It’s all coming back to me now. In my younger days, people used to call really potent marijuana “kind bud.” And the stuff that someone bought quickly on a lark was simply known as “commercial weed” or “schwag.” In the debate over marijuana potency in New Jersey “schwag” has also been referred to as “dirt weed.”
Ok, glad that is clear. The recent agreement between Governor Christie and Democratic Assemblyman Reed Gusciora will keep the THC content in medical marijuana at 10%. “Good stuff” is usually 18% THC, I am told. So that means people who need medicinal marijuana will have to smoke a lot more schwag to reap the benefits of the drug. THC btw, is the psychotropic chemical that gives marijuana it’s kick. That means helping to relieve pain and suffering in chronically ill patients. It is the same ingredient that produces a “high” for college students. That “high” can best be described as euphoria, followed by a deep paranoia in which the smoker is 100% convinced that Federal Agents ( not the local police mind you, but Federal Agents! ) are about to bust in the door and haul you off to jail. That soon morphs into boredom, followed by an overwhelming desire to drink a beer, smoke a cigarette and finally order Dominoes.
Or, you know – so I’ve heard.
But getting back to the issue at hand, if patients are required to smoke a lot – oh wait, they can’t because all recipients of the drug are limited to 2 ounces a month. Hmmmm. So that means, that patients might be smoking and smoking, but not enough to ease their suffering. Critics also say that you don’t want to encourage people to smoke more of anything. Marijuana may not be as bad for your lungs as tobacco, but it’s probably still not something that people should smoke a lot of…if they can avoid it.
Anyway, such are the thoughts of Democrats who feel they may have to go ahead with the Resolution scrapping the Med Marijuana rules anyway since there was no broad agreement on some of these other points. Wait, did I only give you one point? Right. Short term memory loss, dude.
Another issue is that it would still be illegal to distribute the drug in school zones which would render most cities off-limits as distribution centers. That might wind up discriminating against certain individuals who may need or want the marijuana just as much as folks in the suburbs. After all, someone who is ailing often can’t travel that far.
Senator Nick Scutari was noticeably absent at the Gusciora-Christie announcement last Friday. Scutari says he never heard from the Administration about signing onto the agreement. Christie meantime, says he didn’t want to wait around for the Union Dem to play political games. I’m not sure who is right, since I don’t have full access to private phone records and text messages ( although I feel like I have been spending some time looking at those elsewhere lately ).
What is notable is that as of Monday, Gusciora and Scutari still hadn’t spoken after working so closely together to get this bill passed last year.
Whatever. “The Big Lebowski” is coming on in ten minutes and all will be forgotten.
i feel like i need to tell you and whoever else is reading this that there are waaaaaaaay more people than just college students appreciating the benefits of marijuana. i think you would be shocked to learn that many 9-5 professionals with kids are enjoying the high they get from marijuana and often forgoing the glass of wine (or two or three) at dinner for a more mellow and less harmful way to relax. i wish that people would stop stereotyping marijuana users as young, lazy, fat, forgetful, irresponsible, and uncaring people. its usually just the opposite.
Hah Ha. Stoner jokes are so funny and original. You must not have a chronic pain disease, one that will never end until you die. You must not wake up up four or six hours becuase you have to take a pain pill. Perhaps you don’t have to be connected to a drip that provides your muscle relaxer so your spasticity doesn’t tear apart your tendons.
Perhaps you don’t have any idea of how long you’ve got … but you know it’s a long time. Aside from an occassional sports strain or jangover headache, you feel pretty good.
That’s probably why you don’t need medical marijuana. That’s why you can make lame stoner jokes that were dull 30 years ago. You figure thatthere are far more people in this state like you than like an actual suffering fellow citizen.
Yes. Let’s not think about the suffering fellow citizen, someone just like you but with a random horrible health problem.
Instead of some peace and relief, they are facing $500 an ounce for something that won’t really help them. Christie can’t strike down the law, so he has made it a punishment to the people it was made to help. He has decided to administrate the Law in order to make it unusable. He is administrating in direct contradiction to the spirit of this law. This is ideologically-inspired cruelty, pure and simple. He is appeasing a retrograde base by forcing the physical pain and suffering of thousands of the citizens of his state.
But it’s easier to make stoner jokes. How about imagining it from the sufferer’s point of view? They aren’t laughing.
i think you are missing the subtext of the joke here, Louise….which is that some believe all the players involved here are acting a bit like a bunch of teenage stoners. get it? people really need this drug, and that urgency has been tossed aside with all this infighting.
that said, your point is well taken. i am not trying to insult anybody, but i am poking some playful fun at the legislative process ( as i always do ).
Perhaps I was. My sense of humor has diminished ever since I was hit with Central Pain Syndrome, a disease of the central nervous sytem that causes excruciating, wndless , burning, incurable pain. It can only be partially controlled by prescription drugs.
The mmj that I have been fortunate enough to smoke in MMJ states has brought a noticeable reduction in pain, as well as a definite relaxation of spasticity.
Every article that I’ve read about this issue seems to have some stoner reference in it. It’s amusing to some, but not to the people that need it. It’s obvious that Christie doesn’t give a rat’s ass about us; we aren’t a large enough voting bloc. It’s got nothing to do with mercy or medicine or the laws themselves.
This is ALL about Christie tub-thumping for his You Tube Groupies. The Tea Partiers all over the country who see his Christie Clips and are salivating for him to run for President. Christie is trying to burnish his “Tough on Crime” credentials by going after a comparatively innocuous drug, designed for patients who are already so burdened by pain and illness to be powerless. It’s not for the sake of New Jersey and its citizens. It’s all for *him*. He’s a bully, once again.
What about the connections between Christie and Rove? He’s been Rove’s cabana boy ever since he was appointed to the US Attorney’s office. While other non-political US Attorneys were fired for not playing ball, Christie leaked a baseless investigation into Menendez designed to torpedo the Senator’s re-election.
Rove, at the head of the *real* but shadow RNC, seems to have decided that Christie will make a great half of the GOP ticket in 2912. Christie is right on board with it, He’s set his sails to catch Rove’s puffs of wind and expects to sail right into Number One Observatory Circle. (Cheney fixed it up so it’s much nicer than the White House, and much more private.)
I’m here by accident. I started reading and I must tell you that your blog is great. You are writing so many interesting things. I can’t agree with many of them, but it’s ok. I will probably visit your blog more often. I would like to use your words on my own blog. Is it posiible? – Paula
absolutely. feel free to link