Congratulations on being the first website I have found that gives emphatic attention to the problem of youngsters getting addicted to tobacco through the pushing of "joints" containing a mixture of cannabis and tobacco.

1. Something I have not yet found mentioned in your presentation, which might fit in the sections "So why do people mix the herb with this 'evil weed' (tobacco)" and "Why haven't things changed?"--

a. The tobacco industry has funneled sneaky money into movies, pop music etc. to reward producers who present this idea of "mixing with tobacco"-- most recently, in the 90's, the "blunt" (cannabis rolled in nicotinous cigar wrappers). Big Tobackgo is aware of the synergy of cannabis and tobacco and exploits it. The health and/or personality damage is then blamed on the cannabis.

b. The government (everywhere) is getting so much tax money out of the sale of tobacco cigarets that it willingly goes along with the TOBACKGO agenda to keep cannabis illegal by any means whatever. For example, tobacco tax revenues are 10% of the Pakistan govt. budget.

2. In ascending order, the two worst nightmares of Big Tobackgo are:

B. Millions of cigaret addicts might, through free unhindered use of cannabis, succeed in kicking the nicotine habit, or, WORSE,

A. With cannabis legalization, safer methods of use-- vapouriser, one-hitters-- now dangerous to possess for legal reasons, would become freely available not only to cannabis users but to cigaret addicts, resulting in a drastic drop in sales of tobacco (a properly designed one-hitter or single-toke utensil can accommodate 25 mg. servings compared to 700 mg. per hot burning overdose cigaret). Imagine 28 smokes a day while using up ONE cigaret! There goes their profit margin.

3. In ascending order, the two worst nightmares of Big Pharma are:

B. Marijuana can replace numerous highly profitable drugs, and WORSE,

A. After cannabis legalization, bringing de facto legalization of vapouriser and one-hitters, a sudden drastic drop in cigaret-induced diseases (due to nicotine users adopting safe procedures in imitation of the cannabis users) couldproduce a drastic drop in sales of drugs used to treat tobacco-related illnesses.

4. Harm reduction and How to smoke cannabis without tobacco

Consider expanding these sections to include descriptions of "small one-toke varieties" of smoking pipes, including both traditional ones such as Japanese KISERU and middle-eastern MIDWAKH (which can be viewed on the Wikipedia), and numerous ways, including diagrams, of making one's own out of a 1/4"(6 mm)-i.d. socket-wrench or hose-nipple or various other plentiful materials found in every neigthborhood.



A. The aim should be to provide a 25 mg. serving size-- 40 servings per gram, over 900 from an ounce of herb after sifting through a 1/16th inch mesh screen sifter. (The uniform particle size guarantees minimum burning temperature so long as user sucks as slowly as possible; standard toke 5-10 seconds.)

B. In order to use sifted herb, a 40-mesh screen is needed to be nested in the crater at a depth of 3/16" (5 mm) protecting against particles being drawn down into the channel.

C. Encourage use of a butane lighter instead of matches, in order to light with very brief touches of flame and then, once it is going, to tap the top of your utensil shaking the glowing material down into the crater so that it burns completely without sucking harder and raising the burning temperature. This conserves THC, thus prevents need for more and more tokes, thus reducing carbon monoxide exposure! (Something the tobacco companies don't want anyone to know.)

D. Long draw tube (as stated in your article) so smoke cools down before reaching your trachea.

E. Optional: use of a Y-shaped draw tube system so two partners draw at once. Advantage: each draws twice as slow, getting half the heat impact. Serve more tokes if needed.

F. Breathbonnet: breathe in and out of a paper or plastic bag dozens of times. Because lungs can not absorb all THC on one inhalation, this is a chance to capture the rest of it, and escape the need for more (expensive) additional tokes, additional carbon monoxide etc.

5. Vapouriser

The above data about one-hitters is needed because of the present-day rareness and expense of vapourisers, which however is subject to change with the onrush of technology.

