Sept. 27, 2008 - Paul Newman, Sweet Bird of Youth, Dies at 83
It is with sadness we report the death of Paul Newman, 83, of lung cancer. The New York Post blog reported that Newman, a former (tobacco) chain smoker, was diagnosed with cancer last year, forcing him to pull out of a reunion project with Robert Redford.

Newman was photographed wearing a razor blade on a chain around his neck at the height of the Hollywood cocaine-snorting heyday. After his only son, Scott, died of an accidental alcohol and Valium overdose in 1978, Newman set up a drug abuse prevention foundation in Scott's name, as well as a charity that sends kids with illnesses to camp, funded by Newman's Own food sales. According to Democracy Now, Newman was an anti-nuclear peace activist who protested the Vietnam war.

In the 1962 film Sweet Bird of Youth, Newman played a young hustler who tries to extort money from an aging actress with a hashish habit (played by Geraldine Page, pictured with Newman at right). The 2005 HBO miniseries "Empire Falls," featuring at least two pot-smoking characters, earned Golden Globes for Best Miniseries or Movie and Best Supporting Actor for Newman. No one asked what he was smoking on that ladder.

September 26, 2008 - Doobies Down Under
"Australia's acting prime minister admitted Friday she had smoked marijuana as a university student, but said it was no big deal," reported AFP. "At university, tried it, didn't like it," said Julia Gillard (pictured left), the deputy prime minister, who is standing in for Kevin Rudd while he attends the UN General Assembly in New York.

"I think probably many Australian adults would be able to make the same statement so I don't think it matters one way or the other," said Gillard, who has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since October 1998, and now serves as Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and also the Minister for Social Inclusion. She is the first woman to hold the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

Gillard made the admission in a radio interview after a similar confession on television by opposition leader and multi-millionaire former merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull, who took over the leadership of the conservative Liberal Party earlier this month, said he regretted smoking cannabis.

"Yes, I've smoked pot," he said, drawing laughter from the live studio audience on ABC1's Q&A program. ""I think most well not most, many people have, it was a mistake to do so....I think now, with what we know about marijuana, I think it is a very serious drug and it is a drug that we should strongly discourage everybody, be they young or old, but obviously particularly young people, from using."

Turnbull rose to the public's attention as the successful advocate in the Spycatcher trial (he blocked the British Government's attempts to suppress the memoirs of a former MI5 agent), and later wrote a book on the trial. Turnbull was chairman of Axiom Forest Resources, which conducted logging in the Solomon Islands under the trading name Silvania Forest Products, managing director and later a partner of Goldman Sachs, and chair of a large Australia Internet Service Provider, Ozemail, which was sold to MCI Worldcom.

The latest admissions bring to at least four the number of self-confessed marijuana smokers on the front benches of Australia's parliament. Treasurer Wayne Swan and environment minister Peter Garrett, former frontman for the rock group Midnight Oil, have admitted smoking cannabis in their university days. And opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott confessed to having a "half-hearted puff" during a rugby tour to the US. Swan said that smoking marijuana as a student at the University of Queensland in the 1970s was not "a Mick Jagger experience," and that unlike Bill Clinton and Tony Abbott, he inhaled.

Far from stirring outrage among the electorate, the only immediate reaction to Turnbull's confession came from the director of the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre. "I'm just sending him an email now congratulating him on his refreshingly honest, straightforward and well-informed response," said Jan Copeland. Copeland she said hoped the message would help to further lower the nation's rates of cannabis use, particularly among males in their teens and 20s.

Statistics show that 750,000 Australians out of a population of 21 million use cannabis weekly while 300,000 use it daily and that it is still the nation's most common illicit drug.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd, whose nickname "Saint Kevin" took a bit of a battering when he admitted last year to a long-ago drunken night in a New York strip club, has not commented on whether he has smoked pot.

Just a Good Old Boy, Never Meanin' No Harm...
Former Dukes of Hazzard TV star Tom Wopat (right) failed to outrun the law when he was caught with marijuana at an airport in Wisconsin. According to TMZ.com, security staff found 1.2 grams of weed on Wopat as he passed a security checkpoint at Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport. The actor was allegedly handed an on-the-spot $500 fine, which he paid. A veteran of Broadway shows like "Annie Get Your Gun" and "42nd Street", the 57-year-old actor is currently starring in the Broadway musical "Chicago."

(If you see the Dukes of Hazzard movie, be sure to stick around for the last scene where the politicians exit Willie Nelson's tour bus.)

Over 20 Million Screwed
NORML's Paul Armentano calculates the 20 millionth arrest for marijuana will be made on October 10.

VIPs included among those US arrests are: Louis Armstrong, Hal Ashby, Dan Aykroyd, Candy Barr, Lord Buckley, Neal Cassady, Macaulay Culkin, Bob Denver, Art Garfunkel, Gene Krupa, Mezz Mezzrow, Robert Mitchum, Willie Nelson, Anita O'Day, Aaron Sorkin, and Ron White. I feel so much safer now.

Dark Days for Chocolate
Hershey's has begun omitting cocoa butter from several of its products, substituting insted cheaper vegetable oils and winning FDA approval to use the words "“chocolate candy,” “made with chocolate” or “chocolatey” for their non-chocolate chocolate. Whatchamacallit, Milk Duds, Mr. Goodbar and Krackel candies no longer have milk chocolate coatings, and Hershey’s Kissables are now “chocolate candy” instead of “milk chocolate.”

The Bangkok Post reported their Food and Drug Administration has asked distributors to temporarily remove Oreo wafer sticks, Dove milk chocolate bars, M&M chocolate candies, Snickers caramel peanut bars and nougat, Mentos yoghurt candies, for fear they contain tainted Chinese milk. The United States has imported two million pounds of a milk protein called casein this year, along with other powdered milk proteins that are used as ingredients in many processed foods, according to figures from the USDA, according to a New York Times story.

But who got prosecuted? Tainted, Inc. , an Oakland-based manufacturer of cannabis candies sold to medical marijuana patients. After sweating out the possibility of a 37-month federal prison sentence, all got probation after pleading guilty.

September 22, 2008 - Palin Patter
That unimpeachable news source The ENQUIRER quotes unnamed sources to back up its "exclusive" story that Sarah Palin's oldest son, Track, 19, and pregnant sister Bristol, 17, party even harder than the Bush twins.

"I've partied with him (Track) for years," a source disclosed. "I've seen him snort cocaine, snort and smoke OxyContin, drink booze and smoke weed." Of 17-year-old (now pregnant) Bristol, another "family friend" said, "Bristol was a huge stoner and drinker. I've seen her smoke pot and get drunk and make out with so many guys. All the guys would brag that the just made out with Bristol." Now Track will join the army while Bristol breeds the next generation of cannon fodder.

The following week (9/29) the Enquirer followed up with a story claiming Bistol was caught smoking pot on video when she was only 15 (but showed no photographic evidence). “Bristol smiles at the camera, puts her lips around the pipe and inhales deeply. She holds the smoke in for a while, exhales, coughs a few times and then laughs uncontrollably...It was just another regular night of partying for Bristol and the other wild kids in Wasilla,” says the story, which also alleges that Track sold OxyContin pills "for a lot of money."

The more believable Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine had a piece in the Chicago Sun Times on 9/18 noting, "As Wasilla mayor in 2000, Palin championed a city council resolution opposing a ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana for adults. In March her administration asked the Alaska Supreme Court to reverse its 1975 decision shielding private marijuana use, arguing the drug is more dangerous than it used to be.

"In other words, Palin got to smoke pot without worrying about legal consequences and now wants to deny that assurance to fellow Alaskans doing exactly the same thing. 'Palin doesn't support legalizing marijuana,' the Anchorage Daily News reported in 2006, because she worries about 'the message it would send to her four kids.' It's Palin's job to teach her children that certain pleasures are reserved for grownups. The government should not continue to arrest adults who are harming no one simply because her children are easily confused."

White Speaks, Jokes About Minor Pot Bust
Ron White appeared on The Regular Guys show on Atlanta's Rock 100.5 FM to discuss his recent pot bust in Florida. After the DJs suggested he could crib from the apology just issued by Atlanta Falcon Lawyer Milloy after a DUI charge, White responded, "A DUI, that’s a big deal. I had 7/8 of a gram of marijuana. If it was 7/8 of a gram of a dead girls’ underwear, that would be a crime." He added, "I didn’t know that much was illegal. I’ve been in Florida a lot and I didn’t know they had any laws."

White said he thought the policemen were approaching him for an autograph when three cops and a drug dog met his plane. The dog gave a false positive on the plane and also alterted to White's bag. Driving him to jail, "I swear we drove past three meth labs and a dead hooker. ...They say they catch a lot of big-time dealers that way, but I say if you’re looking for a rabid pit bull and you don’t find one, don’t shoot a collie." He confirmed that he set pizza to the jail after he was released.

On White's next stop in Mississippi, six cops waiting for him, after another anonymous tip. Asked if that sort of thing changed his lifestyle, White replied, "There's not very much pot on the plane and we smoke out of an apple—the edible pipe. It worked that second night."

"I have a prescription for medical marijuana," White said, joking, "I get bummed when I run out of weed, and marijuana cures that." He then added, more seriously, "My life is busy and people are chewing on me, so I could eat a handful of Zanax and feel fine, or I can smoke some weed and my doctor says smoke some weed." He admitted to having a one-hitter on the plane that he uses, on doctor's orders, when he feels anxious.

