PotMates Blog Import (Full HTML + H2 styled + Smart paragraphs)

Minority Cannabis Business Association

Cannabis Employment Has Begun To Skyrocket

31 Aug, 2023

Are you fresh into the job market and looking for a change in careers? Something new and exciting that will certainly see lots of growth in the coming years? Look no further than the cannabis industry.

Pairing Cannabis With Wine and Cheese

31 Aug, 2023

If you’re a fan of wine, then you know that picking the right pairing for your wine of choice for the night, is the second most important ingredient for a good night.

Marijuana Research Bill

31 Aug, 2023

If you’ve been wondering about Biden and his plans cannabis for this term, then wonder no more.

NuProject Grants Pot Mates A Marketing Boost

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

NuProject Grants Pot Mates A Marketing Boost

Oct 13, 2021

We are so stoked to announce that Pot Mates has received a grant from

NuProject

to enlist the services of an SEO marketing firm. This allows us to expand our reach and ensure every pot-smoking Portlander knows we’re open for business.

NuLeaf Project is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to begin reversing some of the damage wrought upon communities of color by anti-drug policies in the United States. It was founded by executive director Jeannette Ward Horton and her husband Jesce Horton. They were both also instrumental in the creation of the

, a non-profit business league dedicated to increasing the diversity of cannabis business owners, employees, and consumers. These two also contributed to the development of Measure 26-180, Portland’s recreational marijuana tax law, allowing for cannabis tax money to be allocated to fund workforce and business development for minority- and women-owned enterprises.

NuLeaf works to address three common hurdles all marginalized groups face when starting a business: capital, education and exposure to the business, and connections to other like-minded professionals. They provide four distinct services to achieve these goals: NuFuel, NuSchool, NuProfessional, and NuNetwork.

NuFuel

provides funding for cannabis businesses, giving priority to those who are at least 51% owned by people from communities disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs. The grant cycle opens once per year, and NuFuel also offers 0% interest loans, including

up to $25,000 for Oregon-based businesses

NuSchool

NuLeaf has a personalized business accelerator called

NuSchool

, offering targeted and personalized mentorship for owners whose business is growing rapidly, while

NuNetwork

is a collection of leaders in the cannabis industry committed to helping people of color achieve equity.

NuProfessional

Finally,

NuProfessional

is a job board for professionals of color who are interested in the cannabis industry. Careers in cannabis are stable and great for building wealth, and NuLeaf believes Black and brown people should be included in that opportunity.

Pot Mates applied for a NuFuel grant and was awarded enough to partner with Digital With Joey, an SEO and SEM content strategist. Together, we’re looking to increase Pot Mates’s visibility throughout the internet and grow more connected with our customers. We’re excited about this partnership and can’t wait to see what new doors it opens up.

We also want to make sure everyone who wants to work in cannabis knows what a valuable resource

NuLeaf

really is. If you’re just getting started working in weed, there’s NuProfessional to find your next opportunity. If you’ve got your own business, there’s NuFuel and the NuSchool to take you to the next level. If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you can give back some of that hard-won wisdom as part of the

NuNetwork

. And if you’re involved with a minority-owned cannabis business, make sure to check out the

MCBA

, where you can advocate for sensible, equitable policies and increase the growth of the cannabis industry.

< Older Post

Cannabis Employment Has Begun To Skyrocket

31 Aug, 2023

Pairing Cannabis With Wine and Cheese

31 Aug, 2023

If you’re a fan of wine, then you know that picking the right pairing for your wine of choice for the night, is the second most important ingredient for a good night.

Marijuana Research Bill

31 Aug, 2023

If you’ve been wondering about Biden and his plans cannabis for this term, then wonder no more.

Why You Might Want to Avoid Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

…written by a cannabis delivery company in Portland, Oregon

Look, we’re a delivery company of premium cannabis, and we love it. We love weed, marijuana, ganja—whatever you want to call it. We love talking about and it sharing why we think it’s awesome, but we also made a promise to give you the information you need to make an informed decision about your consumption.

On the one hand, that means giving you the cannabinoid/terpene contents and telling you how a strain makes us feel. On the other hand, it means we also want you to know the potential downsides of smoking marijuana. As much as we wish we could tell you it’s 100% safe, no one has ever become addicted, and no one has ever experienced any adverse effects, that just isn’t the truth. Sometimes people have a bad time with cannabis. There are some real risks associated with cannabis use,—some people should avoid it

,—and we’re going to walk you through everything you need to know.

Throughout all of this, we want to remind you that none of us at Pot Mates are doctors, so nothing we tell you should be construed as medical advice. We’ve done a lot of research to bring you reliable information, but the best person to talk to about whether to consume cannabis is your primary care provider, which is not Pot Mates.

People Who Should Avoid Cannabis

Under 25-year-olds

Kids shouldn’t use weed! It is so important that children avoid cannabis that every cannabis sale in the state of Oregon is legally required to include

this notice

. When cannabis extracts are infused into chocolates, cookies, sodas, and other treats, it’s easy for children to mistake them for unadulterated snacks and accidentally eat something that can make them sick. Symptoms can include disorientation, trouble walking or sitting up and difficulty breathing. Remember, we’re not doctors, so if your child ingests cannabis, call Poison Control at

800-222-1222

or visit

PoisonHelp.org

It’s not always an accident though. When children intentionally try marijuana products, it’s usually to emulate someone they know and look up to,—likely a family member or a close friend. If you’re someone a child looks up to and they know about your affinity for Mary Jane, take the initiative to educate them about the wisdom of waiting until they’re older to try it themselves. The negative effects of marijuana on mental health are greatest during development, particularly between the ages of 10 and 24. Make sure they know that marijuana is not what makes you cool. The

socks you wear

make you cool. These risks are higher the younger the person is, how frequently they use marijuana, and how much THC is in it.

These effects may include decreased IQ, attention deficits, poor academic achievement, suicide ideation, and an increased risk of schizophrenia. Keep your weed and all related paraphernalia in a locked or otherwise child-proof container.

There is also evidence that adolescents who consume high-potency concentrates like vape pens or dabs are at a higher risk for developing marijuana dependency

, which is actually a real thing we’ll discuss in the Personal Risks section below.

Pregnant People

Pregnant people should also avoid anything with THC. Babies whose mothers smoked weed while they were pregnant are more likely to be born premature or underweight and admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit.

Cannabinoids (and terpenoids, although these are less demonstrably harmful) are capable of passing through the placenta to the fetus.

This can contribute to developmental problems after birth as well. Although it is transferred in smaller quantities, babies can also absorb THC directly from breastmilk. THC enters breastmilk within twenty minutes and can be detected up to six days later, so it’s probably best to abstain from cannabis altogether while breastfeeding.

People with psychiatric disorders

If you have a personal or a family history of psychiatric disorders (i.e. schizophrenia, psychosis, mood disorders, or anxiety) then you may also want to avoid cannabis. Higher levels of cannabis use have been shown to increase the risk of psychotic episodes for people with a family history psychosis or schizophrenia.

Similarly, people with anxiety who use cannabis are likely to have more severe symptoms than those who don’t, and they struggle more to improve during treatment.

Many people who have an anxiety condition might use weed to calm them down, but research shows that may not actually be what’s happening.

Bipolar disorder is another risk factor for cannabis. Studies have shown that people who use cannabis can expect a higher number of both manic and depressive episodes and an earlier age of onset.

People with cardiovascular/cerebrovascular disease

People who have severe cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease should probably not smoke weed. It can increase the incidence of occasional

hypertension

, fainting,

tachycardia

,—even heart attacks and strokes.

These can constitute serious medical emergencies.

People with liver/renal disease

Similarly, people with severe liver diseases should avoid consuming marijuana because it has been shown to increase the risk and severity of steatosis, or fatty liver disease.

Pets

Please don’t give animals cannabis! A lot of research needs to be done to understand the effect it can have on other species’ endocannabinoid systems, but at least in dogs, marijuana has been shown to cause low blood pressure, dribbling urine, and low heart rate as well as stumbling or falling, which can result in serious injury for older canines.

If you think your pet may have ingested marijuana products, you can call the Pet Poison Hotline at

855-764-7661

or visit their page on marijuana

suicidepreventionlifeline.org

What Are the Personal Risks of Consuming Cannabis?

Cognitive Impairment

Cannabis directly impedes both your short-term memory (also called working memory) and your long-term memory (episodic memory).

This can have a negative effect on your hand-eye coordination, your reaction time, and your ability to remember both things that just happened and things you should remember from a while ago.

Short attention span is another side effect, making it hard to follow a single train of thought or focus on one thing at a time. This can have a negative effect on your hand-eye coordination, your reaction time, and…wait a minute, didn’t you just read that? You know what we are talking about here. Studies have shown that this impairment can last as many as twenty-four hours after using.

Motor vehicle accidents

Did you know people who use marijuana are 20–30% more likely to be involved in a motor vehicle accident than people who don’t?

That’s because THC can act as a central nervous system depressant. Foggy short-term memory makes it difficult to keep track of hazards, and unfocused attention drags down response time to sudden changes, like a car merging into your lane without signaling or a bicycle legally crossing an intersection.

This is also a good reason to avoid combining cannabis with alcohol or any other CNS-depressant medication, as these can compound the effect even further.

Short version: don’t drive high.

Mental Health

Many of these studies establish a correlation between cannabis use and a given outcome, be it birthweight, mental wellness, or psychomotor skills. These are correlations, meaning both cannabis and the given outcome were present at the same time, but that does not mean that marijuana caused those outcomes,—at least, not necessarily. People who use marijuana are more likely to be involved in an accident, but that could be the result of something else they also have in common. Without more research, we just can’t be sure.

There are significant correlations between heavy cannabis use and psychosis, specifically schizophrenia.

Does this mean that smoking pot causes schizophrenia, or that people with schizophrenia often try to self-medicate with marijuana? We don’t know for sure, but unless you’re participating in a study, you should probably avoid it if you or your family has a history of schizophrenia.

There are also strong correlations between adolescent use and the development of depression, anxiety, and other related mood disorders.

In fact, while some teenagers claim they are self-medicating to manage the symptoms of depression and anxiety, weed can often mimic the very symptoms they are trying to treat. This could mean that people with depression and anxiety are more likely to use cannabis,— correlation — or it could mean that cannabis causes people to experience depression and anxiety— causation

Unfortunately, cannabis use has also been associated with an increase of

suicidal ideation

These thoughts are often intrusive and unwanted, but they are not unmanageable. If you find yourself preoccupied with your death, please talk to a friend or family member about your feelings. You can also call

800-273-8255

or visit

to talk through your thoughts, they have people who are always available.

Tolerance and Dependence

The more weed you smoke, the more you develop a tolerance for it, and thus the more that you need to smoke in order to feel the same level of subjective high. You inevitably end up increasing your THC consumption as your tolerance goes up, and this can add up to problems down the line. In addition to making your recreational experience incrementally more expensive, at least one study found that daily or near daily cannabis use can interfere with neurocognitive functions for several days—even after you’ve stopped being high. In other words, daily or near-daily use can leave you as impaired as if you had just smoked, even if you haven’t.

Tolerance can lead to a psychological and even physical dependence—also known as addiction. For the longest time, we thought people couldn’t become physically addicted to weed, but it turns out we were wrong. There are clear withdrawal symptoms that are immediately apparent within one to two days of quitting cannabis entirely. These symptoms include cravings, anxiety, irritability, headache, restlessness and decreased appetite or weight loss.

The first five days are the worst, but most of these symptoms resolve within one to two weeks. If you can get through the first week, the rest are pretty manageable.

There aren’t any drugs approved specifically for managing the symptoms of cannabis withdrawal, but there is other help available. If you think cannabis use is starting to interfere with your work or home life, you can call the Delphi Health Group Drug Recovery Hotline at

888-979-9625

, or visit them

experiences bring us more joy than possessions

Conclusion

All this isn’t to say that marijuana is bad , we just want you to know there are risks. Compared to the incredible list of potential harms associated with other drugs such as tobacco or alcohol, cannabis does very little damage. It hasn’t been shown to cause lung cancer

, it’s unlikely to be a gateway drug

, and it won’t destroy your liver like long-term alcohol consumption.

But we would be lying if we told you it’s harmless, and now you know what to watch out for to be a more informed, responsible cannabis user. The best kind.

Roughly 50% of people in the United States expresses curiosity about cannabis, but only about 20% of people actually partake. It is perfectly normal to be curious about marijuana, and it is also perfectly normal among the 80% of people that do not participate. You should never feel pressured to consume cannabis.

However, if you do decide to consume cannabis, we wrote

an article

about how to do so while staying safe.

Four Ways to Enhance the Romance with Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Four Ways to Enhance the Romance with Cannabis

Feb 11, 2022

Time slips in jolts and jumps, so if we’re the first to tell you Monday is Valentine’s Day, then we’re glad to remind you. And it’s not too late to do something special for your valentine, particularly if you and your significant other(s?) enjoy cannabis. While marijuana makes every marriage that much merrier, it’s no substitute for real affection and connection—it can only enhance what’s already there.

We wanted to share some ways you can deepen your relationship that don’t require a lot of planning or materials. Studies have suggested that

, so these are focused on meaningful experiences you can share together. The addition of cannabis lowers inhibitions and unlocks emotional depth for a truly meaningful and memorable time together.

Breakfast in Bed

The little things we do can sometimes mean the most. Bringing someone breakfast that’s ready right when they wake up is a small way to show that they deserve to luxuriate once in a while instead of leaping to do everything. If your partner likes to wake-and-bake, this is a good opportunity to set a little pre-roll or vaporizer on the tray. Just make sure they don’t have to work—Valentine’s Day is a Monday this year, after all.

Experience Art

It’s February, so there aren’t lush fields of flowers to surround yourself with beauty, but an art exhibit in town may come close—especially if you toke before you go.

Beyond van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

uses projection technology and an original score to bring three hundred of Vincent van Gogh’s artwork to life. Connect with each other spiritually and emotionally by witnessing your awestruck faces as you stroll through 30,000 square feet of vibrant colors.

Tell the Story of Your Lives

Whether you’re lifted or not, this is a fun activity will give you and your lover the chance to reflect on your relationship. Take about fifteen minutes to write down the story of your life together—when you first met, your first date, how you felt, how your relationship changed over time, etc.—then read each other’s story aloud. You’ll be surprised and grateful for the little differences in what you each noticed and what you love about each other. If it goes well, you can go for a second round where you each write out how you imagine the rest of your lives to go from here.

Experience Nature

Another way to get close is to go for a leisurely hike in the natural splendor of the Pacific Northwest. Forest Park is home to eighty miles of trails, any of which give you a chance to decompress and spend time with each other free from any distractions. Or, you can make a day of it, and hike to some more breathtaking sites like

Tamanawas

Latourell Falls

. Make sure to pack snacks and water along with your flower.

< Older Post

following medical conditions

Cannabis Employment Has Begun To Skyrocket

31 Aug, 2023

Pairing Cannabis With Wine and Cheese

31 Aug, 2023

If you’re a fan of wine, then you know that picking the right pairing for your wine of choice for the night, is the second most important ingredient for a good night.

Marijuana Research Bill

31 Aug, 2023

If you’ve been wondering about Biden and his plans cannabis for this term, then wonder no more.

The Differences Between Recreational and Medical Cannabis in Oregon

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

What a time to be alive! Medical marijuana first became legal in Oregon back in 1998, and we’ve been able to enjoy recreational cannabis ever since 2014. Of course, recreational weed didn’t replace the medical marijuana program, so that’s left a lot of people wondering: now that weed’s legal, why would I still need a medical card?

Before we go into the differences between Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) and their recreational use laws, we want to take a moment to remind everyone out there that we at Pot Mates are cannabis enthusiasts and experts in our field—but none of us are doctors or lawyers. We’re going to bring you the best, most up-to-date information we can find, but we can’t offer medical or legal advice.

There are many benefits to having an OMMP license that include higher purchasing limits, higher growing limits, and different pricing from recreational purchases, but the most important benefit is that medical marijuana can help alleviate some of the symptoms of a number of recognized conditions.

OMMP Qualifying Conditions

If you’re considering applying for an OMMP license, our first recommendation is that you discuss the option with your doctor. You will need a statement from your attending physician to apply for a medical marijuana card. The main reason to apply is if you have one of the

Cancer
Degenerative or Pervasive Neurological Conditions
Glaucoma
HIV/AIDS
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Conditions that cause:
- Cachexia or wasting syndrome
- Muscle Spasms
- Seizures
- Severe Nausea
- Severe Pain

There are many ways that cannabis might be useful in helping to treat the symptoms of these conditions and we have done our best to outline them in our article, “

Cannabis Health and Science

.” If you have a qualifying medical condition, there are five simple questions to consider when deciding wether or not to pursue an OMMP license:

Do you currently take any prescription or over-the-counter medications for your condition and are you interested in an alternative option for some of them?
Do you take your medication on a daily basis?
Have you already tried to reduce symptoms using recreational cannabis but found that you need a more reglar prescription in terms of type, quantity, and potency?
Are you already using recreational cannabis to alleviate your symptoms, but it’s too expensive to keep paying taxes on this medicine?
Do you want to be able to grow your own medicine but you live in an area that doesn’t allow plants to be grown for recreational use?

You’d probably benefit from having an OMMP license if you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, but that’s still a conversation we would rather you have with your doctor.

Benefits of Having a Medical Card

As an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program patient, you are entitled to certain benefits that enable you to have regular, reliable access to medical-grade cannabis and cannabis products. This means you can buy products with greater potency, purchase more of them at one time, have more in your possession, and grow more plants for your personal use than if you were simply using weed recreationally.

Potency

What do we mean when we say “medical-grade” cannabis? When a cannabis product is designed specifically to be used for medicinal purposes, it’s labeled differently and it’s allowed to have a different concentration of active components like THC. For instance, recreational cannabis edibles are limited to a maximum of 50mg THC per container, with no more than 5mg THC per serving, whereas medicinal edibles can have up to 100mg THC per container. Recreational tinctures can only contain 1,000mg of THC while medical tinctures are allowed to have four times as much.

Why is it different? Weed is weed, right? While there’s only so much THC you can find in a naturally-grow cannabis flower (it peaks at about 30–35%) there’s more room for variation with concentrates and edibles. One THC capsule could have 10mg THC or it could have 100mg. On the outside, they look the same, but one is ten times more potent than the other.

A medical marijuana patient might need to take 100mg of THC with their morning meal to manage their illness. With the recreational limit of 5mg per capsule, they would have to take ten pills every day for just this one medication! Many people with cancer, AIDS, and other illnesses already have to swallow a lot of pills, so having different limits makes it easier to manage those doses.

From OLCC’s 2018 Packaging and Labeling Guide

Purchase and Possession Limits

Of course, that increase in potency is no good if you can’t take it with you. OMMP patients also benefit from being able to possess up to twenty-four ounces of usable marijuana compared to the recreational user’s eight. They are also allowed to grow up to six mature plants and twelve immature plants at their residence while a recreational user can only grow four plants total. While recreational users are limited to ten, medical patients can purchase up to fifty marijuana seeds at a time.

On paper, a lot of the possession limits look the same. For instance, both recreational and medical users are allowed to have sixteen ounces of edibles or five grams of extracts, but remember the potency differences. Those sixteen ounces of medical edibles (“medibles”?) could have 100mg THC each while the recreationibles are capped at 50mg. Five grams of concentrates are also a completely different quantity when they’re allowed to have 4,000mg instead of 1,000mg THC.

Price Differences

Last, but not least, there is the question of price. An OMMP license costs $200, which is the average cost for an ounce here in Oregon, but it protects medical patients from having to pay the local and state recreational sales taxes. The state sales tax rate for recreational marijuana is 17%, and some local areas (like Portland) have added another 3% to fund community services with the proceeds. That means the same $200 ounce actually ends up costing $240! That cost can really add up if you’re using cannabis daily for medicine, and the licensing fee quickly pays for itself.

Recreational or Medical

We enjoy cannabis in all of its forms, whether it’s being used to treat the symptoms of a specific condition, or if it’s just being enjoyed for its own virtues by people who know a good thing when they see one. Recreational cannabis is legal in eleven states (and the District of Columbia) at the time of this writing, and we think it’s great that so many people are now able to indulge in their favorite pastime without fear of law enforcement trying to arrest them for it.

That being said, there are certainly thousands of Oregonians who depend on medical marijuana to make living with a debilitating disease more manageable, and we think that kind of compassionate use is equally as important—if not more so. For the people who benefit from medical marijuana, it is a life-saving alternative to other treatment options that just don’t get the job done.

If you have a qualifying medical condition, ask your doctor if cannabis might be appropriate for your treatment regimen.

Cannabis Health and Science

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Cannabis is extremely versatile and has been used as medicine for over eight thousand years! Hua Tuo was documented as the first doctor to make use of it in the second century CE. He created a potent mixture of ground cannabis indica and wine to prepare

people for surgery

. While pain relief remained its primary use for most of history, cannabis was also a key ingredient in over 2,000 different

medicines

until 1937, when prohibition pretty much killed the medical marijuana industry.

There are many other potential benefits, and we have compiled some information below, including links to primary sources so you can develop an informed opinion. None of us at Pot Mates are doctors and doctors are the only people qualified to dispense medical advice. We’re only qualified to advise you on stuff like

different ways to consume cannabis

and

what to do when you’re too high

, not your health.

Cannabis for Pain

People have used cannabis to reduce pain throughout history, and this is still the number one reason it is prescribed. You’ve probably noticed these effects if you’ve ever felt particularly relaxed and comfortable after smoking a joint or nibbling a cookie. Cannabis acts on the body’s natural type-1 and type-2 cannabinoid receptors (also known as CB1 and CB2) in areas of the central nervous system that control pain perception.

Different cannabinoids can also reduce inflammation and alleviate spasticity, making it popular with people who experience neuropathic

pain

or suffer from

multiple sclerosis

. Patients who rely on a high concentration of THC for relief prefer strains that have a high percentage of CBD as well. As you may recall from our article

How to Choose a Strain

, CBD helps counteract some intoxicating effects of THC, which is an important consideration for many sufferers of chronic pain who need to stay functional throughout the day.

Many doctors and patients also look to cannabis as a substitute for opioid drugs, which are correlated to high levels of dependency and heavy overdose potential.

Recent studies

have demonstrated that cannabis can be just as effective at reducing pain as opiates, with fewer debilitating side effects.

Cannabis for Nausea

Cannabis can also increase appetite and suppress nausea. No duh, right? Everybody gets the munchies,—we even published an article on

the best foods to eat when you’re stoned

,—but to some patients, this can be a real lifesaver. Cannabinoids can be more effective than conventional medications like metoclopramide, prochlorperazine, and promethazine in mitigating the symptoms of chemotherapy-induced nausea and

vomiting

. This is because our bodies’ natural endocannabinoid systems play a role in managing our upset stomachs. CBD and THC both have measurable anti-emetic

effects

(word of the day! “Emetic” means vomit-inducing), which has made cannabis a game-changing medication for cancer patients who have trouble keeping down their food.

Some

recent research

has suggested that cannabis may even be effective at treating leukemia cells in vitro. It’s still a stretch to say that cannabis could cure cancer, but rest assured that there are many scientists exploring that very possibility as we speak.

