Looking forward to this, silly to see so many Kia "boys" being used for gross violence crimes when regulation changes could lessen it.
> https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/seattle-pot-shop-cr... for example
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-28/marijuan...
One of the first to open a few years back got hit early and everyone seems to have learned the lesson.
>"The owner says around $15,000 of products and items were stolen from the store."
It doesn't mention anything about cash.
"Smash and grab" in weed shops doesn't usually have much to do with having piles of cash sitting around (though I'm sure that might happen too) - it's the product that thieves want to steal because it's got no serial numbers, it's pretty light-weight and easy to run out with thousands of dollars worth of product, and it's easy to resell.
If there's any cash in the register that's often secondary to grabbing a few pounds of high-quality product. 3 pounds of high quality weed can be valued at $20k. I doubt there's that much in the cash register at the end of the day, and good luck getting into the safe. It's much easier to run out with 3 pounds of weed.
I mean... I can leave a 2000 USD Macbook for a toilet break in Starbucks over here without any issues and have done so regularly.
Schedule 1 -> banned from the financial system.
Schedule 3 -> OK to use the financial system.
How the DEA schedule and the financial system interact is still unclear. The important part is that once regulations are updated weed businesses won't be restricted from access to the financial system. There may be some more regs around that access, but I'm sure they'll be worked around.
This is not true.
Here is a legitimate business selling schedule 1 drugs: https://www.caymanchem.com/product/10801/mephedrone-(hydroch...
Regulatory Information: DEA Schedule I
With a schedule I DEA license, you can buy this product, and the manufacturer can deposit your money into a bank.
That's why I'm not sure moving marijuana from schedule 1 to 2 or 3 will really change much from a banking perspective.
Marijuana dispensaries will still be violating federal law, no different than if they were selling sleeping pills illegally.
You already answered this already :)
> the point is that you CANNOT legally sell schedule 1 drugs commercially
Schedule 1 means illegal under (nearly) any circumstance, commercial dispensaries fall under “any circumstance.” Drug scheduling is just a tiered system for classification in order to determine which rules to apply to its sale, distribution, and possession of the substance.
(Call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I don't think I'd want 50+ illegally-correlated transactions on my financial record that the government could lump into other charges...)
Here in Ontario Canada I can walk into a local neighbourhood cannabis store (one of many on every block, it seems) and make a purchase using my debit or credit card. I'm not sure if any of them even keep a cash float although I imagine they must, just in case granny comes in "for medicinal use". Alternatively, I could just go to the government-run web store and get home delivery through Canada Post at no extra charge.
Assuming banks/processors don't decide to restrict them for other reasons.
Edit: yes
https://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/tax_implications_reclassi...
Does alcohol consumption show up on credit card bills and filter back to insurance companies?
This also assumes that grocery stores aren't aggressively aggregating and selling sales data, esp. those from Membership Cards. Insurance companies would love to get a hold of that data, not only for alcohol, but things like sugar and junk food purchases. I'd bet my hat they're already doing so.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...
It’s probably still a net positive to release the federal restriction, but I hope all these small/mid sized businesses don’t get gulped up by big tobacco or other mega corps
Calling it: CVS and Walgreens will move into the medical market for this. You think these little shops will be able to process health insurance payments when that sector gets in on it? lol
I don't think they'll carry intoxicating forms of marijuana, though. (I've never seen a CVS with alcohol, but that could be because of how my state handles liquor licenses.)
- Consolidation is already happening in a lot of ways, in some cases despite state laws designed to prevent it
- Consolidation by big tobacco seems less likely than probably other major industry incumbents (in the long run, I’d bet on companies primarily oriented around alcohol)
- Federal posture since Cole (when first states legalized recreational, partially rolled back under Trump/Sessions but seemingly not as much as was feared at the time) is largely what prompted strong local laws; it’s based in analysis of interstate commerce; federal legalization could have a similar analysis without undermining existing strong local laws; the tradeoff would probably be large disparity of justice between states (on party lines)
- A much better outcome would be a central rule not just to legalize, but to more strongly incentivize justice for people affected by draconian laws in the first place. This is a pipe dream, but it should be the focus because any compromise will start with that.
