Stuff Stoners Like

California’s budget woes could cut a third of the agents from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement! Attorney General Jerry Brown estimates the cuts will lead to the layoffs of nearly a third of its 187 agents.

The Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement was created during Prohibition, in 1927, predating the current U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration by nearly half a century. In recent years, its primary focus has been on stamping out large-scale marijuana operations, busting dispensaries, terrifying cannabis patients, etc.

Perhaps the decision to lay-off some enforcers was made less because of financial concerns and more because of the public’s current favorable view of marijuana and the recent surge in popularity of the idea of legalizing and taxing cannabis.

Once marijuana does become legal, those drug enforcement jobs will be unnecessary.  The state faces a projected $24.3 billion budget deficit and already is making billions of dollars in cuts to education, health care, welfare and other social programs so it’s about time out-dated, useless jobs go away instead.

Look on the bright side Narc dudes…with the rise of dispensaries springing up all over the state of California there’ll be lots of need for security goons like yourselves.

Much like any other outing stoners might experience while stoned, grocery shopping is an adventure. Remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz where everything is all black and white and shit and then all of a sudden everything turns to color right as Dorothy flings open the door to Oz and Pink Floyd’s “Money“ starts playing? Well, uh…the Pink Floyd soundtrack is optional but,  that scene plays out each and every time a stoner walks in to the produce section at Safeway.

To a stoner, the produce department is a feast for the eyes. It’s filled with wild shapes and crazy textures and bright jewels of every color…like that fucking obnoxious Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat that Jesus dude wore in that pansy play.

Anyhow, the funny thing about stoners shopping for food is that they have an amazing knack for finding food that contains no food. Want some proof? Okay, see the dude in the sunglasses and the hoodie loitering in the cereal isle? He’s not smiling at all the low prices…he’s stoned, man. Now, go look in his shopping cart. It’s filled with things like Cap’n Chrunchula, Cheesey Poofs, FunOnions and Chocotacos and shit…all of which contain absolutely no food. See what I mean?

Very quickly grocery shopping morphs into a munchy run with a shopping cart and endless possibilities. Everything suddenly looks delicious…especially things within close proximity. Within no time at all after promenading up and down a few isles, stoners find there cart completely filled with a bunch of awkward ingredients that a chef at a bad Chinese restaurant couldn’t even combine into a stir fry.

Sure it was all fun and games at the store with all the flashing lights and colorful displays and they ice cream isle and stuff, but then they get home…start to unpack the groceries and unlike a memorable adventure they have virtually no memory of the event…let alone remember why they thought picking up a few bags of Skittles, Beer Nuts, Joe Perry’s Hot Sauce (Aerosmith) Rock Your World Boneyard Brew, and a lighter shaped like a gorilla with flashing red eyes was a good idea?

So check it out…some lame stoner mailman over in England was sentenced to a year in prison today for burning thousands of pieces of junk mail! Unfortunately, Neil Goddard, 32, of York, England, wasn’t trying to be all resourceful and shit using the junk mail as rolling papers or anything…he was just being lazy.

According to authorities and the lame Brit tabloid the Sun, dude allegedly smoked so much of his stash that he was unable to keep up with his deliveries and burned the leftover mail. Allegedly he set fire to about 10,000 pieces. No loss, right? Since what, like, 90% of all postal deliveries are either junk mail or bills. The postman dude did the people of Britain a great favor.

The ironic thing, however, is that unknowingly the postal service is the most efficient drug dealer on the planet and they bust an employee for this shit? When police arrested him he was found to have partially digested three catalogs, one flyer and some orange-colored Cheetohs-looking packing foam. Okay, we made that part up. But that’s about as believable as saying your  job went up in smoke because of weed! Never the less, this is pretty clear proof that burning mail makes you smoke pot, what other possible conclusion could there be?

Where would be the most epic…coolest…most hip place on the planet to buy a rad pipe? If you said San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district than you’re not alone! Yep, the district that’s world-famous for its important role as THE epicenter of the entire 1960’s  counterculture revolution was just hit with a bullshit ordinance that would ban new head shops from opening! Sure, we’re sinking into a deepening recession so barring business makes absolutely no sense. At the height of the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967, the Haight Ashbury district was a magnet that drew thousands of young people from all over the country seeking a new life of freedom. How ironic, right?

