes y hace close-up en momentos históricos: en Eurasia, hace más de 10.000 años atrás, en el uso de fibras, en la antigua China, en África y sus variedades, en el proceso social, artístico, religioso y legal que viene atravesando el cannabis.
Se habla del origen de la palabra “marihuana”, del costado psicoactivo, de la prohibición, de la demonización del cannabis como un monstruo mortal, de las representaciones antiguas, del fracaso de la prohibición, del valor simbólico y productivo del cáñamo, de los recursos sostenibles, de mentes alteradas (y de algunas fragilidades), de puntos de vista farmacológicos, de la incertidumbre de la experimentación, del miedo y, por supuesto, del último siglo de leyes antidrogas.
“Tal vez después de un siglo o más de legalización, el miedo desaparecerá. Aunque, nuevamente, creo que la naturaleza de las drogas significa que siempre serán al menos un poco aterradoras”, confiesa Duvall, después de tres años de investigación profunda y tras haber escrito The African Roots of Marijuana (sólo disponible en inglés) más un tendal de publicaciones académicas (disponibles en Google Scholar o ResearchGate).
Asimismo, Cannabis no es un libro para otros académicos, ni comprime gestos masturbatorios, sino que plantea un enfoque accesible, especialmente para quienes tienen curiosidad sobre la planta pero no tienen conocimientos especializados al respecto.
Habrá más: cáñamo
Por estos días, el autor se encuentra investigando el cosmos del cáñamo y sus diversos sistemas laborales.
“Históricamente, la producción de cáñamo requería mucha mano de obra, por lo que fue ampliamente producido por trabajadores no libres hasta el siglo XX, incluyendo esclavos, siervos, prisioneros y otros. No obstante, esto ha cambiado en las últimas décadas, ya que su procesamiento se ha vuelto dependiente de los combustibles fósiles”, comenta.
Y cierra: “En cualquier caso, es un proyecto grande, por lo que se está desarrollando lentamente”.
Few cannabis operations in America can enjoy the level of respect from peers Preferred Gardens has through its rise in California to its massive Florida launch that has many calling its flower the Sunshine State’s finest. It’s the same story back home in California. Not only is Preferred Gardens a contender in the debate about the best flower, but it ranks high in both indoor and mixed light. Its winter light-assisted harvests are among the most flavorful things you’ll taste in California.
Preferred Gardens is essentially as mom-and-pop as multistate cannabis operations can get. Founder David Polley and his wife Nicki do a lot of the work. They’re backed by a small cultivation team that helps Polley in California, Florida, and Michigan as needed to produce the high-end flowers. Polley has trained people on their growing style for the out-of-state efforts.
We sat down with Polley to get his take on the recent hype levels he’s experienced on both coasts. There isn’t really another guy at the moment who is growing flower both indoor and mixed light and getting the same level of recognition. So our first question: What is it like to be that guy?
“I know why. It’s because they’re both individually extremely hard, right?” Polley told High Times. “Especially mixed light, it’s ridiculous. It’s so relentlessly hard to deal with at all times, being head of cultivation of my own site, just controlling that facility all the time is a bitch compared to like these indoor facilities.”
High Times Magazine, May 2023
Polley laughed and explained that the amount of people who have made the switch from growing in greenhouses to growing indoors.
“Most of the guys that have come from greenhouses, they’ll tap into indoor and then they’re like, ‘Fuck going back to greenhouse,’ because it’s just so difficult compared to what you can do. You can make it so automated indoor and have a life,” he explained.
But Polley has not chosen the path of his peers that quit greenhouses. He visits both his indoor facility in Sacramento, California and greenhouses in Yolo County daily. The farms are roughly a one hour drive from each other. This gives him some pretty unique insights, like the one he offered before about greenhouses being a bit harder to automate than state-of-the-art indoor grow rooms like the ones he runs in Sacramento. Even if the greenhouses, like his, are generally top-of-the-line before you get into the stupid money lab-grade kinds of facilities.
Polley argues the reason for this is just the level of variables. But even with the advancements in agriculture we’ve seen from places like Holland, Polley argues, “There’s always something that’s gonna hit you out of nowhere. There’s just too many changes happening on the outside.”
