So, the economist and time agree: It's about fucking time to LEGALISE IT

[AFK]

It has also contributed to the markedly increased potency of the drug as is outlined in this article:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913401,00.html

The THC levels in some of these plants grown via hydroponics are at 25%.  

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I have a "friend" who did a lot of hydroponic growing in the 90's.  One year for Halloween they tried to do a black strain and an orange strain of some really good stuff.  It took like a gallon of food coloring to get the black to a really dark green and the orange turned the other this gross brown color.  Taste and potency wasn't affected but.....  It didn't do what we thought it would.

I've also known people add red food coloring thinking it would make the hairs redder.  That didn't work well either.  

Not sure what green would do other than make it an unnatural color of green.....  

[Triple Zero]

Actually, since a lot of pot is grown using hydroponics, it wouldn't be too difficult to add extra chemicals to the marijuana by simply introducing it to the water.  The capillary action will draw the stuff right up.  Some already use this to color their product by adding food coloring.  It may not be very common, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibilities.

In hydroponics, you can add some things which will slightly modify your marijuana's growth and production, fertilizer. You can also, add something with a high glucose content toward the end to 'sweeten' the flavor of the bud. However, having played in that world, having seen more hydro setups that I can count right offhand, and from having had many, many, many years worth of discussions about growing pot...

There is no evidence that anyone has discovered a way to put harmful stuff into pot via hydroponics. In fact, such an act would likely kill your plants. People that are growing hydro are growing prime weed. You don't grow middies in hydro, you grow beautiful rich flowers with no seed in perfect growth environments. So you get the best that genetic strain has to offer... you don't NEED OR WANT to fuck that up.

BUT CAN YOU COLOUR YOUR WEED BY ADDING FOOD COLOURING TO ITS WATER???

INQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE AWESOME

(oh I see Cram asked the same thing)

I have seen instances where someone has sold joints laced with bad drugs... but thats why no one in their right mind buys prerolled joints. I also recall some news stories about an incident in England where people were sticking small bits of glass in the bags, however, it was quickly obvious, and the glass beads were not medically harmful.

only thing I've heard about that I would think slightly probable to be happening sometimes (rarely) (and I'm talking about NL now) is people spraying sugar water or hairspray on the buds so that the pollen stick better to it. I suppose hairspray is less healthy than sugarwater, even though burning sugar isn't really the most healthy thing to inhale either.

[AFK]

what about food coloring though? I can see how making the bud kind of reddish or purple would justify a higher street price.

What I've been told by the DEA.  (Yes, the evil gov't DEA) is that the foodcoloring is like a brand-marker.  There's already a bunch of chemicals in the Marijuana smoke so I don't know if that really adds any measurable amount of medical detriment.  But one has to wonder about the effects of these chemicals used for growing that are being absorbed into the plants.  They may not have short-term, acute effects, but it isn't too far fetched to imagine they aren't exactly honky dory for human lungs.  

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

YES you can color hydroponically grown marijuana with food coloring, however, in my experience, it takes so much to do so it isn't worth the effort.  You have to remember the water is constantly moving in most hydro set ups...  food coloring filters out quickly so you are constantly adding more.

Also, who the hell knows what smoking food coloring will do to you...  

[Triple Zero]

I have a "friend" who did a lot of hydroponic growing in the 90's.  One year for Halloween they tried to do a black strain and an orange strain of some really good stuff.  It took like a gallon of food coloring to get the black to a really dark green and the orange turned the other this gross brown color.  Taste and potency wasn't affected but.....  It didn't do what we thought it would.

fortunately there's already strains of purple and orange weed out there genetically. but that's mostly the hairs and the back of petals.

Not sure what green would do other than make it an unnatural color of green.....  

we need to figure out how to add that glow-in-the-dark gene to pot.

- trip,
increasing THC content's been done, but there are moar roads to AWESOME

[AFK]

You know what's great about my job is I can Google stuff like "glow in the dark pot" and read how-to sites on this stuff, at work, and it is not only okay, but encouraged!  Granted, for obviously different reasons than others, but still....

Now, if I could only somehow combine my job with Hoopla's....

