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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

But still in Schedule I with cocaine, heroin, methadone, morphine & opium.

Isn't this kind of silly at this point? I'm not into weed (it's always weird to feel the need to append this disclaimer) but for God's sake at this point I think pretty much everyone recognizes where it lies on the harm spectrum and we still treat it like a deadly narcotic.

The baby stepping toward doing something that seems to extraordinarily black-and-white - particularly in countries that have laws that allow cigarettes and alcohol - is really quite absurd.

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>Isn't this kind of silly at this point? I'm not into weed (it's always weird to feel the need to append this disclaimer) but for God's sake at this point I think pretty much everyone recognizes where it lies on the harm spectrum and we still treat it like a deadly narcotic.

Not many people realize this yet, but weed is already legal in the US. With the legalization of "industrial hemp" [0], you can now buy cannabis sativa flower in all 50 states 100% legally. The law requires that it contain less than 0.3% THC by mass, so the strains you can get are selectively bred for that, but it actually isn't a big deal. CBD, and all the other cannabinoids in cannabis that aren't THC still absolutely get you high. You can also create extracts and cook with it for all the same effects as "regular" (high THC) weed. It's essentially like being able to buy beer but not liquor at this point.

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/12/14/the-farm-bi...

More like the difference between beer and kombucha, no? Liquor would be more akin to THC concentrates. I don’t think the effects of CBD are comparable to THC with respect to getting “high”, though I don’t know much about the other cannabinoids. Are you speaking from firsthand experience?

>"I don’t think the effects of CBD are comparable to THC with respect to getting “high”, though I don’t know much about the other cannabinoids."

It's not just about CBD. CBD is one of hundreds of cannabinoids contained in whole-flower cannabis sativa. The synergistic effect of them is what causes the effects of marijuana. THC is just one of many.

>"Are you speaking from firsthand experience?"

Absolutely, from someone who used medicinally for years in California.

Huh. Smoking CBD herb doesn't get me high at all.

It won't. It just makes you feel contentedness. Not euphoria. Or "stoned", either.

According to other commenters, Delta-8 or CBG may.

I've tried CBD before and it mainly made me tired and slightly headachey. I can confirm Delta-8-THC at least will definitely get you very high. It feels slightly different than D9 but it is honestly hard to describe exactly how. Some describe it as being better for people that get anxious on d9 but I have also heard the opposite. I have seen some reports of people having really bad times from eating a ton of candies. Similar problems as with normal edibles, so regulators will feel compelled to step in. Mixing in a little bit of cbd or other cannabinoids seems to enhance the experience and make it more like normal flower.

I discovered delta 8 a couple of weeks back and tried it. My first thought was pretty much "Oh man, they made a huge oversight." Many people that have tried it, say that they prefer it because it is not taxed as marijuana so they get around paying a lot. I mean you can buy an entire ounce of 95% pure Delta-8-THC distillate for $100ish. To give perspective, it is a sizable jar and you literally can scrape out about the size of a rice grain of this hard/sticky substance and get ripped. There is a whole thriving market emerging with vape cartridges/pens, candies and different blends of various cannabinoids to elicit different desired effects.

Hopefully they will just pass the MORE act and we'll have full legalization across the board, but at least it will be harder to change the law with respect to just hemp derived products now.

>My first thought was pretty much "Oh man, they made a huge oversight."

The entire Farm Bill was really clever. Republicans in congress and red state legislatures had pushed back against "medicinal" legalization over and over for years. But frame it as something to support rural farmers, and all of the sudden they're on board. I don't think they understood at all the actual reality of what it meant to legalize "industrial hemp". The floodgates are open and there's basically no stopping it now.

As with any novel drug, I have to ask:

How much human use has there been of this drug throughout history?

If the answer is "not much", then you are basically experimenting on yourself.