Znacks, a cross of Chauffeur and Runtz, combines the tastes of fruit and fuel. Photo by Phil Emerson @philemerson.
Polley believes once you start getting into the fanciest greenhouse debate, you might as well just build out an indoor grow. It’ll cost the same amount of money.
“There’s just so many moving parts. I mean, I’m running 30,000 square feet in Yolo. And I have one of the greenhouses that’s 20 years old, so every day there’s something going wrong with the mechanical,” Polley said.
But he wouldn’t want to be in one of those fancy greenhouses regardless. He feels like the more technology you add, the more things there are to break. Rudimentary approaches have proven successful for Preferred Gardens.
“All the easy analog timers and all that stuff, that stuff never breaks, all the new stuff is made to break,” Polley said, comparing cannabis hardware to the newest generations of smartphones.
Polley wouldn’t change a thing just for some new tech fad. He’s spent years dialing in his mixed-light setup. Many would put it second to none for the quality of both the operation and the resulting flower.
Polley just has to be an exceptionally hands-on operator with every plant under his supervision.
“Just on a regular basis to be able to walk in there and have the energy and the plants. It’s just different,” he said of his greenhouses. “I don’t know. I see lots of indoor spaces and they just seem so industrial like there’s no being in tune with the plant. Really. You’re really just turning and burning on a lot of stuff. Not to say that we’re not putting out amazing indoor flowers now too. But it’s a different life.”
David Polley tours his greenhouse setup in Yolo County. Photo by Phil Emerson @philemerson.
As much as he loves the flower, he equally hates the business side of things. He’s always been in it to produce the best flower possible. He knew if he could do that, the money side would work out.
“I love operating. I have all this opportunity to be this businessman. That’s the stressful part. I don’t like doing that,” Polley said. “I mean, it sucks when you’re doing stuff all the time that you don’t like to do. I like doing the events. I love growing plants. I love seeing new fresh weed, new strains, pheno hunting, breeding, and all that stuff like crazy. That’s all I want to do. Even if I didn’t make any money.”
But as cannabis legalization grows in America, how much can an operation like Preferred Gardens scale up and still produce the cannabis it’s famous for? Especially given how much time Polley spends at the grows.
He was quick to agree that there is that imaginary line in the sand where you could start to lose quality for anyone but said it’s different for everyone. Not to mention you can do a lot before you get to that point with a great team like the one he has. Secondly, he’s avoided the mega deals that would fund a big jump in production. Some of the offers were as big as $40 million.
Znacks. Photo by Phil Emerson @philemerson.
Polley says those deals are scary because the contracts don’t even matter. If things go south with a big money partner they already have someone on retainer that can try and bankrupt you through perpetual litigation.
Recently for Polley, scale isn’t as important as partnering with the right people from state to state to enter new markets. The deal with The Flowery in Florida has proven particularly fruitful and seen the name Preferred Gardens rapidly rise in prominence among Florida cultivators.
The next phase of the Florida buildout will see them double in size to 200,000 square feet.
“I already have my facility in Sacramento, and it’s only 6,000 square feet but the rooms are identical to the rooms in Florida,” Polley explained.
He added a couple little tiny things to deal with the outside variables of Florida like another 10-15% more dehumidification. He also beefed up the A/Cs a little bit, but at the end of the day it is the same facility, and the business was plenty prepared for the heat after its Sacramento effort.
Polley believes the multistate operators running different kinds of gardens from state to state are kidding themselves. He argues that that model doesn’t work because they aren’t experiencing the same things from garden to garden on a daily basis.
Photo by Phil Emerson @philemerson.
Polley is thankful for the moment. But he never takes it for granted.
“I can see it just disappearing like instantly, if you know what I mean. Like it would just be drops and probably have to stay in a certain state like California or whatnot like that. I want to make it bigger,” he said.
As for the interstate commerce debate starting to happen, Preferred Gardens will need to make partnerships with the right players that can actually export cannabis. Maybe one day in the future, the whole country can buy from Preferred Gardens, but for Polley that doesn’t look too far down the line.
