Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
And letting the DEA decide what is Schedule 1 is like letting the fox guard the hen house. I’ve never heard of a government agency voluntarily reducing its scope and budget. Just more of our leadership deferring responsibility to so called “experts” with a vested interest. A pretty rampant phenomenon these days ranging from the banks to the military.
[1] http://www.rand.org/pubs/periodicals/rand-review/issues/RRR-...
Part of their goal is also to provide their cronies in the prison-industrial complex with a steady supply of victims.
I know a lot of people at university who got into smoking it very often and basically lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything. Some have now stopped and are totally different people - just 10 years behind.
While it doesn't cause overdose, cirrhosis or criminal activity from the user, it does become very addictive for some people and causes them to be extremely unmotivated in their life.
Is this as bad as heroin or crack? No obviously not, but a lot of people end up really trapped by it.
There are a lot of benign addictions, which we call habits. We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin.
Edit. "Classifying" in educational sense, not in legal sense.
> We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin.
Yes, definitely. I'm strongly in favour of legalisation, but I recognise that for some people cannabis will be harmful.
Maybe Schedule 4 or 5 might be more appropriate? i.e Xanax, Tramadol, less than 200mg codeine, etc.
Oftentimes drug use is a symptom of a greater psychological problem/issue. Perhaps the underlying issues are causing the negative behaviors and the drugs are only enabling it.
What roles, in what areas, have they risen to in this time?
Of course, I've seen other daily marijuana users remain stationed at the front counters of gas stations, but that's my point. I don't think that daily marijuana use is the factor that accounts for the relative successes or failures of these individuals. There are many more variables.
If Joe Gas Station stopped smoking pot, he wouldn't suddenly develop killer business instinct, or the motivation to build a company in his off time.
Do you think it's a significant factor for some?
I'm interested in where you live, well what society - you've listed 7+ professions, each as a multiple, of people you personally know who you consider successful, who you also know to be daily pot smokers. I don't even know the daily routines of 7 people outside my family ... let's say 50% of people (you know) are using pot and they're split evenly between smokers, vapers, eaters, others ... that means you know the daily routine of over 100 people. That's, erm, impressive.
[Ah, just realised, do you deal, that would explain it! Sorry, is still early for me.]
I know a handful of people who smoke pot, but that's likely my demographic - but I couldn't tell you if they smoke once a day or once a week, or less.
Any chance you're exaggerating your personal knowledge?
In the UK site workers, like carpenters, will often be tested for drug use. Your engineer, teacher friends - do they use on the job, like when taking responsibility for multiples of other people? Are you content with that.
Appreciate your responses as potentially they'd suggest a vast change in my ideas of the prevalence of daily pot use (depending on your geography, social context).
The teachers, principals, and business professionals whom I've known to partake in this ritual, generally do not do so at work. Just as many workers drink alcohol during their off time, most do not come to work drunk.
I don't know many people's daily routines. I really only know my wife's. But, knowing that someone is a daily marijuana user is different from knowing their daily routine.
I can say this: I was very surprised to discover that some people, who otherwise cultivate an image of wholesomeness, are longtime marijuana users. Not everybody who uses marijuana wears tie-dyed t-shirts. Likewise, some people who wear tie-dyed t-shirts have never used marijuana.
Of course, things might be different where you live, but I doubt it.
No, major banks don't all drug test. And in general you are given some warning about drug tests (at least at the several companies I was at). All you have to do is get off drugs for a week or so, and youre fine.
I believe it is fairly well established that addictive behavior runs in families.
smoking definitely affects brain, all the body, it has no positive effect
I also know and lived with roommates for whom marijuana was a real problem. The kind of person who would smoke every day, even coming home on their lunch break and taking some bong hits. I've seen them get fired from work. I've seem them completely disregard the things that need need done. I've seem how irritable they can be when they're not blazed. They may not be chemically addicted, but they surely feel as though they need to smoke for whatever reason.
None of this is to argue for or against, but the "harmless marijuana" trope is a little much. Any substance will be abused by some and will cause harm to some.
Sure, I might be happier if my past self saved even more money, lived a vegan lifestyle, or learned to play an instrument. But, I don't think it's a problem that I have failed to optimize for making this second of my life be the best it could be.
Thank you for this reframing! I believe that it is useful and will likely use it in the future.
More often than not, the 'relaxed lifestyle smokers', myself included, did so primarily to numb the stress in their head, whether caused by work stress, personal issues, social anxiety, etc.
Basically, it's often more to cope than to relax, at least in my experience and that of my surroundings.
But exceptions always exist, of course. I just think it's good to be cautious with anything that seems to offer a quick solution to a difficult problem (being at peace / relaxed).
So, if parity is not enough and everyone must be a net contributer, well that's a cog.
(Many people into meditation had at some point used drugs, but eventually decided they were at best a distraction and at worst actively harmful).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia
Kathleen Norris wrote a book titled with the same name, and one of the things you notice about monastic life is that it's very spiritually dangerous, and often leads to a lot of abuses.
I was talking with a co-worker about US laws in general and he mentioned something I'd never thought of. Many of the laws we pass, speed limits, alcohol tax, prohibition, .08 legal driving limit, etc are designed for the lowest common denominator. Meaning, we pass laws based on the worst case scenario. It seems like it's illegal to do just about anything these days.
Let's fix the potholes before we go after the pot users.
This is a symptom of this:
>> They may not be chemically addicted
When people who smoke weed on a regular basis stop, the effects are similar to nicotine withdrawal - irritability, anxiety, fatigue and difficulty concentrating.
>> but the "harmless marijuana" trope is a little much.
I agree and would also add that when people are forced to consider statistics of people driving while high has increased dramatically in places like Washington and Colorado, their only response is, "Well drunk drivers kill way more people than people driving high." as some way to justify that it's ok.
The idea should be that "it's your choice if you want to use it, but people shouldn't be mass-brain washed by ads into believing it's the best thing ever that they should buy."
if your objection is to "mass-brain washing", I think you're gonna have a lot of 1st amendment trouble arguing that case legally.
