Personally I feel like marijuana legalisation is a no brainer. It's the most used illegal drug in the world so it's incredibly easy to get hold of regardless of its legal status.
At least with legalisation it can be regulated and taxed. I would expect any social impact could be mitigated with education. Also legalisation would prevent people from having to interact with illegal dealers who may or may not be selling other more dangerous drugs.
Marijuana was legalized in my state. I've never touched it myself but I was actually in favor of this and voted for it because I believed (and still do) that the war on drugs was a giant fleecing of the American people. Since then, what has happened here is that we basically got the worst parts of everything.
1. Since "hey, it's legal now," lots of people take that to mean they can smoke it wherever and whenever they want. While driving, in parks, near schools, immediately before class, and so on. Along with legalization, there should have been laws enacted, communicated, and enforced which would encourage people to get stoned at home in their own time instead of out in public where they are a danger or at least nuisance to everyone.
2. A good majority of the billboards in my state, in cities and along highways, are now for MJ retailers. I'm worried about the impact this persistent advertising has on normalizing the casual use of psychoactive substances for children who see these ads constantly in their day-to-day lives.
3. The retailers are regulated and taxed, but their prices are quite outside the range of those on a lower to lower-middle class income. As a result, there is still a lot of gray-market dealing going on to provide lower prices for those that accept the risk/inconvenience. And therefore with it, some amount of crime. So legalizing MJ did _not_ suddenly make everything above-board and peachy overnight like all of the legalization supporters had claimed it would.
I don't know that I have a solution for any of this. I only hope that right now we are just seeing some kind of peak the way cigarettes were positively mainstream in the 70's and then gradually faded over the new few decades as society realized what they were doing to us and our children over the long term.
>As a result, there is still a lot of gray-market dealing going on to provide lower prices for those that accept the risk/inconvenience. And therefore with it, some amount of crime. So legalizing MJ did _not_ suddenly make everything above-board and peachy overnight like all of the legalization supporters had claimed it would.
Consequences of excessive taxes are not consequences of legalization.
The primary benefit of legalization is to reduce abuse by police and the judicial system. It is clearly just a tool for authorities to be able to hide behind plausible deniability if and when they want to exercise their power over others.
I could make the argument treating them the same means legalizing tobacco advertisement.
Of course the risk profile of marijuana is arguable closer or more favorable than that of alcohol, so tossing it into the alcohol advertising bin or better makes more sense.
It doesn't smell like alcohol but then again I'm not concerned about the smells of booze, I'm concerned about the smells of puke.
Or the inevitable domestic violence, barfights, DUIs, and deaths. Marijuana, by comparison, kinda smells and makes people eat too many oreos.
A tiny amount in the air will -- enough to smell -- will have a negligible impact on you or other bystanders. If you're worried about brain impacts from having to be around people smoking outside than you should be fuckin terrified about breathing in car fumes, off-gassing plastic items, etc.
No and that doesn't happen with cannabis or tobacco either. That's an extreme exaggeration and people shouldn't be thrown in jail because someone doesn't like the smell of something, that's completely insane
I agree that people shouldn't be thrown in jail for weed, but fining seems appropriate for a public nuisance. Not sure how you measure it, but we do it for noise as well.
This may surprise weed smokers, but non-smokers don't want to breathe that shit in and the smell goes everywhere. Maybe smokers are oblivious to it, but the stench is more far reaching than tobacco for sure.
It's quite clear you have no idea how long the smell of weed lingers. Also, that means you probably have no idea that when you walk around you reek of weed. Ask some non-smokers.
You seem to be confused, we were discussing smoke smell in open air not clothes smelling like smoke.
It's quite clear that you have no idea how harmful car exhaust is to myself and my children, we need to ban cars and make sure we fine drivers for harming my family
A better analogy would be, imagine your neighbor owned pet skunks and they sprayed a few times a day. Even on their own property, the scent carries and lingers. Keep your pet skunks in the house, that's all.
The function of cars can be served better by bicycles and public transport.
And no, smoke smell does not linger in open air. Molecules in air diffuse rapidly especially in moderately windy environments, I urge you to read up on basic physical chemistry if you don't believe me
The US had some of the highest rates of transmission and lowest uses of public transport when compared with Europe so I don't think that claim holds any water
Africa is not a single country, that is a sweeping statement, and based what I saw on the last time that I was in a particular city in a particular country in Africa, that statement is rubbish.
They were also taking many anti-COVID-transmission measures at the time. What I suspect is that African countries were less naïve about COVID - they had no expectations of being exceptional, of escaping unscathed, and had been impacted by other serious disease outbreaks in living memory, so they had more expectation that it was a real problem, but also one that could be mitigated.
> it's incredibly easy to get hold of regardless of its legal status
> At least with legalisation it can be regulated and taxed.
If it is so easy to acquire, how will legalization result necessarily in regulation and taxation? I am sure some users would go the legal route, but I am aware of people in states that legalized who still grow and sell their own to avoid taxes.
Missouri has generated $70M in recreational marijuana sales revenue in the first month after recreational legalization. Some people will avoid taxes via black market route but most will take the path of least resistance. Doctors hand out medical cards liberally, so that’s a cheat code if you can’t afford recreational taxes and are willing to put the effort in (medical is usually taxed at a lower rate).
> Recreational cannabis sales in Missouri generated $71.7 million in revenue during its first month of legalization.