“Then I can run teams to follow my standard operating procedures and oversee that situation,” Polley said. “I don’t see that being a problem for me. I mean, I knew that already.”
This article was originally published in the May 2023 issue of High Times Magazine.
Many years ago I set out on a journey far from home, one which almost everybody I loved and respected begged me not to embark on. Still, I hobbled West toward Humboldt County in my little red pickup truck in search of mountains littered with cannabis fields and luscious emerald green forests stretching all the way to the frigid untouched ocean shorelines of the Pacific Northwest.
While marooned in the Triangle I naturally discovered what would develop into a lifelong obsession with the cannabis plant and the people who grow it. I trimmed, I transplanted, I de-leafed and I learned what I could from those who allowed me to. I lived off grid for months at a time, hauled big ass bags of soil up the side of a mountain, worked in hot greenhouses in the blazing sun and loved (almost) every second of it. Most importantly, I learned to properly respect the plant and prioritize my own personal relationship with growing and consuming the plant. I studied Journalism at Humboldt State and had the privilege of interviewing some of the earliest cannabis brands and collectives emerging from the Triangle, the magnitude of which I couldn’t possibly have appreciated at the time. I distinctly remember the general vibe was cautious optimism. Everyone was apprehensive but they seemed to believe better times were just around the corner, and one day they might be permitted to exhale. Christ Almighty did we miss the mark on that one.
“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
– Hunter Thompson
I’m very protective over those memories and the sanctity of what we were all collectively trying to accomplish out there behind the redwood curtain. Everyone just wanted to get the world high with the best medicine they could make. I only caught the tail end of the good old days. I know nothing of true freedom. The brave men and women who came before me laid down a legacy to pass down to their children and to their grandchildren while simultaneously living under the constant threat of helicopters bearing down on their family homes to usher them away to life in federal prison. They did their work silently, diligently, and most of them risked everything they had every single year just to keep breaking even and preserving their way of life.
Today, the helicopters are still circling and that way of life is under dire threat of extinction. We are down to our last handful of white rhinos, as they say. Small family farms are going belly-up every day, pound prices are in the shitter and the general quality of dispensary product continues to tank for all but a select few companies. State enforcement efforts ramp up every year as the traditional market slowly withers away, taking everyone’s livelihood with it all the way from the 100-plant hill hermits to the casual dime bag peddlers.
The reality is that cannabis equities are becoming more like the third class passengers on the Titanic, jockeying for their position on the lower decks as the ship eases its way toward the ocean floor.”
If all that weren’t bad enough, the community is beginning to turn on each other more than ever before. We sit and bicker online like school children while Chad, Brad, and Thad, the merry band of corporate cannabis buzzards, steal everything we hold dear as a community. They’re taking our land, our genetics, our SOP’s, our hard work, our years of sacrifice and our money while we, “the culture,” spend our time posting typo-laden paragraphs about how shitty Lemon Cherry Gelato is to our Instagram story.
The Artist Formerly Known as Runtz is on my absolute last nerve as a consumer, sure. But the reality is LCG checks every single box for commercial growers today: yield, color, vigor, taste and potency all score high enough no matter who grows it. Deluding ourselves and others that businesses need to ignore market realities for the sake of some arbitrary definition of headiness that almost nobody has managed to create a viable long-term business model from is not only one of the DSM-5 for diagnosing schizophrenia, but extremely detrimental to our collective image as an industry.
I’m bringing this up because it’s an excellent segue into today’s topic: Evolution.
Cannabis is no longer illegal in a growing majority of the country and the market fluctuations we’ve been experiencing can more or less be considered growing pains as we make our way along our own special little arc of American consumerism. Despite the constant surge of flashy mirons, mylars, and hentai-themed eighths which I’ve NEVER understood, the end game to all this is mono or mix-strain Kirkland hash, Safeway-brand distillate seltzers, and cigarette-style packs of Marlboro Greens at every gas station across the country. Craft will always exist especially in California but at a fraction of the availability we enjoy now. There are a couple other ways it could go in the short term but barring any super irresponsible acts of Congress, which I acknowledge is an unrealistic expectation, cannabis will be another boring commodity inside of ten years.
