photo courtesy tumblr.com
How can I make hash from pot?
There's a great recipe on erowid.com (an all-around great resource for information on psychoactives) for making a solvent-extracted hash from your leftover buds. I'll give you a quick summary. Step 1: Crush your marijuana into a fine powder. Step 2: Toss it into a jar with 100% pure isopropyl alcohol so the alcohol covers the powder. Step 3: Put the jar in a warm dark place for anywhere from a few hours to a few days to soak. Step 4: Pour through a fine kitchen strainer or coffee filter and put what remains into a glass bowl. Step 5: Evaporate the liquid by leaving it out someplace warm. You could heat it gently, but be super careful if you do. It's very FLAMMABLE. No open flames, please, if you want to keep your eyebrows at least. Step 6: Scrape the tar up with a razor blade (hence the glass bowl). Step 7: If it's too sticky, add some of the dry, crushed-pot powder (hopefully you saved a little) and play with it until it's the consistency of silly putty. And, voila. You have made hash, you little drug chef you.
Why are California dispensaries being forced to close? I thought it was supposed to be the most liberal state of all.
The problem this time is completely federal, which comes as a surprise since two years ago U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, “It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana.” (New York Times, Oct.19, 2009)
But he did go on to say, “We will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” and this seems to be the gist of their current retaliation, or at least the excuse for it. The offensive is allegedly targeted against the big-box drug cultivators and sellers who exploit medical marijuana laws for massive amounts of profit, not the mom and pop shops or the patients.
An Oct. 7 article in the Times supports this: “Large commercial operations cloak their money-making activities in the guise of helping sick people when they are in fact helping themselves,” said Benjamin B. Wagner, a United States attorney in Sacramento who is taking action against landlords who rent to the offenders. “Our interest is in enforcing federal criminal law, not prosecuting seriously ill sick people and those who are caring for them.”
It seems like a reasonable claim, but the fear is that inevitably, innocent people are going to end up having their lives ruined in the crossfire, since the federal government is the entity that decides who to target. This is the scary part. That sort of thing never goes well. Marijuana activists are now put in a tricky spot, because though we may not approve of WalMart-like drug dealers making millions selling us weed any more than endorse the real WalMart, we find ourselves forced to defend them so as not to lose any of the ground we've gained, and so that no law-abiding citizen has to live in fear of being thrown in jail.
The ultimate resolution of all this is becoming more and more clear. We need to nip this problem in the bud, as it were, on a federal level, specifically on HR 2306: The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011, for starters. We've got to go straight to the top and cut the head off the prohibition monster.
Send questions to highconcept@newmassmedia.com