> Medical marijuana sales generated an additional $31.2 million, resulting in a combined total of $102.9 million in sales since Feb. 3, according to data from the Department of Health and Senior Services.
Washington state brought in >$500M in revenue on marijuana taxes last year. You can say that you don't understand why people pay it, but empirically the question of whether they will pay the tax is settled.
The Province of Ontario made half a billion in cannabis revenue last year from legal sales. There are provisions allowed for private growing. Some people go beyond and grow more than they're allowed, but this has been a huge success, financially, for the government here.
For one thing, people are really lazy (especially when they smoke a lot of weed).
For another enforcement is kind of pricey.
I am aware of people who had federal helicopters land on their property to machine gun down their grow operations. I would guess that a helicopter full of highly paid federal agents backed by even more highly paid lawyers costs more than they guys would make in a few seasons.
I think it's "easy" in that since many people do it, they probably don't need to be hardcore gang members.
I don't smoke weed, so my opinion may not be worth much, but if I did, I absolutely would prefer getting in from a somewhat regulated outfit and be sure that it's actually what I expect it to be. I don't know if adulterated weed is a thing, though.
Sure, if between taxes and whatnot you end up with a price 100 times higher than your local dealer's, my point is moot. But I doubt that's the case. So if I could avoid having to deal with sketchy characters, that'd be a plus.
I think growing your own is an entirely different question. My mom grows tomatoes, peppers and other stuff in her garden. I live in an apartment building, so I get mine from the local store. I do enjoy eating her home-grown produce when I visit, though. Maybe there's a market for "non-industrial-grown weed", too, as there is for farmers.
>>I don't know if adulterated weed is a thing, though.
From conversations around purchasing a portable freezer (to store prepreg carbon fiber rolls for my shop), from someone who turned out to be in the legal weed business (processing & drying operations between growers and sales outlets), he told me that in the non-legal supply chain there is an insane amount of adultering weed with some really nasty stuff. Some of it is in the dealer chain to make make crappy weed "better", including adding Fentanyl, and some of it is from counter-drug operations spraying herbicides that are highly toxic but not necessarily 100% effective, so survive into the remaining harvest. Seems that is mostly filtered out for the legal supply chain.
It was enough of a caution that if I were to resume partaking (haven't in decades) I'd definitely want to use a proper store, and really just get some seeds and grow my own - the only true quality control.
The biggest issue with going to a regulated outfit is there are cameras and possibly recording of license/ID information to ensure they don't sell over 1 or 2oz limit to you.
~30-50% of people have constructive access to a firearm at home, which means you're subject to going to prison for 15 YEARS of federal prison if you have a single joint. State legal weed is a no go for me until I can hunt squirrels without going to jail for 15 years.
Hopefully someday the federal laws will be fixed to allow retail outfits to put money in the bank rather than get robbed by violent organized crime, and to remove pot users from the prohibited person list.
I'd argue that this is because of what seems like a mismatch between local / state laws and federal laws.
I'm not from the US, so don't know how all this works, but I assume that if weed is "generally legalized", then it should be at the federal level, too.
Our constitution is supposed to relegate intrastate trades to the states via the 10th amendment.
This was nullified in wickard v filburn, where they decided growing your own plant and consuming it on the spot is interstate commerce. Obviously this is nonsensical, but the courts don't want to shake the house of cards and you'd have people screaming about the "end of the civil rights acts" and various other popular laws that depend on an extremely fudged version of interstate commerce and the 10th.
You pay taxes on every tomato you buy at the grocery store. Or every slice of bread.
You don't have to, though. You can just grow your own tomatoes. Easy to do, and can be done with the right setups all year. But you don't. You buy wheat, or tomatoes at the store because it's easier. Sometimes you can get them from your neighbor for free, or from a local farm stand (and lets be real that farmer probably isn't tracking VAT/GST).
The vast, vast majority of buyers are still buying their MJ from retailers, and the incredible tax surpluses the states are seeing reflects that. Most of your weed, like most of your tomatoes, is coming from a store.
I would absolutely rather walk into an actual shop than order something online and hope it arrives as described, or hang around for 30 minutes looking dodgy waiting for a dealer to show up
I let marijuana destroy my life. For about a year, I experienced all the benefits ppl use it for. Then all of a sudden I would get panic attacks and full-on psychosis. I would not wish these episodes on my worst enemy.
The smell of it is so ubiquitous now that it's legal and it's a great deal of anxiety for someone like me.
I acknowledge its benefits and that I'm probably a rare case. But it is disturbing to me how mainstream it's become. Certainly..some ppl will face the same repercussions I went through and I don't want that to happen.
I still think it should be controlled medically and not as available as lotto tickets
> [I personally abused something that's proven to be extremely helpful to millions of people, but because I had a uniquely bad experience with it, I vote for people having harder access to it.]
I deeply apologize for saying this but what an absolutely bizarre opinion. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.
Most people safely enjoy alcohol. No one is pushing a narrative that alcohol is universally healthy and safe, and pushing accounts of alcoholism and other forms of maladaptive use under the rug. Nor do we blame alcoholics for the genes that make them susceptible.
I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the downsides that many experience are described.
I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.
If someone describing their own negative experiences and belief that those experiences warrant more controls is so bizarre, it might be worth exploring why that is.
That doesn’t mean one has to agree that controls are needed, but this notion that “well that’s just your problem, leave me alone” is an unhelpful attitude that does very little to illuminate the reality of the situation.
