Why Is It So Hard to Study Marijuana?
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[0]: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/scientists-say-governmen...
Back about 10 years ago I looked into this, the main problem was that the University of Mississippi was using very questionable methods to produce what they call "research-grade" cannabis. They were growing and then doing "thc extracts" (focused on just the thc content, not the other cannabinoids), and then spraying the concentrated THC onto what everyone who interacted with it called questionable "plant-matter", supposedly so they could more carefully control the THC percentages.
In essence, for a long time, all the studies that were using UoM cannabis were actually not using natural cannabis, so it's no wonder many of the studies failed in general.
Personally, after working in genetics for a while (just as a sysadmin), I came to the conclusion that the big guys like Monsanto just wanted to get all the IP/patents on the genomics so they could then do modified versions it would be illegal to grow on your own, and as soon as they get all that sorted, they will use their corruption of congress to get it legalized under their control.
On a more constitutional note, I personally have come to the conclusion that the government primarily has abused the commerce clause (as it has in many other instances) in order to get to this level of control in the "drug war". On top that, as a general principle, under natural rights, I don't think either the federal or state government has any rightful power to restrict what I do or do not do with my body, whether that be drink coke, smoke cannabis, or eat lettuce. Therefore on princple as a constitutionalist, I have to admit the real proper move is to legalize drugs and treat them as medical issue.
One of my primary criticisms of the recent recreational/legalization movement is that often in those states it is still illegal to grow your own. I think this is also unconstitutional, because there is no reason to require people to buy from someone else when they can easily grow it on their own.
What's next, you may not grow your own tomatoes or jalapeno peppers? A overly dramatic rhetoric for sure, but you get my point.
The other problem is that the drug war has essentially enabled pre-crime to become commonplace because that is what it is on it's face. We arrested that drug user because he is doing drugs and therefore will eventually commit a crime...
One more thing, I get really tired of people who pop adderall all week, get drunk all weekend, and smoke cigars of acting all high and mighty about people smoking cannabis.
Drug use similarly requires an established life, otherwise it consumes the life in a cycle of addiction. Simple curiosity can lead down a one way path.
Ideally parents will be responsible for the maturity of a child but that is far from the case.
Preventing people from falling through a floor is what society is supposed to do. Families that can insulate themselves can afford to not care about most aspects of society which are basically services for the "unwashed masses". In fact, these floors are often limiting to these families as the presence of a floor also correspondingly creates a ceiling.
To let the majority of society suffer from the consequences of "stupid actions" can only be said from a position of privilege. In an increasingly complex world with real one way switch reoercussions, society and culture has to be programmed to prevent people from falling through the cracks.
Chinese kids end up fairly well off for example because theie culture prizes education. The kids hate it growing up but it prevents them from falling through the "disdain for education" crack. The ceiling here is that you end up not having to think for yourself a lot and may never truly find what you really enjoy.
Creating a society is often about creating floors for safety while leaving enough leeway so that ceilings can be navigated. Often though this purpose is lost as the US has done with cannabis. The whole system literally pushes people downwards and never lets them rise.
Multiple pack a day indoor smokers keeping a space filled with carcinogens.
Sitting next to someone with a joint of Certified Organic Top Shelf California cannabis at an outdoor Paul McCartney concert is an absurd comparison.
It is disappointing. Are any cases on their way to the Supreme Court yet?
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/10/489509471/dea-rejects-attempt-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_cannabis_from_Sched...
Relevant commentary, I think: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...
> HHS determined that marijuana has a “high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” leading the DEA to reject the petition in 2011. The petition was filed nearly a decade earlier, in 2002.
So based on a request from 2002, they decided in 2011 not to act, which continues to restrict research, which makes it harder to get evidence to support a new petition...
Sometimes you gotta just love government's ability to tie itself in knots.
"Gonzales v. Raich (previously Ashcroft v. Raich), 545 U.S. 1 (2005), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court ruling that under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, Congress may criminalize the production and use of homegrown cannabis even if states approve its use for medicinal purposes."
Gonzalez vs. Raich was not a ruling on the specific drug. It was a ruling on whether or not Congress (and, by extension, the executive) can apply the interstate commerce clause to the regulation of drugs, even if they don't cross state lines.
It's also a pretty straightforward consequence of Wickard v. Filburn, which is basically the same thing for wheat in the 1940s.
They could rule that all drug laws are illegal, but they couldn't change the schedule for marijuana.
As far as I know, no US court would seriously consider a lawsuit that would invalidate drug regulation, so SCOTUS will never see such a case.
Now, of course the Supreme Court will come down and say federal government law supersedes state law, as the constitution specifies.
I'm no lawyer, but I do think there would be a nuanced way to argue that the states should have the freedom to self-regulate, as long as they don't distribute across borders. I know there is case law that has already said that the Feds have jurisdiction even in this case, but it still could be argued.