Given the immense population of hot burning overdose nicotine cigaret addicts (1.2 billion worldwide), consider the following draft of a Vapouriser Marshall Plan (for those who have forgotten, that's a program whereby the U.S. taxpayer funded European reconstruction after WWII):

The U.S. NORML has endorsed the top-of-the-line Volcano Vapouriser (Storz und Bickel, Tuttlingen) @ L.400 or so (cheaper brands exist too). Imagine a one-time world-wide purchase of L.600 bil. to provide every confessed nicotine addict on the planet with a Volcano (that's about equal to the cost of one year of Iraq war). Maybe for another L.100 bil. every riefer user can get one too? Look up the WHO figures for the economic cost of TOBACCOLOSIS worldwide and it's not so unreasonable. Obviously the industry will fight it tooth and nail, but maybe your website can get there first with agitation in favor of it and stir things up.

Oh, by the way, maybe each recipient can get a booklet showing how they can make one-hitters, in case they need something cheap and handy to take along on the bike trip.

Thanks for this, some good points.

Tokepure is due for an update soonish. A new flyer would be good as well

Derek

Webteam UKCIA

Thanks Derek for your words of encouragement.

1. Visitors to google punching up "Cannabis smoking" will see your website listed on the first page of ten search results, and also (always first) the Wikipedia article "Cannabis smoking". I would urge you to take a close look at the Wikipedia articles on "Cannabis smoking", "Cannabis(drug)", etc. and note the coverage of "mixing with tobacco" and other issues. You should work out ways to get a <ref> to your website into these articles so some of the misinformation can be refuted.

As you may guess I have experienced some frustrations with other editors (I would say, useful idiots for Big Tobackgo) erasing some of my contributions, which is par for the course and you can learn how to handle it and sneak truth in where they're not looking. The editing history of each article is available by clicking on "History" and well worth studying.

Each Wikipedia article has an adjoining talk page (click "Discussion") where you can enter suggestions for what should be in the article, and your contribution is not likely to be erased. Of course there may be a hundredth as many readers on the talk page but still worth pursuing.

2. Your Search Results listing on google for "Cannabis smoking" may not be what you intended. Your site says: "Smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco has been the way cannabis has been used in the UK for some time, but it's not a good idea." The google listing mixes in part of another heading and offers:

Tobacco methods Smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco has been the way...

Well, I think you'll agree with me that that almost sounds like an acknowledgement, or even a PME positive mention endorsement, of the very thing you intended to warn against. (See my attack on BLF below.)

3. Your link to "Forum" on the menu page has a warning message, "Sorry, this is temporarily off line." I clicked anyway and was rewarded, but maybe you are losing many participants who don't try, please look into it.

4. Re efforts of P.M. Gordon Brown to crack down on cannabis because it is "stronger": in 2007 John Walters, director of Office of National Drug Control Policy US, pushed this theory and Dr. Mitch Earleywine replied: "Stronger cannabis leads to less inhaled smoke." What better reason than to promote anti-overdose utensils?

Thanks for that feeedback, I've changed the smoking page first line which now says " Smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco isn't a good idea, although it's been the way cannabis has been used in the UK for some time." It'll take a while for Google to notice though.

And thanks for the heads up on the "offline" comment on the contact page. That was a hangover form the problems we had a few months back when ukcia moved server and everything stopped working.

I must admit I don't give wickipedia as much attention as it demands, I'll have a look at it. But I found from experience the anti tobacco campaign is not very popular with a lot of old skool cannabis activists, probably because they are heavy tobacco smokers of course. I went very much against the grain with Tokepure...

Thanks

Derek

Webteam UKCIA

continuing message of June 12...

5. BLF lied, addicts died

Another google "search results" listing near the UKCIA one (in the first ten) for "cannabis smoking" is about a BLF-sponsored 2002 study which is quoted as finding cannabis at least as harmful as tobacco. When you check the New Scientist article, you find "to lungs" the next thing after "harmful".