What were the arguments used to regulate the display and advertising of tobacco? Those might be a model for the advertising of other potentially harmful substances. Certainly how beer is advertised is no model to follow.
in any case, regardless of whether or not beer advertising is a good "model for society" is kinda irrelevant from the constitutional law perspective. the legal rulings have repeatedly found that commercial marketing is, with a few exceptions, free speech and that the government is limited in its ability to regulate that type of expression.
from an ethical perspective, I think that people living in a free society have an ethical responsibility to educate ourselves and our communities about drugs (of all kinds, including alcohol and tobacco) independently of the commercial promotion of those products. at some point you have to just let people be responsible from themselves. trying to enforce health and safety through prohibition or censorship is not a good strategy.
For the many years it was illegal and I smoked it anyway, sticky cannabis aka 'dank' was always preferred. I believe CBD cannabis is more popular than it seems.
Here in Florida I think CBD oils were recently legalized and I think a single strain of marijuana (with negligible THC and high CBD) had been permitted for epilepsy patients. To be honest I haven't followed to closely after the last medical marijuana bill didn't pass.
Anyway, is the CBD/THC ratios interdependent? Meaning as one goes up, the others go down? Or are there some strains with significant amounts of each and others with low amounts of each?
"However, modern growing techniques have also affected these chemical levels. For example, illegal growers have turned to indoor marijuana farms to avoid detection. Growing cannabis locally in such farms also circumvents the need to import the drug, and guarantees a more reliable harvest. However, the 24-hour lighting used in these farms inadvertently reduces CBD levels in the plant."[0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/jan/17/cannabi...
Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X?
> Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X?
MUDs, MUSHes, Doom, Quake, Starcraft, shit posting on Reddit, dropping knowledge bombs on HN[1] ... the venue changes but it's all the same waste of time. Not necessarily a bad thing either.
[1]: Feel free to swap HN and Reddit.
This is my progression as well :^)
I never said that list was arbitrary or randomly generated :D
I wait for the day, drugs are unbanned, medicine cant be patented, religion is banned, and the world has one common global goal, space exploration! I'd stop smoking cannabis for that. ;-)
I'm not just meaning careers - often they never go on vacation abroad/travelling (past maybe Amsterdam). They look around and see their friends who have been all over the world after university, when they've done really nothing.
This is bullshit. Most travel is leisure, just like cannabis, and not at all mind expanding.
This is just a game of "my hobby is better than yours".
(also not saying anything was better, i like it all, including wasting some hours a week on a videogame)
Traveling opened my mind and gave me much larger perspective on things. Sometimes it is leisurely, other times it is not (I have foreign family and not a lot of resources and no background in this country).
Children should hear a realistic profile of effects for different substances, among other things.
Just because you know people who are lazy and use cannabis, proves very little I'm afraid. Do they drink beer also?
Not attacking you, but it's comments and attitudes like this that help politicians justify silly things, such as, "The war on drugs". The war on drugs is one of the most destructive, wasteful, pathetic ideals of our time.
They usually never drink alcohol I find - or very little.
I know about 5 people who fell into this trap and when (some) of them packed it in have enormous regret. My point is that this isn't talked about with cannabis.
It sounds to me like some of your friends have been using a substance to fill a void in their lives or avoid facing some issues, this is really terrible and I understand.
Truth is, there are just so many ways people can use and abuse things and it's wrong to blame anything in particular. If people sniff glue to mask a problem, you wouldn't say glue has a dark side. Yes glue is can be toxic and extremely harmful, but it doesn't have any intentions or predispositions.
Don't get me wrong, I've had similar views in the past, it's just where I'm at now from my own life experience.
I agree that, being stoned every minute of the day is not a good idea, maybe you're trying to say cannabis is more toxic than people think?
Who said productivity and ambition are absolute values? Are there some tablets of stone somewhere?
Edit: also wanted to add that the humanity of the world views of many of the people commenting here is a source of great hope for the future for me. You all are thinking hard about how to improve the way we think of each other, and it's really moving to see it evolve each day on this site and elsewhere.
Hell, I know people who eat far too much and have lost aspects of their lives - but nobody is talking about outlawing food or alcohol.
Here's an n = 1 study. A few years ago, I used a Pax to vaporize cannabis nearly every night for a year. I quit altogether after moving to an area where it was harder to buy.
After a month or two, I unexpectedly noticed a fog had lifted. It was easier to summon the right word to my tongue. It was easier to reason through difficult abstract problems. It was easier to start working on things.
If you are reading this and are thinking "yeah, but n = 1, man," you're right. I must be the exception. Being an egregious stoner doesn't decrease anyone's IQ or motivation, "studies" and "your lying eyes" be damned. YOU are not experiencing any deficits from smoking herb. Cannabis is NOTHING like soma, and in fact has no negative side effects at all. And you are certainly not rationalizing self-destructive behavior.
Maybe I'm putting too fine a point on it, but using cannabis for even one day will make you stupider and lazier the next day.
Using cannabis daily will make you stupider and lazier in general.
People who deny this are lying to themselves.
When I was a regular cannabis smoker, I had a high-paying, high-status job and was commended for my work. But I could have learned more and done more in that yearlong period - with no psychic cost. Stoners (and I certainly was one) concoct amazing rationalizations for the newly tighter bounds on their motivation.
When it comes to weed, the Dutch approach seems to be pretty effective at allowing it's use while simultaneously keeping it from being a cultural mainstay, and I think that's a good thing.
It also seems to work with smoking. It's amazing to see how many people quit smoking as price increases and as the cultural values change. As a chain-smoker who wishes he never started, I think that's great.
In my ideal world it would be legal to drink, but it wouldn't be such an integral component of our social world. For many people, and perhaps especially those who struggle with dependence on alcohol, the relative difficulty of avoiding 'drinking culture' and the stigma attached (being boring) is a major pain in the ass.
I also knew many who smoked it regularly without major issues, so I'm not saying it inevitably causes problems, but I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up.
