Cannabis legalisation

[Mowl]

Germany legalises cannabis for recreational use despite opposition

From 1 July it will be possible to legally obtain weed through “cannabis clubs” in the country.

www.thejournal.ie

Swift move by ze Germans regarding marijuana use as it becomes legal today to carry 25gr and grow up to three plants in your home. By July 1st, marijuana clubs can apply for licenses for up to five hundred members and it's no longer allowed that a copper can demand to know where you got your weed from. Holland has been reining in their system for some years by now but as to why, I've no idea. You can walk into a coffee-shop in any town in Holland and buy weed over the counter along with a nice coffee and whatever you fancy.

At the point when calculations as to the profit margins become clearer, I'll be the first to lay down cash money that Ireland will hop onto the ship before it sets sail. Anything for a few extra millions in the piggy-bank. But Ireland won't lead the charge as you did with Mick Martin introducing the cigarette ban some years back. Out with the old, in with the new - even if the new has the potential to cause some worry. Finland's been grappling with the laws for the last few years and while medical cannabis can be bought over the counter at the pharmacy, you really need to see a private doctor to get a prescription. The standard issue is Bedrocan, which comes in a regular plastic tub like your pills come in. It has a very distinctive smell and for the months I used it, I noticed too how it seems to seep from your pores after smoking it. I couldn't get the scent of it off me and a number of people asked what the hell that scent was. It's a delicious strain though, a slow moving high that gradually creeps up on you but once you get used to it, the initial rush gets easier and easier to deal with.

I have a number of sources and I try to arrange things in a way that I have at least three or four types in my stash-box, but sometimes in the past I've horded up to seven or eight strains at a time. You can also mix them together to make champagne-superspliffs if that's your thing. Another thing I use is the leftovers of the whole growing process: it's amazing to me that nobody else seems to try it but I used the left-over leaves (they have zero potency) to make 'cigarettes' containing crushed leaves and even the thinnest of the stalks crushed together. It got me off the fifteen a day I used to smoke, and it was no problem at all dealing with the nicotine addiction. I usually slip my suppliers and extra fiver or so for a big bag of leaves I can prepare in the kitchen and fill a few jars to tide me over the mornings in particular: that's where cigarettes had me pinned down, I could smoke six or eight ciggies one after another in the mornings, something I no longer do and no longer miss at all.

Of course, there's always a hump along the road somewhere and here in Finland it now costs €1.75 for a packet of (fifty leaves) standard Rizla brown (the super light-weight version) while over in Tallin they're around 20c a pack. I'm also shifting away from using tobacco in cigarette form to a pouch of tobacco to mix with the weed. I can't take straight weed spliffs, my chest/lungs can't handle it, I cough like a bastard if I try, so I have to roll my own when in company. I use far less weed than most people I know and even at the studio the guys won't share the spliffs I roll: they're too weak, they say.

Me? I'm happy enough with the amounts I use per spliff, so in a way I'm a cheap date: the guys all smoke super-nuclear spliffs but I can't, so I don't. I use far lesser amounts so my weed supplies last longer, cost me less, and don't fuck up my chest and lungs.

In another few years it'll be available everywhere across Europe, like it should have been for decades already. I've legally bought weed in: Spain, Holland, Morocco, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark. By 2030 these archaic laws will be erased and the Nanny state can go suck lemons. Even Ireland.

 

[David]

Fair play to Germany. It's ironic that you can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, two much more dangerous and addictive substances, yet can go to prison for smoking weed.

Cannabis isn't even physically addictive, yet trying to quit a nicotine addiction by contrast is pure physical and mental torture. All it takes for me when trying to quit smoking is to see someone lighting up a cigarette on the television, and I'm back on them.

 

[Mowl]

Fair play to Germany.

Well, it's not as if there isn't an underlying ulterior motive: clogging up the courts with weed/hash offenses and ruining the future potential of the youth is a crime in itself, not to mention the profits to be made by legalizing the weed. They bang on and on about potency and how modern weed is much stronger than the weed of their day, blah, blah, blah. It never seems to occur to them that the same is true of both nicotine and alcohol - both of which are still perfectly legal.

