The classic Volcano has been around since 2000 and people still rave about it to this day. I have admittedly never used one because anytime I have $400 to spare I usually blow it on hash within minutes. I’ve long admired the way the bag system works and always meant to try one but it just never came up. I’ve tried about 100 other various flower vaporizers and hated every single one of them. They all tasted like burnt ass popcorn and I never felt like I was getting high enough.

When the Volcano Hybrid arrived at my house I wanted to leave my reaction completely up to science so I bought two eighths: one was super midsy on purpose and the other was some of the new Bad Apple from Connected (the single best eighth in the dispensary that day). I bought those two specific eighths so I could approach this from the perspectives and palettes of both an average consumer and myself.

Unpacking the Volcano Hybrid was a bit overwhelming. There’s a lot of tubes, bags and different attachments that can be confusing if you don’t read the instructions so definitely read the little quick start manual that comes with it before using.

There’s essentially two ways to use it: the classic method of filling up a pre-made bag with vapor and then inhaling from the mouthpiece attached to the bag, or you can attach a tube directly to the unit itself and inhale as you please. I tried the Bad Apple using the bag first and it took a few tries to get it right but it was a super clean and relatively flavorful hit compared to other flower vaporizers I’ve tried. In my opinion, the same flower still tasted better out of a clean bong but it actually got me higher out of the Volcano because it made more efficient use of the flower than I imagine a lighter would have. I also tend to only hit a bowl once because after the lighter touches the flower, anything remaining usually tastes charred after the first hit but each hit out of the Volcano bag had a consistent, smooth flavor.

I wanted to try two distinctly different qualities of weed because in the past, all flower tasted the exact same out of any flower vaporizer I’ve tried. To my absolute delight, not only did the good flower taste significantly better than the lower quality flower, but the midsy stuff smoked much more smoothly for me than it would have out of a pipe or a bong. I truly cannot stand to smoke mid and it was very tolerable in the Volcano Hybrid. That alone should be a testament to its effectiveness.

It’s also worth noting that I caught a bit of a cold the day after the Volcano arrived so it was very nice to have a smoking option around the house that was easier on my throat. Ultimately, I still needed a couple dabs to get where I wanted to be but my throat was appreciative nonetheless because normally I dab like a loon from sunup to sundown.

Now let’s get to the features. I compared the Volcano Hybrid to dabbing because you can choose your own experience every single time. When I’m dabbing in the morning I let my nail cool down for 82 seconds exactly but later in the afternoon when I want to get punched in the face a little bit I hit it at 75 seconds or so. The Volcano Hybrid gets me extremely wet in this regard because it has an app that lets you fully automate and customize your smoking experience with regard to temperature and air. I can set it to heat up my flower for two minutes at 190 degrees Celcius, blow air and vapor into the bag for five seconds, then heat up an additional five degrees, then blow air for ten seconds and so on. The possibilities are truly endless. The app is only available for Android at the moment but there’s a web browser version for iPhone users.

I didn’t notice much of a difference using the tube versus the bags so I mostly stuck to using the bags because frankly, it looks cool as hell. But it is nice to have the tube option when you just want to lay in bed in the morning and get super high without moving at all or waking up sleeping people with the noise from the bag.

Now comes the big question of “Is it worth the money?”

Well, it retails for about $699 and I would argue that even though I personally would not spend that money on it, I advocate that others should and here’s why:

I’m a writer and writers aren’t typically swimming in disposable income, for one. But in all seriousness I just don’t care about flower much in the first place and I have an extremely high tolerance that does not beget the smoother, less aggressive experience you get with the Volcano Hybrid compared to more traditional methods of smoking. 

However, I am not most people. The overwhelming majority of consumers I talk to just want to get high without losing a lung, not to mention the extremely high number of medical cannabis patients that need to consume weed but can’t smoke it without risking lung infection or something equally as ghastly. The Volcano Hybrid is worth the money for those people. It’s the ultimate experience for people who value the cilia lining their throat cavity and want to use cannabis with minimal damage to their body. 

I’d suggest patience with this machine because flower vaporization is not instant and if you want it to taste good, “low and slow” is your new motto. Let it cook for a few minutes longer at a cooler temp rather than speed up your hit by five minutes. With midsy stuff that rule goes double because it already tastes bad, you don’t need to make it taste worse. 

Another tip I have is to spend the time to figure out what temperature your flower will burn best at because I promise you it will vary from strain to strain and even from microclimate to microclimate so any temperature or time suggestions I have won’t be super helpful. 190 degrees Celcius is the recommended max temp but if you don’t care as much about flavor you can ramp that up to about 206 and get a solid bagful within two or three minutes without sacrificing too much flavor.

Overall, this thing is super slick and worth the extra money over the Volcano Classic in my opinion. It won’t be a daily driver for me because I’m a hash head at heart, but this thing will definitely be getting a lot of use in my house. 

The post Product Review: The New Volcano Hybrid is Slick as Hell appeared first on High Times.

