At a time when the entire scope of the cannabis industry remains uncertain whether the Trump Administration is moving in with the kill switch, Colorado is, once again, on the verge of implementing a progressive reform that will give way to emergence of Amsterdam-style marijuana clubs.
According to a report from the Associated Press, Denver officials are currently at the drawing board in an attempt to figure out how to launch a one-year pilot program designed to bring social marijuana use to life throughout the city. While the program, which was approved by the voters in the election last November, is only a temporary measure, the goal is to further explore methods for treating marijuana similar to alcohol so that more is known when the time comes to draft more permanent legislation.
Interestingly, Alaska was expected to become the first U.S. jurisdiction to experiment with the concept of cannabis lounges, but regulatory officials ended up getting cold feet in the 11th hour and pulled the plug on this development. A couple of other states (California and Maine) have passed laws that include provisions for social use, but none of the rules have been finalized. There is also a push for similar legislation in Oregon, specifically geared toward allowing marijuana consumption during special events.
However, what is on the verge of happening in Denver with respect to social pot consumption could quite possibly be permitted statewide within the coming months.
Reports indicate that bipartisan members of the Colorado Legislature are opening up to idea of cannabis lounges because they say residents have complained about people getting stoned in public. Lawmakers, like Republican Senator Chris Holbert, who believes, “it’s a problem we’ve got to address,” says the time has come to give tourists a place to smoke weed.
But despite bipartisan support for a law of this magnitude, there are still plenty of arguments surrounding the issue to prevent much from getting done. One side doesn’t want medical marijuana users to consume in public, while another group is worried that allowing cannabis lounges might start a war between legal marijuana and the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Jeff Sessions is the big question mark right now,” Democratic state Representative Jonathan Singer told the AP. “I think we need to send a message to him that Colorado’s doing it right.”
Governor John Hickenlooper, who opposed Amendment 64, seems to have changed his attitude a bit regarding legal weed. But he isn’t exactly sold on the concept of social use. The governor has said that he would veto a bill that allows marijuana to be smoked indoors.
“We spent a long time letting everyone know that smoking is bad for you,” Hickenlooper said. “Just cause that smoke makes you happy, and dumb, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.”
Meanwhile, the grey area surrounding legal weed has given way to the presence of underground pot clubs. But these establishments have been the targets of raids and other law enforcement shakedowns. It is for this reason that the cannabis industry has a simple message for Colorado’s government: We’ve legalized marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol, so let’s act like it.
Memes are like the bread and butter of the internet; the more you try to escape them, the more they keep popping up. Trash Dove is the latest one and it’s as incoherent as a meme can possible be, which is a lot.
This purple little bird has invaded the web and has people from all over the world brainstorming and coming up with ways to repurpose it, making Trash Dove go viral all over again in an endless loop of purple thrashing birds. Here are some of our favorite posts:
On Facebook (where there’s a Trash Dove community):
You may wonder when did the Trash Dove become a Meme monster, and why it’s all over the place, which can be answered with the bird’s incredible inception post:
The bird was originally created by artist Syd Weiler, who probably didn’t expect her artwork to be called trash and to become a head banging worldwide sensation. Feel free to use the dove whenever: as a Facebook sticker, as a way to vent out some stress, or to express your current state of mind. Trash Dove is versatile.
As you’re no doubt aware, Russia is suddenly a major player in U.S. foreign policy again. Between Michael Flynn and other members of the new administration, the aggression in Ukraine, Edward Snowden, spy ships anchored 30 miles off the U.S. shore, and the hacking rumors, it feels like we’re suddenly at the beginning of a second Cold War. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of films and TV shows either from or about that era, which means we have a wealth of classic entertainment to inform and distract us about the surreal new world we find ourselves living in. Below are five of our favorites.
The Americans
One of the best shows currently on TV, The Americans deals with a pair of Soviet spies living undercover as a normal American husband and wife in the DC suburbs. It has all the best parts of prestige family dramas with the added bonus of top-notch spy plots. The daringness and deviousness of the Russians combined with plot lines involving flawed FBI agents will no doubt feel very familiar to people paying attention to contemporary politics.