I used to smoke it occasionally myself and I definitely saw its positive effects - for computer scientists, it's a fascinating springboard into understanding consciousness and meta-cognition. It makes good music and art even more enjoyable.
It's also one of the most seductive drugs out there. Alcohol leads to very painful hangovers, which is a clear signal for people to slow down. Psychedelics are too mind-blowing and the trips last too long to be used regularly. Heroin, crack, meth etc are widely seen as dangerous. Cocaine is expensive.
Cannabis is affordable, and can be enjoyed on a weekday evening without strong next-morning effects. So some people end up integrating it into their routine: surfing the internet stoned, listening to music stoned, playing video games stoned, chatting to friends stoned.
If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc.
Long-term, you run the risk of becoming paranoid and demotivated, struggling to make everyday decisions or to get a grip on your own thinking. Given that this isn't a universal consequence of weed usage, it might not be solely due to the weed but also certain personality traits which weed amplifies.
I rarely smoke it at all any more - personally, I found training myself to enjoy good art, and reading deep philosophy/literature gave me access to much more profound pleasures and insights than weed ever did.
Then to tie this in nicely which the argument that people with issues will ignore them - I went through court during school for restraining orders, I worked a full-time job while in school, and started a small profitable business. All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems.
All that being said, I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc. It's really no different than people who become alcoholics. It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. That being said, perhaps some people want this, and it should be an option. I don't care one bit if people want to waste their life on drugs. I only care that I have to pay for them via tax dollars, so remove social welfare for them and I'm all for it!
I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. Just like you can't blame a gun for murder, you can't blame a vice for a wasted life. At some point, if a person had choice, and knew what they were getting into it's their fault.
All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems.
I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem.
I'd be careful not to say it's bad, until that research is overwhelming. I say this because a large number of people I know who smoke(d) regularly end up in prison for it - which of course makes them way less productive.
It's just hard without a ton of evidence whether or not it is more dangerous inherently or if we make it more dangerous with our society.
Let's not forget that it can also be a symptom of society itself. In a scenario where the majority is insane, behaving sanely makes you look crazy.
I understand the disgust for supporting human beings who are inert, but I suspect it's largely irrational. The idea that we should "all do our share" is becoming more and more impractical as technology progresses. There simply isn't a big enough share to keep everyone occupied, and the majority of jobs are completely unnecessary, if not detrimental to our collective welfare.
Let's face it: most of it is just status games and posturing. Anecdotally, cannabis dissolves the desire to participate in status games. My personal theory is that it tends to increase the creativity of people who find meaning in their work and the desire to "opt out" in those who don't. Unfortunately, out current economic system creates a surplus of the latter, because we are stuck with a system of health distribution that is based on human labor, which is increasingly irrelevant.
I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc
> If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc.
As a counterexample to your 99.99% certainty, I had more or less the opposite reaction. I was in a pretty terrible place about a year and a half ago, and I found myself coming home after work and getting high almost every weekday evening. Not only did it serve the intended purpose of getting me through the day-to-day of a pretty horrible and anxiety-inducing time in my life, the fact that I noticed myself using so much more was one of the clearest signals that made me realize that something was wrong in the first place (without the health costs and potential physical dependency that most other drugs would've imposed). In most measurable ways, I was still pretty functional (e.g., still very productive at work, etc), but the place I was in mentally was absolutely unsustainable.
That signal made me take a look at what might be wrong and start thinking about fixing it. As soon as I took the first step towards fixing everything I needed to, my marijuana usage dropped off a cliff (even though I had quit my job and had far, far more free time). A year after quitting, I'm better off in almost every way. AFAICT, marijuana is more or less like junk food (except physically better for you): the costs aren't as dramatic as other drugs but if you're doing it what you perceive as too often you should at least consider that there's an underlying reason (much as I would conclude I was stress eating or had a poorly balanced diet if I was eating junk food once a week or more).
There are quite a few people who go overboard with it, and I'm not arguing complete unfettered access for all, but I think the reason it's dangers are trivialized is in reaction to how trivialized alcohol is in our culture. Every show you watch, and people are drinking alcohol left and right. In entertainment it's just something you do. Costco is willing to sell you gallons of it cheaply and of high quality.
And yet the dangers of alcohol both short and long term are taken as "things we just put up with" from a societal perspective.
I think when people compare the dangers of long term apathy, malaise and possible overeating (which also just sound like responses to getting older ;) to people who get drunk and murder other people and end up killing themselves, short or long term, one set does seem kind of trivial.
*Note: I am not meaning to make it sound like I'm anti-alcohol or pro-cannabis. I think responsible people can handle each one responsibly, and that instead of prohibiting everyone, we do what we do with bad drivers: we help them get better or forbid them from doing that activity any more and provide safe alternatives.
That is: I am not opposed to a small amount of "nanny-state" to force heavy users into a better path (and that is very illiberal, I know) but I wonder if it is possible to do it in a fashion that has minimal "illiberal side effects".
That part is a bit of a bad joke, but I've known people who have lost chunks of their lives to WoW, and the criticisms you outline for cannabis seem to mirror my perception of WoW very closely—"addictive", "causes them to be extremely unmotivated", and "a lot of people end up really trapped by it".
To be honest, when I was in college, I was more worried about the potential dangers of WoW than I was worried about cannabis or other recreational drugs, chief among them alcohol and caffeine, but also cannabis. I had a "just say no to WoW" attitude.
As a user myself, I tend to agree. It can be very easy to go overboard if you aren't careful. For many people, weed can completely sap motivation if abused. The exact risks are really unknown though, since research into marijuana has been stifled for decades.
These threads can easily get out of hand when people think that other people are misinterpreting other people, a kind of chain of misinterpretation.
>At least three people have died playing online games for days without rest. People have lost their spouses, jobs, and children to World of Warcraft. If people have the right to play video games - and it's hard to imagine a more fundamental right - then the market is going to respond by supplying the most engaging video games that can be sold, to the point that exceptionally engaged consumers are removed from the gene pool.