I smoked for 15 years, turns out quitting was easy, once you undestood the way the addiction works, but nobody considers that they developed oral fixation from sucking on a potennt noootropic habit forming substance all day,
But then we have Silvy Listhaug (politician): Marijuana will continue to be banned because she is a mom, she told the reporter photographing her smoking cigarettes. I hope she gets lung cancer.
Personally, as a monkey with a lump of fat in my head called a brain, I think drinking fat solving solvents are a bad idea for that reason alone.fMRI scans shows white brain tissue in drinkers literally dissolves over time.
The increase in marijuana use is mostly due to 3 factors:
* Nobody is hiding anymore.
* We become more people every day.
* More & more people realise alcohol sucks.
The UK and CAnada's offcial stance on alcohol is that there is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol consumption.
The war on drugs is going well in Norway: Cocaine & MDMA purity averages above 80%, Racemic amphetamine is cheaper than hash now, and the hash is good as anything you can find in dutch coffeeshops. ..and it is all getting cheaper at the same time. The war is being lost so bad the police have stopped issuing Narcotics stats 2 times a year as mandated and dropped it to once a year. Last year crystal meth averaged over 99% purity, 99.2%-99.6% according to Kripos Crimelab!! 5000 mafia families in Europe alone funds their organized crime with proceeds from the artificially high price of cannabis caused by the ban, legalizing and taxing it resoanbly would snuff out those and would be a massive blow to organized crime. GHB is fueling a rape epidemic here. Oh and you can legally buy poppy seed and grow them here...
I do expect big tobacco to move in aggressively if weed is made legal.
I don't mean half-assed decriminalization here and there which still feeds very healthy criminal ecosystem and for end user of say weed doesn't change a zilch in anything, I mean same legal treatment as tobacco and alcohol, we don't prescribe that for anxiety do we, its all fun and chill and introspection (for me). Its 2024 FFS, and we see idiocy live where politicians are lying in the cameras to please old conservative folks for next elections.
I want to buy edibles, happy to pay any tax they slap on it. I want to buy a single joint, of strength and power I want to choose. Or vapes. Not some overpriced mediocre shit from paranoid desperate illegal immigrant standing in dark corners of shady parts of cities. Give that man an honest job on some weed farm or distribution system.
Regardless, unless Congress does something to make it legal nationally, we'll still have the state frameworks. Just hopefully avoiding the most draconian criminal charges.
this is the main cinsern for me
Why not? Laws of scale would drive the price down while improving the profit margins, both clients and investors would win.
I think some inefficiencies are important, especially when scoped to "who can do this thing the cheapest?"
But marijuana enjoys high markups, pseudoscience "health benefits", and is becoming more and more acceptable to Americans each and every year.
What else will I spend my billions in revenue on if I can't advertise and have to hide all my employees?
Though maybe you want your drug dealers to be unproductive, for society's sake! I may take this back...
> Jack Riley, a former deputy administrator of the DEA, said he had concerns about the proposed change because he thinks marijuana remains a possible “gateway drug,” one that may lead to the use of other drugs.
>“But in terms of us getting clear to use our resources to combat other major drugs, that’s a positive,” Riley said, noting that fentanyl alone accounts for more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. a year.
1) Govt says cannabis is the most dangerous drug.
2) I try cannabis, nothing bad happens.
3) So when the govt says drugs are dangerous, they are incorrect? I guess I can't use their rating system and will have to base it on my own experiences.
There is a trust penalty for over-classifying drugs.
And then of course picking up your cannabis from the popular pharmacy chain means you never had a reason to introduce yourself to a dealer, who may stock cannabis alongside other drugs.
Cannabis isn't intrinsically a gateway drug. All the gateway-ness flows from the social structure surrounding its misclassification.
1) Govt says cannabis is the most dangerous drug.
2) I find someone who will sell me illegal thing.
3) I try cannabis, nothing bad happens.