I can't argue that it isn't self-experimentation. However we are not talking about synthetic chemicals on the same order as Spice/K2. Delta 8 does exist in Marijuana naturally, just at lower concentrations than that of D9. So at least on some level humans have used it as long as they have used cannabis. D8 is sourced from hemp. There is a chemical extraction process similar to that used with d9. There have also been medical studies on d8. Israel did a study in the 90s showing efficacy for treating chemotherapy induced nausea and has been known to chemists since the 70s.

Point taken though that everyone needs to consider the potential negatives before trying it themselves. Especially since some people react very negatively with regular cannabis. As always, it is important to know your body and know your drug.

There was a story some time ago about a high-profile politician in my country. She had shared a link to a parody newspaper article about teenagers at a party who died from "marijuana overdose". From her comment it was obvious that she didn't understand that the article was a fake, didn't understand that nobody ever died from a marijuana overdose.

Contrary to poular belief, you can get "marijuana" (cannabidiol) overdose, albeit it's rare. It manifests with vomiting, abdomen cramps and feeling of serious sickness, which could be fatal (other drugs that can cause a fatal overdose often are not fatal by itself but by the secondary effect of suffocating with vomit or other). I'm speaking from experience.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482175/

(Not that you can’t die from a Dihydrogen Monoxide overdose as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication.)

(Not that I'm for recreational drug legalization, I may get downvoted to death¹ but I don’t actually think Prohibition was necessarily a bad idea, perhaps just badly implemented — it should have been phased in over decades like the Founding Fathers had hoped to do with slavery, and a local issue.)

¹Edit: interesting, about ten minutes after my higher post and 4 after this, this still has 1 point but its parent lost ⅓ of its peak 6.

> it should have been phased in over decades like the Founding Fathers had hoped to do with slavery

The founding fathers were a mix of people who thought slavery today, tomorrow, and forever was the plan, people that wanted it gone ASAP, and everything in between. The compromise they came up with was to lock on it for a few decades absolutely plus give enormous power advantages to the people that economically depended on it to protect it going forward; there might have been some who hoped, or at least expected, it would be phased out over time after the lock in period, but for the most part even they would have been hoping future generations might overcome the barriers they set up that made they difficult, it's not like they built any foundation for it.

I did not know that!

Is it new research?

I have read previously in many places (including NIH's webpage) that a link between marijuana OD and death is not (yet?) clearly established. Example:

> Overall, the committee identified no study in which cannabis was determined to be the direct cause of overdose death.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425742/#_NBK425742_pub...

This is a few years older than what you linked, so maybe my knowledge is outdated. But I'm not sure "popular belief" is the right description.

I don't know about the rare part. I have a very close friend who works as a emergency room doctor and she said that she is really tired of all the cases where people can't handle marijuana, its all the same symptoms, extreme sickness, vomiting, belligerent behavior etc. I asked her what caused it (overdose?) and she said its a few things, a part of the population has a hard time dealing with large amounts of the compounds in marijuana, also she said that THC content in alot of strains being sold today is really high. So some overdose, some genetic/biology involved. Strange thing is the media/news does not report on this at all. And she said its an almost multi-daily occurrence(lives near a medium sized metro area).

> Isn't this kind of silly at this point?

Yes. Fortunately we're almost there. In the US we have majority support (68%) and is just a matter of time before it's fully legalized.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-...

Drug classification does not depend on the harm they do, but on a complex net of economic and political causes. There are very harmful drugs that are legal and regulated (like alcohol) and also many substances that are not explicitly regulated, regardless of how harmful they may be.

Schedule 1 is specifically classified as:

"contains the substances considered the most addictive and harmful."

The name does not mean anything. What is the official name of North Korea again?

I have no idea what this is supposed you mean. You told me:

> Drug classification does not depend on the harm they do

I'm telling you that's explicitly the opposite of how they intend to classify drugs.

What I mean is that: what they intend and what they say to intend are two completely different things.

that's also true of schedule II. the key difference between I and II is whether there is any accepted medical use.

That’s not quite it either as opioids and pot have medical uses. The list is in effect arbitrary.