This matters to you, dear reader and presumed drug enthusiast, because growing shrooms is really damn hard. Most people can figure out how to grow an ounce or two using Google (or High Times articles) but a majority of people find it far too complicated at first glance and most processes involved with psychedelic production are much easier to understand with visual aids. Being as it were that a lot of people would prefer to consume their drugs without engaging in some sweaty, parking lot exchange with a dude named Indigo, a lot of folks would be shit out of luck if it weren’t for people like Willy and Philly. 

These guys are really putting their money where their mouths are in the sense of taking big legal and personal risks to advance the science of psychedelic production and educating the masses on how to safely replicate the processes for themselves. They both hide their identities in different ways. Willy wears a face mask in his videos and PGT has yet to show his face or reveal what his voice sounds like. Their channels and messages are not associated with one another but they have each amassed an impressive following and each contributed crucial information about psychedelics directly to the people who need it.

High Times caught up with Willy and Philly both together and individually to talk shop about psychedelic culture and their efforts to preserve, promote and advance it.

Willy Myco

Willy is, I shit you not, a Harvard graduate with degrees and qualifications out the wazoo who walked away from a quarter-million dollar salary at a big-name pharmaceutical company to make his educational YouTube and Patreon videos. The videos span from DIY shroom growing techniques to how LSD is synthesized and more. He now pays his bills almost entirely through YouTube and Patreon, thanks to his organically grown community which he refers to as the “trip team family” or TTF. 

“I ain’t shit without you guys,” Willy said. “Without that community behind me, supporting me and being there for me, then I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

The TTF is hard to quantify but according to Willy it ranges anywhere from 70 to 120,000 people. They have a private Discord server that is genuinely a positive place to explore with super friendly people, all of whom are stoked to help other budding mycologists and psychedelic enthusiasts on their individual journeys. 

Not only that, but these cats throw one hell of a party by the sound of things. Willy puts on this big event every year called “Trip-A-Ween” where they basically fry balls on world-class psychedelics and do fun shit like rent out an entire amusement park or live large in Costa Rica for a week. They spare no expense and talk about it like it’s a big family reunion.

As a Patreon supporter and member of the TTF discord, I won’t reveal much of what I’ve seen in there for obvious reasons but I will note that right before I started writing this article, a big member of the TTF community who goes by the alias Watr was arrested and had their children taken away from them for allegedly distributing psychedelics. Inside of a week, Willy had a sweatshirt made up and started an in-house fundraiser to raise money and bring Watr back home to his kids. Willy has also personally given thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to finance medical treatment for some supporters of his who needed help.

Willy is currently in the process of buying a house in Puerto Rico where he will be setting up a cannabis grow to provide employment for the people living there, not to mention hosting a podcast, likely throwing more shroom parties and providing mycology/cannabis cultivation classes to impoverished Puerto Ricans. Willy told High Times his ultimate goal is to preserve the legacy of the people who came before him.

“I want to see people be able to support their families and build their empires off of psychedelics, I want to be able to see people flourish and do well—the people that actually deserve it, and are doing it for the right reasons,” Willy said. “I don’t want that culture to be gone. I don’t want it just to become a machine like cannabis has become. It’s an industry now. It’s a big thing. Before, when it was underground, it was about the members of the community and the people who actually put in the work to preserve it. And then once it became an industry, it just became about money. It was no longer about community.” 

Philly Golden Teacher

Philly is a bit more elusive than Willy but his videos are very detailed and dive deep into the art of shroom growing. Whereas Willy’s videos encompass all psychedelics, Philly strictly focuses on mycology and mushroom cultivation. He’s a prolifically paranoid man (for VERY good reason) who used a voice modulator when speaking to High Times. 

“I’m scared. I’m scared to put myself out there,” Philly said. “That fear really puts me into anxiety mode.”

Philly didn’t tell me many specifics about himself other than he tries to blend into society as much as possible to avoid detection. He works a 9-5 at a call center and spends his off-time working on advanced mycology projects, one of which is attempting to crossbreed psychedelic mushrooms to make a new “strain.” Strain is in quotes because it’s even less accurate when used to refer to mushrooms than how it’s commonly used for cannabis but for our purposes, strain is fine. 

“You have to understand crossbreeding is a lot more complex than putting two different mycelium together on a plate and having them go ‘here, kiss.’ You have to isolate a single spore to be able to do it at a microscopic level. It’s hard to do that; it’s hard to verify that without a microscope so people don’t get into crossbreeding unless you can afford a microscope to put the work behind to do it,” Philly said.

The thing with mushroom growing is that much like cannabis, a fair amount of the legwork on figuring out how to do it properly is pioneered by guys like Philly, who lives in constant fear of federal police raids at worst and losing his YouTube account at best.

“I have to really be careful what I put out on there,” Philly said. “I’m trying to steer things forwards, just trying to to drive things to Patreon because I can’t really rely on YouTube.”

Philly told High Times he’s particularly excited about mushroom lineage cards he and his wife have been working on with information about the breeders and history behind the different “strains” of psychedelic mushrooms.

“We basically went full Pokemon,” Philly said. 