4) Vendor has other items for sale.
I remember a teacher telling me drugs make hair grow out of your teeth. I figured if drugs were really that bad they wouldn't need to lie about what they do.
Now that it's legal in Germany I'm going to grow my own, and experience the (surprisingly common!) miracle of harvesting the exact legal limit of 25 grams from 3 plants ;)
Cannabis IS a gateway drug, indirectly, by means of social contagion. It's simply a catch-22 because the government (and media, and both sides of the political spectrum) has completely destroyed their credibility with the people.
Teenagers have had plenty of excuses, through loss of trust in the self-anointed's reputation of exaggeration, to (rightly) assume the government is outright lying or masquerading the facts about all substances.
So when artistic pieces of blotter paper of unknown orgin start making appearances in high school's around the world in 2014, students had 0 reason to believe they were dangerous; after all, "cup of orange juice man" had already long been debunked.
Many kids have died, directly because of this DIS-education.
Oxy/Hydro's are the actual gateway drugs; recreational/unfettered use, alongside the constant social pressure, will (nearly always), cascade into more dependent use of more potent opiates, then opioids.
When fent-laced pills finally starting working their way into the aging supply of real Percoset in the hills of Appalachia, three generations of drug addicted families had already resigned their fate to a long, painful retirement of addiction.
By the way - these same, ("simple, flyover, farmer, uneducated" by blue/'learned'/democract) people trusted their government to get hooked on these, remember?
If it is a surprise to you that the vast majority of Americans distrust the DEA, FDA, or CDC, or CNN, or even FOX then you have never left the conform of your post-modern urban hell-scape.
source: i am veteran of the war on drugs
Not so much of a gotcha.
What I'm curious about is how marijuana availability links to consumption of other drugs including hard drugs, alcohol, tobacco, tranquilizers and antidepressants. I hypothesize it may decrease these.
Depends how stoned, but people routinely drive while using medication that affects them far more than being a bit stoned.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/
> Cannabis users perceive their driving under the influence as impaired and more cautious, and given a dose of 7 mg THC (about a third of a joint), drivers rated themselves as impaired even though their driving performance was not; in contrast, at a BAC 0.04% (slightly less than two “standard drinks” of a can of beer or small 5 oz. glass of wine; half the legal limit in most US states), driving performance was impaired even though drivers rated themselves as unimpaired.
> This awareness of impairment has behavioral consequences. Several reviews of driving and simulator studies have concluded that marijuana use by drivers is likely to result in decreased speed and fewer attempts to overtake, as well as increased “following distance”. The opposite is true of alcohol.
I'd be more weary of people under the influence of anger, benzos, or other psychiatric drugs.
In my experience, cannabis is a performance enhancer in these cases, increasing awareness rather than decreasing it. After all, it does improve ADHD symptoms.
There is probably some form of bias here, as I don’t remember all of the good drivers, but not a day goes by where I don’t see drivers wandering into other lanes, performing dangerous undertakes, lane changes, or generally being terrible drivers, and you have to wonder why.
A lot of phone drivers, for sure, a lot of ignorant pricks too, but I’d bet on a lot of inebriated drivers given their conduct.
Example of a shocker I had today, I was turning right out of a resi street, a car with no indication stopped to let me out on my right, but it wasn’t safe (very tight, little visibility) so I waved him along. I stayed there for appx 30 seconds until I realised he wanted to turn into the street I was pulling out of. He didn’t indicate once. Just a completely wild disregard for any form of road etiquette, not to mention the Highway Code.
I’ll report it from my dashcam, but I doubt anything will be done by my local police force.
I think we need far more stringent fines and forced retests (along with removal of licence if they can’t meet the standard of a learner) for anyone committing a road traffic offence or blatantly breaching the Highway Code out of sheer ignorance.
I'm not saying that this should be legal or that it's okay to do it, but it's really much less of a problem than one would think. Certainly much less so than drunk driving.
I've long wondered if this will be a trend across the country.
