Tag: Highdeas

What if the government held a billion-dollar competition to create a safe and effective designer drug? Greg Beato thinks it’s a great idea:

Pipe dream? Certainly innovation has never been a part of the federal government’s drug policy mandate. In 1986, in response to “designer drugs” intended to mimic the effects of heroin and other illegal drugs, Congress passed legislation making it illegal to produce substances that are “substantially similar,” or chemical “analogues,” to Schedule I and Schedule II drugs. …

[But] imagine if, instead of trying to thwart the entrepreneurs behind products like “Bomb Marley Jungle Juice” and “AK-47 Cherry Popper,” the [Office of National Drug Control Policy] tried to actively incentivize them, by offering a billion-dollar prize to the first manufacturer who successfully produces the kind of safely domesticated mood enhancer that Dr. Siegel envisioned 25 years ago. Under the current regulatory environment, manufacturers are only rewarded for creating substances that are different enough from existing Schedule I drugs to claim, at least temporarily, shelf space in head shops, gas stations, and cyberspace. A billion-dollar prize for a safer intoxicant would give them a tangible reason to aim much higher.

He wrote in 1969:

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor.

Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word ‘crazy’ to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: ‘did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.’ When high on cannabis I discovered that there’s somebody inside in those people we call mad.

(Hat tip: The Longform Guide to Weed. Photo of Earth at twilight from NASA.)

A reader writes:

One of the "high ideas" you mentioned is that people should be able to text 911 (in case a serial killer is after them). This is actually a really big issue for the Federal Communications Commission, which is trying to modernize the 911 system so people can send texts, videos and photos during emergencies. In a speech in September, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said:

But today, if a mobile phone user attempts to send even a simple text to 9-1-1, it goes nowhere. That’s what happened to the students at Virginia Tech who texted 9-1-1 during the terrible shooting several years ago. A tragedy during the 1990s – the carjacking and murder of Jennifer Koon in New York – was significant in spurring the initial focus on NG9-1-1 [Next-generation 911], and is worth recalling. During the incident, Jennifer Koon was able to call 9-1-1 from her car phone but couldn’t speak for fear of alerting her attacker. The PSAP [Public Safety Answering Point – a 911 call center] kept the line open in the hopes the caller would say something, but she never did and was found dead two hours later. The ability to text 9-1-1 might have saved her life.

He also notes (pdf) that texting 911 is important for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

A website that somehow never made it on the Dish until now. But 'tis the season. It's a portmanteau of "high" and "ideas" – those accidentally brilliant thoughts one gets while stoned. Dish faves:

The word OK looks like a sideways person. I've said OK my whole life and never noticed him. What's up little guy?

we should be able to text 911.. ya know.. just in case your hiding from a psycho serial killer and can't talk….

"White chocolate milk" Tell me I didn't just blow your mind. I know I just blew your mind.

Get a bottle of bubbles. Get glow sticks. Cut open the glow sticks and dump them into the bubble solution. Turn off the lights and you got yourself glow in the dark bubbles. BOOM. You're welcome.

If you watch jaws backwards, its a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.

I think it would be awesome if you could get Morgan Freeman's voice on a GPS. It would be like he's narrating your travels.

I feel like when I go to delete an iphone app they all start shaking cause they are nervous because they don't know which one is being cut

Anybody notice that the word bed looks like a bed?

Here's how u end the Twilight saga in one scene…Bella and Edward smoke a blunt together. Edward gets the munchies. No more Bella. The End.