Interpretation: even if cannabis were more harmful to lungs than tobacco, lung disease is only half the tobacco mortality, the other half being cardiovascular (the carbon monoxide). The BLF gets away with adopting a narrow lungs-only viewpoint. Actually the greater harshness of cannabis (which hasn't been subjected to 7 days of heating to 160 F like the "cured" artificially "mild" tobacco in hot-burning overdose cigarets) is an ADVANTAGE. Why? Because it warns you not to smoke too much! The three joints are more irritating than 20 cigarets--- so the poor nicopuffer takes nearly 200 tokes a day of "mild" carbon monoxide, deprived of harshness or any other warning.

6. Some herbs, by the way, are harsher than riefer-- most famously, eucalyptus and oregano (in both cases, the leaf). Milder than riefer are, especially, hops and other flowers, tarragon, nettle leaf etc. A list of over 40 herbs with discussion of their character is posted in a Smoking Cessation article on Wikiversity. Steal any info you want from it, maybe to put in the box next to "Tobacco methods - Joints, Chillum" where the Mike from Glasgow story is.

I think you should emphasize that the other herbs are not so much something to mix with the cannabis instead of tobacco in a hot-burning overdose joint, but other repertory to use in your vapouriser or single toke utensil. All the hergbs like riefer should be sifted through a 1/16th inch screen to obtain a particle size which works in the vapouriser or in a 25-mg. single toke.

7. The semi-vapouriser concept

A standard 5/16"-diameter cigaret burns at 1500 F when puffed on. A vapouriser heats to a temperature lower than 410 F. Theoretically-- research needed on this-- you can suck slow enough on a one-hitter to burn near the minimum combustion temperature-- say, 420? (Getting more THC per toke means fewer tokes, less carbon monoxide, etc. Please tell Gordon Brown this is why skunkweed is actually better for our health.)

As the low-temperature blazelet creeps slowly along, the not yet ignited particles are heated by adjacent, already burning ones, allowing more time for their contents to vaporize out before they catch fire.

Not quite as good as a vapouriser, but until you can afford one a one-hitter is cheaper.

I hope you can use this and other infoprmation to emphasize to reaeders of the "pipes" section that it is a good idea to use a minimum-diameter utensil. A = pi x r squared. A crater half as wide can limit oxygen access to one quarter as much-- more THC.

Again thanks for this

The BLF study is "The Smoking Gun" which we have in the research section. There are a number of issues with that report, not least that people smoke far less cannabis than tobacco as you state.

Totally agree about herbal smoking mixtures, totally pointless as far as I can see.

This is really good stuff. Thanks

Derek

Webteam UKCIA

Typewriter-compliant diagram of proposed worldwide standard single toke utensil (for 25 mg. servings)
(4 x enlarged)

1/4"(6 mm)
interior diameter
<---------->

________ ________
^ \ / xxxx =
3/16"(5 mm) | |x x| ^
crater depth | |x x| | preshaped screen
(to base of screen) | |x x| | (securely nested
V \xxxxxxxxxx/ V on shoulder
^ | | formed by cra-
narrower subchannel | | | ter narrowing)
leading to | | |
extension tube V | |

Sorry to say the website machinery completely dismantled the typewriter diagram. I'll send it later when I get to a scanner.

9. Harm reduction utensil

Perhaps the main opportunity in the vapouriser and the one-hitter is that they totally eliminate the convenience for need to mix cannabis with tobacco. A major hurdle is that a surprising majority of the population is tragically ignorant of the relatively safer slow-toke, inhalation method, which makes it possible to achieve low burning temperature with a one-hitter. (Relevant until vapourisers are everywhere which will take some time.)

a. Sifted (1/16th inch mesh) herb must be used so that particles nest together and successively ignite each other without extreme temperature burning.

b. 40-mesh screen nested in quarter-inch crater at 3/16"-depth keeps particles from getting loose and sinking down the channel.