The real question though is, will more or less people who try cannabis now that it's legal, know when to stop experimenting when offered harder drugs? The fact that we don't see 15 year olds making bathtub moonshine leads me to believe that there is a limit somewhere for most people. Cannabis has not been difficult to get in the US for decades if you have even a modicum of self-determination. If everyone who has abstained until now suddenly gets the urge to try cannabis, I doubt that will totally destroy that self control after a few hits. Just like many people can go to a bar and know when to stop drinking even though there are likely somewhat inhibited by the drinks they have already consumed.
Regulations and social expectations of where you can smoke should be as-strict as tobacco smoking, if not more since weed is just so much more stinky.
Quantitatively, marijuana smoke is less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.
There are so many different points of view on that topic... I think that debate will go on and on
Ah, I see. Somehow I doubt that if the US announced it would withdraw from this treaty, to be replaced by an amended version, we'd be invaded immediately by all our (former) allies and be driven straight into the sea. Like, I'm sure there are governments even more obsessed with cannabis than we've been, but like, they'll have to get over it sometime.
I don't consume it really, but if I did I'd never pay for it online with a CC processor or anything that goes through an American data centre. The US is way too crazy about this stuff, and an overzealous border control agent armed with information he shouldn't have can ruin your whole day/week/life.
This is just the same principle as private organization boards of directors delegating the minutia of running the organization to the executives and their teams. If you think it would be madness for hiring decisions on individual contributors to be made by board votes, then you should support the delegation of rule-making authority to executive agencies.
Yes, it means that changing the executive might change the rules. Congress remains free to overrule the agencies by passing further legislation, if they so desire. And voters remain free to replace the executive the next time around, if they want to see different rules. These are all features, not bugs.
There is certainly value in stability and predictability, but there is even more value in having an executive branch of government that is empowered to make decisions quickly and a short feedback loop between the public and the government.
It isn't, because the board can replace the executive leadership at any time, whereas the President can only be replaced every four years and isn't elected by the legislature whatsoever, bypassing checks and balances.
The proper way to delegate minutia to an administrative agency is to have them propose rules that Congress then votes on. The rules might be a thousand pages long and 99.9% uncontroversial, so those rules get rubber stamped, but controversial changes have to go through the political process because it gives Congress the opportunity to refuse.
> Congress remains free to overrule the agencies by passing further legislation, if they so desire.
But that's not how it works, because now you've inverted the default. Before you needed a majority of the House and Senate and the President's signature in order to make a change. Now you need all that to undo the change a President makes unilaterally -- implying that the President would veto it and the legislature would need a veto-proof majority. It's not the same thing at all and is handing too much power to the executive branch.
> There is certainly value in stability and predictability, but there is even more value in having an executive branch of government that is empowered to make decisions quickly and a short feedback loop between the public and the government.
There is value in allowing the executive branch to remove bad rules unilaterally, in the same way as the President can veto a bill. Allowing new rules to be created without the appropriate process is tyrannical.
Note that there are only either 538 or 100 voters, depending on which position in the executive branch.
You typically see flip flop rulings on issues that half the country actually does not support.
Abortion is probably the biggest issue and that's because a lot of the country does not support it and this has not substantially changed in over 50 years: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
Another contentious issue has been gay marriage but support for that has only risen over the years (although much more slowly), so generally that is another issue that I don't expect much flip flopping on: https://news.gallup.com/poll/506636/sex-marriage-support-hol...
I'm sorry, am I reading the data incorrectly, or your comment incorrectly?
> Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?
> 2023 | 34(any) 51(some) 13(illegal) 2(no opinion)
According these data, the vast, vast majority of Americans support the right to abortion, correct?
And even if what you are saying was true (it isn’t) isn’t that the entire argument for democracy in the first place? “Politicians make good policy because they want to get re-elected” is how we should hope things work.
Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reexamine the scheduling of marijuana in October 2022.
Nearly a year later in August 2023, the HHS wrote to the DEA recommending that marijuana be reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule III.
A month ago, the DEA was still "writing [their] recommendation" on what they should reclassify marijuana to (if any change was to happen).
