Find out more about Herbal Vaporizers

So, after mentioning them briefly in a previous post, I thought I’d take the time to go ahead and offer a full review, and a few tips for using the Ubie vaporizer.  First off, let’s review.

The primary question is whether or not the utility of the Ubie vaporizer justifies its cost. If you get them from the manufacturer, you can get them for $15 a piece, or even lower if you’re willing to purchase multiples.  So, the cost factor is very friendly. Friendlier even than most traditional smoke generating pieces. In short, yes, the Ubie is worth $15.

But how well do they work?

Well, they can be a bit tricky, but after some experimentation, Healthy and I were able to get them working pretty darn nicely. They’re pretty easy to load.

You put the herbal blend in the longer, larger tube,

then put the smaller one in place behind it

Its true, over heating, and thus burning is possible.  This can be a very unpleasant experience as vaped herbal blend is most foul tasting when burnt. However, with a little practice and know how, the Ubie is an easy to use, low cost entry level vaporizer for people wanting to make the switch to smokeless toking but do not have the $250 – $500 required for a nice high end model.  In short, neither I, nor Healthy, have any objections to this device and recommend it, especially to people wanting to get into vaporizing without making a huge financial commitment in the process.

So, with that said.  Some tips for using your Ubie.

1)  Do NOT let the flame touch the Ubie.  This is a fast way to a lung full of smoke, which defeats the purpose.

A few centimeters away is plenty close to do the trick

2) Break that shit up!  No, really, break it up very finely.  I know this was kind of hard for me, as I have an ingrained desire to try to not break up my sticky herbal blend so it burns nice and slow… but when you’re goal is vaporizing it, the smaller the better.  Got a grinder?  Use it.

Healthy says you need to break your “tobacco” up even more than this

3) Point it up.  It may look, or even feel, a little wrong… (At times I find myself flicking the Ubie I’m using to better pack the herbal blend I’m vaporizing and feel like I’m some junkie flicking his needle) but don’t be afraid to elevate the far end of the Ubie, you want to keep the herbal blend compacted as best you can.  Besides, it’s the perfect opportunity to break out the Penguin impersonation you’ve been saving up to impress your friends.  Ladies, this is your chance to BE Holly Golightly.  Live it up.

Modified to protect the not so innocent Bruco

4) Breath slowly.  You’ll want to inhale slowly as this will allow the hot air to vaporize more of the active ingredients and thus you’ll be getting bigger vape hits.  You’re going to have to accept that the first few hits might be small, and you probably will have to take away your heat source before you’ve filled your lungs to capacity (especially you, Michael Phelps) but you can get sizable puffs.  They do work.  Oh yea, and did I mention they taste delicious.  Seriously.  Mmmmm.

5) Warm your Ubie up.  Don’t expect, or even try, to get vape on your first inhalation.  Just flick the lighter on, inhale slowly a few seconds, and flick it off.  If you want, you can keep inhaling and flick it again briefly.  The point is, you want to warm the weed up so you’re basically getting vapor action as long as the heat’s supplied.  A few short pulls just to get it closer to the magic 400 degree mark isn’t wasting time when you can then flick the lighter 2 seconds and pull a nice puff of vapor quickly and easily in.

If you follow these tips, and get a little practice with your technique, you’ll soon find your self quite stoned with out the harmful smoke.  Is it a nice air blowing electric heated thermostat controlled $250+ top of the line vaporizer?  No.  Is it functional?  You bet.  And while, I wouldn’t recommend putting anything on top of your Ubie, it’s tough enough for the occasional gravity induced trip to the CARPETED floor. For those of you still sitting on the fence, this is it, your entry ticket to the wonderland of vapor.

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As you can probably tell, I am a pop culture junkie, hence the homage to the Colbert Report.  Obviously I’m going to go ahead and weigh in on that whole “Michael Phelps smoking pot photo” brouhaha that has everybody talking.

