Everyone needs to make their own health decisions for themselves but we really do need a mature conversation about cannabis.
A few years ago I was prescribed medical cannabis to treat chronic pain, and aside from being great for pain - wow, it's changed my life!
The right cannabis strains can do wonders for my mood, but it also makes me feel... less autistic, for want of a better way of putting it; suddenly I can understand why somebody said something, or how something I said could be taken the wrong way. For the first time in my life, I can really try to see things from someone else's perspective, and I'm thinking about other people far more than I ever have - I feel empathic.
Over time, cannabis has also allowed me to analyse and think on the past, which, has greatly helped me. For the first time in my life, I would no longer describe myself as having depression (it may come back if I stopped cannabis treatment, so maybe I should say I'm in remission).
Cannabis use may of course pose some risks for a small percentage of the population, but I'd wager it's in general far less dangerous than alcohol. And of course, my experience will not be universal.
Personally I get very anxious if I smoke too much (and in the wrong setting); it helps me a lot with other issues if I only consume a small amount occasionally.
Also it matters a lot if I mix it with tobacco (then its a lot harder to consume responsibly).
So I think both you and GP have good points.
And yes its a million times better than alcohol, that stuff is literal poison for body and mind.
There is danger in attributing something broad like this directly to drug use. Can you only reflect while high?
It may be that the initial psychedelic sessions helped break through some mental/emotional patterns you were suffering from (positive impact), but that continued regular use has an overall negative impact on mental health. That's been my experience with psychedelics and how I've seen them work on those around me, at least.
Is it the same strain(s) for everyone, or does each person need to figure out which ones work for them?
We've seen from the gambling legalization, drug legalization, and even things like loot boxes, etc, that there is a subset of the population who just cannot handle these things at a level most people would consider "responsible". We last had this nation-wide conversation around drinking, and prohibition had its problems, but we're going to have to support this group somehow, or let them be exploited by advanced companies as if they're subhuman.
Gambling is a decent example of where we've lost touch with this in the last decade. In my state, it used to be that if you wanted to play games of pure chance, you had to go to a physical casino, present an ID, and be subject to the rules and regulations of the state which were enforced by actual state LEOs who were always on-premises. If you wanted to, you could sign an affidavit that would ban you from the casino floor on the risk of a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
Now, you can open an app on your phone and place sports bets. There's no harm reduction at all. The apps are designed to be as addictive as possible, minors can sign in under their adult guardians' accounts, and there's no way to ban yourself from the apps. It's destroying people's finances from a very young age.
That's what happens when you don't regulate on the rationale that regulations keep line from going up.
After almost 40 years of war on drugs the problem with hard drugs is bigger than ever in the US (and other places). Meanwhile countries that have a more relaxed approach are doing much better.
I'm not saying legalize everything always but prohibition also ain't it.
I'm sober and have been in that world for several years now, and the most important (and hardest) part of getting sober was accepting that I had a problem and needed help. Macro policy decisions can help with access to an extent, but addicts fundamentally cannot make better decisions for themselves until they first realize they have a problem. And as prohibition taught us, once the demand is there, it can't just be regulated away.
Is there a threshold? Can we define a principle that covers the entire range?
It seems clear that in the ideal scenario, people's freedoms should not be curtailed merely because there exist other people who would do unproductive things with that freedom. And on the other hand it seems clear that "freedom" to engage or not engage with deliberately targeted highly addictive things is not meaningful, and "individual responsibility" as an organizing principle of society only takes you so far.
Let adults do what they want.
A much better argument could be made for banning corn syrup. This cheap fake sugar is behind so many health issues.
Even just a switch to real sugar would do wonders. However I don’t believe the government should ban it.
Corn syrup represents a derivative of a necessity for life and is not psychoactive. Either of these is sufficient to classify it completely differently from cannabis and break your analogy.
Also, apologies for attacking your character, but it's necessary for continuing the discussion in context. Your comment is the exact brand of "immature" that they're saying is wrong. Their comment, to which you are replying, is simply a plea for exactly what your comment is not: relevant, informative, and practical discourse.
(To be clear, they're all drugs, and they should all be used responsibly if at all.)
"Neurodivergent" lacks a well-defined meaning. What is it about someone for whom you would define as neurodivergent that makes cannabis more harmful than someone someone for whom you wouldn't label as neurodivergent?
it's easy to just look at the upside of something that doesn't hurt you and you just have an extra choice, but knowing that it can and does wreck the lives of many, I feel that it's a painful thing for me to vote for, or against
In the better case, they just become insufferable and pseudo-intellectual because they started watching Alan Watts and Carl Sagan while stoned and would become convinced that they know everything about physics and philosophy.
In a lot of cases though, and this is more obvious in hindsight, it feels like they were using weed as a means of dealing with the fact that they were deeply unhappy and depressed people. Instead of confronting their problems and seeing a therapist/psychiatrist or any of the other things that they could do to actively improve their life, they would spend their evenings and weekends getting high.
I don't inherently have an issue with people using recreational drugs; I've gotten drunk before [1], but it should be done in moderation.
[1] I never did it that much and I haven't had anything to drink at all in years.