And just now, April 2024, the DEA agreed with HHS (as reported by AP, DEA hasn't confirmed this yet).
So no, this isn't "just happening" now, this has been going on for years.
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-30/hhs-calls... [3]: https://twitter.com/DEAHQ/status/1772987478548287891
Trust me, you don't want to see a fast-moving American government.
Gallup polled support for legalization being in the minority, as recently as 2010. [1]
Now factor in the demographics of voters vs adults in general, and the timeline is the opposite of surprising.
[1] New High of 46% of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana https://news.gallup.com/poll/144086/new-high-americans-suppo...
The gesture of the freeing these two brave whistleblowers is much more important than you think. Noam Chomsky calls this censorship flak of his five filters.
> If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.
So legalization may still be a political hot button, but give it time. One party supports it, one party opposes it. Dan Patrick, Lt. Gov. of Texas, is going to push the state to ban hemp-based Delta 8 products in the next session.
One party is regressive, one party is receptive and secular.
The only reason why it's not legalized yet is because 1) many politicians are old enough to be brainwashed to believe in "reefer madness", and 2) many voters are old enough to do the same, so politicians who don't believe in it still have to pander to them. But this is a problem that solves itself over time, which is why supporting weed legalization becomes more socially and politically acceptable.
I mean, just this year, 12 US senators wrote an open letter asking DEA to legalize weed. This would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, yet here we are.
If it's not all legal 20 years from now, I would be extremely surprised.
See cannabisstudieslab.com as an example of the kind of non plant touching research that Cannabis Studies majors have been doing due to the Schedule I status.
I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts had lost his job. He was thrilled to "only" have to pay $1000/mo for insurance on the Marketplace for his family of 6. And he confirmed it wasn't even a "Cadillac" plan!
If my back hurts, I'm probably going to reach for weed over a visit to the doctor because $10/day is a potentially more affordable than needing to shell out $8k for back surgery or physical therapy treatments for years. Maybe I get lucky and the pain goes away, or I can focus on finding a new job with better health benefits and still come out ahead financially.
I agree with the sentiment but it seems far more reasonable to stop criminalizing something so human as a step towards the goal, rather than put the goal before the metaphorical horse.
so we definitely need psychedelics rescheduled.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/ https://treatmentmagazine.com/cannabis-2020-this-isnt-your-d...
A society which criminalizes something so popular and widely used; will ultimately fail at their prohibition.
The next step for society would be to attempt at changing opinion, but what are the unintended consequences? The answer is, bad news.
Coming from the US, Massachusetts specifically this was a major step backwards. Granted we are spoiled, especially in my region where there's 2-3 shops per town but I was not expecting it to be that hard in progressive Canada.
Edit: I looked it up and only the "SQDC" (1) is authorized to sell Cannabis. 1: https://www.quebec.ca/sante/conseils-et-prevention/alcool-dr...
So .. all the countries in the world, e.g. Japan, China, Singapore, UAE, etc., etc., where marijuana is very illegal, failed? It seems to be working just fine for them. Since we can provide numerous counter examples to your claim isn't your claim instantly invalidated?
When I visited Quebec in 1997, I saw a lot of people openly smoking cannabis in public. Once I smelt weed, turned around, and saw a kid, probably about 12-14, just sitting on a bench in public smoking a joint. I wasn't in a shady part of town, either.
pffft... source? I know about 1 person who grows their own for every 100 who smoke.
Not sure how the DEA can consider itself a serious organization.
I would be surprised if there is not some string attached to this that doesn't take place until after November. That's a good thing though, becuase it was seeming more and more like the current administration was sabotaging itself. The Democrats need the youth vote.
Got to make sure the doctors get a cut by requiring prescriptions.
Whatever you think about the effects of Marijuana on yourself or society, it's clear that it should have never been outlawed in the first place, and wouldn't have been outlawed if not for the factors above.
It seems that the fentanyl crisis has finally defeated the archaic drug policy in the states, but not in the way you think. If alcohol and tobacco were outlawed in the US, it would immediately become impossible to buy them without risking getting a deadly dose of fentanyl. Legalization of marijuana, controlled legalization, is the only sane answer.