"Eventually [medical marijuana] will be available all over the place," White opined. "It’s four or five states now (actually, 12). "Literally you can blow a joint into a cop car in Santa Barbara," he said. (Sadly, not true.) Of medical marijuana in California, White said, "What happened is they took what was going on underground, brought it above ground and taxed it and now everybody's happy and the court system isn’t clogged with cases of victimless crimes." (Sadly, also not quite true.)

As to the anonymous informant who fingered White, he speculated it was one of the pilots who reported him for a May 11 incident when he got angry with them and fired them. White said it was because they showed up two hours late. "He smokes marijuana like a chain smoker smokes cigarettes," one of the pilots, Scott Wolcott, said of White, and the other pilot, Chris LaPlante, told a reporter the pilots used oxygen masks against marijuana smoke on the plane. The FAA website has no report on the incident.

"Do you get mellow when you’re stoned? You don’t go tearing the place up?" White was asked. "I don’t know anyone who does that on weed," was the response.

White said he has received "an outcry of support like something really happened. Country people, rock and roll people, but I won’t say who because you’ll say they endorse my horrible behavior, which isn’t much different than your horrible behavior." Of the incident, he said, "It’s spiked record sales, book sales....It lends credibility to other stories because they know this one is true."

See the four-part interview at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toq12ImAaRw&fm=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G72kLJFIBE&fm=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mBSnOqnVl0&fm=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsIU5k16nwM&fm=18

And check out this YouTube debut, "Living the Outlaw Life."

I'm Proud to Be a Barber from Muskogee
"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee," pot-lover Merle Haggard sings in his spoof, "Okie from Muskogee." But on September 19, the Muskogee Phoenix reported that Johnnie L. Tarkington, 52, was arrested at his Muskogee barber shop after a search warrant was served and about a half pound of marijuana was seized. Two marijuana buys by an undercover cop were recently made at the shop, police said, adding, “There was a whole lot more than haircuts and shavings going on at the old barber shop.”

Tarkington was booked into Muskogee County/City Detention Facility on complaints of possession and distribution of marijuana. Perhaps he'll get credit for helping the local populace abide by Haggard's lyric, "We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy/ Like the hippies out in San Francisco do." Read the lyrics and get a complimentary Okie from Muskogee ringtone for your "cell" phone (which Ron White argued he ought to have been able to use in his jail cell.)

Are You Experienced? Artie Is
No sooner had we added Peter Boyle to the VIP list, than we spied an interview with Boyle's "outer" Artie Lange in the current High Times magazine. Lange recounts taking a trip to Amsterdam with fellow Howard Stern show staffers, and smoking a blunt in a coffeehouse. "I don't know if it was psychological because I was in Amsterdam, but it was the smoothest, best experience I'd ever had with it. I walked all through the city, and the best way I can describe it is like the Jimi Hendrix song, 'Are You Experienced?'...it was beautiful." Those who haven't tasted the beautiful freedom on Amsterdam can check out the High Times 21st Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam this November.

September 13, 2008 - Ron White Fingered for Florida Arrest
A jealous lover? A comedic rival? or was it just a mean person who tipped off Florida police that illegal drugs were being carried aboard a plane from Los Angeles. As Ron White's private jet touched down on September 10, Vero Beach police used K-9s to find less than 3 grams of marijuana and a pipe on the cooperative 51-year -old comedian, known for his appearances on The Blue Collar Comedy Tour with Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry "The Cable Guy." According to a police spokesperson, White said the marijuana was for medical purposes but could not provide a prescription. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.

White, who commonly appears onstage with a glass of whiskey and a cigar, is known as "Tater Salad" from a joke about getting booked into a Texas prison under that name. According to White's Web site, tatersalad.com, the Blue Collar Tour sold out shows in more than 90 cities and grossed more than $15 million. The DVD sold more than 1.5 million copies and the sequel, "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again," has sold more than 2 million copies.

White was booked into Indian River County Jail at 6:07 p.m. Wednesday and released at 8:06 p.m. after posting $1,000 bail. He went on to perform at two sold-out shows, presumably with more material than he had before.

In an incident earlier this year on White's plane, he allegedly stormed the cockpit after drinking too much. His first CD was titled "Drunk in Public." Perhaps White has, or needs, a medical recommendation for alcoholism.

Interior Department: Sex, Drugs and Scandal
"A culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" has prevailed in the Interior Deparment's royalty-in-kind program, according to three reports by the Department's inspector general Earl E. Devney. Several officials at the agency, which collects about $4 billion in oil and gas royalties annually, "frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." In an environment "devoid of both the ethical standards and internal controls sufficient to protect the integrity of this vital revenue producing program," officials also accepted gifts like golf, ski and paintball outings from energy companies "with prodigious frequency," and allowed them to revise their bids to purchase oil and gas after agency acceptance, the reports say.

Gregory W. Smith, the former royalty-in-kind program manager, reportedly purchased cocaine several times a year between 2002 and 2005 from his secretary, with whom he also had a sexual encounter. Smith also reportedly forced another employee to perform oral sex on him in his car. The Justice Department has declined to prosecute Smith, who retired in 2007, but they've plenty of time to go after nice guy Charles Lynch for running a California Cannabis Coop, one of dozens of such federal cases.

McCain Drug Scandal Re-Surfaces
More in the Republican drug scandal arena: a September 11 Open Left article by Matt Stoller, Did McCain Tamper with the Drug Enforcement Agency to Protect His Career? interviews whistleblower Tom Gosinski about the time Cindy McCain was facing federal charges and, experts say, a 20-year prison sentence for obtaining "a controlled substance by misrepresenting, fraud, forgery, deception or subterfuge" through her former charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team. Gosinski claims John McCain used his political connectinos to blackball him in the Republican party, and had a henchman bring extortion charges against Gosinski. A September 12 front-page Washington Post story said the McCains claimed Gosinski tried to extort $250,000 from the McCains over the scandal (for which Mrs. McCain did no time.)

Franco is Frank in GQ
James Franco, who plays a pot dealer in Pineapple Express, graces the cover of September's GQ magazine next to the headline: "James Franco, The Next James Dean: If James Dean Were Funny and Did Stoner Comedies."

In the article, Franco (born on Bicycle Day, 1978) laments some of his movie choices, stressing he does not mean his recurring role in the Spiderman flicks, and not mentioning Pineapple in that context. But he did have some amusing anecdotes:

“Already,” he relates, “I have had people come up to me in cafés and say, ‘Hey, you’re James Franco, right? Hey, I can’t get hold of my guy—do you know where I can buy some good weed?’ ...I’ve had someone come up to me and be, ‘Hey! What’s up, man?’ and give me a handshake and palm me a little bag of weed.” (The same thing happened to VIP Robert Mitchum after his 1948 pot bust.)

Franco told GQ, in a confessional tone, “I haven’t done drugs, I haven’t even smoked pot, since high school.” He is currently taking 62 credits at UCLA and will appear as the lover of Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, in the upcoming Milk. "Oh, my God, I’m kissing Spicoli," was Franco's thought (referring, of course, to Penn's role as the stoner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Franco has been trying his had at writing, directing and producing and will appear as VIP Alan Ginsberg in Howl (2009), also starring Mary-Louise Parker of Weeds.

Speaking of James Dean, Franco won a Golden Globe for portraying him in a 2001 TNT movie, and John Gilmore's book Laid Bare outs Dean as a pot smoker. Known to be a fan of VIP Lord Buckley, Dean was the subject of one of Buckley's monologues.

Flashing Back
I just got my new Flashback Books catalogue, full of interesting items, including:

-A rare blue cloth binding first edition of Fitz Hugh Ludlow's The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean (1857);

-An "unusually fine" signed first edition of VIP Norman Mailer's Advertisements for Myself, in which he defends marijuana smoking "and how it brought him back to sex," with much more on hipsters and Beats;

-A first edition of Really the Blues (1946), signed by its authors VIP Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe;

-Richard Schultes's "Hallucinogens of Plant Origin" reprinted from Science (1969) and signed;

-A signed first edition of Terence McKenna's Food the the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992);

-Papers from SOMA, the British organization that ran ads in 1967 advancing marijuana decriminalization signed by the recently-knighted Beatles and other luminaires;

-"A review of the Biomedical Effects of Marihuana on Man in the Military Environment" (Dept. of Army, 1970);

-A signed copy of Tommy Chong's The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint (2006) with extra materials;

-A signed first edition of Robert Clarke's Marijuana Botany (1981);

-A limited edition double CD of Rolling Stone Brian Jones's presentation of the Master Musicians of Joujouka, "whose Sufi trance sound is informed by their use of kif and hashish." With liner notes by Jones, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin (who contributed the hashish fudge recipe to Alice B. Toklas's cookbook);

-Some choice selections from VIP Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, and much more.

The catalog is available for $10 postpaid, send to Flashback Books, P.O. Box 471659, San Francisco, CA 94147.

Start the Conversation
VIP Rick Steves' collaboration with ACLU, Marijuana, It's Time for a Conversation, has posted online interviews with Richard J. Bonni (co-author, The Marijuana Conviction); Jack A. Cole (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition); John P. Morgan, M.D. ( Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School) and others. Share them with your family and friends!

