Should Marijuana be legalised?

c'mon

legalised = taxed

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

(xp) ^^^

I get the idea it'd be cheaper if it was legal, even with taxes.

It's just wishful thinking abt something I p sure I will never see in my lifetime anyway.

I voted yes, despite not being a smoker, as legalisation means taxation, which means close scrutiny by Customs & Excise, which probably would result in a) higher quality product, b) more consistent product, c) reduction in criminal involvement.

d) smoke weed everyday

Legalization would be ideal but getting the goddamn fed to recognize the medical benefits would be a huge step. Of course marijuana has nothing in the way of lobbyist compared to pharmaceutical companies that can get just about any ridiculous drug passed.

ILX System otm

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

yaaaay

smoke a poll

the 1 no voter =

http://www.justsaypictures.com/images/hell-noo.jpg

WTF wrong link. goddammit

now that the moment is ruined, the 1 "no" voter =

http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/tiananmen-square-tank.jpg

Is that Jenna Maroney?

I voted yes, despite not being a smoker

I voted yes, despite not having been a weed smoker for many years, because people should be allowed to do what they want and take their own risks.

otm. I don't care if I want to drink three jugs of gasoline and chase it down with rubbing alcohol, it's my damn body

Can I come to your next gasoline party please San Te?

tbh I think this might be a one-time only deal, just have that sense....

Awes at the "wrong" pic

so gonna happen:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2013/04/pewmarijuana.jpg

Is this the next 'gay marriage' progressive galvanizer of opinion? The amount of money spent on the war on drugs generally and on cannibis specifically makes Iraq and Afghanistan look fiscally manageable and dammit if we don't already grow some killer weed.

oh man i am so excited

with 2/3rds of younger voters in favor of it? yes

xp

not to mention the huge burden relieved off our overtaxed gulag system for housing minority fathers

whoa

http://www.military.com/military-report/house-votes-to-let-va-doctors-recommend-marijuana.html?ESRC=mr0530.nl&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

http://www.marijuana.com/blog/news/2016/09/chelsea-clinton-implies-marijuana-can-kill-you/

i need to look into getting medical w33d oil in nyc for my crohn's disease, it seems like a much more promising option than immunosuppressant injection therapies like Remicaid. I don't know where to start though. I have a feeling my gastroenterologist is not 'cool'.

ime it is a life-saver but not a complete replacement for immunosuppressants. are you on 77? i have a thread related to the topic there. short version tho even treating myself w/ mm for about a decade i never had as much symptom relief as i'm having on the humira. tho just the humira without the mm (as i found on a recent business trip where i couldn't score) also has problems + discomfort.

I asked to be put on 77 but I think it got overlooked

Basically I have one disincentive to do the humera/remicaid etc thing which is that I had a splenectomy a couple decades ago, so my immune system is already compromised bc of that. Further suppressing it worries me.

i am looking into this for my chronic neck pain; doctor seems to think it should be pretty doable
wishing for the best for you ailments jon

Not a user myself and never have been, but I do follow developments in legalization, and as I pointed out on another pot thread we're at something of a metaphysical impasse. Marijuana will never be legalized recreationally if it is formally categorized as medical, yet it is likely never going to be categorized as medical for a confluence of reasons, not least because it's hard/impossible for the FDA to isolate and independently regulate all the various chemical components in it (apparently there are only two or so botanicals legally recognized as medicine, period). And yet we have all this grey area stuff going on, with states in essence legalizing marijuana as both recreational *and* medical, even though both categories remain technically illegal on a Federal level. It also introduces all sorts of weird stuff on the medical front, not least the notion of something being legalized as medicine on a state by state basis. Has this ever happened before? That something is recognized as a medicine in one state but not another?

Anyway, it scans to me that the push for marijuana to be licensed and regulated as medical is counter-production, on the legalization front, and that a better strategy would be to focus efforts on recreational legalization. (As some piece I read about this stuff pointed out, the FDA compromise would be akin to, say, vitamins, which can be marketed and sold with medical benefits but which feature an FDA disclosure. Top of my vitamin bottle lists possible health benefits, and at the bottom: "This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.") Because marijuana clearly has benefits (as does alcohol, coffee, etc.), they're just hard to isolate and verify scientifically enough to determine a consistent dose, strength, delivery mechanism and so on per the FDA/DEA policy.

@Wonkblog
Chelsea Clinton ‘misspoke’ on marijuana risks, spokeswoman says

@ggreenwald
Meaning: what she claimed about marijuana and death was . . . false

I asked to be put on 77 but I think it got overlooked

never been invited either. i should probably stop posting here, now that i think of it

I still don't know what 77 is, and I've been posting here forever...

Request Access to 77 Borad

xp no bile intended or anything but you've got to have one of the lowest word-count-to-knowledge ratios of anyone here so it isn't exactly surprising. :D

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/in-sixth-grade-math/ratio-and-proportion/introduction-ratios/v/introduction-to-ratios-new-hd-version

Math is hard. xpost So was that ad hominem "you are dumb" addressed to me? Youch. What's up with that?

never tabulated my word count to knowledge ratio, let alone estimated how low it is. guess that precludes 77 fellowship :(

Math is hard. xpost So was that ad hominem "you are dumb" addressed to me? Youch. What's up with that?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 30, 2016 10:20 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah sorry, i'm bad at math and got it backwards. i meant to say "one of the lowest knowledge-to-word-count ratios", meaning you are often very verbosely full of shit. but never change, it takes all kinds, etc.

i mean we're all dumb to an extend but it takes a special spirit to go on at length anyways.

I'll take it!

you're the best.

we should get high some time

i hope you guys have a good time

sorry, mr. map. never knew how word-county exclusive the love of everything is. be seeing you :(

you should join us

i'd be there, but there's only so long you can persist excluded from 'the in board' before expectation totally deflates. which isn't to say though hey, hope you guys hit new highs

if man is 5, if man is 5

i'm not on 77 anymore fwiw and agree it has some boring and in-groupy elements but iirc it can be a good place to talk about things you don't want to be easily linked to your ilx account. josh in chicago has been around a long time though and there's been a lot of discussion about what 77 is on the main board and it seems he should at least kind of know what it is. i feel like i'm always seeing him say he doesn't know something and then drop 3 graphs about it anyway. i just think it's odd and find it annoying but w/e.

can't recall because i've never been invited to participate in 77 even though i've been clown-posting here for years turns out

So I will be receiving my medical marijuana card in the next week or so. this is an odd turn of events; I'm really not a smoker and I am a little wary of using this prescription but I've been dealing with chronic neck pain and muscle spasms for about 16 months so at this point I'll try anything.
I'm an NYC resident. anyone have any questions?

you can ingest instead of smoke, but edibles are pretty potent, so be cautious

NYC doesn't offer legal smokable weed actually; my understanding is the options are time release capsules (meh), fluid for vaping (uh uh) and sub lingual drops. Given that I'll likely take this before I go to sleep, as that's when the pain is worse (and has been kept in check till now with an evening cocktail of 800mg ibuprofen and muscle relaxers), I think the immediate relief option is the one I'll go for. It's apparently offered as three separate levels of THC/CBD potency and you're guided by the pharmacist as to what's most effective through trial and error. Insurance won't cover this and the doc suggested a monthly dose would likely run $130 out of pocket... which sucks but if it genuinely works I'll take it. There appears to only be one dispensary in Manhattan proper but, as it happens, it's 45 minutes away by subway. Further reports when my card shows up and I start trying to make appointments.

https://col-careny.com/faqs/

another thread for our "new friend"

Vaping fluid is very popular in legal states (and non-legal if you can find it) - an extract is made then mixed with propylene glycol or similar, the tank looks like the early e-cig things you could buy at corner stores.
I've tried those, if that's the form it works like a champ. Screw the tank onto a $5 e-cig battery and take veeeeeeery light drags to start with. You're getting a lot of THC in concentrated form, it's easy to overdo it.

Edibles are too variable for me - I made a batch of coconut oil and it would take an unpredictable number of hours to hit me. Currently have tincture drops in the fridge but I haven't tried it yet - the idea of putting 151 under my tongue is horrifying. I'll probably just dropper it into a glass of water or something.

