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Silicon Valley Reportedly Full of Stoners

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http://www.alternet.org/silicon-valley-reportedly-full-stoners

Another major marijuana stereotype just got blown totally out of the water -- this time the idea that consuming cannabis is for unemployed slacker types. In fact, pot is wildly popular in one of America's economic centers, Silicon Valley. According to a new report in Bloomberg's Businessweek, the "physical toll" of computer coding has made Silicon Valley workers key consumers in the medical marijuana industry.

In San Jose, which Businessweek dubs the "Bay Area capital of medical marijuana," 106 medicinal marijuana dispensaries span the city's 177 square miles, more than adequately serving its 967,000 residents. One of those dispensaries, Pallative Health Center, told Businessweek that tech workers make up an estimated 40 percent of clients.

“We’re seeing people from some semiconductors, lots of engineers, lots of programmers,” Ernie Arreola, 38, the assistant manager, told Businessweek, which noted, "That makes sense, because the shop is an easy shot from some of the area’s biggest employers—Cisco Systems, Google, Adobe Systems, Apple, EBay—and a short drive from dozens more. Also, people in Silicon Valley do like their pot."

One medical marijuana executive told Businessweek that marijuana-infused chocolate toffee is a favorite among tech workers, who he says represents about 15 percent of customers. “It does not give the high or intoxicated feeling that you would typically get from a lot of medical cannabis,” Doug Chloupek, CEO of MedMar Healing Center, told Businessweek. “Those who are coding for 15 hours a day with cramping hands, that is the product that allows them to have mental clarity and still get pain relief.”

But while Silicon Valley employees are getting stoned in a culture that embraces marijuana use, Businessweek notes policies forbidding drug use and possession at Cisco and Adobe, though neither company screens new employees for drug use. Maybe that's because, as Silicon Valley CEO Mark Johnson told Businessweek, “Pot is an extremely functional drug. Coders can code on it, writers can write on it."

Still, as Galen Moore notes at the Boston Business Journal, weed isn't the only drug popular in Silicon Valley:

offer a glimpse into prescription drugs that are popular as work aids in Silicon Valley's high-tech culture, including so-called "smart drugs" Provigil (Modafinil) and Nuvigil, and pharmaceutical stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.

 

Some commenters also challenge Businessweek's assertion that marijuana culture is "raging" in Silicon Valley. It may be news to Businessweek, but the reality has always been that people from all ends of the social spectrum use drugs, pot especially. Not everybody, however, is arrested for it.

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Silicon Valley is full of stoners hey?!. Hmmm, I thought with a name like that, it would be full of bra' shops. :wink:

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It's hardly surprising, I wonder how the stats would read in other fields of employment.

They should have screened them for psychedelic use too, I saw a doco one time about the early days of apple computers. Apparently they were all acid heads and using LSD helped them to gain creative insight on problems they were having. They even suggested that we might not have home computers these days without the insights gained through LSD use.

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I heard that S. Jobs used acid, but never gave it a second mention once he became a figurehead (died with all his money in a white-knuckle grip too)

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i actually expected to click on this and see a link to an oinion article,

thats how thoroughly unamazing i think this "revelation" is,

(p.s. not directed at you at0m, but at news outlets and OH GOD SOME PEOPLE SMOKE WEED WUT!?!?)

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I'm sure I've come across a few different sources where it has been suggested that people on high functioning points through autism spectrum disorder are over represented in silicon valley, so there may be a link there also ?

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I'm currently studying I.T Network Admin and 6\18 of the class including myself smoke weed.

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i actually expected to click on this and see a link to an oinion article,

thats how thoroughly unamazing i think this "revelation" is,

(p.s. not directed at you at0m, but at news outlets and OH GOD SOME PEOPLE SMOKE WEED WUT!?!?)

Yeah, that's why I posted it :P

It's nice to see the 'mainstream' catching up with what people already know.

I'm currently studying I.T Network Admin and 6\18 of the class including myself smoke weed.

I'd be hard pressed to find IT friends of mine who haven't, at the very least, been through a 'phase' where they smoked weed and took acid. The majority definitely did more than that though.

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robots on acid, now thats a thought for the future.

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LOL wood dragon =P

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The concept of it being used as relief for the fact that people in the industry have to spend so much extended time in the same position with non stop repetitive motion makes a lot of sense.. that and I find it relieves the overstimulating effects caused by extended periods of concentration and mental exertion.

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Saw the dead (after Jerry's death sadly) in Mountain View once... anyone who's been to silicon valley will know what a HOLY FUCKING DUUUUH this article is :)

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