Cannabis
[related: Operation Pipe Dreams, Cheech & Chong]
A flowering plant containing powerful psychoactive compounds indigenous to Asia. Cannabis has a long history of ritualistic usage. In ancient Doaist culture, cannabis vapours were inhaled as part of steam bath purification ceremonies. The first documented western use occurred in ancient Greece, where cannabis was known as a common tool of oracles and augurs. Concurrently, various Gnostic Christian sects dubbed it the Tree of Life, though its role in Christian ritual was deemed apocryphal by the Church Fathers. The plant has long been prized for greatly enhancing philosophical thinking and metacognition in the user, however the side effects from regular cannabis use are rampant [1] [2]. In modern American culture, cannabis is commonly smoked from a large water filtration pipe called a bong [3], often adorned with stickers of popular music ensembles or New Age slogans.
- ↑ The rates of schizophrenia in cannabis enthusiasts outpace that of the general population by roughly 370%.
- ↑ Also, nostalgia can be paired with cannabis to form a potent cocktail - a portal to a motionless realm of memory (She called me... "baby".).
- ↑ Bongs exist in a commercial space of liminal legality - Operation Pipe Dreams, a War on Drugs-era CIA/FBI initiative, sought to prosecute "head shops" where bongs were sold. The program budget of $12,000,000 (including the involvement of almost 2,000 law enforcement personnel) yielded only one criminal conviction: Paris Chong, the purveyor of Nice Dreams, a glass blowing collective specializing in non-functional, one-of-a-kind pipes intended to be encased and presented as works of art. Paris Chong is the son of Tommy Chong of Cheech & Chong- a highly lucrative cannabis-fueled franchise of films, television shows, and comedy albums.