The Hole Caboodle Commissary & Holistic Center

08/29/2026

WAIT…LEGAL MEDICAL CANNABIS IS ASSOCIATED WITH FEWER SICK DAYS?

Now THIS is an interesting one, especially around here.

A University of Georgia study looking at more than 20 MILLION working Americans found that after states adopted medical cannabis laws, health-related workplace absences fell by about 6.9%.

But look at which workers showed some of the biggest reductions:

-Fabricators and manual laborers: 39%
-Machine operators: 33%
-Health-service workers: 32%
-Farm workers: 18%
-Construction workers: about 10%

Now bring that home.

We live in a region with a LOT of manufacturing, factories, construction, logistics, agriculture and other physically demanding work.

People who spend eight, ten or twelve hours standing on concrete.

People lifting, bending, climbing, operating machinery, working repetitive motions and asking their backs, knees, shoulders, hands and feet to report for duty every single day.

Those numbers should get our attention.

To be clear, the researchers aren’t saying cannabis caused individual workers to miss fewer days. They couldn’t determine which individual workers actually used cannabis. What they found was an association between legal access to medical cannabis and fewer health-related workplace absences.

And here’s another fascinating piece:

The significant reduction appeared after medical cannabis legalization.

Recreational legalization did not produce a statistically significant change in health-related absences.

That’s worth thinking about.

Because maybe cannabis policy isn’t simply a conversation about intoxication.

Maybe it’s also a conversation about function.

Can somebody manage an aching back well enough to work tomorrow?

Can somebody get enough sleep to function through a shift?

Can a construction worker manage soreness?

Can a factory worker deal with the cumulative wear of repetitive physical work?

Can someone find relief without automatically reaching for something stronger?

Those questions matter anywhere.

Around here, they REALLY matter.

We have an economy full of people who make things, build things, move things, grow things, repair things and care for people.

Their bodies are part of the machinery that keeps this region running.

And yet cannabis policy is still frequently discussed as though access to the plant is inherently a threat to the workplace.

This research suggests we should at least be willing to ask whether the opposite can sometimes be true.

Because there’s a gigantic difference between being impaired at work, which nobody is advocating, and an adult legally using cannabis away from work to manage symptoms and showing up the next day ready to do their job.

We should probably stop pretending those are the same thing.

The researchers note that workplace absenteeism has been estimated to cost American employers around $225 BILLION a year in lost productivity.

So perhaps employers, lawmakers and healthcare policymakers should be asking a different question:

Instead of simply asking,

“How do we keep cannabis away from workers?”

maybe we should also be asking,

“Could responsible access actually help some workers keep working?”

Twenty million workers worth of data says that question deserves serious consideration.

🌿 Sometimes healthcare isn’t about making somebody feel perfect. Sometimes it’s about helping somebody feel good enough to get up tomorrow and keep living their life.

And in a manufacturing and working-class region like ours, that’s not some abstract cannabis debate.

That’s workforce health.

Grow. Heal. Feed. 🌱

08/23/2026

THE BEES LIKE CANNABIS, TOO.

Well, file this under The Hole Caboodle of Reasons This Plant Is Fascinating.

Allegedly, somebody around here may or may not have helped raise bees and may or may not have once had a honeybee colony.

So this particular bit of cannabis science hits a little differently. 🐝

Researchers have discovered something pretty remarkable about industrial h**p:

When a lot of the buffet is closing for the season, h**p can still have the pollen bar open.

H**p is wind-pollinated. It doesn’t need bees to pollinate it, and it doesn’t produce floral nectar for them.

But pollen-producing h**p produces a LOT of pollen.

And timing matters.

H**p can flower in late summer into early fall, a period when pollen from other plants and agricultural crops may be getting harder for bees to find.

So the bees show up anyway.

A Cornell-led study of New York h**p farms identified 16 different bee species visiting h**p.

Another study in Colorado collected 1,937 bees representing 23 different genera around flowering industrial h**p.