(And this is coming from someone who doesn't partake)
Also, anecdotally, I can smell a lot less weed in Amsterdam than when I've caught a wiff of it in the US. You have to be walking right by the shop before you smell it usually. I'm not sure if this is a local regulation or what, but I suspect the Dutch would be much less tolerant if their public spaces reeked 24/7 (but no worried about the dog poop on the sidewalk)!
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
In a presidents first term they are incentivized to do just enough to not piss of the other side enough to get some crazy numbers out but do enough to appease the current voters that they tried.
But then in the second term any worry about being re-elected goes out the window.
Like I am still convinced that Obama was in support of gay marriage before he publicly said it, and just waited until after he was re-elected. At that point what was he going to loose?
Will nonviolent drug dealers be released from prison?
Is that a thing?
Let the experiment begin.
> It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids
Hopefully the first step but not the last.
This will be nice for certain things, particularly payment processors for dispensaries, assuming that card processors don't continue to get in the way (don't see why they would).
But this won't fill the huge skill gap in public sector computer security due to weed getting in the way of clearances, for example. And for people in non-legal states, they will have to continue to use black markets to get it or gray markets like the "THCA" loophole (thanks unfortunately go to Trump for that one).
We shouldn't tolerate politicians delivering us half solutions when it's on issues that don't need compromise due to popular support!
No, really, they're prepared to concede that water is wet? Shocker!
From what I gathered the DEA was looking at this over the past few years.
It wasn’t a Presidential decision.
But Congress can only go far back so agencies are racing to put out regulations now so that a potentially hostile Congress in 2024 can't undo what they did easily.
See for example net neutrality from the FCC, FTC regs, airline refund regs from FAA and more.
Yes, all of this might help in the election, but if this were really just about elections, you would see these announcements in September and October.
See https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th...
We call it democracy, proudly wear pins saying "I Voted!" and shame on you if you ever criticize it.
"The DEA’s proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use."
It is in fact because they were ordered to do so by the US FDA, who by law decides what schedule drugs should be in. It started with MDMA, then LSD, Psilocybin and marijuana. In that order. They signaled the DEA to reschedule all those things because, in fact, they are legitimate medicine and I cannot help to wonder if that started with MAPS (maps.org) applying to do trials with MDMA for PTSD and being *beyond* due dilligent.
The FDA will collect data from any relevant agency whenever something (at least drugs( are applied for $whatever use. I have heard through the grapewine that the FDA were downright furious to learn the DEA had lied about MDMA for years while veterans are killing themselves daily. Much of the DEA data supposedly showed a ton of deaths attributed to MDMA just because a pill with a logo was being sold as if it was MDMA, while in fact it was sooooo many other dangerous things. The US DEA lies about just about everything. These substances are not depency-forming like opioids. If the DEA of any US alphabet soup move their lips they are lying.
The empathogen and psychdelics are not even habitforming: Do you know what happens if you do LSD daily for a week? I do, You can lick an entire sheet on the 7th day and hardly feel a thing, which I know because I have. Israel has been leading the way in marijuana research for decades. 90 year old holocaust surviors inhale marijuana vapor,for PTSD. I find extreme relief from PTSD myself using marijuana vapor: The nightmares stop, and suddenly I sleep 8 hrs a night, a few days of that I almost forget I have PTSD. Then I moved back the "richest nation of earth" (and it can go fuck itself) and essentially have to be a criminal to get regular sleep to function keep a job and not live in a perpetual nightmare. WE have Bedrocan / Bedrolight, but nobody can get a script for it because of all the nonsense authorities and socialized medicine/psychiatry thinks about it. Terminally ill cancer patients have begged to try it and at least on one occasion die 6 days after the news that he got denied died, in hospital from accute opioid poisoning. THey kill cancer patients with opiods all the time.