By boring I mean it will be bought and paid for just like everything else and if we don’t start assimilating with the grown-ups a bit, we are little more than a doe with a broken leg, enjoying its last few moments in the sun before we are ripped to pieces by the predators lurking just over the horizon. They are coming the moment it is convenient for them. We can laugh and dance and sing but the big bad filthy rich ice wolves are coming for every single cent. We need to step into the light a bit and occasionally start acting like literate business people rather than the bloodthirsty tribe of hyena-ferrets we’ve been resembling as of late, at least when it comes to our online activities which brings me to my next question:
WHEN IN THE NAME OF AWARD-WINNING CANADIAN SINGER/SONGWRITER CELINE DION DID WE DECIDE TO START AIRING SHIT OUT ON INSTAGRAM EVERY TIME SOMEBODY STUBS THEIR DAMN TOE? SISTER MARY MOTHER OF GOD WE USED TO HAVE RULES ABOUT THIS SHIT, WHO RAISED YOU FUCKING PEOPLE?
I’m sorry for yelling, that was unladylike of me but someone had to say something. The loudest three percent of us need to mind their manners and shut the fuck up once in a while. For a bunch of supposedly former criminals we sure do seem to have an issue as a community with airing our dirty laundry out on the internet for everyone to see, also known as dry snitching. I don’t follow any tobacco or wine executives but I don’t think ANYONE in any other comparable industry is participating in anything resembling the incredibly public-facing head-assery Olympics that has taken place over the last several weeks. To wit:
Posting screenshots of your lawsuits is bad enough and we absolutely need to nip that shit in the bud because grown men, not to mention industry leaders with all the money in the world, taking time out of their day to post childish response videos containing soap-opera-level personal quibbles makes us look exactly like the “flea market circus” the host of everyone’s favorite podcast thinks we are. Everyone tighten up a bit and spend more time in the garden, I’m begging you. Very rich and litigious men, not to mention all 535 members of Congress are watching us out of the corner of their eye. They’re biding their time and keeping detailed records of blatantly obvious dumb dog fuckery like a whole industry of supposed professionals going to Civil War with each other online instead of picking up the phone and handling shit amongst ourselves.
Allegations of cheating at the Emerald Cup might have been enough to raise my eyebrows an inch or two if the accused parties weren’t already known far and wide for having immaculate product and winning or placing in every cannabis contest that means anything in the last several years. For those who didn’t catch wind of what happened, I won’t give credence to rumors by offering specifics and frankly I wasn’t there so I don’t fully know or care what happened. All I know is it’s a fucking weed contest, not WWE. After the allegations surfaced, people I respect and look up to in this space publicly said disgusting things because a woman happened to be among the accused. Nobody had an excuse to behave the way they did and the community was way too goddamn eager to watch some of our most celebrated members fall on their faces. We all need to do better than we did that day.
The Unpaid Tabs Instagram page is a nightmare and I am taking this opportunity to publicly ask the owner of that page to take it down before somebody inevitably gets hurt. Everyone owes everyone money in cannabis because the game has been rigged against us from the get-go and drawing attention to that for the sake of your own personal vendettas is an amateur hour play at best. I’m not making excuses for anybody. It’s a serious problem and one we need to address properly by passing legislation that allows us to open bank accounts and enjoy tax breaks, but fielding anonymous reports of people claiming they’re owed money by major companies in today’s day and age is not helping anybody. It’s 70% petty gossip and it’s the last thing we need right now. This is not the first time somebody has tried to do this and it is so goddamn irresponsible. Quietly collect your debts in person or charge it to the game, but if you opt to go whining to whoever’s running the unpaid tabs page you probably don’t belong here in the first place.