Rocky IV
While not the best film of the Rocky franchise, Rocky IV is certainly the best of the boxing flicks at creating a seemingly impossible-to-defeat Russian villain. Ivan Drago is so bad, in fact, that he kills Rocky’s friend and rival Apollo Creed in the ring. But Rocky eventually gets his revenge. The perfect film to watch if you need a dose of cheesy sports-inspired patriotism.
The Hunt for Red October
The first of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books to make it to the big screen, The Hunt for Red October tells the story of a Soviet submarine captain (Sean Connery) trying to defect to the U.S. as CIA agent Ryan (Alec Baldwin) tries to figure out why. A good, suspenseful Cold War tale to revisit as a Russian ship sits 30 miles from the U.S. coast.
Bridge of Spies
The 2015 film details the hard work of a deeply moral and patriotic attorney named James Donovan (Tom Hanks) who has been assigned—against his will—to defend Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, who won an Academy Award for his role), a Soviet spy working undercover in New York. Eventually Donovan is sent to East Berlin to negotiate an exchange with the Russians. A story about the complicated inner-workings of intelligence agencies and other government bureaucracies in addition to the bravery of an unflappable lawyer certainly feels relevant today.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Technically not a story about America’s relationship with Russia, but the 2011 film adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 novel is too pertinent to what’s happening right now to ignore. A story abut a retired spy master secretly taking up the job again to root out a Soviet mole at the top of the U.K.’s intelligence, the film—if it took place across the pond—could almost be called Tinker Tailor Soldier Flynn.
Sometimes the universe doesn’t want you to win. You can do everything right and still things will turn wrong. Even if you’re perfect, the disastrous remains possible. The National University of Ireland Galway’s Aengus Meldon learned this lesson the hard way recently. During the Irish Universities Athletics Association Indoor Championships’ 800-meter preliminary, Meldon was a runner in the lead. He was going to win.
Then a pole vault warm-up bar flew in from nowhere, wrapping around his legs. His feet tangled, another competitor was able to catch Meldon who by all means should’ve won.
It’s taken up ’til now to fill a major gap in technology: candy sorting.
Like a coin sorter, this invention by Willem Pennings, a mechanical engineering student, organizes M&Ms and Skittles by color. He posted his creation on Reddit more than a week ago and has already attracted more than 2,400 comments. Of course, as Reddit likes to do, the string quickly turned into a discussion about vodka-infusions and Van Halen’s backstage rider.
Other Redditors missed the point completely by suggesting that someone who wants their candy separated should just go to a candy store. But most were incredibly impressed with the sleek, sellable look of the thing and suggested if IKEA started selling it, it’d fly off shelves.
As seen in the video, the machine separates by color only — it does not differentiate between M&Ms and Skittles.
Pennings says the machine also detects jams.
The measurement wheel takes a certain amount of time to rotate 90 degrees. For this machine, it’s about 200 milliseconds. So, if the rotation is taking more than 250 milliseconds, a jam is detected and the wheel goes in reverse to clear the slot. If that doesn’t fix it, the machine quits!
He says his machine is capable of sorting any equivalent-sized candy, such as Smarties.
I wouldn’t be able to use this machine for peanut M&Ms since the sizes vary so much. For Skittles, smarties and M&Ms etc. this works perfectly fine.
College campuses have long dealt with the challenge of alcohol on campus in a variety of ways. On the more liberal end of the spectrum, Stanford’s “open door policy” allows beer and wine at college parties for those 21 and older, while Brigham Young’s Honor Code forbids alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and illegal drugs of any kind.
But, how will colleges and universities address the growing question about a student’s right to consume cannabis in states that have legal marijuana?
American universities, regardless of their location, have mostly maintained prohibition stances on marijuana. Because almost all universities heavily rely on federal financial aid, they have been wary to do anything that signals a softening on a substance still listed by the DEA as a schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use.”