Both PGT and Willy expressed parallel views to High Times on how psychedelics should be used or looked at going forward. They both hammered home two distinct points multiple times over:

• Psychedelics can be used as medicine but should more so be looked at as tools.
• Decriminalization instead of legalization.

“I’m more comfortable with decriminalization than legalization,” Willy said. “I don’t think people should go to jail or be charged for cultivating their own medicine, whether that’s mushrooms or extracting DMT or cultivating cannabis, whatever the case may be. People should be able to do it freely. But, legalization brings a whole nother slew of problems: oversaturation, stepping on the toes of all the cultivators that have been doing this for a long time. You have companies that have millions of dollars of backing and you just can’t compete with that.”

The post Willy and Philly: Meet the Undercover Shroom Wizards Carrying Psychedelic Culture on Their Backs appeared first on High Times.

The Mighty+ is a black device about the size of a small tablet or large smartphone. There’s a very fun little screen on the bottom that displays the target temperature of the vaporization chamber, the actual temperature and how much battery life is remaining. It’s a bit heavy for its size and looks like it could easily survive light to moderate artillery fire, not that it would need to (but on the off chance our armed forces can ever smoke weed in battle someone needs to get Storz & Bickel on the phone with the Department of Defense). 

It’s a very easy device to use overall, though it did take me a minute to figure out how to properly open it. It twists open from the top and there’s a little compartment for the ground flower to be placed, very similar to a bowl in a pipe actually. Then you twist the top back on and hit the power button. You use the arrows to choose your temperature and that’s literally all you have to do. It buzzes to let you know it’s at the right temperature and you are free to begin smoking. It seems to make more efficient use of a smaller amount of flower compared to traditional methods like a bong or a pipe. One bowl got me anywhere from 5-15 decent sized hits over the course of about five minutes.

I usually do not care for vaping flower. I prefer hash rosin to the face at all hours of the day or night. However, I truly enjoyed using this little device and it actually managed to get damn near the same taste quality as the more expensive Volcano Hybrid. Some hits I would argue actually tasted better, but at a certain point it’s almost not worth thinking about. Either way the taste was superb and incredibly smooth.

One thing I particularly appreciate about the Mighty+ is that it’s so simple and easy to use. I don’t even have to think about it, which is not always what I’m looking for but when I’m out and about it’s a must have. I hate lugging my dab rig, torch, carb cap and Q tips with me everywhere I go, so I often experience the outside world unmedicated and that simply will not do. But with this, all you need is the device itself and your flower. I appreciate simplicity especially on road trips because my biggest pet peeve is clutter in a car while I’m on a long drive. 

Honestly, my one sole issue with it is for how big the thing is, I thought it would have a bit better battery life especially with a $399 price tag. It’ll definitely last through the day but if you’re really getting after it you’ll kill the battery before too long. That’s super subjective and for most average smokers it’ll last a few days without needing to be charged, but for the heads reading this just know you’ll want to keep a charger nearby if you plan to stay roasted in the long term. It also does not comfortably fit in my pants pockets but that is rarely a metric I judge anything by because keeping anything other than a lighter and a knife in my pocket feels unnatural, but to some people that’s a dealbreaker so it seemed noteworthy. 

Those are my only two complaints, if you’d even call them that, because I cannot name a dry herb vaporizer made by a different company that is anywhere near comparable to the Mighty+ battery life or otherwise. Like I said before, I’m not a fan of vaping flower and that’s primarily because of the taste. I never liked that good weed tasted the same as bad weed in any of the other mods I tried. 

However, I tried a top shelf eighth and a bottom shelf eighth in the Mighty+ and both actually tasted excellent, but the better weed tasted significantly better. I like that because as a consumer if I spend 30 dollars more on my weed, that should be reflected in the quality of vapor smoke and I’ve only ever experienced that with Storz & Bickel products. I also think it’s cool that someone found a way to make mids taste a bit better because God knows we have enough of them lying around.

A huge bonus of this device for me is that it looks super discreet. I know stoners love smoking in the car but that shit makes me paranoid! Not only does smoke pour out the car window for every cop in the world to see but even after we’re done I will sit there for two hours worrying about getting pulled over because I know the car still smells. The Mighty+ looks like a regular nicotine vape mod or something similar and the vapor it produces is nowhere near enough to attract anyone’s attention. The vapor also doesn’t smell, which is obviously a huge benefit of vaping in general but I never used them in the car before because they never got me high enough. This thing actually makes you feel like you smoked a decent sized bowl without the added stress of people (or the police) knowing you’re roasted. My road trips have now been upgraded significantly because I can actually relax and enjoy my high instead of spending 200 miles at full clench.

The Mighty+ really allows you to medicate anywhere which is the coolest part to me. Personally, I took it out with me on my daily run with my dog where I skateboard alongside her so she can run like a maniac. I live in a community full of Bible thumpers who all hate weed and not one person gave me a sour look for holding this thing in my hand, and I hit it the whole time. No one could see smoke because any vapor produced was gone in seconds. Hell, even holding it up to my mouth it could almost look like I’m drinking out of a canteen. You have to appreciate something that allows you to get high right in front of people without them having any feasible idea and while that may not be what Storz & Bickel had in mind when they made the Mighty+, it’s certainly a handy tool to keep around.