This is just like alcoholism, except it won't kill you and it won't make you do stupid/dangerous things and it's not physiologically addictive. And like alcoholism, it's only really attractive to people who meet certain preconditions. If you feel a lot better about your life while smoking hemp, and you don't have to give up anything you care about to smoke it all day, consider setting restrictions for yourself on when you smoke it. I think there's a place for escapism, but maybe restrict it to after 9pm, for instance.
The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
Bonus points for the pun in the last sentence, since we're talking about drug prohibition which LITERALLY "traps" people in jail for possessing a plant...
Not any different that tens of different ways to do that: from videogame addiction (someone mentioned it already), to depression (and in fact marijuana can help fight that), not knowing what to do with yourself, to accidental pregnancy, to drinking, to studying for a liberal arts degree (couldn't resist the joke), ...
Besides most people don't go to the university and don't have any particular "big plans" anyway, marijuana or not.
Anecdotal evidence: John Smith, from a lower-income family, grows up a small rural community, 30 minutes outside a mill town with a population of 13k. He's around 13 years old, a computer nerd in the 90s and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the folks in his small school (grade K-8, Total pop 190 pupils). Alcohol has already introduced itself to John as it was common for kids of his age to consume stolen booze.
His next door neighbour's son visits, he's a few years older than John and introduces John to marijuana. John begins smoking it occasionally at the early age of 13. Through his newfound interest in marijuana, he starts visiting alternative websites, listening to the Doors, reading books by writers like Hunter S. Thompson, and eventual Aldous Huxley. John continues smoking weed, increasing to daily, as he finds it opens his mind to being more creative and understanding the content better.
At 15, John moves to a city 3 hours away that has a university. He looks into University courses and sneaks his way into the larger seminars after high school, on topics such as the existence of UFOs and quantum mechanics. He begins smoking pot with university students after seminars and has rich discussions with them. This leads to joining the local anime club and computer science club. Pot still remains the social lubricant for John and his social circle.
Flash forward: John has moved to the other side of his large country, is an IT manager at a world-class organization as well as a private contractor, lives a comfortable middle-class life with a long term partner. He visits home every year and helps family with their business. He still consumes marijuana daily.
True story.
This a fallacy I see all the time... when someone makes an unusual choice and something bad happens, people blame the decision. If someone makes the typical choice, people blame the circumstances.
If someone has an open relationship and it breaks up, people blame the openness. When a monogamous relationship breaks up, no one ever blames monogamy.
If someone breaks their leg while rock climbing, people think climbing is dangerous. If someone breaks their leg while painting, it was just an accident.
When someone cooks some terrible vegan food, lots of people think "vegan food tastes bad". But if someone wrecks a piece of meat, no one ever thinks "meat tastes bad".
How do you attribute that to marijuana smoking? Correlation isn't causation; perhaps they would have been apathetic over that time period, regardless.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/pot-pains-why-marijuana-can-bec...
Let me tell you the truth... addiction is not about the drug. Addiction is about the environment. So if these students were apathetic, it was because they had deeper-rooted issues that they were attempting to mask via some drug.
And cannabis is not physically addictive. Psychologically addictive as I pointed-out but not physically. Even coffee is more addicting.
Drugs are a multi trillion dollar business. 100's of billions of dollars turning the wheels of the shadow economy every day.
Who stands to lose all that money if drugs were legalized? Who is involved in drug business? think of all of the players in the chain..
We know examples of developed countries where drugs are legalized and everyone did not become a junkie over night, or next week, or next year.
Drug money fuels a lot of things in this world, entire countries are built and destroyed using drug money, new political systems are built and presidents elected using drug money. It is convenient "invisible" hand that makes a lot of things happen in this world.
Drug problem is not about me or you becoming a junkie. Its about money, a lot of money, its about economical and political power that comes with it.
The day when drugs are legalized the convenient way to make lots of money out of "thin air" all of the sudden would be gone...
Hearings on the CIA and Drug Trafficking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km0Z2XmzBDw
John Kerry committee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvFr5K8zJRA
Police Officer Mike Ruppert (dead now, shot in the head 2 years ago) Confronts CIA Director John Deutch on Drug Trafficking:
During conversations in everyday life, I can not believe how many (well-educated) people I meet that are completely ignorant of the humongous elephant in the room even when they've been caught multiple times with their hand in the suitcases full of money that the CIA likes to throw around their potential "customers" like they're candy.
Even if black budgets that are kept off the books are a small slice of the pie, all the other colossal bureaucracies (DEA, prison-industrial complex) more than make up for it.
i have noticed you have perceived things others have not,
even though they have seen them with their eyes, they have not seen them with their mind
how would you like to connect?
Look up the history of opium war in China or for more recent experiences, drug problems in Punjab India or the drug dependency in the Middle East .
Opium war in china had nothing to do with social cohesion, but trade and geopolitics. Same for the war in Afghanistan.
You don't need to go that far in order to come up with dubious examples (that few are familiar with) however.
The early 1900s in the good old USA, where morphine and later heroin were sold over the counter should provide plenty of evidence that you're spewing garbage.
If you can just pick up your fix from the corner store like alcoholics can, then you won't expect social cohesion to be affected any more than it is by alcoholics, especially since many of the people who might become addicts after legalization were likely to become alcoholics anyway.
Basically, The US makes drugs illegal and then enforces embargoes against other countries so they comply. Drugs have a very inelastic demand so this doesn't actually stop people from using them, but it DOES make drugs an extremely profitable enterprise.
Keeping drugs illegal has at least one massive 'benefit' -- if law enforcement grants anyone immunity and gives them permission to deal in drugs, they are essentially immediately granted billions of dollars. It's really not hard to grow poppies or cook meth or truck packages between cities. Nothing about that is intellectually difficult.
Consider the following: If the head of the CIA told you that you had total immunity and could deal in drugs all you wanted, how much money could you make? The answer, for any idiot in the world, is literally billions of dollars per year within just a few years.
This becomes enormously useful when we want to implement regime change around the world or otherwise provide funding to certain elements without directly giving them money.
Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to overthrow the government of Nicaragua but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. [Contras]
Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to help fight against the soviets in Afghanistan but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. [Osama bin Laden, Hekmatyar, various other Afghan groups, and Pakistan's ISI]
Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to fight against communist-backed forces in Laos but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. They run out of adult soldiers and have to start using children? That's fine, give them the go-ahead. [Vang Pao]
The illegality of drugs is integral to our foreign policy strategy.
To my understanding, until about a hundred years ago, we didn't mess with other countries. Remember our policy of "isolationism"? It's hard to, these days, but that was once a core part of our national identity.
But since the end of WWII, the US has overthrown a sovereign foreign government, attempted to overthrow them, or attempted to overthrow them through support to a third-party, almost once per year. Literally about 50 times since then. Our intervention with some countries is absolutely brutal. We installed the Iraqi governments both immediately before and after Saddam's. You think Iran hates us because of our freedom? I think they hate us because we refuse to respect theirs.
Understand that the OSS/CIA was created because we had no idea what was going on during WWII. Prior to WII, we did not have a foreign intelligence agency. During WWII, we did, but it was an Intelligence agency, not a paramilitary or interventionist organization. Then everything went to crap and now we are the most hated country in the entire world.
Drugs let us weaken and overthrow regimes without doing anything. Suddenly, _inaction_ is sufficient. Just don't arrest that guy or any of his friends, and don't investigate their activities.
Think about it -- if drugs were legalized, what would unskilled thugs do for cash? They're not going to get jobs... they're going to commit real crimes like robbery, extortion, sex trafficking. Illegal drugs are a way to keep them occupied without really hurting anyone.
This can not be overstated. I recently discussed a prior client of mine on HN who is one of the few patients who receive the federally authorized marijuana from University of Mississippi (at a dosage of 360 joints/month). My client has a rare bone disease and has been in the federal program for over 30 years, one of my clients biggest complaints is that while he wanted studies to be conducted regarding the use/effects of marijuana the Government has refused.
You can walk into a dispensary here and choose your levels and mix of THC and CBD - want 20%+ THC for an intense high? Maybe 15% CBD with no THC for almost no psychoactive high but a focus on pain relief / relaxing? All that and everything in between is available.
As research into all the other cannabinoids increases I expect to see their breakdowns included on labels as well.
And that's where the analogy to alcohol breaks down - there's typically just one active ingredient in beer but dozens in pot. And the different strains can deliver various ratios of the cannabinoids to create very different effects.
Bottom line is that I could easily see how if you only ever experienced illegal pot i.e. no choice and low quality I think you are likely to hold a different view on it than if you'd experienced the variety and nuance of legal pot.
Certainly very few non-violent marijuana offenders are incarcerated for periods of a year or more where the tax payers would see savings to the tune of $30k-$60k/year. In fact in the 2.5 years I did criminal defense I didn't have a single client with a marijuana possession sentenced to serve any jail time, and most of my cases included additional charges such as DUI, Leaving the Scene of Accidents, etc...
Just to further illustrate your point, I had a handful of more serious possession cases, including, cocaine, opiates, and crack pipe. Not a single one of them was sentenced to serve jail time either.
I would actually like to see the statistics on first time misdemeanor marijuana offenders who receive 1 year jail sentences without any accompanying charges, my guess it might even be 0%.
- More than a third (35%) of drug offenders in federal prison at sentencing, had either no or minimal criminal history— lowest criminal history category.
- Nearly a quarter (24%) of drug offenders in federal prison used a weapon in their most recent offense.
Which is to say over 3/4 of them did not.
Do the inmates in federal prison qualify as low level drug offenders?
Moreover, the term being discussed isn't a legal term with a definition, so as a result everyone kind of has their own opinion as to what qualifies. So for example, when I think of low level drug offenders forget people in federal prison and I would also think the vast majority of inmates in state prison fall outside my definition. Basically, when I think low level drug offender I am thinking about people who are in county jails.
Edit: Your citation explains the vast majority of those first time offenders in federal prison are there for drug trafficking, that is why I discard federal prison as low level.
Just gotta watch the dosage so you don't accidentally end up stuck on the couch for the rest of the day.
WARNING: This comment contains words known to the state of California to cause cancer.
If you want to learn more, the book "Primer of Biostatistics" cites a number of studies (see the problem section) where numerous studies showed an absence of cancer being caused by marijuana smoke inhalation using controlled trials. Further work on humans has also shown no credible evidence.
That's just marijuana. There are other substances that are smoked and have no evidence of increased cancer rates.
If you're going to make a general assertion, please back it up with scientific data.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23802821
http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/cannabis...
tl;dr: slowly increase consumption to promote cannabinoid sensitivity and avoid overconsumption which raises tolerance
I don't care if I die, so take that away from me, and literally there is no valid argument to stop me enjoying a smoke.
Fuck the Police.
I am pretty much a tea-totaller. I am also allergic to marijuana, so I have no desire to be around it. But I have known people in person and read articles and the like. One example that comes to mind: 16 year old boy's brother is gruesomely murdered, he becomes an addict or alcoholic and when he is 19 he decides to get clean and sober. So, he's had three years to process his grief and he is now a legal adult, not a helpless legal minor who can't do much about anything wrong in his life. Now, he wants to be sober and talks trash about what a bad person he was for using/drinking and blah blah blah.
My best guess: It is easier and/or more socially acceptable to blame drugs than to admit that life really shat on them, their parents are assholes, whatever. But, in most cases, it looks to me like they use for a reason and if that underlying reason gets better, then they will tend to stop using.
I am fond of the book "The truth about addiction and recovery" which basically takes this view.
To be honest, not sure what is right here.
Is it ok to demonise interracial marriage while trying to get the minority the right to vote?
Does the end justify the means?
But if you think heroin is a demon and marijuana(or alcohol) is ok you are sadly mistaken.
1 of the 3 is ok, by some definition of ok. My definition: doesn't have serious health effects and users can (and do) live normal lives.