Getting off the Skunk Train
The NORML blog picked up on the news that VIP Jacqui Smith lied about increased potency of marijuana when she pushed for harsher drug laws in Britain. The myth of dangerous "skunk" weed has been promulgated by VIPs Richard Branson and Pattie Boyd.

September 6,2008 - Shirley, You Jest!
Shirley MacLaine's 11th book, SAGE-ing While AGE-ing (2007, Atria Books) contains the following passage: I've never done a line or coke or taken any drugs for recreation. But once Robert Mitchum gave me some bang brownies, and I thought I was walking around in my own brain cells (fascinating, by the way). And I smoked pot in a hotel room in London, and afterward nearly ate the furniture, I was so hungry.

Since MacLaine recounts being so fearful of gaining weight she once told mafioso Sam Giancana to go fuck himself for trying to make her eat some spaghetti, perhaps the munchies were one reason she chose not to further explore the "fascinating" experience of "bang" (presumably, bhang, but it's cute her way). One of the experts she quotes, Dr. John Mack of the Department of Psychology at Harvard, noted that the use of psychedelic substances is one way to challenge the prevailing materialistic-dualistic worldview, but MacLaine, 74, choses other means, exploring UFOs, star beings, numerology, synchronicity, past lives and more in her far-reaching book. It's funny she doesn't notice that Mitchum's 1948 arrest came just after the Roswell UFO sightings and the National Security Act.

Of drugs, she writes: In the sixties, when nearly everyone was experimenting with drugs, my friends explained how they loved being high because they could see the possibility of joy and love, etc. It has been proven [she doesn't say how] that liquor and drugs dull and block out the lower energy senses that we suffer from and allow us to experience the higher levels of who we can be--and really are. We can then become addicted to the higher experience. ...

Somewhat wisely and compassionately she adds: Many people who are interested in expanding their conscious use drugs...the Timothy Leary approach. Yet our legal system puts millions of people behind bars every year for trying to block out lower energy senses and find the higher potential. Why doesn't our legal system teach rehabilitation through meditation and prayer so the people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol can find their higher power another way?

MacLaine says the ghosts who lived in her New Mexico home told her that drugs "make the soul incapable of the beautiful experience of passing." Aldous Huxley, for one, would disagree with that.

MacLaine will appear on Regis & Kelly on September 8 and will receive an award at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10.

Cannabinoids Conquer Bacteria
Source: Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa (Journal of Natural Products)

The antibacterial properties of marijuana have been known since the 1950s, and have now been linked to the plant's cannabinoids. A study by Italian and British researchers has found cannabinoids to have "potent antibacterial activity" and "exceptional" activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

The team investigated the antibacterial profile of the five major cannabinoids Δ⁹-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), cannabinol (CBN), and their chemical cognates. The researchers chose to focus on the nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, although all showed antibacterial activity. Topical treatments against MRSA and other pathogens are one promising future product.

The researchers state, "Given the availability of C. sativa strains producing high concentrations of nonpsychotropic cannabinoids, this plant represents an interesting source of antibacterial agents to address the problem of multidrug resistance in MRSA and other pathogenic bacteria. This issue has enormous clinical implications, since MRSA is spreading throughout the world and, in the United States, currently accounts for more deaths each year than AIDS." But they warn, "Several studies have associated the abuse of marijuana (Cannabis sativa L. Cannabinaceae) with an increase in opportunistic infections, and inhalation of marijuana has indeed been shown to interfere with the production of nitric oxide from pulmonary macrophages, impairing the respiratory defense mechanisms against pathogens and causing immunosuppression."

Sumo Wrestles with Marijuana, Fraud, Abuse
Russian siblings Roho and Hakurozan (pictured, left), tested positive for marijuana in urine samples taken by Japan's sumo wrestling association a month after another Russian, Wakanoho, became the first sumo wrestler to be expelled in the sport's 2,000-year-history when police found a marijuana cigarette in his wallet.

"The revelation of drug use among sportsmen known for their Spartan training methods and supposedly disciplined lifestyle is a huge embarrassment for the sumo authorities," said UK's Guardian newspaper, which reported the head of the sport faced calls to resign over the Wakanho incident because the wrestler was his protege.

Wakanoho, 20, was arrested after admitting he had bought a small quantity of the drug in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, the Guardian reported. A pipe used for smoking cannabis was found in his apartment.

The sumo association said it had carried out surprise tests on all 69 wrestlers in sumo's top two divisions. Only Roho, 28, and Hakurozan, 26, tested positive, officials said. "It is possible that they inhaled very recently, probably within the last two days," said Shohei Onishi, a sumo anti-doping official. Both wrestlers denied smoking marijuana, but later admitted to having smoked it in Los Angeles in June. Although possession of marijuana is punishable by up to five years in prison, Japanese law carries no penalty for simply smoking it.

"Sumo authorities are under mounting pressure to show zero tolerance towards drug use as it battles to salvage its already tarnished reputation," reported the Guardian. "Earlier this year Junichi Yamamoto, a stable master, was arrested on assault charges following accusations that he had ordered the beating by three of his wrestlers of a 17-year-old trainee in June last year. The victim collapsed and died the following day. Sumo elders have also had to fend off accusations of match fixing and have been ordered to clamp down on the widespread physical abuse of younger wrestlers."

Non-Sumo Sports News
A Denver-based marijuana policy reform organization is decrying the estimated $300,000 fine levied by the National Football League against New England Patriots running back Kevin Faulk for marijuana possession. Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) is calling for changes to the NFL's marijuana policy via an on-line petition and an official letter to Commissioner Roger Goodell that the organization delivered to the league's office in New York City on September 5.

"The NFL has no problem with players using alcohol and it accepts hundreds of millions of dollars to promote booze to football fans of all ages," said SAFER Executive Director Mason Tvert. "Yet the league punishes those players who make the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol to relax and recreate. The NFL is driving its players to drink." Faulk is on one year's probation after he was stopped and searched while attending a February 22 Lil Wayne concert at the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana. Four hand-rolled cigars containing marijuana (aka "blunts") were found on Faulk, who pleaded no contest to the charges in July.

Meanwhile, Mario Chalmers, the Miami Heat rookie guard who "miraculously" helped Kansas win the NCAA championship five months ago, and his former Kansas teammate Darrell Arthur were reportedly caught in their room with two women at the NBA's mandatory rookie transition program, held at a resort in Rye Brook, N.Y. Security officials say they detected the scent of marijuana coming from the players' room, although no drugs or drug paraphernalia were found.

Both Chalmers and Arthur denied smoking marijuana, but even having guests in the room broke NBA policies. They will have to repeat the class next year. Both could be fined up to $20,000 and still may face a suspension at the start of the season.

And Penn State police, responding to a call about noise violations at the campus Nittany Apartments, said they smelled a strong odor of marijuana. Obtaining a search warrant, they seized 5 roaches; 3 small samples of suspected marijuana; a bag of marijuana with an empty cigar from a trash can; mixed pills outside a trash can; a can containing a marijuana roach; and a bag of marijuana in a trash can. No immediate charges were filed, but Maurice Evans and Abe Koroma, who play end and tackle on the Penn State football team, were suspended from play. Evans was crying before Saturday's game against Oregon State, according to defensive end Josh Gaines. Coach Joe Paterno didn’t say Saturday when Evans, an All-American candidate, or Koroma would return to the team.

Pot & Palin: Joe Biden, Drug Warrior
By the ever-astute Fred Gardner for Counterpunch

Putting the Grass in Grass
A nationwide group of marijuana legalization advocates has announced a prize for the first person to genetically modify any common food to produce the active ingredients in marijuana. The group’s web site lists plants that are the best candidates for the genetic modification. They will also consider other plants that could be consumed by humans, such as ordinary lawn grass.

Technical papers describing the processes used will be published at http://MarijuanaPrize.com. More details are available at: http://MarijuanaPrize.com/marijuana_prize_press_release.aspx

September 1 - Read It and Veep
It must have been a bitter moment for VIP Hillary Clinton and her supporters when Clinton was acknowledged by 44-year-old Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen by John McCain as his running mate. The only major-party woman left in the race is an anti-abortion conservative and lifelong NRA member with two years' experience as governor, following holding office as mayor of a small Alaska town. But at least she admits to smoking pot. "I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled," Palin said during her 2006 gubernatorial run.

Biden: His Time
Meanwhile Joe Biden, VIP Barack Obama's 65-year-old running mate, is the man who wrote the bill that gave us a "drug czar." Biden is disliked by Tommy Chong, who went to prison under Biden's law, but the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann points out that he has at least tried to rectify one of the most egregious injustices of the war on drugs.

Biden is on record saying he would end the federal raids on medical marijuana patients a house party in Canterbury, New Hampshire, on May 12, 2007. He added, "But you know that one of the things we have got to deal with is the issue of pain management. I spent a lot of time in the hospital, fortunately I wasn't, for most of the time, in serious pain. But, you know, lying there for 59 days in an ICU unit you see people and hear people in pain. We have not devoted nearly enough science or time to deal with the pain management and chronic pain management that exists. There's got to be a better answer than marijuana. There's got to be a better answer than that. There's got to be a better way for a humane society to figure out how to deal with that problem."

