Cypress Hill’s B Real Talks Opening His Medical-Marijuana Dispensary, New All-Star ‘Mixtape’ and ‘Ultimate Stoner Lineup’

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B-Real

 
Cypress Hill‘s B Real (whose real name is Louis Freese) has fame and money, but he still needed a lot of luck for his next business venture outside of music: a medical marijuana dispensary in Southern California’s Orange County.
The musician-actor-TV entrepreneur was one of six out of 630 applicants to win the right to open a dispensary in the O.C. It comes at a perfect time as he focuses on his Dr. Greenthumb world. The rapper recently took third prize for Best Sativa Flower in the Cannabis Cup in San Bernardino, Calif., and will be releasing The Prescription, a Dr. Greenthumb mixtape, featuring longtime friend Snoop Dogg,A$AP Ferg, AB-Soul and many more this week.
Billboard sat down with the Cypress veteran in his downtown L.A. studio to talk about his colliding passions of weed and music, what will make his dispensary different from others and hear stories on the greatest smokers he knows.
 
Full Article:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6473058/b-real-opens-medical-marijuana-dispensary-mixtape-cypress-hill

Why pot gives you ‘munchies’; what it means for HIV patients

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Choreograph | iStock | Getty Images
The same cells in the brain that usually help suppress appetite actually make you want to eat more … when you are stoned. Researchers at Yale University identified a set of brain cells that reverse their behavior when under the influence of cannabis, and say further research could help prevent malnourishment in severely ill patients who have lost their appetites.
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Paul Krassner honored by Veterans for Peace group

Denise Goolsby, The Desert Sun
Paul Krassner 3
(Photo: Denise Goolsby/The Desert Sun)
 
Paul Krassner, co-founder of the political activist group the Yippies and founder of America’s first adult satirical publication, The Realist, was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Veterans for Peace Jon Castro Chapter 19 at the group’s President’s Day awards luncheon Monday at Cimarron Golf Resort in Cathedral City.
Veterans for Peace of the Inland Empire — which celebrated its 10th anniversary Monday — is part of a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to abolishing war.
Krassner, 82, of Desert Hot Springs — who began publishing The Realist in 1958 — founded the Yippies (Youth International Party) with fellow political and social activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s was an outspoken antiwar advocate who was on the FBI list of radicals during the Vietnam War.
Krassner is the author of numerous works, including the books,”Pot Stories for the Soul: An Updated Edition for Stoned Adventures” and “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture.”
Lanny Swerdlow, a local medical marijuana advocate, introduced Krassner by way of a witty three-minute riff lamenting the decline of pot use since the ’60s — blaming today’s troubles on yesterday’s activists — seeking respectable careers — who decided to forgo weed.

 Lanny Swerdlow introduces counter-culture icon Paul Krassner at Veterans for Peace event, Feb. 16, 2015 Denise Goolsby/The Desert Sun

“We wouldn’t be in the mess we are today if we kept on smoking marijuana as much as we did in the ’60s — and Paul Krassner and I were two of the people who never stopped smoking pot,” Swerdlow said as the crowd laughed.
 
Full Article:
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/02/16/paul-krassner-desert-hot-springs/23534777/

Infamous pot outlaw turns focus to utilitarian hemp

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Donnie Clark, right, shared a prison cell with his son Duane after both were convicted in a legendary marijuana bust.  HERALD-TRIBUNE ARCHIVE
 

Prison never bothered Donnie Clark, the pot-growing legend from the swamps of Myakka City whose mischievous life reads like the lyrics to a twangy country music song on a scratchy AM radio station.

He would take long naps in a cell he shared with his son, the younger inmates always treated him with respect, and he had nothing but time to devour all the books he could read.

Clark read over 750 while serving life without parole in a maximum security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana in the 1990s. His crime: conspiracy to grow marijuana.

Ironically, one of the books he read was about President Clinton, who surprisingly commuted Clark’s sentence in 2001 and sent him back to Manatee County, where his first meal as a free man was cow intestines.