THC is the more useful part for pain but a 1:1 THC:CBD mixture is good if you're worried about anxiety/paranoia - CBD blunts the anxiety response some people have to THC. Higher CBD than THC (like the 20:1 products for epilepsy, etc.) don't get you high and while there's a body relaxation effect I don't think it would be useful for pain.

re: variable time - first two times I tried the coconut oil effects were minor but then I went to sleep. Increased the dose by 2 more ml, went to bed an hour later THEN woke up 3 hours later higher than I have been in my entire life. Still sort of high the next morning. For some reason it wasn't hitting for 4 hours, maybe my digestion is fucked.

We had made the coconut oil a few times and unpredictable is right. Sometimes it would come on in under an hour. Sometimes I'd be sitting there for three hours feeling like I'd wasted my time when it would finally start creeping up on me. I like the high much better than smoking it though.

I've been researching the whole thing for my crohns and finding it pretty confusing. I guess I don't need my gastroenterologist to be on board with the idea, but I do need some kind of statement of diagnosis from her. But who actually prescribes the shit for me? A doctor at the one place that exists in Manhattan?

Jon, let's talk. I can recommend the pain management doctor who helped me get the prescription.
Basically all you need is a referral from someone who is certified to put you in the program and there's only a few in the city. I have a list and we can see who takes your insurance... or you can ask your gastro explicitly to place you with someone who can.

A sterling excuse to hang out!

agreed! drop me a line!

Chief Wana Dubie: In Memoriam

https://i.imgur.com/OtCmrl9.png

what the hell are they smoking in new hampshire

given all the car wrecks we've had in this country, why on earth should we be giving people bikes?

It's just wishful thinking abt something I p sure I will never see in my lifetime anyway.

― Rocker Brian (Abbbottt), Saturday, January 29, 2011 11:05 AM (eight years ago)

Who's the one dweeb who voted nay?

it was the fuzz

it was someone in new hampshire. one time they know someone who smoked a bowl and immediately jumped out of a window because they thought they could fly

in the middle of that sentence someone asked me a question and i decided to just keep typing and let jesus take the wheel with the post. goddammit jesus

Does weed help with crohn? Asking for two friends. Both have it. Just seems an awful thing to have. :-(

Also the one who voted no: learn to hit the correct answer.

Yes

It has helped my crohns symptoms baseline and quelled flare ups when I have taken extra. I don’t know if it has done anything to the disease at a deeper level. Unfortunately it’s been over a month since I’ve been able to afford it (1:1 tincture is $210 a month in nyc)

let's talk about this sometime jon

Fuck the price is stupid high

Wtf. 210 dollars??? A shop just opened here. They sell med weed at 10/12 euros. Been trying to convince the two ppl suffering from crohn to go. Alas one can't due to religious reasons, the other fears it might influence the impact of other medicine her kid is taking. (Daughter is 20 yo)

can confirm it helps. obviously there are side effects. because it can potentially affect late brain development, i would be hesitant to push for someone younger than their mid-20s to use it regularly unless absolutely necessary.

Oh hell no. She's an adult. Wldnt recommend for a kid.

20 still too young for more-than-occasional use imo (he said hypocritically)

though if her current medication isn't sufficient it's certainly something to consider.

Her diagnosis is very recent though they now realize she's had it since she was 12. But it's sth to consider. Fuck Crohn. :-((((

it help relieve symptoms for sure (i used to use it when i otherwise could not leave my house, now on humira that's not as much as an issue and i mostly use it for pain relief + appetite) and the science isn't quite there yet (mostly they're researching its effects on crohn's in israel) but the anti-inflammation might help w/ the crohn's itself

As an anti-inflammatory, is it even as effective as ibuprofen? Or is the idea that it is less effective but less unhealthy?

I might have mentioned already, but since I had always heard about its benefits for those with glaucoma (which my mother in law takes medicine for) we found that you would pretty much have to be dosing with cannabis on a near non-stop basis to come close to the effects of Rx meds.

I'm really torn about legalization, at least in some regards. It should really be decriminalized, or at least no more criminalized than alcohol, but that kind of elides over the issue that alcohol is not particularly good for you. So it's def. hypocritical and stupid that cannabis is mostly illegal and alcohol isn't, but probably for the vast majority of people neither has many benefits and both have potential drawbacks, health or otherwise. Of course we have tried prohibition, and that didn't work, but there's something kind of ... off about making something at least potentially dangerous freely available just because you can't stop people from using it. It's like a rhetorical circle.

something at least potentially dangerous freely available just because you can't stop people from using it.

decriminalization cannot regulate the black market any more than prohibition can. even if you view it as a potentially dangerous drug, the fact that it cannot be effectively controlled in a black market means that at least a legal market allows us some small measure of regulation and control, and the state can collect taxes that may be used to offset potential harms.

JiC on what basis should the government be restricting people's usage of a plant? "potential drawbacks, health or otherwise" -- if that's your standard there are a lot of things we should ban before cannabis. not just alcohol. maybe we should ban palm oil, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup and sodas, cigarettes, alcohol, numerous over the counter medicines... humans can abuse all kinds of things and cannabis they can abuse much less than others.

unless you can give me a clear and unequivocal reason why cannabis is dangerous to adults i don't think you need to be a libertarian to believe the govt has no business banning it.

What's "at least potentially dangerous" about weed? Stoned driving?

but probably for the vast majority of people neither has many benefits

alcohol gets you drunk and weed gets you high; demanding more benefits seems plain spoiled

Well, you underscore my point. There are *a lot* of dangerous or potential dangerous things that we allow and/or encourage! From a rhetorical standpoint it seems as tenuous to me to say potentially dangerous product A should be legal because dangerous product B, etc is legal as it is to argue, well, people are just going to do it anyway. Even if both of those things are true! I def. don't think the government should ban it and I never said they should. It definitely benefits some people. The challenge, when it comes to legalization, esp. recreational, is where to draw those lines, those restrictions. Obv. small children shouldn't use cannabis products. How about teens? At what age? How should they be penalized for using under age, or holding at school, or showing up at school high? These are as much social issues as they are legal issues, and these are things people have struggled with for years for all sorts of substances/activities. But it stands to reason that the more legal it gets the more it will be used and abused, so a question becomes how to deal with that and when.

xpost

If you hired a babysitter for your kid, would you rather she be stoned or sober? Would you care?

Like, you're not going to overdose on cannabis, so in that regard it's "safe." But it does alter and impair functions.

(I type, as I sip a delicious cold beer.)

xps. .this is a silly line of questioning. you would presumably want them to be sober.

I know! My point is it's safe, in that you won't die, but it still has an effect that is not always good. Which calls for some degree of regulation. The question is how much.

But it seems to me to be harder to regulate than alcohol.

It's interesting, I should talk to my kids about it. They are so aware of the dangers of tobacco smoke and (unaware) of its previous ubiquity that they react to even a whiff of it in public with total disgust. I wonder what they think of pot smoking (which I don't think they've encountered much of yet, just Juul kids).

(I should say I fully support legalization, I just don't know if everything has been totally thought through yet.)

I barely see students smoking cigs on campus anymore. Last November I asked a class of ninety journalism students if they smoked. Two raised their hands. When I asked how many vaped, about twenty raised their hands. "Should've asked us if we smoked something else," a kid in the front row said.

what do you mean by harder to regulate than alcohol?

basically all the same issues (minimum age for purchase, can't be under the effects of it when you're driving etc.)

I mean it's easier to sneak into places than it is to sneak in alcohol. It is also harder to gauge someone's level of inebriation.

This is total tangent, but a senior at my son's high school was recently stabbed to death by two middle school kids in an apparent botched Juul deal. Point being, there's probably a lot about teens today that we don't quite get either.

Man, my daughter complains about kids in the bathroom Juuling all the time.

I mean it's easier to sneak into places than it is to sneak in alcohol.