As far as the price tag goes I’d say this thing is absolutely worth the $399 it costs. I haven’t found a portable vaporizer anywhere near as effective and most of them cost about that much anyway so if dry herb vaporization on-the-go is what you’re after, may I humbly recommend the Mighty+ for your next mobile adventure. 

The post The Mighty+ from Storz & Bickel is My New Best Friend on Road Trips appeared first on High Times.

I grew up just outside the Emerald Triangle and I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years working on grows, trimming, making hash rosin, growing for myself, and everything in between. I’ve been robbed, threatened, extorted, and nearly killed more times than I can remember. Not ONCE during that time did I ever see any of you pocket-protector-wearing, rule-following weirdos in those hills risking life and limb with the rest of us. 

I really need to get this off my chest because this bush league shit has gone too far. A multibillion-dollar industry existed for 60+ years in the shadows because YOU sorry fuckers, or your parents for that matter, insisted that it remain there. Your friends didn’t go to prison for growing a plant, ours did. You didn’t have to risk multiple felony charges every time you got in your car, we did. A lot of growers still do for that matter. Weed has been legal in California since 2018 and I can’t even smoke a joint in my backyard without overhearing my neighbor tell her children that we’re disgusting. 

All that hard work, all the high risk for minimal reward, all the helicopters coming in to terrorize actual children in the middle of the night for DECADES was all for nothing because you people swooped in with your war machines (Excel spreadsheets) and left the victims of the drug war out to starve. Still to this day people in the triangle who don’t even grow weed have helicopters circling directly above their backyards every single year. Does that seem normal to anyone? Does it seem fair that the legacy growers, in lieu of compensation or even basic acknowledgement for their work, have received abatement notices and annual police raids instead? 

To make matters worse, the rural communities that built the cannabis industry and quietly flourished alongside it had their businesses and livelihoods taken by a bunch of asshole lizard people from Palo Alto. Do you know how many of my favorite hill restaurants closed down in the last 10 years? I’m not even exaggerating when I say it’s at least five. They’re all being bled dry. Even the non-growers who just want to live in the mountains are struggling. Cannabis is the backbone of rural America whether anyone wants it to be or not and rural America is not doing well right now.

Now, all you skim-milk-drinking cretins are going to your respective state legislatures whining all the livelong day about the black market stealing your business. First of all, losing business to someone playing with less than 100 plants when you’re playing with thousands of lights and millions of dollars is pathetic. Second of all, can you even blame the black market? Why would any financially literate person want to throw their hat into legal weed in 2022? Anyone who graduated the third grade can understand what a red downward arrow on a graph means. All the farmers “taking your business” are breaking even at best every year for the same reason I’m writing this article: we simply love cannabis and we don’t want you anywhere near it.

For the sake of efficiency and to be perfectly clear who I’m referring to, if I’m ever be crowned King for the day anyone who makes the following list will be charged with high treason and sent to Madagascar to be used in barbaric, gene-splicing experimentation:

• Everyone on LinkedIn. Every last damn one of you.
• All you Patrick Bateman-esque suits spending thousands of dollars on booths at every event only to lose money every quarter because all of your products fall on deaf ears.
• Weed journalists that have never worked for a cannabis company and barely smoke if they smoke at all. 
• Anyone who uses the term “scalability” (You also qualify for this if Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” starts playing in your head when you jerk off).
• Anyone who has never committed so much as one misdemeanor or petty crime in the name of the cannabis industry.
• Marketing vultures who pester cannabis journalists to cover MSO’s. You’re a thieving band of godless Tik-Tokers and I’d rather eat a live hornet’s nest than do your PR for you.
• Concentrate makers who continue to make CRC and distillate despite being unloved by God and their own children.
• If your name happens to be Chad, I realize this is a “couple of bad eggs” situation but I’m sorry, you all need to go 
• Every single one of you assholes who made felons out of multiple generations of people only to show up once the risk was gone and say “nice house, we’ll be moving in now.”

Everyone on that list is walking up steps we all built with our bare hands and simultaneously complaining that the steps aren’t up to code. Now we have metric shit tonnes of garbage cannabis that doesn’t sell, events you can’t smoke at, and that headass CEO who won’t let it go that almost nobody wants to drink their weed. I don’t even remember his name. 

I don’t remember any of your names for that matter. I don’t remember your knock off strains or your god awful, mold-infused pre-rolls. I don’t remember your renamed Gelatos and I especially don’t remember strains with a Z in the name that don’t taste anything like real Z. I don’t want your business, I don’t want you reading my stories, I frankly just don’t want any of you here at all. 

That said, I’m fully aware this is how things are and how they’re going to stay. But to the specific group I’m talking about, let me assure you that your days making a viable income playing this poor man’s game of copycat are numbered. Everyone that we consider “big money” in weed right now sucked in whatever industry they started in so they figured they’d bring their same dazzlingly average business tactics to an industry full of pot-smoking illiterates and clean up nicely. Doesn’t seem to be going too well for most of you does it? It’ll be going even worse for you when federal legalization happens and the real money comes in. 