The reality is that some people form a habitual/addictive relationship with cannabis. The reality is that cannabis severely disrupts REM sleep. The importance of REM sleep is a growing concern as we learn more about the process of sleep and how a lack of it predicts serious mental deterioration later in life.
To be clear, I use cannabis regularly and find that it helps me deal with some aspects of C-PTSD. At the same time, I also find that it reduces the quality of my sleep.
This is a tradeoff I accept because the alternative is less sleep overall, which is worse than the degraded sleep I’m getting now. But if I could otherwise sleep normally, adding cannabis to the mix is something I’d be more cautious about.
The point behind that anecdote is simply that using cannabis involves tradeoffs.
I don’t think access should be further controlled, but I do think education needs to be prioritized.
>I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite >problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the >downsides that many experience are described.
>I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a >pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.
I think you hit the heart of the issue. The negatives have been used as a cudgel and amplified beyond reason over the years to block progress on legalization. It's create a knee jerk reaction to anyone who talks about their negative outcomes. (This isn't exclusive to MJ legalization. Try talking about quitting alcohol in a group setting over drinks. Something I had to do because I had negative outcomes with alcohol.)
Very often these points are parroted by organizations that want to block legalization for reasons that have nothing to do with the issues of abuse or health, for example the Private Prison system which is one of the biggest lobbies against marijuana reform.
While at the same time, society happily brushes aside the same concerns about alcohol which proportionately has worse side effects and outcomes. We also still sell cigarettes with glee for the tax dollars while they essentially have nothing but negative outcomes. People pay 8-10 dollars a day to murder themselves and cause undo excess cost and burden on healthcare but no one give a shit anymore.
It's all so performative, inconsistent, and driven by capitalist motivations tangentially associated with the actual issue.
Consider substances like weed or alcohol that can ruin lives but usually don't. How should our laws treat these substances? I'm not sure but there's nothing absurd about thinking they should be illegal.
Also consider: what are laws for? To some degree they're about discouraging certain behavior. It would be nice to think that we could discourage weed/alcohol without making them illegal but it's not clear that we can do that.
Whether laws are here to protect and/or ensure prosperity of society, or whether laws are there to maximize freedom seems to be a huge source of contention in our modern society. Ultimately I think the two ideals, while overlapping many places, are incompatible. Hopefully we can rewind the consolidation of federal powers to allow people with different ideals to move to different states to achieve something closest to their desired way of life. Federal drug laws controlled by unelected beuracrats are an example of making this selection impossible.
I think this is more common than is really known at the moment. I had a similar experience. So have at least three other former regular users that I know. We've all stopped using almost entirely now.
That being said, any drug when abused will have negative side effects. If marijuana is legal it will be easier to actually test, regulated, and provide guidelines for safe use.
Everyone knows taking 6+ shots of some form of booze will likely cause you to be drunk. How much weed will cause you to be incapacitated? One puff? One joint? A dab? Half an edible? It's not clear. That feels like the real problem currently.
Alcohol is pretty terrible for your body and is carcinogenic. Then again, so is sunlight, or, as the parent pointed out, sugar, sat-fats, etc. The difference is I need some amount of sunlight and saturated fat to live.
Alcohol also heavily correlates with assaults, rapes, domestic violence, and murder. Something crazy high like 60% or more of assaults. Ditto for things like car accidents after 9pm -- overwhelmingly alcohol related. DUIs kill a non-trivial amount of people.
I’m not saying it doesn’t but alcohol causes so many unnecessary deaths in society due to drunk driving. Note: I’m not advocating for alcohol to be banned.
It isn't. My state is looking into making the penalties stronger and people are generally favorable for that because they still see people driving every day with their face glued to their phone.
The only people against distracted driving penalties are people who are entitled and think they should be able to put others in danger for their minor convenience or libertarian assholes who think seatbelt laws are oppressive nanny stating.
Selective enforcement and high penalties is not a solution. Simply enforcing existing laws would be trivial and solve the issue. The only problem is people would not really want that, just like they would not want police to enforce speed limit laws.
The other way to think about this, how much of our phone use when driving is because of lack of public transit and the requirement to commute to work? There are different ways of addressing the same problem.
What is psychosis defined as, and how is it any worse than the effects of excess alcohol consumption?
On 30+ years, I have never seen someone get violent from cannabis, but with alcohol, it is a regular occurrence.
Worked at a hotel when I was younger too, and you can bring me a hotel full of people high on cannabis, and the worst they ever did was buy a ton of snacks.
Alcohol, on the other hand, was responsible for noise complaints, broken televisions, furniture, sexual assault, violent assault, cops being called all the time, etc.
Look. Maybe I'm crazy, but being unable to control one's emotions is a much less severe condition than not being able to know what is real and what is not for the individual in question.
As an aside, my father was an alcoholic and a pathetic loser indulging in as much alcohol as self-pity. I am not defending excessive alcohol consumption.
My point is: Even if you think weed is relatively better than alcohol from a big picture societal POV (we can agree to disagree here), don't underestimate the bad effects of weed. Don't be a weed-smoking loser just because it's legal.
> I know that psychosis on alcohol happens, but I have never personally seen a person get psychotic from alcohol.
I was a bartender for a while in college and off-and-on afterwards. I've seen dozens of barfights, several with people ending up in hospitals. No shootings, thankfully, but that absolutely happens outside of bars and clubs.
There were at least 3 fatal DUIs that were traced back to coming from bars that I worked at; it led to the closure of one of them.