Cannabis for Mental Health

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that cannabis helps relieve stress and reduce the symptoms of anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and even post-traumatic stress disorders. The reason we like it is because it chills us out. Cannabis has been demonstrated to offer some relief from anxiety and

depression

in clinical studies as well. While low doses of THC can have anxiolytic and mood-elevating effects, high doses can do the opposite, sometimes triggering symptoms that can resemble a panic attack. CBD contributes some anxiolytic (more vocab, this one means anti-anxiety) effects, which is why people with anxiety prefer balanced strains to those without CBD. If you have certain pre-existing conditions like paranoia or schizophrenia, you may want to avoid using cannabis. Some research has suggested cannabis use may exacerbate these conditions (although other research suggests it may help with them. Medical science is complicated!)

Another way that cannabis could be medicine for the brain is that it can reduce the accumulation of amyloid-β, which is one of the main causes of

Alzheimer’s disease

progression.

Recent research

suggests certain cannabinoids may even be able to reverse some of the disease’s debilitating effects.

The Entourage Effect

Many trials focus on the effects of just one or two specific cannabinoids that they have chemically isolated. This is a necessary step for the process of developing sound medicine, but Israeli researcher Raphael Mechoulam has found some evidence to suggest that cannabinoids work better

when they work together

—like in full-plant extracts or smoking flower directly. We’ve already seen this in the way that CBD can attenuate some psychedelic side effects of THC. More research is is trying to pin down exactly how these different compounds interact with each other to bring us the therapeutic benefits of cannabis. This hypothesis is called “the entourage effect,” and it may explain why synthetic THC and CBD products are not as effective at managing symptoms as an extract prepared from the whole plant.

Ongoing Research

This is a developing field of study, so the available information about the medical effects of cannabis is likely to change over time. We already know so much more about cannabis than we did before 2008, when medical cannabis first became re-legalized, and new studies are being published every day. One place to keep up with those changes is right here at Pot Mates. We’re excited to follow the development of this wonderful plant as medicine and will do our best to share the news with you as soon as it happens. Another place to keep track of ongoing research into medical cannabis is Wikipedia’s

medical cannabis research

page, which offers a breakdown of the latest studies on the effect cannabis has on a number of different medical conditions. We encourage you to stay informed and always consult your doctor before starting a new treatment regimen.

In the interest of giving you all of the information to make an informed decision about your use, we have also compiled the current research on

reasons you might not want to use cannabis

. Knowledge is power!

Celebrate Juneteenth, 2022 in Portland!

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This year marks the second time ever that Juneteenth will be celebrated as a certified, bonafide, federal holiday, which is as good an indicator as any of America’s pace in the progression toward racial equity. This will also be the first year Oregon celebrates Juneteenth as

an official state holiday

Juneteenth commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery on June 19, 1865, and the emancipation of African American slaves. While the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 effectively ended slavery on January 1, 1863, it wasn’t until the slaves in Texas finally got their freedom in 1865 that the last enslaved people were liberated.

On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Juneteenth into law as the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was added back in 1983, but it’s been observed and celebrated since pretty much 1865. Texas marked Juneteenth as an official state holiday in 1980, and in the years since, eight more states have come on board.

Juneteenth Oregon 50th Anniversary Celebration

Of course, some people have been celebrating in Oregon a lot longer than it took the government to finally recognize its importance. 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of The Juneteenth Oregon Celebration, founded in 1972 by Clara Peoples. Every year, the celebration starts off with a parade that leads into a variety of festivities including live music, entertainment, food, educational booths, art, cultural booths, and even a children’s play area.

The main thing to know is that everything gets going on Saturday, June 18th, 2022, with the parade. It starts at 11:00am from the Safeway on MLK and Ainsworth. The festival gets under way at noon in

Lillis-Albina Park

and goes until 7:00pm, before opening up again from 11:00am–6:00pm Sunday.

Freadom Festival

Another way to celebrate Juneteenth is with Portland’s First Annual Black Book Festival. It’s also taking place on June 18th, from 12:00pm–6:00pm, in nearby

Peninsula Park

. The Freadom Festival is based on the belief that books should be inclusive and accessible. It was created to educate people about the importance of Juneteenth, foster fellowship with a community of book lovers, support Black businesses, and celebrate literacy as well as liberation.

Bring a book for the community book swap (kids under ninth grade get one free!), stay to hear some book talks with local Black authors, and think about what you might want to donate to the PDX Books to Prisoners book drive. A list of what they’re looking for is on the

Freadom Festival website

This might be a good time to learn more about

Prominent Black Cannabis Advocates

Is Cannabis Addictive?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Marijuana has been the target of vicious disinformation campaigns over the past century, making it hard to sort out fact from fiction. Starting with the Marijuana Menace of the early twentieth century and morphing into full-blown Reefer Madness by the 1930s, the dangers of weed have been exaggerated while research into its medical applications has been suppressed for almost the entire history of its recreational consumption in America.

We’ve talked about the dark side of cannabis history before in our post on

social justice and cannabis

, which explains how most of this demonization was aimed at swaying public opinion with regard to specific ethnic groups, and a lot of misconceptions about our favorite flower still persist today. These include the notion that weed can kill you, make you insane, or turn you into a drug-crazed addict. Modern medical science has revealed that it’s nearly impossible to overdose on marijuana and cannabis-induced psychosis is rare, usually only affecting people with certain genetic predispositions, but the research into cannabis dependence is still relatively new—and worth discussing.

It’s important to be informed about all the pros and cons of marijuana consumption, which is why we’ve posted articles about the

potential medical benefits of cannabis

as well as

why you might want to avoid it

. This time, we want to talk about the reality of cannabis dependence for the 10% of users who experience it. What does cannabis dependence feel like, what are the risks, and what should you do if you think you or someone you know might be dependent on cannabis?

Define “Dependence”

There’s a difference between heavy consumption of cannabis and cannabis dependence. As we mentioned in our guide to THC tolerance, “heavy cannabis use” refers to using cannabis on twenty-one of the last thirty days. This could be a prescribed regimen for pain management, or just an after-work stress reliever, but heavy use in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

Cannabis dependence is a little harder to pin down, but the fifth edition of the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

lists eleven key indicators. While it is not the be-all end-all of diagnostic tools, The DSM-V offers helpful perspective to evaluate your own consumption. If you manifest two or more of these symptoms over a twelve month period, you might want to have a conversation with a doctor about your experience:

Using cannabis in larger amounts or over a longer period than was prescribed or intended.

If you’re prescribed a specific dose and you find it’s not enough, you should talk to your doctor about your treatment plan. If an eighth was supposed to last you two weeks but it’s gone in a weekend, that’s worth talking about too.
Making unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control cannabis use.

Sometimes, we’ll see the vape pen sitting there and just take a hit because we can , because it’s harmless. If it starts happening every time, you should try taking a tolerance break, just to make sure you’re still dictating the terms.
Spending a lot of time in activities necessary to obtain, use, or recover from cannabis effects.

Does waking and baking leave you needing to take a lot of afternoon weed naps? Are you picking up extra hours at work because you keep running low on cash for flower? Look at how cannabis affects your schedule to see if it’s keeping you from doing what you want to do.
Craving cannabis or feeling an urge to use cannabis.

Marijuana is a great stress-reliever, but if it’s the only thing you do to relieve stress then it may be time to look at some other hobbies or activities.
Failing to fulfill major life obligations at work, school, or home.

Missing deadlines, skipping chores, canceling plans,

because you got high

is a good indicator that weed is interfering with your life in a negative way.
Continuing to use cannabis despite persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems.

If you’ve already noticed that the herb keeps getting in the way but you keep smoking it anyway, it’s time to re-evalute the relationship.
Giving up or reducing involvement in important social, occupational, or recreational activities.

Didn’t apply for the job you really wanted because they urine-test? Always skipping practice because you don’t like to run while you’re high? Is weed keeping you from doing what you really want?
Using cannabis in physically hazardous circumstances.

The second rule of staying safe while you smoke weed is

don’t drive

. If you’re hotboxing your car, operating heavy machinery, or otherwise impairing your reaction time in life-or-death situations, it means your ability to assess risk is impaired. That’s the only time weed really gets dangerous.
Continuing to use cannabis despite having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem.

We mentioned that some people with psychosis or schizophrenia might have episodes related to their cannabis use, and if that happens to you, you should discontinue use until you can consult with your doctor.
Tolerance, as defined by a need for markedly increased amounts of cannabis or a markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of cannabis.

Okay, so the DSM-V considers tolerance to be one potential symptom of cannabis dependence. Cannabis dependence necessarily entails higher tolerance, but that doesn’t mean high tolerance causes dependence.
Withdrawal, as manifested by characteristic withdrawal syndrome.

Withdrawal symptoms start within forty-eight hours of your last dose and might include irritability, anger, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, abdominal pain, fever, chills, and

severe headache

Now, you might be thinking, “wow, practically everybody I know has at least two of those symptoms!” but the important thing to remember is that this list is simply a diagnostic tool. We’re not doctors, so we’re in no position to diagnose anybody with anything, but if you see yourself in this list, we encourage you to open a dialogue with your doctor about it and maybe take a short tolerance break. If you can’t walk away from it for more than a week without things becoming unbearable, that might be another indication that cannabis dependence is at play.

What You Can Do

Dependency is a scary concept, partly because of how disempowering it is. People don’t like to think that they are not in control of their actions. They tell themselves all kinds of stories, about how they can stop anytime they want (although they rarely choose to,) or how it’s not really interfering with their life as much as it might seem, because they’re worried confronting their dependency would mean losing to it.

Nobody wants to be seen as a loser, yet that’s how people who experience cannabis dependency are often

depicted in media

. The truth is, dealing with cannabis dependence isn’t the end of the battle, it’s the start of it, and there are many ways to re-assert yourself over this part of your life.

TRY A TOLERANCE BREAK

If you recognize some of those symptoms of dependence, you can do a little experiment by taking a

tolerance break

(although consult with your doctor first if you’re taking cannabis under clinical direction). A tolerance break is a fourteen-day vacation from consuming cannabis to give your CB1 receptors a chance to rejuvenate and allow you the time and space you need to see if cannabis is having a negative effect on your life.

Pick a date on the calendar when you feel confident you wouldn’t want to get stoned for a couple weeks and mark out fourteen days. Tell your friends you’re going to take a break and either get rid of your stash or give it to someone you trust until you’re ready to ask for it back.

During these two weeks, be mindful of things that you usually associate with cannabis and try to find something else to do instead. Maybe you just got home from work and you can pick up a video game to blow off steam instead of a pipe, or maybe you noticed it’s just after 4:00 and you can use this opportunity to take a walk instead of a toke. The more you’ve integrated cannabis into your daily life, the harder it’s going to be to imagine life without it—but you got this.

Even if it seems like it’s totally unmanageable, there are other ways to defeat cannabis dependence.

TALK TO A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL

Your doctor will have the best perspective on your physiological relationship with cannabis, and they’re bound by stringent laws to keep your conversations with them confidential. Cannabis withdrawal isn’t particularly painful or long-lasting, and there are a lot of ways to treat the unpleasant symptoms.

Or, if you have access to a mental health provider, you can address the deeper causes of cannabis dependency through cognitive-behavioral therapy, which helps you enhance your self-control, or motivational enhancement therapy, which empowers you with tools to effect change.

Millions of Americans experience dependence in one form or another, and it’s important to remember that help is available, treatment works, and people are recovering from dependency every single day. Some people don’t have a current relationship with a medical or mental health provider, but there are other resources out there like

FindTreatment.gov

HealthGrades.com

. And there’s always the

Crisis Text Line

if you don’t feel like talking on the phone.

TALK TO A FRIEND

If you don’t feel comfortable talking with people you don’t know, it’s still important to have a conversation with someone you know and trust about your relationship with weed, if you notice that it might be giving you trouble. It’s hard to see ourselves objectively, and if we’re having difficulty taking a tolerance break, it’s okay to ask for an outside opinion. Friends, family members, even co-workers can be vital assets in figuring out if you have a problem and what you can do to solve it.

Open Dialogue

The most important thing we can do to help people win against cannabis dependence is to talk about it with each other.

10% of adult cannabis users experience dependency

at one point or another, so if we’re going to look out for each other, we need to acknowledge that it’s real and that there are real strategies to overcome it. Talking about it openly and often is the best way to safeguard responsible use against the potential for dependence.

In spite of all the disinformation that’s out there, this rumor about marijuana has turned out to be true: it is possible to get addicted to cannabis, just like it’s possible to get addicted to alcohol or

World of Warcraft

. And, like many other addictions, people recover from it every day and go on to lead happy, healthy, normal lives.

The Best Places to Be High in Portland

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Best Places to Be High in Portland

Have you ever smoked a bowl and then wondered what to do next? It’s a nice day outside, you don’t have to go to work, and you may even have some friends who are available to hang out.

Being bored sucks, but if you’re in Portland that will never be a problem. First of all, we can deliver weed right to your doorstep. That right there is a safeguard against having nothing to do. Second, Portland is particularly conducive to lifted states, whether you want to take a

walking tour of the vibrant street art

, kick back in an

IMAX theater

for a magnificent movie experience, or just sit on a bank and watch the hypnotic flow of the Willamette. You’re never far from a tasty place to grab a bite if you’ve got the munchies or a free public restroom, and if you get lost you can always hop a bus to take you home.

We don’t want you to be bored, so we wanted to share some of the best places to be high in Portland with you, grouped like our products by how you might feel. If you’re restless, we’ve got some places to check out that will stretch your legs, and if you’re feeling sociable, we found a cannabis lounge where you can light up over a cup of coffee. Portland also has some really weird stuff that’s great to experience while high, so we have another section for stuff like that. Read on for the best places to be high, and you’ll never be bored again.

Get outside!

International Rose Test Garden

One of the most arresting visual experiences in the whole city is acres of roses of all different kinds. There are 10,000 bushes with varieties from all around the world, and it’s 100% free to walk through and smell every one. You’ll also find a spectacular view of downtown Portland, easy access to the

Oregon Zoo

and the

Portland Japanese Garden

, and the entrance to the

Hoyt Arboretum

. Use either an Activate or a Lift strain to keep up with Portland’s natural energy.

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden

If you’re on the east side of the river, skip the traffic and go to the rhododendron garden. It’s nearly ten acres of winding paths, quiet benches, soothing waterfalls, and picturesque bridges. The garden is also home to over 90 species of bird, including wood ducks, great blue herons, and bald eagles. As of May 26th, the rhododendron blooms are peaking, more than Crystal Springs can even list on their website. There are also several broods of goslings and ducklings waddling around the lake. Go slow and take your time to make sure you see everything.

Willamette Stone State Heritage Site

Trip out on the miniaturization of the whole Pacific Northwest as you stand on the spot where the territory was divided into intelligible pieces. Then go up to Pittock Mansion and see if you can see the lines as they exist today. If you hit something from the Flow family before you go, you can finally figure out how to decode all those little

survey markers

you see on the sidewalks around here.

Eat and Drink!

Rose City Book Club Bar

This is a bar you can enjoy just as much by yourself as if you go with friends. You can pick up any of the books to sit down and read as you sip on a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, a beer, or a cider, and if you find a book you like—you can buy it! This a good place to settle in for a while, either to pass a rainy day in comfort or watch the light change throughout the day.

Space Room Lounge

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the Space Room Lounge, loaded with pinball machines, classic arcade games, and even an air hockey table. It’s not as crowded as a Ground Kontrol or a Quarterworld, but there are still plenty of open games to play. They have some great retro hits like 4 person Pacman, Street Fighter 2, and a whole slew of movie-themed pinball games.

Psychic

Psychic has good eats and an extensive menu, but we like it best for its cool, dark environment. Whether you’re trying to find a quiet place to talk or just be for a little while, you’ll find few distractions here. The house has a creepy atmosphere, especially at night, but Dream strains will lend it a sense of wonder—especially if you let the bartender read your palm.

Be sociable!

Flight Lounge

The Flight Lounge is one of the few places you can legally smoke cannabis outside of a private residence. It’s a members-only social club and lounge that also offers tasty coffee beverages and snacks that really hit the spot. Membership dues are only $10, but you can sign up for a five-day test flight

Dr. Raven’s Elixir Experience

Purrington’s Cat Lounge

Sometimes you want to be sociable but still find being around other people to be a bit much. These cats won’t judge. Purrington’s is a by-reservation cat café where you can enjoy some feline company along with your beer, wine, or coffee, and if you feel a connection, you might even be able to adopt a cat you meet! Just don’t get too attached—a lot of the cats are spoken for.

Canna Bus

Where’s better to have a good time with your friends than on your own private weed-themed party bus? Take a cannabis tour of some of the best dispensaries (that aren’t delivery-only) with a professional designated driver and a 420-friendly personal concierge. The bus comes equipped with leather seats, reclining chairs, and backlit tables to ensure all your senses are comfortable for your journey. It only seats forty though, so you’ll have to be judicious about which friends you invite to go with you.

See something weird!

Freakybuttrue Peculiarium

Unless it’s Tuesday, you can go gawk at the oddities of the Freakybuttrue Peculiarium, a place so weird you can get in for free if you’re wearing a decent costume. No superhero onesies though, they only want the real deal. Once inside, you’ll find interactive art exhibits and installations designed to tantalize all

six

of your senses. That’s all we’re allowed to say in advance—better see it for yourself.

Raven’s Manor Dr. Raven’s Elixir Experience

For a more engaged encounter with the macabre, try

at the reportedly haunted Raven’s Manor. Legend has it that the mysterious Dr. Raven disappeared while attempting to create a miraculous elixir for everlasting life. The phantoms of the manner will guide you through spooky puzzles and the creation of your own ghoulish concoctions, should you be brave enough to drink them. Reservations fill up fastest closer to Halloween, but it’s a bone-chilling good time year-round.

The Rimsky-Korsakoffee House

One of the oldest coffee houses in Portland is also rumored to be haunted, although in a much subtler way than Raven’t Manor. The Rimsky-Korsakoffee House is named for Russian composer Nikolai Rinsky-Korsakov, and is best known for its coffee and desserts—and spooky atmosphere. There is always classical music playing—sometimes live—and the decor has been known to play tricks on the mind of even the most sober individuals. Go there after getting lifted and you’ll swear you’ve entered a

parallel universe

Be Here Now!

Of course, the absolute best place to be when you’re high isn’t even confined to the city of Portland; it’s right here, right now. If you can calmly and mindfully connect with the present moment, wherever you happen to be, you’ll be able to have a good time without having to go anywhere or do anything at all.

The Best Movies to Match Your High

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most enjoyable ways to spend a high is watching a good movie or two, but there’s always a problem: as soon as you’re ready to get nestled in with a good flick, you’re confronted with endless lists and menus of things you could watch—and often the choices aren’t great. Netflix alone has almost 4,000 titles, Disney+ has every movie you remember from when you were a kid, and there are thousands more on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and the rest. Instead of spending time enjoying a film, you have to scroll and click, making countless decisions about streaming platform, genre, length—it quickly becomes a chore instead of something fun

We love movies, and we especially love watching movies when we’re lifted. Since each of our strains produces a clear and well-defined mood, we thought we’d make life easier for everyone by putting together a list of some great movies to pair with each mood.

Activate

Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is cinematic story-telling at its finest. Its fast pace never lets up for a minute, and the story is conveyed almost entirely without dialogue. Mad Max: Fury Road is only a loose sequel to the Mad Max series—Tom Hardy plays Max, and that’s about the only connection—and focuses instead on the daring escape attempted by Imperator Furiosa to save five women from a fate worse than death. This is a movie that will get you revved up for whatever comes next.

Run Lola Run

Speaking of adrenaline-fueled heart-thumping thrill rides, Run Lola Run asks: what if you only had twenty minutes to come up with $100,000? Lola, played by Franka Potente, races through Berlin, trying everything she can think of to find the money before a group of criminals has no recourse but to execute her boyfriend. Stuck in a time loop, Lola tries gambling, theft, and armed robbery in an attempt to save him, and you’ll be hanging on your seat every second.

Tropic Thunder

So, you want excitement, you want energy, but maybe you want to avoid being trapped in such existential stakes. Tropic Thunder has danger, excitement, and explosions—but also has a great sense of humor about it. This movie is so funny, it starts with four imaginary commercials/movie trailers that make you feel like you’ve already seen three movies by the time it really gets going. Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., and Brandon T. Jackson lead a platoon of actors through a Vietnam-era adaptation of the fictional memoir, Tropic Thunder , and everything goes off the rails before it’s even begun.

Calm

Amélie

Amélie plays like a window into someone else’s life for an hour and a half, and the life it depicts is full of little pleasures and no small amount of whimsy. There’s something so pleasant about French too, we highly recommend watching with subtitles instead of dubs. Chill out in Paris as Amélie works to unravel the little mystery that falls into her lap and enjoy the stream-of-consciousness storytelling as it moves in and out throughout the world.

Samsara

This movie is so entrancing you might forget you’re even watching a movie and just let your mind give itself over to daydreaming. Samsara is mesmerizing, beautiful, and full of striking music that will let you sit back and contemplate the mysterious splendor of our world. There’s no dialogue, no plot, just serene meditation for an hour and forty-five minutes. “Samsara” is a Sanskrit word that means “the ever turning wheel of life.”

Paddington

There may not be a better feel-good movie than Paddington , regardless of your age. Based on the books by the same name, Paddington tells the story of a family who meets a talking bear seeking a home with a tag that reads, “Please look after this bear. Thank you.” After agreeing to host the bear for one night, the family quickly learns that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. It’s fun, lively, and guaranteed to leave you smiling.

Dream

Waking Life

If you like to drift off to sleep with swirling visuals and introspective philosophical questions, Waking Life will have you wondering what’s real until you wake up in dreams of your own. The entire film was painted by digital artists, drawing stylized animation over the frames of the live-action raw footage to recreate the effect of wandering between realities.

Fantasia

This classic 20th Century Disney film is a serenade for the senses, consisting of several ambitious enterprises to animate what the mind’s eye “sees” responding to classical music. We can neither confirm nor deny the influence of cannabis on the result; however, we will loudly proclaim its virtues as a companion to the dreamy state often induced by marijuana.

Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully oil-painted feature-length film. Using a similar rotoscoping technique as Waking Life but completely analogue, it achieves a level of transportive immersion that is impossible to replicate, realizing the full potential of the animated medium. Loving Vincent has a slow, deliberative pace, based on the events of Vincent van Gogh’s life, and its visual aesthetic is directly inspired by his paintings—sometimes even including reproductions as the backdrop.

Flow

The Fountain

Immersive, contemplative, and imaginatively scored, The Fountain is full of long lingering visual effects that let your mind wander wherever it wants to. If you choose to keep it in the foreground, The Fountain asks tough questions about purpose, relationships, and relevance in the face of unrelenting time. It follows three stories through the past, present, and future, as mere mortals struggle with the implications of their one feeble shot at existence.

The Lord of the Rings

The great thing about The Lord of the Rings is that there’s three of them, so you can run the trilogy in the background and have cinematic company for the entire day—especially if you watch the extended editions. The premise is simple: an evil dark lord has returned to power, and there’s only one way to stop him: Frodo must carry the One Ring into Mordor and cast it into the fire of Mount Doom. Soon, his journey involves all the peoples of Middle Earth as they work toward—or against—his goal.

Spirited Away

No one does animation better than Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, and Spirited Away is a gorgeous, arresting experience that’s the perfect companion to any creative spark. Chihiro finds herself trapped in a world of spirits and her parents transformed, powerless to leave. She has to adapt to the new rules of this fantastical reality and find a way to break the curse preventing her family from leaving.