Now to be fair, it’s going well for almost no one right now, but the OG’s who have been out here risking everything every season just to grow the best weed they can will all survive for years to come because they’ve all seen much worse than this and they have a customer base that is loyal to a fault. I’m talking about brands like Alien Labs, Ember Valley, 710 Labs, Jungle Boys, Jelly Wizard, Fidel’s, anyone with access to real cuts of Zkittlez because they earned them, and a bunch of other people I don’t feel like remembering because I just took a gigantic dab and I can’t breathe. 

The point is every single company I named has skin in the game. They have a reputation that precedes them which lets me know they deserve to be playing at the level they are. A lot of cannabis journalists don’t even cover companies that produce true quality. I’m not sure why. Maybe they don’t smoke enough, maybe they’re too busy asking the CEO of Tilray to autograph their copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. The world may never know.

There are growers known all over the world who refuse to run more than 10 lights per room because they are that concerned with quality. They’re growing the loudest weed this side of the Mississippi but the only people that know about them are the people who understand what quality is. The real smokers will always pay twice as much to their buddy with a one light tent if the weed is better, and it almost always is. The price of real top shelf pounds from trusted brands is still extremely high and those $1,200 dollar organic ounces you hear about in L.A. are one hundred percent real (even if they are overhyped). You can’t fake the love!

That’s the part about cannabis that these suits don’t seem to understand. They’re trying to rerock weed to appeal to people who don’t smoke it. Rather than reinvent the wheel, just grow some good weed! Market to heavy smokers who want to take half gram dabs to the face from sunup to sundown instead of this weirdo boutique shit where we’re supposed to pretend like we can feel 10 milligrams of dogshit distillate in sparkling water. The only reason the black market is still around is because it’s obviously doing a better job. 

I’m not here to be a complete pessimist. I love everyone, man. I even love all you second-rate, online-business-school bunch of Mark Cuban wannabes. I do. I just don’t want you taking jobs and money away from MY people. The ones who are in this because it’s what they love. Anyone who truly does what they love to do does not have the option to seek alternative employment and you all keep taking their damn jobs. 

However, if you just happened to show up late to the party, I can’t be upset with you for that. Just show some respect! Hire people who did time on illegal grows or time in prison or both. But don’t show up at our house like a walking, talking version of that Steve Buscemi “Hello fellow kids” meme and expect the people who built the damn house to just bend over for you. 

So what should all these paper pushers and chronic bedwetters do to earn their place? Well, leaving promptly would be a good start because you all appear to be hemorrhaging money and I’m sure most of your wives are cheating on you by now so you probably have bigger fish to fry than continuing to drive eighth prices up and pound prices into the dirt. I think I speak for the majority of the heads when I say, we got it from here. As kindly, respectfully, and cordially as I can possibly muster: can you all please just fuck off? 

In all seriousness though, this part is going to feel like a kick in the dick: at the end of the day we all need each other. The OG’s can grow some serious fire but living in the shadows for decades means they’re not good at abiding by the structure that the legal market demands. The legacy market needs the legal market to help it step into the light a bit and the legal market needs the legacy market because it has no idea which way is up or down without the experience of people who have been doing this their whole lives.

However, I want to be as clear as possible when I say you all need us more than we need you. We did fine for years without you and we’ll continue to out-perform and undercut you at every turn until you give us a rule book we can live with. That’s all I’m asking for. Release the weed prisoners, give the legacy market a substantial leg up in the legal market, require these big MSO’s to hire felons, vote for direct-to-consumer sales, and stop taxing growers back into the Stone Age so they can afford to feed their families. 

If you’d like to skip all that and earn my respect directly, I have a quicker method you can try: take a full-gram dab of some black or brown 2013 BHO style wax on video and email me the footage. I want to see pain in your eyes before I give you a pass.

The post WHO THE F*#K ARE YOU PEOPLE? appeared first on High Times.

According to the company’s founder, Ken Fichtler, American law enforcement agencies have already agreed to use the technology, though he could not specify which ones. 

“I’ll preface all of this by saying I am pro cannabis. I’m pro cannabis legalization. I’m doing this because I see a distinct need at the federal level to have some product to detect impairment so we can keep roads safe,” Fichtler said.

The device is akin to a virtual reality headset of sorts that a police officer would hypothetically place on the head of a driver suspected of reefer smoking. It shrouds the suspect in darkness for a few moments before shining a bright light to electronically scan the movement of the suspect’s eyeballs.

“The eyes are the window to the soul. The eyes offer a remarkably clear picture into the mental state of a person. They’re full of involuntary micro-movements and reflex responses that transmit information about someone’s impairment or sobriety,” the Gaize website states.

According to Fichtler, the scan cannot be used as evidence in court, much like a traditional breathalyzer, but police officers can use it in the field if they suspect someone is high so as to take their own bias or out of the equation completely. Gaize cannot yet quantify impairment like a traditional breathalyzer does, but it can essentially indicate if the person is intoxicated enough for their eye to respond to stimulus differently than it normally would.

