Healthcare
How Cannabis Can Be Used As A Tool For Personal Development
If there’s one thing that most cannabis users can agree on, it’s that cannabis allows your mind to wander into unknown realms of the imagination. You begin to think in different terms and can use this to your advantage.
Most people are looking for ways to better themselves. They go to the gym, they read books, they watch their diets — all with the purpose to advance their personal development.
For many years, cannabis has been thought to be detrimental to personal development by the establishment making claims that it “makes you slow” or “lazy” or “unmotivated”. However, while cannabis may produce these effects in some people, many others have discovered that marijuana can be a wonderful tool for self-development if used correctly.
In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the different ways you can use cannabis to accelerate your personal development. Please note that the following are merely suggestions on how to use everyone’s favorite plant to push themselves beyond themselves.
Stress Management
Stress isn’t a bad thing, but bad stress is! What’s the difference between good stress and bad stress? From Summa Health:
Good stress is short-term and it inspires and motivates you, focuses your energy and enhances performance. Bad stress, however, is the kind that wears you out, leaves you jittery and is harmful to your health. Bad stress, or distress, can lead to anxiety, confusion, poor concentration and decreased performance.
In other words, proper stress management is a key aspect of personal development. When your mind is gripped by stress, whether you have an upcoming deadline, bills to pay, or even suffering from relational stress, cannabis can give you a moment of peace to reassess your relationship with the stress itself.
Many people use cannabis to unwind at the end of their days. This allows them to unplug from the activities of the day and gives them space to relax. However, it’s important to note that smoking at any sign of stress would be detrimental to your personal development.
You want to wield stress like a weapon, using it to move you forward and letting it go when it begins to stifle your progress. There’s a delicate balance between the two, but with enough practice, you’ll learn to work with stress and not let it work against you.
PRO TIP: Don’t smoke cannabis at the first sign of stress, rather, sit in the stress for as long as you can. Become mindful of it, and figure out how you can naturally convert it into “positive stress”. If the stress becomes too much to handle, spark up a joint. If it’s late at night, any strain that will induce a body high would be preferable and throughout the day, you’ll want to work with more cerebral strains.
Finding Positivity in Negative Situations (Changing Self Talk)
Being positive doesn’t mean ignoring the negatives. On the contrary, people who are actively looking to improve themselves are constantly looking at their shortcomings to see how they can improve their performance. However, the difference between looking at your shortcomings and falling prey to negativity comes in relation to the attitude you harbor.
Negativity is a loop. If you begin to pull on one “negative thought or emotion” and give it your attention, you tend to reframe your brain to look for only negative things. It’s as Robert Anton Wilson said, “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves!”
In other words, your mind is primed to look for supporting evidence to any premise you establish. If it is “negativity”, the mind will find things to prove this position. If you victimize yourself, make yourself smaller than the situation, insult yourself for your shortcomings, etc., then cannabis can be used as a powerful disruptor.
It’s difficult to simply “stop being negative” and, thus, a bit of euphoria can go a long way. Cannabis gives you a few moments of “altered perception” that gives you the opportunity to break your mental cycles.
Once again, it’s important to use cannabis sparingly. Some people rely on cannabis to break the negative mental cycles, however, in the realm of personal development, you’ll always want to implement tactics that derive from internal mechanisms. For example, focusing in on your breath can also create enough mental space to switch your internal gears of perception.
In the case that you are stuck in a negative feedback loop, smoking some cannabis can provide you with a quick release from the mental cycle.
Dreaming and Being
In the world of personal development, establishing the “future you” is incredibly important. You need to have a goal to work towards. This means that you have to tap into your creative powers to imagine a future where you have achieved all of your goals.
Who are you then? What are your habits? How is your emotional state? What do you do daily? All of these questions (and more) begin to create an image in your head of what “success” looks like. Some people however, either find it difficult to utilize their imagination for this action or are too subjected to their current situation that even envisioning a brighter future becomes difficult.
Fortunately, cannabis can help here as well. If there’s one thing that most cannabis users can agree on, it’s that cannabis allows your mind to wander into unknown realms of the imagination. You begin to think in different terms and can use this to your advantage.
If you find it difficult to envision a future where you are straight up “killing it!” then you can use cannabis to help you bridge this gap. Simply spark up and smoke as much as you need to get good and high.
Make sure that you let go of all restrictions and then, using a pen and paper, just start writing out the future you that you would be very happy with. The future you that you consider to be “a baller”.
Once you have done this, read it again when you’re sober. See what parts really resonate with you and then try to envision you as that person. Invoke this future self into your present and begin to operate according to how “they” would do things.
