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A little history about April 20th or 420

For most peo­ple, today might as well be listed on the cal­en­dar (I’m sure some peo­ple do have it on their cal­en­dar) as a reli­gious hol­i­day. For years, April 20th (4/20) has been a day of non-stop pot smok­ing cel­e­bra­tion. Cel­e­bra­tion for what?

There’s a lot of con­fu­sion about this day. Some say that 4/20 is related to Hitler’s birth­day and the Columbine shoot­ing that occurred in 1999. The fact is; Hitler made no asso­ci­a­tions with mar­i­juana, just because his birth­day is on April 20th, doesn’t mean that he smoked pot.The Columbine shoot­ing also had any­thing to do with the date. The term was actu­ally never heard of until 1971. There have been many of things that hap­pened on April 20th as well as the birth of many well-recognized peo­ple, the com­mu­nity has com­piled a list of events, births and deaths that have occurred on April 20th.

It all started back in 1971 at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, Cal­i­for­nia. A group of kids who called them­selves Waldo’s, started using the term as a code-word for a time to go get stoned after school. The code described the time of day (4:20 PM) that these Waldo’s would meet to get their buzz on, there are more details from recent inter­views of the group of nearly a dozen kids, but who really cares about that?

Since the start of the term four-twenty, it’s mean­ing has changed quite a bit. Con­trary to what most peo­ple think, the orig­i­nal term was not describ­ing April 20th. What the Waldo’s prob­a­bly didn’t know back then, was that they were start­ing a huge trend for those who enjoy marijuana.

Even know that today, the mar­i­juana cul­ture doesn’t use the term exactly as it was cre­ated, it’s still a really big part of many events relat­ing to Earth Day and mar­i­juana decrim­i­nal­iza­tion. I think that most of those who par­tic­i­pate on 4/20 would find it inter­est­ing to have some back­ground on it.

A young mar­i­juana plant

Pharmaceuticals vs. Herbs

In today’s cul­ture, mil­lions of peo­ple are pre­scribed phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal med­ica­tion for all types of con­di­tions and ill­nesses when there are herbal med­i­cines avail­able. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, also referred to as med­i­cine or med­ica­tion can be described as any chem­i­cal sub­stance intended for use in med­i­cine. Herbal reme­dies, also referred to as home­opa­thy or herbal sup­ple­ments are alter­nate med­i­cines that are com­posed of only nat­ural ingre­di­ents like plants and herbs.
It is sci­en­tif­i­cally proven that many herbs on the mar­ket can and do pro­vide effec­tive treat­ment for cer­tain ill­nesses and ail­ments. While most doc­tors sit in their office and write pre­scrip­tions for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs all day long, they could be mak­ing an effort to try and help the con­di­tion with herbal reme­dies. Peo­ple don’t real­ize what doc­tors are doing to them by pre­scrib­ing them the chem­i­cals to “cure” them. In many cases, pre­scrip­tion drugs do more harm in the long run; whether the drug cause seri­ous dam­age to your inter­nal organs, or the drugs them­selves cause you to become depen­dant on con­sum­ing them. For exam­ple, in the United States and in most other coun­tries, Heroin is ille­gal, though doc­tors are able to pre­scribe a syn­thetic ver­sion of it to peo­ple who say they’re in pain.

Herbal sup­ple­ments do not cause depen­dency when tak­ing them. Instead of sup­ply­ing a patient with mor­phine, hydrocodone or oxy­codone, they should be able to try a med­i­cine that is native to the Earth like Cham­momile, Kava, Brome­lain, Horse­tail, Valer­ian or even St. Johns Wort. There are many Dietary Sup­ple­ments that are a com­bi­na­tion of herbs such as Curamin© which includes DLPA, Boswl­lia, Cur­cumin, and Nat­tok­i­nase which are all one-hundred per­cent nat­ural medicines.

On the con­trary, med­i­cines that doc­tors are giv­ing out are not the only med­i­cines that are caus­ing peo­ple prob­lems. Aceta­minophen, Ibupro­fen and Naproxen are all over –the-counter NSAID’s or Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs that are avail­able to any­one who needs them. With­out proper edu­ca­tion, these drugs which are “safe enough to sell to every­one in the United States” can cause seri­ous prob­lems with the liver, includ­ing death.

Over­all, the main dif­fer­ence between drugs that are being pro­duced by phar­ma­cies and being dis­trib­uted by doc­tors and stores around the world is safety. In the United States alone, over 80 mil­lion Aspirin pills are used each day. Con­tin­u­ous or over use of Aspirin can cause liver dis­ease and even liver fail­ure. Aspirin is syn­the­sized from Wil­low Bark, a very com­mon tree that is also avail­able as com­pletely nat­ural herbal sup­ple­ment, which in turn is not nearly as dan­ger­ous as tak­ing Aspirin or other NSAID’s.