[fomenter]

Why not?  What harm does it do?  

why not require everyone who buys a beer to undergo screening for alcoholism ? and who do you want intruding into peoples lives like this? the gov?

Alcohol is legal, marijuana is not.  Is it arbitrary?  Sure.  But show me human-made laws that aren't arbitrary.  But a simple screening is harmless and would take an hour, max, of a person's time.  And if the person really does have a problem they would reap huge benefits from being referred to treatment.  I look at it in the same way that a person has to take a defensive driving course for certain driving violations.  It's a formality one has to go through when they violate a certain law.  If they don't want to go through it, either don't violate the law, or become a lot better at violating it without being caught. 

we were talking about small amounts for personal use being ok and that it should be legal  which is more comparable to alcoholism tests for buying a beer then driving classes for violations... what happens to someone that has committed a crime that harms no one is often far worse than arbitrary i would rather see them "get help" for there harmless choice than go to jail but only if its still illegal 

if pot is legalized  part of the laws surrounding it need to address preventing its being glamorized (no advertising) and laws for selling to kids should be tightly enforced and carry heavy punishment to prevent the spread of easy access to kids that you worry about, but its hard to say that criminalization is some how better than taking such steps as part of the legalization process would end up being..

It's not hard for me to say.  One of the biggest access points for alcohol is relatives and known adults.  If you have more of these access points with legal marijuana, it's really a no-brainer that it will be more accessible.  And again, I know it is already quite accessible, but I firmly belief the needle needs to move down.  Any measure that it moves up is unacceptable in my view. 

i cant come up with any proof for this one.. but after a brief explosion of drug use from the curious trying it (small amount) and the REAL numbers of users becoming apparent (the larger part of any increase) the amount of use will become fairly constant and if the surrounding laws and penalty are done properly (strict enough) the number of known adults and relatives (and strangers willing to buy for kids) would end up being close to the same.

because i don't work in your industry i don't see the harm done by pot "??" as out weighing the harm done by the war on drugs in there pointless and un-winnable effort against it, i doubt we ever will have the same view...

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It has also contributed to the markedly increased potency of the drug as is outlined in this article:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913401,00.html

The THC levels in some of these plants grown via hydroponics are at 25%.  

As I said before, hydro allows you to give the plant the absolute BEST growing environment. The maximum level of THC present in any marijuana plant is defined in the genetics. If it's grown outside, if the conditions aren't right, you get less THC. In a perfect growing environment, you can coax a lot all the THC that's in the genetics.

It's like saying "Ohhh, those people are growing huge tomatoes and getting a bigger harvest than the outdoor tomato growers". Of course they are... but its still just tomatoes. Pot with more THC just means that you don't have to smoke very much of it.

30 years ago, most pot was being grown outdoors in a remote area where it got random watering and feeding and was prone to seeding (which drastically decreases the THC content), to compare that to weed today and pretend its more dangerous because of some chemical magic is absurd.

what about food coloring though? I can see how making the bud kind of reddish or purple would justify a higher street price.

What I've been told by the DEA.  (Yes, the evil gov't DEA) is that the foodcoloring is like a brand-marker.  There's already a bunch of chemicals in the Marijuana smoke so I don't know if that really adds any measurable amount of medical detriment.  But one has to wonder about the effects of these chemicals used for growing that are being absorbed into the plants.  They may not have short-term, acute effects, but it isn't too far fetched to imagine they aren't exactly honky dory for human lungs.  

Are you worried about eating produce from the grocery? Because it likely has exactly the same "chemicals" in it; nitrogen, phosphates, amino acids, potassium... all sorts of strange chemicals...

And if the DEA believes that food coloring is a brand marker... well, I'm not surprised, they seem to believe many things which are entirely absurd. I think, perhaps, they find an instance where some spag tried something stupid, and extrapolate it to be "a trend". I used to believe those people, I used to never touch drugs because the government had so much information about how they were Very Very Bad. Then I tried it, then I started meeting "pot dealers" and then I learned that much that had been told to me was BULLSHIT. And not just slight exaggeration bullshit, but whole cloth fibbing.

If you're telling kids that people are secretly sticking chemicals in their hydro... maybe they will believe you. However, as soon as they meet someone that does Hydro, and as soon as their misconception is cleared up... how would that affect their opinion of other things you've told them?

