Should Marijuana be legalised?

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