Honeybees. Bumblebees. Native bees. Solitary bees.

All bellied up to the Cannabis sativa pollen bar.

Apparently, if the buzz fits…

And here’s the part I love:

Cannabis doesn’t even need them.

H**p is primarily pollinated by the wind. The bees aren’t there because the plant evolved some elaborate nectar-for-pollination transaction with them.

They’re there because pollen is food.

Pollen supplies bees with protein, fats and other nutrients necessary for colony health and raising young. And when pollen-producing h**p flowers during a seasonal shortage of other floral resources, researchers believe it could provide an important nutritional bridge.

Now, an important distinction:

Not every h**p field does this.

Cannabinoid flower growers generally want female plants and remove males because pollination means seeds and can reduce cannabinoid flower production. It’s h**p grown for things like fiber, grain and seed, where pollen-producing plants are present, that has the real potential to become a late-season bee buffet.

Which brings us back to something we say around here quite a bit:

There is so much more to this plant than THC.

Fiber.
Food.
Seed.
Oil.
Building materials.
Soil and agricultural applications.
Cannabinoids.

And apparently, when the flowers elsewhere start shutting down for the year…bee groceries.

The more we actually study Cannabis sativa instead of treating the entire plant as something society should fear, the more interesting The Hole Caboodle becomes.

Turns out nature never read the stigma.

It just followed the buzz.

**p **p

08/22/2026

THE BOOZE INDUSTRY MIGHT HAVE A CANNABIS PROBLEM.

And that problem appears to be us drinking less booze.

A new study followed 4,516 adults using cannabis beverages for three weeks.

65% said they drank LESS alcohol.

53% reported LESS craving for alcohol.

56% said they would consider cannabis beverages as a regular replacement for alcohol.

And when researchers checked back roughly 50 days later, 63% said they were STILL drinking less.

Meanwhile, participants reported better sleep, less anxiety, less pain and improved mood.

Now remind me again why we’re preparing to essentially ban most h**p-derived THC products?

Because this is where things get interesting.

The alcohol industry has been increasingly involved in lobbying around federal h**p and cannabis policy while THC beverages are becoming a legitimate competitor to b**r, w**e and liquor.

Funny how that works.

Maybe America’s problem isn’t that cannabis drinks are dangerous.

Maybe the problem is that they’re working.

And let’s put alcohol into perspective using something other than opinion.

The World Health Organization says alcohol contributes causally to MORE THAN 200 diseases, injuries and other health conditions.

WHO also classifies alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen, the highest risk category, and says even low levels of alcohol consumption carry some health risk.

Think about that.

We’re debating whether adults should continue having legal access to h**p-derived THC beverages while alcohol, a substance causally associated with more than 200 diseases, injuries and health conditions and classified as a known human carcinogen, is available at practically every grocery store, restaurant, bar and sporting event in America.

Alcohol isn’t some harmless benchmark against which cannabis needs to prove itself worthy.

Your liver has to metabolize ethanol. In that process your body produces acetaldehyde, itself carcinogenic. Alcohol contributes to oxidative stress, DNA damage and changes throughout the body.

Cannabis isn’t harmless either. THC impairs driving and judgment, can cause anxiety or unpleasant reactions, and isn’t appropriate for everyone.

But cannabinoids interact with something our bodies already possess: the endocannabinoid system, a signaling network involving cannabinoid receptors and naturally produced endocannabinoids that participates in functions including sleep, appetite, pain, stress and mood.

Cannabis didn’t invent that system.

Your body came equipped with it.

And THAT is why I keep coming back to harm reduction.

If an adult who would normally have four or five alcoholic drinks can instead have a responsibly dosed THC beverage, enjoy the evening, sleep, wake up without a hangover and ultimately consume less alcohol, why in God’s green garden would our response be prohibition?

Regulate it.

Age restrict it.

Require accurate testing and labeling.

Establish sensible serving sizes.

Keep it away from kids.

Punish companies that don’t follow the rules.