And WTF are DEA doing with offices in Copenhagen, Denmark?! They set up shop there and suddenly swedish police (SSI) has endless kilos of cocaine to plant and don't want the labs analyzing it following swedish law (the law say to destroy within 3 months of seizure and lab analysis and it has been all over national tv in the Scandinavian nations they Police active tried to stop them destroy man y many kilos of it, 9kg of which they were caught planting.). Oh, and SSI police have a tendency to become cocaine addicts. -All that cocaine with no oversightmakes it an occupational hazard, I guess.
IMHO, if you go to war for me, you deserve the best treatment available for your injuries. MDMA assisted therapy trials have helped veterans I know personally. I stoppped drinking liquor & wine the first time I tried marijuana, 20 years ago. The UN removed cannabis from the narcotics list in 2020, for decades it was embarassing: None of its cannabinoid components ever went on it as no narcotic effect were demonstrated they were listed as psychotropic substances, along with caffeine, psychdelics, nicotine, alcoholm etc. The original Opioum conventions had a clause specifically permitting businesses to have upto 500g for resale in small quanties to adults. That is how Dutch Coffee Shios exist. The UN listedcannabis in the 1930's under the __assumption__ of opium like effects, nobody what was in marijuana until late in the 60s, many years after the 1961 Narcotics treaty.
I am still waiting for the war on tylenol, which has killed over 100k in US a year for decades. Remember when opioids killed 100k a year in the US? The entire world does, yet most people dunno about Iran's struggle: almost half the afghan heroin ends up i Iran, has for decades. Afghanistan makes about 80% of illicit heroin.
That is completely false:
"an estimated 458 deaths due to acute liver failure each year"
1. The re-scheduling will happen (90%), the administrative hurdles will be cleared. Only counterexample I could find was Kratom in 2016, which was the reverse of this situation, and the DEA dropped the proposal at the public comment stage.
2. Trump will not reverse it if elected (80%). He's been pro-states-rights on cannabis (or outright legalization) going all the way back 1990, and has criticized Biden on this.
3. Unlikely many US states that outlaw it will change, but I do predict (75%) at least one major European country will follow suit within a year, given Germany beat US to the punch
4. Effects in the US will be minor, outside of weed stores using the banking system as another comment pointed out, since most enforcement is state level.
5. But if there are changes, the best evidence we have on this comes from state legalization, where the effects are estimated to be huge (+3% state income, +17% substance use disorders).
The Psychotropic Substances Act modified the existing schedule, but left other acts in tact - those other acts are the ones being modified by this nonsense circus.
So it appears that US rescheduling would bring drug policy closer into alignment with the UN than before.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/cannabis-uni...
Now, there may be some procedural red tape to go through, but it would be odd for the UN to reject such a change when their own scheduling agrees with the change.
The problem I have is that no one is talking about the potential consequences when they're talking about legalization. My 70 year old mom is going to parties with her friends where they all have a new habit of smoking marijuana because "it's legal and safe". Regulators, politicians, and advocates only hail the positive effects of marijuana and no one is talking about the cognitive risks involved.
The reason probably is because I think most people agree that it's stupid to send people to jail for smoking marijuana. But they're conflating the idea that decriminalization is good with the idea that marijuana then must not be bad for you. And this is wholly not true, and I wish more people were talking about this.
Btw, I know I will probably get downvoted for this because marijuana users don't want to face the fact that they might be dampening their long-term cognitive potential but please go do a full review of the literature—you will begin to share the doubt that I have.
Regardless, stronger plant just means you smoke less to get the effect, right? It's not so strong that a single puff puts you in the ground.
Is it so strong it precludes medical usage?
These drugs are escapes for people - and a lot of them, especially younger kids get completely hooked on the escaped from reality from these drugs (including alcohol).
We should instead be limit the use of these drugs and have teams dedicated to studying why people are turning to these instead. It's OK to have them on the weekends, but most people I know who smoke weed are on it the majority of the time. Alcohol isn't much better - most do limit it to after hours / weekends, but there are a few who tend to overdo it.