My point is that even when a small portion of the community behaves poorly, it reflects horribly on all of us. If we want to have any say in the future of cannabis, we need to start collaborating and presenting solutions instead of constantly bitching about the same problems to anyone who will listen. It’s bad form. I want to wake up in 20 years and still be a part of this thing because I shed blood, sweat, and tears to be here today and I deserve my spot like so many others. We have to be the example. We have to bail water out faster than it’s coming in. We are the Thin Green Line preventing the cannabis industry from cataclysmically spiraling down to a very midsy place from which we will never recover, a place which will be owned in totality by companies like Glass House if we don’t stop throwing stones in a… glass house…
Glass House is one of the largest cannabis companies in California and it is part-owned by a former police officer. They have been accused, if not informally, of a laundry list of unscrupulous and predatory business tactics that I won’t repeat because they have much better lawyers than I. Suffice it to say they’re big sharks in a big pond and they’re playing for keeps so they naturally attract a lot of negative attention from the heads. They recently went on the First Smoke of the Day podcast, which I’ve long appreciated for their ability to field the right guests. When a clip of the Glass House interview was released, everyone who has ever consumed cannabis in their life took time out of their day to log onto Instagram and sing the siren song of the second rate: “Why are you giving them a platform?”
First of all, the deplatforming conversation is for the sake of preventing hateful and harmful ideologies from spreading, like refusing to air a KKK rally on TV. I’m not the one to decide what’s harmful enough to make the list but I am pretty thoroughly certain “weed-growing former police officer” doesn’t qualify. Second of all: the hosts of First Smoke of the Day aren’t 60 fucking Minutes which is why one of them calls himself “PackGods.” I’m not throwing punches here either, just a couple of light jabs to make myself laugh. I love the podcast, I just don’t know why anyone expected them to grill the owners of Glass House any harder than they did. I watched the entire interview and they asked everything I would have wanted them to. They could have followed up a bit harder, sure, but that’s not a sin. The interview was very calculated on both sides. Glass House knew exactly what they were there to do and they played their hand well.
Regardless, the interview was a net positive. I don’t know if anyone realizes but that ex-cop is the one helping to write the laws in Washington, not us. He’s the one with the seat at the big boy table once the feds loosen things up. Ex-cop or not, that man dropped a fair amount of free game on that podcast for all of us to take note of and use but rather than praise the noble bridge-building efforts of both parties, we just kept throwing more stones. We can laugh and dance and sing but the ex-cop is beating us at our own damn game. We need to swallow that wretched pill and start supporting each other before it’s too late. We need to learn from companies like Glass House so we can rig the game in our favor and get the world high with the best medicine we can make while feeding our families at the same time.
If that means we have to grow 10 rooms of LCG so we can have one room to experiment, so be it, make that shit smack. If we have to go door to door, state to state explaining to people why they should care about the quality of their cannabis and where it comes from, that’s what we have to do, so let’s do it with a smile. We need to learn real-world business tactics, develop new and improved cultivation methods, proprietary genetics, and rock solid intellectual property. We need to keep breaking even every year for the sake of standing in the way just a bit longer, hand in hand, joints lit.
The Thin Green Line is weaker and more divided than ever before but there is hope for us yet. I attended Jimi Devine’s Transbay Qualifier in Sacramento a couple weeks ago and I had the privilege of shaking hands and smoking cannons with some very special people, people who truly care about the plant and our collective future. For an industry of people who spend all day making memes about each other, we are sweethearts to each other in person. Most everyone I met was just stoked to show off what they’d been working on and connect with all the other weed nerds. We need to bring that same enthusiasm to everything we do, online and in real life. We need to stop gatekeeping everything and spread love to everyone who wants to learn how to smoke. We need to protect our legacy while preparing for the future and we need to fortify our connections to one another while sharing information on how to combat the thieves and the snakes and the con men actively trying to steal from us. We just need to evolve, to preserve our way of life.
I believe there is still time. We have not yet hit the iceberg. The wave has not yet broken. Hold fast to one another, the hurricane approaches once more.
In his 15 seasons in the NBA, Kevin Durant has collected two championships and a most valuable player award, all while establishing himself as one of the greatest scorers to ever play the game.
But it turns out one of his most significant contributions to the league came off the court. And when he was under the influence.
Appearing at a sports business summit that aired Tuesday on CNBC, the Phoenix Suns star said he personally lobbied NBA commissioner Adam Silver to drop the league’s marijuana ban.
“I actually called him and advocated for him to take marijuana off the banned substance list,” Durant told CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin at the event. “I just felt like it was becoming a thing around the country, around the world … the stigma behind it wasn’t as negative as it was before. It doesn’t affect you in any negative way.”