Lift

Dazed and Confused

If you’re already feeling the vibe, Dazed and Confused is a perfect companion piece to getting lifted. It takes place over the course of a single day at a small high school in 1976, following a group of seniors and a group of freshmen as they navigate the last day of school before summer vacation. It all culminates in a life-changing party under the stars for everyone involved.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may just be a perfect movie. It’s certainly the best comic book adaptation that makes you feel like the pages are flipping right in front of your eyes. Into the Spider-Verse is a bright, musical, energetic romp through the jungle of life’s big questions like, why am I here? What’s important to me? What am I supposed to do? For a superhero movie, there’s an incredible amount of artwork and heart on display here, challenging everyone to tap into their inner Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, or Spider-Ham.

The Big Lebowski

Although it’s hard for stoner comedies to age well, The Big Lebowski takes things to a different level. Jeff Bridges plays the pot-smoking, White-Russian-Drinking hipster who just wants to go bowling with his friends. Due to a case of mistaken identity, he gets entangled in a series of capers enacted by unscrupulous individuals who want to use his laissez-faire attitude for their own selfish purposes.

Relieve

Big

Big is a classic comedy from the 80s that features Tom Hanks as a kid who’s stuck in a grown-up’s body. At first, it’s a dream come true—he can go wherever he wants, stay up late, and gets a job developing toys—but the realities of adulthood remind him that there are many great things about growing up. Big delivers big smiles and a few laughs, and is one of those movies that only seems to get better with age.

Little Women

With a little more heart, Little Women tells the story of four sisters trying to make their way in the world during the years after the Civil War. Meg, Amy, Beth, and Jo each have their own passions, ambitions, and desires, brought to life by the talented actresses Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, and Saoirse Ronan.

Coco

This movie has all the feels in one place, combined with eye-popping visuals and an uplifting soundtrack. Coco follows Miguel and his family’s relationship with heritage. Miguel wants to be a famous mariachi, but his family has a strict ban on music after his great-grandmother Coco’s father abandoned her as a child in pursuit of fame and fortune. After getting trapped in the afterlife, Miguel seeks his great-great-grandfather to try to put things right.

Legalization Liberates Police to Focus on Serious Crime

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Legalization Liberates Police to Focus on Serious Crime

Jun 17, 2022

There were countless excellent reasons to legalize medical and recreational marijuana. Maintaining the right to bodily autonomy, generating tax revenue for social services, and creating a whole new industry’s worth of job opportunities are just a few of them. We’re starting to see real changes as a result, especially here in Oregon, as we head into our fifth year of full legalization. (Can you believe it’s been five years? Crazy.)

One intended outcome was freeing up law enforcement professionals to pursue actual criminals doing actual crimes. The failed War on Drugs

endowed local police departments with military weaponry

and focused a large portion of department resources on arresting and prosecuting drug offenders. This has resulted in up to nearly

half a million American citizens incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses

, while less than

8% of the federal prison population is there for violent crime

. Wouldn’t it make sense that cops would have a lot more time to focus on reducing violent crime if they weren’t so preoccupied with minor drug offenders?

It’s one thing to hope, but it’s another thing to have hard data, and a new report in

The International Journal of Drug Policy

appears to confirm what we always suspected. A team of researchers from the University of Utah and the University of China analyzed trends of crime clearance rates in Oregon before and after legalization, comparing them to other states without legal cannabis. They found “significant increases in the clearance rate for overall violent crimes and for aggravated assault in Oregon counties relative to those in non-legalized states following legalization.”

According to

NORML

, these findings are consistent with similar studies in Colorado and Washington, especially regarding violent crimes and property crime. The implication is clear: when police aren’t forced to waste resources on minor drug offenders, they can focus their efforts on individuals who are perpetrating serious crime and solve cases that actually affect public safety.

This is a great relief to advocates and opponents of marijuana legalization alike. People who

opposed the legalization of recreational cannabis in Oregon

were worried that it could lead to an increase in crime, and people who supported legalization believed it would do the opposite while generating tax revenue to reinvest in law enforcement. Now that there is actual data, we can move on to a more sophisticated discussion of sensible drug policy and the allocation of law enforcement resources. As of March 2022, eighteen states in the U.S. have legal recreational cannabis and thirty-seven allow it for medical use.

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The U.S. House Pushes for Legalization

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The U.S. House Pushes for Legalization

Jun 24, 2022

It was a great day for a practical joke, but it turns out the U. S. House of Representatives were actually feeling pretty serious on April 1st, 2022.

, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act, also known as the “MORE Act”. Its passage represents one step closer to criminal justice reform, social justice, and economic development in the realm of federally-legalized cannabis.

The MORE Act does a lot of things. First and foremost, it would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act list of federally-banned drugs. This would “

open the door to research, better banking and tax laws, and help fuel economic growth

“. The MORE Act would also enact automatic expungement of federal cannabis convictions at no cost to the individual, and prevent the federal government from discrimination on the basis of cannabis use when it comes to things like federal benefits and deportation. It would create the Office of Cannabis Justice to oversee the social equity aspects of the bill, and apply a 5% excise tax to all marijuana products for the first two years, raising it to 8% by the fifth year.

Fully half of this tax would create an “Opportunity Trust Fund” to support a “Community Reinvestment Grant Program”. 10% of the funds raised would go to support substance abuse programs, and the other 40% would go to the federal Small Business Administration to support implementation of a newly created equitable licensing grant program. Marijuana producers and importers would need a federal permit and pay $1,000/year in federal taxes for each of their premises, which could also be used to fund social programs.

If you’re feeling a little déjà vu, we can assure you, you’re just a little high. This is totally

the same bill that passed the U. S. House in December, 2020

, but back then, it was blocked from being voted on in the Senate by

You-Know-Who

. And this bill may not pass in the Senate, either. The

Senate has its own marijuana reform bill

called the Cannabis Administrative and Opportunity Act (the “CAO” Act) that would impose a 25% excise tax on marijuana products, similarly remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, and expunge the records of people who are federally incarcerated for marijuana-related crimes.

The bills are different enough from each other that it may be difficult to get Senators and U. S. House Representatives to agree on a common path forward, but we’ll be watching the development of both avenues to full-blown legalization with great interest. Whichever one wins out—whether it’s the MORE Act or the CAO Act—it will be a great victory for legal cannabis.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Cannabis Laws in Portland, Oregon

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There are a lot of cannabis laws in Oregon, well everywhere, but you should know at least a few of them. Can you just walk into a store and buy a joint or do you have to buy the flowers and roll your own? Can you smoke it on the sidewalk? At the beach? In your house? Here are some answers to frequently asked cannabis questions so you can be an upstanding, law-abiding, cannabis-smoking citizen. If you are curious

we also have an article for that.

First, a disclaimer. None of us at Pot Mates are lawyers, or at least no one will admit it, so what follows should not be misconstrued as “legal advice”. Lawyers are, generally speaking, the only people qualified to offer helpful, valid legal advice. That’s like, literally their job. We have our own thing going on. If you really want to be informed, you should read

HB 3400

and

Measure 91

for yourself. (uh, were not going to update this section very often so definitely double check the date and double check the laws!)

Disclaimer out of the way, let’s get to the questions!

Q & A

So how does this whole legalization thing work?

Well, if you’re over the age of 21 in the state of Oregon, you are legally permitted to possess up to one ounce of dried cannabis flowers, hash, concentrate, or extract, sixteen ounces of edibles, and seventy-two ounces of liquids. And ten cannabis seeds. And four immature cannabis plants. (And, man, that’s a lot of ands!)

Wow, that’s a lot! Where can I buy it?

Oh, so many places! Especially here in Portland. This also depends a lot on where you are because there are some cities (and counties) that have decided not to allow recreational sales. Basically, if you’re west of the Cascades and you’re not in Douglas, Marion, Jefferson, or Klamath counties, you can probably find a licensed marijuana retail store. Many of them are cash only, and they always check your government-issued photo ID to make sure you’re over the legal purchasing age, so bring both when you go.

You can also get cannabis delivered here in Portland, Oregon! (that’s what we do). Just

click over to our menu

and

. Technically these are all places of business and Oregon cannabis law says we can’t do it.

Like, how much can I buy though?

Cannabis laws in Oregon allow you to buy an ounce of flower, five grams of concentrates, sixteen ounces of edibles, seventy-two ounces of liquids, ten seeds, and four little plants per day. For reference, an ounce of flower would make more than seventy-five joints. Please don’t smoke this many joints in a day. Well, you’re an adult and we aren’t lawyers, so you do you, but seventy-five sounds like a lot. The real question is how you should

choose a cannabis strain for your mood

Per day?

Theoretically, you could buy that much every day! You can even keep up to eight ounces in your private residence, so you don’t necessarily have to go every day. But yeah, it’s crazy.

That is crazy! What if I want to grow my own?

If you’re over 21, you can grow up to four plants (per household) on your own private property, provided you keep them out of public view. Growing outside should be done in a greenhouse, or behind a fence or tall hedge that keeps them hidden. The only place you can’t grow cannabis is within 1,000 feet of a school, because cannabis is not for children and they will, most likely, try and steal it. You don’t want that, their parents don’t want that, we don’t want that. Nobody wants that.

Four plants would make a lot more than eight ounces. Can I give some to my friends?

You’re so generous! You can give cannabis to anyone over 21 on two conditions: you can’t give them more than they are legally allowed to possess and you can’t receive any kind of financial consideration for your gift. Oh, and you both have to be in Oregon when the gift is made.

What’s “financial consideration”? Sounds like something a lawyer would say.

Yeah, we know, and we’re not lawyers, but definitely don’t try to sell anything you grow. Actually, now that we think about it, don’t sell any controlled substances, like at all. That’s what we do, and we had to get a bunch of licenses and a security system and cameras to be able to do so legally. It’s for sure, super not legal to sell cannabis without a license.

Pretty much anything with verifiable monetary value is considered (by lawyers) as financial consideration. Basically, if you’re going to gift it, make sure there are no strings attached. Here’s a list of stuff you can’t receive in exchange for gifting somebody cannabis:

Money
Tips
Goods or services
Cover charges
Admission fees
Fundraisers
Donations
Raffles
Sales
Etc.

I rent my place. Can I still grow?

According to Oregon Cannabis laws you need to ask your landlord! It’s up to the property owner. So maybe!

Where can I smoke?

Only in your home or on private property. This means no parks, no public beaches, nowhere cigarette smoking is already prohibited, and not on federal land. We actually like this rule, because everyone should enjoy the freedom to choose when they do or don’t inhale cannabis smoke.

There are some “cannabis clubs” in Portland, Eugene, and other cities around Oregon where you’re welcome to consume it in the company of others. Kind of like a bar, but you have to bring your own cannabis. These places may have pinball machines, pool tables, or refreshments for you to enjoy while you get high.

That sounds like a lot of driving, but I don’t think I should drive if I’m high.

That’s…not a question. But you’re right! Driving under the influence is illegal, hazardous, and in no way worth the risks. Your reaction time and short-term memory are impaired whenever you ingest cannabis, and those are the most important factors in responding to or averting an accident. If you need to get somewhere quickly, try to get a ride with someone. This is a good time to read up on

Point taken. If I’m not high, can I drive with weed in my car?

Mostly yes, but not if you’re crossing state lines. As long as you’re staying within Oregon, it’s okay to have it in the car. Just keep it stored somewhere the driver can’t reach it in a child-proof container. By the way, if you’re flying within Oregon, you can take it with you! Anyplace else and they make you get rid of it.

Awesome! But wait,—why can’t I take it to California or Washington, states that have also legalized recreational marijuana?

Well, because it’s still illegal on a federal level, and crossing state lines puts you under federal jurisdiction. If you get pulled over by a state trooper crossing the border with an ounce of cannabis, you could be charged with intent to distribute, even though you were within your legal possession limit in both states! Oregon cannabis law stays in Oregon, California Cannabis law stays in California.

Okay, now that is crazy.

That’s not a question either, but we agree! Legalize cannabis nationwide!

What do I say to the cop if I get pulled over and I have weed in the car?

In general, it’s best to only speak when spoken to and only answer the questions the officer asks. If the officer asks whether or not you have cannabis in your car, you can certainly refuse to answer the question (any question, really,) before speaking to a lawyer, but that means you have to actually call one of those lawyers we talked about at the beginning. This sounds like a lot of trouble. If you tell them you don’t have anything, they could bring you up on charges if they eventually—legally—discover that you lied. Lying is bad, and if you lie to a police officer you are going to have a bad time. Use your best judgement and be respectful. Everyone deserves respect, especially people who can arrest you. Thats a more universal truth than an Oregon cannabis law FAQ, so take that one wherever you go.

What else do I need to know about legally buying and consuming weed in Oregon?

Not much! Just remember:

Don’t drive high
Exercise good judgment
Obey all the laws
You can have up to an ounce on you at a time
You can only smoke on private property that expressly allows it
Keep all cannabis products out of the reach of children
And above all, don’t drive high. Marijuana affects your memory and response time.

You should know more about the

what to do when you are too high

, especially if it will be your first time, and

, regardless of how many rodeos you have been to.

Safety First: How to Smoke Weed and Stay Safe

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone’s personal high cycle is unique, so once you get comfortable with yours, it’s perfectly natural to want to try a lot of your favorite activities high, just to see what they’re like. Some things,—snacking, writing, watching movies,—are undeniably better when you’re stoned, but there are others that can end up being dangerous. Here are some things to keep in mind so you and the people you’re with can have a good time without having to worry about causing any problems. Keep in mind the

what first time users should know

so you don’t find yourself in a bind, unprepared.

If this is your first time puffing ganja, read our article about

. It’ll help you know what to expect, and that can make a huge difference in your experience. Also, remember that most people don’t smoke weed at all,—like literally 80% of Americans,—so you should feel no pressure to try it if you don’t want to.

Avoid “Important” Stuff

What do we mean by “important”? Anything that directly affects your personal safety, livelihood, or the livelihood and personal safety of other individuals. Things like driving a vehicle or operating heavy machinery, going to work, and taking care of children should all be considered “important,” and you want to be at the top of your game when you do them.

Marijuana can slow down your reaction time and

interfere with your short-term memory

. This leads to disorientation, forgetfulness, distractibility, and high levels of excitement. A lot of these sensations can be pretty intense, especially if you’re new to using cannabis. Cannabis can also interfere with your short-term memory. This is why you should try to avoid getting high before you need to do something important.

For the same reason, you want to avoid taking on any such obligations if you’re already high. If work calls and asks you to pick up an extra shift, tell them today doesn’t work. Does your brother or sister want to see if you can look after the kids for a couple of hours? Better say you’re busy. If something goes wrong or there’s an accident, sober you will have no problem assessing the situation and coming up with a solution. Sober you will generally be in a much better position to evaluate what needs to be done and make the right choices quickly

Don’t Drive

It’s so important to avoid driving while stoned or operating any other motor vehicle or heavy machinery.

Your reaction time just isn’t fast enough

to deal with surprise merges, unaware pedestrians, or sudden mechanical malfunctions. If you’re driving fifty miles per hour, and you look away from the road for as few as five seconds, that’s a hundred yards of driving blind—the length of a regulation football field.

Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, “I’m a totally safe driver, I’ve never had an accident or anything!” You’re probably right, but safety is not the absence of accidents, it’s the presence of safeguards. Even if you do not cause any accidents by virtue of being high, it will likely interfere with your ability to prevent them. Nothing can harsh your buzz more than injuring someone or getting injured yourself.

Don’t Buy Stuff

This is less of a physical safety concern, but spending money on stuff you don’t need is definitely one of the risks of being high. As cool as that tie-dye blacklight-responsive velvet Cheshire Cat poster looks at Spencer’s, you can still appreciate it without dropping $25. One way to avoid unnecessary spending is to write down whatever seems appealing and look at the list again once you come down to see if you still want to buy it.

Also be wary of fast-food restaurants. All too often, they are specifically targeting you , a high person, with too-good-to-be-true deals on mountains of food. The truth is, most dollar menus are only designed to get you in the door. Once you’re inside, or staring at the drive through menu, you’ll quickly up-sell yourself to a meal deal with extra fries or—god help you—an entire tray of chicken nuggets.

Phone a Friend

Safety doesn’t have to be a bummer: it’s the presence of safeguards not the absence of accidents, after all. We have some suggestions for making sure you don’t have a bad time and can adequately respond to any unforeseen circumstances.

The safest thing you can do is to have a sober friend with you or who you can call if something doesn’t seem right. It’s a great relief to have a clear-minded friend or family member to talk you through anything you might need help with. They can contact emergency services for you if it’s actually necessary. You can put your friend’s name and phone number on a note to keep with you, just in case.

Keep Your Phone With You

Make sure you always have your phone on you, in case of emergency. Having your phone makes the difference between being able to reach out to your support network if you need help and being forced to manage everything by yourself—which can be tough when you’re high! You need to be able to reach out to people you trust so you can either delegate some of your newfound responsibilities or get some help figuring out how to tackle them.

Don’t have any friends? Don’t worry! You can make new ones by striking up a conversation with other shoppers at your local dispensary, search for “cannabis” on Meetup, or try apps like Puffy to find some like-minded people. The cannabis community is a friendly, welcoming place.

Conclusion: Dos and Don’ts

To recap, here some Pot Mates Dos and Don’ts to stay safe when you’re enjoying cannabis:

Do :

Drink water. Lots of water.
Stay in touch with a sober friend.
Keep your phone charged and nearby.

Don’t :

Do anything that could risk your livelihood or personal safety, or the safety of others.
Operate a motor vehicle.
Make significant purchasing decisions.
Order anything “family size” at a restaurant. What are you doing at a restaurant anyway? Take a look at

the best foods for when you have the munchies

instead.

How to Plan for the Four Stages of Being High

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Your first time can be a great time if you know what to expect from the whole high cycle. Hopefully, you’re reading this beforehand, but if not, there’s still time! You should also already read our advice about what

first timers should know about cannabis

The most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s a good idea to avoid anything dangerous or important. The first time you get high should be a kind of trial run, a learning experience that allows you to see how you personally react to cannabis—your personal high cycle —so next time you’ll know your limits and what kind of experience to expect. As long as you ease into it, pay attention to how you’re feeling, and avoid hazards like traffic, you’re gonna have a good time. If you drive high, it’s not only illegal, but you or somebody else will probably have a bad time. Don’t drive under the influence, we want you to have a good time! With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s begin.

There are four main stages of any high: the come-up, the peak, the plateau, and the come-down. Here’s what to expect.

The Come-Up

You’ll feel it first in your head and your lungs. It’s perfectly normal to experience tightness in your face and a mild sense of vertigo before the high settles into the back of your mind like a low-hanging cloud.

During the come-up , you can expect to lose track of time a little—especially if it’s your firs time. You might start to feel some déjà vu , or notice that things take a lot longer to happen than they usually do. Sometimes things will seem to happen faster than they usually do. You might even start to feel some déjà vu. This is also normal, and sometimes even a little fun! The technical term for this is “

time dilation

,” and you’ll get used to it after about fifteen or twenty minutes. It won’t last forever, and if you approach it with a light heart, you’ll probably get some laughs out of it.

You may also feel some restlessness in your joints, but some light stretching or a brisk walk will have you feeling limber again. If you’re partaking with a significant other, now is the perfect time to ask for a back rub, or better yet—offer to give one.

The come-up will last for about thirty to forty-five minutes, and then you’ll really be able to notice the effects. First-timers should probably wait at least this long before taking another hit.

The Peak

After about forty-five minutes, lights will seem brighter and colors more vibrant, the littlest things will make you giggle, and your favorite song will sound more perfect than even you remember it being. This is the peak , and it’s just like looking out from the top of a mountain. You might not taste colors or smell sounds, but you may start pondering the deep questions of the universe. Why is the sky blue if air is clear? Does snow have a taste? Why are ducks always wearing

little dog masks

If you start to feel that your heart rate has become elevated, find a calm comfortable place to sit and relax for a while until you get your feet under you. Try drinking water,

eating a snack

, and enjoying some light entertainment. Cartoons are a great option, so is having a conversation with your friends.

As great as it is to connect with other people, we want to encourage you to talk to them directly—like a phone call or a text message—rather than a post to Facebook or Twitter. You may very well have thoughts that you want to share with the world, or revelations you think everyone needs to know right now, but it’s best to resist the temptation to post them on social media. As great as your highdea

©® may seem at the time, it’s something you might want to save for after you’ve come down a bit. Once it’s out there, it’s there forever for friends, coworkers, potential employers, and future in-laws. If it’s a great idea, it will still be great when you’re sober again. Maybe.

The same goes for any kind of live-streaming or phone-calls with relatives or authority figures. Now is not the time to call your boss! And if your grandmother calls to wish you a happy birthday, let it go to voicemail, listen to it, then call her back later. Grandmothers love that sort of thing, —being surprised on a random Thursday by their favorite grandchild calling them back? It’s the least you could do to call your grandmother once in a while, after everything she’s done for you. Just let yourself come down from the peak before trying to do anything important.

The Plateau

The plateau is where you’ll spend most of the high, and it’s also when you’ll be most comfortable. Whatever came before it, you’ll know by the time you hit the plateau if you’re

too high

, not high enough, or just the right amount of high. If you feel like you might want to take another hit, now’s the time to indulge—just be aware that you’ll be starting a new high cycle of coming up, peaking, plateauing, and coming down. And don’t forget that every additional hit increases your chances of getting too high, —or just higher than you wanted to be. If that happens, don’t worry,

we have a guide for that too

You may begin to feel more active once you’re a couple of hours into it. We recommend going for a walk somewhere close by. Just go outside and see which direction you find most appealing. As long as you take all right or all left turns, you’ll make it back home. Pro-tip: it’s much harder to get lost if you have your phone with you. The plateau is a great time for exploration and recreation. You could exercise, watch a movie, play a stimulating video game—some people even enjoy reading! You might not always follow everything that’s happening (you might even get déjà vu ), but you can still get the gist and that’s fun enough sometimes.

The Come-Down

After another three hours, that curtain of fog lifting from your mind. You’ll have a greater sensitivity to things like sound and temperature, and you may even feel a little tired. Some people get irritable during this time, especially chronic users. You can expect to come down over the course of a couple of hours, and different people like to do different things as they transition back.

If you like to read, this is a great time to settle down with something to ease your transition back from the high. Graphic novels like

Sandman

Scott Pilgrim

can be very engaging. If you haven’t had anything to eat yet, definitely get on that with some snacks—or better yet, get some dinner! If you manage to stay hydrated and well-fed, you’ll avoid the dry mouth and uneasiness some people report feeling the morning after they indulge.

If you don’t keep a journal, now is a great time to start. Writing down strains you enjoy and where you got them, what the different stages of the high were like, and the things you most enjoyed doing while high helps you make informed decisions next time, allowing you to maximize your experience by getting exactly what you want out of it. We don’t recommend using social media to share your thoughts in the moment, but keeping a journal will let you save the gems for later. Your memory isn’t the best when you’re high, so the come-down is a great time to jot down all those highdeas

The next question is,

how can you stay safe while enjoying cannabis

? Step one: stay calm.

Proper Joint-Smoking Etiquette

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Guess what? If you can roll a joint, you’ll never be short a few friends to help you smoke it. On the other hand, if someone wants to share their joint with you, you had better know what to do with it so they’ll share again in the future! Joints are a quick and easy way to smoke cannabis—perfect for kicking back and relaxing with a cup of coffee or

some great food

. They also hold a nostalgic link to the Hippie roots of cannabis’s rise to popularity in the Sixties and the classic stoner comedy films of the Eighties and Nineties. This is a guide to teach you the ins and outs of packing, rolling, smoking, passing, and pitching a joint so you do it the right way—and with some style.