With alcohol you can swing between light-weight drinks like shandy all to way over to moonshine, absinthe, poitin, etc: all of which are lunatic level drinks to fuck around with. I've done that whole Prague thing a few times and yes, the bars that serve absinthe properly are cheap as chips. Three or four shots of absinthe (with the burnt sugar) leaves me cross-eyed and dizzy. Poitin is even worse. We have one up here called Viru Valge, which is an Estonian vodka you can buy duty free for around a tenner. It's 94% pure alcohol. It's fucking nuts. It's a kind of 'sorting the men from the boys' liquor which people carry with them in their pockets, that way they can order a light drink, but top it up with Valge and get all fucked up. They'll boot you out if they catch you, like anywhere would, but at around €15.00 per liter it's rocket fuel.

Some cigarettes are light, others are very heavy; then there's the cigars, the pipes, the hookahs, and whatever else is going. The taxes collected on booze and tobacco always increase year by year, it becomes a habit that's hard to afford and maintain, and for sure when a packet of smokes up here went through the €10 glass ceiling (just as I was about to have chest surgery) I wanted out. Thankfully, the week I spent in the cardiac ward made sure I broke the habit and the nurses gave me as many Nicotinelle patches as I needed to quit. I'm still off them but I still use a little tobacco in my spliffs, I can't smoke straight weed.

It's ironic that you can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, two much more dangerous and addictive substances, yet can go to prison for smoking weed.

Yet cigarettes and alcohol go hand in hand - until Uncle Mick got a hold of things and Nanny'ed the fuck out of the entire EU zone, the baldy little prick.

Cannabis isn't even physically addictive, yet trying to quit a nicotine addiction by contrast is pure physical and mental torture.

Well, I might argue that point base on the feeling of having no weed today and none on the way for at least a week, then my sleeping patterns are out the fucking window. I can't sleep a wink, and I use sleeping pills as a matter of course. An empty jar depresses me, so I make sure I'm always well stocked with more than I actually need in my stash-box. I'm holding around twenty-five to thirty grams of a few different strains. I label and date them, and mark which source I got it from by cryptic nicknames.

My current favourite is called 'Hairy' (as I marked it) and has lots of brown hairs as well as visible crystals emanating from the flowers. The name is a similiar name to his real name, but nobody else I know buys from him: I'm his number one customer and he's a gentleman. Always lets me know how things are going and when harvests are ready, no pissing around - call by, pick my items, weight it up, calculate the price, pay him and leave. It's a separate thing to our actual friendship and we never discuss it with others.

All it takes for me when trying to quit smoking is to see someone lighting up a cigarette on the television, and I'm back on them.

You should try the leaves, ask your supplier to give you the leftover leaves and stalks and tell him you're trying to quit nicotine.

Most people just dump the lot and forget about it - not me, I want it, I'll use it, and it'll be good for me.

Waste not - want not.

 

[David]

Is mixing tobacco with weed popular up in Finland? I always felt like it fucks up the flavour, though it's cheaper and a way to spread out whatever quantity you've got on you.

 

[Mowl]

Is mixing tobacco with weed popular up in Finland?

Depends whose company you're in.

The guys I'm working with at the moment all smoke their weed neat.

I can't do that without having a fit of coughing that'd wake the dead.

I do a fifty/fifty for stronger spliffs and maybe a sixty/forty for a regular mild high: I've never enjoyed being blitzed so much I can't think straight, my coordination is vital in the studio, so I don't smoke anything heavy until my work's done for the day. Then I can smoke whatever's going.

What I really miss is having a spliff and a cold beer in a nice city, do some people-watching and day-dreaming in good company.

Few of my Finnish ladies are smokers, and only one ever complained that I was. That's the lady I mentioned last week who read a paper at the United Nations HQ in New York. She works for KTL, the Finnish health research department. She was very sweet (and red hot - she's on of Ducati's 'ambassadors' for the annual motorbike expo, small in height, massive bazongas though.

Plus, she could go through half a bottle of gin before heading out to party - then give me a hard time about smoking a spliff so lightweight that nobody in the smoking room even noticed. So in the end I turfed her, it was getting too stupidly hypocritical to deal with.

I always felt like it fucks up the flavour, though it's cheaper and a way to spread out whatever quantity you've got on you.

I don't have any choice, really: whatever the strain is - it's usually too strong for me, straight weed in a spliff.

Sixty/forty weed/tobacco suits me fine.

It also makes me laugh when anyone in my crew (like Brandon last month: 'man, that's not even a spliff - half of it's tobacco') and yes, yes it is half tobacco. Is it supposed to make me more of a 'man' that it takes five grams a night to enjoy myself? Fuck that. I smoke only what I choose to. If other people want to throw all their spending power away getting utterly monged, then god luck to them.