While some herbal sup­ple­ments can­not achieve the relief or goal that some phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals can, a com­bi­na­tion of herbs and mod­er­ate pre­scrip­tion drugs can achieve the desired effect while avoid­ing dam­age to the body as well as dependency.

Bouncing Bear Botanicals, Raided

Jonathan Sloan, owner of Bounc­ing Bear Botanicals

Just when I think that the United State’s  could not be more cor­rupted and incor­rect, Bounc­ing Bear Botan­i­cals was ille­gally raided. For those of you who have never heard of them, BBB is one of the Inter­nets largest herbal sup­pli­ers. Along with the raid of Bounc­ing Bear Botan­i­cals, the FDA and local police also raided another store which sold some of the same mer­chan­dise called Spir­i­tual Jour­ney. There is a lot of talk about why the raids were exe­cuted, some say it’s because the state of Kansas is cur­rently work­ing on a law to out­law a herbal smok­ing blend called K2, by raid­ing an con­fis­cat­ing the prod­uct before the law is passed to keep it from going into the black mar­ket. K2 is a new blend of herbs with appar­ently is a cannabi­noid antag­o­nist, in sim­pler words, it pro­duces the same effects of Mar­i­juana, so the gov­ern­ment wants it banned (a news story about it).

On top of los­ing over $700,000 worth of prod­ucts and prop­erty; Jon Sloan was arrested and had bond set at $906,000, and received 8 felony charges including:

1. Unlaw­ful man­u­fac­tur­ing of con­trolled sub­stances: Dimeth­lyl­trypt­a­mine (DMT)
2. Unlaw­ful man­u­fac­tur­ing of con­trolled sub­stances: Mescaline
3. Unlaw­ful man­u­fac­tur­ing of con­trolled sub­stances: Lyser­gic Acid Amide (LSA, rel­a­tive to LSD found in Morn­ing Glory and Hawai­ian Baby Woodrose Seeds)
4. Unlaw­ful cul­ti­va­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­trolled sub­stances: Mescaline
5. Unlaw­ful cul­ti­va­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­trolled sub­stances: Dimeth­lyl­trypt­a­mine (DMT); Chacruna; Illi­nois Bundle­flower; Epena; Cebil Seeds.
6. Unlaw­ful cul­ti­va­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­trolled sub­stances: Bufote­nine, Epena, Chaliponga, Cebil Seeds, Col­orado River Toads.
7. Unlaw­ful cul­ti­va­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­trolled sub­stances: Lyser­gic Acid Amide, Morn­ing Glory Seeds, Rivea Corymbosa.
8. Unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of cer­tain drug pre­cur­sors and drug para­pher­na­lia: Plas­tic jugs and fil­ters used or intended for unlaw­ful use to man­u­fac­ture, cul­ti­vate, plant prop­a­gate, har­vest, test, ana­lyze or dis­trib­ute a con­trolled substance.

The thing that is so asi­nine about this whole sit­u­a­tion is that all of the plants, herbs toads (yes, toads) and cacti found on Bounc­ing Bear’s web­site are legal. I could per­son­ally go to Wal-Mart’s gar­den shop and buy Morn­ing Glory seeds,  I could go to an exotic pet shop and buy a Col­orado River Toad, San Pedro Catus, totally legal. Bounc­ing Bear did not sell extracts from any of these plants which he is being charged with. If grow­ing Morn­ing Glo­ries are “cul­ti­vat­ing LSA”, every gar­den­ing shop in the USA would be fined as well. Another highly accred­ited botan­i­cal shop, IAmShaman, sells a lot of the same plants the BBB does.

It is truly ridicu­lous of what the FDA spends their time on. Instead of try­ing to crack down on the guys who put chem­i­cals in herbal sup­ple­ments, they are try­ing to shut down and com­pletely screw over a guy try­ing to make a liv­ing sell­ing plants. I know that almost every plant sold on the site has some kind of psy­che­delic prop­er­ties, but they are legal, 100% legal.

The feds are really just wast­ing their time, the owner’s time and taxpayer’s dol­lars. There is no way that the charges will stick on Sloan, in my opin­ion. I do wish him the best of luck, I have always sup­ported his store and I still do to this day. The feds basi­cally froze all of his bank accounts and put him in jail to make it harder for him to present a defense. His fam­ily and co-workers are gath­er­ing dona­tions for his defense, though I don’t com­pletely agree with that. They made a lot of claims on savejon.org that are untrue to make more peo­ple donate. They say that they didn’t know that most of those plants were psy­che­delic, but if you visit the owner’s blog and web­site, he has tons of infor­ma­tion about it all. I under­stand that you need money, but lying to the peo­ple who sup­port you isn’t cool.