California AG Brown Gets Into the MMar Act
In a move that the Wall Street Journal ties to his plans to run for Governor again, California Attorney General Jerry Brown seems to have joined the ongoing cannabis-club raiding gold rush the feds have been enjoying. On August 22, the day of the first state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement raid of a club since the days of the dastardly former AG Dan Lungren, Brown issued medical marijuana guidelines designed to “ensure that medical marijuana is not diverted to illicit markets.” Read California NORML's analysis of the new guidelines.

Brown, who was elected California’s Governor in 1974 and reelected in 1978 by over one million votes, saw his populist 1992 run for President derailed by an anonymous accusation that he smoked pot in the Governor’s mansion, made by a man who appeared on television with his face and voice obscured. Brown’s reaction, which should have been, “So what—I dated Linda Ronstadt too,” was instead so unnecessarily defensive it helped sink his campaign.

BNE's raid of Today’s Healthcare in Northridge club resulted in the arrest of the club’s owner and a suspected middleman between the club and Northern California growers, and netted a total of six pounds of marijuana and $9000 in cash. It's a far cry from the estimated $100 million in sales tax the club contribute yearly to California's coffers.

Meanwhile, I just Stumbled Upon the Curb Your Enthusiasm moment where Larry buys pot from a street dealer for his ailing father. Yeah, this is so much better than buying from a club. If we get McCain/Palin, we can have back alley abortions again too.

Blasting the Stoner Stereotype
An article in Blast magazine quotes successful college students who like to get high. It declares:

The days of the "stoners" lying on the grass in hippie attire, munching on snacks and going nowhere with their lives has disappeared. The typical "stoner" has been replaced with a well-dressed, put-together college student who does well in school and blends in seamlessly with the rest of the student body....Students are smoking cannabis while studying, writing papers and taking tests and doing extremely well while they're at school.

"I think that it adds to my quality of life and my educational experience," said Megan, who regularly does her school work while under the influence of marijuana. "There are a lot of people who feel the same way and I think that will lead to the legalization." Read more.

War on the Sythians, and others
Look for an upcoming piece in Junior Scholastic on the Georgia-Russia war by former High Times senior editor Steve Wishnia. He writes, "While I was researching it, I found that some people in the area are believed to be descended from the ancient Scythians. The Scythians, as those of you who are up on your herbal history know, were the first recorded pot-smokers in the Western world. In 440 BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that they would put a plate of hot stones in a tent, throw buds on the stones, go in and inhale the smoke, and emerge 'howling with pleasure.' On the other hand, the Scythians were not your stereotypically peaceful pot smokers. They were a warrior tribe that enjoyed drinking their vanquished enemies' blood." Wasn't Spartacus as Scythian?

Labor Day marks the anniversary of the 2001 shooting death of Tom Crosslin of Michigan's pro-pot Rainbow Farm at the hands of federal and state police. The following morning Crosslin's companion Rolland Rohm was also shot and killed. See Memorial Day Weekend 1997 at the farm, "featuring speeches from Gatewood Galbraith, (The Last Free Man In America), Jack Herer (Godfather of The Hemp ...Movement), Chris Conrad, (Hemp Guru), & Elvy Musikka, (Federal Medical Marijuana Patient & advocate) & Master of Ceremonies Derrik DeCrane."

"Imagine returning home after work to take a shower before an evening meeting. Suddenly, your door is broken down, your two Labrador retrievers are shot, and you are interrogated for hours while handcuffed in your boxer shorts as you watch your beloved dogs bleed to death before your eyes. It sounds like the twisted plot of a horror movie about a home invasion, but these events actually happened in Prince George's County, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. on July 29, 2008, to Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his family." Thus begins a letter at the Drug Policy Foundation action site to the nation's mayors, asking them to stop paramilitary tactics. Read more and take action.

Christmastime at the Lebowskis
The Big Lebowski is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a multi-page story in the new Rolling Stone. A more patient guy than I, Steve Bloom of CelebStoner waded through it for a Christmas Quote.

August 17, 2008 - THC meets THX: A Woman's Review of Pineapple Express
Pineapple Express does The Big Lebowski two better by involving both a pothead (Seth Rogen) and his dealer (James Franco) in a full-blown action flick. It's an entertaining and cleverly realized yarn, despite the tired old elements of warring evil drug gangs, a corrupt cop (albeit in the unusual person of Rosie Perez), and lots of second-act violence, some of it among crazy-looking pot plants. The opening sequence presents just about the most accurate and hilarious depiction of the effects of pot smoking ever filmed, and irresponsible acts like driving while smoking and selling to schoolchildren are part of the over-the-top plot (and properly rebuked, or at least examined).

The inability of Rogen's character to commit to marriage even after a near-death experience is amusingly played in the film, with its "bros before hos" theme. Though his girlfriend is left hanging at the end while more male bonding occurs, the characters do perform some heroic acts worthy of winning a damsel in distress. Perhaps the filmmakers read last year's David Denby review that challenged them to do so.

"Literature was a particular laddish enterprise, the province of young bachelors who usually gave it up when -- or if -- they married," writes Germaine Greer in Shakespeare's Wife (2007, HarperCollins, New York). Shakespeare, who got the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway pregnant when he was 18, left his wife and children behind to pursue his writing in London, probably patronizing prostitutes and having a homosexual affair with his patron, The Earl of Southampton. Initially criticized as lightweight fare, Shakespeare's plays have endured through the ages. And so it continues to go.

The Pineapple Express should ride to big bank in foreign markets, where violence needs no translation. I smell a sequel in the making.

August 15, 2008 - Men and Women on Pot
Men's Journal has an article in their September 2008 issue titled, "Athletes Discover Pot for Pain"--Tagline: "Marijuana works wonders on serious pain related to major illnesses. But could weed also be a better option than over-the-counter drugs for sports injuries and muscle soreness?" by Marc Peruzzi. A table compares cannabis with ibuprofen, acetominophen, aspirin, and naproxen.

And the July 2008 issue of Elle magazine ran an article titled "Pot Stirring". Tagline: "After years of prescription antidepressants that offered no relief from anxiety disorder, Patsy K. Eagen experiments with her drug of choice--marijuana, which for some may be the medicine to send SSRIs up in smoke."

August 4, 2008 - Stoner Flicks Rule
If you had the New York Times delivered on Saturday, chances are the first story that hit your eye was their story Boldly Going One Toke (or More) Over the Line, which not only promoted Sony Pictures' Pineapple Express but treated the stoner comedy as a full-fledged genre, with photos from Reefer Madness and Cheech and Chong through Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, Half Baked, The Big Lebowski, and the Harold and Kumar franchise (the first installment of which is airing on cable this week).

New Yorker film critic David Denby, in a scathing review of the the 40-Year-Old Virgin/Knocked Up genre published last July, wrote of Pineapple's director Judd Apatow, "Apatow does the infantilism of the male bond better than anyone, but I'd be quite happy if I never saw another bong-gurgling slacker or male pack again." But nothing succeeds like success, and by October Denby was interviewing writer/actor Seth Rogen and Apatow about their "pothead action movie" at the New Yorker fest, now calling their work "shallow on the surface but with endless depths."

As Cheech and Chong announced they would reunite for a comedy tour (news that got more pick-ups than a press conference for the Barney Frank legalization bill, the first in 23 years) Rogen, 25, appeared on The Tonight Show and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, who asked him if he was depressed during the four years between his TV shows Freak and Geeks (1999-2000) and his first film break. "I was probably too stoned," joked Rogen, who wrote for The Ali G. Show among his other credits. Rogen will appear on The Daily Show on August 5, a day that will go down, no doubt, in stoner history.

Strikingly, the only female lead in the Times's stoner flick list was Anna Faris in the "little seen" Smiley Face (2007), where she plays "a pot-addled would-be actress stumbling through a long, weird day." So, women can get stoned, but they don't have any fun? It's also a shame to see James Franco, who was so appealing opposite Neve Campbell in Robert Altman's The Company (2003) relegated, as nearly all young actors are, to playing comic book heroes or Tommy Chong-style stoners. (I have never once seen a real-life stoner who acts that way, nor does Chong in real life.) But I'm sure I'll enjoy the film, and I actually like Rogen's goofy/sweet/thoughtful/funny persona. I just hope it's not too violent.

After a comedy stint in the musical Reefer Madness (2005), Campbell goes so far as to bare her breasts for attention in I Really Hate My Job (2007), a dreary film that could have used a toke, or an actor not making another Bromance. This as a new Apatow project is anounced by Sony: a Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson buddy flick starring Ali G's Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Farrell, written by Etan Coen, whose Tropic Thunder, the ultimate male bonding extravaganza, is due out later this summer. If you read John Gilmore's book Laid Bare, which outs James Dean as a pot smoker, you'll see a movie business run by old gay men. Hey, just like Washington!

How China Got That Way
With all the focus on China for the Olympics (where anti-doping samples will be accompanied by armed guards through the smog-filled streets of Beijing), it's interesting to revisit the role drugs played in the history of China, Britain and the U.S. Read more.

August 3, 2008 - Jobs for Stoners

July 20 - Ehrenreich in Oakland
Pastor Lynice Pinkard gave a rousing introduction to author Barbara Ehrenreich's talk at the First Congregational Church of Oakland, California on July 15. Pinkard spoke of the two strands necessary for engagement and transformative action: both radical critique plus "celebration and hope in the face of overwhelming odds." She cited Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, where she took minimum wage jobs in order to report on the world of the working poor, and her book Dancing in the Streets, where she celebrates celebration.