Under a new collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the players’ union, the league will no longer conduct drug screenings of players for marijuana. The agreement, which took effect earlier this month, also allows players to invest in cannabis companies –– something Durant and his business partners have done.
“Marijuana will be removed from the Prohibited Substances List (‘PSL’),” the CBA reads. “A team that has reason to believe one of its players is under the influence of marijuana or alcohol while engaged in NBA or team-related activities, or has a dependency issue involving marijuana or alcohol, may refer the player to a required evaluation treatment program.”
The agreement also permits players to “invest in a company that makes products containing only CBD, and to “hold a passive, non-controlling interest in a company that makes products containing marijuana.” Players “will continue to be prohibited from promoting marijuana companies, but a player may promote a company that makes products containing only CBD,” the agreement says.
Durant recounted his meeting with Silver, saying the commissioner could readily pick up on his passion for the issue.
“Well, he smelled it when I walked in, so I ain’t really have to say much,” Durant said at the summit, drawing laughs from the crowd. “He kind of understood where this was going. And I mean, it’s the NBA, man. Everybody does it, to be honest. It’s like wine at this point.”
Durant, who was traded to the Suns from the Brooklyn Nets last season, has been open about his pot use in the past.
In an interview last year on David Letterman’s Netflix series, Durant told the former late night legend that he was “high right now.”
“To me, it clears the distractions out of your brain a little bit. Settles you down. It’s like having a glass of wine,” Durant told Letterman, adding that he wanted to “change the narrative around athletes and marijuana.”
“It’s crazy that you got people in jail for 20 years for maybe selling a pound,” Durant said.
The NBA first began phasing out marijuana testing for players in 2020, when it announced that it was suspending testing as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We decided that, given all the things that were happening in society, given all the pressures and stress that players were under, that we didn’t need to act as Big Brother right now,” Silver said at the time. “I think society’s views around marijuana have changed to a certain extent.”
Other sporting leagues have also relaxed their policies governing marijuana use. In 2019, Major League Baseball removed cannabis from its banned substances list.
A new study sheds light on exactly what nutrients hemp plants are providing to pollinators, which pollinator likes hemp the most, and which variety of hemp is most popular among bees out of four different varieties.
Researchers narrowed down four strains of hemp and observed which species of bees gather pollen and what nutrients the hemp pollen provides them. Joey—a new hemp variety developed in 2020—was the most popular cultivar among bees.
The study, “Chemical Composition of Four Industrial Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) Pollen and Bee Preference,” was published July 26 in Volume 14, issue 8 of the peer-reviewed journal Insects, exploring hemp as a nutrient source. The study depicted varieties of bees foraging for pollen, as well as flowers, pollen sacs, and anthers under magnification.
The team of researchers counted 1,826 pollinators which can mostly be broken down into three bee groups: honey bees, bumble bees, and sweat bees. Sweat bees, gaining the name because they are attracted to sweaty people, were found most abundantly in the study, accounting for 84.7% of the entire bee community on all four hemp varieties, however they noted that previous studies listed honey bees as being more prevalent.
Since harvesting pollen was difficult, about 500 grams of mature hemp flowers of each variety were harvested and placed in paper bags that were then put in Ziploc® bags and placed in styrofoam shipping containers with dry ice. Samples were shipped to a commercial analytical laboratory in Wisconsin. The pollen samples were analyzed for levels of moisture, crude fiber, protein, ash, mineral content, amino acids, and fatty acids.
Researchers determined the nutrients the pollen provides and their benefits to bee populations.
“Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is a new crop that is grown over a wide geographic area in the United States, providing economic and nutritional benefits to humans,” researchers wrote. “However, the contribution of hemp floral resources (pollen) to bee nutrition is not well understood. We investigated the chemical composition of pollen from four industrial hemp varieties (Canda, CFX-2, Henola, and Joey) and documented the abundance and diversity of bees on the crop using two sampling methods.
Each of the four hemp strains provided different ratios of nutrients, but researchers added that bees need a more diverse supply of nutrients that goes beyond hemp or any one plant.