I'm a cheap date, and I prefer it this way.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Yeah I could never do with smoking neat especially as I liked seriously strong strains. Always mixed in tobacco but that's because I was generally in company in a bar in the 'Dam and wanted to treat it like a cigarette. I used (and still do use) liquorice flavoured papers as I can't stand the ordinary papers. Couldn't be bothered rolling three and five paper mongers either so I'd just add in a line of nice weed to the baccy and drink coffee at the bar, or coca-cola or something which allowed me to mellow but not go half comatose. I could tell when I was getting it bang on because I could fade out to the music and fade back into the conversation without much grief.

Enough that I could stand and look at the Night Watch by Rembrandt and just be there for 40 minutes enjoying the painting at the Rijksmuseum. Timeslip.

 

[Mowl]

Yeah I could never do with smoking neat especially as I liked seriously strong strains. Always mixed in tobacco but that's because I was generally in company in a bar in the 'Dam and wanted to treat it like a cigarette. I used (and still do use) liquorice flavoured papers as I can't stand the ordinary papers.

My old man smoked liquorice papers too, they're disgusting to me, especially the after-taste that sticks around tainting everything. He also smoked a pipe for some years. Old Holborn was one tobacco and there was another one which was a solid cube of tobacco he used to chop up with a Swiss army knife and then line the bowl of the pipe with that one and fill the centre with Holborn. The scent was lovely, reminds me of summer afternoons in the back garden eating dinner outdoors in the sunshine.

The radio on the window ledge, Larry Gogan and Dave Fanning. The Old Man's large bottle of Guinness and the Mi-Wadi for the kids.

Amsterdam was a whole other story though. I stayed in a squat on De Oudeschaans, at the edge of the red light but a fifteen minute walk to Centraal Station. I followed and oriented myself using a triangular sense of where exactly I was: Centraal Station, Dam Square, and Rembrandtsplein. I worked in a bar called De Hoogt, which was very popular with the dub reggae fans, but we didn't sell weed, only beer, wine, coffees, and assorted munchies.

I got my weed from a German guy who also lived in the squat, he had a line to Jack Herer's infamous 'Sixteen' - a strain of weed (sixteenth generation, said to be the optimum generation) that could stop a charging bull at one hundred paces. Knock-out kind of stuff, but once you got used to it it was a lovely high. Five grams of Herer would last me a week back then, probably longer these days, heh!

Couldn't be bothered rolling three and five paper mongers either so I'd just add in a line of nice weed to the baccy and drink coffee at the bar, or coca-cola or something which allowed me to mellow but not go half comatose. I could tell when I was getting it bang on because I could fade out to the music and fade back into the conversation without much grief.

I miss that kind of buzz, especially in summertime when the streets were teeming with tourists.

I'd be eyeing the ladies but once in while you'd see some poor fool who smoked way too much of whatever weed stalking the streets wide-eyed and all freaked out. Used to crack me up. Usually younger lads over for the first experience of life in a free city. They'd end up getting mad drunk just to balance out the effects of the weed making them all paranoid and self conscious.

You just know by looking at them that they're going back to the hotel/hostel without their wallet and coat.

Enough that I could stand and look at the Night Watch by Rembrandt and just be there for 40 minutes enjoying the painting at the Rijksmuseum. Timeslip.

Yeah, that's a thing about Amsterdam visiting people rarely seem to get: it's one of Europe's most incredible cities for art and culture.

The diamond district is another interesting end of town.

The Vondelpark in summer: awesome, music everywhere, laughter, dancing, drinking, lying in the sun. Gigs every night at The Blue Note out by the Leidzplein. Paradiso club nights. The Bim Huis jazz club, best acoustics anywhere in the western world. The Slagwerk drumming school out on the streets busking their rehearsal sessions. Might as well make it pay, eh.

That's all in the hazy past now though, Amsterdam's not what she used to be.

She'll be even further from that period when the rest of the EU catches up with the blossoming availability of weed for those who choose it.

I'd even predict right now that the Irish version of whatever changes of legislation are handed down from Brussels will have a secret loop somewhere in it so the top lads get their cut before the Joe Dope in the streets even gets his first baggie. It'll be scammed to fuck and the underground scene will have a simple task in making their money before a dime in tax goes back to the state via the legal places to buy it.

Just as it is with Ireland's tobacco addiction: make the legit version so expensive that everyone turns to the street dealers for a cheaper import.

They'll make a hames of that like they do everything else.