Speaking about her new book of essays, This Land is Their Land, Ehrenreich's talk hinged on the news that the top 1.5 % of the country now is worth as much as the bottom 90%, and most people are "living in their own personal recessions." Of universal health care, she mentioned the environmental news that 41 million Americans are getting prescription drugs in their drinking water -- free! Noting that $10 billion is being spent yearly on veterinary care, she called for making vet care available to all. Since plastic surgery is soaring, why not solve the fuel crisis by building a pipeline for liposuction fat sucked from the ultra rich in Los Angeles. On a serious note, she said that an estimated 18,0000 Americans die yearly from the lack of health insurance, 6 times the number that died on 9/11.

Ehrenreich was asked about Obama's flip-flopping on marijuana legalization, and suggested interested folks log on to his website to make their voices heard. She added that The Nation is drafting an open letter to Obama, reminding him he won't win without the energy generated in the spring which he had because he appealed to progressives. She told this reporter she thought that letter included a statement about marijuana legalization. Along with Tom Hayden and Danny Glover, she signed on to an earlier open letter urging progressives to back Obama. 

Of questions about the recent flap over the New Yorker cover depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as a terrorist and a Muslim, Ehrenreich commented that this country has irony deficiency disease. Maybe so, but Ehrenreich is doing all she can to revive our irony, and our ire. She is on her way to Jobs for Justice events in Portland and Seattle. Now that's she's appeared on The Colbert Report, she can tackle anything.

Obama Not a Deadhead (but close)
Barack Obama made the cover of the Rolling Stone with an editorial endorsement and a revealing interview by Jann Wenner. Reacting to the news that Bob Dylan had endorsed him, Obama said he probably had 30 Dylan songs on his iPod, including the entire Blood on the Tracks album. "Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm'," he said. " It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

Remarking that at his RS cover shoot he recognized the Grateful Dead music that was playing, Wenner asked the candidate if he was a deadhead. "I'm not sure I fully qualify as a Deadhead - I don't wear tie-dye and I've never followed them around anywhere. But I enjoy the songs," he said, adding that The Dead played a benefit for him and " I just like them as people."

Asked if he had a musical hero, he named Stevie Wonder (who playd at the Free John Sinclair rally in ). He added his iPod includes a lot of Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker, plus "everything from Howlin' Wolf to Yo-Yo Ma to Sheryl Crow to Jay-Z." There are a lot of drug users there. There was also this exchange:

The War on Drugs has cost taxpayers $500 billion since 1973. Nearly 500,000 people are behind bars on drug charges today, yet drugs are as available as ever. Do you plan to continue the War on Drugs, or will you make some significant change in course?
"Anybody who sees the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities, or the methamphetamine trade in rural communities, knows that this is a huge problem. I believe in shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public-health approach. I can say this as an ex-smoker: We've made enormous progress in making smoking socially unacceptable. You think about auto safety and the huge success we've had in getting people to fasten their seat belts.

"The point is that if we're putting more money into education, into treatment, into prevention and reducing the demand side, then the ways that we operate on the criminal side can shift. I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives - it's expensive, it's counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

On July 1, Obama stated that he opposes a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California in a letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club.

Pot: An American Pastime

The Time/CNN website posted a story "An American Pastime: Smoking Pot" by Sarah N. Lynch on July 11, which sought to spin the survey published this month in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science, finding that despite tougher drug policies in the U.S., Americans were twice as likely to have tried marijuana than the Dutch. In fact, Americans were more likely to have tried marijuana or cocaine than people in any of the 16 other countries, including France, Spain, South Africa, Mexico and Colombia, that the survey covered.

"Yet experts say the findings of the new survey don't fairly reflect the success or failure of any particular drug policy," the article states. Jim Anthony, chair of the department of epidemiology at Michigan State University and an author of the study, says U.S. drug habits have to do, in part, with the country's affluence. "Another factor may be an increasing awareness that marijuana may be less toxic than other drugs, such as tobacco or alcohol. (However, the study also found that the U.S. is among the leading countries in the percentage of respondents who have tried tobacco and alcohol)."

"One of the questions raised by research of this type is whether Americans will want to continue supporting the incarceration of young people who use small amounts of marijuana," Anthony says.

The ongoing study, which surveyed more than 85,000 people in 17 countries, is part of a larger project through the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey Initiative.

Coffee production touted as alternative for Kalinga marijuana farmers
ABS-CBN reported along with Reuters that the local goverment in Tinglayan, Kalinga "is determined to enhance coffee production to eradicate marijuana plantations in its far-flung villages. One official said marijuana planting is still rampant in the villages of Loccong, Busculan, Butbut and Balay. The municipal government is planning to approach more farmers, particularly those who are cultivating marijuana, and convince them to plant coffee plants instead.

Jerry Baliang, acting regional director of the Department of Agriculture in the Cordillera Administrative Region, said more than 8,000 hectares of land in Kalinga have been converted into coffee farms.

In its 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy report, the US State Department said marijuana had regained popularity in the Philippines and the drug was also being exported to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia.

The report, citing data from the Philippines' Dangerous Drug Board (DDB), had identified at least 60 cultivation sites in the Cordilleras and on the troubled southern islands of Mindanao, Jolo, Basilan and Tawi-tawi.

Warning: Don't Dance Strangely or Leave Your Car Door Open
A teenager whose strange dancing at a Sheboygan festival caught the attention of authorities is now facing drug charges, according to the Associated Press. A criminal complaint says a security officer at Hispanic Fest last Saturday alerted a patrolling police officer about a man who was "dancing strangely." The security officer thought the man was either drunk or high on drugs. The complaint says the police officer noted the man smelled strongly of marijuana, then searched him and found 2.6 grams of marijuana and a glass pipe. Eighteen-year-old Jeffery Holm Jr. of Plymouth was charged with marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Source: The Sheboygan Press.

And Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page, 38, was arrested in upstate New York after police noticed a car with its driver's side door left open. They say they found Page and two women in a nearby apartment, along with cocaine and marijuana. Page, released after paying $10,000 bail, is due in court Thursday.

Medical Marijuana on Retirement Living TV

July 13 - Now That's Ital-Lion
Peter Popham of The Indpendent (UK) reports the Italian Supreme Court ruled that "smoking or possessing cannabis is not a criminal offence but a religious act when the person doing it is a Rastafarian."

Last year, the same court declared that cultivating even a single cannabis plant was a punishable offence. But now Italy's Court of Cassation has said Rastafarians use marijuana "not only as a medical but also as a meditative herb. And, as such [it is] a possible bearer of the psychophysical state to contemplation and prayer".

The ruling overturned the conviction of a man in his forties from Perugia who was sentenced to 16 months in jail plus a €4,000 (£3,000) fine in 2004 for possession of 97g of marijuana. His religion, the judges said, permits the smoking of 10g per day. Rastafarians smoke the drug, said the court, "with the memory and in the belief that the sacred plant grew on the tomb of King Solomon".

"The government is livid," the article states. The judgment "shatters the laws which forbid and proscribe penal sanctions for" the use of illegal drugs, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Right-wing politician Senator Maurizio Gasparri said: "Today we learn a Rasta is free to go around with drugs. If somebody belonged to a religion which permitted them to eat their children, would they give them the go-ahead, too?"

But the verdict was received with joy at Rototom Sunsplash, Europe's biggest festival of reggae music, near Udine, in north-east Italy. "Finally the principle of religious pluralism is beginning to make headway," Filippo Giunta, president of the festival, said. "This judgment ... underlines again the difference between this substance and so-called 'hard' drugs, alcohol included."

McCain Gaffes on Tobacco, Viagara
As the news hit that John McCain lost favor with the Reagans when he dumped his wife Carol for beer distributor heiress and former prescription drug junkie Cindy McCain, he was caught on film suggesting tobacco exports to Iran was "one way to kill them." On top of that, he hemmed and hawed mightily over a question raised by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the Republican National Committee's "victory chair" who has been mentioned as a VP possibility. Fiorina suggested women should be able to choose a health-insurance plan that covers birth control but not Viagra. "Those women would like a choice," she said. Pressed by LA Times reporter Maeve Reston, McCain had this nonresponse:

High-Tower Right Again
The Marijuana Policy Project has debuted a terrific video of Jim Hightower answering questions about the drug war with his usual highly cogent plain speaking. Hightower has risen from his post as Texas's Agricultural Commissioner to become America's conscience, a Jiminy Cricket to the lying Pinocchios of Politics. Don't miss his reasons why the gateway effect is bunk, or his daily Hightower reports.

(Jiminy Cricket, I find on Wikipedia in looking up its spelling, was originally a euphemism for Jesus Christ, first uttered in Pinocchio's immediate predecessor, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Another example occurs in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.)

Desired Reading
The July/August 2008 issue of Mother Jones magazine has a great package of stories on criminal justice, prisons, and the drug war. Pickup your copy, or subscribe to this wonderful magazine today, for only $10/year.

Wackness, Harry Potter Stars Grow Up
The Wackness and its writer/director Jonathan Levine have been getting rave reviews since the film won the dramatic audience award at Sundance in January and was picked up by Sony. The Vancouver Sun calls it "the spiritual coming-of-age antidote to Risky Business."