But don’t destroy an entire legal h**p marketplace because adults discovered another way to relax.

I’ve experienced the substitution effect personally. I rarely drink anymore, outside an occasional exception. THC beverages have allowed me to remain social without feeling like I have to punish my body with alcohol to participate. And yes, when my favorite sister and I get together, the traditional mimosa can still make an appearance.

The difference?

I don’t find myself wanting another one.

That’s harm reduction.

And perhaps that’s exactly what has parts of the alcohol industry paying attention.

We don’t need Prohibition 2.0 dressed up in a lab coat.

We need science, reasonable regulation and the freedom for adults to choose the plant over the bottle.

Grow. Heal. Feed.

The (w)Hole Caboodle Commissary & Holistic Center. Website in the comments

**pNotHarm **p

08/21/2026

08/14/2026

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CANNABIS USERS HAVE HEARTS. RUNNERS EVERYWHERE STUNNED.

Could’ve saved them some money. I’ve been running this experiment for 11 years.

I didn’t even start running until I was 45 years old.

Now, 11 years later, I’m still running, still improving, still racing and still knocking out PR’s. And respectable PRs at that.

I swear cannabis has played a role in keeping me moving, recovering and, remarkably, pretty damn injury-free through all those miles.

Can I scientifically prove cannabis is responsible for that? Nope. But after 11 years of running, I know my own body, and my experience certainly makes this research interesting.

A new 2026 study looked at cardiovascular responses to cannabis in physically active older adults, adding another piece to a much bigger question: what actually happens when cannabis users aren’t sitting on a couch, but are out exercising and living active lives?

And there’s already some fascinating research on cannabis and running.

Researchers at the University of Colorado had regular cannabis users complete runs both with and without cannabis.

On the cannabis runs, participants reported:

• Greater enjoyment
• Better mood
• Greater tranquility
• More of that wonderful “runner’s high” feeling
• Less negative mood
• Less pain afterward

Here’s my favorite part:

They weren’t actually faster.

In fact, they averaged slightly slower.

So maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Cannabis may not be a traditional performance-enhancing drug.

It may be an experience-enhancing plant.

And for everyday runners, walkers, cyclists, hikers and people simply trying to MOVE MORE, that distinction matters.

Because if something makes a five-mile run more enjoyable, helps you settle into the rhythm, changes your perception of discomfort and makes you want to get back out there tomorrow, what happens over the course of years?

You keep showing up.

You move more.
You run more.
You become more consistent.
You recover and do it again.

And consistency is where fitness actually gets built.

There’s another fascinating layer to this.

Your body already makes its own cannabis-like compounds.

The runner’s high is connected in part to our endocannabinoid system, including compounds such as anandamide. Exercise activates this system, and cannabis interacts with that same biological neighborhood.

So perhaps cannabis and running aren’t the strange bedfellows decades of stoner stereotypes would have us believe.

For me, cannabis can help me settle into a run, enjoy the scenery, disappear into the rhythm and simply enjoy moving my body.

And somehow the guy who didn’t start running until 45 is still out there at 56, injury-free, chasing PRs.

And getting them.

That doesn’t prove cannabis increases VO₂ max, prevents injuries, makes you faster or is automatically good for your heart. THC can temporarily increase heart rate, and researchers are still studying potential cardiovascular risks associated with frequent cannabis use. Dose, frequency, individual health and how cannabis is consumed all matter.

But the old picture of cannabis being inherently incompatible with an active, healthy lifestyle?

That picture is getting pretty damn dusty.

Some people apparently don’t use cannabis and melt into the couch.

Some of us use cannabis and go running.

Maybe the plant wasn’t the lazy one after all.

Link to the article in the comments.

08/11/2026

MAYBE THE PROBLEM ISN’T THC DRINKS. MAYBE IT’S THAT PEOPLE LIKE THEM.

Something interesting happened in Washington.

The Senate voted to delay the coming federal crackdown on h**p-derived THC products, and the vote didn’t follow the usual Republican-versus-Democrat script.

