Legal marijuana sales forecast to hit $23B in 4 years
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
Someone once told me that this is how most of China operates; there are many common day-to-day things (such as money transfers) that close to 100% of the population engages in that are completely illegal, yet tolerated. When a person does something that the state disagrees with for any reason, legal or otherwise, the entirely legal option to lock them up for one of the unrelated common activities (which are illegal) is used.
It really influences how people think. Remember when it seemed insane to see advertisments about how "8 out of 10 doctors recommend ___ brand cigarettes"?
It doesn't seem crazy to me now that there is so much "health" based marketing around marijuana.
Marijuana should be legal but discouraged, not permitted to be advertised, put in plain packaging, kept behind counters and not turned into novelty products that appeal to teenagers like foods.
Hard to see how it's much different to tobacco really.
you don't have to smoke cannabis to get thc. you can eat it, and many people do.
if you just don't like the idea of it, that's one thing and completely understandable, but claiming (even rhetorically) it's the same as tobacco is one of the stupidest things i've ever read on hn.
The heaviest pot smokers I know (and I know a lot, though I don't generally use, myself), will consume it as much as four or five times a day. As you note, one "usage" looks like a few hits off of a pipe, bong, or vape. It seems to be self-limiting, even in people with a history of addiction.
I'm not gonna suggest pot doesn't have negative consequences; the heaviest users I know also have motivation problems (but so do I, sometimes, and I don't do any drugs) which maybe contributes to them often having shitty jobs and a difficult hand-to-mouth existence. (But, that is correlation and not causation. Maybe the economy is shit, and young folks today have a hard time finding good work. Maybe smoking pot just makes it bearable.)
What's interesting to me is what happens when a pot smoker can't get pot. Among my friends, cigarette smoking goes way up, drinking goes up measurably, and use of other drugs goes up. I'd be willing to believe pot is a good tool for helping people quit more dangerous habits. People who need something help them get through stress/anxiety/pain (emotional or physical) will find something.
Fools read and hear what they want to hear and then make something up and say that's what was said.
Tobacco - breathe non-air stuff into your lungs enough, it kills you.
Pot - breathe non-air stuff into your lungs enough, it kills you.
i also don't think you understand that you don't have to smoke pot. you can eat it. in medicine this is called 'oral administration'. you can't just ignore facts you don't like, that's not how medicine and science work.
most drugs are eaten. pot is a drug. you can eat it. you can use drugs to treats disease and symptoms. therefore, you can use pot to treat diseases and symptoms... by eating it.
i don't understand what your mental disconnect is, other than you just don't like the idea of pot, which is fine, but you should just say that, because then it becomes a moral argument, which is what you're trying to have, rather than a medical one, which is pretty black and white - pot is a drug, and you can use drugs to treat diseases and symptoms. that's pretty much a fact. again, i'm not really sure where the disconnect here is for you. this is a pretty simple logical chain. maybe you don't consider pot to be a drug?
i've never met anyone who doesn't think pot is a drug, but i suppose it's possible.
but really i think you just don't like the idea of it, which is a perfectly respectable opinion to have.
No matter how it is ingested, marijuana is like all drugs and pose a health risk if not taken in moderation.
Health risks from smoking it (and most people do smoke it), and no matter how you ingest it, mental health risks.
This is not a harmless drug and there will come a time in future where there are court cases brought by marijuana sellers for selling a toxic product - in the same way that tobacco has been brought to trial. My key argument is that marijuana should be sold under the counter to meet a need that is kept hidden from society and young people, but is freely available to adults who know it is there. Selling it, advertising it, displaying it in a shopfront, making it fun and cool are all really bad ways to go.
They are different, but they have many similarities. They're used under similar circumstances. The business model around them is very similar. I would expect the industry that forms around it to ultimately behave very much like the tobacco/alcohol/etc. industries, and so it is weird to treat one differently from the other. Or do you think there are important differences?
And what do you mean they're used under similar circumstances?
Why would they be any different from tobacco consumers?
>I expect marijuana businesses to behave about as badly as the average business, but I doubt they'll manage to be as hideously evil as the tobacco companies.
Don't most of the factors that make tobacco different from the average business apply equally to cannabis?
>And what do you mean they're used under similar circumstances?
They seem to serve a similar social function. Indeed don't people frequently smoke a mix of the two?
Marijuana attracts an earthy, naturalistic sort of crowd. I have no proof of this, but it's been my experience.
> Don't most of the factors that make tobacco different from the average business apply equally to cannabis?