Well Mr Phelps, we here at the HealthyToker are not going to give you a hard time about toking.  As a matter of fact, we’ll “tip our hats” to you for it.  After all, we believe in it, it’s all natural, its a good time, and sadly you could have been doing keg stands and it would have garnered less attention thanks to the USA’s ass backwards drug policies.

However, Mr Phelps, a “wag of the finger” from us here at HealthyToker for using a bong.  Your lungs, the ones that have won you like, what a dozen gold medals (14, but who’s counting?) between 2 olympic competitions?  Those pink babies are priceless.  Worth more than their weight in platinum and there you are mucking them up with, ugh, smoke.  Next time Michael do your self a favor, use a vaporizer.  Or better yet, get together with some friends and bake some.  I’m sure you swim enough laps to sweat off the butter, and what’s more?  You wouldn’t have lost a Kellog’s sponsorship over a photo of you eating a brownie.

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First off, if any of you use Hulu and have seen the film called Johnny Appleweed on there, do your self a favor, don’t watch it.  It’s utter shit.  Seriously.  I like movies in spite of bad acting, bad writing, and bad production values.

For example?  I own a copy of a film called The Unnameable 2 which is, frankly, a terrible bastardiztion of HP Lovecraft’s fiction.  However, despite the bad acting, writing, and terrible production values, I still like the movie because I’m so fond of the source material on which it is based.  The fact that the “source material” for this piece of shit Johnny Appleweed movie is essentially the same idea that gave birth to the Johnny Weedseed Project means, in theory, I should be somewhat benevolent towards this movie, and I’m not.

It sucks.  Don’t watch it.  HOWEVER!  It is not all bad.  My attempt to turn this into an internet movement may have been 10 years delayed, but it seems that now IS the time for this idea to become reality.  Bad movies are being made, a few other websites are popping up, and Healthy, being the tech genius of the two of us, has brought it to my attention that we’ve had a few people wander onto the site curtousy of google searches and the Johnny Weedseed Project.

Welcome to any and all wishing to embrace the idea of legalization through proliferation.  Please, go out, plant your seeds.  Encourage your friends and dealers to join in.  We can do this.  Now, I’m going to retreat to my cave so I can resume my research on fatty acids and how THC bonds to them.  If any of you are bio-chem majors and want to help enlighten me, feel free to drop Healthy or I a line.

Adieu mon amis!

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Well, as you all know, we here at the Healthy Toker only enjoy one thing more than a good bowl of some high grade ganj, and that’s a good bowl of high grade ganj that doesn’t require us to inhale smoke.  Nothing revolutionary in this post, just some quick thoughts on alternatives to the usual flame to bud technique.

Vaporization -  The great thing about Vaporization is you get all the effects of smoking marijuana, including the fast high, with out the smoke.  The downside is vaporizers can be a little expensive in general.  Keep an eye peeled as we intend to eventually roll out comprehensive reviews on devices and vendors, but we’re still in the research process. The way a Vaporizer works, (especially a well made one, as
opposed to the one you tried to rig out of a soldering iron or light bulb using some random “how to” guide from Google) is that it heats up the cannabis to around 365-405 degrees farenheit.  At this temperature, THC will vaporize, but the plant its self does not catch fire.  What winds up happening is all of the THC (what we’re all after) is vaporized into a steam like substance that hits smooth and clean, and contains no smoke at all.  That’s right, no smoke, no carcinogens, no lung filling tar, just gaseous THC to get you stoned.  What’s more is, there’s little to no loss from combustion, which is a usual after effect of the tried and true fire and smoke method.  The big difference between a home made vaporizer and a retail one is the controls for the temperature.  Most home rigs will require you to keep an eye on the vaporizer and remove your heat source before it gets too hot, as opposed to the retail jobs that you simply turn on and control themselves with a thermostat.  Though some that are out there will still require user attention, such as the convenient, portable, Ubie.  The point is, vapor is healthier than smoke, and less wasteful, and being the green friendly guys we are at Healthy Toker, there’s no better solution.