c. Load in only about level with top (should be 25 mg. or 1/40 gram).

d. Light from side so flame creeps over rim of (metal or glass) crater.

e. As soon as combustion is just barely creeping along, start tapping the metal-shielded end of your lighter (one of many reasons to boycott matches), which will knock the glowing coal together down into a more compact mass in the center where the draft is, thus enabling it to burn slower and completely.

f. As soon as it has gone out, give it one more flaming to finish off anything that's left and dry the material for cleanout.

g. Not everyone knows that it is desirable to eat the ashes (minerals). Suck them right out. Then scratch the screen gently several different ways, suck again, then poke the middle windows 18 times or so. Ready to load another toke (minutes later at the soonest). Now

h. Breathbonnet: start breathing several times in and out of a paper bag or plastic sack, about one liter in volume-- because our pneumonial apparatus doesn't absorb all the THC on one inhalation anyway.

I think this detailed info may be helpful in converting many abject overdosers (on carbon monoxide) over to an unchauvinistic unheroic moderation (L.S.M.F.T.= life-saving minimum fire temperature).

awesome stuff


peace


g

PUT AN END TO CONTAMINATION, PLANT A SEED SAVE A NATION

I have looked at some websites offering or discussing this product which was developed in China (emerging no. 1 world disaster area for hot burning overdose nicotine cigaret deaths).

The e-cigarette is a battery-powered device shaped like a cigar or cigaret which, unlike a vapouriser which can use tobacco, cannabis or other herb material, accepts cartridges containing actual pharmaceutical fluid nicotine and/or other flavors which may simulate the taste of someone's favorite brand of cigaret. There are videos showing how to use it (pretty much like a regular cigaret). Propylene glycol is added to the fluid to produce a smoke-like fog which issues from your breath organs after use just like real smoke, but speedily dissipates. Users report being able to use it many places where smoking is prohibited.

In reply to one questioner who asked if it could be used with marijuana, the answer was that, with some models, pure THC can be loaded in (provided you have a way of getting hold of any), and it vapourises at subcombustion temperatures (below 410 F.) providing the advantages of smoking without the hazards. Various brands are available on line at L30-40.

Have three wire screen strainers on hand: mesh #8 (i.e. 1/8-inch windows, or similar), #16, #30.

First: break buds with fingers.

Rub and grind in a rotary motion, enough to remove all loose material from hard woody stems which may then be gathered to use in making tea.

First sifting: 8-grind

Fingergrind material (bud fragments) in a rotary motion against 1/8"-screen windows until nothing remains in the strainer but hard, unbreakable stems, seeds etc. which will be saved for tea or planting.

Second sifting: 16-shake

Shake the sifted, loose material in a 1/16th-inch (1.6 mm) (16-Mesh) strainer until nothing further goes through. The container receiving the finer material is labeled 16-Shake.

Third sifting: 16-grind

Grind through the material which remained in the strainer after Shake was entirely removed. Gather this in a container labeled 16-Grind. Remaining unbreakable chunks join "tea and planting" (above).

Fourth sifting: shaking out the kief

Shake each of the above labeled fractions, 16-shake and 16-grind, in a 30- to 40-Mesh kiefsifter. The combined 30- or 40-Shake that emerges will be close to pure kief.

Where, when, what

Use a vaporizer if possible or, for all smoking, use a 1/4"/6-mm. i.d. screened-crater low-burning-temperature type of utensil, with a long flexible extension tube (to be fancy, you can use the type found on middle-eastern hookahs).

Keep the high quality 30-Shake (kief) by your bedside, in your office desk--i.e. wherever you have leisure to smoke (or vaporize) carefully, rebreathe numerous times with a hot-bonnet (1-liter bag or sack), and prior to following use clear the one-hitter's screen windows with a big safety pin. Try to avoid using too much and burning it too hot, this will teach you to be patient andthink long-term.

Use the 16-Shake if you are at a party and want to serve numerous relatively good quality tokes in a hurry. Convenient because it won't clog the screen as much as the kief.