“One of the things not often talked about with cannabis on college campuses is the medical aspect. Medical cannabis patients who are also students on college campuses are often discriminated against because the school has policies that prevent them from medicating on campus, which is often where they live.”
He points out that faculty and staff who are medical marijuana patients are often affected by the same policy.
Regarding these university positions, Agliata states:
“One of the issues with prohibitive cannabis policies at any school is that they punish good students for doing something that is not at all harmful to the college community. This is even truer in states that have legalized cannabis, as if a student were consuming outside the boundaries of the campus, they would not be receiving the same level of punishment.”
Universities with the responsibility of teaching and protecting students often do not agree that this behavior is without negative impact. Institutions like the University of Washington are currently in new territory, with more legal recreational pot shops around its campus in Seattle than Starbucks stores.
Jason R. Kilmer, Ph.D. is an associate professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, assistant director of Health & Wellness for Alcohol & Other Drug Education Division of Student Life at UW. His research focuses on harm reduction-based prevention and intervention efforts around college student alcohol and other drug use. While others may be singing the praises of cannabis, Kilmer must honestly try to assess both foreseen and unintended risks of cannabis on campus.
Kilmer points to important data like Dr. Amelia Arria’s study from the University of Maryland showing that “over 40 percent of those with chronic (cannabis) use experience enrollment gaps compared to under 25 percent of those with no use or minimal use.”
He must also balance that with the opportunities cannabis legalization is presenting to him as a researcher. Kilmer has witnessed that:
“[Students] have sensed a shift and change in stigmas associated with use of cannabis, so there are increased opportunities to have conversations about cannabis with less concern about judgment. … We are always mindful of people obtaining substances without complete knowledge of what’s in them, and legalization has worked to change that for those purchasing cannabis through legal outlets.”
He remains hopeful as some barriers to research have been recently lowered, allowing more study into cannabis and its possible effects on students, their health and their work.
It appears that, for the moment, cannabis is poised in the classic tug of war of academia. The students, or at least a vocal subset of them, push for more liberal considerations while the institution moves carefully, seeking to protect students and its own reputation.
Will cannabis use be allowed by more institutions of higher learning? Some advocates are hopeful that cannabis on campus could cut into the binge drinking culture and the vandalism and violence that often accompanies it. Some university administrators are concerned another intoxicating substance will simply complicate the equation.
Which position will prevail? It is simply too early to know. Like so much in this cultural shift, the answer is we must wait to see while the tug of war continues.
The pure joy of biting into a potato chip and licking your fingers of powdered seasoning is apparently too much for a new snack food that seems to be trolling all of us.
As a big middle finger to the rest of the chip industry, which painstakingly spent decades designing packaging that would ensure the safe delivery of full sized potato chips, a trendy product has hit store shelves: FailChips.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPa3kC5AwdO
It’s a rather brilliant idea, selling something nobody historically ever preferred, and stuffing them into designer packaging with a name straight out of modern hashtag lingo. They’re perfect for eating quickly, and nobody can deny their sandwich soulmate. Are potato chip “sprinkles” the new condiment?
Not ones to dismiss a potential new trend, Vice has included FailChips (which hit store shelves February 6) in their newest documentary on potato chips.
Did you know that potato chips were born out of a snarky chef’s attempt to troll a persnickety customer who kept sending back potatoes that weren’t crispy enough? True story. As is the story of how one competitive eater, who holds the record for the most potato chips eaten in a minute (18 chips) does breathing and mouth exercises to prepare. For the record, he would never use crushed chips to win a competition, not that they’d even count.
There’s actually a question on the FailChips website that asks how they’re made. Really?
Oddly enough, “how do you eat them?” is a less strange question, as the bag is made to be torn at the corner and emptied into a mouth space. It’s specially designed for “one-handed chip chugging.”
Now, if they could only figure out a way for people to see Jesus in their crushed chips.