In the film, Nickelodeon star Josh Peck, the pudgy half of "Drake and Josh," plays Luke Shapiro, a sexually repressed teenage pot dealer who trades his product for treatment by psychiatrist Ben Kingsley (pictured, left). "It's definitely a different sort of forum than people are used to seeing me in," Peck told AP. "But I really hope that the Nickelodeon audience can sort of take a leap of faith with me and accept me in this new arena."

"I was always Carol Burnett's daughter," Hamilton, at 15, explained to People. "When I got high, I wasn't anymore. I wanted my own image." She became a successful performer in her own right, starring in the film Tokyo Pop and co-writing a play with Burnett. But doctors diagnosed Hamilton with lung cancer in August 2001, and three months later found the cancer had spread to her brain.

According to the American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 73, Issue 7 784-788 (1983), " In March 1978, 13 (21 per cent) of 61 marijuana samples from the southwestern United States were found to be contaminated with the herbicide paraquat, a pulmonary toxin, in concentrations from 3 to 2,264 parts per million. The source of the contamination was an aerial spraying program in Mexico, supported indirectly by United States funds." Paraquat is toxic to the lungs. Friendly fire, indeed.

One Thing Potheads Are Good At
Leah Garchik's column in the San Francisco Chronicle of 7/8/2008 reports that for the 13th year straight, Bolinas beat Stinson in the July Fourth Tug-o-War. "How do those skinny tie-dyed potheads manage to beat us every year?" moaned one competitor.

The Dog Doesn't Disappoint
The Ottawa Citizen reported on July 7 that 45 minutes into Snoop Dog's performance, the "renowned pothead" caught a whiff a banana-sized joint near the stage and demanded a hit, after which he loosed up and his show improved considerably. Elsewhere, Snoop's wife of 11 years had DUI charges dismissed when it could be proven she was under the influence of marijuana.

July 7 - Limbaugh: "I thank God for my addiction"
VIP Rush Limbaugh appears, puffing a big cigar, on the cover of Sunday's New York Times Magazine. The accompanying article by Zev Chafets reveals charming stuff like the fact that Limbaugh has been playing a spoof called "Barack the Magic Negro" to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" on his show. Limbaugh says he doesn't even know where PBS is on the radio dial, which is fine because we don't know, or care, where he is either. Of Bill O'Leilley Limbaugh says, "The man is Ted Baxter."

Chavets interviewed Florida psychologist, Steve Strumwasser, who was hired by Limbaugh’s lawyer, Roy Black, after Rush's 2006 bust for "doctor shopping" prescription pain medications. (The article doesn't mention that Limbaugh received 2,000 pain pills prescribed by four doctors in six months' time, and used his maid to buy his drugs. Then there was the off-label Viagara episode, not mentioned either.)

“I assessed Rush, and I saw he had a problem he couldn’t control,” Strumwasser told Chavets. According to Strumwasser, Limbaugh had previously tried twice to stop using drugs on his own and failed.

Limbaugh told Chavets, “I thank God for my addiction. It made me understand my shortcomings...My problem was born of immaturity and my childhood desire for acceptance. I learned in drug rehab that this was stunting and unrealistic. I was seeking acceptance from the wrong people.”

Though he's on record saying drug users should be "convicted and sent up," Limbaugh himself was booked in and out of jail in April 2006 faster than you can say "maggothead." And one observer, fellow California DJ Randy Raley, debunks Rush's assertion that he only puffed pot twice.

Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance weighs in on the topic in his piece, Rush to Judgement. And Slate.com has an interesting new article about the deadly nature of prescription drug abuse What's Killing America's Drug Users?, citing a new state of Florida study about which the New York Times reported that the "rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined." The Florida study "attributed not one death to cannabinoids—you know, marijuana and hashish," wrote Slate.

Science Stuff

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2008) reports that scientists from Hungary, Germany and the U.K. have discovered that our own body not only makes chemical compounds similar to the active ingredient in marijuana (THC), but these play an important part in maintaining healthy skin. This finding on "endocannabinoids" just published online in, and scheduled for the October 2008 print issue of, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology ( FASEB) Journal could lead to new drugs that treat skin conditions ranging from acne to dry skin, and even skin-related tumors. "This research shows that we may have something in common with the marijuana plant," said Gerald Weissmann, MD. "Just as THC is believed to protect the marijuana plants from pathogens, our own cannabinoids may be necessary for us to maintain healthy skin and to protect us from pathogens." It is also suggested that these agents can be efficiently applied locally to the skin in the form of a cream.

Wired magazine reports that a chemical in marijuana, beta-caryophyllene, has been proven effective to treat pain, inflammation, atherosclerosis, and osteoporosis. Jurg Gertsch, of ETH Zurich, and his collaborators from three other universities learned that the natural molecule can activate a protein called cannabinoid receptor type 2. When that biological button is pushed, it soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals -- without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system. The chemical has not yet been proven to be safe and effective in humans.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma Is in a Frenzy to Bring Cannabis-Based Medicines to Market and in its largest report ever on the topic, The World Health Organization Documents the Failure of U.S. Drug Policies

July 4, 2008 - Be the 100,000th Unique Visitor to www.VeryImportantPotheads.com
VeryImportantPotheads.com has nearly reached 100,000 unique visitors (by the Bravenet counter -- we're getting more, plus tons of "hits" by our new counter). If you are the 100,000th visitor, you can win the original prototype to the new Name that Pothead card game, featuring 102 famous potheads in six categories. Here's how to win:
1. Visit http://www.veryimportantpotheads.com
2. Click on "VIPs" to get to the www.veryimportantpotheads.com/main2.html page
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the hit counter. If it says "100,000," print the page and send it along with your name and address to: Conscious Communications, POB 1203, Redway CA 95560. (Allow 6 weeks for delivery.)
[UPDATE: THIS MARK WAS HIT SOMETIME BETWEEN JULY 8th and 9th. STILL WAITING FOR A WINNER TO CLAIM THE PRIZE.]

Pothead of the Month: Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas, the singer/songwriter of the highly successful band Matchbox Twenty, was interviewed on tour in the March 6 Rolling Stone surrounded by his dogs, DVDs, scented candles, and "a blue bong he hits between sentences." Now Thomas tells CelebStoner he's a "huge" pothead and advocate for legalization.

The second you hear Thomas's voice you know he's full of conviction. His band combines lush musicality with rocking urgency and angst. He's not afraid to say he's been wounded by love, and has a genius for capturing the little moments that define relationships, and life.

Interestingly, Thomas's first band was called Tabitha's Secret. Perhaps he is aware of Tabitha's Weekend (6 March 1969), the episode of TV's Bewitched in which Tabitha turns herself into a cookie. In it, Endora (the grandmother witch) is offered brownies by Darrin's (straight) mother. "Those wouldn't be from a recipe by Alice B. Toklas, would they?" Endora asks. When told they were not, "Well then, never mind" is her answer.

Higher Education Chronicled
"I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana," begins a July 2 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education written under the pseudonym Tom Quincey. It continues, "I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities..."

Noting he is not recommending daily smoking, the author writes, "But if you use the substance judiciously, marijuana can remind you that 'intellectual labor' is really a form of Play, and infinitely preferable to most of the jobs your peers are drudging through. Hence, I accept Paul Bowles's basic distinction between an alcohol-drinking culture and a cannabis-smoking culture, with the latter encouraging inwardness and creativity." The author recounts using pot to blast through writer's block in a way liquor could never do, and encourages his readers to eschew hard drugs and join NORML. "Together we'll resist the soulless forces of materialism and corporate conformity. And maybe someday I'll be able to write a column like this under my real name." Now there's an Independence Day message.

Jesse Helms Dead at 86
Ex-Senator Jesse Helms, who Helms once said his job was to derail the freight train of liberalism, is dead at 86. A champion of North Carolina tobacco growers, Helms single-handedly stopped the nomination of fellow Republican, then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, as ambassador to Mexico because Weld supported medical marijuana. Helms tried in 1983 to filibuster legislation to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

Highly Recommended: Wonderful Tonight
Wonderful Tonight, the autobiography of rock muse Pattie Boyd, for whom George Harrison wrote "Something" and Eric Clapton wrote "Wonderful Tonight" and "Layla," confirms some rock and roll drug stories and reveals others. Boyd married Harrison after meeting him on the set of "A Hard Day's Night" and was a top model who became a photographer.

After George returned from the Beatles' U.S. tour, where he told Pattie Bob Dylan turned the Fab Four onto pot, he rolled a joint and told his wife to inhale deeply. "It was quite dark in the room, we were listening to music, chatting away, until all of a sudden we were roaring with laughter and realized we were stoned," Boyd wrote. "Everything seemed hilarious."

While The Beatles were doing uppers in Hamburg to play long hours, Boyd was doing diet pills to stay Twiggy-skinny. "Drugs were part of our lives at that time and they were fun. We didn't take anything hard--none of us used heroin...but we took acid regularly." After they were first dosed with LSD, George said, "It was as if I had never tasted, talked, seen, thought, or heard properly before. For the first time in my whole life I wasn't conscious of my ego." But later, Boyd traveled to San Francisco's Haight Asbury district with George, who got turned off to the scene by what he saw. In 1967, one month after the Beatles signed on to an advertisement in the London Times calling for marijuana legalization in protest over the Rolling Stones' pot bust, they traveled to India to study with the Maharishi and vowed to give up all intoxicants.