“You can’t simply measure THC and say, ‘Yeah, okay, this guy’s high because he’s got five nanograms of THC in his body,’ right? It just doesn’t work that way,” Fichtler said. “What we’re doing is actually directly measuring how impairment manifests in the body, which I think is a much more rational, measured and fair path forward.”

Fichtler said the test is based on several different studies which have spanned the last 40 years, including a 350-participant clinical trial Gaize conducted themselves. A cursory search of “how cannabis affects eye movement” does indeed show several peer-reviewed studies on the matter dating back to at least 1979. As with most scientific studies there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation or error but try as I might I could not find much to dispute the science behind this technology. It turns out eyeballs are just dirty little snitches that will sell stoners out at every turn.

“There’s a lot of changes that happen and a lot of them happen at a scale that a human couldn’t necessarily see unless they were looking really close or even using a magnifying glass or something. Our product is sensitive enough that we can detect these really minute changes,” Fichtler said.

Fichtler did make a point of saying Gaize will not be selling the technology arbitrarily to be used for nefarious purposes but if you work a dangerous job or like to get high on your morning commute, you may find yourself staring into the bright light of a Gaize headset soon. 

Fichtler was not able to provide High Times with an estimated date that law enforcement agencies might begin to roll out the use of these headsets but for what it’s worth he seemed to speak with the voice of a man who had signed one or more non-disclosure agreements, rather than a man waiting for orders to start coming in.

“It’s being evaluated by some really high profile departments,” Fichtler said. “They haven’t all adopted it yet, but some have. My hope is that within a couple of years, maybe this is sort of standard practice.”

The post Cops May Soon Be Able To Scan Your Eyeballs To See if You’re Driving Stoned appeared first on High Times.

“Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a Federal Register notice, Safety and Effectiveness of Certain Naloxone Hydrochloride Drug Products for Nonprescription Use, that may help facilitate the development and approval of certain nonprescription naloxone drug products, including through the switch of certain naloxone drug products from prescription status to nonprescription status,” the FDA announcement said.

For those who don’t know, NARCAN is basically a nasal spray that acts as an anti-opiate of sorts. Naloxone is used alongside buprenorphine in the drug Suboxone which is used to treat the symptoms of opiate withdrawal. The key difference in NARCAN is that it’s naloxone by itself at a relatively high dose, which has absolutely no potential for abuse on its own.

“Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. It is an opioid antagonist. This means that it attaches to opioid receptors and reverses and blocks the effects of other opioids. Naloxone can quickly restore normal breathing to a person if their breathing has slowed or stopped because of an opioid overdose. But, naloxone has no effect on someone who does not have opioids in their system, and it is not a treatment for opioid use disorder.” – Excerpt from the National Institute of Health website.

At the moment you aren’t necessarily required to have a prescription to obtain NARCAN but in most cases you need to get it directly from a pharmacist and it can be very expensive. I obtained four free doses through this program, but the point is most addicts simply don’t have the regular access to NARCAN that they require.

“Today’s action supports our efforts to combat the opioid overdose crisis by helping expand access to naloxone,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. “The agency will keep overdose prevention and reduction in substance use disorders as a key priority and area of intense strategic focus for action as rapidly as possible.”

The FDA assessment won’t make NARCAN freely available just yet but it is an important first step toward making a dent in the 100,306 deaths of United States citizens from drug overdose in the 12 months leading up to April 2021. 

“This preliminary assessment is intended to facilitate development and approval of nonprescription naloxone products; however, it is not a final determination that certain naloxone drug products are safe and effective for nonprescription use, and it does not mandate an immediately effective switch to nonprescription/over-the-counter (OTC) availability for naloxone,” the FDA said.

If you or someone you love uses opiates, carrying NARCAN is an absolute necessity. The following is a list of signs a person might be experiencing an opiate overdose from the official NARCAN website:

• Unusual sleepiness or unresponsiveness
• Breathing will be slow or absent
• Slow heartbeat or low blood pressure
• Skin feels cold and clammy
• Pupils are tiny
• Nails and lips are blue

If someone is exhibiting these symptoms you simply aim the NARCAN nasal plunger into the person’s nose and press the plunger to release the naloxone. They may require two doses especially if more powerful opiates like fentanyl are involved. 

I realize people might be cautious to carry NARCAN if they don’t use opiates and don’t know anyone who does but trust me when I say that you absolutely know someone who uses opiates in secret and fentanyl is popping up in drugs that have nothing to do with opiates at all like cocaine or even cannabis in a couple isolated incidents. Carrying NARCAN can save the lives of your loved ones or even strangers and I tell everyone I know to carry it at all times.

The post FDA Takes First Step in Making NARCAN Available Over the Counter appeared first on High Times.

“Some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space,” a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhang Lu, said in a speech Monday. “These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments.”

According to an article by the South China Morning Post, the study will take place aboard the Wentian Lab Module on the Chinese Space Station Tiangong. The space station is currently outfitted with small test cabinets intended for fish or snails but they will be reconfigured to house the monkeys, who were presumably still on Earth as of the publication of this article.