Another book Clark read in prison, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” opened Clark’s eyes to the many uses of industrial hemp. There was a time when Clark was one of the best marijuana growers in the country — the father of the infamous “Myakka Gold,” a strain so popular it was showcased in the centerfold of “High Times” magazine — but above all he was a highly skilled farmer, which is why he believes so strongly in industrial hemp.

Full Article:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20150217/ARTICLE/150219711

Tour a SF cannabis dispensary with Google View

by Oscar Pascual

Berkeley’s Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Win Big in Federal Court

Leafly

 
When federal prosecutors tried to shut down the oldest medical dispensary, not just in Berkeley, but in the entire state of California, the city of Berkeley decided to fight back. Berkeley Patients Group was founded in 1999 and has long been a model for safe access, even as it grew and gained popularity as well as financial success. In 2012, when U.S. Attorney General Melinda Haag moved to seize all assets and close the dispensary’s doors, the city of Berkeley decided that this aggression would not stand and sued to block the forfeiture, arguing that the city would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of one of the most respected legal cannabis dispensary in the community. And wonder of wonders, the city of Berkeley won! Federal authorities ruled in favor of the city and Berkeley Patients Group won the right to serve the community and its patients. It’s a beautiful day in Berkeley!
In addition to this ruling, California’s medical marijuana law may be been expanding, with the recent introduction of HR 262, to protect medical marijuana assets from civil forfeiture, andAssembly Bill 266, which would serve to regulate the vastly unregulated medical marijuana market in California.
 
Full Article:
http://www.leafly.com/news/headlines/leafly-cannabis-legalization-update-2-17-2015
 
 
 

Columbia Professor Blasts Media for Parroting Biased Pot Science

By David Downs

Carl Hart.
 
Carl Hart, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, blasted shoddy national reporting on cannabis science during a speech in San Francisco on Sunday, noting how reporters fail to add context to cherry-picked findings.
The problem is not scientists over-interpreting results, so much as it is drug war profiteers and lazy members of the press, he said in a keynote address at the International Cannabis Business Conference.
 
Full Article:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2015/02/17/columbia-professor-blasts-media-for-parroting-biased-pot-science

A Nice Bowl of Weed – Vanity Fair Magazine

Aside from High Times and the Denver Post’s nascent Cannabist section, there are few knowledgeable resources for the marijuana connoisseur. The former suffers from a giggle-and-cough vibe—if High Times were a magazine for drinkers, it would offer the best methods for stealing from your parents’ liquor cabinet—while the latter assumes too credulous a readership. Yes, under ideal testing conditions (HEPA-filtered room, virgin vaporizer, Neti-potted nose) Afghan Kush may indeed offer notes of cardamom, but this occasional cannaphile suspects the emperor wears no hemp clothes.
 
Full Article:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/02/10-rules-for-smoking-weed
 

Colorado florists working marijuana flowers into bud bouquets

By , The Cannabist Staff

 

There’s no holiday more cliché than Valentine’s Day, and there’s no gift more cliché than red roses. But in the new world of legalized marijuana, bud bouquets are now a reality, which might just make us reconsider. 

The concept of incorporating cannabis into floral design was officially introduced this past summer in a New York Times trend-spotting piece on marijuana at weddings in Colorado and Washington State. Denver Highlands-based Plum Sage Flowers was featured for its cannabis inspired florals at the request of couple Lauren Meisels and Bradley Melshenker. As an award-winning, event-focused florist, owner Erin Hornstein says her goal is “to create flowers that complement our clients’ preferred aesthetic. It was important to them that we included the plant … we did, and it was fun and gorgeous! But this isn’t something we’re specifically aiming to do.”

One florist slightly ahead of the trend is Buds & Blossoms owner Bec Koop. After getting her start in the biz at her mother’s Washington D.C.-area flower shop, Koop is now based out of her eco-friendly home studio in Centennial, Colo., where she creates custom arrangements for weddings and special events, often featuring marijuana flowers. As a part-time budtender atHigh Country Healing in Alma, Colo., Koop started experimenting with marijuana and traditional flowers in 2013.

Full Article:

http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/02/11/marijuana-flowers-bud-bouquets-weddings-valentines-colorado-washington/29477/