The health risks of marijuana are much better understood now than the health risks of tobacco (more particularly cigarettes) were in the 1950s. There's simply less room to lie, for one thing, which was far and away the most atrocious thing that Big Tobacco did. And the mere fact that marijuana has been illegal for so long and developed its own culture underground makes it hard to compare.
> They seem to serve a similar social function. Indeed don't people frequently smoke a mix of the two?
In Europe it's common to mix the two, but for most Americans no. I usually smoked alone anyway, it's not a social thing at all for many. You're really comparing apples to oranges here. Marijuana and tobacco as different as LSD and beer in terms of their effects.
All of these requirements are implemented in the Washington state roll out. Re: discouraged, there are radio ads warning parents to talk to their kids about the dangers of marijuana. There is zero advertising and everything is behind counters at special stores that don't sell anything else.
> Hard to see how it's much different to tobacco really.
Hey, why leave out the other big sin drug? Alcohol gets a lot more free roam in advertising and sale/visibility in stores minors can visit.
http://www.kplu.org/post/seattle-sees-first-marijuana-billbo...
For one, you don't have to smoke it (where the majority of negative health effects come from). You can eat it, steep it, drink it.
Comparing it to tobacco is ridiculous.
hell, that's even what people do to each other when they want to break up a relationship. your s.o. did something you really can't stand, or maybe you're just over it, but don't want to admit it? blame it on all the other stuff that accumulated over the past 3 years.
Prohibition has many causes. The international treaty / 'Single Convention' was the first international treaty to prohibit cannabis.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 is an international treaty to prohibit production and supply of specific (nominally narcotic) drugs and of drugs with similar effects except under licence for specific purposes, such as medical treatment and research. As noted below, its major effects included updating the Paris Convention of 13 July 1931 to include the vast number of synthetic opioids invented in the intervening thirty years and a mechanism for more easily including new ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...
Watch "Reefer Madness" - it's reflective of the mindset these policymakers grew up with.
If you want to understand where that mindset ultimately came from, look at the history of cocaine prohibition - it boils down to racial politics.
It is only in modern times as I read more I learned the truth. Not everyone has time to educate themselves on these issues which many not concern them.
It seems like there could be an opportunity for some kind of mutual aid arrangement -- an insurance policy of sorts -- that could underwrite the legal fees for a member who happens to get busted.
Similar to how trademarks can be voided if they are not consistently defended.
Edit: written before I saw vidarth's comment.
"For my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law." – Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru.
It'd be difficult to get something like that just right so that the bar is high enough (no chance of getting laws stricken down just because police is under-unded and has to prioritise and are trying their best) but still low enough to prevent abuse, and it'd put a burden of collecting a lot of statistics and do a lot of analysis on police to ensure they don't have undue biases, but it's work they should be doing anyway.
There'd still be the option of the legislative to intentionally pass the laws again, scold the police and do nothing to actually change things, but if the bar is low enough and it happens with a lot of laws, they'd be swamped...
Another thing I'd like to see is a legal requirement that laws comes with a set of pre- and post-conditions that the law is based on. E.g. "Given that it's proven that X causes Y effect, we pass this law" and "The intent of this law is to achieve a X reduction in Y behaviour within Z timerame", and give courts the power to suspend laws where the conditions provably don't hold...
Requiring laws to be regularly re-affirmed would be another fun thing - forcing people to go on record voting for a law that today sounds antiquated and that their opponents would use to club them over the head with in the press might substantially increase the chances of having bad laws stricken down... Even "just" requiring laws to be re-affirmed if X years have gone with less than Y prosecutions would be a big deal.
A lot of problems are down to legislatives being able to pass laws and then largely wash their hands of the whole thing and not worry about the consequences or whether or not the laws have the desired effect as long as it doesn't affect the people voting for them too much. Unfortunately that's also exactly the reason we're unlikely to see it happen - it's not in their interest to have to consider the fallout.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_prosecution
[2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1933943
I'm not saying this in a sarcastic way - I've been smoking on and off for 20 years and I have great respect for the plant.
But it has this "self-limiting" property - sometimes you want to be with it, sometimes you want to take a break.
And taking a break is not trivial for some people.
This is were the secondary market can take form - helping people take a break/detox from marijuana.
This can take the form of books, websites, applications, seminars, drugs, whatever.
I think your point is valid though. We can always learn more, especially if it can help.
Even worse is the word "addict", which is dirty and degrading and helpless.
Just like the word "drugs" or "criminal". There are so many shades to it that one word just doesn't cut it.
The word we use to state the issue gives us the frame of where to look for solutions, hence a bad statement can lead to bad solutions.