Alcohol correlates directly to levels of domestic abuse, rape, assault, and murder. Most traffic accidents after 9pm are alcohol related.
Been to Oktoberfest. All of the Brit, Irish, Canadian and Australian members of the crew could not believe that much alcohol in one place without any barfights/disputes/blah.
I've been to Oktoberfest, too. My brother lived in Bavaria for a while.
There were several fights, some blatant abuse of cocaine, and one of my female friends had someone get a hand down her pants and squeeze her butt without permission.
No one got shot or stabbed, but it certainly wasn't a peaceful hangout.
I could say the same thing about running, overdo it and you’ll hurt yourself.
We don’t need gatekeepers to prescribe these things only when a legitimate medical use demands it. There are countless examples in society where we allow people do things that are dangerous purely for the fun of it. Just because these are drugs we don’t need to justify their use as medicines.
Instead let’s inform the public and have them make their own choice. The regulation should be in proportion to the extent of the harm. In both cannabis use and running, it’s restricted to the individual (and temporary), so we should regulate minimally.
That's a slippery Sloap argument, and an absurd one. The benefits of running to the cardio vascular system are generally seen as a positive, contrary to smoking. The threshold to overdoing it is orders of magnitudes out of proportion. And there is no common opinion on psychological impairment from running, again in contrast to the psychadelica related substance abuse.
I don’t think this is a slippery slope [0], I’m only drawing a comparison.
Additionally there are health benefits to cannabis (and psychedelics) as well. Whether it’s stress, anxiety (ironically), depression, etc. so the comparison remains apt.
Here's a cthird comparandum for you. Breathing is rather beneficial for literally everybody and not doing it is very detrimental, actually fatal. How do you feel about the slippery slope now?
When I was a public defender representing the mentally disordered, literally all of my clients' mental disorders had been triggered by marijuana use. Cannabis (along with other psychoactive substances) is known to trigger latent mental disorders (like schizophrenia, etc.). This is one of the justifications given for continuing to keep it illegal at the federal level.
This doesn't mean that marijuana causes mental disorders; it only triggers latent disorders, meaning those already present in the brain due to genetics, environment, or brain damage (caused by concussions, drug use, etc.).
Other psychoactive substances (especially meth) can actually cause mental disorders due to the structural brain damage they inflict.
It's my understanding in some jurisdiction claiming a drug nexus makes you eligible for certain more attractive sentences or diversions, such as going to a treatment facility in lieu of jail.
Could it be that some of your clients would have, say, benefitted from claiming a drug triggered nexus to take advantage of this?
No, the meme of "drug nexus" being a "get out of jail" card is just an internet meme. It only applies to drug possession or drug use cases (like intoxication). It doesn't apply to crimes where drug use is irrelevant to the charges (such as larceny), or a lesser charge (such as compared to assault,, etc.)
For most of my clients, the cases were about whether they had mental disorders. And the consequence of being deemed to have a mental disorder that caused them to offend was involuntary commitment to a mental hospital for at least as long as their original prison sentence (and for violent offenders, theoretically for the rest of their lives).
Ah damn. Is RDAP just a scam? I had thought for instance non-violent federal crimes are often eligible for reduced time, often even if they weren't drug crimes. (you're only eligible for this program if you had substance use)
Federal law allows the BOP to reduce the sentences of non-violent offenders who complete the RDAP program by up to one year. The RDAP program is voluntary and takes 500-hours, nine- to twelve-months to complete. The RDAP is authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3621, which directs the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide residential substance abuse treatment for all eligible federal inmates.
Guessing the feds just lie and don't actually take the time off then?.
>only applies to drug possession or drug use cases
Yeah but these are pretty common charges no? Seems relevant. For instance, my understanding is in some instances if you have a drug disorder with possession you're in a better position than merely found in possession and don't even use drugs (or use them without having a "disorder"), as the drug-nexus'd disorder might make you eligible for some programs.
I gotta say I didn't realize these programs were just memes, must be a lot of attorneys lying to their clients.
In theory RDAP is open to all (federal) offenders. In practice, only those with drug-related offenses make it into the program, and the wait list is years-long and most eligible inmates complete their sentence before their spot on the wait list comes up. The reduction of sentence is applied against the drug-related sentence. The prisoner is moved to a halfway house up to 1-year before the original expiration of their sentence, and can be returned to prison for violating the rules of their transitional release.
Yeah but these are pretty common charges no? Seems relevant. For instance, my understanding is in some instances if you have a drug disorder with possession you're in a better position than merely found in possession and don't even use drugs (or use them without having a "disorder")
Yes, they're quite common. But pure drug offenses (other than dealing) generally get sent straight to diversion if they qualify (and space is available). Most drug offenses in addition to other crimes and this generally makes the defendant ineligible for diversion. Given two similar defendants whose only difference is that one is substance dependent and the other is not, the dependent defendant will never get a meaningfully shorter sentence than the defendant who is not and is more likely to end up with additional restrictions on their parole that make it easier to send them back to prison.
must be a lot of attorneys lying to their clients.
The programs are not memes, but your understanding of them, and how they are actually discussed by attorneys with their clients, appears to be based on internet memes of these programs.
So not only do you now acknowledge you were lying about these programs (not) existing for non-drug offenses, now you're expecting me to take on your (shot) credibility that only drug-related offenses make it into the program. This is WRONG as evidenced by BOP's report which shows significant underlying offenses for RDAP participants in fraud, immigration, firearms, and "other" offenses.
