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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's help people by criminalizing them so they have a harder time getting a job and all that...
Today's regulation seems to be dependent on the principle of not talking about risks at all.
I agree with the top comment - I think it's great that we're starting to deal rationally with cannabis, but we need to be realistic about. It can be beneficial but can also cause real harms, especially in children and young adults, and cannabis use disorder is a real thing.
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.
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
(To be clear, they're all drugs, and they should all be used responsibly if at all.)
> 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.
The prison system also loves weed legislation. So many folks are/were behind bars for weed.
Biden also mass pardoned minor weed possession charges https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/biden-marijuana-simple-possess...
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?
Ruling by executive order is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Biden_a...
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.
There should be some exceptions, like banning invasive species, but in general, you're absolutely right.
The drug to beat would be safer than nicotine probably.
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.
Can we move on to more important and substantive topics? Something something files.
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...