It seems to me that if the truth isn't enough to stop kids, making shit up to scare them is only a short term fix.

[Cramulus]

  after reading this thread, I want to find some of this artifically colored herb

so perhaps it has a market value after all

[East Coast Hustle]

what about food coloring though? I can see how making the bud kind of reddish or purple would justify a higher street price.

you can turn your bud purple just by overwatering it, or adding a PPK solution that's higher on phosphorus than your plant needs. Since watering and adding PPK are things you do anyway, there's no need to add food coloring.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

what about food coloring though? I can see how making the bud kind of reddish or purple would justify a higher street price.

you can turn your bud purple just by overwatering it, or adding a PPK solution that's higher on phosphorus than your plant needs. Since watering and adding PPK are things you do anyway, there's no need to add food coloring.

OMGZ!!! H2O and PPK are CHEMICALS!!!!!!!

[East Coast Hustle]

what about food coloring though? I can see how making the bud kind of reddish or purple would justify a higher street price.

What I've been told by the DEA.  (Yes, the evil gov't DEA) is that the foodcoloring is like a brand-marker.  There's already a bunch of chemicals in the Marijuana smoke so I don't know if that really adds any measurable amount of medical detriment.  But one has to wonder about the effects of these chemicals used for growing that are being absorbed into the plants.  They may not have short-term, acute effects, but it isn't too far fetched to imagine they aren't exactly honky dory for human lungs.  

what you were told by the DEA is an outright lie.

[AFK]

we were talking about small amounts for personal use being ok and that it should be legal  which is more comparable to alcoholism tests for buying a beer then driving classes for violations... what happens to someone that has committed a crime that harms no one is often far worse than arbitrary i would rather see them "get help" for there harmless choice than go to jail but only if its still illegal

Well the only way for someone to get appropriate help is to be properly assessed.  You don't want to treat an ASAM 1.0 the same way you treat an ASAM 3.0.  They require very different levels of care.  

because i don't work in your industry i don't see the harm done by pot "??" as out weighing the harm done by the war on drugs in there pointless and un-winnable effort against it, i doubt we ever will have the same view...

First, I work for a non-profit.  Not an industry.  
Second, as I mentioned before, law enforcement policies should continue to be examined and are as we speak:

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2009/congress-orders-review-of.html

But we can do these things without legalizing the drug.  Because I can assure you that this drug has done considerable harm to individuals and their families.  It's a fight worth fighting, but also, a fight that needs to be fought sensibly.  

[AFK]

It has also contributed to the markedly increased potency of the drug as is outlined in this article:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913401,00.html

The THC levels in some of these plants grown via hydroponics are at 25%.  

As I said before, hydro allows you to give the plant the absolute BEST growing environment. The maximum level of THC present in any marijuana plant is defined in the genetics. If it's grown outside, if the conditions aren't right, you get less THC. In a perfect growing environment, you can coax a lot all the THC that's in the genetics.

It's like saying "Ohhh, those people are growing huge tomatoes and getting a bigger harvest than the outdoor tomato growers". Of course they are... but its still just tomatoes. Pot with more THC just means that you don't have to smoke very much of it.

Ah, but this gets us back to the whole issue of minors and brain development.  Sure, a seasoned veteran like yourself may understand this, but do you think the majority of teenagers understand this and will exercise that restraint?  Teenagers and restraint are two words not commonly found in the same sentence. 

30 years ago, most pot was being grown outdoors in a remote area where it got random watering and feeding and was prone to seeding (which drastically decreases the THC content), to compare that to weed today and pretend its more dangerous because of some chemical magic is absurd.

Are fertilizers not chemicals? 

If you're telling kids that people are secretly sticking chemicals in their hydro... maybe they will believe you. However, as soon as they meet someone that does Hydro, and as soon as their misconception is cleared up... how would that affect their opinion of other things you've told them?

Let me ask you a question.  How many chemicals do you think are present in inhaled marijuana smoke?  No, not compared to tobacco, just a number relative to marijuana itself. 

It seems to me that if the truth isn't enough to stop kids, making shit up to scare them is only a short term fix.

I don't make shit up.  Anything I present to kids or anyone else for that matter in my professional work is researched.