The Life of a Pot Critic for the Denver Post
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The problem with this is, outside of places like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, under the guise of medical marijuana its now more important for the specific review of a flower that can be reproduced by the grower. Ugh, I am just saying, these reviews are specifically of the nug that guy smoked not of the overall strain but they pretend it is of the overall strain.
The reviews most certainly are not about a strain (in the horticultural sense) but a strain and the grower.
I guess there are magazines that make reviews about a certain strain from a certain seed bank but this one says that it's not excluding the effect of the grower. Ie. this one is comparing the product from a specific vendor to another.
Another interesting issue is that it's not only assessing the taste but the effects too. That's certainly not the case in e.g. wine tasting but perhaps more so in evaluating coffee (or tea).
Perhaps in the future we'll see the marijuana landscape settle down into a few widely recognized and harvested strains, with different growers touting their harvests and growing techniques over those of others.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas...
> Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.
> Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.
> The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBi9PfZve84
(I had to dig around to find out where I found this; it turned out to be a link entry on Daring Fireball, May 2013.)
For a local newspaper in Denver, an article that says "Go down to ye ol mary pub, and get this nug its the bomb" will be relevant for most who read it.
If you read it online from Flordia, and then buy the "same" Lemon Skunk from your street dealer in Orlando, of course you are going to end up with a different product...
So here's what makes me think so hard about this: All the experience that qualified him for his job was, for lack of a better term, in a "grey market" - what I mean by this is while the Medical System was established, due to it being officially still banned by the Federal Government, he was breaking the law. Not Colorado law. Federal "if you send this across state lines you are forever ruined" Law, right?
Fate is cruel. There are, without a doubt, thousands of young men who are easily as qualified with the product, whom are locked behind bars. This is inefficient. You don't want Maureen "Serious Journalist Doesn't Take Marijuana Seriously" Dowd as an ambassador, you want an educated, intelligent person (in agreement with the article here).
I've not got a lot more to add on this subject, other than I find it very, very strange that it was, relatively speaking, so easy to get the job. I have an actual writing degree, an advanced degree in education, and spent the first couple years of my life watching nearly every job posting reveal inflated expectations for qualifications and/or experience.
That is a very real problem, so maybe I'm partially just grumbling that it was so easy for him, whereas getting a, you know, "real" white-collar job means the Secretary needs a Bachelors and minimum 5 years experience for a salary of $37,000 in a major metropolitan city. This may seem extreme (especially to STEM professionals) but it's genuinely true, and if it isn't a problem in your industry - or not debilitating - be vigilant so it does not.
"Fine Scotch critic Maureen Down drinks 750ml bottle of Macallan 18, concludes alcohol should be illegal"
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-dont-harsh-ou...
OTOH, maybe he needs to burn the pot to taste it after smoking tobacco! It's like a wine critic eating salsa between tastings.
I suppose any studies with regard to tobacco might have some relevancy, but marijuana isn't tobacco. It's a very complex plant and I wish the states that legalized it had included funding for clinical studies in their statutes.
And certainly he should not be smoking cigarettes! The comparison to a wine critic eating salsa is quite apt.
But your point about the lack of research is a good one. Unfortunately the federal government makes it very, very hard to conduct legitimate cannabis research in this country.
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8446
>To assess the effect of reductions in air pollution from biomass smoke on daily mortality.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22302628
>The authors tracked changes in children's respiratory health during a wood stove intervention
Cannabis and marijuana are more neutral terms, whereas the connotation of slang terms like 'pot' is usually slightly derogatory. You rarely see the word 'booze' used the same way in similar news pieces - not that it never happens, but it's nowhere near as common.
Except for the kids. They call it "weed". Which is a bit confusing because "weed" used to mean the cheap stuff and "pot" the good stuff.
A few people called it "dope" 25-30 years ago, but that didn't last. Before that it was "grass", but that really was the bad cheap stuff, ten dollars a lid (an ounce of leaves in a baggie with the flap sealed by spit) from Mexico.
The dispensaries and producers seem to prefer "cannabis" - there's Buddy's Cannabis for example - or "medical marijuana", but never just "marijuana".
In fact, the dispensaries never call it "pot" either. It's "medicine" or "flowers", or just referred to by the name of the specific strain.
Now the kids are calling it "weed", "tree", "dro", "bomb", "doja" (Southern), "piff" (NY), "gas" (Cali), "Keyshia" (Atlanta / mid West) and a million others. Worse stuff is usually called "mid" or "brick".
We need to stop throwing people in prison for using heroin and cocaine. But if the only alternative is to put someone in the business of getting people addicted to heroin...Well, why should we accept that dilemma?
We need to find a third way, in between drugs being illegal, and them being a marketable product like any other. And shit like this isn't helping.
It's just not an actual problem. By all means, forbid advertising like most places do with tobacco. But there's little harm in it becoming a legal commercial product.
If anything, presenting high-bar critiques has the potential to reduce abuse of cannabis by focusing on quality over quantity.
"The new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. However, the offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than ten days' supply of that substance."
Then we outlaw that like tobacco advertising is outlawed in most countries. But companies selling weed to us isn't actually a problem. In fact it's better than unregulated black-market sales.
>> We need to stop throwing people in prison for using heroin and cocaine. But if the only alternative is to put someone in the business of getting people addicted to heroin...Well, why should we accept that dilemma?
Why would that be the only alternative? Look at the Portuguese model.
>> We need to find a third way, in between drugs being illegal, and them being a marketable product like any other.
We already have this third way for alcohol and tobacco in most places.
>> And shit like this isn't helping.
Neither is the use of the term 'drugs', nor the idea that we necessarily have to treat them all the same.
edit: Are you questioning the possibility of heroin being regulated as pot is in Colorado. or are you questioning pot being regulated in Colorado like beer has been regulated for the past century? I'm confused by your intention.
Marijuana is as addictive as potatoes. The fact that you even mention heroin in your post shows you clearly have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
Alcohol is way more addictive and dangerous than pot and we have a huge craft brewing and tasting culture in this country.
If you know absolutely nothing about a subject, for the love of god, please stop and think before you hit reply. You're not contributing at all by posting when you know nothing about the subject.
Maybe we disagree on how addictive potatoes are? Marijuana is fairly addictive, with about 9% of users becoming addicted.[1]
Alcohol's quite addictive too. I don't know whether it's more or less so than marijuana. But with alcohol, we have what we have. If I were designing policy and we didn't have the drinking culture that we do, I'd be hoping we wouldn't end up here.
All I'm saying is this: it's actually a bad thing if lots more people end up smoking lots more weed. It's bad in two ways. One, it's bad intrinsically, because I do think that smoking weed three or four times a week demotivates you and keeps you from getting your shit done. Two, we need to learn how to legalise drugs without use increasing massively, because we've got a lot more drugs to legalise.
[1] Number pulled from the summary here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-tha... , citing research here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3371269/ . I haven't read the paper, but I do trust this blog a lot.
Nice straw man, but it falls down when you actually look at the rates of usage in places with legalization. For instance, The Netherlands, where the toking habits are somewhat safer than in San Francisco [0].
[0]: http://www1.ucsc.edu/currents/03-04/05-03/drug_study.html
Colorado's full legalization has barely existed long enough to consider it a valid sample, but the state's Department of Public Health and Environment has found that use among high school students has gone down since legalization [0]. That's certainly an encouraging trend.
All I really would ask is that you back up the claims you make with facts rather than just sharing your assumptions.
[0]: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/07/pot-use-among...
What did you expect? I thought it was common knowledge that the weed market would be basically swept up by companies that operate like Marlboro (and as soon as it's legal nationwide, just watch all the cigarette companies turn to weed companies)