With cannabis, anti-cannabis messages trying to portray cannabis users as all a bunch of layabout half-criminal pot-heads won't work any more because so many people know productive, intelligent, hard working normal people who use cannabis and are fine admitting it.
I bought into that image of heroin users too, until I realised I'd worked with a heroin user for a long time without realising, and he didn't look like a wreck, and functioned well most of the time despite being a hardcore addict.
When I then started reading up on it, I finally realised that not only can heroin addicts be high functioning people the same way alcoholics can, that you can't see it on most of the time, but most heroin users never get addicted the same way most alcohol users never become alcoholics, and it became impossible to hold onto my previously very strongly anti-drug views.
Obviously many people use heroin and have normal lives.
Alcohol is destroying, but in incidents rather than marijuana which I think is long term damage.
Heroin destroying lives is so complicated because most of it is societal based, it's not the drug destroying lives in current society.
How is this different from marijuana?
The biggest problem with heroin is an adulterated supply, cut with anything from other - often more dangerous - drugs to brick dust, putting the user at substantial health risk both due to the stuff they've put in it and due to uneven doses.
The second biggest problem is societal condemnation that makes it hard for those who function well on heroin to seek help if something goes wrong.
Marijuana is less likely to be mixed with other crap, and you're less likely to face condemnation if you tell someone you use it.
Other than that, heroin has a higher potential to cause damage in itself. You certainly can overdose on it, and damage yourself seriously with it in ways you'd find impossible with marijuana. But you can also use heroin your whole life with few ill effects if you have a clean and predictable supply.
In terms of addiction we like to treat heroin is if it is insanely addictive, but there's little indication it's worse than alcohol in that respect (not that alcohol is a standard to aspire to when it comes to addiction potential).
Why's that?
Unfortunately there are a lot of vested interests, organizations that make a ton of money from the cruel Marijuana laws: private corporations running prisons, police unions/organizations, and I would argue the big pharmaceutical companies (because Marijuana is a good natural pain killer). The war of drugs is a high-profit business.
Canadian government's list of sanctioned providers:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/info/list-eng.php
Their trade association:
The growing supply of research-grade material:
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/medical-ma...
So stop harping on about a lack of research. The fact that a medical substance hasn't been studies within the magic bounds of a particular country should be irrelevant to any reasonable person.
Pure heroin is quite harmless by itself (provided you didn't take too much). People can live a full and complete life totally addicted heroin with probably less risks than even pot. The problem of heroin is never direct -- it kills/harms via overdose (misjudging a dose, or doing the same amount after your tolerance drops) or the most common "overdose" we hear of is when Fentanyl gets cut into your heroin (Yes, Fentanyl is way more potent than heroin and hospitals prescribe it all the time). The other ways people die is by mixing heroin with other stuff, namely xanax. You virtually never hear of someone just dying from heroin alone. And have you ever heard of someone getting lung cancer from their heroin?
The drug itself isn't like crack or meth where doing it for an extended period of time can permanently turn you crazy (Psychosis). Or kill you from exhaustion/sleep deprivation. People can take it for decades and show no obvious signs (functioning addict). The drug is always labeled "super hard" by the same people carrying around Percocets in their purse. But that's OK because they got it from a dentist/doctor. Percocet is oxycontin mixed with Acetaminophen and Oxy is almost as strong as heroin per mg. Demonizing heroin while you're taking vicodin or oxy is so hypocritical that there should be a new word invented for it, something that means "more than hypocritical".
Heroin's problem lies in that it really doesn't have a great medical application. What it does, other drugs now do literally (not figuratively) 1000x better. But heroin is incredibly cheap to make (relatively speaking) and provides a unique rush when taken IV. There are other drugs (like Demerol) which provide that same rush but hospitals instead inject it into your fatty tissue (ass) so it's slow to release (so you can't get the rush). So why don't drug kingpins make that stuff instead? Because those pharmaceuticals (like Vicodin, Demerol, and Fentanyl) require complex processes (many steps) and expensive labs to make well, and it's way more expensive than Heroin. Not just cost-wise but also time-wise. When you're out in some back-country in Afghanistan mixing your freshly dried Opium in a vat of Acetone to dissolve it, you're on the clock to get in and out with the product or the boss is going to be pissed.
I realize I'm starting to rant but that's because I myself always though "drugs are bad!" then I tried pot. Realized it wasn't that bad, safer than alcohol. That same "Well that's not so bad" happened to me with heroin. After snorting it I was actually disappointed and thought I was ripped off. I didn't realize it wasn't stronger than Oxycontin. I thought it was orders of magnitude stronger than these harmless little pills my dentist gave me when I got my wisdom teeth pulled. I was wrong. And that lack of understanding is what almost threw me down the rabbit hole.
Medical marijuana laws and pregnancy: implications for public health policy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27422056
"Although there is much to learn yet about the effects of prenatal marijuana use on pregnancy and child outcome, there is enough evidence to suggest that marijuana, contrary to popular perception, is not a harmless drug, especially when used during pregnancy. Consequently, the public health system has a responsibility to educate physicians and the public about the impact of marijuana on pregnancy and to discourage the use of medical marijuana by pregnant women or women considering pregnancy." [emphasis added]
Long-term Marijuana Use and Cognitive Impairment in Middle Age http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=24849...
Association Between Lifetime Marijuana Use and Cognitive Function in Middle Age The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=24849...
Marijuana use leads to increased stillbirth: (free download)
Association between stillbirth and illicit drug use and smoking during pregnancy http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24463671
"CONCLUSION: Cannabis use, smoking, illicit drug use, and apparent exposure to second-hand smoke, separately or in combination, during pregnancy were associated with an increased risk of stillbirth. Because cannabis use may be increasing with increased legalization, the relevance of these findings may increase as well."
What kind of human being would want increased babies neurologically deprived from marijuana exposure or additional stillbirths?
Instead of downvoting, why don't you explain why you want these effects in infants?
But Alcohol is not schedule 1.