As part of a celebration for Bao Bao’s departure, the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. released this “greatest hits” compilation of their favorite giant panda darling.
Watch Bao Bao’s birth, tiny human-like cries, checkups, to growing into a big cuddly black-and-white teddy bear. She rolls down a hill on her first snow day and struggles to eat bamboo in the most adorable way.
On February 21, the zoo is shipping Bao Bao via FedEx to China, where she’ll join a panda breeding program. But they’re not packing her in peanuts and cardboard for the ride: Bao Bao will have a keeper alongside for the long journey.
When she reaches sexual maturity in two to three years, she’ll be tasked with repopulating the giant panda species. Pandas were recently taken off the endangered species list, but continue to be a vulnerable species. Bao Bao is such a sensation because she’s one of the rare few ever born in captivity in the United States. There are 1,864 giant pandas in the wild in China today.
Male pandas in captivity have never seen other pandas procreate, and are confused about what to do with a female who’s ready to mate, the Week reports: They “stand there like a man who has just opened a large box from Ikea and has no idea what to do next.” Dude.
There isn’t a vertical the marijuana industry doesn’t touch. Any website includes some mention of marijuana coverage, whether it be tech, politics, entertainment, lifestyle, sports, you name it. All these issues come into play as we watch the marijuana industry grow up and become more a part of our daily lives. But it doesn’t always happen so cleanly. Because as Matt Skerritt, a commercial filmmaker and the creator/director of IndieFlix’s original series Grow Op, tells me, “Anything that’s new goes through a period of adolescence.”
Of course, the difficulty of adolescence is that it’s messy and complicated. Grow Op, a mockumentary series following a once-illicit drug dealer Kevin trying to “live legit,” captures that sentiment. It dives into the problems the cannabis industry faces as more states legalize recreational use and our culture destigmatizes that usage. But how do you regulate such an unregulated product? How do dealers like Kevin make a living within the legalized marketplace? And is any of this still fun?
“It would be like if prostitution was suddenly legalized everywhere,” Skerritt jokes. “You’d have this fascinating series of questions.” But what makes this comedy series special is that as its story breaches outlandish territory, its characters remain grounded and real within that context. They, too, are trying to grow up and struggling to survive and all while making you laugh.
Grow Op callsIndieFlix home, but has become recently available on other platforms. Skerritt and I chatted to learn more about the series and what’s next for the cannabis industry in its current adolescence period.
How did this idea come about? Where’d the inspiration come from?
Well, me and a couple friends of mine had actually been approached to pursue developing a reality show about the cannabis industry a couple years ago. It was [a] new [thing] and it was going to be one of those kind of reality TV programs that were made inevitably. We were like, yeah it’s pretty cool. We know people. My best friend’s son was a pot dealer, like a real pot dealer. Let’s hook up with Jordan, get him involved, and he can set us up. We can find some people we can follow around. Let’s go shoot it, because I shoot for a living. I’m a commercial filmmaker, we have the bandwidth, we have the gear, we have the people.
As we got close, one day we were walking to meet this guy who wanted to fund it. We’re walking down the street, and laughing amongst ourselves. It occurred to us, we don’t even watch this shit, we don’t even watch reality programming. We don’t really like it. We don’t really like what it’s doing to society. We all work for a living, we don’t need that job. Maybe we were doing it for our egos, like, we’ll go be TV people or something. And we just thought that was hilarious. It seemed so silly.
One of us said, what we should be doing is making a show about us even considering doing a reality show about pot. Because it’s funny. And that was it. Of course as will happen with stoners, everybody else forgot about it, it’s that kind of idea, but I didn’t forget about it. So I started putting my own money in and making a show because it seemed like a fun thing to do. It was an opportunity for me as a commercial filmmaker—I’ve been doing other people’s work, making things for other people. For me, it was an opportunity to reconnect with the craft of it and have fun. We’re all a bunch of grownups who know what we’re doing and here’s an opportunity for us to act like children again.