Uh... it's super easy to sneak alcohol into places and it doesn't smell. Vodka + Gatorade, the drink of functioning high school alcoholics.

my senior prom was cut short an hour early when some kids puked all over the hilton waikoloa village's bathroom after overindulging in what they'd snuck past the staff in salad dressing bottles

maybe they OD's on thousand island dressing? I would.

zesty

Josh: Convince me.
Everyone: These arguments convince us.
Josh: I still need more convincing.

Me: Think about the options as long as you need and if you still aren't convinced, well, OK. Be that way.

There's no guarantee that marijuana will never harm anyone in any way, or lead to some situation you find undesirable. Wanting that is like crying for the moon. Figure out where the least harm lies. That's the only approach that can deal with this kind of issue.

The results we are getting with our current approach do massive amounts of harm in my view. How about you convince me the harms you fear are worse?

Weed stores have been open in Washington for what feels like forever now, and the worst problem they’ve caused is gentrification

my senior prom was cut short an hour early when some kids puked all over the hilton waikoloa village's bathroom after overindulging in what they'd snuck past the staff in salad dressing bottles

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, February 26, 2019 8:17 PM (eleven minutes ago)

look, I said I was sorry

i was ready to go tbh

Possible link to increase in pedestrian deaths:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/pedestrian-deaths-marijuana.html

decrease in pedestrian lives tho

#pedestrianlivesmatter

i don't quite understand the argument JiC is making. in states where it's legalized, it's regulated. you have to be over a certain age to buy it (like cigarettes & alcohol) in many states, it's illegal to be under the influence of weed while you drive (like alcohol and many other drugs). so what's the objection?

if you don't want your babysitter to be high, you probably also don't want your babysitter to be drunk. so...do you ask your babysitter to please not get drunk before you leave the house for the evening? or do you try to find a babysitter that knows not to get drunk while they're looking after your kids?

i think JiC is concern trolling?

Maybe a little. I just mean for people arguing it is safe, then how can you simultaneously concede it's, say, not safe enough that you want someone in a position of authority using it? Yes, no more so than alcohol, but that's more an argument for the abolition of alcohol than it is for the legalization of cannabis.

How about you convince me the harms you fear are worse?

I think that's kind of silly and circular (not you, just the argument). As I understand it, ridiculous and arbitrary restrictions have made it impossible to freely study cannabis and its effects, longterm or medical or otherwise. But the contradiction I pointed out almost negates that: everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society, but ... so what, we've decided it's not going anywhere. The benefits to legal cannabis seem ancillary: decriminalize and it helps people legally, tax it and it helps the government financially. But the product itself? Its benefits and effects are more nebulous and inconsistent and anecdotal, as far as I've read.

Anyway, like I and you said, there's no "convincing" me. Legalization is the clear direction we are heading in. But I'll be the first to concede I don't know the legal ramifications or regulations at all. For example, how does regulation and enforcement in, say, Amsterdam compare to Washington? I have no idea. Are we (US) generally more legal? More strict? The same? How is Canada handling it? No idea, it's all so ad hoc. But I'll say it will be and is a fascinating experiment to live through.

everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society

the sources of alcohol have been symbiotic with society for so many millennia, changing us and being changed, that i'd honestly have no idea where to begin evaluating the quality of the relationship, but i'm confident no one needs to call the cops

The answers to all those questions are freely available if you really cared to know them.

everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society

Everyone does not know this.

xpost

Yes, not everyone, but I thought the cost (literal and figurative) to society, from alcoholism to violence to drunk driving deaths, was pretty well known. Maybe not!

The answers to all those questions are freely available if you really cared to know them.

How about a link or two? I did a quick search for Colorado vs. Amsterdam, and every article (for good reason) was from 2014.

I just mean for people arguing it is safe, then how can you simultaneously concede it's, say, not safe enough that you want someone in a position of authority using it?

Tandem sky-diving is safe, but I don't want the President issuing executive orders while HALO jumping.

This is a foolish argument. No one is going to say pot or alcohol are completely harmless. They are just not harmful enough to toss people in jail over.

No argument!

.

If you hired a babysitter for your kid, would you rather she be stoned or sober? Would you care?

the amount of everyone's time josh in chicago has wasted is like a nerdstrom poindexter x 1000 but everyone likes and puts up with him anyway because he's like a dad and stuff i guess

that's not cool.

No dadshaming on ilxor.com

I barely see students smoking cigs on campus anymore

I saw a neighborhood teen, who I was familiar with because he had bullied my son in middle school, walking down the street smoking a cigarette the other day. The sight put me in this really weird headspace where I wasn't sure whether to be grossed-out by him hacking on a Marlboro or happy that he wasn't Juuling like some fucking nerd all the other teenagers I see around town.

As an anti-inflammatory, is it even as effective as ibuprofen?

btw ppl with crohn's shouldn't take ibuprofen as it can exacerbate intestinal bleeding

yup. acetaminophen only.

Iirc the current line is that ibuprofen isn't very good for anyone, and should be seriously limited. In fact, also iirc, that ibuprofen is added to many Rx opiates to intentionally make them unpleasant in large doses.

Same with acetaminophen though.

And aspirin has its problems as well.

I ate an edible a couple of days ago to coincide with my menstrual cramping, nausea, back pain. They should pack that in every tampon box.

Do guys ever use turmeric capsules for inflammation?

Do *you guys

I know a bunch of people here do fresh curcumin or make golden milk/tea.

the neurological element of marijuana impact the pain process above and beyond the anti-inflammatory benefits

How about a link or two? I did a quick search for Colorado vs. Amsterdam, and every article (for good reason) was from 2014.

Oregon's Measure 91, November 2014:
https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/marijuana/Documents/Measure91.pdf

Revised statutes, 2017 (passed 2018):
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors475B.html

Canada's Cannabis Act, 17/10/2018:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-24.5.pdf

Curcumin is (or can be in certain formulations or something) a COX-2 inhibitor like ibuprofen or Aleve for pain relief but IIRC that also means it has the downsides of those related to heart issues.

btw ppl with crohn's shouldn't take ibuprofen as it can exacerbate intestinal bleeding

live in the right state and it's easy to forget that cannabis isn't legal everywhere

josh iirc you even posted at length about a cannabis tour through western states you took in the last year or so?

The results we are getting with our current approach do massive amounts of harm in my view. How about you convince me the harms you fear are worse?

^This!! Case of "the devil you know..."

Yeah, sort of. I mean, it's not why we were there, but when you're there it's pretty visible (though nowhere near as ubiquitous as alcohol). I mostly went to a couple of places out of curiosity to see how it works. The craziest is when you go on some drive through the forests in crazy militia land and there's a dispensary sitting in the middle of bigfoot country.

If I had to liken it to anything it's, I dunno, porn barns on the side of the road. It's not something you (or I at least) really think about, but they're there, and you pass them, and you pass billboards for them and stuff. Then you go into the cities and the porn barn as been replaced by a fence porn boutique with higher prices or whatever but, I assume, the same stuff. And they have their clientele, enough to stay in business, but you never really see people going in and out. The cannabis places I poked my head into in Oakland in another trip out there were pretty quiet, kind of like liquor stores with more giggling (not chemically induced, mostly lots of couples giggling at the novelty, the same, come to think of it, that you might find in a porn barn or shop.)

idk man from what I can tell the weed stores in Seattle are frequented by people going there to buy weed

idk man (haha -- i also started my post with "idk man" and i am leaving it there) -- not all vice is created equal. no one is prescribed "highway porn barn" for any medical purposes I'm aware of. If you are coming at the idea of legalization from a rubbernecking perspective, it's going to seem different than if you are a core customer.

crazy militia land and there's a dispensary sitting in the middle of bigfoot country.

Rednecks toke up, too. Just like Wm. F. Buckley was interested, there are plenty of cowboys with as much curiosity as he had. It's just that now they can do it legally in Oregon, Washington, California and Canada. Even in bigfoot country.

i was looking up these porn barns (i thought it was like a brew thru) and i got people fucking in barns.

Murder Mountain on netflix is all about that bigfoot county weed shit it's kinda interesting

weed stores are basically the most banal thing that have happened in Seattle in the six years I've lived here.