Packing and Rolling

There are basically two ways to make a joint, you can roll one yourself or buy a pre-made cone that you pack with your own supply. It might seem easier to grind up some flower and stuff it into a paper, but the result is prone to runs, blockage, and potentially a lot of wasted weed (we prefer to call it cannabis, but SEO dictates we use “weed” at least three times per article.) Still, it’s technically easier if you’ve never rolled before. To guide the weed into the joint tube, crease a card to use as a funnel, pour it in, then tamp it down with a pen, pencil, or anything pokey. Once it’s full, pinch the paper at the wide end of the joint and give it a few quick shakes to get your weed to pack more tightly in the bottom.

Packing a joint tube isn’t very satisfying, but you can take pride in rolling your own joints by hand. Rolling a joint is mechanically simple, but artistically delicate work. The best way to learn is to practice and know that you can always tear it open and try again if you don’t like the result. No one’s watching you, and if they are, you may be practicing wrong.

To roll a joint, you’ll need three things: a rolling paper, a crutch, and ground cannabis flower. What’s a crutch? Well, it’s a thin strip of notecard or business card that you’ll roll into a tiny cylinder for the base of the joint—about the size and shape of the filter on a cigarette. Don’t use an actual cotton filter tip or it might filter out the cannabinoids that are the reason you’re smoking in the first place. You want to make the crutch first, so it gives your joint structure as you fill it.

Take your rolling paper and open it up so it makes a v-shaped trough. Hold the paper in your dominant hand with the gum-strip facing you and place the crutch under your thumb. You should now have a little paper trough into which you can sprinkle your ground cannabis. Try to distribute it evenly in the paper, filling the trough about halfway to the gum-strip. Get ready for the tricky part!

Using your less-dominant hand, press both sides of the paper flat against each other, enveloping the cannabis inside. Hold it tight so you can reposition your dominant hand to do the same for the crutch end. Now, holding both sides of the paper against each other with both hands, slide the front up and down against the back. This will pack the joint down to a tiny little cylinder. You’ll have to go by feel to tell when it’s packed tight enough, but don’t go too tight. If your joint is as solid as a stick, it will smoke just as poorly.

Now the tricky part: when you’re happy with the consistency, slide your side of the paper down until you can just see the green edge of the cannabis inside, then lightly lick the gum-strip. Now all you have to do is roll it the rest of the way up, and you’ve got a joint! You can light it up right away, or twist closed the open end if you want to save it for later.

Smoking

Do you have a joint? Friends? Awesome! You’re already doing it right. If you rolled it, you get to light it. If someone else threw down on what’s inside, they get to be on your left for the next hit (traditionally). But before you put it in your mouth and smoke it, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Don’t go deep with the joint.

It’s not a lollipop, it’s a piece of paper, and if you slobber all over it, you’ll be passing a soggy mess that nobody wants to hit, especially right now (

2021

, but also in general). If you don’t want to share, just say so, don’t ruin a good thing. The joint shouldn’t go past your teeth. Hold it up to your lips rather than between them.

Draw slowly or you’ll burn your throat.

Don’t take a huge, deep breath, it’s more like sipping through a straw. If you draw the smoke into your mouth first, it has the chance to cool before you send it deeper into your lungs. Then, when you do inhale, open your mouth a little to let in some fresh air. That also helps prevent coughing.

Puff, puff, pass. Take two hits, then pass it to your left .

Or, when among friends, pass it to the left hand of the person to the right of you. Some people will tell you “right is tight,” and hey—we don’t judge—but the important thing to remember is that the joint is not a talking stick. You don’t have to hit it, but you do have to pass it.

Passing Technique

Proper passing technique means you’ll be able to get the spliff (that’s what they call joints in Europe) from your hand to your friends’ without anyone’s fingers being singed or clothes getting burnt. It’s a stoner comedy cliché to drop a joint in a car and

instigate a cartoonish catastrophe

, but that shouldn’t be your fate. Unless that car is parked, you shouldn’t be smoking. Unless your car is your permanent domicile, it’s probably illegal to smoke there anyway. The best way to pass it is to hold the joint as low on the crutch as you can with the lit end pointing straight up. Hold it lightly and allow your friend to take it out of your hand. Don’t release it, that’s how you drop a joint, just let them remove it.

There will come a point where the joint is too short to continue. It is a sad time, but all good things must come to an end. You can decide to go ahead and throw it away, or you can attempt a more advanced technique: the three-fingered pass. When the joint has burned down almost to a roach, squeeze the side of the crutch (aren’t you glad we told you to use a crutch?) between your thumb and forefinger. Your friend will do the same on the other side, then you just have to push it against their fingertips with your forefinger until they take it away.

This takes practice, so don’t try it with someone the first time you smoke with them. You need to build up some joint-passing rapport, this is a real thing, we did not make that up. Trust is the first rule of sharing weed with friends. Or having friends at all.

Pitching

When you’re done with the joint, what do you do with the roach? Some people eat it,—and they’re not entirely wrong about how that works,—but that would taste disgusting and probably make you sick. That practice was more common during Prohibition, along with people saving their roaches in case they ran out of cannabis (

not as much a problem anymore

). If it came to it, they could pack the roaches into a pipe and smoke that. Disgusting!

That’s all behind us now. Now, there are only two things to worry about: making sure it’s completely out, and keeping it away from kids. Most joints are biodegradable and can be responsibly buried in your backyard. Others you can throw away in ashtrays or trashcans, but always on your own property or where you have express permission to dispose of your joints. Don’t them on the ground or in bodies of water where small humans (we call them kids here) or animals might be tempted to ingest them. You don’t want anyone to have a bad time. If someone is having a bad time because of you, you are not having a good time.

“But wait, why do they call it a joint?” we hear you asking. You might like our article about

popular cannabis slang origins

, where we discuss the history of “joint,” “bong,” and even “marijuana.”

What First Time Users Should Know About Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If you’re thinking about trying cannabis for the first time, thanks for getting educated first! Knowledge is power and there’s a reason

50% of Americans

are curious about it. This simple guide will help make sure your first time is a good time, because what’s cannabis about?

Having a good time!

It’s also being safe, please so read our article about

either before continuing or between reading this article and trying weed.

Preparing for the Experience

First, know that you can always get more high later. While experts debate about whether there’s such a thing as getting “too high,” the rest of us agree that you can definitely get “higher than you wanted to be,” and it’s not a good time. It’s important to start small so you can get a feel for the effects and how you react to marijuana before experimenting with higher doses. Think about it like cooking, it’s easier to add than subtract.

How Much Time Do You Have?

Think about how long it will be until you have to drive somewhere, interact with people professionally, or do something that requires your prolonged, undivided attention, e.g., going to work, looking after kids, or serving on a jury. Remember to take the

Schedule I Controlled Substance

into account. If you have less than four hours before real-world responsibilities, you might want to postpone your first joint or dab until you’re finished with your obligations for the day. Plan for longer, just to be safe.

Edibles can last even longer, with effects that can stretch up to ten hours after ingestion. The first time you try edibles should be a day when you don’t have any external expectations, you won’t be expected to drive, and you won’t be directly responsible for anyone else’s health or safety.

Set and Setting

The first time you try cannabis, choose someplace comfortable and familiar, with a convenient bathroom. Better yet, just go to the bathroom beforehand. The last thing you need to worry about for your first time is how to get past your flatmates without looking awkward.

Try to set up your future self to have a good time by filling a water bottle, collecting some of your

favorite snacks

, and putting on some music that you like. The full course of a cannabis high can last around four hours if inhaled,—or about two movies. We recommend Pixar or Marvel. Definitely nothing from the horror genre.

The people you’re with can have an effect too. Try inviting just one or two close friends to partake, people you already trust and who have your best interests at heart. Avoid crowds of strangers who might make you feel paranoid.

Making a Purchase

Go to a Cannabis Dispensary Nearby

Visiting a real, live, legal marijuana dispensary for the first time is a magical experience. There are rows of glass jars containing a range of different strains, wire racks with clones growing under a bright lights, coolers full of cannabis-infused refreshments, and a wide selection of pre-packaged vaporizers, snacks, and pre-rolls. The selection is staggering, so don’t feel bad if it’s overwhelming.

First,

know the laws

of your state concerning the purchase and use of recreational or medicinal cannabis. They’re your best resource for where you’re allowed to buy weed, how much you can legally have on your person, where you’re allowed to consume it, and other things you may want to know about. As of January 2021, marijuana is still a

in the United States, so make sure you’re aware of the risks before you go in! Also make sure to bring your photo ID since dispensaries don’t allow underage people on the premises. See our

frequently asked questions about cannabis laws here in Oregon

for quick information.

The people who work there are just great. They’re the most experienced with their shop’s selection, and they want to make sure you’re happy with your purchase, so feel free to ask questions! Tell them what you like, what you’re looking for, and they’ll offer helpful recommendations to find it.

Order Your Weed Online

Sometimes, there are some pretty compelling reasons to keep you from wanting to go into a physical store. Mobility, discretionary, and even public health concerns (have you read

our response to COVID-19

?) are enough to make people look for other options. Fortunately, there are now online cannabis delivery services (like

Pot Mates

!) that allow you to make your selection from the comfort of your own home and have it hand-delivered to your door.

Methods of Consumption

There are about a million different ways to consume cannabis (if you round up), but let’s just focus on three for now: flower, concentrates, and edibles. We wrote a pretty detailed article about the different

ways to consume cannabis

if you are curious.

Flower

You can picture it now: green, five-pointed leaves, sparkling crystals, little orange hairs, the smell of skunk and fuel…all of which you can put in a pipe or roll into a joint to smoke it the old-fashioned way. You can even buy pre-rolled joints right in the store!

If you have sensitive lungs, you might benefit from a bong or a bubbler. These pieces are designed with a water chamber for the smoke to go through, cooling it before it reaches your mouth and lungs. Bongs often have ice chambers that let you cool the smoke even further.

To start with, take one hit, exhale fully, then wait about five minutes before deciding to take another. Breathe normally. You may experience lightheadedness, some tingling in your arms and legs, and a gentle tension around your crown. These sensations mean that the high is starting to “come on,” and it can take up to thirty minutes for you to feel the full effects.

While flower is one of the cheapest ways to purchase cannabis, combusting has its costs. Every time you inhale burning plant matter, you’re inhaling carcinogens that have been linked to the development of lung, throat, and mouth cancer, which is why vaporizing and concentrates have become much more popular methods.

Concentrate

Cannabis concentrates are made by extracting the active chemicals in cannabis—like THC, CBD, and terpenes—from the raw plant matter. “Dabbing” is applying a small amount of marijuana concentrate to a super-heated bowl or “nail,” so that it turns instantly into vapor. Due to the high temperatures involved, it is highly recommended that you use a bong or bubbler, the purchase of which can make your initial investment pretty costly.

A cheaper and more convenient alternative is the vaporizer cartridge. These come as either a single disposable unit like an electronic cigarette with a built-in battery, or as separate rechargeable batteries and cartridges. These vaporizers are great for managing your dose and keeping your home clean from the sour smell of stale smoke.

Edibles

The first rule of edibles is start small. Only eat or drink the recommended amount until you know what to expect from it at that level, otherwise you might

get too high

, and if you get too high, you might have a bad time. Check the label every time, because edibles come in many varieties and their effective dose can be as small as a single

gummy cube

or as large as a bar of

chocolate

. Other forms of edibles include sodas, cannabis-infused coffee, and small bottles of cannabis extract, like energy shots.

Edibles can take up to three hours to come on, so try to do something else to occupy your mind while you wait for the effects. If you don’t feel anything after four hours, don’t be discouraged! Just increase your dose by one half the next time until you find the dose that works for you.

Choosing a Strain

The main question to ask yourself is, “What kind of experience do I want to have?” Do you want to chill out and relax, or get stuff done? The strain you choose has the greatest impact on whether you’ll have an uplifting, cerebral high or a heavy body high. See our article on

how to choose a cannabis strain

for in-depth evaluation of the brief guidelines below.

High THC — Relaxation Supreme

High THC strains are great if you want to feel relaxed all the way down through your fingers and toes, you love the taste of delicious food, or you just want to spend the day playing video games and watching movies. Look for something with greater than 15% THC for a nearly psychedelic experience. Forbidden Fruit, Blue Dream, and Banana Split are some notable strains to try. Watch out for the couch-lock and make sure you drink plenty of water!

High CBD — Get Up and Go!

Some people like to get up and do stuff, so if you’re planning a day of creative writing or hiking through the mountains, choose something more on the CBD side, like Harlequin, Pennywise, or Cannatonic. CBD counteracts some of the narcotic effects of THC, so it’s also great for doing chores around the house,—but don’t let its subtlety fool you into thinking you can drive! Short-term memory loss and slow reaction times are common side effects of any strain.

Balanced — Best of Both Worlds

Want our advice? Strike the balance. Look for something with at least 5% THC and 5% CBD. The presence of both cannabinoids means you can indulge your senses with the stimulation of THC without having to worry about the paranoia and anxiety that sometimes comes with it, enjoying the balance of CBD. If you’re the type of person who wants to ease into a hot bath instead of doing a cannonball into a cold pool, a balanced strain will give you the whole spectrum of cannabis’s effects, making it easy for you to learn what you like and don’t like.

One More Thing

The last thing you should know before you try cannabis is that it is non-toxic and

no one has ever died from an overdose

. Even if you make a mistake the first time around, you’ll survive to learn from the experience and that will help you have a better time next time. And what’s cannabis about? Having a good time! As long as you remember to stay safe, start small, and obey your local laws, everything will be totally manageable, and we wish you the best of luck.

How to Choose a Cannabis Strain, and What Makes Weed Different?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve read our guides on

what to expect the first time you get high

and

what to do when you are higher than you want to be

, you’re probably feeling ready to visit a store (or

order something from us

) and make a purchase. The only problem is there are like ten million different kinds of bud to choose from! With names like Chemdawg, Ghost Train Haze, and Chiesel, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the choices. Fortunately for you, we’re here to make it easy. There a few things you want to keep in mind when choosing a strain, and we’re going to explain them so you can understand what you’re getting into.

It starts with one question:

How Do You Want to Feel?

Everybody likes cannabis for different reasons. Some people like help getting to sleep, others take it to feel energized. There are people who feel cannabis helps them be more creative and others who are only looking for pain relief, —not a psychedelic experience. Cannabis is so versatile, some researchers report it can help with

, and

. We’re not doctors, so you should speak with yours before you use it to address any health concerns.

You want to have a general idea of what you’re looking for before you even pick anything up. Ask yourself, do you want to be more energetic or more relaxed? Creative or sociable? If you do care about the more

medicinal qualities

, which ones should you ask your doctor about? Alternatively, you could think about the activities you want to be high for. Are you watching a movie? A sports game? Hiking? Sitting at home? Sitting at home some more?

It’s important to know what you want so that you can get it! Many people who get turned off by their experience with Mary Jane usually just didn’t get what they expected. The wonderful thing about living in the future where recreational cannabis is finally legal is that you can buy exactly what you want most of the time. As long as you know what you want going into it, you don’t really have to know anything else. We can help you find what you are looking for (

call us

if you are in the Portland, Oregon area and we will walk you through our selection.)

By now you’re probably wondering, how can these different effects even be possible? It’s all coming from the same plant, right? How different could it really be?

Cannabinoids

Cannabis comes in as many varieties as any other plant. If you think about how many kinds of tulips, orchids, and roses there are in the world, then you know that flowers can have a lot of variety.

Cannabis flowers

—the part we consume—are no different, except that they come with different concentrations of psychoactive compounds as well as scents and colors. And they sure smell nice! The psychoactive compounds are called cannabinoids , and they’re what make the difference between a lucid, speedy high that lets you do stuff for hours and a lethargic, hungry high better suited to chilling out with some snacks, a movie, and a friend.

There are two cannabinoids you can see right on the label of almost every pot product you can buy: THC and CBD. Many people consider these the primary compounds that determine the kind of high you’re likely to have and we will get into more nuanced details later. Knowing the THC and CBD levels is good for anticipating how high you’re going to get while the ratio between the two can hint at the character of that high.

THC (∂9-Tetrahydrocannabinol)

THC is the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, and is responsible for most of what you associate with getting high: euphoria, relaxation, occasional anxiety, introspection, appreciation for art, etc. At higher doses, it can even create visual/auditory illusions and

pseudo-hallucinations

. Generally speaking, you can expect heightened senses, a more active imagination, and an energetic disposition. The higher the concentration of THC, the greater or more pronounced these effects will be, but be forewarned: the risk of unpleasant side effects will be greater too, but we wrote an article about

. Some people experience anxiety or paranoia after smoking certain strains, and higher concentrations of THC can exacerbate those reactions. One reason the ratio of THC to CBD is important is that CBD can help mitigate some of these less-desirable side effects.

CBD (Cannabidiol)

CBD puts the “medical” in “medical marijuana”. It’s another naturally occurring compound in cannabis, but it doesn’t get you high. Instead, it can reduce the effects of THC, and some researchers argue it can provide relief for chronic pain, anxiety, inflammation, depression,—even the short-term memory loss associated with smoking bud. Although we can’t recommend recreational cannabis for these benefits. (Ask your doctor if medical marijuana is right for you. Have we mentioned that marijuana affects the memory? We forget.) Some strains are selected for high concentrations of CBD without any THC. Their users enjoy the reported pain-relieving and anxiolytic effects of cannabis without getting too discombobulated. Since it’s not psychoactive, CBD can be sold without the same restrictions as THC, so you can find it in everything from chocolate to lip balm to coffee.

The Balance

If you want the best of both worlds, look for strains that have a balanced ratio between THC and CBD. A balanced strain will have between 5-15% CBD and 5-10% THC. In recent cannabis history, breeders sought to grow plants with higher concentrations of THC, so don’t be surprised if you find some with 20% or more—just know that they’re genetically incapable of producing enough CBD to balance out the effects.

If you want to achieve the balance without spending a ton of time squinting at the fine print, just make sure both THC and CBD are at least 5%. It’s a foolproof way to breeze through any menu and find exactly what you’re looking for: the perfect, balanced high.

Indica and Sativa

How did we make it this far in our discussion about choosing a strain without mentioning the words indica , sativa , or hybrid ? They’re everywhere in marijuana stores, most menus divide their strains along these lines. Generally speaking sativa refers to strains that give you an energetic, euphoric high and indica means the sedative couch-lock thing. Although this may once have been the case on a genetic basis, modern cross-breeding and artificial selection have rendered that distinction—as far as what the high will be like—almost entirely meaningless. That means we are going to talk about those more nuanced differences.

Regardless of a strain’s lineage, it’s the ratio of THC and CBD (and the terpene profile) that will tell you about the high you’re getting and its side effects. You can find sativas with high CBD, indicas with low THC, and everything in between.

Why is this myth so prevalent? Despite being in use for centuries, there’s still a lot we don’t know about weed, and governments have only recently started allowing scientists to study it. Until we could start dong thorough, chemical analyses, the best we had to go on was word of mouth, and the early strains of indica and sativa had different enough concentrations of THC and CBD that the distinction was a useful one.

Now, science has taught us that what really matters are two things: the ratio of cannabinoids present and the terpene content. Terpenes are the fun part.

What the Heck is a Terpene?

Terpenes are fragrant oils secreted from the same glands that produce cannabinoids. They give weed its wide variety of flavors, like citrus, pine, berry, and pepper. Over two hundred different terpenes have been identified in cannabis alone, and every strain has their own unique combination. It’s this combination of terpenes—and the ratio of cannabinoids—that make each strain distinct from the others. Some terpenes enhance or inhibit the activity of other cannabinoids, giving each strain its own special smell and distinctive high. If you have a sensitive nose, you can put your nose in a jar of cannabis and know if it’s rich in α-pinene, limonene, or β-caryophyllene.

Here are some common terpenes, their scents, and what effects they may produce:

β-caryophyllene

– Oily, spicy

– Cell protectant, anti-inflammatory

α-humulene

– Hoppy, bready

– Reduces munchies

Limonene

– Citrus, peppermint, juniper

– Elevates mood, relieves stress, immune stimulant

Linalool

– Floral, candy, herbal

– Calming, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant

β-myrcene

– Earthy, musky, acrid

– Sedative, psychoactive, analgesic

α-pinene

– Piney, sweet, rosemary

– Aids memory retention, improves alertness, bronchodilator

Try It!

Of course, no amount of reading labels and smelling flower can replace sampling the strain you want to try. Every person’s reaction is different, and you’re the best judge of what works for you. That’s why Pot Mates describes the terpene content of our curated products whenever available so you can easily decide which one is best for how you want to feel.

Just remember, look for a THC and CBD content that’s at least 5% if you want balance and pay attention to how each new strain makes you feel so you can learn what you like and make a more informed purchase next time. Maybe keep a strain log of your favorite smokes, vapes, and nibbles to make it easier on your future self.

The Many Ways People Use Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Did you ever see Mel Brooks’s History of the World, and there was that scene toward the end where they rolled a

mighty joint

? Did you know you can buy an empty cone that’s almost that size right now? It can hold 2.5 ounces of cannabis in

one joint

. When it comes to the many different ways you can smoke weed, the only limit is your imagination. And physics. Don’t forget physics.

Four Romans Holding 2 Foot Long Joint

We want you to be informed, so we’re going to break down the options you can choose from to make your own decision on how to have a good time. If there’s one thing all of us here at Pot Mates want you to do, it’s have a good time.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re combusting it or cooking with it, cannabis works the same way—heating the psychoactive oils and compounds to a warm enough temperature that they decarboxylate. “Decarboxylation” is a fancy scientific word that means they become active. With smoking or vaping, you’re performing this decarboxylation (wow, you’re going to be so good at Scrabble!) during consumption. In the case of a prepared edible or an infused ointment, the decarboxylation has already been done for you. Nice!

If this is your first time with cannabis, check out our tips on

how to stay safe when you enjoy cannabis

first.

Smoking It

Just like the ancient Romans, it’s easy enough to

roll up a joint

(or a blunt, where the rolling paper is replaced with tobacco leaf from a cigar) and smoke it. This is a tried and true method. All you need is dried cannabis flowers and some rolling papers. Rolling technique can be a little tricky to get the hang of at first, but with practice, you’ll be a regular Cheech Marin. (Ask your parents if you don’t know about Cheech & Chong.) You can also buy joints pre-rolled, and we can bring some to you. We are pretty dang good at it, it’s our job.

The two primary benefits of smoking a joint are convenience and discretion. One joint can get several people high—or dozens, if you get that “Challenge” cone from the first paragraph‚—and its remains are usually bio-degradable, leaving little waste or accessories to be worried about. As for downsides, well, it’s not the most efficient way to consume cannabis. Most of the terpenes combust, and you lose cannabinoids whenever the joint is burning without anyone smoking it, and that is just a tiny bit sad. Plus, any time you inhale burning plant matter, you are subjecting your lungs to harmful carcinogens that have been linked to certain cancers. There is still a lot of research to be done about this, but it’s important to remember that lighting anything on fire and inhaling it carries some risk.

Another popular way to smoke cannabis is with a pipe or bong. You can find them made of wood, clay, silicone, metal, or glass, in more shapes and sizes than you would have thought possible, or even practical! Some are small enough to fit in your pocket while others require two or more people to operate. Smoking cannabis with a pipe makes it easier to control your dosage while conserving your product. After you apply flame to a small portion of the bowl and take your hit, snuff it out so you don’t waste any while you pass it to your left (or right if you are in the Southern Hemisphere).