It’s like Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In other words, your problems can’t be solved by the way you are thinking now or in the past, but by the way that your future accomplished self would engage with it.
Cannabis can help you invoke this future self to begin to deal with the problems you face in the present.
Bottom Line
There are many more ways we can use cannabis to improve our self-development. The three techniques discussed above can definitely help you achieve higher states of performance.
Source: https://thefreshtoast.com/how-to/how-cannabis-can-be-used-as-a-tool-for-personal-development/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed that cannabis odor does not constitute probable cause to search a vehicle.
If Minnesota police search a vehicle solely based upon the smell of pot, they can’t justify searching a vehicle, even if there is evidence found of other alleged crimes. Even after appealing a lower court decision to suppress the evidence—twice—the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed, and the dismissal of his charges stands.
In a ruling filed regarding a case the State of Minnesota Court of Appeals on Sept. 13, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed that cannabis odor does not constitute probable cause to search a vehicle.
The case has been ongoing for two years. On July 5, 2021, just before 10 p.m., a Litchfield police officer stopped a car for an obscure local law: the light bar mounted on the vehicle’s grill had more auxiliary driving lights than are permitted under Minnesota law. The officer asked the driver, Adam Lloyd Torgerson, for his license and registration. Torgerson, his wife, and his child were present in the vehicle. The officer stated that he smelled pot and asked Torgerson if there was any reason for the odor, which he initially denied. But cops found a lot more than just pot.
A backup officer was called in. The couple denied possessing any pot, but Torgerson admitted to smoking weed in the past. The second officer stated that the weed odor gave them probable cause to search the vehicle and ordered them to exit the vehicle. The first officer searched the vehicle and found a film canister, three pipes, and a small plastic bag in the center console. The plastic bag contained a white powder and the film canister contained meth, which was confirmed in a field test.
Torgenson was charged with possession of meth pipe in the presence of a minor and fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance after the unwarranted search of Torgerson’s vehicle.
Police Aren’t Allowed to Do That, Multiple Courts Rule
But the search had one major problem—cops weren’t searching for a meth pipe. They only searched his car because they could smell pot, and the meth and paraphernalia were a surprise for everyone. Still, they had no grounds to search the vehicle. The man’s charges were later dismissed after the district court determined the odor of cannabis alone was insufficient basis for probable cause to search the vehicle, regardless of whatever other drug paraphernalia they found.
The state appealed the case, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision. The case was appealed a second time, this time to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which agreed with the lower court’s ruling.
“This search was justified only by the odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle,” the Minnesota Supreme Court decision reads. “Torgerson moved to suppress the evidence found during the search, arguing that the odor of marijuana, alone, is insufficient to create the requisite probable cause to search a vehicle under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. The district court granted Torgerson’s motion, suppressed the evidence, and dismissed the complaint. The State appealed. The court of appeals affirmed the district court’s suppression order. Because we conclude that the odor of marijuana emanating from a vehicle, alone, is insufficient to create the requisite probable cause to search a vehicle under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement, we affirm.”
It amounts to basic human rights that apply—regardless of whether or not a person is addicted to drugs.
Other States do Precisely the Same Regarding Pot Odor as Probably Cause
An Illinois judge ruled in 2021 that the odor of cannabis is not sufficient grounds for police to search a vehicle without a warrant during a traffic stop.
Daniel J. Dalton, Associate Judge of the 14th Judicial Circuit, issued a ruling in response to a motion to suppress evidence in the case of Vincent Molina, a medical cannabis patient arrested for cannabis possession last year.
In that case, Molina was arrested despite the decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis in Illinois in 2019 with the passage of the Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act.
In some states, the issue of probable cause and cannabis was defined through bills.
Last April, the Maryland House of Delegates approved a bill that reduces the penalties for public cannabis consumption and bars police from using the odor of cannabis as the basis for the search of an individual or auto. Under Maryland’s House Bill 1071, law enforcement officers would be prohibited from using the odor of raw or burnt cannabis as probable cause to search a person or vehicle.
The rulings represent the rights of citizens when they are pulled over by police, even if there are hard drugs involved.
New Mexico cannabis operator fined, loses license for alleged BioTrack fraud
Marijuana companies suing US attorney general in federal prohibition challenge
Alabama to make another attempt Dec. 1 to award medical cannabis licenses
Pot Odor Does Not Justify Probable Cause for Vehicle Searches, Minnesota Court Affirms
New Mexico cannabis operator fined, loses license for alleged BioTrack fraud
Alabama to make another attempt Dec. 1 to award medical cannabis licenses
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