Incense Herbal – Now and Then
A long, long time ago, Ug the Caveman returned from a hard day of chasing dinosaurs, and glanced around for something to unwind. He threw the first thing he saw (a nice pot of blended herbas his woman had prepared) on the fire, laid down next to it to sleep...and began to have very vibrant dreams.
Well, it might have happened that way. Cultures as assorted as African, Chinese, Indian, Native American, and even European have been shown to have roots in smoking herbal incense. In Central Africa, hemp cults smoking herbs used the smoking ritual much as Native American Indian tribes used the peace pipe in North America, to seal peace agreements, or business transactions. Ancient Chinese shamans, known as wu, were smoking legal buds long before the war on drugs in an effort to to talk with the spirits.
Then there are the Native Americans. Though they weren't smoking legal buds back then, they were certainly lighting up plenty of Herbs. Everything from sweetgrass to cedar to sage went inside the peace pipe, and everybody inside the Sweat Lodge then experienced a group smoking high as one. And even in Europe, where stiff penalties for ownership of that other herb dominate, linguistic proof shows that Germanic tribes were smoking legal buds of a cannabis type no later than 500 B.C.
So, where are we at this moment? Does civilization still use these incense herbal smoking rituals for leisure and meditation? Everyone knows the answer to this question is no. While smoking herbs like cannabis is tolerated in some areas (San Francisco and Amsterdam come to mind) there is no place on the planet where these psychoactive plants are legal, free and clear.
Enter the beginning of modern-day incense herbal products approximately in the year 2000. Though psychoactive plants and herbs had always existed, the herbal incense industry was given an increase in 1995 when organic chemistry professor John Huffman managed to synthesize a group of chemicals that became known as "cannabinoids". The chemicals showed many of the same effects as THC, but without any of the harmful side effects such as paranoia and memory loss.
Beginning around 2004, incense herbal smoking products were sprayed with one of more of the cannabinoids. These cannabinoids—with chemical sounding names like JWH-018, JWH-200, CP-47, and JWH-073—are what led people to begin referring to Incense Herbal Smoking as "smoking legal buds". The benefits of these new smoking herbs included no known side effects, no dread of failed drug tests or record of criminal charges, and proven comforting and stimulating effects.
A lot of folks in modern society need to pass a drug test at some point in their life. In fact, a large number of them need to be able to pass a random drug test and have it show that they don't even know what a smoking high is. Costs for a failed drug test might consist of job loss, punitive discipline measures in professional sports, or even actual prison time. Little wonder, then, that after thousands of years of smoking rituals all of a sudden brought to an end by the government, people hesitant to give up their favorite method of relaxing turned to smoking herbal blends.
One very simple and understandable plus of smoking herbal incense is that these products are still very much legal. Although the DEA is continually on the move trying to bar more and more of them, the producers are wise to this and constantly change their product formulas so as to guarantee maximum legality in the most states possible. Numerous companies have some herbal incense flavors that are legal in all 50 US states.
Many people in authority are now asking each other, "What is herbal incense?" out of fear or ignorance. Since none of them actually knows, this kind of talk fans the flames of suspicion until soon they've convinced themselves that all varieties of incense herbal are the same as marijuana and need to be banned. Opponents of herbal incense bring up concerns such as, "We don't know what's in these products."
The irony of this is that these are the same folks that devour any number of food products every day that they have no conception of the ingredients. Your typical fast food product has things like trans fats, refined grains, sat, and high-fructose corn syrup, all of which have been verified scientifically to have harmful effects on health in excessive amounts. It seems once again the victors set the rules on what is "good" for you and what isn't, as the unhealthy American diet continues to grow while harassment for connoisseurs of smoking legal herb continues to increase.
But the good word for those who have grown to love herbal incense smoking is that, like Darth Vader in the Sci-Fi classic Star Wars, the more herbal incense products the DEA tries to ban, the more new products will pop up on the market. No matter how many substances they forbid or place on the controlled substances list, there will always be more, because you just can't battle 5000 years of human history.