What are some of the other projects you’ve worked on in the past? When I came up in the industry, I came up through film and television production, just working as a crew member 25 years ago. Working as a truck driver, pulling focus, pulling cables for electric department, or doing set decorating for longform production. Seattle had a bustling business at the time, and it died because of Vancouver tax breaks and it moved up north.
My wife and I started our own production company doing anything we could. It was hard to make it work. So we moved back home to Los Angeles, where we had some contacts in the music business. Down there, I got into that, and it was a great fit for me. I was able to go do behind-the-scenes packages, EPKs, and concert videos, and things like that. I did some cool stuff. We did stuff with Madonna, Dixie Chicks….
So this project became a way to showcase what other content you can create? What’s very fascinating is that, after we started making it, we realized a lot of people who said come shoot in our place, or said come over, I’ll show you my pot…it turns out that everybody in the industry is struggling mightily to find cool video opportunities for marketing. You can’t advertise through FCC regulated channels if you’re doing cannabis because the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t recognize that as a legal product.
That’s part of what I found fascinating about the web series. The characters match what the industry is facing writ large which is: how do we grow up? Yes that’s exactly right. There’s an adolescence period that every person and everything in nature goes through. I remember my adolescence—vaguely. I remember my dad patting me on the back when I was about 20. I think I was in the Navy at the time. He patted me on the back and said, I’m just glad you survived your teens.
It’s kind of true for everyone in a way. I know all these kids who are friends with my kids—and my kids too—who, it’s amazing they make it through. Because they’re dumb. And they’re crazy. And they’re confused. I don’t think it’s any different for any new industry or any new economic policy or any new law or any new anything.
I think that’s true for this. And I thought it was a nice dovetail. It seems seamless into the story of human being going through their midlife crisis at the same time. Finding their own self during their extended adolescence. At the end of the day, that’s what the show ends up being. We put the little tagline, ‘learning to live legit.’ It’s really true. Be who you are, be what you are. Find yourself, land, put your feet on the ground, and be that. Don’t worry about how you look or what it sounds like. It’s okay.
Cannabis as an industry and as a subject is just creeping into narrative storytelling, visually speaking. HBO’s High Maintenance and you also have the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg stories where it’s more of a present narrative device. Why do you think cannabis has become this backdrop for storytellers? I think it’s the novelty of it. There’s a discovery underway. I’m a middle-aged man and I recently started smoking pot again because it’s legal. Not that I couldn’t get pot before it was legal, but knowing there was this—when electric cars came out, you’re kind of like, that’s cool, that’s a great idea, that will save the planet. I can put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to buy an electric car. There’s something new and novel about it, it becomes an instant story immediately.
How many states have legalized recreational pot now? Seven or 12, I don’t know what it is. [Ed. note: Eight states have legalized recreational use, while 12 have approved medicinal use.]
It’s still so brand new and there’s still all these questions if it’ll ever be re-classified by the federal government. There’s all these religious questions about it and there’s all these economic questions and the politics of state rights vs. the federal government vs. profit vs. morality. This is a huge, huge issue, actually.
A couple of miles into this new thing, there’s the obvious question: What happens to people who have been making their living in this industry or have been committed to this industry either as users or sellers or technical people or whatever and now it’s legal. What is the real implications for them as real human beings living their lives. As dads, as husbands, and wives. Are they entrepreneurs? Can they make the change? All cool, really fascinating questions about it, especially with the legality issue still in question. We don’t know, quite honestly, if Jeff Sessions and his monkeys are going to roll in here in three months and close everything down and arrest everyone. The way this administration behaves, it could happen. And that would be an episode, by the way.
Taking the character of Kevin, he is this drug dealer who has these almost mundane, human problems of how to support my kids and make a living. Get by, yeah.