I see it along the same lines as brands, your typical Great Value psychologist will greatly underperform the Kirkland psychologist who will greatly underperform the ... and so on.
Then there's the subset of the population whom have been abused in the most horrific ways by psychologists.
Not to counter your point, just as additional discussion.
Meanwhile I know many people who did the therapy rout and are still there decades later. Not sure their path was better.
As always, it depends. While I agree wrt marijuana, everyone would be an opiate addict if poppy wasn't regulated - it's just that good.
That doesn't match my experience at all.
We as a society somehow keep making the whole opiate addiction thing worse with increasingly stronger versions. I've read that Heroin overall was a much more enjoyable drug, and harder to OD on. Then Opioids became big, the sackler family got rich, and now you just have a super cheap, super strong drug that isn't even enjoyable. Fentanyl just knocks you out and makes overdosing easier.
I do wonder what a safety minded policy around opioids could look like, as they're not exactly a new problem in the scheme of human history.
There should be some exceptions, like banning invasive species, but in general, you're absolutely right.
You could get pulled over with a brick of asbestos in your trunk in all 50 states and not have problems. And this was true 20yr ago as well. The regulations around asbestos are/were primarily restrict commercial manufacture, processing and interacting with it so I suppose they could contrive to get you for "processing" if you consumed it.
> Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday changed the classifications of products containing marijuana that are covered by the Food and Drug Administration or that have received a state medical-marijuana licence. They will move from a Schedule I narcotic like heroin to a Schedule III drug - on par with Tylenol with codeine.
> He also called a hearing to consider reclassifying all marijuana.
And with most presidential elections actually being quite close, and only ~70% of the population voting at best, even getting 3-5% voters, who otherwise don't care at all about politics and wouldn't bother voting for any cadidate, to vote for you simply means you win.
The prison system also loves weed legislation. So many folks are/were behind bars for weed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Biden_a...
I mean... you can just EO this.... but there's rules you're SUPPOSED to follow. Biden did that.
This is simply Trump reaping the rewards of that effort without (of course) giving any acknowledgement to Biden.
Oh and BTW, why didn't Trump do this in his FIRST administration in 2016-2020?
Oh, and remind me which party consistently voted AGAINST rescheduling over the past 30 years?
The private prison industry is affected by this HARD. When you deregulate, all those marijuana criminals (who are mostly black btw) go away. Thats less heads in jail, which is less money to the private prison corporations. My guess is now that this current administration is sending immigrants and americans to immigrant concentration camps, their headcount will be a wash when the marijuana convictions fade away.
And guess which party the private prison industry donates to?
Ruling by executive order is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
Trump is basically just pushing that order across the finish line.
Can we move on to more important and substantive topics? Something something files.
I agree that I would expect a serious candidate to come with much bolder ideas, but it can fit into a platform in the same way "no tax on tips" fit into the 2024 election. One of many good ideas that will motivate a certain niche of voters.
Oh no too many of the powerful establishment democrats are friendly with the esteemed bankers, politicians and business leaders in those files.
So over time, I've gotten more in the camp of "completely ok with the gummies being legal, not so sure about the smoking part anymore" - anyone else feel that way?
It's a clear and rational line - do unto yourself if you must, but keep the air clean and don't force others to share your nasty habit.
It makes me wonder how undetectable we really were when we smoked up when we were kids. I mean dang, I can smell the weed half a block from Chipotle after 9pm.
I know politics is hard to talk about, but I generally think that we underappreciate the importance of being agentic in politics. Obviously I prefer that our government follow the law and uphold the constitution. But the many ways in which the current administration got things done by being quick, by "flooding the zone" [2], and by using tactics that apparently no one noticed before [3-4] are worthy of study and emulation.
I know the obvious response to this is to note that a lot of what they're doing is illegal, and again, I think that's bad. But they really make the current Democratic leadership seem out of touch and old [5] by comparison. Combined with policy positions that are far from the median voter's [6], it doesn't make for a winning look/platform.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/04/acce...
[1] https://www.cspicenter.com/p/its-time-to-review-the-institut...
[2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/02/tr...
[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/27/russell-vought...
[4] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/16/the-unmaking-o...
[5] https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-democrat...
[6] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-median-voter-is-a-50-someth...
The spiteful killing of so much research funding alone dwarfs all of their minor wins. Wrecking clean energy projects are total self sabotage for the country. The utter lack of pollution enforcement will cause untold cases of cancer and other disease in Americans. Trump's family has stolen billions for themselves while destroying hundreds of billions of dollars in value with this idiotic Iran war they can't even articulate a plan or theory of victory for.
This is far from an exhaustive list. Trump is good at making minor high profile moves seem like a big deal, but it can really distract from the orders of magnitude worse decisions he's making elsewhere.
How that will work will be unclear, because technically marijuana is still a controlled substance. That said, pharmacies can bank, so at some level dispensaries can bank. Maybe only medical dispensaries can bank, and the recreational ones will piggyback off of them?
76th Rule of Acquisition: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
Marijuana is one of those political dog whistles they only talk about at elections, which funny enough we're nearing, but at least finally someone did something instead of just saying they would...