Inhaling hot smoke can be pretty unpleasant, so some people like to make the experience more comfortable with a water pipe like a bong or a bubbler. Bubblers are the more portable option, they’re just pipes with one or more water chambers, but bongs are large enough that their water chambers can hold ice cubes to cool the smoke even further on its way to your throat.

Bongs are also pretty versatile. By switching out a single attachment, you can convert a bong from smoking flower to vaporizing concentrate. Concentrates are extracted from the raw plant matter to give you the full benefit of all the cannabinoids and terpenes without those nasty carcinogens associated with combustion. Using a butane torch, the “nail”—a specialized bowl—is heated to white-hot temperatures so that the concentrate evaporates on contact. That’s where a bong comes in handy to cool all that super-heated smoke.

Vaping It

Of course,

dabbing

is only the latest development in the movement toward vaporizing cannabis. There are a huge variety of vaporizers, everything from desktop apparatuses that plug into the wall to compact portable vaporizers that fit in your hand and run on rechargeable batteries. Vaporizers fall into two categories: flower vapes and concentrates.

Flower vaporizers, like the

Volcano

Pax

, and

Magic Flight Launch Box

, let you grind up any cannabis flower and vaporize it. This is the best way to get a feel for a strain, since you won’t need to buy a lot of flower, your risk of inhaling carcinogens is low, and you’ll get a chance to enjoy the full spectrum of the flavor. Once you have a sense of your preferences, you could invest in a cartridge.

Concentrate capes come in several variations of the cartridge + battery design. The cartridge contains both the concentrate and the vaporizing mechanism while the battery may be rechargeable, allowing you to keep using the same one over the course of multiple interchangeable cartridges. Some batteries have temperature controls to dial in the perfect level of heat. Be sure to check compatibility before you make a purchase, however

all of our cartridges

work with any 510 thread vaporizer battery.

Using vape cartridges is one of the safest alternatives to smoking, as it uses no open flames and doesn’t put you at the same risk for inhaling carcinogens. On the other hand, if you buy a cartridge that you end up not liking, you could be stuck smoking that expensive mistake for weeks. Definitely

know what you want

before buying a cartridge system.

Eating It

Remember all that talk about decarboxylation? Decarboxylated cannabinoids and terpenoids can bond to fat molecules in foods like butter (yum), milk, or coconut oil. In India, weed has been traditionally mixed with prepared milk, sugar, and ghee to make a warm beverage appropriately named, “bhang”. This versatility means that any recipe calling for butter or milk can be made psychoactive with the infusion of canna-butter or other extracts. In America, people might bake cookies or brownies with cannabis-infused butter, and the effect of slowly digesting the cannabis over time produces a remarkably different experience than from inhaling it.

Edibles require your body to break down the cannabinoids during digestion, which means it can take longer to feel their effects—anywhere from one to three hours. Edibles can keep you high for up to six hours, even if it’s just a couple of gummy bears! Whether you’re trying cannabis cookies, tea, canna-cola,

chocolate

, ice cream, or syrup, follow the recommended dose on the packaging, at least for the first time. Maybe even take half of it. Check out our guide to

What First Time Users Should Know About Cannabis

if this is your first time with edibles.

You can also make your own edibles—it’s as easy as boiling water. Well, butter. Boiling butter, not buttering water. Be advised: this is a stinky process and your entire cooking/living space will smell like weed before you’re done. Melt a pound of butter over medium low heat (around 200 degrees) and stir in an ounce of dried, ground cannabis flowers. Let the mixture simmer for at least thirty minutes (stirring occasionally) then strain it into a glass jar. Now you have some highly potent canna-butter that can replace the butter in any given recipe to make your own psychedelic concoction! Just make sure to clearly identify its cannabis contents to anyone who might get into the butter or anything you make with it, and keep them away from children and pets. Consent matters.

Cannabis tinctures are another form of edibles where the active cannabinoids have been extracted and concentrated into a small amount of very potent liquid, usually through a chemical extraction process rather than decarboxylation. This can be taken either sublingually, by holding it under your tongue, or by adding it to a beverage or dish of your choice, like a smoothie or a bowl of ramen. Once again, follow the recommended dosage on the label and keep it away from kids and pets.

Topicals

Once activated, cannabinoids can be absorbed transdermally? That’s right, through your skin! Topical applications of cannabis like lotions, massage oils, balms, and salves can provide localized pain relief due to CB2 receptors located throughout your body. For people who are looking to manage chronic pain without all the fuzzy mental side effects, topical cannabis can provide unparalleled relief and comfort. Topicals high in THCA and CBD have great anti-inflammatory properties that can reduce swelling.

Trying It Out

Since everyone’s endocannabinoid system is unique, the best judge of these consumption methods will be you. Start small, take notes on what you like and dislike, and have open conversations with your friends about the nuances of your experiences until you find out what works best for you. Then kick back, relax, and have a good time!

Now you just need to

choose the cannabis strain you want

Don’t Panic! What to Do When You’re Too High

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve all been there, and if you are just starting to explore, it might be an especially concerning possibility. What happens if I get too high? Is it going to last forever? Is it going to ruin my life? Am I gonna die ?

To the last three, no, probably not, and definitely not. There have been precisely zero recorded cases of anyone being high forever and no one has ever died from a weed overdose. But let’s talk about what to do when you find yourself in the “higher than I wanted to be” category.

If you think you might be too high, remember these things:

Don’t panic, everything’s totally manageable.
Take ten deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Drink something, avoiding caffeine and alcohol.
Eat something, just not a lot of something.
Just wait. Ride it out. You got this!

One way to prepare for the experience is by reviewing the

, which could have help you avoid this situation entirely, and we definitely recommend that you read our article about

top ten best foods for the munchies

after you finish this.

If you don’t read any further, this piece of advice will help you through almost any calamity: don’t panic! This is important enough that we’re giving it to you before we even get to the list. You’re only going to have a bad time if you freak out and start making a lot of rash, overly intoxicated decisions—even being too high can be an educational experience if you keep your cool. Don’t panic and remember that you’re in control of your actions. Follow our four-step guide to managing the high and everything is going to be fine.

Nothing is permanent, everything changes, and everything’s totally manageable.

Step One: Don’t Panic

Remember this: no one in recorded history has ever died from an overdose of cannabis. chemically speaking, cannabis doesn’t affect your body in a way that could cause that kind of damage. Cannabinoids bond to existing receptors in your brain that have nothing to do with your circulatory or respiratory systems. You are definitely going to feel funny if you get too high, this is true, but nothing severe is going to happen purely as a result of the weed in your body.

Willie Nelson

Snoop Dogg

, and

Tommy Chong

can’t get permanently high, neither can you. eavy usage over long periods of time might have some negative side effects—there’s presently too little research to tell, so we aren’t sure,—but you won’t do any permanent brain damage just by getting too high once or twice. And it only takes a few instances of getting too high for you to learn how to avoid it entirely.

So don’t worry! Everything that goes up must come down, you’re not going to die, and you haven’t ruined your life. You probably haven’t even ruined your day. Not convinced? On to step two!

Step Two: Breathe

Take a few deep breaths. If you think you’re too high, you might start to breathe quickly or shallowly, so compensate for this by taking five or ten deep breaths. Start by straightening your back like you’re trying to look over the horizon and take a long slow breath in through your nose, then out through your mouth. When you inhale, try to completely fill your lungs like there’s a balloon lifting up your collarbone. Then, when you exhale, pull your belly all the way in to expel the last of the stale air. Count your breaths and see if you can make it to ten. Don’t worry if you lose count—you’re already too high, so that’s unavoidable,—just start back at one. By the time you do eventually make it to ten, you’ll have made it through the worst of it, and you’ll be ready for step three.

Step Three: Drink Water

It’s important to stay hydrated. You’ll be able to avoid a lot of the uncomfortable dry-mouth and red, itchy eyes if you have a water bottle handy or something with electrolytes. Electrolytes allow your body to absorb the water and actually do something with it, so Gatorade and Vitamin Water are better options than Dr. Pepper or coffee. Avoid anything alcoholic or caffeinated until after you come down.

Water? Great! Juice? There you go! La Croix? Ooh la la! Whiskey? No. Drunk does not cancel out high.

Step Four: Eat Something

Food will give you some electrolytes to process all of that water you’ve been drinking, plus food tastes amaaazing when you’re high and will help take your mind off of the fact that you’re a little too high. There are all kinds of foods out there, and they’re all delicious. Read our list of

as a distraction or just follow your instincts and try not to overdo it. Eating too much is the only real risk of snacking while high. It’s easy to lose track of how much you’ve had to eat when you’re too high (because

marijuana affects the memory

, remember?) and you don’t want to end up with an upset stomach.

If you’ve tried all four of these steps but you still don’t feel right, we have a bonus step! It’s never failed anyone for any reason at any time in their entire lives.

Bonus Step: Ride it Out

Sometimes there’s only one way off this ride, and it’s forward. If you need to sit down or take a nap, that’s perfectly fine—in fact, naps are highly recommended. There’s no way to get less high than to wait for the comedown and avoid getting any more high. If that means getting some fresh air, see if there’s someplace you can sit outside. Don’t go far unless you really have to. Being too high is exhausting enough already.

Sometimes overdoing means there’s a better strain for you. Not every kind of weed is right for everyone! Follow our guide on

how to choose a cannabis strain

and maybe next time you can get the high you were looking for.

The Amazing Versatility of the Cannabis Plant

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Our favorite part about cannabis is the way it makes us feel when we ingest it, whether that’s smoking a nice fatty, munching on some tasty edibles, or loading up our rig with sticky dabs. Medical users swear by its positive benefits on their health, and years of research and development have gone into honing its effects. But there’s so much more to the plant than just getting high.

Throughout history, people have used all parts of the cannabis plant for a variety of different applications, spanning almost every industry. It’s been called catchfly, bitterroot, milkweed, and even wild cotton, but the most common name for industrial cannabis is hemp, which refers to

cannabis containing less than 0.3% THC

. We wanted to share some appreciation for the incredible versatility of the cannabis plant with people who already know and love it.

For Food

Let’s start with the seeds. Hemp seeds contain over 30% fat, and are rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are essential for

healthy heart and skin

. They’re also high in soluble and insoluble dietary fiber. Soluble fiber feeds the

beneficial bacteria in our gut

while insoluble fiber doesn’t break down so easily in our bodies and contributes to solid, regular

bowel movements

When eaten raw, the whole hemp seed has a mild taste with a soft texture and an often nutty flavor. If you roast it, it turns into a delicious crunchy snack with a crispy outer shell.

Hemp hearts, which are the seeds with the shells removed, are also great sources of protein, making them a healthy addition to our diets. They’re chewy and also a bit nutty. Hemp hearts are a great way to add protein to your smoothie or on top of a big bowl of oatmeal, and they’re also good in salads.

Hemp seeds can be made into hemp milk, blended into nut butter that goes well on toast, and you might even find them included in protein or granola bars. Hempseed oil works just as well as vegetable oil in a variety of cooking applications, including mixing it with oil, vinegar, and spices to make your very own cannabis salad dressing.

You’re more likely to find hemp hearts on the shelf in a regular grocery store than you are the raw hemp seeds, but you can buy those too if you want to roast or cook them yourselves.

For Textiles

One of the oldest uses of cannabis is for textiles, a fact so famous that the USDA actually put out a

video

promoting its cultivation back in World War II. (Get lifted and give it a watch, it’s especially fun if you play it back at double speed.) Unlike cotton or flax, cannabis requires fewer resources and a lot less water to grow. Because it grows so quickly, it’s naturally pest- and disease-resistant, which means fewer pesticides, too. It also produces 200% more fiber per acre than cotton or flax, up to

1,500 pounds

While we’re mostly interested in the cannabis flower, the stem is where all those wonderful fibers live. The outer material (the “bast”) is composed of long fibers called “line fibers” that allow it to be spun and woven into fabric, while the inner “hurd” has a lot of short wispy fibers called “tow” fibers—great for making coarse yarn or stuffing. Hemp

rope

has been used for centuries, especially in naval applications because it doesn’t grow or shrink much when it gets wet. Some manufacturers will grow crops specifically for its fiber while others will harvest both the seeds and the fiber, although growing weed for seed means losing some size gains in the resulting product.

Line fibers can end up being as long as the raw plant that’s being harvested, stretching as many as sixteen feet in length. Can you imagine a sixteen-foot tall cannabis plant? That’s practically a tree! The line fibers are spun into fabric for

clothes

, furniture, and even

rugs or carpets

. The naturally low lignin levels in hemp allow for environmentally friendly bleaching without chlorine, enabling hemp fabric to accept a wide variety of dyes that maintain their color better than cotton. It also has less stretch than other fibers, allowing clothing to retain its shape and grow softer over time.

Hemp textiles have natural anti-bacterial properties, good breathability, high abrasion resistance, and superior UV-blocking compared to other fabrics.

For Construction

Did you know you can build an entire house from cannabis? It only takes three months and a few acres of growth, but check out

this video

if you don’t believe us. The hemp hurd can be chopped up and combined with lime and water to make concrete—or

hempcrete

? The strength of the hemp fibers combined with a powerful binding agent like lime makes a strong and sturdy framework for a variety of construction purposes. Cannabis-based concrete (cannacrete? Help us find a name for this,) offers good insulation and moisture regulation, is pest- and mold-resistant, has low-flammability, and—the best part—is fully recyclable.

And that’s not the only thing you can do with cannabis. It’s also a great material for

insulation

, using the fibers to make batts, rolls, and solid panels. HempWool

(now that’s a great name) doesn’t irritate your skin like fiberglass, it doesn’t rot, it’s nontoxic, and it’s completely recyclable. Hemp insulation has high thermal resistance and excellent absorption of both sound and moisture.

Using cannabis for construction dates as far back as the sixth century A.D., when it was part of the recipe for hemp-based plaster in

cave dwellings discovered in India

. They’re still intact today, that’s how good this stuff is!

For Paper

Did you know that cannabis was involved in the invention of paper? Before hemp, people used to write on bone, stone, bamboo, and even silk—but the result was often cumbersome and, in the case of silk, prohibitively expensive. Paper was invented sometime during the Han Dynasty (206B.C.—24A.D.) in China, and was made by soaking hemp fibers in water then pounding it with a wooden mallet, then pouring it over a bamboo frame with a woven cloth stretched across.

There are a lot of popular rumors about the use of hemp paper throughout history with some claiming that it was used for the Gutenberg Bible and the first couple drafts of the Declaration of Independence, but these claims are disputed by the

British Library

and the

estate of Monticello

. Still, hemp paper can be derived from both the line and tow fibers. Line fiber paper is thin, tough, and brittle, making it a good material for book covers, while tow fiber paper is softer, thicker, and good for everyday use.

Even though most modern paper is made from trees, hemp grows undeniably faster than wood, has a higher concentration of cellulose, and produces

more durable paper

. Cannabis makes for a much more sustainable alternative to the deforestation caused by the paper industry, and with the

2018 Farm Bill

in full effect, we may see it making a comeback very soon.

For Cosmetics

Remember that hempseed oil we mentioned back in the food section? Well, it’s not just for eating. Hempseed oil can also be refined for a number of different cosmetic applications from soap to conditioners, shampoos, and sunscreens. Hempseed oil is a

natural moisturizer

, thanks to its high concentration of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) which is one of those Omega-3 fatty acids. It’s also rich in vitamin E, magnesium, and potassium.

This rich oil can be made into

, and even

Conclusion

The next time you settle in for a lengthy smoke sesh, take a moment to appreciate the rich history of the cannabis plant. The stalks can be pounded into paper or crafted into concrete, the seeds can be eaten raw or pressed for their oil to make moisturizer (and

diesel fuel

? Did we mention that?) and the flower can—as you know—get you absolutely baked. Let’s raise a toast to this marvelous miracle of nature, and if you want to learn more about its history and its future, watch

this short documentary

from Patagonia.

What to Cook With Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Cannabis and food are two great things that go great together, each enhancing the experience of the other. Although there are a million different edibles companies out there (and a few fantastic ones,) there’s just something so satisfying and rewarding about making them yourself. The same way kneading bread by hand can help you feel connected to your great-grandparents, baking a big batch of old-fashioned pot brownies connects you to a long line of cannabis connoisseurs.

Back in the day, they would literally just

grind up some flower and throw it in the mixing bowl

. Fortunately for us, our relationship with cannabis has gotten more sophisticated over time. Weed has gotten so potent that the old ratio of 1 oz to 1 lb of butter results in cannabutter that’s so strong, it would knock Bluntman down.

We’re going to teach you the right way to make cannabutter, so your fudge tastes like

fudge

instead of a

High Times Cannabis Cup

judging booth. In case you don’t dig on dairy, we’ve also got some guidance on making cannaoil and cannabis tinctures.

Make Your Own Edibles

THC, the primary compound of cannabis that gets you high can only bond with your brain after it’s been decarboxylated, heated beyond a certain point to “activate” it. This happens automatically when you smoke or vape—that’s literally why we do that with weed—but when cooking, the process is a little different.

Now, it is true that some THC would be absorbed if you just ground up some nugs and dropped them in the batter, but it would be such a small amount that you’d basically be wasting your purchase. The result of using raw plant matter is food that tastes a lot like weed but doesn’t really get you high.

The more elevated solution to this problem is to extract those cannabinoids from the flower and use them to infuse butter, coconut oil, or alcohol with a predictable quantity of THC. By removing the rest of the plant matter, you end up with a cooking staple that is both more potent and less pungent—and it’s not even that hard.

Read this first!

The most important thing to remember when making cannabis edibles is

The last thing you want to happen with your new batch of cannabutter is for someone who doesn’t realize what it is to eat too much of it. That person is going to have a bad time, and you can prevent that by making sure they either know what it is or they can’t get to it. Even if you live alone, you don’t want to discover you used the wrong coconut oil for breakfast when you have a big interview at noon.

A Little Math

Cannabinoids bond with fat—that’s part of how they work inside your body—and that makes butter an ideal medium for cooking edibles. It’s so versatile that you can often use it as a direct substitution for whatever is called for in your recipe. With a little of math, you can whip up a full pound of cannabutter (or 16 oz of coconut or olive oil) and know how many milligrams of THC you’re getting in each serving.

While the old ratio of 1 oz of weed for 1 lb of butter is easy enough to remember, weed is a lot more potent now and the process of decarboxylation means more of the THC ends up in the resulting product. If you’re cooking with Pot Mates flower (and, let’s be honest, it’s really too good to fry up in butter. Try one of those cheap places instead for a cheap deal on some bulk flower) then you’re starting with an average of 25% THC. That means each tablespoon contains

of THC—or

per serving. The standard recommended starting dose for edibles is just 5–10 mg. No wonder people always get too baked off homemade edibles!

We’re going to double that and shoot for a target that is closer to 10 mg per serving. 5 mg is a great dose for beginners, but if you’re making your own cannabutter, you’ve probably had some experience. You can always start with half a brownie to see how it goes.

If your weed is about 25% THC, we recommend using

. Minor variations in potency mean that your butter might end up a little above or below the target, but 1/4 oz should result in about 35 mg of THC per tablespoon of butter or coconut oil. This is a much more manageable amount, although a whole tablespoon would still likely be enough to send you to sleep for the rest of the day. You can check our math using this handy dandy

calculator from Scientific Edibles

Cannabutter

Making cannabutter is super easy and uses stuff you probably already have. The only downside is that there’s not really a stealth way to do it without buying

fancy expensive

infusion equipment

. Your place is going to smell like weed for most of the day, and that’s something you should know how your housemates/parents/spouse/landlord feels about before you begin.

Decarboxylate

The first step is to grind up your flower (greater surface area for vaporization and absorption) and decarboxylate it in the oven. You can toss everything in an

oven bag

to help contain the smell, or spread it out on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Bake at 250°F for 30 minutes.

Infuse

The next step is to help the cannabis and the butter get to know each other. Use a saucepan or a pot to boil four cups of water and when the bubbles are really popping, reduce the heat, so the water is just simmering. Add your pound of butter and make sure it melts before dumping in your decarboxylated weed. The weed should float, so check your water level and add more if it’s closer than two inches to the bottom. You don’t want any of it to burn. Stir everything thoroughly.

Now you’re just going to let it sit and simmer for 90 minutes, checking in to give it a quick stir every 15–30 minutes. This part will be stinky regardless of how you decarboxylated (it’s just a fun word to say!) so be prepared to open some windows or turn on a fan for circulation. Your neighbors will know what you’re doing.

Once that’s done, pour it carefully into a bowl using a strainer or cheesecloth to catch the planty bits. It’s still going to be basically boiling, so don’t touch it. Some people like to squeeze the rest of the moisture out of the plant matter at this stage, but we think that makes the butter taste too much like weed. Plus, it gives it a green tint that will color whatever you make with it. Since cannabinoids don’t bond with water, it’s pretty safe to assume that most of the desired compounds are already in the butter in the bowl.

Allow the bowl to cool to room temperature, then move it to the fridge to cool overnight. Once the butter hardens, you’ll be able to pour out the excess water. Presto! Your own batch of cannabutter! Put it in a sealable container, give it

, and

. Here’s a bonus tip: go ahead and freeze half of it for later, unless you plan to use it all right away. The butter will only stay fresh for about two weeks in the refrigerator, and this way you won’t have to stink up your place again.

You can spread it on toast to make Space Toast, whip up a batch of

old-fashioned pot brownies

, or melt it on a bowl of hot

popcorn

. It’s butter! Go nuts!

Cannaoil

Cannaoil can be made from coconut oil or olive oil, opening the door to a wide variety of culinary possibilities. Weed

salad dressing

! Cannabis

milk chocolate

! Ganja sauté! It uses the same ratio as cannabutter,

, and the process is dead simple.

The first step, as with cannabutter, is to Decarboxylate your flower. Then our favorite method of extraction involves a slow cooker or crock pot and a couple of mason jars.

Fill your crock pot halfway with water separate your coconut oil into two mason jars, splitting your decarboxylated weed between them as well. If you’re worried about smell, you could screw lids on the jars, but you’ll want to open them every half-hour or so to relieve the pressure (a.k.a. “burping” the jars) but you don’t have to.

Let this cauldron bubble for at least 90 minutes, and then carefully strain the jars of oil through cheesecloth or a strainer into two empty jars for long-term storage. Allow them to cool to room temperature before sealing with lids and storing as usual—but

We can’t emphasize that enough.

Cannabis Tincture

This one is even simpler, yielding a potent tincture that you can take directly—just a drop or two under the tongue—or by infusing into any number of tasty beverages. However, everything we said about

staying safe with cannabis

goes double if you’re combining cannabis with alcohol, so if you’re going to use this tincture in a tasty alcoholic beverage, you need to be twice as safe about it.

All you need is an eighth of cannabis and enough food grade high-proof alcohol (like Everclear) to cover it in a container. Mason jars work great. Decarboxylate your cannabis as usual before covering with alcohol in the jar, then store it in a cool dark place for 21 days. Try to shake it up about once a day, so you get all the little bits.

After three weeks, you just strain the resulting tincture through a strainer or some cheesecloth. Cannabis tincture is best stored and served in a 2 oz

child-resistant tincture bottle

that is

as to its contents—including THC content in mg per mL. (A typical dropper for one of these bottles is 1mL.) Even though the container ought to be child-resistant,

Conclusion

As with all edibles, your individual response will be unique. We recommend starting small by consuming only the equivalent of 10 mg THC and waiting 90 minutes to evaluate the effects. For the extraction methods we mentioned above, that comes out to about ⅓ tbsp of butter, ⅓ tbsp coconut or olive oil, or 1mL of tincture. Let us know if you come up with any recipes you especially enjoy!