I would think people up in the mountains in the PNW would just grow their own? Like, our friends in Portland, we went to feed the neighbors' chickens across the street, and they had like five giant beds of plants growing back there.

Not everyone wants to grow their own. I mean it's great if you want to do that. but not everyone does. Just like not everyone grows their own spinach or carrots or raise chickens or whatever.

People might do that more if those products were sold at huge markups with a big tax hit.

imho decriminalization is first and foremost either a civil rights issue (re: incarceration, racial disparities in arrests and sentencing, etc. etc.) or an urgent health crisis issue (re: opening up channels for research and access given possible medical benefits, potential to circumvent or reduce the opioid epidemic and other crises). in that light, wondering whether you might get a stoned babysitter is baffling to me - - - you could end up with a stoned babysitter right now! no doubt millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter. the world keeps turning. meanwhile people are dying and getting thrown in jail.

anyway if you're concerned about the potential costs of recreational drug use, those are all better under a decriminalized status quo, right? if someone's abusing something and needs to get help, the thing itself being illegal can be a huge barrier to them seeking out that help, or to others setting up and funding programs to help them.

xp Josh are you actually arguing a point here or are you just posting

not that I haven't been guilty of just posting many times in the past but

No, I'm just posting.

The stoned babysitter thing I brought up was just as an example of cannabis not being "harmless," per se. It has an effect, which has ... effects. Which aren't always wanted and can be negative. Which, sure, is true of lots of legal things, but like I said, that's more of an argument against those things than for more of those things. Which I'm not making one way or another. It's just a discussion. Or concern trolling or whatever the fuck. If you guys all believe to a one it's a settled issue and full steam ahead, it won't keep me up at night. I've got no dog in this fight and the more people out of jail for dumb reasons the better. Maybe lock the thread for a few years and come back with "should it have been legalized?"

I once burned the bread at Subway when I was high at my shift during high school. I don't know what would've happened if I had to bake some kids.

Not trying to get on your case, Josh - - - just that your musings seem a little detached from the real stakes of the conversation, or maybe sort of on a parallel/red-herring track to the reasons being advanced for legalization, rather than answering them. Tbf my own thinking about this issue has shifted a lot over the years as I've been exposed to a lot more on the social-justice aspects and as the medical picture has become much more complete; I imagine that if this poll had been conducted five or ten years earlier, the results might not have been so lopsided, and this would be more of a lively debate thread instead of one that feels like the social consensus has been finalized.

If the question is just, why should "those other legal things are harmful" be an argument for making a harmful thing legal, then the answer is, "it's not." People bring up the existence of other legal harmful things not to say that every harmful thing should be legal, but to say that the world keeps turning despite numerous harmful things being legal. Many or most of them, we seek to regulate in ways that minimize that harm: speed limits and seat belts for cars, chain link fences next to dangerous abandoned quarries, "do not inhale" labels on poisonous chemicals. All of those things get ignored and people suffer, but we could throw it back at you and say, "so is your suggestion that we create a parallel carceral state for fence-climbers and paint-huffers, just so as to avoid being hypocrites?" More reasonably: it seems like you're just halfway to making an argument for legalizing it but with regulations and restrictions, which is what 99% of legalization campaigners are saying anyway, right?

millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter

my favorite tortoise album

jic what the fuck are you on about ? i think you need to go smoke and think this over

And they have their clientele, enough to stay in business, but you never really see people going in and out.

Washington state collected a total of $319 million in legal marijuana income and license fees in fiscal year 2017, all but $4 million of it from the state’s marijuana excise, or sales tax. [...]

The report also shows that ... the marijuana excise tax income to the state for fiscal 2017 of $319 million grew by almost $130 million from the prior year.

Those June 2016 LCB projections covered fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2019. While they may ultimately prove to underestimate actual end-of-year marijuana excise tax revenues to the state, they nonetheless show sharp growth expected.

[...]

Sales of legal marijuana in Washington state have climbed up to $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2017 , up from $786 million in fiscal 2016, and $259 million the year before.

Maybe lock the thread for a few years and come back with "should it have been legalized?"

You already posted upthread that you have been unable to determine via google whether it has even been legalised in Washington or not

and then don't post about what you thought about

if they want to regulate cannabis by giving it an age limit i think that's fine since there's some evidence that it can have deleterious effects on developing brains (and particularly pre-schizophrenic brains) but honestly i should be allowed to grow as much as i'd like to in my home bc seriously we should not be looking for reasons for the govt to be regulating what free people grow on their private properties. yes, i also believe ppl should be allowed to grow poppies if they want.

I was about to write back to Dr. C but

You already posted upthread that you have been unable to determine via google whether it has even been legalised in Washington or not

What are you talking about? I was just asking how it being legal in the US (where it is legal) compares to places like Amsterdam (where it has been legal for longer), in terms of enforcement, restrictions, regulations, etc.

you said that you couldn't figure out whether it was more or less legal, and strict, and regulated, in Washington or Amsterdam

it is not legal nor regulated in Amsterdam

QED

and also FFS

it is not legal nor regulated in Amsterdam

Huh?

Now I'm just confused. I was asking if it was *more* legal, and strict, and regulated in WA/OR/CA than it is in Amsterdam or *less* legal, and strict, and regulated on the west coast than it is in Amsterdam. Where I thought cannabis was legal?

The stoned babysitter thing I brought up was just as an example of cannabis not being "harmless," per se.

Arguing from hypotheticals like this is a very bad idea, because whatever you imagine has no regulator or limitation in the way reality does. If you know of a stoned babysitter anecdote where some great harm occurred, that would constitute anecdotal evidence, which is of notoriously poor quality for making wide generalizations. But imagined scenarios are not evidence of any kind for anything.

Yes, people do this all the time. But people make terrible decisions about the world when they allow imagination to take the place of experience, evidence, or something grounded in some kind of reality. It's like Europeans thinking they'll see Native Americans in feather headdresses walking around the streets if they visit Denver.

they're all too stoned now to walk around in their garb, quite sad

That is such a weird and specific analogy

i was about to say

Geez thread a buzzkill now

OK, you don't like that one, I'll crank out another one. It's like people not visiting Yellowstone Park because they imagine they'll be eaten by a grizzly bear or a cougar, because they imagine this happening and it is vivid and frightening to them.

Sorry didn’t mean to buzzkill wondering if it was based on a real experience

Here's some that are highly applicable and verifiable.

When Oregon had an assisted suicide law on the ballot, prior to any other state having such a law, the opponents bruited the argument that Oregon would become a mecca for suicide tourism, with suicidal people coming from all over the world to kill themselves here. The law passed and no such thing has even remotely happened; it was imaginary.

Sarah Palin notoriously hypothesized that the ACA would absolutely lead to the creation of "death panels"; it was a given that these must be created in order to ration out scarce dollars for expensive life-saving surgeries. There was no other possible outcome. These were imaginary, too.

The usual criterion for imaginary examples to be persuasive are that they engage a deep fear and have at least a shred of plausibility, like the hordes of "illegal immigrant rapists", based almost exclusively in people's imaginations.

Huh?

Now I'm just confused.

Now?

I was asking if it was *more* legal, and strict, and regulated in WA/OR/CA than it is in Amsterdam or *less* legal, and strict, and regulated on the west coast than it is in Amsterdam. Where I thought cannabis was legal?

It is not legal in Amsterdam, they just don't prosecute possession of under 5 grams.

If you cannot figure out whether it is *less* legal, and strict, and regulated on the west coast than somewhere it is illegal, then you have not been able to figure out whether or not it has been legalised.

millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter

my favorite tortoise album

― jolene club remix (BradNelson)

bold repositioning by the jehovah's witnesses

/millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter/

my favorite tortoise album

i am a stoned parent most of the time

tbh i think it helps me to be a more empathic, loving, and engaged parent

https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/i-want-to-be-a-420oldfatlesbian-when-i-grow-up.html
doing good work out there

Medical cannabis is already legal in Illinois, marijuana has been relatively decriminalized as a street offense, we have a new overwhelmingly elected Democratic governor who campaigned on legalization, who has even assigned a number to the amount of revenue to be raised and has incorporated that into his budget, we have a Democratic super-supermajority in the house and senate, and there is last I checked strong public support for legalization. And yet, as far as I have seen, there is a good change the actually pretty modest legal cannabis bill being discussed right now won't pass in three weeks. Kind of nuts.