Always carry a small can of the 16-Grind in case you experience a sudden social necessity to share some of your herb with a less than trustworthy person.

Using this system you should get 800-900 single tokes out of an ounce of reasonably good herb.

If you have a narrow screened single-toke utensil, described above, with a crater-head made of glass or metal (easiest to find: hose nipple or socket wrench), load 25 mg. of sifted herb inside, start sucking v e r y slow, and hold your butane lighter (don't try this with matches), with moderate flame, near the outside of the head, moving it slowly around, to heat the glass or metal which in turn heats the herb particles inside; the which gradually reaching the critical 385 F. subcombustion temperature, your herb vitamin (the THC) will have most possible time to vapourise out before the particles catch fire.

This takes patient long (ten seconds or more) inhaling, an art akin to yoga, which will teach you patience and long-term thinking as stated above. You will probably get impatient and wind up burning some unvapourised cannibinoid but it's still almost as good as a vapouriser or E-cigarette.



L E A P - MEMORY

This stands for Long-term Episodic Associative Performance Memory. In greater detail:

1. Long Term: in about 1920 Louis Armstrong, allegedly born on the 4th of July, 1900, emigrated north to Chicago where he became the riefer connection for numerous young musicians. Armstrong wanted to turn them on and get them to jam with him, producing an accompaniment which spurred him on to feats of unprecedented virtuoso improvisatory trumpeteering in which he recollected in nontranquillity melodic material he had listened to or played years before, injecting additional notes and ornaments from long-past experience into present-day melodies.

2. Episodic: this refers to memories being reprocessed in the mind and composed into coherent melody packages (the music equivalent of story) with formal aspects of beginning, middle and end (Aristotle), accessible for instant reuse. The music of course became wildly popular.

3. Associative: this has been recognized as a feature of cannabis inspiration. Memories of diverse origin and character are matched and mated in present time. Tunes Armstrong heard years apart met and joined in a new synthesis. (By the way in honor of the herb Armstrong recorded a tune titled "Muggles" in 1929.)

4. Performance: this may mean listened to attentively; hummed; sang; played on the horn; danced to, or whatever, i.e. not sat around and passively endured as the tobacco culture teaches youngsters to do with cannabis, but did something, put energy and aggression into it. This is something which needs to be better understood and promulgated: real cannabis activism. In our example, Louis Armstrang eventually set world records for most amount (number of notes) of coherent melody uttered in a given time at most volume (we're talking trumpet here, the instrument that trumps all others). It was the greatest act of prophecy since Joshua at Jericho (but more humane since that asshole killed 12,000 Jerichans).

This set off a world-wide arms race (pun intended) of musicians trying to outperform previous efforts, literally walk on the moon. After Armstrong's visit to Europe in 1923 musicians like the guitarist Django Rheinhardt and his friend the violinist Stefan Grappelli tried to revolutionize their instruments in similar fashion. Jazz was considered "hot". (This was not lost on the embittered war veteran A. Hitler who tried to take over the Bavarian government and schemed to fend off the "bestial" invasion of Afro-Hebraic music from Maxwell Street (see Wikipedia article) bringing cultural "bastardization" upon the European continent.)

By January 16, 1938 a band of black and white musicians led by clarinettist Benny Goodman (raised in Chicago near Maxwell Street) integrated Carnegie Hall with a style of jazz associating klezmer and cantorial styles with the Delta blues which had influenced Armstrong. The Culture Minister, Goebbels, warned the Fuehrer to do something in a hurry, leading to the Sudetenland Crisis, Reichskristallnacht and World War II, but those tactics failed and LEAP music conquered the planet by 1968 (Beatles White Album). In 1969 the Pioneer was honored by choice of a man named Armstrong to be first to walk on the moon.