People who normally disagree about what color the sky is suddenly found themselves on the same side.

And Sen. Rand Paul said something worth paying attention to:

THC products compete with alcohol.

Well…there it is.

Because perhaps one of the reasons THC beverages are becoming popular isn’t complicated at all.

A lot of adults are discovering they can have a drink, relax, laugh, socialize, feel good and wake up the next morning without wondering why their mouth tastes like a boot and somebody apparently installed a marching band behind their eyeballs.

And increasingly, science suggests some people really ARE replacing alcohol with cannabis.

A 2026 study of cannabis-beverage consumers found average weekly alcohol consumption dropped from about 7 drinks to about 3.4 after people started using cannabis beverages.

Another randomized 2026 study found THC reduced subsequent alcohol consumption by 19% to 27%.

That’s worth talking about.

Especially considering what the alternative does to the human body.

Alcohol isn’t simply “another intoxicant.”

Alcohol is a toxic, dependence-producing substance and a known human carcinogen.

Your body metabolizes alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical capable of damaging cells and tissues.

Long-term excessive alcohol use can damage the:

Brain.
Heart.
Liver.
Pancreas.
Digestive system.
Immune system.
Nervous system.
Muscles.
Bones.

It increases the risk of several cancers.

It contributes to inflammation throughout the body.

It can cause liver disease, cardiomyopathy, high blood pressure, stroke, pancreatitis, neurological damage and alcohol use disorder.

And yes, over time, alcohol can essentially accelerate the wear and tear we associate with getting older because the damage isn’t occurring in one place.

It’s systemic.

From the organs out.

And then there’s what alcohol can do outside the body.

Fights.
Car wrecks.
Domestic violence.
Broken relationships.
Lost jobs.
Destroyed families.
Addiction.

Most of us don’t need a research paper to know someone whose life has been seriously damaged by alcohol.

I certainly do.

I know people who have desperately wanted to quit drinking and couldn’t.

I’ve watched what alcohol dependence can do to someone’s health, appearance, relationships and life.

And this part is personal for me.

I don’t drink anymore on any regular basis. Alcohol has become an exception for me, not the routine.

THC drinks have been a game changer because they’ve allowed me to still participate in the social part of “having a drink” without regularly putting alcohol into my body.

I can go out. I can socialize. I can have something in my hand. I can enjoy myself.

I don’t feel like I’m giving anything up.

And I’m certainly not declaring alcohol forbidden for the rest of eternity.

Heck yeah, the tradition of having a mimosa when my favorite sister/Wonder Twin and I get together is still happening.

Some traditions are sacred.

But here’s the remarkable difference for me:

I don’t crave the next one anymore.

One mimosa can simply be one mimosa.

I don’t leave thinking about another drink later.

THC beverages helped break that connection for me between socializing and continually consuming alcohol.

That’s not something I read in a brochure.

I’ve lived it. Trust the APPLIED science.

And apparently I’m far from alone, because researchers are now documenting reductions in alcohol consumption among people using cannabis beverages.

Meanwhile, I personally can’t think of anyone whose marriage collapsed because they came home, drank a 5mg THC seltzer, ate half the refrigerator and became extremely interested in a nature documentary.

That doesn’t mean cannabis is harmless.

THC can impair you. Cannabis use disorder is real. High doses can cause anxiety and other problems. You shouldn’t drive impaired. Children shouldn’t have access to it. Adults need accurate dosing, testing, labeling and responsible regulation.

Fine.

REGULATE IT.

Require testing.

Require accurate labels.

Require child-resistant packaging.

Set age limits.

Establish reasonable serving sizes.

Punish companies that cheat.

That’s regulation.

Prohibition is something entirely different.

And Congress should be asking a very simple question before effectively eliminating an entire category of h**p products:

What happens when you remove an alternative that some adults are using INSTEAD of alcohol?

Because if THC beverages are actually helping some people drink less alcohol, banning them isn’t automatically a public-health victory.