For example, instead of "addiction to marijuana" try using the expression "relationship with the marijuana plant".
This subtile change in statement shifts the domain of the issue and lets us look for a solution in new places. Now we're dealing with a relationship (with a plant) - might it be a replacement for a relationship with a human (current or previous) ? Who is it replacing in my life ?
And so on, you get the point ...
Reframing my "addiction to tobacco" to "relationship with the tobacco plant" has helped me quit smoking for good, because I was not thinking of it as a mechanistic dependency on a substance (nicotine), but as a case of relationship with a plant.
She was my closest friend, my protector, my thinking partner, but she was taking a toll on my health, hence we had to part ways. Peacefully and respectfully, we separated and I've been free ever since.
The point I'm trying to make is that we're still far from a clear understanding of what "addiction" is and how to approach it at the root and that's were green pastures for research and businesses exist.
"Jail, your honor", said no one ever.
>Rehab stats for weed have nothing to do with addiction. Primary marijuana admissions were less likely than all admissions combined to be self- or individually referred to treatment (18 vs. 37 percent). Primary marijuana admissions were most likely to be referred by a criminal justice source (52 percent) [Table 2.6].
page 21
http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2003_2013_TED...
When people point out that marijuana isn't physically addictive, the point isn't that people's psychological addictions aren't serious. The point is that they don't appear to reflect a danger posed by marijuana.
For at least some addicts, they need a complete cultural transplanting, age change, or even social class change.
For an analogy think of alcohol pretty much owning 22 year olds at college bars as a cultural issue... short of going hermit mode or being really poor (that was me) or moving to a different non-western culture, there's no avoiding it, which is rough on people with susceptibility to alcohol addiction. Send them to rehab all you want, but until you remove them from the culture they're just gonna drink again.
Im sorry to hear that
Now, I don't think this is "psychological."
Note that cannabis is not listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_dependence#Drugs_that...
Also: Being able to explore ways to discuss, diagnose, and ween myself off of the dependency of weed, while being open and free to discuss why it helps me in the first place, without stigma, would really help in my situation.
I've read some studies recently that show that habitual marijuana users are at heightened risks for stroke and that THC does in fact cause accelerated brain cell death (and so does alcohol). Hopefully responsible users will understand that many things can be really great if only in moderation.
So true. I'm at that point now, but finding it really hard to quit when I can just walk down the street to a store and buy it...
However with the surveillance society we live in, we need to rid the books of laws that most people break otherwise there will be a sea of non-violent crimes that don't make logical sense today. Laws as deterrents for moralistic or non-violent acts do not work but make it more unsafe in this case, you regulate and tax to make it safer and more about support/new markets rather than incarceration which is a drain on the economy.
The black market created by the war on drugs does not operate better or safer for kids, nor add tax revenues or regulations for safety. It funds cartels.
We have been doing it wrong for a long time.
Look how much money yearly has been going to the black market, cartels and diverted from benefits like school funding, support and regulation. Public university funding is plummeting along with K-12 [2][3]
This is only the start of it as well, probably in the hundreds of billions have been going to black markets/cartels. This cannot continue, legalization and regulation is the only way. I can't believe it is this slow now that there is this much money in it for revenues in a time of local/state huge budget shortages and most of all stopping funding of cartels. This moralistic prohibition is just as bad as the first prohibition in creating lucrative crime markets and attacking personal freedom.
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/186260/back-legal-marijuana.aspx
[2] http://www.marketplace.org/2016/03/14/education/illinois-cut...
[3] http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/pf/college/public-university...
Or you could change the US constitution so that it includes a right to privacy and data protection, like the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, or the European Convention of Human Rights
Besides, nobody said Europe wasn't a surveillance society.
And the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to non-US people who aren't in the USA.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has found that US data protection law is significantly lacking compared to CFREU. If the US 4th Amendment was the same as the CFREU then there wouldn't have been that Safe Harbour case.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights...
But privacy? I don't think such a right exists, at least not in its modern formulation. You can't find modern articulations of the idea in contemporaneous works.
And that's a big deal. If you're going to say that a 200-year old document prohibits a democratically-elected Congress and President from setting policy, you better prove that the folks who wrote that document intended that prohibition. Democracy is supposed to be the general rule; Constitutional rights the exception.
Here it is, in its entirety:
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
Huh. So travel is in there but not privacy?
I just love to watch the gymnastics of making rights enumerated and government powers unlimited and unrestrained except by a list of rights granted by government to the people.