Super buzz-killin’ Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi introduced the ordinance, which would prohibit the opening of any new businesses that sell tobacco and marijuana smoking paraphernalia for a period of three years, and sadly the shit passed a Board of Supervisors committee yesterday. And get this…the ban could be extended by a future board vote.

According to Mirkarimi’s office neighbors don’t want any more head shops in their backyard. Well, when you’re backyard sits squarely in the most famous place on the planet to celebrate marijuana culture and smoke a bowl what the hell do you expect? What, those residents didn’t notice the tie dye or the fuckin’ VW busses all over the damn place when they moved into Hippie-Mecca? Man, it’s just too bad the Grateful Dead dudes don’t still live there because they surely wouldn’t be the ones bitching about head shops and shit.

The ordinance passed the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee and will be heard before the full board on June 23, 2009.

There’s something so very similar to admitting to being a homosexual and admitting publicly that you support the legalization of marijuana. One of our favorite (D) Congressmen, openly out-of-the-closet, Barnett “Barney” Frank known as “one of the brightest and most energetic defenders of civil rights issues”, representing the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts, has done both many times. And, he has just introduced a bold new bill into congress that would allow states to make their own medical marijuana laws free of federal interference. Finally!

The bill, HR 2835, would move marijuana from the FDA’s Schedule I to Schedule II. Currently, that Schedule I designation allows the Feds to keep their heads in the sand and pretend that cannabis has no medical value, has a high risk of abuse and is extremely harmful. By keeping marijuana in Schedule I, the federal government makes research impossible. Now, porting weed over to a Schedule II designation would recognize its medical value, allow safe access to weed for research and would set in motion some regulatory framework so the Feds could begin a drug approval process for marijuana.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Well, it gets even better. Frank’s legislation would also explicitly protect patients from federal arrest in state’s where medical marijuana is legal.

The leading worldwide expert on lung health announced recently that marijuana does not cause lung cancer in his study on the effects of cannabis and the lungs. In fact,  Donald P. Tashkin, M.D, Professor of Medicine, Medical Director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Geffen School of Medicine, thinks it’s about time to legalize marijuana. Yep the guy the opposition has paid for the last 30 years to slag weed thinks marijuana should be legalized. Oh, by the way…he’s just as  surprised by the results of the study, which finally demonstrates once and for all that there is no statistical link between pot and lung cancer, as you are.

“What we found instead was no association between cancer and smoking marijuana  and even some suggestion of a protective effect, “ says Tashkin.

What? So not only does marijuana NOT cause lung cancer it will actually reduce the risk of lung cancer? YEP! See the video below for yourself.

Damn, Sayten thought to himself. Feeling crushed, he tossed his precious ipodphone on the bed, letting out a sigh. His last few texts for weed going unnoticed by Jowi. Ever since the day behind San Francisco’s Warfield theater when Pantera’s Dimebag Darrel handed him his first joint, Sayten smoked weed daily. He’d been lucky enough to always have a connection or two. Hell, he even had friends who’d drive across the Bay Bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland just to drop it off. He’d been even luckier, however, because he had never gone without a stash for the last 18 years.

The feeling of going without was frightening. He had a certain Taoist-like attitude towards marijuana. He never put too much effort into going after it, rather he’d wait for it to come to him. And, when he had it, he thoroughly appreciated it. Marijuana was like a big hug, whenever he needed comfort.

The li’l Tupperware container stuffed in a droor next a bag of Jollie Joes and a box of Lemon Heads, sadly, had just a few hits left in it. Late that night Sayten laid awake in bed, his mind raced trying to remember someone…anyone who could help him get his hand on weed.

Still trying to come up with a way to score some weed, Sayten had a moment of clarity. Dude, he thought to himself, you LIVE in California, why not get a prescription? It was 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning when he decided to research. Someone on Twitter sent him a link to a list of doctors in the East Bay and within a few minutes he had not only found the tweet, but the website and a doctor in Oakland’s infamous Oaksterdam. The name is a mash of Oakland and the Dutch city Amsterdam that’s famously tolerant towards Marijuana use and the model for this cultural district. The name was Jim McClelland’s dea. McClland is AIDS patient who was a founding member of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club and the Berkeley Patients Group. Sayten made an appointment online and wondered if the website was even active. He let out another audible sigh that no one in the office heard…

The phone rang immediately, it was Compassionate Health Options to confirm the appointment and within a few minutes he was on the way to Oaksterdam. The woman from the office said that the doctor would be “willing to work” with him even though he didn’t have immediate access to his health records.

