Overcast with an occasional flare of bright sunshine this Friday morning on California’s north coast, a little on the chilly side, but if current conditions persist for awhile, we’ll be nice and warm by noonish.
A 50-percent chance rain later today and tonight, supposedly not much, though. Big storm with some decent moisture forecast for middle of next week, and the season continues, but until then…

Do-a-bowl-or-two — from Forbes this morning and mainstream marijuana:

Green Rush, the largest cannabis delivery platform in California, says Super Bowl weekend was the most lucrative in the company’s history.
So big, it was better than the 4/20 marijuana holiday celebrated in April.

Pot and the conventional life.

(Illustration: ‘Cannabis and Politics,’ by Denis Marsili, found here).

Salwa Ibrahim, executive director at Blum dispensary in Oakland: ‘“The Super Bowl weekend is a time for people to have fun and as cannabis becomes more mainstream and an acceptable replacement to alcohol, we’re seeing sales increase on what were typically ‘drinking’ holidays.”‘

Dude, explain the term, ‘acceptable replacement,’ in relation to alcohol — no replacement, but way-most-likely, an ‘enhancement.’ Although now more than 20 years alcohol free, I do recollect that additional fuel to a slug of Kessler was a toke off a joint. In many cases over the years, not with just myself, if used together, you seemed to not get ‘higher,’ you just get ‘drunker,’ and usually quicker.
One of the few negatives — just stay away from alcohol and that particular problem evaporates.
Yet as marijuana becomes more ‘ordinary,’ why not ‘enhance’ the party?

Sadly. marijuana’s history is of slander — held vile and illegal for decades for no real reason. And a huge negative off that narrative is the health and medicine benefits lost for so long.
From a 1999 report written by the National Academy of Sciences:

Advances in cannabinoid science over the past 16 years have given rise to a wealth of new opportunities for the development of medically useful cannabinoid-based drugs.
The accumulated data suggest a variety of indications, particularly for pain relief, antiemesis, and appetite stimulation.
For patients who suffer simultaneously from severe pain, nausea, and appetite loss, such as those with AIDS or who are undergoing chemotherapy, cannabinoid drugs might offer broad-spectrum relief not found in any other single medication.
Marijuana is not a completely benign substance.
It is a powerful drug with a variety of effects.
However, the harmful effects to individuals from the perspective of possible medical use of marijuana are not necessarily the same as the harmful physical effects of drug abuse.

Seventeen years later, and we’re just now getting it right.
The marijuana subject matter this morning originated when I spied an item at Raw Story — a tale of a crazy asshole, and the consequences.
Some snips:

In 1929, a man called Harry Anslinger was put in charge of the Department of Prohibition in Washington DC.
But alcohol prohibition had been a disaster.
Gangsters had taken over whole neighborhoods.
Alcohol—controlled by criminals—had become even more poisonous.
So alcohol prohibition finally ended–and Harry Anslinger was afraid.
He found himself in charge of a huge government department, with nothing for it to do.
Up until then, he had said that cannabis was not a problem.
It doesn’t harm people, he explained, and “there is no more absurd fallacy” than the idea it makes people violent.
But then — suddenly, when his department needed a new purpose — he announced he had changed his mind.
He explained to the public what would happen if you smoked cannabis.
First, you will fall into “a delirious rage.”
Then you will be gripped by “dreams… of an erotic character.”
Then you will “lose the power of connected thought.”
Finally, you will reach the inevitable end-point: “Insanity.”

And ‘media frenzy’ kept the lid tightly screwed shut. Anslinger kept the bullshit going for 32 years.

Just in sad irony, recent medical research indicates you’re better off with marijuana in your system if you encounter some health-related incident — like, for instance, improved outcomes in patients hospitalized with intracerebral hemorrhaging (ICH aka bleeding in the brain), according to data published online ahead of print in the journal Cerebrovascular Diseases.
Via NORML on Thursday:

Researchers reported that cannabis-positive subjects possessed “milder ICH presentation” upon hospitalization and presented “less disability” at discharge as compared to similarly matched patients who tested negative for cannabinoids.
Preclinical and observation trial data has previously indicated that cannabinoids may possess neuroprotective activity.
Specifically, a 2014 UCLA study previously reported that Traumatic Brain Injury patients who tested positive for cannabis upon hospital admission possessed significantly increased survival rates as compared to patients who tested negative for marijuana.

Better-a-bowl, than not…