Anyone with a pulse is currently wondering the following: is it even possible to make monkeys have sex in space? Have humans had sex in space? If you have sex in space but give birth to the baby on Earth is the baby an earthling or an alien? Would that very same baby be barred from entering the United States under Trump’s immigration laws?

The history here is interesting, actually. Fruit flies were the first living creatures officially sent into space in 1947. Then the Soviets and the U.S. sent a bunch of animals including monkeys, mice, and dogs into orbit in the late 40s and 50s. I’ve seen some reports that mating may have occurred but the Soviets weren’t big on sharing notes so it’s hard to say.

In terms of the present day space monkeys, a Beijing college professor told the SCMP that their large size presents more issues, but studying larger animals is crucial for understanding if humans can create colonies on other planets.

“The astronauts will need to feed them and deal with the waste,” Professor Kehkooi Kee of Tsinghua University told the SCMP. “These experiments will be necessary.”

As far as humans go, NASA has clearly stated that as far as they know, no humans have ever had sex in space. No reports of space sex have ever been confirmed, though it is a surprisingly hotly-debated issue. An American astronaut couple married in secret before joining each other on a mission to the International Space Station in the 90s but the official story is basically that everyone is always too busy doing astronaut shit to think about screwing. I call shenanigans on that but I’ve also never been to space. 

Our nation’s top scientists say the physics of space sex would be quite difficult as you’d need a third person, or a lot of velcro, to properly hold you in place. Not only that, the increased radiation levels in space and the effects of zero gravity on blood circulation present equally challenging issues for sexual and reproductive success. 

According to a 2014 study: “Relative to other organ systems, the gonads are highly sensitive to radiation exposure. In men and women, temporary infertility is associated with high-dose, acute radiation exposure.”

Many scientists have also proposed that the way low gravity affects blood circulation might make it difficult for men to produce or maintain an erection. All this, coupled with the lack of privacy on a spacecraft has thus far made it very difficult for astronauts to, dare I say, experiment in this department. 

Which brings us back to the Chinese launching monkeys into space. If the monkeys can successfully reproduce without any issues, or if we can at least develop an understanding of any issues that do occur, it may be key to understanding if humans can maintain future colonies in space or on other planets.

The post China Is Sending Monkeys Into Space To Have Sex For Science appeared first on High Times.

The ACPD issued a press release on Halloween which said their detectives had been investigating Welch for possibly selling drugs based on evidence for which they did not offer specifics. The investigation is still active so it’s not uncommon for law enforcement agencies of any kind to keep information limited until the investigation is complete. Thus, not much detail was offered in general about this case other than the following:

“He was taken into custody on the afternoon of October 28 in the 1300 block of S. Scott Street (Arlington, VA) after detectives observed him purchase narcotics for distribution. A firearm was recovered at the scene. A search warrant was subsequently executed at the suspect’s residence in Alexandria which resulted in the recovery of additional quantities of narcotics and firearms. As a result, City of Alexandria Police charged Welch with Possession with Intent to Distribute Controlled Substance (x2) and Possession with Intent to Distribute Controlled Substance while Armed,” – Arlington County Police Department.

Those charges indicate Welch was arrested with anywhere from 2.5 to five kilos of cocaine. Naturally, I emailed the Pentagon to ask them how in the Sam Hell an officer of theirs managed to get his hands on that much coke when my guy has been dry for weeks. They sent me the following statement:

“The Pentagon Force Protection Agency is aware that an off-duty Pentagon Police Officer was arrested by the Arlington County Police Department on October 28, 2022. The officer was placed on administrative leave.”

I asked if this was the first time Welch had been reprimanded for conduct in or outside of the workplace.

“We don’t comment on individual personnel matters,” said Jacqueline Yost, director of the corporate communications office at the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.

Welch was arrested at least once prior in Arlington County as well. Court records show Welch pleaded guilty to charges of destruction of property of value greater than $1,000 as well as disorderly conduct. A separate charge of failure to pay for a rental vehicle or animal was also entered but no other information was immediately available. I did a cursory search of court records for neighboring Virginia counties and a search of Washington D.C. court records and found no other entries for an Eric Michael Welch. 

When asked if they were aware if Welch has a prior criminal history, or if it’s common to allow police officers to work with criminal records, the Pentagon did not wish to comment. 

As of Wednesday morning, an inmate query with the Arlington County Detention Facility showed Welch was still incarcerated and being held without bond. 

Interestingly enough, Welch maintained a moderately active Instagram presence dedicated to bodybuilding and fitness of all things prior to being arrested. His handle is @welch_fit but, in the interest of complete transparency, I’m saying that based on basic image and name comparison as I could not verify directly with Welch that it was the same guy. 

He is downright ripped, like eats a bowl of nails for breakfast ripped, and lists a company called MSF Supplements as a sponsor in his Instagram bio. I reached out to them to see if Welch is still a sponsored athlete or if they were aware of the charges and they did not get back to me in time for publication. 

The post Off-Duty Pentagon Police Officer Arrested With at Least 2.5 Kilos of Cocaine appeared first on High Times.