And three weeks pass ... and I was wrong. Looks like Illinois will become as far as I can tell the first state to legalize marijuana through the legislature.

FIRST-EVER THC OVERDOSE: A Louisiana woman who died in February was killed from THC overdose, a coroner reported. This is the first-ever recorded marijuana overdose. https://t.co/Puf0JCzrVO

— FOX 5 DC (@fox5dc) June 7, 2019

reports say some are skeptical

i love how the coroner just kind of casually describes his theory like he's making it up on the spot

so she stopped breathing because she was soooo chilling?

After watching that John Oliver bit about coroners, color me skeptical as well. Sudden death while high is not the same as sudden death by high.

I would not be surprised if there were not some isolated incidents that come up do to people being extra with crazy dab tokes. Like you see people straight knocked unconscious . That can’t be good for you right?

due to*

But death?

Bong RIP

lol

that coroner sounds super high

i learned about the dire state of coroners from Frontline -- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/post-mortem/

this one sounds like a real dope!

"What if, like, she died because there wasn't *enough* THC in her system?!"

"Maybe what she was suffering from was not too much THC but too little TLC."

(I feel a little bad for those, RIP)

lol old lunch

But death?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 7, 2019 9:11 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark

idk have any of you ever took proper dab hits from a rig ? shit is no joke

pretty sure there hasn't been a time in history were one could instantly take such concentrated doses of THC instantly.

i guess probably the highest risk is like passing out and cracking your skull on something but i'm just saying .

When I see people doing that I can't think of anything else other than people smoking crack, so sure, I can totally imagine somebody dying.

lol they call it "meroin" around these parts

but this is still ridiculous ftr

for sure this case is stupid as hell

looks like Delta 8 and Delta 10 THC will remain legal in Texas for the foreseeable future. There was a bill seeking to ban them that was approved in the house and senate, but ultimately it failed to make it through a reconciliation process.

It seems that marijuana has been legalized for ages, so its interesting to see that as recently as 2011 the outcome was in doubt. By the end of 2012 it would be legalized in Colorado, and then the dominoes started falling.

I live in Wisconsin, it seems like it'll never be legalized here because our state legislature is so turbofucked

that said D8 is still legal, which is funny cuz apparently when it comes to edibles it's basically the exact same thing

the carts I have kick my ass, but I'm a bit of a lightweight

There's a legal weed store down from my house, as well as a couple glassware/gift shops (not really head shops - no Pink Floyd posters) and I have to says that the consumers of legal weed are big time litter bugs.. the gutters and parks are strewn with blunt wrap wrappers and empty packages of commercial weed

They need to clean up their act, these pot consumers

it is weird going to a legal state and seeing advertisements for it everywhere. go here! no, go here! we'll deliver it to your door for 3 bucks! all I can think of are the folks I went to high school with who wound up getting jail time for having like, a quarter ounce of shitty weed.

feels a bit like legalized sportsbetting I guess, I think it's good that it's legal but all the advertising for it rubs me the wrong way.

here in Wisconsin at the liquor store you can get these drinks with 25mg THC in them. since it's under the 0.3% threshold I guess it's legal. and yet they do get you very high. so what's the point of keeping it a crime??

I saw a billboard in Oakland recently advertising ounces of bud for $49, delivered to your door. For an ounce!

Thirty years ago we were paying $50 (or even $60) for an EIGHTH of an ounce! The market has totally crashed, some NorCal growers say that prices have fallen by 90+% and it just makes no sense to grown anymore

I wondered about that as soon as the legalization talk started. Marijuana is just an incredibly efficient drug. Always felt like a sucker for paying 50 bucks for a tiny baggie of something someone grew in their garden, but that baggie would last me like 2-3 months. So I can definitely see a lot of overestimation of how much this stuff would really be worth on the free market.

In Tennessee we're among the legal Delta 8 states, which is super weird because we have all these dispensaries — some of them very fancy and boutiquey — that are basically exactly like legal weed stores I've been to in other states except that it's all hemp-derived. I have friends who say it gives them basically the same high as actual weed, but I kind of disagree — it does produce an identifiable THC high, but I think it hits a little different? I don't know, maybe I'm just a snob. I am somewhat put off by the whole chemical process they use to concentrate and produce the stuff. I know that weed can have all sorts of pesticides and things on it too, it's not exactly organic lettuce or whatever. But I like the "real thing" best.

(not that I ever have any, copper — I ain't no criminal!)

Most of the legal stores here in CA have all the charm of a strip mall Verizon store... I guess they want to look 'legit' but I miss the old head shops with underground comix, t-shirts, "Dark Side" tapestries, etc. as well as pipes and bongs; they were some of my first intros into counter-culture

I've vaped a fair amount of delta 8 carts and they do get you high, but yeah, it's just not as pleasant as actual weed. There's no newer ones like delta 10 or whatever, I have no idea what they are like.

Wisconsin is absolutely packed to the gills with that stuff. I live in a town of 50,000 and I swear we've got at least a dozen D8 shops. Yeah, it's okay, I guess. The carts hit pretty harshly though. Honestly I felt better smoking the dubiously labeled fake carts I was getting before. It can get you high but yeah not really the same. More functional, less euphoric. Sometimes you just get a headache. The D8 edibles, on the other hand....are pretty legit. Results may vary on those though. I find 'em a lot less predictable than other edibles. Sometimes they mess you up good, sometimes you feel very little, but then there's a 50/50 shot you wind up getting way too high 5 hours later.

That happened to a friend of mine, had this very delayed onset that didn't hit til right before she went to bed. She fell asleep and woke up six hours later still high. The quality control is pretty variable seems like.

I got these 25mg D8 cookies once and I noticed all the cookies were very different sizes, like one would be 9 grams and another would be over 20. so these "25mg" cookies would be anywhere from idk like 15 to 35, that seems like kind of an issue when it comes to THC

here in Wisconsin

I drive to Madison pretty often, and I find it hilarious that there is a big dispensary more or less literally right on the Illinois border.

lol yeah if you look at the map of dispenseries in Illinois like a third of them are right on the border. pretty common icebreaker question here is "do you go to Illinois or the U.P.?"

As I understand it, prices/taxes in Michigan are considerably lower than they are in IL.

yeah it's dirt cheap in Michigan but that's a longer drive from where I am. plus the U.P. dispensaries are a little shady, I remember hearing the one closest to here isn't even licensed. it's just so dumb you can't actually buy it here, I guess that's what happens when the Tavern League secretly rules your state. even dumber because those "Delta 9" edibles/drinks you can get here because they're "less than 0.3% THC" are incredibly similar, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference (other than the real ones being twice as strong)

I miss the old head shops with underground comix, t-shirts, "Dark Side" tapestries, etc. as well as pipes and bongs; they were some of my first intros into counter-culture

you're in luck, for just for just $20, indie fragrance house Alkemia can make you smell just like an old head shop0, indie fragrance house Alkemia can make you smell just like an old head shop

Always felt like a sucker for paying 50 bucks for a tiny baggie of something someone grew in their garden, but that baggie would last me like 2-3 months.

damn, at the height of my addiction i'd burn through one of those every 36 hours. i don't think they ever lasted me more than a week.

it's not so efficient when you've built up a heroic tolerance, of course now one toke makes me want to crawl into a hole and die

I did the go to sleep sober/'wake up high' thing to myself making infused coconut oil for a friend's wife. Put me off edibles forever, waking up to a panic attack was rough. I don't have time to be fucked up for long.

Need someone to come up with a new easily obtained research chemical in the DMT/5-MeO-DMT realm so I can have a nice 10 minute trip once a week.

-weed advertising sucks
-delta 8 and concentrates and dabs are weird, I also prefer the classic analog marijuana.
-had a friend who quit smoking weed when he got divorced and couldn’t afford it. Weed is so cheap now that there’s no real financial burden. People spend more on craft beer and cocktails in two nights out than I do on weed in a month.