I sent the following two corrections over the Feedback channel but thought readers of this page would be interested in the argumentation:

1. Under the heading "Smoking without the killer weed, tobacco" appears a bluish picture with a bomb-like object, titled "Smoke a JOINT (and make it pure)". Maybe it would be a better idea to throw this out and show a picture of a single-toke one-hitter. The high burning temperature and harshness of a cannabis-only joint are one sneaky reason why many persons mix with tobacco, namely the tobacco is actually milder. Of course, the reason is the tobacco has been "flue-cured" (this practice is said to destroy 12% of all trees killed each year worldwide, to get hardwood logs for the curing process), and also various "mildening" drugs are added to suppress the cough-reflex and make it possible for the slave nicotine addict to inhale much more smoke (including carbon monoxide etc.) without coughing. So any advice to substitute a pure cannabis joint is self-defeating and the victims will relapse into mixing with the Mild Killer.

2. Under "What's the Problem" you should update the tobacco mortality from 4 mil. per year to 5.4 mil. (WHO Press Conference, Feb. 7, 2008).

(If we assumed 5% of all the cigaret addicts worldwide started with joints, chillums, spliffs etc. mixing tobacco with cannabis, then this accounts for 270.000 deaths a year, or about enough for three hiroshimas.)

Ho TD

That picture of the pure spliff is very old now - one of our earliest images for toke pure actually. I've changed it for a pipe.

Also changed the tobacco mortality figure.

Thanks for you input on this TD, including your posts to the blog.

I'm wary of making claims that are too specific though, the idea is to sell the concept. Toke pure will get a re-write soon though, but I'm really more interested in ideas of how to promote it.

Derek

Webteam UKCIA

Dear Derek,

1. Again, check out whether you can get a link to the UKCIA site into the references on "Cannabis smoking" and other Wikipedia articles (while remaining encyclopedic enough in tone that some other editor won't erase it),

2. Glad to see the spliff disappear but the gleaming golden pipe shown is heavy OD-- looks like it could hold up to a gram. Maybe you could contact the company that makes it, and suggest they design a 25-mg. serving size utensil and send you a promo picture of it. Another thing you can probably do is borrow the Midwakh picture friom Wikipedia...

Argument for the additional correction i.e. replace picture showing a 1-gram-capacity overdose gleaming gold big bowl device with one of a 25-gram capacity screened single toke utensil: the main thing is if the serving size is small enough you have eliminated the reason and opportunity for mixing with tobacco.

Of course they must understand (see above) the necessity to:

(1) grind/sift the herb through the 1/8"-inch and then the 1/16th-inch sifters, arriving at a particle size which is easily loaded into a small crater;

(2) hold the crater-opening, or top of the utensil, upside down in can of weed while sucking a 25-mg. loading-- flush with the top-- into it, then

(3) turn it rightside up and proceed with the (Butane Maxifer-assisted) SEMI-VAPOURISER TECHNIQUE (see above).

If they are hooked on tobacco anyway, then encourage them to tear a tiny piece off the cigarette and serve a mini-toke just like good herb (above), similarly afterward breathe in and out of breathbonnet etc. Maybe a person now doing ten cigarets and three joints a day will convert to doing ten 25-mg. single tobacco tokes and ten 25-mg. single riefer tokes, i.e. radically downsize the dosage but don't beat the total abstinence drum. Upgrading the efficiency/economy of herb use and reducing quantity consumed also helps in escaping unwise desperate purchases that wind up supporting contaminators.

A half-dozen types of one-hitter utensils are now worldwidelisted in the Wikipedia "Cannabis Smoking" article and haven't been erased in months.

Efforts to improve Wikipedia "Cannabis smoking" and other articles through careful incremental editing continue. Reminder to activists: though UKCIA is near the top, the Wikipedia article remains the top source worldwide consulted on the topic of Cannabis smoking. Check out the article, read the line of progress under "history" to get an idea of what kinds of editing are tolerated, and attempt further improvements as warranted in the information provided, especially as concerns alternative methods of cannabis use to displace genocidal 'joint" (mixing with tobackgo).