Perhaps someone could explain why they want to adopt policy that will lead to an increase of neurologically harmed infants and stillbirths.
Empathy is key. Try to imagine infants that have been harmed by marijuana use by their mothers before their mothers knew they were pregnant. Not certain why anyone would want to increase the number of neurologically harmed infants.
For example, be pass laws banning cigarette smoking in public places, in parks, etc.
We also have a drinking age of 21, and many/most states now consider driving with a blood alcohol level above 0.8 as drunk driving. These acts are to protect other drivers and pedestrians from being harmed by drunk driving.
It is not unreasonable to want to ensure that fetuses are protected too.
Isn't this the same situation with alcohol and tobacco?
If one wants to grow and dry their own tobacco to smoke, I am okay with that.
But, productizing addiction of known deleterious substances should be illegal.
I am not disputing that cigarettes are indeed addictive, overwhelming evidence suggests that they are, but cigars in my experience are not and I would guess pipe smokers would also fall into the same category.
Are you really willing to give up on sugar?
And the obscene amount of refined sugar in our diets isn't doing us any favors. A couple months sugar-free and everyone's palate would adapt.
Whole tobacco is supposedly much more addictive. Tobacco contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors which in animal models increase the addictive effects of nicotine:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16177026
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14592678
Many other users of pure nicotine report it as not strongly addictive. Conflating nicotine with whole tobacco could cause harm by encouraging tobacco use in people unaware of this difference.
If you feel or suspect that marijuana negatively affects your life, and if you want to quit (even temporarily), then I can strongly recommend visiting the 'leaves' subreddit (leaves.reddit.com).
In fact, even if you're just curious about how people compare living with and without weed as part of their lives, it could be interesting to read a bunch of the posts there.
It's a remarkably varied community; not everyone there sees weed as evil and quitting as an necessity.
And for alcohol there's a similar subreddit called stopdrinking. It's similarly open-minded.
Both have really helped me deal with (borderline) dependence.
Look, bottom line to me as a Constitutionalist, is that no one can tell me what I can or cant do with my body. It's unconstitutional to make illegal, and while theres plenty more for why it shouldnt be illegal, thats all I need to know to be pro legalization.
Most of you probably don't have that experience.
- Parents do. Ask parents "how did your kid change after commencing use of pot?"
- Teachers do, if they know a student imbibes. These days teachers have a great chance to see the difference between regular students and those who smoke it.
- Property managers of apartment properties do.
I'm the latter. I made my Silicon Valley startup bucks and have been buying and operating apartment properties since 1993, 2 years out of college.
Here's what I experience:
1) my pot using tenants do not like following rules compared to other tenants.
2) they are defiant in their attitude to varying degrees, challenging things they initially agree to ("no smoking", "new occupants must pass the same tenant screening you did and must be added to the lease", "no guest parking", "no loud parties/noise after 10pm", etc).
RECENT EXPERIENCES - tenant moves in, it's a no smoking building, they begin smoking pot in their unit EVEN THOUGH there are 'no smoking' signs everywhere and the lease clearly calls for 'no smoking cigars/cigarettes/marijuana'. THAT'S HAPPENED 18 TIMES (18 different tenants) IN THE PAST year and a half.
- tenant moves in, gets a warning for their car blocking other tenants in the parking lot, they kept blowing it off, parking and blocking others. FIVE TIMES over a 2 month period until they were evicted.
- tenant moves in someone without adding them to the lease (a requirement), we catch them, the added person does not pass the normal tenant screening process and they have to leave, the original tenant keeps them there anyway, we catch them, gave them a final warning, they ignored the final warning, and got evicted
Just a very small set of examples.
IF YOU SMOKE, you are the LAST person to know if your pot use has changed you, added some negatives to your behavior. "A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient."
I myself imbibed for 3 years as a teen. WHAT AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER. Normal recreation time was clouded by intoxication.
If you prefer being intoxicated in your leisure time, how would you feel telling people that?
"I like being intoxicated. It's my recreational activity."
OR
"I like being intoxicated during my leisure time."
OR
"When I spend free time with recreational pursuits, I like being intoxicated."
VERY FEW pot users will admit that to arbitrary others. Deep inside, we know to ourselves "I shouldn't need intoxication to enjoy myself."
You should not need to live in an altered state, intoxication, and if you are frequently choosing intoxication from pot as 'recreation', something is wrong.
> You should not need to live in an altered state, intoxication, and if you are frequently choosing intoxication from pot as 'recreation', something is wrong.
Your comment is ironic evidence for insobriety. Anger, stress and frustration are all palpable, and you may need some help to unwind. Hell, I could use a beer after reading it.
In 1993 I had no pool of 'before move-in/after move-in' experience with tenants. 23 years on, I have a large number of 'before move-in/after move-in' tenant experiences.
So when a tenancy went bad, over time I started making a mental note of
1) the social cues the tenant made when I first met them
2) what their behavior was after move-in
I started seeing patterns. After 23 years of "before move-in/after move-in" experiences, I developed predictors.
In my mind, I suspect that Judges, teachers, cops, hiring managers, any profession where you have a lot of "before/after" experience with lots of people -- have developed similar wisdom, similar predictors.
It's probably a survival skill humans have -- if you get burned over and over, you start connecting "is there any way I could have used this person's before behavior to protect myself from their after behavior?"
Here are some of the screening-out cues I use:
1) during the initial showing of the unit and meeting, does the person forget something I just told them ("It's a one year lease")? Did they exhibit more than one memory lapse like that?
2) was the person inarticulate in writing (on the application), or in their speech?
3) on the continuum of demeanor (behavior and body language) from "street people behavior" to "my professional peers" -- was the prospective tenant closer to "street person" demeanor or closer to "professional peer"?
4) does the person smoke cigarettes? Over 23 years most of my pot-smoking tenants smoked cigarettes. It makes sense I guess, smoking cigarettes for nicotine, smoking pot for thc.
The list of 'cues' I have is not perfect; people are still moving in and smoking pot inside my properties in violation of the lease.
