I was recently shocked to discover that my backwards eastern european country is one of the few in the EU that has even decriminalized drugs; I genuinely thought that this was standard in the EU but apparently not, see this map https://i.imgur.com/A0JICkk.jpg
So yeah, your country might not be so backwards after all, and in this respect at least is pretty enlightened in the grand scheme of things :-)
The tragedy of this late Labour-era push against loosening /smarting-up of drug legislation is that it fairly directly led to the boom in synthetic cannabinoids, starting with the fairly benign Spice (as a brand) and resulting in a swathe of much-stronger, less-tested and more dangerous brands flying under the radar which (all Hoover/Google-like) were collectively known as 'Spice', but have caused problems for many in the underclass and prisons and such.
I'm not much in to party politics, but this is one thing I directly attribute to Gordon Brown and his very unhelpful moralising.
The law specified dried mushrooms specifically as the stance skirted complexities regarding the picking or possession of native wildlife samples (psilocybe semilanceata predominently).
With kits offering the ability to grow easier-to-grow strains from elsewhere in the world (Central and South America principally) we sought clarification from the Home Office on whether it was actually illegal to possess and sell fresh magic mushrooms. Turns out, there wasn't anything illegal in that. Made for an interesting few years.
We assumed a change or clarification in the law at some point, so prepared for a time when sale of fresh mushrooms per se would be outlawed. We never expected them to come down as hard as they did though, so the survival/back up plan of forming a small laboratory to grow mycelium and take spore prints and cater to an enthusiast market was all for naught.
Strange to think at the time that we thought we were on the verge of the UK being at the front of the line for a change in stance on cannabis and drugs generally, but Mr. Brown took us down a different path.
Wow, didn’t know that. Which years are we talking about, roughly?
> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-going-soft-on-cann...
Under New Labour (not to be confused with the Labour Party) the generic catch-all term 'cannabis' was down-graded to Class C. So still illegal.
Then, after a few complaints from parents with kids ending up in lunatic asylums due to smoking too much high-grade weed, something had to be done.
The market for weed has changed a lot over the years, in the last century the product came from who-knows-where and was generally that resin stuff with who-knows-what in it.
Then the market changed to the regular 'skunk' weed - dried leaves of weed.
This then became a bit of a racket, if you believe the Daily Mail it became the business of Vietnamese gangs with the money being laundered through cash only nail bars. For a while the product was quite dangerously adulterated with wallpaper paste sprayed on to make it look extra good. The slight problem with this is that the wallpaper paste would not do wonders for circulatory systems, giving rise to blood clots etc.
There was also a side-problem of legal highs, e.g. 'spice', these really tipping people over the edge into psychosis.
The adulterated weed was soon rejected by the customers and even stronger 'high grade' weed began to be what was available.
By now the older sticky resin type of weed that your grandfather smoked whilst listening to The Beatles and wearing tie-dye clothing was no longer available. We had gone from 'shandy' to 'absinthe', a different beast.
Also to note is that the government is nowadays Conservative so there is nobody in power wanting to enable people to enjoy the finer grades of weed - just ban it is the attitude. People who do smoke the stuff do end up with ideas above their station and you can't have that.
Often the word 'psychosis' was used to describe the kids that worried their parents by smoking too much of the stuff. 'Paranoid' was also an oft-used word. Sure the more modern weeds are a lot more intoxicating than the cannabis resin that went around in the olden days but it is always easier to blame the coping strategy rather than the root problem, e.g. the difficulty of being a teenager in modern Britain.
Are you suggesting the US isn't the land of the free because people aren't free to come to work intoxicated and potentially endanger their colleagues?
In short, it's freedom from a government, which isn't too surprising considering the places in which "free" is used and the history behind the formation of the country.
It should be fairly clear, then, when you consider that the freedom refers to lower government intervention in the actions of people, and sometimes a hostility towards this intervention.
This concept isn't really unique to the US, though other developed countries tend to have a less extreme approach in most practical areas. Switzerland, for instance, is usually an exception compared to its neighbors when it comes to privatization, healthcare, parental leave, etc. and a similar justification of reduced government intervention and more freedom of choice is often used here.
Do you have any reason to believe this is an actual, honest to God, widespread problem?
Was it a common occurrence in the US, that construction workers would cause accidents because of smoking cannabis? And btw, do you know of any study showing a negative correlation between drug testing and accidents? Or is this more "lie detector"-style "science" -- an excuse to stick your nose in other people's private affairs?
> Do you have any reason to believe this is an actual, honest to God, widespread problem?
Yes, my professional experience. American workers seem to find intrusive practices such as drug testing perfectly normal, exactly in the way that you are expressing. In Europe, such tests are much more regulated, as well as many other forms of abuse of power by the employer, and yet I never had any problems with bricks falling over my head.
Perfectly reasonable. And don't forget, "only losers do drugs"...
No security implications there. Of course, by security, it is meant "security against lawsuits". Actual human beings don't really matter in this equation.
Here's the Mayo Clinic page on caffeine.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
The whole country is a patchwork right now
this is a stark and growing area of conflicts of laws
the constitution is setup to avoid this issue, but it is current irreconcilable on the topic of weed as the federal government derives its power from a consensus of the collective states.
I assume it's because it's pretty much the pearl of the region (Bavaria) and if you take this away there is not much left. Also the city is full of pretty rich people who tend to this kind of behaviour.
You see the same in people where the location of the city is similar like Warsaw in Poland for example being surrounded by backwater villages.
Because of just this.
They are the elite who can afford living there.
I was on a business trip in Munich once, took the chance to visit a friend who got me a hand full pre-rolled joints for the remaining days I had to spend in the city. One night after work I went out to the park opposite the hotel and started smoking.
I was suddenly surrounded by police. They are really all over the city and I was stupid. They went through my stuff in the hotel, I gave them the remaining joints and they left. A few weeks later I got a letter saying that they won't follow up on it according to §31a Abs.1 BtMG.
That’s a very strong “might“. Possession is legal for up to 15g in Berlin, and virtually no cop will ever bother you for smoking weed.