“Results showed differences in composition among the four hemp varieties,” researchers added. “Overall, the Joey variety was the most preferred by bees, despite expressing lower protein, amino acid, and saturated and monosaturated fatty acid content. Based on our findings, we concluded that industrial hemp pollen provides some nutritional benefits to bees. However, it is important to understand that multiple sources of pollen are needed for sustained bee survival.
Researchers noted that other species, including the longhorn bee, miner bee, and leafcutter bee, are also known to gather pollen from hemp plants.
Importance of Pollinators and Hemp’s Role
Keep in mind that the importance of bees cannot be overstated: The USDA says that “three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce.” Hemp is one of many nutrient sources for bees.
You may have noticed that the hemp industry has been all about super potent cannabinoids in the last year or so. And, with growing demand for hemp products that can get us unbelievably high, the industry has developed new and highly advanced techniques for taking naturally occurring cannabinoids and making them even stronger.
Case in point: Delta 9 and Delta 9P products. This rarer cannabinoid is new to the market, and you aren’t going to find it in every store just yet. But, its popularity is growing fast, because it offers a memorable high that appeals to anyone with a substantial THC tolerance. Let’s share everything you need to know about this cannabinoid so you can decide if it’s worth trying. But, as a spoiler alert, we want to mention that if you’re ready for one of the most powerful highs of your life, you can try Delta 9P products25% off using the codeHIGHTIMES25 here.
Delta 9P: What You Should Know
Delta 9P is an extremely new development as a type of THC-P, as there is Delta 9 THC-P and Delta 8 THC-P. Delta 8 THC-P is very strong, while Delta 9 THC-P is on a whole new playing field. With a feeling around 35x stronger than regular Delta 9 THC.
What Kind of High Will I Get From Delta 9P?
If you’ve been keeping up with the hemp industry for a while, then you won’t be surprised when we say that Delta 9P and Delta 9P vapes, being such a brand new addition to the market, is lacking in research, as well as anecdotal information about its effects. It’s not a cannabinoid that you can easily find just yet, like we said before.
Because of that, you’re going to have a hard time finding consistent info about what to expect from its high. To complicate matters, we already know that with a lot of these newer cannabinoids, results can vary a bit from one person to the next because of the way in which they interact with different cannabinoid receptors in the brain.
Basically, what we can say is that Delta 9P is going to give you an unbelievably strong psychoactive effect. It’s said to be more intoxicating than Delta 8 THC-P, as we said earlier, and the high is probably very euphoric yet calming, as that’s something we see consistently with THC-P.
Does Delta 9P Have Any Benefits?
Again, we really don’t have enough information to know what kinds of benefits Delta 9P has in store. This just isn’t a cannabinoid that has undergone extensive medical research, like cannabinoids that have been around for decades, such as CBD or Delta 9. But, once again, because Delta 9P is essentially the strongest version of THC-P, it’s likely that it delivers the same benefits found in both of these cannabinoids, which include:
Relief from inflammation
Relief from physical discomfort
Relief from stress/anxiety
Mood-boosting effects
Neurological regulation
Relief from nausea
Help with sleep
Improvement in appetite
Courtesy Binoid
Is Delta 9P Legal?
Of course, such an intoxicating cannabinoid would leave a lot of people assuming that it’s not fully legal. But, at the end of the day, Delta 9P is fully compliant with the federal Farm Bill, which allows all hemp products to be sold legally as long as they contain no more than 0.3% Delta 9 THC. Delta 9P is therefore totally unrestricted, and can be enjoyed legally – under federal law, that is.
As many know, a number of states have banned THC isomers, meaning that psychoactive cannabinoids cannot be sold. So, Delta 9P is illegal in:
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Iowa
Maryland
Mississippi
Montana
Nevada
New York
North Dakota
Oregon
Rhode Island
Utah
Vermont
Washington
Where Can I Buy Delta 9P?
Great question – Delta 9P and Delta 9P vapes are only slowly making its way into stores, and for now, you’re far more likely to find it in vape form than any other product type. As always, you want to make sure you’re buying from a reputable company, and that you can easily access lab reports on their website to verify the authenticity, safety, purity, and potency of the product.