(a) Schedule I shall consist of the drugs and other substances, by whatever official name, common or usual name, chemical name, or brand name designated, listed in this section. Each drug or substance has been assigned the DEA Controlled Substances Code Number set forth opposite it.

(b) Opiates. Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any of the following opiates, including their isomers, esters, ethers, salts, and salts of isomers, esters and ethers, whenever the existence of such isomers, esters, ethers and salts is possible within the specific chemical designation (for purposes of 3-methylthiofentanyl only, the term isomer includes the optical and geometric isomers):

“considered” does a lot of work in that definition, to the extent it can be taken seriously at all.

The poster you're responding to is addressing how these drugs get put into the categories, not what the categories actually say they're for.

American drug enforcement is tied as much to racism (marijuana with hispanic immigrants, crack cocaine with black americans) and politics (like hallucinogenics with the anti-war movement) as it is to science. Far more so.

Are you saying it doesn't in theory or in practice? I agree that in practice, it's mostly a joke, with Cannabis having a higher rank than Cocaine and Meth. In theory though, the definition explicitly says it's about addictiveness and harm.

> I think pretty much everyone recognizes

This “vote” was 27-25.

The 27 with a brain would best ignore this UN committee entirely. And stop any funding to it too.

>The 27 with a brain would best ignore this UN committee entirely. And stop any funding to it too.

Anyone with a brain realized it's best to ignore the UN as an entity quite some time ago.

I guess this time around the strongly worded letters will be what? In support of asking people to perhaps (please) reconsider their legislative approach to or classification of cannabis?

I tend to be pretty interested in opinions that go against the grain when they're interesting, but when it's just "anyone with a brain"--that's just rhetoric and not even very artful rhetoric at that.

Is it even going against the grain?

The trope of the UN and their strongly worded letters has existed and been popularized for at least as long as I can remember. Is it really "against the grain" to simply make a call to their ineffectual, flaccid and outright farcical nature?

And if one really wants to debate their farcical nature, one need only look at their most recent candidates for election to the Human Rights Council.

Or their recent Universal Periodic Review where some of the worst modern assailants on human rights lined up for the 2 minutes hate in the name of virtue toward the USA.

If someone is willing to defend the UN and prove they're anything but a farce, I'm all ears.

This is one way the 27 can influence the 25. What do you think the UN is?

I don’t see the 25 changing their stance because they lost a vote.

This committee exists to take away people’s rights, not to give them any.

I look forward to a UN vote on mandatory mask requirements (will never happen).

The UN isn't a government, it's a meeting forum.

Not a government, but they do vote on where to send troops and step in when governments fail and decide who gets sent food, who gets loans.

In rare cases, when no major or regional power is interested, they do that as the humanitarian backstop, yes.

I'm pretty sure East Timor is the only case of their stepping in for a government. Could be wrong? Other examples?

From what I have gathered from Wikipedia, East Timor has not been governed by the UN since 2002. However the UN still governs the Cyprus Buffer Zone, part of the Golan Heights, and Kosovo. In the past they have also governed Western New Guinea, Cambodia, and part of what is today eastern Croatia.

Their administration of Cambodia in the early 90s seems particularly full fledged:

> The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)[3] was a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia in 1992–93 formed following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords. It was also the first occasion on which the UN had taken over the administration of an independent state, organised and run an election (as opposed to monitoring or supervising), had its own radio station and jail, and been responsible for promoting and safeguarding human rights at the national level.

'Governs' Golan Heights and Cyprus buffer zone? Come on, man. A few blue helmets to discourage shooting across the ceasefire is a great idea and all but it's not government.

I didn't know about Cambodia, that's another case, thanks.

Well they're all from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territories_governed_b...

> The 27 with a brain would best ignore this UN committee entirely.

Several of the 27 (sufficient to deny any of them a majority) voted against other loosening recommendations on marijuana, so I'm not sure that voting to move it from “like heroin” to “like cocaine” means much.

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