Privacy does not fit in there because no state has ever granted its own citizens the notion of privacy espoused by certain modern proponents of the "right." Nor can you read the contemporaneous works of the framers and see any discussion of this idea that people should be able to keep certain information private from the government. Instead, in the 4th amendment you see a much narrower concept: that the government shouldn't be able to trespass on your property without a warrant.
Not all rights are enumerated in the Constitution. But that doesn't mean you can make up a right and say the Constitution protects it. The right has to come from somewhere. Otherwise, "rights" become an end-run around democracy. Oh, ACA is unconstitutional because people have a "right" not to be forced to buy health insurance. Oh, you can't require background checks for gun purchases, despite the vast majority of Americans supporting them, because the Second Amendment prohibits that.
So, if a state did that, we would have a right to privacy from, at least, state and local government? We would only have to worry about federal warrants? That would be a step forward. And do we not have a federal right to travel? Would internal passports be kosher? Residency permits?
As for the framers and encryption, some of them knew how to encrypt documents and did in fact use cryptograms to encrypt their notes, not for communications purposes, and would not have hesitated to use cryptograms against government investigations. One-time pads were developed in the 19th c. and remain unbreakable if properly implemented.
But that's beside the point. They surely did not have airplanes, and if you adhere to reasonable regulations, you have a right to fly through the air, found nowhere in the Constitution.
Also, as far as I know, it's not a crime not to buy health insurance. I'd be taxed for not doing so. Background checks, like the required training for pilots, would be a reasonable regulation. As long as the laws are not discriminatory or impose a de facto prohibition, they are constitutional. This is unlike some of the laws regulating abortion providers that are clearly meant to drive them out of business. Those are unconstitutional, because women have a right to control their bodies derived from the right to privacy.
The freedom to use math is as much of a freedom as the freedom to use physics to move things with your hands (that is to say: pretty independent of what one would call a freedom from a legal perspective).
The freedom to secure your documents is also a freedom insofar as the constitution does not seem to grant the government a way to prevent you from doing so (10th amendment). But hey, there's been some creative applications of the commerce clause in the past.
Some years ago they got really modern and invented a second basic right, the "basic right to guarenteeing the confidentiality and integrity of data-processing systems".
And the Charter post-dates the Court's decision on privacy by decades.
Basically (i) 4th doesn't apply to use EU citizens, and (ii) it, unlike the CFREU, doesn't apply to data you turn over to 3rd parties, like financial records to your bank, whereas Article 8 does.
[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/51921...
The mind boggles.
This has become a cash cow for state governments and I don't see this ending well for anybody wanting to use legally. The government track record on stuff like this is absolutely miserable.
> and limit new businesses
> popping up
I know for years, cops used to co-ordinate with the local energy companies to spot houses that were suddenly spiking with energy usage and tip off the cops.
This ran into issues of guys trying to tap into their neighbors HVAC system or AC system to get more power and stay off the energy companies list. I would go out on a limb and say doing stuff like that is just as dangerous as having an illegal still.
It seems growers who supply the retail outlets will be the way to go.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/debraborchardt/2015/05/19/cannab...
http://europe.newsweek.com/marijuana-and-old-amsterdam-30821...
However, there are some key differences with the situation in the US. In the Netherlands, the supply to the coffeeshops is still very much illegal; it's a "mystery" how the shops are supplied, but they've got the product (max 500g at any given time), and it's tolerated for them to sell it to the public. Supply however remains under the table. Enforcement is rigid, if they're over the 500g limit, selling to minors, or selling other hard drugs then they can be swiftly shut down.
The Dutch government at the highest levels is increasingly regressive; they've even begun to criminalize supporting the growing of cannabis, which is absurd when you see that innocent garden supply shops are now potentially liable. At the municipal level in the largely pro-cannabis cities (e.g. Amsterdam, Rotterdam), there have been plans to try regulated and tolerated growing. The national government however emphatically rejects these plans and prevents it from happening. Some councils (especially in the south near Belgium) have enacted resident-only restrictions, which has the not-unsurprising effect that nuisance street dealing picked up. The government tried to enact this nationwide, but many cities refused and there are usually no residence restrictions except for certain areas.
(Interesting fact: only 35% of visitors to Amsterdam visit a coffeeshop. It's a big, inaccurate stereotype that the Dutch are stoned all the time or that Amsterdam is all about weed. Americans smoke a lot more than the Dutch do, much to many visitors' surprise.)
Keep in mind this article is talking about growth of the state-legal pot industry, not growth of the overall pot industry (legal or otherwise) which I think must be growing, but more like at single digit percentage rates.