>he dependent defendant will never get a meaningfully shorter sentence
Up until the BOP report showed to me you were lying about the programs, I probably would have take your word on this. Now I'm not so sure. Would be interested in seeing the evidence that this never happens.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding me operating off of "memes." They may exist, but they're not something I've looked for nor noticed.
I can see that reading comprehension is hard for you.
The programs you describe are not an alternative to prison for drug users convicted of non-drug offenses, which is what your original comment claims. And you keep harping on the FDAP program, which is a federal program for those convicted of federal crimes, not state level crimes, and which provides for substance abuse counseling within federal penitentiaries.
And I notice you deliberately avoid mentioning that your study was based on data collected from 2002-2010.
What's next? Are you also going to claim that Blackberry dominates smartphone sales, based on 13-21 year old data?
>>>It's my understanding in some jurisdiction claiming a drug nexus makes you eligible for certain more attractive sentences or diversions...
It's a more attractive sentence. You're simply lying about my original comment.
You've cited nothing at all, so you're upset about a (May 2022 published) study with data from 2010 vs your mere word that opposes it? You're aware that studies look at data for things that already happened right, not the future?
>And I notice you deliberately avoid mentioning that your study was based on data collected from 2002-2010.
I cited it... the date was right on it. Not hidden. What's even your point here? It's not unusual for an informal citation to not include the date as part of the citation. And even were it I marked the publish date next to the citation it would be '22 and you'd probably still be moaning as '22 isn't the data of the data.
>federal crimes
My original comment indicate "some jurisdictions." Not all. But I will note that the vast majority of people in the US are subject in various capacities to federal jurisdiction, so it seems quite relevant. I guess you could argue the UN Headquarters is exempt, for instance.
I had the same experience. I fought with regular debilitating panic attacks and resulting anxiety for a year. It was horrible.
That being said, I'm still for legalization, simply because it being illegal didn't keep me or you or anyone else from trying it. It just doesn't make sense for law enforcement to spend all those resources on fighting a battle that's already lost. Plus, in the US, all the lives ruined and money wasted on incarcerating people for marijuana-related offenses.
I will say though, that legalisation leads to positive public health outcomes sounds like just the sort of bullshit cherrypicked study that Reddit would jump on instantly. I don't know why this is on HN at all.
David Foster Wallace talked and wrote extensively about marijuana addiction/withdrawal. A lot of responses to this tend to be if someone has a negative outcome they were prone to mental illness anyway and besides, it's not as bad as alcohol. I'm personally skeptical as to whether the negative outcomes with recreational, high potency weed are being quantified sufficiently and whether we're digging a hole for future generations.
People will get defensive and kneejerk some vague response about how it doesn't affect _them_ that way (science!), but I agree 100% with you. It's a drug and it feels like it's being pushed on us these days by states and corporations.
Are caffeine and alcohol also pushed by corporations? Alcohol is many many orders of magnitude more destructive and toxic than THC, do we really want to go back to prohibition days? Illegalized drugs do not work. Period. The solution to all drug problems is legalizing it. Yes, including crystal meth and heroin. The absolute worst a government can do for substance abuse is to ban addictive, toxic drugs, which makes them so much more destructive. The opposite is shown to work: https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...
> The solution to all drug problems is legalizing it. Yes, including crystal meth and heroin
There have been a few cases in the past were heroin use was allowed, or at least not actively prosecuted. They were absolute disasters.
E.g. Zurich, 1986-1922: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8044118/
Can you elaborate on why you feel like it's being pushed on you?
I've visited several US jurisdictions where it's legal. While it's still illegal in my area, I'm adjacent to fully legal and medically allowed areas. The only time I've felt any pressure was visiting Las Vegas, where every cab/uber/etc driver volunteered a recommendation for a pot store.
I found the recommendations useful for knowing which stores are overpriced.
In Seattle, we recently had a high driver hit-and-run, killing a cyclist, going 30 mph over the posted 25 mph speed limit.
> Documents also show Yusuf was identified on Ring camera and audio behind his house telling someone he was driving "55mph," several admissions he made in his social media feeds, including searches for "hit-and-run death of cyclist," "how long does marijuana (weed) stay in your system?"
You're responding to a different claim than I'm articulating. I'm just tired of people handwaving away high driving as "high drivers are harmless and slow." I am not making the claim that legalization increased rates of high driving; and personally, I support legalization.
Which is weird because I see people smoking weed while driving pretty frequently (especially in stopped traffic on the Lion's gate). Last I heard, we don't have a reliable test for cannabis intoxication -- which makes recorded DUI rates questionable as evidence.
Where I live they just test your urine for metabolites. If you pop hot and have smoked anytime in the last month, DUI. No fucks are given whether you are currently intoxicated, as that's too hard to figure out. In theory this yields a result of higher DUIs than actually intoxicated drivers.
The field sobriety test is merely a way for police to make up signs of intoxication. It is a subjective test. If you're there you've already lost. At least in my state you can refuse it without losing your license.
I'm not a lawyer, but I view it as akin to speaking to police without a lawyer. It has no upside for me, therefore I refuse to do it. I do submit to chemical testing due to that being a requirement of my license (in my state the portable breathalyzer is not admissible in court so I'm fine with taking that too).
This. The entire test is fine tuned to let the officer pen a police report that makes you look drunk without having to actually lie in an observable way vs the dashcam/body cam.