I also have a very skewed concept of how the American public as a whole views marijuana but I can't imagine it is overwhelmingly negative
http://www.gallup.com/poll/196550/support-legal-marijuana.as...
That claims it's up to 60% now.
We are just now getting able to look at the Nixon and Ford administrations. With any president, there are a ton of people who love them and a ton of people who hate them -- no matter what they were actually like. To be able to dispassionately talk about their strengths, weaknesses, and legacy requires some time. Most of those folks have to die off.
It kinda makes me sad the best we have to say about him after 8 years is well he is not Bush. I had really bought into the whole hope and change rhetoric. But maybe it was my fault for being so gullible...
* Universal health insurance != universal health care
[0] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/the-number-of-americans-witho...
I think he did a lot of good things he doesn't get credit for but this issue seems like a missed opportunity.
Every time a Republican wins the White House, people instantly put on rose-colored glasses regarding the previous Democrat in office (e.g. Bill Clinton was Jesus during the Bush administration, and it was two decades before people started criticizing his criminal justice record).
No, Obama didn't embrace drug decriminalization. He was too busy bombing Syria and expanding the surveillance state. "Better than the current guy" does not mean a politician was on the right side of everything.
(I mean, if we're just latching on to a word or phrase in the previous post, to talk about things irrelevant to its point for cheap upvotes...)
Your argument is that we should aspire to merely "just better than the other guys", with the subtext that Democrats aren't really any better than Republicans.
'muhfuhkah' pointed out that it IS better. Which is worth pointing out in a two party system.
We just watched a whole bunch of people make your same arguments, saying Obama wasn't perfect so whatever they're all the same, and as a result we elected a guy who's much worse in every possible way. Great job, everyone.
Parent post was surprised that Obama did not legalize drugs. Presumably due to binary thinking ("correct" politician does "correct" thing, etc). But even in a two-party system, "correct" does not equal "perfect". It's dangerous to presume that a politician's beliefs and actions will always line up with your preference, just because he or she is not with the other party that you oppose.
That is all. It is not even remotely a statement that all politicians and parties are equivalent. My sentence that he quoted from explicitly says the opposite, for pete's sake. You guys are just venting.
This is not a safe presumption. Michael Botticelli (former director of the drug czar’s office) came out and said that the administration was considering it, but it was too dangerous, politically.
The Obama administration pushed lots of sentencing reform legislation, so it would follow that they might decriminalize cannabis as well. It's not just because they were democrats.
>No, Obama didn't embrace drug decriminalization
We can easily find examples to refute this, 2010's Fair Sentencing Act and Holder's 2013 memo regarding mandatory sentences in low-level drug cases come to mind.
I think the author's fear of mega-corporations stems from analogy with tobacco and the implicit assumption that all marijuana use (smoking, vaping, eating) is as bad as smoking tobacco products.
It is easy to demonize a single thing (smoking) and regulate a whole bunch of things (anything with nicotine in it) related without a rational connection (is the vaped substance as carcinogenic as smoking?). I have full faith there will be anti edible campaigns.
Alright, so first there were indie juice producers and vape boutiques. Nicotine and the liquid (some kind of glycerol, i don't remember off the top of my head) are quite cheap, so early on the money was made off unique flavors. Boutiques would sell hundreds of flavors at cheap places; regulation still looks good because you have no idea what you're vaping.
Then phillip morris companies began selling vape kits at very expensive prices (for both their shitty electronic vapes and batteries and their juices). These are typically lines of 3-9 flavors in around 3 different nicotine levels, and frankly they're all pretty terrible.
However, the major difference between the vape boutique and the gas station are three things:
1. Nobody at a gas station can help you vape the juice at a safe, sub combustion voltage. This is really key.
2. There's no variety of flavors, and they all suck, and the ecigarettes you can buy there are generally pieces of shit desiged to break. Some i've tried are configured at high voltages, leading to an acrid taste and a hugely increased risk of inhaling carcinogens. Bluntly put, a great way to convince smokers not to switch to vaping.
3. The boutiques source from indie vape juice makers. These people are often just a few people and the brands are often in flux.
Now, for the most part i'm for regulation, and there are certainly questionable juices you can get. Off the top of my head, some of the flavorings combust at lower temperatures and are a genuine health concern; i've had my glass tubing cracked when trying out a new flavor. Scared the bejeezus out of me.
However, the way the PMTA regulations are structured, you need to go through a roughly $300k, 500 hour process for each SKU you sell containing a liquid intended for consumption in an ecigarette. Now you need to assign different skus to every (brand, flavoring, flavor version, nictone level) liquid. So this means the indie juice makers, which might have 20 flavors at 6 nicotine levels each, would have to pay $186M to continue their product line. Accordingly, the market no longer optimizes for convenience and sells a lot of nicotine separately to combine at home with the one or two levels of nicotine they already have in their flavors.