One thing I've noticed is the prevalence of skunky weed smells in utterly mundane spots: desolate bathrooms, obscure grocery aisles, quiet alcoves of museums... feel like the rise of the vape has ushered in a sly anonymity for a quick lonely indoor fix which wasn't as convenient with flammable methods.

There are a couple of specific blocks around there that consistently stink, morning, noon, and night.

A couple of weeks ago my daughter was in one of her classes (this is high school) when the weed smell grew so strong the teacher had to stop everything and call in security. After searching a few pockets/lockers/suspects/nearby bathrooms, they eventually found the source: an ounce (!) of weed a kid had brought it and, panicking, stashed in the rainy-day board game box along with Monopoly and the like. Vaping is apparently pretty pervasive and distracting enough at the school, but this was kind of beyond the pale, lol.

I don't have time to be fucked up for long.

My friend who woke up high called into her office and said she was going to work from home that day lol. (Feel like work-from-home in general has probably enabled a lot more daytime toking.)

i have a nice dialed-in microdose i do twice a day in the 'barely feel it' range. before i work out so the onset is fast and i burn through it fast. on the 420 thread, z shared this article https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/05/03/weed-anxiety-cannabis which is *highly* otm ime, pun intenteded baby.

weed is powerful and very complex. i try different edible products and they have really different emphases to me, to the point where it feels like "different strains of weed are different drugs". the one i recently stocked up on, for whatever reason, really brings whatever is going on emotionally with me to the surface. not sure i'm into it tbh. my dose on these has decreased because i don't want to feel that so intensely in day to day life.

There was *another* recent Washington Post article about weed sparking psychotic reactions in teens: https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/05/01/teen-pot-use/

It seemed pretty anecdotal and over the top, but then there's this one person repeatedly commenting beneath it who leans too hard the other direction. "It's perfectly safe and natural and no side effects and etc.!" Out of curiosity I listened to that Huberman neuroscientist podcast ep on the science of cannabis, because I liked his episode on alcohol. He is thorough and nonjudgemental, and the conclusion I came away with is that cannabis is indeed very complicated and its effects not really well studied or even entirely understood.

https://hubermanlab.com/the-effects-of-cannabis-marijuana-on-the-brain-and-body/

That first WaPo story seems pretty otm, this quote in particular: "“A lot of it could be the baggage you’re carrying into the situation,” Vandrey said. “It’s really hard to predict.”

Years ago I remember a heavy smoker telling me, "When something bothers me or makes me anxious when I'm high, to me that's a sign that that's something I need to deal with." In other words, it wasn't the weed making him anxious, the weed was highlighting things in his life that made him anxious. Some truth to that I think, but also the weed can amplify and distort those feelings so that the thing that might be really just a mild source of worry or anxiety becomes outsized when you're high. I think I've written this on another thread, but I've had super-stressed/anxious/sad times in my life where I stopped smoking weed entirely because of exactly that — it was making me feel worse or more stressed about things rather than less.

Really with both alcohol and weed I find them most enjoyable when I'm generally feeling good — they're mood enhancers, so it helps to be in a good mood.

During one particularly emotionally trying time I found that for months I couldn't have so much as a glass of wine or one hit of weed because I was sort of barely hanging on and the smallest thing would derail me completely. ymmv obviously, but it was a good lesson to me. Self-medicating has real limits.

[ "“A lot of it could be the baggage you’re carrying into the situation,” Vandrey said.

This is 101 level knowledge. If you don’t respect the feelings you already have, no substance will solve your problems. This is hardly a revelation.

I don’t see how any of this has a bearing on whether it should be legal or not. (I’m glad it is in my state and have many reasons that I’m not interested in sharing.

It may be 101 level knowledge, but I think it's why some/a lot of people don't make it past their first time of being really high. I've heard lots of people say things like, "I can't handle it!" because they had a bad experience at some point and don't really understand how the drug works. Not that I think that's some great social problem, it doesn't matter to me whether people want to use THC or not. But I think the way it connects to legalization is that having friendly legal stores with good salespeople could help guide people a little -- in the same way a good wine store can help you find something to your taste.

Also I think after decades and decades of mostly anecdotal information, a lot of folks may not realize its/their limits, and just assume the mantra of safe, healthy, natural etc. means safe and healthy for everyone. Even now a lot of it remains anecdotal or personal. That's one reason I recommended that podcast. I found it really informative and neutral.

Agree about seeking advice from informed professionals! I’m tired of hearing anecdotes from/about people who don’t know what they’re doing and impugn a plant for their human error. Legalize it!

re: limits, see also:

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome

a lot of folks may not realize its/their limits, and just assume the mantra of safe, healthy, natural etc. means safe and healthy for everyone

RIP Maureen Dowd

lol

cannabis overconsumption may be bad but it also gave us one of the funniest nytimes op eds so who is to say

How many states are left in which it is 100% illegal in every circumstance?

This is 101 level knowledge. If you don’t respect the feelings you already have, no substance will solve your problems. This is hardly a revelation.

i think a lot of people who smoke a ton of weed don't have 101 level knowledge.

i got into it because idk i thought it would make me more creative and write better songs, and secondarily because it would bolster my social life i guess? everything i knew about weed i'd read in Mr. Nice and i wtd to be Syd Barrett, basically. be careful what you ask for, i guess.

i def wasn't thinking about how it would interact with my mood or emotions or my anti-psychosis meds LOL

DMT/5-MeO-DMT realm so I can have a nice 10 minute trip once a week

A buddy bought a DMT *pen* last year - like a vaping thing. I tried it a couple times - 1 draw/dose would make everything really trippy and visual for all of four minutes or so, it was pretty fun

xpost More importantly, according to that podcast, no one else knows the answer, either. There are hundreds of compounds in the plant, I think maybe twice that of, say, basil.

yeah, i understood that much. it would have been smart to track the effect on my mental & physical health but i wasn't concerned with that really once i started seeing cool shit when i closed my eyes & painting the cool shit i saw.

The number one reason to fully legalize it, or at least make it a lot more legal, is that legalization trends are well ahead of research, which has been lagging for decades.

weed being a 'schedule 1' substance is a travesty. which is not to say weed is utterly harmless. no psychoactive substance is harmless. legalize it. regulate it. study it in greater detail. teach a healthy respect for it.

and tax the shit out of it

Unfortunately, this has led to a thriving underground market here in CA... the legal growers complain that the taxation and regulatory hurdles are just killing them

from what I understand, the taxes are based on a preset 'theoretical' value rather than what the growers are actually getting for the weed, now that prices have cratered

legalization is good. industry is bad.

Yeah - lots of unintended consequences

We had a case here in Oakland of some grow warehouse that had several giant industrial diesel generators running 24/7, in a residential neighborhood... and even when they got several warnings and finally a cease & desist, they just kept them going with vague mutterings about 'exploring new solutions', it was just fucking maddening

“Teach a healthy respect for it” otm

Can’t effectively do that if it’s something you gotta buy in the black market. Legalize it please.

Iirc I believe the reason it's a schedule one drug is not because of its addictive properties or anything like that, it's more that its components can't be isolated. Something like that. I think it's true for all plant-based drugs.

why "tax the shit out of it" though? I'm not a libertarian, but I don't really get what the argument is there

xp that isn't right, Josh afaict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act#Schedules_of_controlled_substances

xp Oh, I don't necessarily agree with the taxation, I'm just saying that's what's currently happening in California

And the heavy taxation is partially what's driving the illegal underground market

ah ok, got it

vice taxes aren't inherently progressive, which is an issue, but obviously the american way is to tell you that if you're not working hard enough to support your vices that's a you problem

Years ago I remember a heavy smoker telling me, "When something bothers me or makes me anxious when I'm high, to me that's a sign that that's something I need to deal with."

yeah that's why I always liked the scene in Curb where Larry gets too high and starts yelling at himself in the mirror, those sort of conversations happen all the time in my head when I'm too blasted

definitely agree it needs more research but also that it's clearly safer than alcohol and probably tobacco too. it's never felt poisonous to me the way liquor does.