Boyd stands up for the relative safety of marijuana over hard drugs in the book, but repeats a fiction now popular in England that today's so-called "Skunk" is much stronger and more dangerous than what her crowd smoked. "Dope in the sixties...was about peace, love, and increasing awareness. It was the basis of flower power; it was innocent. Cocaine was different and I think it froze George's emotions and hardened his heart." She recounts her painful relationship with Clapton, whose abuse of alcohol, cocaine and heroin are also documented in his recent book. The couple nearly reconciled after taking Ecstasy together, and Boyd finally found peace during an Ayahuasca journey after Harrison died and Clapton remarried.

Charles Lane Played Pothead
Charles Lane (left), the veteran character actor who died last July 9 in Los Angeles at the age of 102, was known to many as the train stationmaster on TV's Petticoat Junction. One of Lane's final performances was as the pot-smoking priest in Date with An Angel, the delightful 1987 film that starred French beauty Emmanuelle Beart as a fallen angel who brings joy and hope to the world without saying a word.

10 Years Later, Ricky Williams Looks Forward

What Your Government Knows About Cannabis And Cancer -- And Isn't Telling You

Senator Webb Questions Drug War Costs

June 22 - RIP to VIP George Carlin
The preeminent stand-up comedian of his time, George Carlin took us from the difference between AM and FM, baseball and football to his latest curmudgeonly specials, and along the way, showed us his Toledo Window Box (right) and voiced a character named Munchee in the Simpson's episode "D'ohing in the Wind." Carlin admitted to smoking pot judiciously into his old age and died of heart failure at the age of 71.

According to his NYTimes obit, Carlin "talked openly talked about the use of drugs, including acid and peyote, and said that he kicked cocaine not for moral or legal reasons but after he found 'far more pain in the deal than pleasure.'...In December 2004 he entered a rehabilitation center to address his addictions to Vicodin and red wine."

"Beer leads to heroin, that's a fact. In fact, mother's milk leads to everything," Carlin joked on Toledo Window Box, where he says he got into weed instead of alcohol in 1952-3, realizing, "Grass doesn't make you stagger, your breath don't smell, and you don't puke on your shoes." He then deconstructs our favorite nursery rhymes, like, "Mary had a little gram..."

"There's a cold front coming Canada, not to be confused with a high front from Mexico," his Hippy Dippy Weatherman joked.

According to his AP obituary, "Carlin's infamous seven censored words sketch led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance. The words were later played on a New York radio station, resulting in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening."

Carlin produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies. He won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

George Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston. "Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his website says.

We trust Carlin is safe, safe at home.

June 21 - U.S. Seeks to Imprison Pothead Hacker
UK's The Daily Mail reports that the U.S. is seeking to extradite 42-year-old British hairdresser/computer hacker Gary McKinnon who, while smoking copious amounts of pot, managed to hack into U.S. military computers. "His efforts have been described as the biggest military computer hack of all time," the article states. "Since then, the deeply embarrassed and enraged U.S. authorities have determined that their British pothead nemesis should pay a heavy price." If extradited, McKinnon faces 60 years in prison and, he fears, a stint at Guantanamo Bay.

June 20 - Rock Puffsome?
There’s a brief mention of pot, and lots of liquor, in the Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedy Lover Come Back (1961), spied on (where else) TCM. The rather convoluted plot goes something like this:

Advertising executives Carol Templeton (Doris) and Jerry Webster (Rock) work for competing ad agencies. Angered by Jerry’s method of nabbing clients using alcohol and women, Carol brings his behavior up before the Advertising Council. But Jerry bribes Carol’s star witness by filming her in a TV commercial for an imaginary product named VIP. When the ads are accidentally broadcast, Jerry pays a scientist to invent something he can call VIP. Meanwhile, Carol goes after the VIP account and mistakes Jerry, whom she has never met, for the scientist. As in other Hudson/Day movies, Rock pretends to be an inexperienced and marriageable man instead of the rogue he truly is, a ruse that was a good cover for Hudson’s homosexuality.

Jerry tells Carol he will consider her for the VIP account, but says he also has loyalty to Webster (himself). When Carol shows up at Webster’s apartment she is surprised when Jerry, who she thinks is the scientist, opens the door. Jerry feigns confusion, implying he was partying with Webster the night before and his memory is fuzzy.

Rock: “I was dizzy after that cigarette he gave me.”

Doris: “Oh, that depraved monster! What kind of cigarette?”

Rock: “I don’t know. It didn’t have any printing on it.”

Carol drags Jerry to her apartment where he tells her he lacks the confidence to make love to her. She goes into the kitchen and sings, “Lover, Should I Surrender” before popping a champagne cork and nearly donning a negligee—just before discovering the ruse. Furious (yet still sweet, as only Doris Day could be) she once more brings a complaint to the Ad Council, this time involving the District Attorney as well.

Meanwhile, the true scientist has come up with a product worthy of the VIP name. He calls it “A triumph of advanced biochemistry. Looks like candy, tastes like candy, and enters the bloodstream as pure alcohol. Each one of these is the equivalent of the triple martini. I’ve given this country what it has long needed: a good 10 cent drunk.”

Jerry shows up at his hearing with a box full of VIP, which the Ad Council stuffs themselves with. Hijinks ensue and he and Carol end up in bed with a marriage certificate neither remembers signing. Still furious, Doris shouts, “No alcoholic beverage, no drug known to science could induce me to stay married to you!” and storms out (pouting prettily). Representatives of the liquor industry then show up to bribe Jerry into burning the VIP formula by giving him a chunk of their $60 million advertising budget, which he gallantly gives to Carol.

The drug-laden plot is reminiscent of Bye Bye Birdie (1963) wherein biochemist/composer Albert F. Peterson (Dick Van Dyke) tries to make good in one or the other profession in order to marry his fiancée Rosie DeLeon (Janet Leigh). Just as he gets the Elvis-like Conrad Birdie to sing “One Last Kiss” on the Ed Sullivan show to Ann Margret, he hits upon the formula for a stimulant drug that truly makes him successful.

For factual information on marijuana and amphetamines, see The History Channel’s Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got that Way - Marijuana and Methamphetamine (2000).

Highly Recommended: Bongwater (1997)

The always engaging Luke Wilson stars as David, an artist/pot dealer with goofy friends and romantic troubles in Bongwater (1977), based on a novel by Michael Hornburg. With Jack Black as the quintessential hippie Devlin and Brittany Murphy as Mary, the friend who takes Davis on a mushroom hunt. With real life, intelligent characters and situations, this one is a cut above the usual stoner fare.

June 19 - Specter Would "Absolutely" Puff Legal Pot
Reporter Dan Gross of the Philadelphia Daily News asked Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, 78, who has completed eight of 12 rounds of chemotherapy for his cancer, whether he would use medical marijuana himself.

"If it were legalized in Pennsylvania and if I were in pain and my doctor prescribed it, then yes, absolutely I would," he told me, Gross wrote, adding, " When I asked if he would consider sparking up without it being legalized, I'd swear there was a brief smile before the senator said he was 'certainly not about to say I would violate the law.'" Several years ago, early in his battle with cancer, Specter told Gross that he had considered introducing legislation supporting medical marijuana.

On the Philly.com blog reform groups Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana and Philadelphia NORML they were starting a letter-writing campaign to Specter and other officials on the issue.

Pot Potency/Health Link Debunked
Science Daily reports today that "Claims that a large increase in the strength of cannabis over the last decade is driving the occurrence of mental health and other problems for users are not borne out by a study of the worldwide literature, say researchers at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) and the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI), both from Australia." Cannabis samples tested in the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Italy have shown increases in potency over the last decade, but no significant growth in other European countries or in New Zealand has been found during the same period, the article states.

June 18 - Shrinks Get Spacey
This is becoming a trend. First Bette Midler took a quick toke playing Mel Gibson's psychologist in What Women Want, then Angelica Houston shared a joint with her fellow shrink Hank Azaria on Huff, and Ben Kingsley opens The Wackness as a bong-sucking psychotherapist. Now Kevin Spacey, who played a middle-aged man who rediscovers pot in American Beauty, has signed to star in the indie drama, Shrink, from Thomas Moffett's script about a celebrity shrink in the midst of a personal crisis who turns to (you guessed it) ganja. A co-production between Ignite, Ithaka and Spacey's production house, Trigger Streethe, Shrink's cast will include Robin Williams and Gore Vidal and is scheduled to arrive in theaters later this year.

June 17 - Cyd Charisse and The Electric Prunes
As we say goodbye to the Texas girl who learned to dance to recover from polio and became Cyd Charisse, we revisit the appearance of psychedelic rockers The Electric Prunes on The Cyd Charisse show circa 1966. After introducing the band as "new and different" with a pair of puppets, Charisse donned flapper garb reminiscent of her performance in Singing in the Rain to dance in a skit for the Prune's third number. The band opened with Get Me To the World on Time ("Here I go/higher and higher") followed by their biggest hit, I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night).

Bringin' in the Weed
Showtime's Weeds will address marijuana smuggling this season, as Nancy walks her boots across the US-Mexico border, and gets caught. Meanwhile, Allen St. Pierre of NORML informs me that the U.S. government admitted last year in an ABC interview that Mexican marijuana smugglers caught with 500 pounds of marijuana or less are routinely released. Yet, American citizens are constantly prosecuted for simple possession of far smaller amounts.

