Well, it's almost over. My class at TMCC called "Welcome to Wonderland-The Golden Age of Psychedelia '65-'67," which wraps up on Wednesday the 18th. This is the second time I've conducted this nostalgic bus ride back to a time that was just a little more remarkable than most, and it leaves me with some unanswered questions. In the class, we re-live the lysergically enhanced music of that rich era (Beach Boys, Stones, Beatles, Dylan, Pink Floyd, etc.) that's now 50 years old. Fifty freakin' years! [continues 418 words]
On June 3, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd blew a lot of minds when she wrote about her experience in Colorado with one of the newly legal pot-laced candy bars now available there. What made it memorable was that Maureen got rocked hard by her stony treat. "I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. ... I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. ... I was thirsty but couldn't move to get water. ... I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me" and so on and so forth. [continues 460 words]
It's time for this state to join the 21st century. It's time for the state to stop pretending that it's 1939, the age of Reefer Madness. It's time for this state to pull its big dumb head out of its big dumb ostrich hole and establish a sane, civilized, and eventually lucrative system of dispensaries for medical marijauna. The citizens of Nevada approved the use of medical marijuana many years ago (2000 was the second time the MM initiative was passed, and it did so with 67 percent of the vote). But the legal reality that has evolved in the years after the initiative's passage is a typically murky one: Nevadans with a medical marijuana permit may grow their own pot (7 plants max), but they may not buy it. And no entity is allowed to sell weed to those with permits. [continues 345 words]