At the same time, he’s this drug dealer. It normalizes it to a degree, because everyone sort of thinks of a drug dealer, or everyone involved with cannabis, as this morally corrupt individual where you’re showcasing the opposite. Exactly, but we’re also allowing it to be funny. Pot’s funny, people giggle when they’re stoned, stoned people do funny things. Things become stereotypes because they’re true, to some extent. And this is true for pot smokers and potheads and all that.
It’s just like you or me and you got a job and you chose this career path earlier on. He’s been doing it and at one point he’s probably made a pretty good living doing it. It’s always risky, it’s always illegal. And even in this economy, there are people selling pot illegally. A lot of people. There’s still pot dealers.
That’s one thing that’s kind of great about the show. It’s educational without being pedantic. The idea that there’s limitations within the legal marketplace, like with edibles. A lot of people, like serious stoners, are still going off into the black market. Because hey, I want my edible and 10 milligrams isn’t going to do too much to me so I need a 240 mg chocolate bar. That’s a reality that they’re facing, right? Absolutely. That’s the other part of this that I find fascinating. The most important thing from my standpoint is that it’s this story of these men and women—there are women coming, by the way. It’s been a sausage fest so far. But they’re coming to save the day, let’s put it that way.
These are all people who are, to some extent, caricatures of themselves. We have to do that. We’re making a comedy. We’re letting those funny moments really rise to the top. To do that, you kind of let people make fun of themselves.
The story’s about what it means to be living this lifestyle, especially in a city like Seattle. Where there’s also this entrepreneurial spirit, and all this money, and all these people with money, and all this internet influence, and all this other tech stuff. It’s a different kind of psychology in a town like this. And all these dynamics are coming into play.
I think it’s been effective. I enjoy watching it, you know. When it’s all done I’m like, I dig this show. It’s funny, it makes me laugh. When I’m editing this stuff, I just have to stop and laugh for five minutes. Just can’t do anything but laugh, tears welling up in my eyes, whole nine yards, which is just fantastic.
Nevada official Joe Pollock told the Associated Press that once Nevada’s recreational market is open for business, there will be very little incentive for adult patients to continue using the medical marijuana program.
When it comes time for Nevada to launch its recreational cannabis trade, there is a distinct possibility the sin sector will be handled in exactly the same manner as the market currently servicing those participating in the state’s medical marijuana program. The only distinguishable difference between the two could be in the way the product is taxed, according to a report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
This is because Joe Pollock, the official who oversees the state’s medicinal cannabis project, is not at all convinced that growing and selling weed to people looking to catch a buzz should be treated any differently than the industry distributing cannabis to people with health issues. This is the spiel Pollock fed the Senate Committee on Finance earlier this week, suggesting the state simplify the regulatory process of the recreational side by copycatting its medical marijuana rules and simply increasing the tax rate.
“I think there’s a lot of advantages of having recreational and medical marijuana treated the same, right up until the point of sale,” Pollock said.
Although combining the two sectors may not sound like much of controversial issue, there are some hardcore medical marijuana purists out there who will likely spit glass the moment a policy emerges that suggests their “medicine” is the same stuff the average stoner is using just to get high.
In other fully legal states, like Colorado, recreational and medical marijuana sales remain completely separate in the way they are handled under the language of the law. Not that it is absolutely necessary. But there is an illusion, or at least an awkward perspective, that the cannabis being grown across the state for medical purposes is more effective in the treatment of health conditions than what is being sold in retail marijuana shops. But the truth is, a strain is going to have the same power regardless of its designated application.
Lawmakers in Oregon understand this concept, which is the reason the state became the first in the nation to allow the medical marijuana sector to temporarily sell weed to the recreational crowd. The goal of this move was to ensure those people without a medical marijuana card would not be forced to into the black market for weed.
Nevada has stolen a chapter out of Oregon’s handbook, setting up similar program that is well on its way to making recreational weed available through the medical sector at some point this summer. Permanent regulations are supposed to be in place by the end of the year.
Pollock recently told the Associated Press that once Nevada’s recreational market is open for business, there will be very little incentive for adult patients to continue using the medical marijuana program.
