Top 10 Tokin' Woman Reads from 2024

1. Trump Chief of Staff Pick Worked for PR Firm that Represents Trulieve Cannabis

Donald Trump has named as his Chief of Staff pick Floridian and longtime Republican operative Susie Wiles, which will make her the first woman to hold that position. 

According to the New York Times, Wiles worked for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm. According to their website, Ballard represents Trulieve, the mega cannabis company whose female CEO Kim Rivers reportedly met with Trump just before he announced he would be voting in favor of Florida's measure to legalize cannabis on the November ballot. Read more. 

2. Did Trump Plan to Cheat on A Pre-Debate Drug Test? 

Gotta admit Trump is something of an evil genius: his ploy to call for a mutual workplace employment drug test before June's Presidential Debate may well have lead to Biden trying to perform without Jacking Up, with disastrous results for the Democrats, and the country. Read more. 

3. Curiouser and Curiouser Cannabis Politics

Among the bizarre political incidents this year, Trump met with the 95-year-old mother of Butler, PA–born schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who has served three years of a 14-year sentence in Russian for bringing a small amount of medical marijuana into the country, just before the candidate spoke at the rally where a sniper shot at him before he could say Marc's name.  Read more. 

4. Of Usha, Kamala, and the Hindu Kush 

Both our Vice President / Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice President-elect JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis. 

University of Oregon professor Stuart Ray Sarbacker writes, Dr. Sarbacker continues, "The role and nature of the beverage referred to as soma in the Vedic tradition of fire sacrifice (yajña) and its purported psychoactivity has been thoroughly investigated within and outside of Indology. ... Soma is identified as amṛta, literally the elixir of 'nondeath,' of immortality, a name resonating through the millennia of later Hindu narrative and discourse. There are various hypotheses as to the botanical identity of soma, some of the leading candidates being ephedra, peganum harmala (Syrian rue), cannabis, poppy, mead or wine, ergot, amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric mushroom), psilocybe cubensis (Magic Mushroom), and an ayahuasca analog." Read more. 

5. Connie Chung Comments on Marijuana Strain Named for Her in New Memoir 

In Connie: A Memoir, Connie Chung, who broke through stereotypes and stigmas as an Asian woman newscaster starting in the 1960s, reflects on and meets with the "Connie Generation" of Asian women named in her honor. She then rather surprisingly ends the book: 

As gratifying as the Connie Generation is, I have one more distinction of superior recognition. There is a strain of weed named after me. Yes, a strain of marijuana named Connie Chung. I have not a clue how it came about. I tried smoking marijuana in college, and unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. However, still being a straight [pun intended?] arrow, I am not a weed smoker, not that there's anything wrong with it. Read more. 

6. California State Fair Allows Cannabis Sales and Consumption For the First Time

California took the historic step of allowing cannabis sales and consumption at its State Fair in Sacramento in July. The historic move drew a large crowd of enthusiasts and curious folks from across California for the opening weekend, with opportunities to sample and enjoy award-winning cannabis strains and products throughout the month. Read more. 

7. Molly Tuttle, Brandy Clark and Patti Smith Rock Hardly Strictly Blue-Grass

The Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free music festival, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park through the generosity of investment banker/banjo player Warren Hellman, tends to have its musical acts comment on being in the city once called Yerba Buena. Read more. 

8. Dionysian Tableau at Paris Olympics Shocks Christian Conservatives Who Forget Their Past

Those who could only see the Last Supper in the tableau are forgetting or were never taught their history (not to mention their herstory): Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy, was by some accounts the son of the grain goddess Demeter of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries. Those mysteries saw yearly pilgrimages of the faithful to experience communion with each other via the sacrament kykeon, thought to be a psychedelic potion. Read more. 

9. 100 Years of Surrealism, A Movement Inspired by Cannabis? 

Surrealism, the trippy art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I, traces its roots to the publication of André Breton's essay Manifeste du surréalisme, published in October 1924. Female surrealist artists include Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo. Read more. 

10. Tiffany Haddish Named Tokin' Woman of the Year; More Tokey Awards Annnounced

Also see: Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2024.