The Bong Blog

Its starts when your young and someone first gives you a joint or offers you a puff and before you know it your buying weed and rolling it into joints then you start to see people using pipes and bongs and you just NEED to get your hands on one. Then after you’ve been smoking  for a while you realize that you really need a grinder to make the best use of your smoking kit. More time passes and you eventually end up here on The Bong Blog wondering “what kind of scale should I buy?”. The answer to that question very much depends on your needs, how much money your willing to spend, and what level of quality you expect out of the things you buy.

1. Rough estimation scales

For most people the buck probably stops here. These scales are of similar quality, accuracy, and price. All of them are made for as little as possible overseas, and not one is going to be 100% accurate. The fact that these are made cheaply is not nessisarily a bad thing just that you may not want to use any of these for any purpose that demands precision. If your only purpose is only a casual reference for your own use and you are not using the readings the scale gives you as the basis for any business then these are the ones you want. (the scales on this page are a mash up of the most popular/highest rates products)

American Weigh Signature Series Black Digital Pocket Scale, 1000 by 0.1 grams

Only goes to 0.1 gram accuracy which should be alright for most people but fot an extra few dollars it is preferrable to get the next step up from the same company.

American Weigh Scale Ac-100 Digital Pocket Gram Scale, Black, 100 G X 0.01 G

A nice step up from the previous model from the same company. If you chose this be careful because it only goes up to 100g rather than 1000g which is the price you pay for having a more accurate lower end (preferable for herbalists) There are many more scales available on Amazon and other stores however I personally own this scale and would say it’s probably pretty close to the best 14 dollars I have ever spent.

2. Premium pocket scales

These are the scales that you get to display proudly beside your 3 foot glass bong, 4 layered grinder, and pictures of yourself smoking a six paper joint.

My Weigh Palmscale 7 Advance – 200g x 0.01g

This is a great scale from a repuatable company, it comes with an calibration weight and is one of the top selling pocket scales in north america.

3. Commercial use scales

I have never needed to use a scale for any commercial applications and I assume that you actually know what you need better than I do so why not check out Amazons selection of kitchen digital scales. no matter what your looking for you will find something that meets your need there. Amazon Scales

In an interesting move the conservative government of the Netherlands has decided to delay its plans to ban all tourists to the country from buying marijuana. The reason for the delay is apparently a practical one; they are having a logistical nightmare implementing their proposed “weed pass” system which would only allow residents of the Netherlands into coffee shops. There is no indication that this move signals a shift in the position of the Dutch government, however there is growing resistance to the plan from some southern cities and of course the city of Amsterdam both of which benefit enormously from the tourist industry. The strongest voice in the oppostion is the academic community which believes that the criminalizing of the sale of pot to outsides would result in the re-takeover of the drug industry by street dealers – the problem the tolerance laws where brought in to stop in the first place.

This situation makes my blood boil, for the last 3 decades I have been able to look over to the Dutch as an example of a country that has got it right. They have low “problem drug user” rate compared with the rest of the EU, 0.30% of the population vs and EU average of 0.52%, as well as a low crime rate, and even a comparable rate of pot smoking to the rest of the EU. The only fundamental difference is they are where able to takes the criminals out of the drug scene equation.

It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few years.

Source

If your a little cash strapped and you happen to live in Johnson County Kentucky you can earn a bit of extra dough if your willing to tell the police who is dealing drugs. This offer comes with the option for informant work.

Now this is pretty ludicrous and I tend to think that no one who has ended up here is about to run off and do this but I guess it’s your prerogative to do so. What I take issue with is the attitude of the sherif who says ”Basically what we need from the public to help combat this, is we need some informants. Without community involvement, there is no way we can combat these drugs. We have to have community involvement”. He comes strait out and says that the deals are the problem and not Americas ridiculous drug policies.

This is in contrast to an organization called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Probation) which is a growing movement amongst Law enforcement officials which aims to bring credibility to the stance that probation is the problem and not the criminals that seek to meet the demand for drugs in the country. The reality is that the consumer demand for drugs in the united state is absolutely enormous. The UN estimated in 2003 that the world drug trade was worth US$321.6 billion, slightly less than 1% of total global commerce. Now even if there where not a wealth of historical evidence showing the failure of anti-drug policies I would bet on the power of the dollar 100 times before I would bank of the power of governments to stop people from making that dollar.

This is a highly sophisticated industry full of hardened criminals who have amassed vast fortunes on the sale of drugs. What is interesting is that the worlds governments have the power to dismantle this entire industry overnight. If drugs where legal and people with drugs problems where viewed as having a medical problem rather than a criminal one it would completely eviscerate the cash flow of dangerous criminals and cartels overnight. Of course it seems the likely hood of any western government doing this is unlikely at a time when even the pot haven of the Netherlands is backing down from their long held position of tolerance, and if it’s unlikely in the west you had better believe drug legalization is not on the horizon for any other regions. In 2009 China executed 50 drug traffickers in celebration of UN Anti-Drugs Day, it would be a pretty big stretch to go from executing to legalizing.

Like any sane thinking person who has been exposed to drugs, drug users, and drug dealer over the course of their lives it is easy see that is it not necessarily a black and white issue but I firmly believe that the society as whole would stand to gain from the legalization of drugs. /rant

According to the Huffington post President Barrack Obama has done more to stop on the rights of Americans seeking marijuana as a medical treatment than any other president. Here’s a chart:

Really tragic for a guy who once said he was going to respect state law when it came to medical marijuana. At least this doesn’t really come as a big surprise after decades of ridiculous drugs laws that only serve to funnel money into the hands of proper criminals.