There are several ailments for which cannibis provides relief. As longas  a doctor has treated you for something on that list within the recent past, you shouldn’t have a problem, he thought. He’d been treated for migraines recently and had to undergo his first ride in an MRI machine recently. Maybe that would be enough for a presription for medical marijuana, he wondered?

It’s true, sometimes stoners will admit to a slight bit of paranoia right after smoking a joint, man. One minute smoking weed in a parking lot behind a Safeway seems like a really good idea and then all of a sudden you take a hit and every single person is watching you. That’s precisely why stoners love hoodies. Because to a stoner…the hooded sweatshirt is a cloaking device. Don’t want anyone starring at you while you exhale? Don’t want anyone to notice your bright red-eyes? Don’t want to entertain any conversations? Of course you don’t…you’re stoned and slightly paranoid. That’s why hoodies have hoods…up goes the hood and well, you’re now stoned and invisible (and slightly delusional).

Much like an all-over Indica-induced body high the right  hoodie is like a big giant hug. A hug that wreaks of weed. The hoodie, well, to a stoner it’s a thing of comfort…a baby blanket, if you will.

It’s true, man, we hate to break it to you guys like this, but Linus was a total stoner. And, you thought Shaggy was the OG cartoon stoner, didn’t ya? Yep, let the story begin. At the last minute good ol’ Charles Schultz realized that he better replace Linus’s dirty hoodie with a blanket or his cute li’l comic strip wouldn’t survive. Oh and get this, Linus wasn’t a chronic thumb-sucker. Originally, Linus was known for always sucking down bong hits.

There you have it, people. No matter how you slice it…hoodies are probably the most beloved item in every stoner’s wardrobe.

Our prayers have been answered and we’re not talking about Legalization. Soon, you’ll be able to smoke a tomato to get stoned. Yep, a few days ago scientists at Montsaint Genie Tech Inc. announced that they have successfully transferred the gene segment that produces THC in weed to many other common garden plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and more.

Sounds too good to be true? Oh, and close your mouth by the way…there’s more; “We probably can put the THC segment into almost any plant in existence,” says lead scientist Rebeca Vale. “It’s a very simple process. We are starting work on oak and maple trees now.” Oh, man, just imagine chicken ‘n’ waffles and syrup that gets you stoned!

But wait a second, you can’t really get stoned from a vine ripened tomato can you? “If someone were to dry it and smoke it, all of the medicinal and psychotropic effects of marijuana would be present. And what’s more, we have learned that tomatoes, in particular, actually produce more THC than cannabis itself,” says the coolest scientist on the face of planet Earth, Vale.

Okay, great, I can smoke a tomato and get stoned, but is this tomato, which has been touched by the hand of god, legal? “Actually, yes,” says Vale. Wha?

“Our research qualifies as GMO ‘intellectual property’, as does the process itself. Since tomatoes and other plants are not illegal, a person would be well within the law to grow them and use them as they please,” says Vale. She also says that her soon to be coolest company on planet Earth is working on a spray that will transfer the segment to many plants simply by spraying the leaves of seedlings.

“It’s a very simple process,” she says. “Anyone can do it. We plan to start selling the spray – ‘Genie Mist’ – in a matter of weeks. One bottle will sell for five dollars and be capable of treating 6,000 seedlings.”

C’mon, these things have to taste like shit, right? So, uhm how do they taste? “Scrumptious,” Vale says. “But, of course, they are best when roasted.”

What student stoner, at some point in time, hasn’t written a persuasive essay on the Legalization movement? But, among you with your hands up in the air…how many of you punctuated your essay by smoking a joint in front of the class while presenting the said…persuasive essay? Sure, firing up a joint would make the presentation more authentic and more persuasive to a teacher and audience with a contact high…but it led to an arrest, unfortunately.

According to buzz-killin’ Pierce County sheriff’s detective Ed Troyer, the student smoked the joint during his essay, sat down, finished smoking the j and then ate the end. The teacher of the class contacted the school resources officer, a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy, who found a small residual amount of marijuana on the student, Troyer said. The student, a 17-year-old junior with a 3.7 grade-point average, was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana by Pierce County deputies no word on his grade just yet. But we here at Stuff Stoners Like give the dude and A. Wondering what the essay said? If so, read it here!