1) I'm estimating memory lapse / brain fog etc in the general population is much more prevalent in non-pot-smokers for general reasons -- hell, depression affects something like 5-10% of Americans which iirc is many times over the fraction of people who would wake and bake prior their apt. showing. Yeah, memory problems are a strong signal when you know a specific person is blazed, but across the whole of the population this is going to be a filter with a really high false positive rate.
2) kinda seems like a proxy to their parents' wealth, maybe that matters to you but really should the equivalent of an SAT score really predict the ability for a tenant to keep to the contract?
3) there could be a couple of effects at play here. Kind of another proxy to parents' wealth. People might also put their guard up once they notice you sizing them up. But conveying professionalism as a game theoretic 'signaling' strategy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
Cigarettes though? probably not a bad indicator. I think as a whole they probably do more damage to the building and other tenants, too.
You must ask yourself: how accurate are you in your assessment of who smokes marijuana and who doesn't? For some of your tenants, I'm sure it's obvious that they partake. But, I'd wager many of your 'good' tenants do as well, and you have no idea. It's really not hard to hide marijuana use from your landlord. And from what it sounds like, the tenants who don't make any effort to be discrete with their marijuana use are also the tenants who don't care if their car is blocking another car. Perhaps a DGAF attitude would be a better thing for you to screen for than marijuana use.
The 18 tenants I've evicted in the past year and half -- they ALL slipped 'under the radar.'
My "cues/indicators" list above is 100% NOT all inclusive.
Until you've dealt over many years with pot smokers, in quantities, you really, really have no idea how defiant/grouchy/uncooperative/troublemaking they can be, behaviors you can only witness over a period of a lease.
Here's another example. 31 yo male, he should know better, right? About the useless 'crutch' of drugs and alcohol as the foundation for personal recreation?
Smoked up a storm. He befriended surrounding tenants, and so no one complained. NOTE: in our non-smoking properties, keeping in mind that very few people smoke these days and make an effort to only live in non-smoking apartment properties, if a non-smoker is exposed to 2nd hand smoke, do they complain to Management? Oh my god. Especially pot smoke. We get complaints like "the person below me is smoking pot, you said this was a non-smoking property, I don't want to get high from their 2nd hand smoke" -- we get COMPLAINTS. It's understandable, very few people smoke or want to be in close breathing proximity to smokers these days.
Well, I had to catch him in the act, he chummed up with the surrounding tenants "in range" and somehow got them to not complain. It wasn't easy. Caught him over the course of 2 weeks on our security cameras.
We didn't tell him "Joe, we have video evidence you're smoking" we just served the 3 Day Notice. He refused to stop. Went to eviction court, he lied to the Judge. HE'S UNDER OATH. "Judge, I stopped smoking weeks ago." Lied to the Judge while under threat of perjury. DEFIANT.
Then my attorney brought forth the photos and entered them in the record. The Judge looked at Joe. I'm thinking 'it's perjury, is Joe going to jail?' The Judge must have been in a good mood. He looked at my photo evidence for 20 seconds, BAM the gavel dropped, "judgment for the plaintiff."
Pot smokers are T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
It depends on how long they've been smoking. Those 3 years I smoked it as a teen, it was in the final year I started with bad behavior, and bad experiences I finally realized were not me.
So I don't really care how much a pot smoker says "it's fine, I'm fine, it's harmless."
My philosophy with ANYONE who uses pot, and this is solely because of my 3 years personal experience and the screwed up behaviors from pot smokers over 23 years of landlording:
get away from me. Stay away from me. I don't care if you compromise your personal life by thinking intoxication is a good foundation, just don't do it around me.
That stuff is a disaster in many ways BECAUSE the damage is so incremental, that the build of up negative consequences is invisible to the user.
I have personally walked the path and I now also have 23 years of screwups, pot smoking tenants causing weird problems no other (sober) tenant causes.
Let me say, I feel deeply sorry for anyone who leans on drugs and/or alcohol for 'recreation.'
If you find yourself frequently intoxicated for 'recreation' - from pot, alcohol, whatever -- MOST people are going to have problems from it. You can throw the dice with it over the long term if you want.
There is an error in your reasoning process which has been pointed out several times now (not just by me). I encourage a bit of introspection.
Pot smokers make bad decisions MUCH more frequently than sober non-users.
I am in a position to observe that -- lots of non-users and a few users, at our properties
It doesn't matter if 100,000 non-experienced people tell me my opinion (based on personal experience across 23+3 years) about pot smokers is wrong.
I actually have THE EXPERIENCE.
But, as I've said, and as I tell prospective tenants, it is not for me to tell you how to behave. My job, if you are a fan of repeated intoxication, is to keep you out of my apartments. That's all I do.
And in the past year and a half, 18 people have slipped under the tenant screening radar -- and got evicted for smoking on the premises.
We go to so much trouble to help people realize "hey, these people are really serious about this 'no pot' rule, this place isn't for me"
18 people in a year and half. Despite the fact we TOLD them, UP FRONT, no pot smoking (or cigars or cigarettes) on the premises. Before we even take a deposit.
Think about that. 18 pre-warned-and-now-evicted pot smokers. THAT'S THE POT. That's the bad decision making.
And you don't see or experience that. So I understand it's hard to grok, these pot smokers.
This is the crux of it. You simply cannot know for certain who the non-users are. I guarantee you over the course of your 23 years, there were tenants who you assumed fell into the non-users group but actually didn't.
This all just reads like a 23-year long confirmation bias building up.
Indeed, being in a position of authority is an incredibly dangerous gateway drug. Makes you start thinking that you've got all the answers. Next thing you know, you're shouting at strangers on the street just to get the next fix of self-righteousness.
This is key. As someone who has previously been on various prescribed medications which alter brain chemistry, I can absolutely say that you can't tell how it affects you while you're on any kind of drug that alters how your brain chemistry works. You may notice later, things that you didn't do or didn't enjoy, while you were on medication that affected your brain chemistry. But you'll always feel like you're thinking "normally", because that's how your brain chemistry is operating at the time.