They'll tell you to stand on the line, you'll pass, they'll make small-talk, they'll tell you to say the ABCs backwards, you'll pass, and they'll write "suspect was unable to remain on white line while saying ABCs backwards" in the police report and in the court the prosecutor will ask "did the officer ever instruct you to stop standing on the white line?".
I wish we had a system of simulators people could be put into to assess their driving ability before criminally charging them.
While it won’t capture everything related to driving, it’s gotta be better than existing sobriety tests. And I say that as a terrible video game player but good driver (or so I believe), with a relative that’s a great video game player but meh driver.
Dunno how well correlated a field sobriety test is, but the subjective element of it leaves a lot to be desired.
> I wish we had a system of simulators people could be put into to assess their driving ability before criminally charging them.
That it would cause an uproar when "safe drivers" who are really just "safe to insure" because they follow the letter of the law fail miserably in droves because they have the context processing ability of a 2017 "driverless" car.
I don't know, I see that driving behavior more often from born and raised relatively conservative Denverites who are pissed that Denver has become a bigger city.
It's always seemed like conservatives are just as into weed as liberals, they just don't want "those people" to have it. The asshole conservatives in my family that say we should stop oppressing responsible gun owners while firing their AK with five beers in them have been growing and smoking since the 70s, and it regularly polls pretty highly in conservative demographics. It's just the politicians ignoring that and niches of diehard cop groups that refuse to accept that 90% of the stuff they pushed during dare were lies and that nobody should trust them.
I think the bigger issue is that mj impact can vary wildly. You can just laugh more or you just met god and are traveling back in time to the moment you were just at, which is not an ideal moment to be in a car ( you might be going 20 miles an hour slowly over someone ).
IL is slowly starting to see the same issue in the suburbs. I have zero problem with weed legalization in principle.
As always, the issue is with people and that is hard to correct.
> or you just met god and are traveling back in time to the moment you were just at, which is not an ideal moment to be in a car ( you might be going 20 miles an hour slowly over someone ).
No doubt. But how does that work in practice? Is someone seeing god likely to be getting behind the wheel, or are they just lying wasted on the couch somewhere? Can it also happen with a delay?
What I've noticed with alcohol (which is legal!) is that sometimes I'd drink, and everything would seem fine, then it would hit me like a ton of bricks 15 minutes later. 15 minutes is enough to figure "yeah, I'm fine, let me get in my car" and end up in traffic.
My point is that I'm wondering whether weed (which I don't smoke) is actually worse than alcohol (which I do sometimes drink). And since we already have plenty of people smoking weed, maybe legalizing it would help with education.
When I took my driver's license in France, there's a whole segment on driving intoxicated. They'd go into the effects of cannabis, which clearly don't seem great for driving, but that'd be about it, besides the generic "drugs are bad, mkay". Whereas alcohol, while also decried, had a bit more info, such as a rule-of-thumb of how long it takes to get out of the blood stream, interactions with food, etc. So, I know that I shouldn't drive while high, but since I've already smoked a joint right now, how long can I expect to wait before I'm legal again? Crickets.
I genuinely agree. Amusingly, this is the side effect of war on drugs. As in, those various interactions for the longest time were not common knowledge, but word of mouth mostly. On the other hand, we have centuries of alcohol use and abuse history to draw from and learn.
That said, I can't blame it all on lack of knowledge. There is a fair amount of regular prescription medication that clearly says "don't do anything after you take it", which is also mentioned in passing by your doctor and yet people either don't listen or just assume it won't affect them?
FWIW, I genuinely don't know what the answer is here.
> Is someone seeing god likely to be getting behind the wheel
I think you're significantly discounting the number of people who smoke weed while driving. I saw quite a bit of it in college- much more, in fact, than drinking alcohol before driving (never saw some literally drinking while driving, though I know it happens).
Apologies for the completely made up numbers, but I think it is illustrative:
If weed only makes you 5% more likely to get into an accident (compared to, say, 50-75% for alcohol), but legalization causes an additional 10-15% of the population to drive stoned, that's still a statistically significant effect.
Real numbers would be useful to draw meaningful conclusions about what to do about it, but I think it's not unreasonable to believe that it will have a negative effect in this regard.
> If weed only makes you 5% more likely to get into an accident (compared to, say, 50-75% for alcohol), but legalization causes an additional 10-15% of the population to drive stoned, that's still a statistically significant effect.
Sure, but isn't that also an argument for outlawing alcohol?
I don't think I meant "negative effect" in my last paragraph to mean "should remain outlawed", but rather that we need to understand and perhaps plan for the negative consequences of legalization.
The biggest challenge is that there is not yet any procedure that can verify impairment by marijuana. With alcohol, it is easy- any amount over 0.08 and you are legally considered impacted.
With pot, the metabolites stay in your system for weeks. Did you crash because of a genuine accident, or did you crash because you were driving impaired by weed? The police don't have a way to make a distinction with a simple breath / blood test, so it is harder to enforce.
It seems like a large claim to say that an accident between someone going 60 and 40mph is as fatal as an accident between someone going 60 and 80. I would need to see empirical evidence to consider the claim.
Absolute speed is one of the key values indicating how much energy is in a car crash.
Think of it this way: The relative speed between your car and a tree is whatever speed you’re going. 80 is more than 60.
But if everyone around you is going 80 and you’re going 50, you’re the tree. People going too slow on the freeway are dangerous. But not as dangerous as people going crazy fast.