It could accomplish exactly the opposite.

Perhaps that’s why this issue is beginning to scramble traditional political alliances.

Maybe people are finally realizing that the adult standing at the cooler choosing between a six-pack of b**r and a responsibly dosed THC beverage deserves a choice.

We’ve spent generations accepting alcohol’s enormous social and physical costs because alcohol happens to be culturally familiar.

Familiar doesn’t mean safer.

And prohibition doesn’t become healthcare just because somebody puts a lab coat on it.

Regulate h**p. Test it. Label it. Keep it away from kids. Educate adults about responsible use.

But don’t destroy a potentially less harmful alternative to alcohol and then congratulate ourselves for protecting public health.

That math ain’t mathing.

Link to the article and supporting research in the comments.

**p **pIndustry **p

08/10/2026

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. BUT WE AREN’T DONE.

The U.S. Senate just voted to delay the coming federal h**p THC ban, giving lawmakers more time to do something they should have done in the first place:

REGULATE RESPONSIBLY INSTEAD OF PROHIBITING.

That is good news.

But this fight is nowhere near over.

And for me, this isn’t simply about h**p businesses, THC gummies or whether somebody in Washington likes cannabis.

This is healthcare.

My parents are 83 and 84 years old.

They use C*D rubs and gummies because those products help make their lives a little better at their age. Comfort. Rest. Relief. Quality of life.

So somebody explain this to me:

If Congress eventually passes a law that removes the products helping my elderly parents, what exactly am I supposed to do?

Walk into their house, take away the C*D and say:

“Sorry, Mom and Dad. I know this helps you, but Washington decided a plant product you’ve been using responsibly shouldn’t be available anymore.”

Absolutely not.

I will not stop caring for my parents because politicians wrote a bad law.

And apparently we’re not alone in seeing the insanity here.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has urged senators to delay the ban, warning that it could undermine efforts to make h**p-derived C*D accessible to seniors and people with disabilities through Medicare.

Think about the contradiction.

One part of the federal government is exploring ways to help seniors ACCESS C*D while another part of the federal government is preparing restrictions that could remove many h**p-derived products from the marketplace.

That isn’t healthcare policy.

That’s government tying its own shoelaces together and wondering why it fell down.

And haven’t we been down this road before?

It was only about eight years ago that Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill and federally legalized h**p after decades of prohibition.

We spent years learning what legalization looks like. An entire American h**p industry developed. Farmers planted crops. Businesses opened. Scientists studied cannabinoids. Consumers discovered products that worked for them.

Did the marketplace expose loopholes that need to be fixed?

Absolutely.

SO FIX THE LOOPHOLES.

Create standards.

Require testing.

Require honest labeling.

Set age restrictions for intoxicating products.

Punish bad actors.

But don’t respond to imperfect regulation by dragging prohibition back out of the basement, putting a white coat on it and pretending it’s healthcare policy.

It’s prohibition wearing a lab coat.

Trust THE APPLIED SCIENCE.

We’ve already run that experiment.

Nobody needs the sequel.

Nobody here is arguing for an unregulated free-for-all.

Age restrictions? Absolutely.

Testing? Yes.

Accurate labeling? Yes.

Responsible manufacturing? Yes.

Keeping intoxicating products away from children? Obviously.

But wiping out enormous portions of the h**p market because Congress refuses to create sensible regulations is not consumer protection.

The Senate’s vote gives us more time.

Good.

Now use it.

Build reasonable regulations. Protect consumers. Protect farmers and legitimate businesses. Protect access for adults.

And for heaven’s sake, protect the seniors and families who already know these products can improve their quality of life.

Because somewhere behind every debate about “h**p policy” is an actual person.

In my case, they’re Mom and Dad.

And I’m not going to stop taking care of them.

Neither should our government.

Regulate it. Test it. Label it. Keep it away from kids.

But don’t take healthcare away from people who are benefiting from it.

Website in the comments

**p *D **pIsHealthcare *D **pIndustry