Hmm, I'm trying to remember what I was thinking of, then, re: why it remains schedule one. I know there was some sort of catch-22 at work regarding its medical value or quasi-medical status. Maybe that its complex biology makes it hard to isolate and precisely dose its compounds? But that because it *is* currently schedule one, there is very limited research allowed that might make it easier to do the aforementioned, something like that? Also, I want to say something can't be formally designated as medical and recreational at the same time, so maybe that's an added complication. Anyway, clearly right now it is all a patchwork legal mess.

racism and history iirc

doesn’t mix well with capitalist death drive

haha otmfm

though i've met stoners for whom it clearly does not complicate their relationship to capitalism in any way and seems to enable them to glom on to being an "entrepreneur" even more than they otherwise would.

Tons of libertarian free-market stoners out there. One of the most obnoxious things about weed culture really.

at one point I thought it'd be nice that standardizing consumption would take us away from all the dorky hippie tie-dye and posters and goofy stuff but now I've strongly reconsidered this

it's schedule one because hippies

nah, it's schedule one because of jazz musicians.

meaning, racism.

But I think the way it connects to legalization is that having friendly legal stores with good salespeople could help guide people a little -- in the same way a good wine store can help you find something to your taste.

yeah this is pretty important when it comes to edibles, my first experience was very intense and unpleasant (until 3 hours later, when it was a lot of fun), so I kinda shudder when people are buying them for the first time and not knowing the dosage but thinking "well, I've smoked a bit, I can handle it"....nah, you can have a really bad experience, which sucks because edibles in the proper dosage are amazing

At least in MA and NJ, they've capped individual edibles at 10mg, which means a daily smoker like me had to scarf down more than a handful at the 100 gecs show I went to last week.

This is in stark contrast to grey market LA where 50-100mg doses were common in the early 2010s.

yeah that's crazy, I feel like I'm a pretty frequent user (though usually not more than 1x/day) and the 10s can get me really stoned sometimes. I'm not sure why but sometimes they just kick in really hard and sometimes they don't. I think it's just different for everyone, for example I know one person who just can't get high at all from edibles (but can by smoking). seems like something the people at the store should be aware of, cuz yeah I know a number of people who had one bad experience with them and wouldn't touch them again.

there's also a thing where people who haven't really smoked anything before look at edibles as an easier way in, which is probably backwards

Current edibles remind me of the old issue with brownies/cookies... they don't necessarily kick in right away, so you question their strength and maybe take a few more nibbles... then in three hours you're sunk into the sofa just wishing you could go back in time

When did it become a thing for all sorts of medicinal stuff - vitamins, pot, melatonin, whatever - to be mixed into gummies? It just seems to be asking for trouble in a world where Tide pods have child safety lids on them.

i buy my girlfriend microdose 1mg gummies which i think are a pretty solid way in in the absence of smoking/vaping, neither of which appeal to her. i have to eat about eight of them to feel anything which tracks

to be mixed into gummies

A buddy just game me a bottle of "Uncle Arnie's Apple Juice" with 100 mg THC per bottle (8.5 oz bottle)... there are warnings: "If this is your first time consuming, consider trying a half dose" etc.
Talk about starting them off young!

when i was vaping much more frequently i developed an iron stomach for edibles and nothing had an effect on me. now that i’ve cut back, i have these 10mg gummies i just bought and they creep on me but the effect is palpable. they are also very good at getting me to sleep through the night (vaping bud, for most including me, has the extreme opposite effect) (does weed make you sleepy or amped? the answer to this and most weed questions is: yes)

the only time that edibles feel like the right fit for me is before a long airplane flight

xp yeah if I smoke bud before bed I lay there half the night worrying I have a really ugly laugh

the only time that edibles feel like the right fit for me is before a long airplane flight

Yeah I did that once and it was not fun at all. I remember the pretzels feeling like I was eating a handful of sand.

an edible before a run (with headphones natch) is glorious ime

I think on a plane it just lets me tune out everything and zone out, it actually moves faster for me.

My Really Bad Edible Experience was at a Ween show. A friend gave me a cookie while we were in line to get in and said “eat half now, save the rest for later.” I got paranoid that security would take it (I was probably already stoned) and ate the entire thing. It was hell. I threw up twice and wanted to leave but driving was out of the question and I lost track of my buddy. The show was in Santa Cruz, in a place that looked like it had sporty things so there were these bleacher type seats in the back. I sat there alone with my head in my hands, dimly aware that Ween was playing a killer setlist and I wanted it to stop. A security guard came and hassled me: “Hey buddy, you okay? Been dancing too much? Too much to drink? Too many drugs? Hey buddy!”. It fucking sucked.

In hindsight, it was a horrible idea to drive my friend and I back to San Jose over the Santa Cruz mountains, but we made it.

nah, it's schedule one because of jazz musicians.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, May 10, 2023 10:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

meaning, racism.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, May 10, 2023 10:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

since the "schedules" are iirc a nixon joint i was thinking of the erlichman classic where he says "we could associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin"-- but whynotboth.gif and wrt to weed's prior illegality of course yr right.

yeah, I wasn’t intending to be argumentative, just thinking back to all the jazz era fears about marijauna

A buddy just game me a bottle of "Uncle Arnie's Apple Juice" with 100 mg THC per bottle (8.5 oz bottle)... there are warnings: "If this is your first time consuming, consider trying a half dose" etc.

that's insane, for a first timer I'd do 5, maybe 10 if they were an experienced smoker

My worst edible experience involved apple cider. We were in our early days of making infused coconut oil in a Magic Butter machine. After emptying the contents into jars to be stored for later, my wife decided to clean out the remaining drips and drops by swirling apple cider around in it to drink. She said that she had done this previously and just enjoyed a glass of apple cider that got her high. She handed me a glass of it to drink and set hers to the side to drink after she finished cleaning up. I drank mine down and within two minutes, I could tell I was coming up very rapidly and intensely. In more usual circumstances, it would usually take me between 45 minutes to 2.5 hours to come up. I made a bee-line for the kitchen where I pointed at her cup. "Be careful with that - it's SATAN." She drank some of hers anyway - not as much as mine, but it still ended up being more than she could handle. Long story short, it was a rough 18 hours or so. Nearly completely unable to communicate. Intense paranoia and anxiety. A feeling that the world was swirling around me. Cottonmouth so bad that I had to keep drinking water, which eventually led to me needing to pee every 10 minutes or so throughout the night.

Clearly you have a very low tolerance for apples.

I got paranoid that security would take it (I was probably already stoned) and ate the entire thing.

My dad famously did this while he was with some friends in college, I grew up with it as a cautionary tale. There were a group of them in a car going to a movie and my dad had a little hash that they were all going to smoke in the parking lot before going in. But they got pulled over on the way for something or other and my dad freaked out as the cop was approaching the car and ate the whole stash. With the result that he was practically catatonic through the movie while his friends were sadly sober.

doesn't it have to be decarbed first? this exact scenario happened in the beginning of Super Troopers and it always bugged me because I always thought just eating weed straight up wouldn't actually do anything. much less kick in 30 seconds later as it does in the movie. wonder if IMDB lists that under "goofs"

as a general rule I just don't eat anything homemade anymore unless I either make it myself or know the people who did have a low tolerance. my first edible experience involved a brownie which a frequent stoner friend of mine said knocked him on his ass...I figured I'd just eat a quarter. but when packing it up for the freezer a little corner fell out so I figured what the hell, eat it and see what happens. 30 minutes later I was pacing back and forth in the basement and Googling shit like "how long brohwnie last mijreaijana"

I drank mine down and within two minutes, I could tell I was coming up very rapidly and intensely.

lol yeah that sounds bad, I've never had it happen that fast but all the times I've gotten way way too high off an edible I've felt it coming on a lot quicker than I expected. when you start feeling high within 10 minutes it's a sign you're gonna have a bad time

that's insane, for a first timer I'd do 5, maybe 10 if they were an experienced smoker

Ha, no - the entire 8.5 oz bottle contained 100mg total, not per dose

so what's a dose then? one ounce?

ironically all the dispensaries I've been to in legal states you can't get edibles stronger than 10mg, whereas here in Wisconsin you can get 250mg bars of "legal D9" which may not actually be that strong but actually might be kind of close, you can really fuck yourself up

doesn't it have to be decarbed first?