Making an important distinction between hard and soft drugs, Nancy refuses to smuggle heroin. For a true-to-life story of a young Colombian woman who becomes a heroin smuggler, see Maria, Full of Grace, the 2004 film that won first-time actress Catalina Sandino Moreno a well deserved Oscar nomination.

June 16, 2008 -David Sedaris a Pothead No More
"David Sedaris is famous now, but he's spent so much time remembering the years when he was a slacker and a pothead that he's come to seem like the ordinary kid who one day discovers he has superpowers," begins a June 15 Bloomberg News article by Craig Seligman. The article goes on to say that Sedaris writes he has given up smoking both pot and cigarettes in his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

Sedaris, 51, is the humorist who contributes audio essays to NPR's This American Life. He is a best selling author of novels and essay collections like Me Talk Pretty One Day, and his essays appear regularly in Esquire and The New Yorker. One of these, "Of Wildflowers and Weed" (2007) describes an encounter with his pot dealer nine years earlier. A 2008 essay, Letting Go: Smoking and Non-Smoking says he was given a pack of cigarettes to take home after a fourth-grade school field trip in North Carolina.

As a child, Sedaris had a lisp, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome, which he says improved after he took up smoking ("A Plague of Tics" in Naked (1997)). In Me Talk Pretty he writes, "For the first twenty years of my life I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own."

In 2001, Sedaris was named "Humorist of the Year" by Time magazine and became the third recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He was named by Time magazine as “Humorist of the Year” in 2001. He's been nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album ("Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim") and Best Comedy Album ("David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall"). Not bad for a slacker/pothead.

Potheads on Parade
The Los Angeles Patient Advocacy Network's float reportedly won the top prize at the Gay Pride Parade in L.A. last weekend. Here's a picture of two happy partcipants (right).

June 13, 2008 - Reason: Drug Czar Reports Marijuana is Better than Ever

Bob Barr: I Was Wrong About the War on Drugs

The ACLU has made VIP Rick Steves' DVD "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation" available for the low-low price of $5.00. The accompanying booklet is free.

NOW U.K. EXPERTS SAY CANNABIS SHOULD BE LEGAL
Cannabis should be legalised and taxed, an influential Scottish think tank recommended just weeks after the UK's government hardened its attitude towards the drug, reclassifying it as a class B substance. According to a June 10 article in The Scotsman, the Scottish Futures Forum has published a report on drugs and alcohol in Scotland, saying one way to tackle the problem of addiction to harder drugs was to tax and regulate cannabis.

Forum chairman Frank Pignatelli said studies of San Francisco, where cannabis is illegal, and the Netherlands, where it is decriminalised [actually, tolerated], showed that the idea is worth considering because it breaks the link with class A drugs. In the Netherlands, only 17 per cent of cannabis sellers were also selling drugs such as crack, cocaine and heroin, while in San Francisco it was more than 50 per cent.

High-Flying Broadcom Founder Indicted
Flying in his private plane from Orange County California to Las Vegas in 2001, Broadcom Corp. co-founder and billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III and his entourage "generated so much marijuana smoke that it billowed into the cockpit, requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask," according to a federal grand jury indictment made public on June 5. Nicholas, who stepped down as Broadcom's chief executive in 2003, surrendered that day to the FBI.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a second indictment accused Nicholas of manipulating stock options at Broadcom, the Irvine-based maker of computer chips used in such products as mobile phones, Apple Inc.'s iPod and Nintendo Co.'s Wii consoles. In a 21-count indictment, Nicholas and William J. Ruehle, 66, Broadcom's former chief financial officer, were accused of backdating millions of stock options for five years to improperly reward employees.

A second, four-count indictment alleges Nicholas, 48, maintained homes and commercial properties in Orange County and Las Vegas for the "purpose of using and distributing controlled substances," including cocaine and methamphetamine. Among other things, Nicholas allegedly supplied Broadcom customers with prostitutes and narcotics he sometimes referred to as "party favors." He is accused of slipping MDMA (ecstasy) into some of the drinks of technology executives and representatives who worked for Broadcom's customers without their knowledge.

Nicholas also allegedly paid $1 million in June 2002 to buy the silence of another, unnamed Broadcom employee who was aware of his illegal drug activity. "In or around 2001, in the lobby of Broadcom's offices . . . Nicholas directed a Broadcom employee to provide approximately $5,000 to $10,000 in cash to a drug courier in exchange for an envelope containing controlled substances," the indictment alleges.

"Dr. Nicholas will contest these charges vigorously," his lead attorney, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. of Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "He is confident that he will be fully vindicated." U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato ordered Nicholas freed on bail of $3.4 million and ordered that Nicholas be confined to a Malibu drug treatment facility, with electronic monitoring, and that his two private planes be disabled. He warned Nicholas that he would be arrested if he violated any terms of his release, which also stipulate random drug tests.

The kicker: Nicholas was the chief financial backer of last-minute campaign commercials that derailed Prop. 66, which would have reformed California's Three-Strikes law to require a violent conviction for life imprisonment. The measure was leading by 62% for and 38% against with only 2 weeks left until the election. In the ads, California's former pot-smoking governator spoke in front of blown-up photos of convicted rapists and child molesters who he (falsely) claimed would be released if Prop 66 were passed.

June 7, 2008 - Weeds to Grow Again
As if it wasn't bad enough that Showtime paired Weeds with a show called Californication last year, now the network is co-promoting it with a new series about a hooker. Both will premiere on June 16. Nancy, the non-pot-smoking pot princess of Southern California, burned down her house at the end of last season and will reportedly be traveling to Mexico and moving in with her father-in-law, played by Albert Brooks.

Last season Nancy contined to fuck her way to the top, while doing other nice things like holding a knife to her neighbor's throat. But she does worry that she's not exactly a good role model for her kids. In fact, I wonder what "technical advisor" Advanced Nutrients thought of the face she made when someone suggests her son would make a good pot farmer. But the show must be having some effect, even in Orange County: UC Irvine's drama department just presented the musical Reefer Madness.

The charm of the show, for me, is in the ancillary characters, like the brother-in-law played by the talented Justin Kirk, and SNL's Kevin Nealon, the bong-loving bad boy of Agrestic. Nealon is being shown in a goofy promotional interview on Showtime where he is asked if he favors legalization. "I think marijuana should be legal for medical purposes and for entertainment purposes, but not the other uses," he jokes.

Last season, in the biggest break-out role since Bob Saget's Entourage appearance, Mary-Kate Olsen guest starred as a Jesus freak who sewed up the Christian market for Nancy. "It's St. John's anointing oil," she correctly stated. Likewise, even the hippie hilariously played by Ashton Kutcher in Bobby noted the spiritual nature of the herb and the founders of Advanced Nutrients have been knighted by the Bulgarian Order of St. Michael. While Weeds tarts up what's sacred for entertainment value, at least they slipped in one note that's radical and true.

NAME THAT POTHEAD: What Weeds cast member won an Obie Award for his role as a blind gay man in 1997’s Love! Valor! Compassion! and appeared as the employer of a pot-puffing waitress played by Salma Hayek in Ask the Dust ( 2006)?

HINT: When he accepted his High Times Stoney award for acting in 2006, he commented in his acceptance speech that the money he made from the hit series is only a fraction of what he’s spent on weed over the years. (In 2007 he was nominated for a Golden Globe award for his role on Weeds.)

Answers to: games@veryimportantpotheads.com

Where the Joints Are
VIP Bill Maher will be the guest programmer on TCM just after the Weeds debut on June 16. One of the four films Maher picked is Where the Boys Are (1960), a film that was quite ahead of its time, addressing sexuality and following four girls through the maze of men they encounter on spring break in Ft. Lauderdale, while seemingly hinting at pot use.

Classic cowboy Chil Wills contributes a fine performance as Ft. Lauderdale's police chief, who informs his men the kids who will be invading their town to "celebrate the rites of spring...have that right." Paula Prentiss' love interest T.V. (Played by Jim Hutton) constantly listens to a police radio to "keep up with his friends." When the girls meet Frank Gorshin's character, a "purveyor of dialectic jazz" named Basil (pronounced with a long "A", like the green leafy herb), he invites them to a concert where they play a song called "A meeting between Shakespeare and Satchel Page on Hempstead Heath." Afterwards he orders a Grasshopper, saying, "No man, no--not the one that hops!"

Yvette Mimeux's dreamy character Melanie (shown above) looks a lot like the cover of the 1956 novel Reefer Girl, and she goes astray with too many college boys, while uttering lines like, "Mystic!" and "I must have been really smashed--stoned!" When the boys teach her to smoke cigarettes, she reassures her friends, "I don't inhale, though."

In the commentary to the DVD version, Connie Francis reveals that she brought her favorite songwriter Neil Sedaka to the project, and sadly the sappy theme song was picked over her preferred song. But Sedaka also penned "You've Got to Turn on the Sunshine," the song Connie uses to nab her jazz musician. Remember folks, "You don't have to be a politician, you can change it all with a sunny disposition."

June 5, 2008 - Barr's Brownies on The Colbert Report
Last night's The Colbert Report featured this interview with Libertarian Presidental Candidate Bob Barr that wrapped up with a discussion of hash brownies and the failure of the drug war: