Alcohol and cannabis: strange bedfellows indeed. Often discussed (and partaken) together, these ubiquitous inebriants couldn’t be more different. One is a toxin and the other a sort of skeleton key to one of the body’s most critical systems. Yet the two remain intimately linked in culture, business, and even public policy, with frequent calls to…
My friend Arsenio can’t stop talking about flies. It’s all he talks about. He’s convinced there are more flies in his yard today than there were yesterday. He texts me a video he took of a swarm near the fence marking the boundary between his property and his neighbor’s. I watch it and count eight…
Excerpted from Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana—Medical, Recreational and Scientific. A grapevine and a cannabis plant are depicted side-by-side on a bas-relief from a ruined Roman temple at Baalbek in Lebanon’s fertile Bekaa Valley. One of the world’s sweet spots for growing cannabis, this region is also known for its fine wines. It…
Dr. Sunil Aggarwal Research into the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD, depression, addictions, and other conditions is rapidly gaining momentum. At the forefront of this effort are several prestigious medical and educational institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, New York University Langone Medical Center, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the USA, and the…
Since the 1960s, cannabis consumers have distinguished between two kinds of herb: Indica and Sativa. But this framework is flawed – problematic at best, arbitrary and misleading at worst. And while some producers and providers are beginning to rethink their use of these terms, in large part this nomenclature remains ubiquitous within both legal and…