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Your death is imminent. It will be painful. A few minutes before, your executioner hands you a joint.
"If someone suggested this option and said," Hey, do you want to do it first? " Charlotte Gill, owner of Charlotte's legendary lobster book in Southwest Harbor, said Charlotte Gill. & # 39; "
Mrs. Gill wants to present this opportunity to crustaceans whose death is the cause of her business, trying to use marijuana to raise them, so that they can dive without pain and stress into boiling water.
In recent days, Ms. Gill's methods have generated a fair amount of publicity and a good deal of skepticism: can lobsters even become high? Do they feel pain? If a lobster can take and become high, can anyone who eats it can absorb marijuana? And is all this allowed?
The answer to this last question seems to be no, at least for the moment, says Maine.
Emily Spencer, spokesperson for the state's Department of Health and Human Services, said that state health inspectors would "treat food served to consumers in licensed eating places and contaminated with marijuana, as described with this facility. said Thursday.
"At the moment," she added, regulators have "no information on the health consequences or effects of lobster licensing with marijuana."
In her experiments with lobsters, Ms. Gill is unknowingly at the forefront of the science and regulation of marijuana.
She says that it is undeniable that marijuana has the desired effect. In a series of tests, the restaurant employees put a lobster in a small container and add a few inches of water. They channeled marijuana smoke into a tube until the container was full, and they kept the lobster for about three minutes.
Before the lobster entered the container, he would flap his tail and click and act his claws. After being exposed to the smoke, the lobster was docile and serene, Ms. Gill said.
"The lobster is always very alert, but there is no sign of agitation, no kicking, no attempt to pinch you," she said. "In fact, so calm that you can touch the lobster freely without them trying to hit you or being aggressive."
This method is preferable, she says, for drop a crustacean alive in boiling water without marijuana.
Gill, 47, grows marijuana at home and says she has a license to do so. Maine voters approved in 2017 a measure to legalize recreational marijuana for adults over 21 years of age.
But Thursday night, Gill said, the Maine health department has informed her that she is using marijuana in a forbidden way because "it's supposed to be used only for me and not for lobster."
Mrs. Gill, a self-proclaimed animal lover, has faced a dilemma since she started serving lobster about six years ago. She began investigating the idea of marijuana this year with staff at her restaurant, located about 50 miles southeast of Bangor. While the experiment was gaining publicity, some wondered if it was a marketing gimmick, but Ms. Gill argued that this was not the case.
Staff members tested their urine after eating marijuana lobsters, she said, and no trace of the drug was found. During the last experiment, Mrs. Gill's 82-year-old father is eating large quantities of sedative lobster with marijuana every day; he will soon have a blood test.
She said she hoped her tests could prove to the state that lobsters do not take up marijuana. But on Thursday night, it became apparent that plans to make lobster available to the public had been blocked. State regulators continue to look into the issue, Spencer said.
Ms. Gill's experiments focus on an ongoing debate about the pain felt by lobsters. This year, Switzerland ordered that lobsters and other crustaceans no longer be allowed to fall into boiling water, saying that it caused crustacean pain and that other faster methods should be used.
It's hard to know if lobsters can feel pain, said Michael Tlusty, professor of sustainable development and food solutions at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, who has researched lobsters. Lobsters know the world in a fundamentally different way from humans, he noted.
"We saw lobsters with major injuries turn around and start eating right after their injury," said Dr. Tlusty. "What does it mean in the perception of pain?"
Research on the effects of marijuana on lobsters is rare. But Dr. Tlusty said that a 1988 research paper indicated that lobsters had reacted one way or another to a chemical contained in marijuana.
Joseph Ayers, a professor of marine and environmental science and biology at Northeastern University, who has been studying lobster for four decades, said crustaceans were too simple to feel pain because humans know it.
"They are much simpler than insects," he said. "They can not report. It's really from the point of view of how we expect verification of humans. You probably will never get that from a lobster. "
Could these simple brains be bred?
"Who knows," says Dr. Ayers.
Kimberly Stuck, the founder of Allay Cannabis Consulting, who advises clients on how to comply with new marijuana laws, is skeptical about Gill's experience.
"I do not know if that's anything for lobster," she said.
People are finding uses and applications for marijuana faster than laws can follow, said Ms. Stuck, a former marijuana specialist for the city of Denver. Regulators had to issue an order to stop and refrain at a grocery store she sold smoked turkey with marijuana, which infused her with the psychoactive ingredient THC.
"There are a lot of unknowns in cannabis; most regulations are in a gray area, "said Ms. Stuck. "In most countries, regulators do not even regulate."
Ms. Stuck said that when authorities regulate, they must be more reactive than preventive.
"People are very creative," she said. "They come with all kinds of crazy things."
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