Curiouser and Curiouser Cannabis Politics

If you were in Oregon on Sunday watching the heart-wrenching hour-long 60 Minutes program on 9/11 and the terrible toll it took on the FDNY, you would have seen an ad funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee slamming OR Congresswoman Val Hoyle for her association with the cannabis company La Mota while serving as OR’s labor commissioner. La Mota is under investigation by the FBI and the huge scandal around it lead to the resignation of Oregon’s Secretary of State. 

Hoyle responded to the ad when it first appeared, and a counter ad that aired just after the NRCC one on 60 Minutes featured a firefighter talking about Hoyle’s advocacy for workers. (A second appearance of the NRCC ad on the program went unrebutted.)

Hoyle has apparently been a friend in Congress, tweeting out support  for the cannabis industry when former NFLer and cannabis entrepreneur Ricky Williams visited her office in June. She seems to face scant competition from her “Young Gun” Republican challenger who has now called for a federal investigation into Hoyle and La Mota; still, it’s disturbing that NRCC would attack a Congressperson on this basis, even as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris now squabble about who is the bigger legalization supporter. 

"Bob Marley: One Love" Tells Rita's Story Too

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita in "One Love"

The biopic "Bob Marley: One Love," co-produced by several members of Marley's family, tells his and his wife Rita's story in a moving way seldom seen on film. 

Producers include Rita Marley, their oldest son David "Ziggy" (whose nickname means "little spliff"), and daughter Cedella (a cannabis cookbook author and musician). Stephen Marley, the couple's third child, was the film's music supervisor. Also involved as an executive producer, along with Brad Pitt, was Orly Agai Marley, a music industry executive who is married to Ziggy. 

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

Christian conservatives have gone on the attack about protecting their children against a segment during last night's Olympics opening ceremony in Paris depicting what was seen as a Last Supper-like tableau with a Goddess in the center and Dionysus served up on a plate. 

“[The Last Supper] is not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious," production designer Thomas Jolly said, [in translation]. "There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity.’”  

“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”

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. 

Of Usha, Kamala, and the Hindu Kush

J.D. and Usha Vance at their Hindu wedding. 

Both our Vice President (and now likely Presidential candidate) Kamala Harris and Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance, have roots in the Hindu religion, which has sacred connections to cannabis. 

"The academic study of Indic religions, and of yoga, has been intimately tied to questions regarding the role of psychoactive substances from an early stage. This is particularly with respect to soma, a sacred beverage utilized within the Vedic tradition," writes Stuart Ray Sarbacker, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at Oregon State University, in his paper "Psychoactives and Psychedelics in Yoga: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Culture."

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 revered as a sacred beverage and as a deity, said to confer visionary experience and immortality upon the brāhmaṇa who ritually consumes it. 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."

Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn & Judy Osburn write in their book Green Gold The Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion, "Descriptions of haoma, or soma, list it as yellow or gold-like in color, the color of ripe cannabis in the Middle East and India. Source material on the subject also tells us that 'the intoxicating juice of the haoma herb found on their mountain slopes' grew in the Hindu Kush mountains and valleys, a place that is still famed for its powerful ganja."

Harris (top left) wearing a sari. 

"Cannabis use is a part of mainstream Hindu practice, prevalent during Mahāśivarātri, Durgā Pūjā, and other festivals [including Diwali] in the consumption of bhaṅgā, a mixture of cannabis, milk, and spices, which augments the festival spirit," writes Sarbacker. "Routine cannabis use is extensive among renouncer (sādhu and sādhvī) communities in India as a sacramental substance and a social glue. Some Sādhus and Sādhvīs are said to follow, per Bevilacqua, the so-called 'chillumchai' diet—combining the mildly psychedelic effect of Indian cannabis with the stimulation of tea with sugar and spices. One study found that among a subset of Sādhus present at the Paśupatināth temple in Nepal, virtually all used cannabis regularly, with a high percentage reporting its use as a support for meditation."

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 over the weekend. 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. 

Embarc, the fair’s partner on the project, is hosting a dispensary and 30,000-square-foot outdoor consumption lounge space at Cal Expo, allowing fair-goers who are 21 and older to buy and try award-winning cannabis. The company operates several cannabis retailers in California and has hosted cannabis consumption spaces at festivals like Outside Lands in San Francisco. 

This is the third year the Fair has featured a cannabis exhibit and competition, but the first year that sales and consumption are allowed. This year, outside the CBD-only cannabis exhibit hall at the Fair is a "cannabis oasis," where cannabis flower and products can be purchased, and drinks and edibles can be consumed. At one end of the "oasis" fair-goers can purchase cannabis products from Embarc or, at the other end, from a group of cannabis equity companies from across the state (shown). Customers can then walk down a path to the consumption space and enjoy their purchases with others inside a huge tent. Shade, misters, and fans provide relief from the heat in both spaces, and the exhibit space is air-conditioned. 

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 Thursday's Presidential Debacle (aka Debate) may well have lead to Biden trying to perform without Jacking Up, with disastrous results for the Democrats, and the country. 

In his usual Teflonic and ironic fashion, The Donald managed to skirt the issue of the long list of performance-and-other drugs given out like candy at his White House, and the persistent accusations that he's the one on drugs. That he offered to take such a test himself means nothing, considering that he has no compunction about cheating on elections, his wives, and almost everything else. The fact that his plan was backed by former White House doctor Ronny (as in Reagan) Jackson (whose name Trump got wrong while bragging about passing the cognitive tests he administered), makes me wonder if his dastardly plan was to have Dr. Johnson-Jackson administer the tests, duly bribed to provide a negative result for Trump. 

Leading up to the debate, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow laughed heartily at Chis Hayes's pronouncement that, "If performance drugs make you a better debater and president, I'm all for them." My twitter feed ruminated a bit on that, pointing out that it's "too bad the performance enhancers Trump is on make him even more delusional, narcissistic and evil." 

Then Jon Stewart, who appeared live post-debate, nailed the thought as only he can (because, Great Heads Think Alike):

Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

A new book, Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year by Paul Alexander details the last year of the beloved singer, and is full of flashbacks to her earlier life and career that set the stage for the tragedy of a life ended too soon on July 17, 1959 at the age of 44. 

After stints performing with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, Holiday opened the Café Society, the first non-segregated nightclub in New York City, and did the two-year residency there that shot her to fame.  The surveillance of Holiday by the FBI and the BNE (Bureau of Narcotics) started not long after she began her residency there. It intensified after she began singing "Strange Fruit," a song about a lynching. Barney and Leon Josephson, who owned the club, were considered shills for the Communist Party and were later prosecuted. 

Holiday's political views, as well as her drug use, made her a target for surveillance. Talking about "Strange Fruit" and "the Jim Crow–sanctioned racism that motivated her to sing it," she publicly said, "That's what made me a communist. Everybody should be a communist—not like the communists you meet at benefits and rallies, though. Not that stuff, at all. But we should all believe in treating each other as human beings. Everybody should have the chance to eat and sleep in peace." Like others in the African-American community at the time, it was the Communist Party's stance on racial equality that won her support, writes Alexander.  

Bitter Crop recounts that Holiday "had smoked marijuana since she was a teenager" and that "she particularly enjoyed sneaking off from Café Society between sets to smoke a reefer while driving around the city in a taxi." It was mostly men who took her down into heroin, starting by smoking opium with her husband Jimmy Monroe, whom she married in 1941. When Truman Capote saw her perform at the time, he wrote of "my most beloved American singer—then, now, forever....Billie, an orchid in her hair, her drug-dimmed eyes shifting in the cheap lavender light, her mouth twitching out the words."