Oregon Hempfest 2022

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It’s back! Get ready for

Oregon Hempfest 2022

, a return to something resembling normal—well, maybe more

NORML

than normal , but you get it. Oregon Hempfest was the first Hempfest to be officially licensed after the original, and it will be back on July 16th and 17th, 2022, after a two-year

COVID-related

hiatus. As of this writing,

Oregon is 70% vaccinated

, and it’s such a relief to be able to participate in cannabis events again.

Hempfest is one of the best cannabis events in Oregon. It’s an offshoot of the original

Seattle Hempfest

, which has been celebrating cannabis activism for over thirty years, starting in 1991 as the “Washington Hemp Expo” to advance sensible cannabis legislation. Oregon’s Hempfest was started in 2015, so they’re celebrating their seventh anniversary.

The event gets started with a Friday night pre-party for VIP ticket holders, sponsors, vendors, speakers, and other industry leaders, with the soundtrack provided by special musical guests. Really, there are almost two Hempfests, the day events and the night events.

The day events run from 10:00am until 8:00pm on Saturday and Sunday, and they’ll be packed full of music, giveaways, information about cannabis, great food to sate your

munchies

, and tons of trippy art.

Then the night events kick off around 10:00pm with an EDM dome provided by Unity and even more festivities. A night pass includes a camping pass, so you don’t have to worry about trying to find your way home, stoned, in the dark. There are designated campgrounds on-site for anyone staying the weekend, and Hempfest encourages tents and hammocks for sleeping off the high. (There’s limited space for RV’s or campers, and no electric or sewer hookups.)

Hempfest is rather cryptic about possession and consumption of cannabis at the event (a sign that there is still work to be done advancing the laws governing cannabis consumption), and they attendees from their

FAQ

to the

OLCC

for guidance. The short version is that you can carry up to an ounce of usable marijuana on your person, but you’re not permitted to consume it anyplace besides private property. Is the event hosted on private property? Can you consume cannabis at this cannabis-themed Hempfest event? Sounds like a question to ask when you get there!

Some of the rules that are a little clearer include:

No pets.
No fireworks, campfires, or candles. (Camp stoves are okay if you have a camping pass, but there will be tons of food available for purchase.)
No outside food or alcohol. (Unless you have a camping pass.)
No swimming in the pond (but the

straw-bale pool

is likely okay).

Oregon Hempfest 2022 will take place in

Oakland, Oregon

, making it a great addition to any

420-friendly road trip

o get away? Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came. Here’s the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls. Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed – a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed?

The first mate and his Skipper too will do their very best to make the others comfortable in their tropic island nest. Doin’ it our way. Nothin’s gonna turn us back now. Straight ahead and on the track now. We’re gonna make our dreams come true? It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight. They’re creepy and they’re kooky mysterious and spooky. They’re all together ooky the Addams Family.

Come and knock on our door. We’ve been waiting for you. Where the kisses are hers and hers and his. Three’s company too. Makin’ your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Takin’ a break from all your worries sure would help a lot! Movin’ on up to the east side. We finally got a piece of the pie. Movin’ on up to the east side. We finally got a piece of the pie. Movin’ on up to the east side. We finally got a piece of the pie.

All of them had hair of gold like their mother the youngest one in curls. Go Speed Racer. Go Speed Racer. Go Speed Racer go. So get a witch’s shawl on a broomstick you can crawl on. Were gonna pay a call on the Addams Family? Knight Rider: A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Here he comes Here comes Speed Racer. He’s a demon on wheels. In a freak mishap Ranger 3 and its pilot Captain William Buck Rogers are blown out of their trajectory into an orbit which freezes his life support systems and returns Buck Rogers to Earth five-hundred years later. It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Its a neighborly day in this beautywood a neighborly day for a beauty. Would you be mine? Could you be mine! Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip that started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship.

Road Trip Destinations for High-Spirited Adventure

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

It’s finally spring in the Pacific Northwest, and summer is right around the corner. After months of being cooped up inside under threat of rain, snow, and hail, you’re finally ready to go out and see the world again, supplemented by our favorite recreational herb. But where should you go? What should you do?

There’s a whole world out there of new experiences and beautiful locales, so we’ve decided to highlight several that are within driving distance. Keep in mind, you should never smoke and drive, or drive when you’re already stoned—that’s against the second rule for

staying safe while enjoying cannabis

. When it comes to these road trip recommendations, it’s more about the destinations than the journey, and we’ve picked out some truly marvelous ones to share with you—so long as you arrive there safely.

Whether you’re just taking a day trip to see the sights around Portland or you’re willing to go out of state and stay overnight, there are a lot of places to visit and things to do across the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve grouped them by distance from our headquarters in Portland. Everything on our list is located in either Washington, Oregon, or California, so you can be confident that recreational marijuana will still be legal when you get there. Just make sure you’re following local laws when you consume—stick to private property, avoid driving while intoxicated, and keep all of your cannabis products out of the reach of children. Also, federal law prohibits crossing state lines with marijuana, so make sure you don’t have any with you when you do.

Portland Metropolitan Area

If you live in Portland, congratulations! You’re in our delivery zone, and we can help you load up on supplies before you even leave! There are also plenty of places to go and things to do without even leaving the city limits, if you’re looking for a local experience.

Stay at the Jupiter

The Jupiter Hotel is a party hotel on East Burnside that captures a stunning vision of Portland’s unique arts and music culture. With restaurants, a cocktail bar, and a music venue all right there, it’s like a microcosm of everything we love about Portland. And, thanks to a partnership with the nearby dispensary Oregrown, you can book a room that comes complete with an “

Everything But the Weed Kit

” including a custom stash jar, rolling papers, and other cannabis swag to enhance your stay. The only catch is that you’re not legally allowed to consume marijuana at the Jupiter Hotel. Sorry folks, OLCC rules.

Experience Potlandia

Remember what we said about not driving? The Potlandia Experience is a psychedelic bus tour like no other, offering a full 420 adventure to some of Portland’s best marijuana dispensaries (besides Pot Mates—we bring the weed to you ), microbreweries, and food carts for the munchies you will inevitably acquire. It’s a four-hour tour unless you and a bunch of friends want to rent the whole bus for a private party, and if you want to get farther out of town without needing a designated driver, their

Weed and Waterfalls

tour will wake you down the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Byway to see some of the most majestic views the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

Greater Oregon

All right, so you’ve done everything there is to do in Portland, and you’re ready to put the city in your rearview mirror. While Mt. Hood isn’t going anywhere, there are some other places you might like to see for a unique excursion with some of your favorite buds.

Live in a Tree

It’s everything you want from a wilderness resort—full-size houses built around real, living trees. Located just south of Cave Junction in southern Oregon, they have small tree cottages if there’s just one or two of you and full-on two-story tree mansions if you’re traveling with friends. If you’re thinking, “wait a minute, but could I actually smoke weed in a tree house?” the answer is yes—but only if you go to

420 Treehouses

instead.

Rediscover Fossils

In eastern Oregon, the John Day River Basin presents four distinct geologic layers that perfectly preserve 50 million years of earth’s history between layers of siltstone and sandstone. The Painted Hills northeast of Prineville are gorgeous, unbelievably colorful natural formations, while the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center showcases some of the fossils that have been uncovered here over the years. The best way to experience the fossil beds is to hike them, but make sure to bring plenty of water and pack out anything you pack in.

Washington

For those of you willing to venture farther out of your comfort zone, there is some magnificent natural beauty just waiting for you north of the border. Recreational cannabis is legal in Washington, but remember that it’s still illegal to cross state lines with it, so buy local instead of traveling with bud in your car. Both

WeedMaps

and

Leafly

can help you find a good shop.

Go Underground

The longest continuous lava tube in the continental United States resides just south of Mount St. Helens in Washington. Formed almost 2,000 years ago, this tunnel-like cave was formed by streams of lava rushing away so fast that the outer layers hardened before the inner molten lava drained away, leaving a two-and-a-half mile tube to walk through the earth’s crust. If you turn off your lights deep within the cave, you can experience total darkness—and see what your mind fills it with.

San Juan Islands

If you like being near the water, you’ll want to make the trek to the San Juan Islands near Bellingham, Washington. There’s some incredible biodiversity on display here, and you could spend days gorging on the awe-inspiring scenery. The San Juan Islands offer a refuge for countless species of mammals, birds, and insects that can’t be found anywhere else and a variety of ways to experience them. We might recommend booking a

kayak tour

to get up close and personal without disturbing anyone.

California

Heading the other way, there are several exciting ways to stimulate your senses just waiting for you in California. Like with Washington, make sure you’re not carrying any Oregon weed with you when you go, or a routine traffic stop might turn into a real bummer.

Eureka

is the first place to find a dispensary if you’re driving down the coast.

Hear the Wave Organ

Located in the Marina district of San Francisco, the Wave Organ is an acoustic musical apparatus driven by the lapping waves of the San Francisco bay itself. As waves crash inside the pipe ends and drain back out, you can hear haunting, reverberating tones that sound like a Blue Man Group concert in slow motion. The best time to visit is at high tide, so you can use this

handy tool

to plan your trip. San Francisco is also home to

Urbana

, a classy cannabis lounge where you can chill out and light up with a variety of smoking apparatuses.

Chase Butterflies

The western monarch butterfly is making a comeback, and they migrate all along the west coast in early spring, with some making it as far as the Pacific Northwest. In the fall, they return to the warmer coasts in the south to weather the winter. The

Western Monarch Trail

comprises a long stretch of iconic Highway 1—a road trip in itself—and offers breathtaking views of

millions of brilliant orange butterflies fluttering by

. Is there anything more magical?

Wake and Bake Bread and Breakfasts

Wherever you end up, you should know that you have options for a 420-friendly lodging experience. Sites like

Bud and Breakfast

and

InnDica

let you search for rooms, houses, and entire estates that support the lifestyle choice we have in common. Rules for consumption vary by location and local law, so be sure to reach out to your host before you go, so you know what to expect.

We love discovering new and exciting places, so if you find something awesome, tag us on

Instagram

, so we know where to go, too!

Prominent Black Cannabis Advocates

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve been celebrating Black History Month all February, but the relationship between People of Color and cannabis throughout history has been tenuous at best—especially here in America. Even before the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, weed was making life difficult for Black people, and although the struggle looks a little different today, it hasn’t gone away.

The first step toward effecting change is identifying the current problems and understanding where they come from. For this Black History Month, we wanted to explore the beginnings of the American hemp industry and its effect on Black people, a couple prominent Black musicians who advocated for its use despite harsh penalties in the Prohibition era, and some more contemporary individuals who are blazing trails through the modern cannabis industry with an eye to restoring justice to the people most negatively affected by the failed War on Drugs.

Black Cannabis History

As you might remember from our article about

social justice and cannabis

, hemp was a staple crop that thrived in North America’s temperate climate and helped the early United States gain a foothold in the global economy. Like most crops during the time of slavery, cannabis was entirely cultivated, harvested, and processed by the forced labor of West African slaves. Kentucky, in particular, quickly became both the biggest producer of American hemp and the home of one of

the largest concentrations of slaves in the country

Emancipation did not bring freedom from the tyranny of American cannabis for long. The

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937

made it illegal to sell without certain tax approvals, and it opened the door for mass incarceration of people for its possession. While the law as written was nondiscriminatory, its enforcement was not, and Black and Latino communities suffered the most as a result.

This “anti-drug” rhetoric escalated in the 1960s and 1970s, which introduced the

Controlled Substances Act

and increased the penalties for drug-related offenses. While it wasn’t technically illegal to be Black in America, these harsher punishments and mandatory minimum sentences gave law enforcement a loophole to stop, frisk, harass, arrest, and imprison people at their discretion.

Now,

almost 80% of the 150,000 people in federal prison and about 60% of the 1,200,000 in state prison serving sentences for drug offenses are Black or Latino

. That’s 840,000 People of Color, and roughly half of them are doing time for marijuana. Even worse,

in forty-eight of our fifty states, convicted felons are ineligible to vote

—sometimes only while serving their sentences, but sometimes for the rest of their lives.

Prohibition-Era Advocates

Despite all this, there were still people who argued for the legalization of marijuana and a more equitable justice system, going all the way back to the turn of the 20th Century. At first, it was powerful enough just to be publicly associated with weed, defiant in the face of the encroaching Prohibition.

Louis Armstrong

Legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong was a prominent proponent of the beneficial aspects of cannabis as far back as the 1920s. As

he told biographer Max Jones

, “We always looked at pot as a sort of medicine, a cheap drunk and with much better thoughts than one that’s full of liquor.” With his soaring trumpet and gravelly voice, “the gage” (as he called it) helped unlock new realms of creative possibility and take the edge off so many demanding performances. He liked it especially for the way it always brought out the warmth in people who were sharing a “stick”.

When Armstrong was arrested in 1930 outside the Cotton Club in California, it was because a rival bandleader was jealous and called in a tip to the local police. He only spent nine days in prison (turns out the detectives were big fans of his horn,) but was saddled with a six-month suspended sentence and likely only got out because of how influential the jazz world had become at the time.

Peter Tosh

Peter Tosh personally advocated for legalization with his platinum solo record, “Legalize It”, and pushed hard for equal rights. He wasn’t content to just enjoy ganja for its own sake, he wanted to upend the entire oppressive system that made it illegal in the first place.

Peter Tosh openly spoke truth to power, once lighting a spliff onstage at a packed concert where the Prime Minister of Jamaica was in attendance and

ranting at the Prime Minister for over thirty minutes

about his refusal to legalize ganja. He believed he—and everyone—had a natural right to consume the herb, and that no one was going to stop him.

Still, the backlash was brutal. Tosh was repeatedly arrested by Jamaican police and beaten nearly to death for his acts of defiance.

The Peter Tosh Foundation

continues his mission to see the legalization of cannabis everywhere, raise awareness of the need for prison reform in the United States, and liberate oppressed people from the torment of injustice.

Modern Restorative Activists

Now that medical and recreational marijuana are legal in so many states, that problem should be solved, right? No! The data since the onset of legalization suggest that although the arrest rates for drug offenses have gone down in states with legal marijuana,

Black people are still 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession

than white people. And you don’t even want to see

these charts

showing that fewer Black people are smoking weed than white people.

While the emergence of a new industry in legalized marijuana should be a boon for Black entrepreneurs looking to build generational wealth, the truth is that

less than 3% of licensed cannabusiness are majority Black-owned

. Instead of legalization laws rebuilding the communities that prohibition laws knocked down, they’re unleashing a wave

white venture capitalists

to excise the profits.

Fortunately, there are many People of Color working hard to be that change they want to see in the world, and they give us hope for a brighter and more equitable future.

Dr. Janice Knox

Dr. Janice Knox is the Oregon representative to the

Doctors for Cannabis Regulation

, advocating for science-based legislative changes to improve public health, social justice, and consumer protections regarding cannabis. She had been a board-certified anesthesiologist for thirty-five years before visiting a medical marijuana clinic and being surprised by the variety of patients and the ways they were using cannabis to manage their symptoms.

With her husband David and her daughters Rachel and Jessica (all doctors!), Dr. Knox founded

American Cannabinoid Clinics

, specializing in integrative cannabinoid medicine. This brand-new field pairs patients with their doctors in a partnership to explore their treatment options, the best way to consume cannabis as medicine, and strategies for mitigating any undesirable effects.

Wanda James

Wanda James smoked a little weed during college at University of Colorado, Boulder, but didn’t get involved professional with cannabis until later. She became one of

the first African Americans, legally licensed in America, to own a cannabis dispensary

with the founding of

Simply Pure

and went on to start the

Cannabis Global Initiative

, a consulting firm to help develop cannabis businesses and engage in political activism.

James has seen firsthand the damage that cannabis sentencing laws can bring. Her brother was arrested at seventeen for cannabis possession and sentenced to ten years in a maximum security penitentiary,

where he worked picking ten pounds of cotton a day to reduce his sentence

. She couldn’t even give her own brother a job when he got out because

Colorado bans former felons from working in the cannabis industry

Today, she continues to disrupt the industry, raising awareness about the over-policing of Black communities, the disproportionately high number of Black people incarcerated for cannabis, and the concerning lack of Black cannabis business ownership.

Jesce Horton

Jesce Horton’s father was arrested in Charlottesville, Virginia for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana with intent to distribute, and sent to prison for five years (although he got out early for good behavior) just before Jesce’s birth. As a result, the family had to move from place to place seeking employment, driving home the lifelong impact of mandatory minimum sentences on working families. “Just having a record means opportunities lost, depression, anxiety, and a lack of belief—feeling like your life is ruined because of this plant,” he told

High Times

Nevertheless, he persevered. After graduating from Florida State University in 2007 with a major in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Mathematics and Physics, Horton started growing medical cannabis within the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program for one of his fraternity brothers and his wife. Since then, he’s gone on to found

NuProject

with his wife Jeannette Ward Horton to reverse some of the damage wrought upon communities of color by anti-drug policies in the United States, the Minority Cannabis Business Association to help address the challenges faced by minority cannabis businesses and their communities, and one of our favorite flower producers, LOWD.

In 2016, Horton was appointed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown to the

Task Force for Cannabis Environmental Best Practices

, and he sits on the board of directors for the

Oregon Cannabis Association

Cannabis and the Elderly

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Cannabis and the Elderly

Aug 31, 2023

Thanks to a reduced stigma, and easier access, cannabis products have become more popular among senior adults. The more that they were asked, the more it became apparent that older adults were using cannabis, and they were using it a lot. Of course, most of them were using it for medicinal use, especially since in the last few years with several articles having come out describing the plant’s positive effects.

With this new knowledge researchers have learned that cannabis may help to relieve agitation by regulating neurotransmitters, reducing brain inflammation and improving circadian rhythm disturbances seen in dementia. With certain cannabis products there can be a relief in these symptoms that keep the patient calmer; while it doesn’t stop the decline of the disease it helps to ease the patients discomfort.

Cannabis products come in many forms, so it is easier now to get the therapeutic effects of cannabis without having to smoke it. Many elderly are using salves to soothe joint pain, tinctures to help with falling asleep, and to simply help with the day-to-day anxiety. While this can be a great way to improve some symptoms and give the elderly a better quality of life, depending on their ailments, there are also possible negative effects.

Since cannabis is a relatively understudied drug, there is not a ton of medical research going into the articles that are saying marijuana is actually improving the lives of the elderly. Things to be aware of when it comes to the elderly and cannabis use include: the interaction between cannabis and other prescribed medications, the increased likelihood of injures, and its potential to impair cognition. With these warnings in mind, cannabis use can be safe for the elderly, as long as it is used in moderation and with plenty of caution.

A lot of the evidence of out there making health claims is anecdotal. Without further research it is hard to know exactly what will happen with the elderly increasing their consumption of cannabis. However, the best way to start studying the relationship between the elderly and cannabis would be to study how it effects those with dementia. While it can’t stop the disease entirely, it does have the potential to help halt the disease’s progression. This means that those with dementia have the ability to live better lives with symptoms that are more tamed. Of course, moderation is key when it comes to cannabis consumption, especially when it comes to older adults.

< Older Post

@HIGH_TIMES_Mag on Twitter

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If you’ve been wondering about Biden and his plans cannabis for this term, then wonder no more.

High Times Cannabis Cup 2022: People’s Choice

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

High Times Cannabis Cup 2022: People’s Choice

Jun 17, 2022

The High Times Cannabis Cup is an annual event that combines the best parts of festival, trade show, and cannabis competition into a global celebration of ganja. It was founded in 1988 by former High Times editor Steve Hager, and has undergone many evolutions since then.

In the beginning, it was an underground competition hosted in Amsterdam Remember when Amsterdam was the only country where you could legally smoke weed? Times sure have changed. Then, around the dawn of the American medical marijuana movement, it served as a showcase of different medicinal products that became available. Now it’s become a world-renowned expert-driven competition to find the best of the best in the world of recreational cannabis—at least, until the past two years.

COVID-19 changed a lot about our lifestyle

, and that includes how we celebrate cannabis. The High Times Cannabis Cup was unable to continue its packed, in-person events consisting of instructional seminars, celebrity appearances, concerts, and product showcases out of concern for limiting the spread of this new disease, but they’re no strangers to adversity. The silver lining of this heavy cloud has brought forth the Cannabis Cup People’s Choice Edition, the next evolution in the Cannabis Cup’s history.

The High Time Cannabis Cup People’s Choice Edition offers cannabis consumers the opportunity to get in on the fun and vote directly on the best cannabis each region has to offer. For the first time, High Times is opening the judging process to members of the public to crowdsource its rankings. Instead of having around thirty experts judging each category, High Times is partnering with select retailers to send out 228 kits per category in state-wide competitions around the country.

These categories include:

Indica Flower
Hybrid Flower
Sativa Flower
Sungrown Flower
Pre-Rolls (Infused and Non-Infused)
Solvent Concentrates
Non-Solvent Concentrates
Vape Pens and Cartridges
Edibles: Gummies
Edibles: Non-Gummies
Topicals, Tinctures, and Capsules

If you’re like us, you’re probably wondering: can be a judge in the Cannabis Cup People’s Choice? The answer is: probably! If you’re not a cannabis cultivator entering product to be judged, you can apply to be a judge and purchase a kit of product to evaluate. Each Judge Kit contains an exclusive backpack, samples, and a scorecard with a unique link and access code to the High Times Judging Portal. They’ll be sold on a first-come, first-served basis at participating dispensaries, priced according to the quantity of product entered into each category (usually between $100 and $300.)

Since Oregon’s 2022 High Times Cannabis Cup People’s Choice has not been announced, now is the perfect time to pre-register as a judge. Follow this link to fill out a short form and be among the first to know when People’s Choice Judging Kits are available in Oregon.

You can also follow

and

@hightimesmagazine on Instagram

for updates, or just keep checking

cannabiscup.com

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What You Need to Know to Grow Your Own Cannabis

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

What’s the best part about the legalization of cannabis in Oregon? Obviously, that you can get it hand-delivered to your door! But what’s the second -best part about legalization?

, without fear, in the comfort of your home, and then smoke the fruits of your labor! While the flower we carry is obviously top-notch and grown by some of the finest cultivars in the state, there’s nothing more satisfying than sprouting your own seeds, nurturing the plant as it grows, and harvesting your own flowers at the end of the season. And, if you grow indoors, you can plant and harvest year-round!

This won’t be a comprehensive guide to growing your own—there are enough books on the subject to fill a small library—but we do want to point you in the right direction by filling you in on the legality of growing in Oregon, the life-cycle of the cannabis plant, and some considerations for growing indoors versus outdoors. This guide will be chock-full of resources for further reading, so bookmark this page to act as a general reference throughout your grow.

Legal Guidelines for Growing Your Own Cannabis

The first question to answer is:

With some minor caveats, the answer is

In Oregon, if you’re over 21,

you can grow up to four plants per residence

, so long as you own your own house. If you’re renting, you need to check with your landlord or housing authority to make sure they’re okay with you growing on their property. In either case, it’s important to keep your plants in a secured area where they can be kept away from public view, and

federal law still prohibits cultivation within 1,000 feet

of a “Drug Free” zone, like a school, although Oregon has

some exemptions for home cultivation

. As with any gray areas between local and federal laws, it’s better to play it safe and avoid doing anything that could land you in trouble with the police.