Is that true for hash too? Probably I guess. Could be elaborated family lore. My takeaway from the story was not to lose the stash.

Do any of these THC derivatives/alternatives manage to do away with cottonmouth?

I once had to eat a j that a friend had pre-rolled for me. I know he added some additional ingredients to the flower. Definitely kief. Possibly hash as well? Anyway, two hours later I was deeply, deeply stoned.

just wanna point out how stupid the situation is here in Wisconsin, where we are now entirely bordered by legal states. I have overheard the conversation of Illinois (which is taxed out the wazoo) vs. Michigan (which is further away but dirt cheap) so many times. and the convo always turns to "man just think of how much we're losing in tax dollars from this". it's so idiotic. to make it even more ridiculous we have farm bill weed which is essentially hemp with some sort of THC spray (or HHC, or Delta 8, or THCo, or whatever the fuck they're doing now), the stuff works but you don't wanna bother with it if you can get the real thing.

however I do think the edibles are legit, the only law is they have to be less than 0.3% THC. but I think most edibles you get in legal states are probably even lower than 0.3% so all it does is make edibles legal but unregulated. now this is a problem because I think a lot of these places fudge the actual amount of THC you get. something that's listed as 15mg is probably more like 7mg, which to me is a good dose. unfortunately once you find something you like it gets pulled and replaced and you have to figure out the dosage again. which is surprisingly difficult!! anyway fun adventures in legal weed the other day when I found one product I liked was available at some liquor store, but when I opened it up the gummies looked to be about 50% bigger, which I assume meant they tinkered with the formula. but no - I think what happened is "15mg" actually means "15mg", and so I was so fuckin zooted. twas a good time (eventually) but yeah I don't know why we can't just get the real thing!

The German cannabis law passed the Bundesrat today. It‘s legal to smoke pot in Germany starting April 1st… no, seriously.

just wanna point out how stupid the situation is here in Wisconsin, where we are now entirely bordered by legal states
I assure you, you are not

Man, yeah, the price difference between buying in Illinois versus Michigan is absolutely nuts. I was shocked the last time we were in Michigan and walked out with probably 5x what we'd get in Illinois for the same cost.

shit's about to get wild

Breaking:

WASHINGTON (AP) — US drug control agency is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug in a historic shift, AP sources say.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 30, 2024

About fucking time they took it off Schedule 1.

wow

man if there's a Weedonald's on every corner

some info I just found on what that means, legally:

Legal Consequences If Marijuana Moved to Schedule III

Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, without other legal changes, would not bring the state-legal medical or recreational marijuana industry into compliance with federal controlled substances law. With respect to medical marijuana, a key difference between placement in Schedule I and Schedule III is that substances in Schedule III have an accepted medical use and may lawfully be dispensed by
prescription, while Substances in Schedule I cannot. However, prescription drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although FDA has approved some drugs derived from or related to cannabis, marijuana itself is not an FDA-approved drug. Moreover, if one or more marijuana products obtained FDA approval, manufacturers and distributors would need to register with DEA and comply with regulatory requirements that apply to Schedule III substances in order to handle those products. Users of medical marijuana would need to obtain valid prescriptions for the substance from medical providers, subject to federal legal requirements that differ from existing state regulatory
requirements for medical marijuana.

Rescheduling marijuana would not affect the medical marijuana appropriations rider. Thus, so long as the current rider remains in effect, participants in the state-legal medical marijuana industry who comply with state law would be shielded from federal prosecution. If the rider were to lapse or be repealed, these persons would again be subject to prosecution at the discretion of DOJ.

With respect to the manufacture, distribution, and possession of recreational marijuana, if marijuana were moved to Schedule III, such activities would remain illegal under federal law and potentially subject to federal prosecution regardless of their status under state law.
Some criminal penalties for CSA violations depend on the schedule in which a substance is classified. If marijuana were moved to Schedule III, applicable penalties for some offenses would be reduced.

However, CSA penalties that apply to activities involving marijuana specifically, such as the quantity based mandatory minimum sentences discussed above, would not change as a result of rescheduling. DEA is not required to set annual production quotas for Schedule III controlled substances.

The prohibition on business deductions in Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code applies to any trade or business that “consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of schedule I and II of the Controlled Substances Act) which is prohibited by Federal law or the law of any State in which such trade or business is conducted.” Because the provision applies only to activities involving substances
in Schedule I or II, moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III would allow marijuana businesses to deduct business expenses on federal tax filings. Other collateral legal consequences would continue to attach to unauthorized marijuana-related activities.

Hooray for rescheduling — it’s a step!

legalization seems like pretty low hanging fruit for a not-particularly-popular incumbent President in an election year but honestly idk what he can even do. this seems like a good step at least.

xpost it's a step I thought was a pipedream for many years. glad to see sanity finally prevailing

legalization seems like pretty low hanging fruit for a not-particularly-popular incumbent President in an election year but honestly idk what he can even do. this seems like a good step at least.

― frogbs, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 2:11 PM bookmarkflaglink

with our luck, Trump campaign will do his advertising for him.

"With Biden in office, weed is going to be freely available"

Biden's response:

"Hell yeah it is!"

Legalization would require congressional approval, yes? Good luck with that right now

still might help to get their votes on the record

get their votes on the record

Good thought, but not gonna happen. In the Senate legalization would be subject to filibuster and never make it to a vote. If the Ds held the House majority they could bring legalization out of committee to the floor for a recorded vote, but the R majority's not going to cooperate on that.

It doesn't need to get to a vote. The President and prominent Democrats making it an issue would be an energizing issue with a lot of younger (under 50 lol) voters.

should be decriminalized NOT LEGALIZED

why not

I seriously doubt that legal weed would be such an electoral slam dunk for a candidate that everyone always hopes it will be. I mean, it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t think it’s moving the needle very much.

I seriously doubt that legal weed would be such an electoral slam dunk for a candidate that everyone always hopes it will be.

Maybe it's a dumb stereotype, but "really into weed" and "likely voter" seem close to mutually exclusive.

Weed is all over the place now as well: from the lowly doobie of mexican weed, to highly concentrated 'dab' and shit like that

I don’t think it’s moving the needle very much

perhaps not but as unperson says it's one of those issues that might motivate some folks to vote who otherwise would say "who cares, it's all a scam anyway, man...". plus it would force the GOP to argue against something broadly popular. but yeah maybe the ship has sailed I mean I don't live in a legal state and yet it seems to be everywhere these days. that farm bill which passed seems to introduce so many technicalities, like oh here's something that's not at all like weed until you heat it up, in which case it's basically the same...I mean where we're at now just makes no sense. like you can "only" have .3% THC in edibles here but even in legal states you don't often get more than that.

i am not going to try to predict the effect this is going to have on voters -- overall rescheduling it from S1 is a logical and useful shift and I am here for it.

Maybe it's a dumb stereotype, but "really into weed" and "likely voter" seem close to mutually exclusive.

https://www.cshl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Boomer-Esiason-headshot.jpg

xpost otm, regardless of its effect it needed to happen

something that I think has been overlooked itt so far is that this will enable research on a much greater scale

i.e. lab work, genetics, tests, etc

cancer treatment, etc etc etc

yes!! and that will legitimize and destigmatize and that is good.

lmao my brain was going the opposite direction and I was thinking "yes, there will be more labs doing work on marijuana genetics and breeding"

ConAgra Cannabis® - Buds You Can Trust

dankest weed moonshot starts now

happy 4/30 yall

think the corporate weed move will be lowering THC content so that you can buy a pack of Marlboro joints that don't paralyze the average person (also that increase addictiveness somehow) plus all the exotic cannabinoids present naturally in small amounts that supposedly cause weight loss/etc..

market segmentation, for sure