From a biased point of view, I've had a few young family members and friends who turned to weed as their go-to for their daily lives, and it has changed their lifestyle, made them far less willing to live out their life and pursue actual goals. They definitely had both the potential and backing of their families (mid to high class) to do great, but chose to instead live a life of 'rotting away' in their words. Out of them only one has turned their life around (still smoking on weekends) citing that it made them not want to do absolutely anything in their day to day life.
Just like with alcohol, if your life is trash: bad job, no friends, no relationship, then turning to weed or alcohol can be seen as an escape from your life and eventually it will take over.
But if you are in a good headspace, then what is the problem really? I can meet some friends and get plastered with them for a weekend and not touch booze for a month after that because I have work/family commitments that would make getting drunk impractical,
I am fairly certain that weed can be used exactly the same way.
Having a few drinks with friends or alone after a a hard day's work is fun. Smoking a joint with friends while sunbathing on the beach is fun. Getting high every day and drunk everyday is a problem but it doesn't have to be that way.
A lot of them naturally moved away from smoking when its purpose was served too.
It doesn't have to be exclusive or. People are looking to fix these issues. In the mean time, we don't have to ruin people's lives by convicting them as felons.
1. Attempt to ban it.
2. Accept that people are going to get high, and try to limit the harm.
The first has been a complete and utter disaster. The second -- e.g. applying the same rules about who can use it and where they can use it as alcohol -- is the only sane option.
Prohibition is about as effective as abstinence-only education and for many of the same reasons. We can either work with how we wish people would behave or how they're actually going to behave.
Maybe we should consider banning drugs for medical reasons too...
Hell, even if you added the drug that blocks the opiate receptors into the water supply like fluoride so everyone is getting dosed, addicts will just switch to bottle water. Legislation does not prevent anything. It only increases those deemed as a criminal.
Would you ban coffee? How about sugar?
There’s no point in caring too much about anything or anyone else. Free will and all that.
Not my problem. I have insurances and pay for services.
I’ve pretty much accepted that most people are just there to destroy society. So I stopped caring about anyone but myself.
The only people I will get up and help are my direct blood relatives.
if something could be done about the thc content -- that will be nice.
weed isn't exactly harmful -- but long term it will be interesting to see the consequences. now already a lot of people are paranoid due to weed use.
Have we learned nothing from the Mueller Investigation? How are we all still falling for unsourced stories 5 years later?
Then hopefully the f... UN can do that too.
I'm totally shocked that the UN has such a hard and shitty drug policy.
> The entire process can take from a few months to several years, depending on the complexity of the issue, the volume of public feedback, and the urgency of the reclassification.
Making it a schedule III puts it back in "Doctor prescription" territory, and since there's now a legal route to getting it, a lot of these businesses that have operated with impunity are breaking a different set of laws if it's schedule III. No doubt that laws and decriminalization statutes would need to be updated to comply federally. Banks may be able to be used, but only if you're a registered pharmacy. It's really just a lot more questions and a lot more people to profit on the chain to selling it.
Most of the world still treats it as an illegal substance. In the US we have definitely allowed popular sentiment to make it appear much less harmful than it is. I'm not sure it belongs in schedule I, but it certainly doesn't belong OTC.
How is it more dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol?
Prescriptions are basically a formality. There are a certain set of symptoms you have to describe to a doctor in order to get any particular drug, then you go to a doctor and get the prescription. It has to be this way because many of the conditions have no non-invasive tests to determine if the patient is lying and as much as the DEA would like it to be the case, doctors are not supposed to be cops and they can't be effective doctors if they have to play CYA all day.
But at that point all the law is doing is propping up pharma profits and inflating healthcare costs by routing recreational use through the insurance system, and screw that. If you want to eat pot brownies then you should a) pay the market price, not a tax to corporate shareholders, and b) pay it yourself, not stick the cost on everyone who buys health insurance.
Other than that, nothing is likely to change unless states walk back the laws they've already passed.
Remember, it's already illegal on the federal level for these businesses to exist, and that isn't stopping them.
Obviously there are outliers and certain cultures where domestic policy was also heavily at play (Japan). But many European countries didn't view weed as particularly problematic.