One brand that’s introducing their Delta 9P to the public is Binoid, as they’re developing Delta 9P vapes in a great choice of strains. We recommend their products, as the brand has maintained a stellar reputation over the years for selling top-quality, safe, and highly effective formulas, made without unwanted additives, and consistently sold fresh for maximum positive impact. Currently Binoid offers 6 brand new Delta 9P strains including Tropical Zkittlez, Alaskan Lights, and Desert Diesel, Vice City, Space Mountain, and Hot Lava.. You can get right on their website for an amazing price.
Delta 9P: Not for the Faint of Heart, But Highly Rewarding
It’s likely that Delta 9P is one of the strongest cannabinoids you’ll ever have the pleasure of trying, in terms of its ‘high’. And, while that may not be for everyone, there’s a growing number of enthusiasts who are seeking out just that. For now, it’s not too easy to find, but one company that promises top-quality Delta 9P is Binoid, with exquisitely crafted vapes made from the purest Delta 9P distillate and freshest terpenes around.
Is Delta 9P Safe?
It’s important to note that Delta 9P hasn’t been around for nearly a long enough time for us to be able to talk about its potential therapeutic uses as determined through clinical trials and research. Since Delta 9P is totally new, there just isn’t any research out there about it. And, with an array of cannabinoids being unearthed and developed in the last few years, you can imagine that cannabis researchers have their hands full, and Delta 9P is not the first in line to explore in clinical settings.
It’s safe to assume that Delta 9P offers the same properties as THC-P, only with harder-hitting and longer-lasting effects as an added bonus. So, you can expect Delta 9P to offer relief from physical discomfort and inflammation, along with help regarding nausea and appetite, not to mention very enjoyable effects when it comes to mood.
Courtesy Binoid
What Else is Delta 9P Good For?
We always want to be careful to talk about benefits of any cannabinoid without clinical studies that we can refer to, for ethical reasons. And, there are no papers that have been published in scientific journals about the properties and effects of Delta 9P, because the cannabinoid just came out, and there hasn’t been time for proper analysis by cannabis researchers.
Still, it’s likely that Delta 9P offers benefits similar to those of Delta 9P, like potential mood improvements, appetite enhancement and more.
Delta 9P Dosage and Dosing Guide
As we learn more about Delta 9P, we’ll have much more specific dosing guidelines available. What we can say is that since the cannabinoid is so potent, you don’t want to take as many milligrams in one sitting as you would a milder cannabinoid like Delta 8. Because Delta 9P is so strong, doses look to be small amounts, but that is because of how strong the compound is.
Comparing Delta 9P potency to other cannabinoids, however, we can offer a general idea of how much you should take whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user, regardless of the product type that’s available above:
Beginners Delta 9P dosing: 1mg-3mg
Intermediate Delta 9P Users dosing: 3mg-5mg
Advanced Delta 9P Users dosing: 5mg+
Delta 9P is the strongest cannabinoid in hemp with a strength 35x stronger than regular Delta 9 THC. This means that all products using Delta 9P vapes and gummies will be extremely potent, and small MG’s are necessary.
Will Delta 9P Fail A Drug Test?
As a rule of thumb, any time you encounter a cannabinoid, you should assume that it puts you at risk of failing a drug test. Why? Because all THC-based cannabinoids are metabolized by an enzyme called THC-COOH, which is what standard drug tests are seeking to identify in a person’s urine.
Because Delta 9P and Delta 9P products are particularly potent and are the stronger form of Delta 9 THCP, there’s good reason to believe that it’s very likely to fail a drug test.
Delta 9P Has Arrived at Binoid!
Delta 9P and Delta 9P products, being so powerful, are going to be a cannabinoid that Binoid customers are looking forward to trying. This unique cannabinoid blend really does stand out from the rest by promising effects even stronger than those of Delta 8 THC-P.
Check out Binoid Delta 9P products and vapes with 25% off using the codeHIGHTIMES25 if you want to try the strongest cannabinoid hemp has to offer. With amazing prices, trusted products, free shipping and 24/7 customer service, you cannot go wrong trying Binoid!