The real problem is when people go slow in the fast lane. Or fast in the slow lane.
My info may be outdated, but I thought the highest injury rates for vehicle-vehicle collisions was from getting T-boned by people running a red light. You have a stationary vehicle getting hit into its least protected part by a speeding vehicle. In older cars this sort of collision can be deadly at speeds as low as 30mph. Something about the two sides of your brain slamming together and lack of side crumple zones.
That’s why Slovenia (probably from an EU directive) made it illegal to run a yellow light in the early 2000’s. Yellow means stop unless you’re already in the intersection and can’t stop in time.
As opposed to USA where yellow, at least in practice, means “accelerate like mad”
Yellow could be used to start the sequence in reverse order. You are stopped at an intersection with a red light, light turns yellow for a brief time indicating proceed with caution as the cross street has just had its green light go directly to red. The brief yellow turns green allowing cautious transition of cross traffic right of way, instead of the regular use of yellow which seems to induce a lack of clarity on what to do, accelerate or decelerate. Green directly to red makes it very clear what to do, stop or maintain velocity. The grey zone still exists but it is on the new flow to proceed with caution instead of just, green=go. Rightly this would be rejected as it wacky, but wow t-boned accidents are horrendous and people really like to game the yellow light in a reckless way. How can we move towards caution.
Bumping into a tree at 20mph is significantly less fatal than a 80mph person rear ending a 60mph person because in the latter example, the drivers lose control and just keep going at high speeds.
That's wrong. Relative speed differences result in collisions, yes. Absolute speed causes those collisions to be fatal. Low speed collisions are much less likely to be fatal.
> think most people under the influence of marijuana are not really going to want to go anywhere most of the time.
This is an old joke that I wish would go away. People smoke weed and drive everyday and as a former user we were always looking for something to do. Pot heads dont, as a unit, “sit around and do nothing” much more than any other group of substance abusers.
I don’t condone driving while high in the slightest but we allow rampant alcohol consumption leading to substantial annual DUI accidents and deaths. Perhaps let’s consider more roadway enforcement while also appreciating the benefits of non-pharmaceutical therapy. And if you’re just using it at home for fun, that’s fine too, just don’t drive after (people are going to use it whether it’s legal or not of course).
There is some data (although admittedly inconclusive) that opioid use and deaths decline in jurisdictions where marijuana is legalized, an important point to consider.
TLDR some medication is better than others, don’t drive under the influence regardless. “In God We Trust, all others bring data” as the saying goes.
As municipalities begin to see more and more tax revenue from Cannabis sales the resistance to legalization will decrease more and more. Here in Michigan local communities are going to be receiving close to $60 million dollars based on 2022 sales. https://www.michigan.gov/treasury/news/2023/02/28/adult-use-...
> Aside from the more than $59.5 million in disbursements to municipalities and counties, $69.4 million was sent to the School Aid Fund for K-12 education and another $69.4 million to the Michigan Transportation Fund.
> In total, more than $1.8 billion in adult-use marijuana sales was reported for Fiscal Year 2022.
Living in a country where marijuana consumption is still illegal (as in, you go to jail or at least get a criminal record, not even decriminalized) the frustrating thing is that when medical evidence is up against public prejudice and ignorance, the politicians will always side with the public rather than the science.
If a politician believes a course of action is beneficial, and public opinion disagrees with them, then they should persuade the public to change their opinion.
That's kind of how democracy has worked since ancient Greece.
The reduction in fatalities is significant. Displacing other drugs seems to be the most obvious cause of that - but I am a reminder that defeating epilepsy/migraine complexes are enabling people to work, and enjoy pain/delirium-free time with others.
This rings true to me -
“perhaps marijuana and prescription pain medications are substitutes, but marijuana and heroin are not.”
Marijuana use is linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. How do we index positive health outcomes? Teenage use statistically goes down while a few years ago vitamin e oil killed people.
For medical applications of marijuana it might be possible to somewhat objectively quantify the positive results. However, it is probably not possible to objectively quantify the positive results recreational use (increased creativity, recreation, fellowship, etc.).
It seems to me that the larger issue is the significant negative results of criminalization.
> ...in people who are already disposed to these disorders.
So? If the disorder would have otherwise remained latent in an individual, and marijuana was the environmental factor that caused it to manifest itself, then that's definitely a negative health outcome of marijuana.
> One criticism from concerned parents or conservative politicians was that increased legalization would lead to increased teenage consumption of cannabis....It’s a criticism that exemplifies the theory of the author Jonathan Haidt, who showed in his classic volume The Righteous Mind that most people form their opnions by making an emotional conclusion—teenage consumption of cannabis is bad—and then using ad-hoc rationalization backwards to find whatever intuitive reasoning is needed to justify their gut instinct.
I don't understand how this exemplifies this. Isn't the worry just much simpler: legalization creates in general more accessible weed, and so more teens could get it?
Not to comment on the fact that this was retrospectively a misguided concern. Just don't understand Haidt's relevance here.
(Not to mention its a little weird to feel the need to credit him with this idea, isn't just kind of a truism?)
How is the concern misguided? I’ve heard people say use is down since legalization but I’ve never seen them provide data and that isn’t the case in Washington state. It’s trending up across all age groups.
I had the same experience in the US Midwest. Weed was far easier to obtain than alcohol, in part because the underground black market has always involved teenagers, and in part because adults able to buy/sell alcohol could get into big trouble supplying it to minors.