Cooking – Now, cooking is something most of us have heard of, and probably tried.  It basically boils down to bonding the THC with a saturated fat (commonly done by simmering in butter) and then using said saturated fat in a recipe.  The upside is, you can get stoned from anything you’re willing to put butter on.  It’s great for taking pot treats out in public.  Once, I worked at a convenience store, and had a friend who regularly baked cookies and brownies.  She’d often give them to me back then.  I can’t tell you how many nights I stood at the counter, ringing people up, on the security cameras, reaching into my smock and grabbing a cookie from the bag I kept in my pocket.  It filled me with a strange delight to know that I was, in fact, getting stoned off my ass in front of strangers and regulars, cops and crooks, and even the man’s camera, but none was the wiser.  It made the end of my shift in the cooler more fun, too.  The downside is, saturated fat is fat.  If you really want to eat all your bud, you better figure out some ways to counteract the fat intake, like exercise and diet controls.  We’ll look into suggestions along these lines in later posts.

The Magnifying Glass – Now, when Healthy first mentioned this idea to me, part of me laughed.  After all, if you’re inhaling smoke, why worry about a little butane?  But after pondering our site, and its goal, I realized that some people might not have the means or ability to find a healthier alternative to inhaling the smoke, in which case, shouldn’t we at least try to suggest one way (if not more, presuming we can come up with them in this haze we lounge so often in) to help reduce the health risks when smoking?  Well, this idea is simple.  You skip the butane, you skip the phospherous of a match, and instead, you park yourself in a well lit area where you wont be disturbed and bust out a trusty magnifying glass to create a mini heat ray you can use to spark your bowl (this will work better if you have a bowl designed to keep the burning material burning, such as a ceramic bowl or something) or joint.   Sure it sounds geeky, sure its probably less practical than the previously mentioned Ubie, but it’s a lot better than when you used to sit in the yard frying ants with the magnifying glass, instead of getting your self fried.

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10 years ago when I had the idea for the Johnny Weedseed project, I was too proud to ask for help.  I wanted to do it alone, so I kept it to my self.  Foolish, I know, and it mothballed for a decade.  I’m confident I am not the first to come up with the idea that I have named the Johnny Weedseed Project, and now I’m hoping to share it with as many others as I can so the dream can become a reality.

At this point you may be wondering, “So what the hell is the idea, wordy?”  Well, it’s simple.  I don’t think marijuana should be illegal.  I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you probably agree.  The thing about laws though, is they’re only as good as the enforcement, and enforcement is a matter of logistics.  Number of officers, vehicles, dogs, etc, all of these are finite and limited things.  If the police didn’t have budget problems, they wouldn’t set up monthly speed traps to boost their revenues. Even still, as we all know, crimes go unpunished.  Well, simply put, the Johnny Weedseed Project is an initiative to make marijuana enforcement so expensive and impractical that it can’t be done.  To make the “situation on the ground” be that marijuana is just too damn common place to hope to try and contain it or enforce laws prohibiting ownership of it.

Now, this may sound like a pie in the sky dream, but its not.  There’s a reason that cannabis is nicknamed weed.  It grows like one.  It needs little attention, can grow in almost any climate, and spreads quickly.  I’m not proposing anybody go out and plant fields of weed.  There’s already lots of those, and law enforcement will concentrate their efforts on such obviously dense regions.  I’m talking about all of us, however many millions strong we marijuana users are, just planting our seeds at random.  Throw them in your neighbor’s yard when walking your dog.  Toss them out the car window on the highway.  Plant them at rest stops.  Hide them amongst the potted shrubs at your work place.  If there’s dirt, and sun, put seeds in it.  Never a lot, a few in any one spot should do fine.  Ideally, in a few seasons time, cannabis will start to truly spread like the weed it is.  When there’s 3 bushes on the side of the road and random plants sprouting up in every neighborhood, it will eventually become impractical to continue enforcing possession.  At that point, well, victory will have been achieved.

None of us could hope to do this alone.  Together, we can each make an individual contribution to make a lasting change on the society in which we live.  In short, “Yes, we can.”  Heh

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