However, if you squint, you can see this is optimized for selling a shitty vaping product at gas stations with the money enriching tobacco companies. This is certainly going to put out of business pretty much every vape store i've talked to; the only ones that can survive need a massive amount of cash to pivot into a new product line (or recover from a suddenly absent supply list). If you look specifically at the laws just passed in California, this becomes more clear (not sure when these laws take effect, or if they already have):
1. Vape stores can't help you with hardware at all anymore. They literally can't show you how to change the battery on your own pen.
2. At vape stores, there is a flat $2 tax on every. Single. Item.
I'm probably missing more details, especially on the california side of things. There are also probably some companies that will survive serving this market who aren't Phillip Morris, but i can't feel optimistic about their lobbying power. Finally, i just want to point out that people want to regulate the juices—and i certainly believe it's necessary for the industry to grow—but this style of "brute forcing" every SKU for such a huge cost of time and money seems like beureacracy at its worst, and it only hurts the consumer and small business owner. Furthermore the recent studies put out about "DNA damage" seem to cherry pick the worst possible result to support the conclusion that "vaping is just as bad as cigarettes" without, you know, actually comparing the health effects emperically on humans. I have no doubt vaping is harmful; i have every doubt it's anywhere near as harmful as cigarette smoke.
> Today’s rule also requires manufacturers of all newly-regulated products, to show that the products meet the applicable public health standard set forth in the law and receive marketing authorization from the FDA, unless the product was on the market as of Feb. 15, 2007
So cigarette products made before 2007 (which is most of them, but predates most vaping) are grandfathered in and can be sold without expensive review. (As can "substantially equivalent" products.) But any vape product is required to go through the "new tobacco product application" process.[2] That process is (apparently) very expensive and can result in rejection anyways.
Anyway, we all know cigarettes are bad. We don't have real data on how good or bad individual vaping products are. I think that in all likelihood, at least some of them will be less harmful than smoking. The FDA has taken the stance that all vape products should be banned until they go through the premarket research.
You can understand why vape businesses are upset.
(I'm not affiliated with any of these businesses and don't use any of their products, just follow it all with mild interest.)
[1]: https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressannouncements/u...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarket_tobacco_application
Not to argue against your point; i'm a little confused why one would argue FOR second hand smoke. In any circumstance with smoke.
Until then, "marijuana is better than tobacco" is simply a bullshit statement. Smoke less cigarettes and your risk of cancer and respiratory diseases will of course be lower!
That sources this study:
http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File...
That study states that "there is moderate evidence that there is no statistical evidence for ... lung cancer".
Now most studies in this area make mention of the fact that even for heavy marijuana smokers, they never smoke as much as a pack a day cigarette smoker. Which is to say, that even though there is more tar in the smoke of marijuana per gram, people don't smoke as much because they don't feel a need to.
That does not mean it is safe, but there is no evidence that it's as bad a cigarettes.
The secondhand smoke discussion is a good topic derailment for marijuana legalization. People will argue about that issue instead of just thinking about ways to consume it without exposing others to harm, such as going outside or any of the non-smoking ways to consume cannabis.
Second-hand smoke is an actual risk, but the studies that WHO cite all consider indoor use. Burning carcinogens should simply never be done without adequate ventilation, whether for food preparation, science experiments, or recreation.
http://www.who.int/tobacco/research/secondhand_smoke/about/e...
It's also misdirection to suggest carbon monoxide is dangerous in the same way as smoke is.
Research has shown that the volume of airflow needed to be mitigate the second hand smoke risk in at-risk workers is not met by any establishments, nor is it likely to be (because it's huge) - http://www.tcsg.org/sfelp/FedOHSHAets.pdf. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco....
So please tell me, what "extremely effective" mitigations exist? Does anyone implement them in the workplace?
I don't like secondhand smoke, and studies are clear about its harmfulness. Nobody in this entire thread is advocating burning carcinogens indoors.
The effective mitigations (not sure why you used scare quotes) are
1. Burning carcinogens outside
2. Accomplishing the goal without burning carcinogens, e.g. ingesting chemicals through oral consumption or vaporization.
Just because something is dangerous at a certain exposure does not make it dangerous at all exposure levels.
Failing to highlight this difference is what separates FUD from actual science.
However, second-hand smoke is second-hand smoke. I wouldn't favor letting people smoke pot in any locations where they can't smoke tobacco.
It's bizarre (and hypocritical) to me that the same demographic most in favor of marijuana also tends to be the most hostile toward public cigarette smoking. Bottom line, you hate second-hand smoke in one context because it mostly comes from rural working-class people... and you're fine with second-hand smoke in the other context because you wanna legally get high (or at least thumb your nose at the rural working-class people who tend to oppose it).