Should Marijuana be legalised?

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.