One more thing to note is that the four-plant limit applies to each residence, not to each adult living at that residence—so if you have three roommates, you can’t grow sixteen plants, your household is still limited to four. This is especially important to keep in mind when cloning (which is something we’ll get into later.)

The Life Cycle of the Cannabis Plant

Before you start to grow your own cannabis, it’s essential to know a bit about the cannabis plant life cycle. There are several stages of growth, each with their own necessary planning steps, and we’re going to cover all of them right now.

Seeds and Clones

If this is your first grow, you might want to buy clones directly from a cannabis retailer who carries a strain you already know you like. A “clone” is just a cutting from a mature cannabis plant, and it is genetically identical to its “mother,” making it easy to predict what you’re going to get. It’s the easiest way to get started with growing your own cannabis.

When it comes to seeds, you can buy

“feminized” seeds

that are bred to contain no male chromosomes (either by

light stressing

or with the addition of

silver thiosulphate

) or you can use your first grow to separate male from female plants, then grow cuttings from a mature female (also known as cloning) for the next crop. Only female plants produce the trichome-rich flowers we’re interested in as sophisticated cannabis connoisseurs.

While you might be able to just plant a seed in a pot of soil and hope for the best, not every seed is viable, and it’s better to germinate them first. “Germinating” a seed is just a fancy term for letting it sprout, and you can do this with a damp paper towel or a rooting cube. Seeds can take forty-eight hours to

twelve days

to germinate, depending on certain variables, but then you’ll be ready to transplant your new seedling into its more permanent growth medium.

Vegetative Growth Stage

Cannabis plants enter the vegetative growth stage after one to three weeks, at which point they’ll continue vegetating for about three to six more weeks. During vegetative growth, your plants will grow a thick center stem and little nodes that will turn into new branches and more leaves. Cannabis plants will continue to vegetate as long as they receive twelve to fifteen hours of sunlight or more each day, unless the plant is “auto-flowering.” Auto-flowering plants will transition to the flowering stage whether or not the light cycle changes.

If you’re planning an indoor grow, you can even keep a cannabis plant in the vegetative growth stage indefinitely by lighting it for

eighteen or more hours

per day. This is good to know if you’ve already got a healthy plant growing from a strain you really like because you can start new plants as clones from the mother.

Outdoor grows are limited by the amount of natural daylight they receive, so plan your planting accordingly to match the cannabis plant’s expected growth cycle.

Flowering Stage

On the other side of the summer solstice, when sunlight starts to diminish toward twelve hours per day or less, cannabis plants naturally enter their flowering stage. This is when it’s important to weed out any male plants that might have snuck into your grow, since they’ll kill your yield if they pollinate your females. The big sticky buds we love to smoke are only possible when female cannabis flowers go unfertilized—in fact, the psychoactive THC found in the sticky trichomes is a side effect of the plants trying their hardest to get fertilized. In nature, those trichomes help the female plants trap the male pollen for fertilization.

Plants will flower for eight to ten weeks once they’ve entered the flowering stage, and you can help them reach their maximum potential by trimming back some extraneous shoots and leaves.

Harvest Time

Once

the pistils start to turn orange

, it’s time to harvest! This is where all your hard work finally pays off. First you cut down the plant at the root, then separate it into smaller branches, cutting off the rest of the extraneous leaves and stems. Hang the plant upside down for four to six days to ensure it’s had the chance to fully dry out.

After a week or so of drying, it’s time to separate the buds from the stems and pack them (loosely) into airtight containers (wide-mouth mason jars work great) to be stored in a cool, dark place for one to three weeks. It might not look like it, but there’s a lot of activity taking place in these jars, so you’ll want to “burp” the jars once a day to let out any gasses that may have accumulated and introduce fresh air.

Then you’re ready to smoke, or create your own extracts!

Growing Cannabis Outdoors

The simplest, easiest, most hassle-free way to grow your own cannabis is outside with natural sunlight. While you can certainly just plant them in the ground and hope for the best, we recommend growing in a pot (a three-gallon planter will suffice for a single plant) for better control of nutrients, water levels, and pH balance. If you use good, healthy, organic soil, you might not even have to feed your plants any supplemental nutrients at all!

You’ll still want to germinate your seeds indoors first, to protect them from the elements, then take them outside in April or May, after the last frost of the season. Young plants will then enter adulthood in June or July (auto-flowering varieties start a little earlier) and you’ll want to harvest them before mid-October to avoid any risk of freezing. You can check out this handy-dandy outdoor growth

calendar

for more specific timeframes depending on your region.

Water the plants

with either distilled water or tap water that has been left open to the air for twenty-four hours (to evaporate any chlorine.) When they’re little, they may need to be watered twice a day, while more mature plants only need water every two to three days. In either case, you want to water in the morning to avoid mold and encourage nutrient absorption.

Growing Cannabis Indoors

Not everyone has the space for an outdoor grow, but the same principles apply if you want to grow your own cannabis indoors. You can grow your plants in three-gallon pots if you ensure they have proper drainage holes at the bottom, and you use organic potting soil. Indoor grows require some closer monitoring—you’ll want to make sure the soil has a pH between 6.0 and 6.8, and you may need to supplement your watering schedule with some nutrients the plants would otherwise receive from natural soil. When you water, make sure enough goes into the pot that there is visible runoff beneath it (and put your pot on a drip tray, so it doesn’t make a mess.)

Once a week, you want to supplement your soil with some key nutrients for plant growth: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, or NPK. Nitrogen promotes healthy stem and leaf development, phosphorus aids root and flower development, and potassium is vital for keeping roots healthy. Nutrient formula bottles display the ratio of these nutrients as a set of numbers like 20-20-20 to indicate N-P-K content, along with how much formula to add to a given quantity of water.

During the vegetative growth stage, you want to use a 20-20-20 ratio, then

switch to 10-30-10 after two or three weeks of flowering

As an alternative to soil, you could grow your plants

hydroponically

. Some people find this is a more precise method, since it suspends plants’ roots in a nutrient-enriched water solution that can easily be tested for things like pH and nutrient levels. The equipment is a little more involved—you need a container with a lid, a pump to circulate water, and a growth medium to support the roots as they grow—but it often takes less space to set up since it doesn’t require any soil.

Growing without soil requires some more regular attention, however, because you have to add all the nutrients your plants need directly to your hydroponic system. Fortunately,

other people have worked out all the math and chemistry

involved with keeping it balanced.

In either case, you’ll either need to place your plants by a window where it will receive more than fifteen hours of direct sunlight, or you’ll need to invest in an artificial lighting system. Conventional wisdom suggests that

a 250-watt HID lamp

is the only way to go, but those setups can be costly. Recent innovations in LED lighting make options like a

Roleadro LED Panel

more compelling since they produce less heat, use less electricity, and can be configured for multiple light spectrums.

Plants need blue spectrum light during their vegetative stages and benefit from red spectrum light when they transition to flowering (again, unless they’re an auto-flowering variety).

Another thing you’ll be responsible for with any indoor grow is maintaining proper temperature and humidity. Cannabis thrives in a low-humidity environment, and you’ll want to ensure the temperature stays between 68–78 °F. This can be especially challenging if using hot metal halide or high-pressure sodium lights.

On the plus side, you can get better lighting coverage by lowering your lights to just a foot above the canopy and then raising them as your plant grows higher.

Portland-Based Resources for Growing Cannabis

There are several excellent local gardening supply stores in the Portland metropolitan area to help you get set up with everything you need to grow your own cannabis. If you just want to try a basic soil grow with no hassles, check out

A Pot for Pot

. They sell all-in-one grow kits that contain everything you need (except sunlight, seeds, and water) to grow your first marijuana plant.

Garden Supply Stores

If you’re looking to really take the plunge, we can recommend three places to get you started.

Roots Garden Supply

on North Interstate Avenue in Portland is 100% locally owned and operated with a strong emphasis on organic growing.

Bloom Garden Supply

has two locations, on in Northeast Portland and one in Southeast, and they sell hydroponic systems for beginners and experts alike. Their staff is knowledgeable and ready to answer your questions. Then there’s

Grow World

, one of the largest hydroponics suppliers in the country. They’ve got their own glass shop and a unique partnership with the

Oaksterdam University Home Grow Program

Clones and Seeds

Last, but not least, you’re going to need either clones or seeds to have something to actually plant. We recommend starting with a clone if it’s your first time trying to grow your own cannabis, since you’ll be able to get familiar with the life cycle of the cannabis plant before having to deal with germinating seeds.

In our search, we found three reputable sources for clones:

Archive Dispensary Portland

on SE Henry Street,

Kind Heart Collective

on North Denver, and

Maritime Café

, which is celebrating their tenth anniversary. The only way to judge the quality of a clone is to see it in person, so check out all three—make a

road trip

out of it!

As far as seeds go,

Maritime Café

also has them, and so do

MindRite

Nectar

, and

Satchel

We hope whatever you decide to grow turns out great, and let us know what you come up with come harvest season!

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Here’s the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls. In a freak mishap Ranger 3 and its pilot Captain William Buck Rogers are blown out of their trajectory into an orbit which freezes his life support systems and returns Buck Rogers to Earth five-hundred years later. If you have a problem if no one else can help and if you can find them maybe you can hire The A-Team. They were four men living all together yet they were all alone. Got kind of tired packin’ and unpackin’ – town to town and up and down the dial. Go Speed Racer. Go Speed Racer. Go Speed Racer go! Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip that started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship. Maybe you and me were never meant to be. But baby think of me once in awhile. I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati. Sunday Monday Happy Days. Tuesday Wednesday Happy Days. Thursday Friday Happy Days.Saturday what a day. Groovin’ all week with you.

These days are all Happy and Free. These days are all share them with me oh baby. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came. Here’s the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls. Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed – a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed?

The Best Food for the Munchies

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

So. You’ve got the munchies. Don’t worry, it happens to everyone at one time or another. Enjoying the delicious taste of food is one of the great pleasures of being high. After

choosing the cannabis strain you want

, the only problem is deciding what to eat, and we’re here to help you out. To start with, it helps to understand the four elements of the only food groups that matter. Then we have compiled a list of the ten best foods to eat when you have the munchies.

The Only Food Groups You Need to Know Right Now

We’re not talking about the

Food Pyramid or MyPlate

—although those are great for ensuring a balanced diet, —this is something much more important. We’re talking about engaging all of your senses for a veritable

culinary cabaret

. Everything tastes better with a

bag of weed

, and the most appealing tastes and textures fall into four distinct groups that complement each other beautifully when combined.

Sweet

Sweet foods are irresistible and instantaneously delicious. Candy, chocolate, pies, cakes, and ice cream are just some examples of sweet delights. These foods are good to purchase or prepare in advance so you don’t end up with decision paralysis between the Twizzlers and Red Vines at the grocery story or trying to bake cookies when all you have are butter and baking soda. You’re not going to feel great about your choices the next day if you don’t plan ahead. If you maintain a munchie stash, and you never have to worry about going without. Stick to the snack sizes, and you’ll be all right.

Salty

Salty foods are a cornerstone of the four food groups because salt makes everything taste better. And since cannabis already makes everything taste better, that’s like exponentially tastier food! Pizza, Funyuns, Doritos, Chex Mix, and pretzels are great mainstays of salty sensations. Salty foods are also the easiest to overdo, however, because the taste of salt

actually makes it harder to stop eating

. Just like with sweet foods, try to manage your portion sizes in advance to avoid the adverse health effects of eating too much salt. “Family size” should be taken literally.

Chewy

“Wait!” you’re probably saying, “chewy isn’t a taste!” And you’re right, (as usual), but chewiness is an undeniable quality to so many of our favorite foods. It’s like exercise for your mouth, and one of the few exercise trends we can stand behind. And chewing will help your salivary glands counteract the dry-mouth endemic to some stronger strains. Lean into it with some sugarless gum, Twizzlers, gummy bears, Rice Krispies treats, caramel, or

cow tales

. It turns out most things that are chewy are also sweet. Kinda weird now that we think about it.

Crunchy

The fourth and final food group offers some contrast. Sometimes you just want to snap into something, and that’s where your crunchy foods come in. Think potato chips, crackers, popcorn, even carrots and celery if you are feeling adventurous. Their satisfying crispiness will be a welcome reprieve after all of that endless chewing. Some crunchy foods are also sweet—like Whoppers or Butterfingers—so feel free to mix and match!

Top 10 Munchie Foods

If you can’t decide what to eat, here are our picks for the top ten foods to eat whenever you’ve got the munchies. We recommend eating them in reverse chronological order if possible for best results.

10. Ice Cream

There’s nothing better than your favorite ice cream or frozen yogurt if you want something cool, sweet, and refreshing. We recommend limiting yourself to a half pint at a time—or three scoops. If you eat a whole carton of ice cream and you’ll just hate yourself in the morning. Many flavors come with bonus candy or fruit mixed in, but you can also add your own toppings by picking up a bag of candy, crushed nuts, or some chocolate sauce.

Of course, you’re not limited to what’s in the freezer! It’s a great time to take a walk. In Portland, you can find some excellent ice cream at

—and you can even get orders to go!

9. Cheese Crackers

Cheese crackers are crunchy, salty, and are often made with real cheese. Cheese flavored anything gets all smooth and buttery and creamy as you eat it. We’re drooling just thinking about it! Pot Mates doesn’t receive endorsements for these recommendations, we just like what we like. Like Cheddar Baked Lays, Goldfish, Better Cheddars and Cheese-It’s. Cheese crackers present a fantastic combination of flavor and texture. Pair with water or juice to stave off the inevitable dry-mouth and remember, “Family Size” is not meant as a challenge.

8. Macaroni & Cheese

Talk about smooth, buttery, and creamy! Macaroni & cheese combines almost all of the four food groups. It’s chewy and salty, warm and a just a little sweet. It is mostly made of cheese if you do it right, and it comes in a variety of shapes of noodle. Quick and simple to make, macaroni and cheese is a childhood favorite that you can still enjoy as a self-respecting grown up adult. They even make it in easily-microwaveable single-serving bowls! If you cook it yourself, you can add bacon (crunchy, salty), sausage (spicy), cut up hot dogs(chewy), or tuna to enrich the flavor and be a real chef. Throw some chicken nuggets in the oven before you start cooking, and they’ll be done in about the same time! Well, if you remember to turn the oven on.

Don’t want to make it yourself? We don’t blame you! You are a grown up adult and don’t have to cook if you don’t want to. Check out

Herb’s Mac & Cheese

PDX Mac and Cheese Bar

for the best mac & cheese in Portland.

7. Donuts

These are harder to make yourself unless you have a

donut pan

, in which case you should be making donuts right now. Why aren’t you making donuts every day? Most stores have little boxes of breakfast donuts or bags full of tiny donettes for only a couple of dollars! If you want to get fancy, Portland plays host to a number of gourmet donut shops like

Blue Star

Pip’s Original Donuts and Chai

. Voodoo Doughnut even has a

Rapper’s Delight

special which consists of three donuts for $4.20! Trying to go vegan? Check out

Doe Donuts

, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Pro-tip, donuts are better hot. Heat before you eat and put some of that ice cream on top. The donut soaks up some of the melted ice cream and keeps you from getting brain freeze. Didn’t we tell you this was a shopping list?

6. Pretzels

You cannot go wrong with pretzels. They can be chewy or crunchy, enjoyed warm or cold. You can buy (or bake) big sourdough pretzels with salty flavor crystals, or pick up a package of crunchy pretzels at the grocery store. Dip them in honey mustard, ranch dressing, or even melted chocolate if you want to be decadent! Bread is so good, and pretzels make one of the best bread-based snacks. They have this earthy, yeasty smell and taste that you can’t really get anywhere else. We know these pretzels are going to make you thirsty, so bring some drink.

5. Nutella

Okay, this isn’t technically “food,” but it goes great with just about everything and should be its own category on the food pyramid. You can spread it on a bagel or a slice of bread, dip your favorite foods into it (pretzels, anyone?) or even just stick your finger in and eat it straight out of the jar. Eew. But if it’s yours, it’s okay. Don’t eat too much though, this cocoa hazelnut spread is loaded with sugar, and a little goes a long way.

4. Munchies

We didn’t want to like these because their name is so on-the-nose, but Munchies may well be the most delicious crunchy/salty snack out there. Each bag consists of a mixture of Sun Chips, pretzels, Cheetos, and Doritos in a variety of flavors—from cheesy to spicy to ranch. You could always buy a few bags of your own and combine them for your own custom mix. They’re all a great route to enjoy that irresistible combination of crunchy and salty. Of course, you could also make your own by buying your own favorite snacks and mixing them together, but having it already put together in one convenient bag is almost too good to be true. (They also don’t pay us. We don’t want sponsors.)

3. Crudités (/ˌkro͞odəˈtā/)

Bet you weren’t expecting us to use fancy words on this list, but we’re fancy. Crudités is a French word for assorted cuts of raw vegetables. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! After all of that sugar and salt, nothing is more refreshing than some cool cucumber, carrots or celery. They are juicy and delicious, great for when you’re hungry and thirsty. They are crunchy water you can dip in sauce. Crudités can help you fight dry mouth while simultaneously filling you up. If you don’t think vegetables have enough flavor on their own, you can always dip peanut butter, ranch dressing, cream cheese, Nutella, caramel sauce, or your own favorite sauce.

2. Cookies (Any Kind)

Did you know that cookies are technically bread? You can bake them from scratch with just eggs, flour, sugar, and butter. A whole lot of sugar and butter. If you want, you can use chocolate chips, oatmeal, or raisins, to make them extra-delicious. Or you can buy those cookie dough packages you see in the store to have them ready-to-bake at a moment’s notice. Freshly baked cookies are the best ! Cookies contain all four of our food groups. Crunchy on the outside, chewy and gooey on the inside, packed full of sweet, delicious sugar, but enough butter and salt to keep you going. Some places, like the

Cookie Dough Café

, offer cookie dough desserts that are specially made to be consumed safely without being baked. Well, you should be baked, be forewarned—their portions can be deceptively large.

1. Pizza

It might be chewy, it might be crunchy, but it is always savory and delicious, pizza has been a staple pairing with cannabis ever since it was invented. Take some bread, bury it in sauce and cheese and whatever’s clever for toppings. The crust is buttery and crunchy, the top cheesy and chewy and melty. You can

make it yourself

in less time than it takes to wait for delivery, pick up a couple of frozen pies from the store, or order in from any number of reputable pizza spots around town. We like to support our local businesses like

Hot Lips

Pizzicato

, and

Sizzle Pie

, but there’s nothing wrong with ordering a little Domino’s or Pizza Hut if the craving strikes. We’ve heard that any pizza is a personal pizza with enough dedication.

Since you’re fully equipped with all of your favorite snacks, now is the perfect time to learn

proper joint-smoking etiquette

. Fortunately for you, we have an article for that.

Cannabis HEROES: Safeguarding Legal Weed in the Face of the Pandemic

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Cannabis Flower, Edibles, pre-rolls

Imagine you aren’t allowed to have a bank account or a credit card. You have to use cash for everything—rent, your power bill, your cell service, even insurance. Whenever you get your paycheck, you have to cash it out and find someplace to keep it safe. If you get robbed, that’s it, you’re broke. That’s what it’s like for legal weed shops right now. The cannabis banking provisions in the HEROES Act changed all of that.

Here in Oregon, weed possession and sale is legal, but cannabis is still listed as a

Schedule I controlled substance

according to the federal government. Even though marijuana is legal locally, dispensaries can’t open bank accounts or apply for financial insurance because federally regulated financial institutions suffer penalties for doing business with cannabis retailers. Basically, that means that there’s no safety net if things go south, unlike nearly every other legitimate business in America.

You can imagine how difficult it is to run a company like that—and scary! There’s a ton paperwork. Between the paper forms and all the records that are needed, it can take up to fifteen minutes to process a single order to deliver weed—at least here in Portland, Oregon. Working exclusively with cash is inherently dangerous too. It makes marijuana dispensaries a hot target for crime. Fortunately, there’s new legislation that’ll change this, and many other things.

The

Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2019

includes a provision that allows banks to serve legal marijuana businesses without fear of fine or penalty. That means dispensaries can store their money in banks, get insurance, and apply for federal assistance like federally insured small business loans. Instead of relying on cash, weed shops can use credit and debit cards, increasing security for both their businesses and their customers. Sounds great, right?

The SAFE Act was already approved back in the fall of 2019 by the U.S. House of Representatives (yay!) but it was been stuck in a Senate subcommittee for over a year(boo!)—until October, 2020 (oh good, yay again!). Responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the House of Representatives passed a new $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill called the

Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act

, which included the SAFE Act! Cannabis businesses (cannabusinesses, for short) are essential businesses, and one thing the HEROES Act did was make them eligible for the same protections and benefits as other essential businesses. It also requires an Annual Diversity and Inclusion Report, to investigate what barriers minority-owned cannabis businesses face when entering the market and accessing financial services. If (and when) this report reveals systemic discrimination, it empowers the Comptroller General of the United States to recommend changes to Congress. As a Black-owned cannabis delivery service, we think this is great. The negative consequences of the War on Drugs have undeniably been worse for People of Color than anyone else, and legalization has been slower to redress these wrongs than any of us hoped.

So what’s the result? Weed stores have become safer for everyone, cannabusinesses can protect their investments, and the playing field is becoming more level and fair for everyone. Even better, revenue from legal weed dispensaries can finally enter the mainstream economy—if marijuana were legalized nationally, that could be almost

$130 billion

. The HEROES Act was signed into law by former President Trump in December of 2020.

If you want to learn more about the legal side of weed, you’ll love our article on

how cannabis delivery works in Portland, Oregon

Defunding the Police from Cannabis Dollars

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Defunding the Police from Cannabis Dollars

Oct 21, 2020

Wouldn’t it be great if legal weed helped give back to the community? That’s what the city of Portland thought when we approved

an additional 3% tax

on marijuana sales specifically so we could reinvest that revenue into drug treatment programs, support for neighborhood small businesses, and public safety. What a great deal, right? Not only is weed legal, but every time you buy it you’re directly funding:

Services that increase access to drug and alcohol education and treatment programs
Programs that support rehabilitation and employment readiness
Incubator programs for women-owned and minority-owned businesses
Police DUI training and enforcement

It feels good to make a difference, but how would you feel if you found out your money was actually being used to fund the police? A

2019 Portland City Auditor

report showed that the 3% tax brought in $4.6 million dollars that year and Portland spent $2.2 million of it on the Portland Police Bureau for “intoxicants training and traffic enforcement personnel.” According to the audit, only 15% of Portland’s marijuana tax revenue in 2019 went to small businesses and communities who were disproportionately affected by prohibition. That left just 5% to fund drug and alcohol education and treatment programs.

In June 2020, amidst protests for racial justice, the

Minority Cannabis Business Association declared that was unacceptable

. “It is outrageous that in a city like Portland we are funding the disruption of our own communities with money meant to uplift us” Dr. Rachel Knox, MCBA Board Member, said in a statement. “We must end this insult to our communities and focus 100% of those dollars to a health equity framework immediately.” According to Jeanette Ward,

NuLeaf Project

Executive Director and MCBA member, “research has proven that training and transparency methods are not effective solutions.” Under the leadership of Dr. Knox, the MCBA demanded that the city of Portland eliminate all of the funding the Portland Police Bureau receives from marijuana taxes.