A company in St. Petersburg Russia called Prekated Academy offers the chance to fake your own death, stage a funeral for yourself, and begin life anew—all you have to do is pay one low price of 3,545,000 Russian Rubles, or $57,455 USD.

The following was (loosely) translated from an Instagram post:

“If:

• Your life has turned into a continuous, hopeless fuck up
• You can’t get out of the financial hole
• You do not take out business, team, life, family
• You do not see positive prospects ahead

Do not be horrified at the thought of death, but see in it a chance for deliverance – make a knight move, bury yourself!”

I really did try to get ahold of someone with this company but I did not manage to because of the basic limitations that exist when trying to contact people in a different part of the world. However, this does appear to be a real service that you can pay for. Whether or not anyone has utilized it without getting ripped off, I cannot say because those people would likely be listed as dead. I must say though, it does seem inherently funny to advertise a $57k service to people in a financial hole.

“I will give you the opportunity to say goodbye to a low standard of living, irrevocably burn bridges to the dreary past, rethink life and come to personal success without mistakes,” the post said. “You will not only revive faith in yourself and in a happy future, but also regain a great mission, potential and love for life in all its diversity.”

The majority of the rest of the company’s other Instagram posts that I translated all appeared to be dedicated to business marketing strategies or secondhand success stories about people who had utilized the fake-your-own-death service and gone on to make lots of money. 

However, one key post which immediately followed the original post offering the live burial services, reassured any skeptics that might be worried about guarantees of their own personal safety when paying such an exorbitant cost.

“We do not intend to expose our clients to undue risk,” the post said. “Scientists have calculated that the buried person will have enough air in the coffin for about 5.5 hours. So, even if your life is totally fucked up, it won’t take you more than 60 minutes to resurrect.”

Diligent little journalist that I am, I looked it up and around five hours is how long you could hope to survive depending on how big the coffin was, according to this website. The next obvious question the post decided to answer was what the company’s protocol would be should a client wish to stay in the coffin.

“Euthanasia is illegal in our country, so we will rescue you whether you choose to stay fucked or reborn,” the post said. “However, one country has now introduced a quota for euthanasia and actively promotes this service, even as a measure for depression. Google it at your leisure.”

It would appear that the service is available all over the world but for the full shebang you have to go to St. Petersburg.

The post You Can Pay This Russian Company To Fake Your Death, Bury You Alive For About $60K appeared first on High Times.

The two survived, and one of their doctors recently told the Boston Globe it was thanks to the help of Legalon, an experimental drug flown in from Philadelphia made from an extract of the milk thistle plant. Kam did, however, require a liver transplant and the two suffered kidney damage as well.

“The treatment involved getting special permission from the FDA to provide an antidote that’s currently an investigational drug – and then to get that antidote emergently cured from Philadelphia” said Dr. Stephanie Carreiro, from the Division of Toxicology at UMass Memorial Medical Center in a press conference. “We had tried many methods to try to remove the toxin from their bodies. And ultimately, for Kam, it also required liver transplantation.”

Death caps, known amongst nerds as Amanita phalloides, are a mushroom that grow pervasively throughout California and most of the world. According to Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz, the mushrooms are all white from top to bottom and commonly grow on wood chips but can be found more or less anywhere in North America. The fatality rate for those who consume death caps varies depending on the source from 25 to 50%.

Death caps and a handful of other particularly prolific and toxic species of mushrooms cause fatalities in people who ingest them every year, largely because the symptoms do not set in immediately after consuming. By the time people seek help, it is often too late and the liver damage has already begun. Kai Chen did, however, tell CBS Boston that they felt something was off pretty quickly.

“This should be a very big cautionary tale,” Kai Chen said in a press conference. “Be careful of what you find out there in the woods, especially mushrooms.”

Levon Durr, owner of a mushroom cultivation business called Fungaia Farms in Eureka, CA, told High Times that death caps have actually just as of this year been recorded in places they have otherwise not yet been found, which could indicate climate change has allowed them to gain more ground, so to speak.

“Amanita phalloides (death cap) has officially been recorded in Humboldt County last year and seems to have been migrating north over the last decade. They have been recorded in the Bay Area for years now and then became more common in Mendocino County and now Humboldt,” Durr said. “The theory is the warming, drying climate has opened up new habitats for them to move north. So, it begs to hypothesize we will, unfortunately, see more poisonings as it expands its habitat into areas where people are less familiar with the death cap.”

Mushroom foraging season is upon us and despite all the most grim warnings I can think of, people will still inevitably go out and mistake one thing for another every year. Mushroom experts have collectively warned the community at large for decades that proper mushroom identification is extremely difficult and requires much more extensive legwork than simple photo comparison. For instance, one of the most commonly hunted psychedelic mushrooms known as “Wavy caps” (Psilocybe cyanescens) have a deadly look-alike called Galerina marginata that oftentimes are virtually impossible to distinguish between without proper training.

“When collecting wild mushrooms for food, one rule supersedes all others. When in doubt, throw it out. If you are not sure that your mushroom is edible, don’t eat it.” – Excerpt from Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast.

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