I'm sure there are adults willing to illegally provide cannabis to kids, just as there have always been some willing to do so with booze. However, the legal market obliterates much of the underground black market (which is part of the point), so I would expect supplies to be much more limited than in a prohibition environment where the incentive to break the law is already greater for all potential consumers.
In my experience, most adults who can get what they want without breaking the law would far rather do that than take risks they don't have to. Why would I open the door to being thrown in jail to help some children get high? Not to mention all the possible secondary consequences.
Its not "my" argument, I'm simply pointing out that I found it strange to pull out Haidt to explain the concern, when we could understand it far more simply.
To add to your anecdata: yes it was much easier for me to get weed as a teen than alcohol. In that I think the concern itself is misguided even without retrospection. But this is all orthogonal to my comment.
"I don't understand how this exemplifies this. Isn't the worry just much simpler: legalization creates in general more accessible weed, and so more teens could get it?"
Be cause the author is doing the very thing they quoted about - they formed an opinion and worked backward to it. Regardless of the good or bad debate, it's generally accepted that access goes up as things are less restricted. That doesn't just apply to pot, but all sorts of other stuff.
> it lowered the rates of suicide, binge drinking, traffic fatalities, and perhaps ironically, cannabis use in teenagers
As someone who's generally been pro-pot, these benefits sound like an "improvement of really bad things" which, I wonder, is missing the "degradation of good things" anger of the story.
For example, impact of smoking pot on obesity? I certainly was the fattest during the periods of my life when I smoked (because it led to things like eating a whole package of cheese at 2am, something I don't do otherwise)
Or, on overall social outcomes? Are people meeting more people, making more friends, going on more dates - or are they increasingly sitting high alone in their room?
Or, educational / professional ambitious outcome? Are people relatively less motivated to pursue these things as they are, on average, more high?
I don't know the answers but I think it would be important to understand those, before we unilaterally celebrate that someone who would have been binge-drinking is just very high instead? Potentially, this type of thing can hurt a much larger number of people than is helped by the things mentioned in the story.
No, because prohibition was kind of popular because Americans were drinking ABSURD amounts of alcohol, like an average of 13 drinks a week, or 2.5 gallons of pure ethanol a year. However, prohibition had lots of bad side effects and people decided a government purposely poisoning them for consuming a substance that is as human as farming probably wasn't the right solution.
Nobody thought alcohol was "healthy", and right now, the only people pushing pot as "healthy" are dumb stoners who are just anti-establishment types and think tanks that want to push medical weed as a foot in the door to legalization. It's propaganda basically.
Also isn't this article about SOCIETAL effects of weed, not health effects?
> The reason was believed to be that once drug dealers were replaced by dispensaries with a legal obligation to check ID, far fewer teens were able to access it.
Replaced? In what way? I don't think they folded up their tents and went home, leaving the field to the dispensaries that checked ID. Dumbest thing I read today, and it's afternoon already.
I’ve wondered how much of our homelessness crisis is due to psychotic breaks from marijuana. It’s a small fraction of users which have psychotic breaks, but our homelessness population is similarly small.
I'm a psychiatrist who works with lots of people who are homeless and mentally ill. My experience faces a strong selection bias in that I don't see the homeless people who don't have marked symptoms of mental illness. The ones who come to my attention usually have delusions and hallucinations. Beyond anecdotes, there's some reasonable and ongoing research on the topic.
Methamphetamine remains far more strongly associated with psychosis than cannabis, but both anecdotes and research support that THC extracts are considerably more likely to cause psychosis than whole flowers. There also seems to be something protective about CBD, so THC extract (dabs/oil) products appear to carry more risk due to both their high THC content and the absence of CBD. People who use cannabis heavily in adolescence also have an increased risk of developing a psychotic disorder.
Again, strong selection bias, but yes. THC stays in your system for a long time. It can take a while to figure out if the issue is a primary psychotic disorder, like Schizophrenia, that has been exacerbated by THC or if it's only drug-induced. I occasionally see cases that appear to be completely accounted for by THC, but at a far lower rate than meth-induced psychosis.
I'm also curious, since you work in psychiatry....
Have you seen any cases of scromiting, or "Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome"?
These articles showed up in a big online hit in mid-2022, and never seemingly referenced again. My pessimism indicated that it was likely a hit piece against cannabis, but I'd rather ask for sure than just assume some conspiracy.
Having a psychotic break doesn't suddenly make you homeless. You would need a psychotic break + lack of healthcare + lack of family/friends/support network + lack of money + lack of social programs + lack of affordable housing. The idea that people just one day lose their minds and wander out into the street is not supported by my experiences working with and interacting with unhoused people.
Very little of it. The causes of homelessness are pretty well understood and it's basically poverty, high housing costs, low wages, lack of access to affordable medical care.
Being homeless also does a number on your mental health and my intuition says a lot of those "psychotic breaks" were experiences of homelessness, not causes.
I had a friend who experienced a psychotic break following marijuana use. He was a moderate user, weekends only, for a dozen years prior. If he didn’t have such excellent support structure around him, I’d expect him to be homeless now.
Would be interesting to see the homelessness rates in countries with very restricted marijuana access, like Japan, versus countries where it’s widely used. Or some other way to determine if marijuana usage increases homelessness.
At least with legalisation it can be regulated and taxed. I would expect any social impact could be mitigated with education. Also legalisation would prevent people from having to interact with illegal dealers who may or may not be selling other more dangerous drugs.