In response, Portland

City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty announced

that the city’s new budget would divest another $15 million from the Portland Police Bureau, reallocating $4.8 million to fund Portland Street Response, $1 million for Black youth leadership development and $1 million for houseless community participatory budgeting. This reduction, in addition to cuts made earlier in the year, means the Portland Police Bureau will receive 27 million fewer dollars next year than they did this year. The budget was approved on June 11 2020 with only one “no” vote.

But the battle’s not over yet. MCBA President Jason Ortiz called for solidarity in the face of what is clearly a national problem,

saying

, “We call on all cannabis justice activists to investigate their municipal finances, their local cannabis company investments, and discover if and how dollars meant for community uplift are being sent to law enforcement. This mockery of justice is a shameful moment in our history, and we will not allow it to be our future.”

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so disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition

Cannabis Employment Has Begun To Skyrocket

31 Aug, 2023

Pairing Cannabis With Wine and Cheese

31 Aug, 2023

If you’re a fan of wine, then you know that picking the right pairing for your wine of choice for the night, is the second most important ingredient for a good night.

Marijuana Research Bill

31 Aug, 2023

If you’ve been wondering about Biden and his plans cannabis for this term, then wonder no more.

Pot Mates, One Year In Review

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

One Year in Review

We launched at 4:20pm on 4/20/2020. It has been an unbelievable year and we had no idea if we were going to survive in the beginning. When COVID hit, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to launch at all! After a couple of months adapting to this new business environment, Oregon was flooded with wildfire smoke that blocked out the sun and made the air toxic to breathe. Then, in February, a massive snowstorm made the roads icy and dangerous. Both were bad news for a delivery-only dispensary!

In spite of all that, Pot Mates has not only kept our deliveries running and our store stocked, we’re thriving. After a year of operating successfully in spite of adversity, we wanted to take the time to look back and share with you a behind-the-scenes perspective of how we got where we are.

The Seed of an Idea

Pot Mates started as an answer to a question Pot Mates founder, Hammond Potter, kept asking himself: how can I get more out of my job and myself? Working retail for several years left him wanting to do something more fulfilling with his life. He had saved a lot of money through smart investments and believed he had what it took to run his own business.

Hammond has always loved high-quality weed, and the Oregon cannabis business was booming in 2016, so he decided to open his own dispensary. Looking into it, he discovered that it was a lot more expensive than he expected—at least the way most companies do it. Hammond didn’t want to work at his day job any longer than he had to, he wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and that meant thinking outside the box.

Sitting on his couch, watching TV during the summer of 2017, the idea hit him: what if there was a food truck, but for cannabis? A mobile dispensary that wouldn’t have to pay the same kind rent as a brick-and-mortar store, but could still offer a varied selection. Hammond did some research and when he learned more about the laws Oregon has governing pot sales, he realized that wouldn’t be legal. The state of Oregon has a

step-by-step guide

for starting a recreational cannabis business, so he read it from start to finish to see what his options were.

What he could do instead was offer a cannabis delivery service. All he needed was four walls, high-speed internet, and a whole lot of grass, and Hammond was ready to be in business. At least, that’s what he thought. It turns out starting a cannabusiness is a little more complicated than that—and a lot more expensive!

Nothing Worthwhile Comes Easy

The first step was finding a location. There are several state regulations that prevent cannabis dispensaries from being within 1,000 feet of a school and they can’t be located in an area zoned exclusively for residential use. Hammond searched and searched for a suitable location that was in his budget, but it ended up taking more than three months just to find a place that fit all of the requirements. Then he had to secure it with a minimum security system that included video surveillance, an alarm system, and a safe to ensure everything was protected.

Fortunately, Oregon provides a “business readiness guidebook” for OLCC marijuana operations, but the licensing application can be a lengthy process. There was huge backlog of applications already in the state’s queue, so Hammond had to keep paying rent and utilities on the Pot Mates headquarters while he waited for that approval to come through.

It took longer than expected, and money started to run low. Hammond had to take a second job delivering food from restaurants around Portland just to keep himself afloat in the interim. He had to seek support from an outside investor to keep the business from going under before it had even gotten up and running. By the time his license was approved and he could finally start stocking inventory, Pot Mates was only able to offer eight varieties of flower at launch—no vape cartridges, no prerolls, and no edibles or concentrates. Hammond could only hope that sales would be strong enough to diversify his product line.

By early 2020, Pot Mates was nearly ready to launch. We had our location, we had a small but well-curated menu, and our website was almost complete. Hammond set a launch date of April 20th, for obvious reasons, and started counting down the days on the calendar.

Launching In Spite of a Pandemic

The plan was to open for business from 11:00am to 8:00pm, but there was a snag on that first day. For whatever reason, the website wasn’t able to process orders the way it was supposed to. Since Pot Mates is delivery only, we couldn’t open our doors to customers any other way. It took a few hours of troubleshooting, but our CTO Jason Hinson was able to work out the bugs and bring the storefront online by 4:20pm that afternoon—just in time for the first orders to come through.

Hammond describes feeling a rush of excitement going to make that first delivery. This was an idea he had been working on for over three years, and now he was finally going to put his plan in action. The order came through, printing out product labels and delivery directions, and he happily packaged everything up in our classic, “Oh, high there” bags, then it was time to meet our first customer.

That first delivery went off without a hitch, and we could tell already we had a hit on our hands. Due to the explosion of what was then a novel coronavirus, it was hard to get the word out that Pot Mates was open for business, but we still had a handful of deliveries that day and our customers were so thrilled with the quality of our products that they told all their friends. Within a few months, the flower money became seed money and we were able to gradually increase our selection with vape cartridges, then edibles, and then concentrates. Our customers were super helpful with providing

feedback

about what we needed to make available next.

As Hammond would say, it was kind of a rocky start, but “the rest is history.”

Highs and Lows Over the Year (Mostly Highs)

After it became clear that Pot Mates was going to survive, we got to kick back and enjoy the ride. It’s important to us to stay committed to our promises, which is why we still only stock top shelf marijuana that’s certified free from pesticides and contaminants. We have also learned to love the day-to-day process involved with running a delivery business.

The part that gives Hammond the most joy on a daily basis is shopping for new product and packing it up for delivery. Getting to touch and smell such a beautiful and unique variety of flowers is a huge perk of the job.

Every day since 4/20 has brought us more deliveries, more products, a customer base that loves our services, and other people who can’t enjoy delivery (because they live outside Portland city limits) but still appreciate the knowledge base Pot Mates has amassed with our weblog and product catalog. They use the information we provide to make informed decisions about the weed they buy and how they choose to enjoy it, and they trust us to always share both sides of the story.

In the interest of sharing both sides, we have to acknowledge how Pot Mates fell short of some of our expectations. We 3-D printed masks to support healthcare workers who need personal protective equipment at the beginning of the pandemic, but by the time we had them ready to distribute that particular crisis had passed. We’re still using computers for protein folding to help the fight against COVID-19. We also wanted to do more for the BIPOC community that has been

, but we had to make sure we could stand sturdy on our own two feet before helping others up onto theirs. Still, we to be better every day than we were yesterday, so we have a lot to look forward to.

A Year Ahead and Beyond

One thing that will never change is our drive to be better at meeting our promises. The core of everything we believe is right there, we believe quality without compromise is possible and that it means approaching the ethical presence of our business in the world as well as the service we provide. At the end of the day, it’s not enough to just be a successful premium cannabis delivery company, we want to make sure we’re making the world better with our efforts, giving back after being given so much.

A year from now, we hope to be making even more deliveries of the same high-quality weed you’ve come to expect, and we want to expand our delivery radius as much as we can. We’ve developed a lot of custom technologies to make our lives easier enabling us to offer fast turnaround times and free delivery, technology that no other cannabis retailers seem to use. In the future, we want to find ways to empower the cannabis community at large with these innovations.

We also want to do more from a social justice perspective. Our first year of business saw widespread protests in Portland over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. It reminded us that the war on drugs has been very damaging to people of color and their relationship with the criminal justice system. Whether it’s mentoring other Black entrepreneurs like Hammond or providing a path to a new career for someone existing the prison system, we know there’s got to be some way we can be making more of a difference.

Five years, ten years down the line, who knows where we’ll be? Pot Mates has its sights set on becoming the top premium cannabis delivery service in Oregon and it’s only a matter of time.

What Next?

A year ago today, we launched at 4:20 in the afternoon after three years of hard work bringing a dream into reality. It was a lot more complicated than we expected, but we didn’t let that stop us from persevering through everything life could throw at us to do what we believe this state needs. And we’re just getting started.

We’ve got a pretty good sense of how we want the next year to go, but we also want to open up a dialogue with our community. What did we get right? Where can we improve?

to let us know your thoughts about your first year with Pot Mates. We’d love to hear from you.

Don’t Panic! The Pot Mates Response to COVID-19 — Keeping You Safe

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The novel coronavirus is still a threat, so the two most important things we keep doing to preven its spread are

and

. Pot Mates can help with both. While restaurants have shut their doors or switched to delivery,

school’s out forever

, and all but the most essential businesses have closed, Pot Mates is still committed to

delivering premium cannabis to your doorstep

. And we’re not going to leave you hanging in fear and uncertainty.

Each of us has an important role to play in maintaining the health and safety of our community. There are small adjustments to our everyday lives that can make a world of difference in our fight against the virus and Pot Mates is uniquely equipped to minimize the risk of transmitting or contracting it when purchasing cannabis. We’re going to share some general guidelines for doing your part, offer some transparency into our health and safety guidelines, and share some ways to keep your cool while sheltering in place. You can also read about how we use 3D printing to make our own masks and join our

Folding@Home team

to help find a treatment.

If we work together to stay apart and aloft, we can beat this thing.

What You Can Do

The primary way to catch the virus is from someone else who has it, specifically from the aerosolized droplets they might expel from a sneeze or a cough. These droplets can land directly in the mouth or nose of another person or they can be picked up from nearby surfaces. Then it’s just a short trip to the face. (Did you know that the average person touches their face over 300 times per day?

Crazy.

) Here’s what

the CDC says

you can do to protect yourself and the people around you from contracting the coronavirus:

Wear a Mask

Everyone 2 and older should be wearing a mask when they’re in public and staying at least six feet apart from people you don’t already live with. If someone in your house is sick, you should both be wearing masks to prevent transmission. Make sure your mask has at least two layers of cloth, and be sure to wash your hands before putting it on. Also, and this should go without saying, your mask needs to cover your mouth and your nose because you use both to breathe.

Wash Your Hands (like, a lot)

Now is not the time to slack off on hand-washing. Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds every time you aren’t sure about the last thing you touched and especially when you return home from going anyplace else. Coronavirus can live on hard surfaces for up to three days. The WHO has a great infographic

outlining the best technique for thoroughly cleaning your hands.

If there’s no soap and water handy, you can use hand sanitizer, just make sure it’s at least 60% alcohol (that’s 120 proof).

Cover Your Mouth

There’s never a tissue when you need one, so if you feel a sneeze or a cough coming on, try to direct it into your elbow—even when you’re wearing a mask. The additional force increases the risk of transmitting potentially infectious droplets through the cloth. If you are lucky enough to have a tissue, throw it away as soon as you’re done. No need to keep potentially infectious goop around in your pocket. Always wash your hands immediately after sneezing or coughing—even if you’re just coughing from hitting a joint too hard. Remember the droplets!

Keep Your Distance

Normally, we love a good high-five or a fist bump, but right now we could all use some space. Those infectious droplets can travel up to six feet from the person who coughed them out, so it’s best to stay more than six feet away from other people.

No touching!

We know that sucks, but we’re trying to be smarter than the disease here. The most effective way to keep your distance is to only leave home when it’s absolutely necessary—getting groceries, picking up prescriptions, or visiting the doctor. Also you can feel good about taking a walk as long as you stay on the other side of the street from other people. Exercise is important.

Clean Your Surfaces

Clean and disinfect frequently-touched surfaces like doorknobs, faucets, handles, tables, phones and even your cannabis smoking implement of choice. If you run out of disinfectant, you can make your own by diluting 4 teaspoons of bleach in a quart of water, or use an alcohol solution with at least 70% alcohol. The EPA has put together a chart of other disinfectants that are effective against the coronavirus

When in Dobut, Be This Hamster

If you need a quick refresher on how you can help stop the spread of coronavirus, check out this socially responsible hamster:

Safety and Handling: What We’re Doing

So what’s Pot Mates doing to safeguard against coronavirus? We’ve actually been pretty good about clean handling from the beginning, so COVID-19 has just increased our commitment to sanitation. Everyone from our packaging team to our deliver drivers wears gloves already to prevent the degradation of THC from touching it with our hands and we change gloves every time we change activities. We prepackage our products in selected quantities which are then left alone long enough to

get rid of the virus

. We also place orders inside of a childproof exit bag before bringing it to you for cannabis products that don’t already come in childproof packaging.

Every time we change activities, we wash our hands and we disinfect all of our frequently-touched-surfaces. As a final precaution, our handlers and delivery drivers wear masks that we 3D-printed ourselves so as not to encroach upon Oregon’s limited supply of personal protective equipment.

We take this stuff seriously! You can trust us to stay up-to-date on new guidelines as the situation develops.

Delivery Guidelines

Thanks to modern technology, you can safely enjoy premium cannabis in the comfort of your own home without having to break your self-isolation. We’ve put a lot of thought into how to make our cannabis delivery system work without compromising your (or our) safety, and there are a few things you should know before we get there.

Our delivery drivers will always show up wearing fresh gloves and masks. We’ll still need to verify your age by peeping your photo ID, but you don’t have to worry about signing for the delivery—for now. That would be too much close contact.

As much as we want to give you a fist bump or a bro-hug, we’re going to avoid touching you during deliveries and we ask that you do the same. We’ll still hand you your order, but we’ll be careful to only hold it from our side so you can take it securely from yours.

Finally, to avoid exchanging cash as best we can, we use a contactless payment system called Hypur that you can use for digital payment. It helps us complete transactions online as much as possible. We also have debit and credit card options, but its safer if you pay online so we do not have to handle your card. It’s better for all of us.

Hypur

Hypur is a mobile app for processing electronic payments securely, for free. It works by sending a direct payment from your bank account with no signup or transaction fees. There’s a two-step process for secure checkout: you just select your dispensary (Pot Mates) and enter your 4-digit Personal Access Code. With Hypur, we can ensure a safe delivery environment for our customers and an (almost) entirely touchless process. You can download Hypur on the

App Store

and

Google Play

and sign up now.

Having a good time while social distancing

It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. We’re not hiding out in our little foxholes, waiting for the scary virus to go away, we’re depriving it of its ability to propagate and proliferate. So why not have a good time while we’re cooped up inside? That’s what cannabis is all about, right?

This is a great opportunity to get to know yourself. Whether you’re working from home or temporarily funemployed, you can re-engage with your hobbies or take on some new creative pursuits. Free from distractions, you could create some wonderful art or write the next great American novel—maybe humanity’s triumph over a deadly disease set in a not-too-distant future? Settle in with some delivered cannabis and a good soundtrack, then kick back to see what happens.

You could also use the time to learn new skills. Or read up on on

proper joint smoking etiquette

, in case you know someone that wants to try it for the first time and you can’t be there for them. Everybody should know how to roll a joint, and we have a tutorial for you here on

. Or maybe you’d like to try your hand at baking? It’s pretty easy to make your own canna-butter, you can read how in the “Eating It” section of our

Ways to Consume Cannabis

article.

A lot of us miss the traditional smoking circle at 4:20, but you can still FaceTime your friends for a virtual smoke session. In fact, you can even kick it and watch a movie together with a free Chrome plugin called

Netflix Party

. If you all order food from one of the restaurants in Portland

offering delivery

, it’ll be just like a regular Friday night!

We’d love to hear how you’re keeping your chill during this pandemic, so leave a comment and spread the wealth!

Popular Cannabis Slang Origins — Where Did All the Names for Weed Come From?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If you want to be technical about it, the proper Latin name is either cannabis sativa or cannabis indica , and it’s been in use for over eight thousand years. Whether you call it weed , ganja , or marijuana , you’ve probably wondered where all this different cannabis slang came from. Some were the result of people discovering Mary Jane independently of each other, some came about through the intermingling of those cultures, and others developed as a kind of code to keep the purchase and consumption of “grass” a secret during

Prohibition

. Let us take you on a tour of some terminology you might hear when people talk about weed.

Weed

The first use of the term weed to refer to the reefer was in 1929, when the quarterly journal American Speech included it in their “Among the New Words” column as meaning, “

marijuana cigarette

.” In 1932, the Chicago Defender reported, “The humble ‘reefer,’ ‘the weed,’ the marijuana, or what have you by way of a name for a doped cigarette has moved to Park Ave. from Harlem.” By calling it weed , people could speak freely about the plant at a time when its criminalization was being publicly debated.

But did you know…cannabis is not actually a weed! “Weed” isn’t the name of any specific family of plants. It really just refers to a plant that is unwanted in a given context. Clover is considered a weed for people who like nice, trim lawns, but it’s a cash crop for honeybee farmers. You could only call cannabis a weed in the conventional sense if you found a lot of it growing where you didn’t want any, in which case, did you know it’s legal to grow up to four plants for personal use?

Ganja

Sometimes a term for weed is the result of some cool cross-pollination. You’ve probably heard of ganja relating to Rastafarianism, but that’s not where it started. The word ganja actually originates from

Sanskrit

, and it referred to a plant consumed by the Hindu god Shiva. In 1833, Great Britain started transporting laborers from India to all sorts plantations, sending over 30,000 to Jamaica. These indentured servants worked in the fields alongside former African slaves and shared their spiritual practice of smoking ganja

This observation of cannabis as a religious rite combined with the Jamaicans’ desire to resist oppressive societal structures and led directly to the development of

Rastafarianism

in the 1930s. Ganja is still the preferred terminology in many Reggae songs that celebrate its use and call for its widespread legalization.

Marijuana

Ganja isn’t the only term with history, and marijuana’s past is far from pleasant. Over the course of the bloody ten-year Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), many refugees fled to the Southwest United States to

escape the violence

. Searching for stability and employment, they found jobs in mining and agriculture. In the fields and the mines, other workers introduced them to a pleasant way to pass the time with a little bit of bud in their pipes. The Mexican Spanish word for cannabis is marihuana , and U.S. politicians who wanted to demonize the drug latched onto the exotic-sounding variation, marijuana

Cannabis was already widely available in a variety of tinctures and other legal medicines, but the use of the term marijuana made it sound like a different drug altogether. Harry J. Anslinger launched massive campaigns against this “loco weed,” sowing fear and misinformation into the public mindset, leading ultimately to full-on

Reefer Madness

Pot

Pot, on the other hand, is completely harmless. Maybe you prefer just pot to marijuana or ganja. It’s short, it’s sweet, but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it? A pot leaf doesn’t actually look like a pot in any way, pots aren’t used in its preparation (except maybe in the traditional Indian beverage bhang , or modern cannabis oil extraction methods,) so where does the name come from?

Although its origin is a little more mysterious than other slang terms, pot probably comes from a Mexican Spanish word, potiguaya, which is a portmanteau of “potación de guayaya,” meaning “drink of

grief

”. This medicinal elixir was prepared by steeping cannabis buds in wine, —at least, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Chester Himes wrote, “She made him smoke pot and when he got jagged…she put him on the street” in his 1938 short story,

The Way We Live Now

. You wouldn’t believe how many articles we had to read to find this reference, but

we know our stuff

Joint

By now, everyone knows a joint refers to a marijuana cigarette, but this is another term with a disputed origin. The European practice of making a marijuana cigarette originally meant combining hash with tobacco to keep it burning. In Old French, jointiz meant “close together,” or “joined,” so it could be a reference to this method of combination.

By 1877, joint had also become slang for a building or place, and began to refer specifically to opium dens in the United States around 1883. Opium users started calling their drug paraphernalia their joint , so it’s equally possible that the terminology just carried over.

A third explanation is even more literal. Cigarette rolling papers are often joined to make a longer smoke,—a joint —and if it was rolled poorly, the result would look kind of like an elbow joint. There are many reasons to call them joints

“A pinched-off smoke, or a stub, is a roach ,” according to Meyer Berger, who was the first writer to use the

term

, writing about the fast-paced and ever-changing world of cannabis slang in Harlem in 1938. Roach may be so-called because of its physical resemblance to the common cockroach, but it could also be a reference to a small fish from the carp family. Who knows!

Bong

This is the most literal cannabis terminology. It’s a direct transliteration of the Thai word baung , meaning “cylindrical wooden tube”. In the 1944 Thai-English Dictionary, (yes, we also looked up a historical Thai dictionary to get you accurate information), it is described as “a bamboo water pipe for smoking kancha, tree, hashish, or the hemp-plant.” It started to catch on in America when Vietnam War veterans brought the practice back with them from their time in the service.

Now, bongs are made from a wide range of materials like silicone, glass, and acrylic, but they all expand on the same premise of a cylindrical tube filled with water, a bowl to hold the cannabis as it’s ignited, and a down stem to carry the smoke through the water chamber, filtering and cooling it for more comfortable consumption. You can read more in our article about

the different ways people use weed

Conclusion

There are about

twelve hundred

more slang words for marijuana, but these are the ones we like the most. You’ll notice that, here at Pot Mates, we prefer cannabis to all the alternative cannabis slang. It’s specific, accurate, and doesn’t stigmatize any specific groups of people. It is also easier to say after a you’ve had a few hits. Say, ““potación de guayaya” three times fast! What words do you use to describe cannabis? Did we miss any that should be included in this list?

Learning new things burns calories, so if you need to replenish your store, our list of the

best foods to eat when you have the munchies

is a good place to go. Just remember, the four real food groups are sweet, salty, chewy, and crunchy. Mmmm, like

honey roasted peanuts

How This Portland, Oregon Cannabis Company Launched During a Pandemic

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

How This Portland, Oregon Cannabis Company Launched During a Pandemic

Jun 19, 2020

Want to learn more about the history of Pot Mates? Read our full interview with the Cannabis Industry Journal, written by Aaron G. Biros!

In it, we share our story about how

we launched a successful marijuana business during the Covid-19

pandemic and some of the barriers we face as a cannabis delivery company. We get into a few details about how we have made no-minimum citywide Portland weed cannabis delivery work.

“Pot Mates was prepared to launch as a new cannabis delivery service in the Portland, Oregon market, but then the coronavirus pandemic hit. In this story, we’ll explore the new delivery market, how Pot Mates came to be, where they’re going and what starting a new cannabis business during a global pandemic looks like.”

You can read the whole article here:

The Dawn of Delivery: How This Oregon Company Launched During a Pandemic

About the Article Author:

Aaron G. Biros

Editor & Publisher of CannabisIndustryJournal.com

Innovative Publishing LLC

Aaron G. Biros joined Innovative Publishing LLC full-time after graduating from Tulane University in May 2015. Graduating with a B.A. in Environmental Studies, his coursework involved environmental sustainability, conservation policy, design thinking in collaboration, social innovation & entrepreneurship, food production & health, and environmental & health risk assessments. He has two years of experience working on staff as an associate editor for FoodSafetyTech.com, writing a series of articles focused on the intersection of food safety and environmental sustainability. Aaron is now the editor and publisher of CannabisIndustryJournal.com, a B2B digital trade publication that seeks to educate the global cannabis industry on everything seed-to-sale in both recreational and medical markets. CannabisIndustryJournal.com covers news, business trends, technology, regulatory compliance and other important areas, aiding in the advancement of a well-informed and safe market.

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