...Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized, so this is completely incorrect. And in the minority of states that currently ignore the illegality of marijuana, they impose the same age restrictions as cigarettes.
THC-A is just the natural form of good old delta-9 THC while the plant is still freshly harvested and unheated. THC-A is the natural, standard weed chemical that converts to “good old delta-9 THC” at 100% efficiency as soon as the weed is heated for consumption, or while the plant sits around in storage for a long time. The old laws counted THC-A as contributing to delta-9 THC content, you summed them together or converted them before testing to decide if it was hemp. Now it’s treated as a different cannabinoid and only delta-9 content determines if it is hemp or weed.
So yes, weed is now legal nationwide is the USA, and sold in brick-and-mortar stores in all 50 states…it’s just gone completely and utterly under-the-political-radar.
Also “good old delta-9 THC” edibles are legal now as well, at very high strengths, because as long as the total weight is <0.3% delta-9 THC its a “hemp gummie”.
I don't know where you live, but I buy my marijuana from a government store. There exist other countries.
To claim "marijuana absolutely isn't legalized" is completely incorrect. Something being illegal is more complicated than what the above poster makes it seem, unless a definition of "illegality" is used that's so broad that it's meaningless.
My point is that the legal and cultural barriers that kept young adults from heading down to their local dispensary to buy dope have disappeared. So while we were on the cusp of freeing people from smoking in the 1990s, we have just made it easy and effectively legal to smoke a different thing, and everyone seems to have forgotten that inhaling smoke into your lungs is bad for you.
I don't know for sure, but does this imply that the FDA can't really regulate these dispensaries? Since the federal government's official stance on marijuana is "you shouldn't be using it anyway!" then presumably they don't feel the need to ensure purity of the product for dispensaries.
I've said for years that I'm the only person I know that D.A.R.E. was actually effective on; I'm way too much of a coward to consume things that aren't regulated. Even as a teenager I never did any drugs because I was afraid that it might be cut with something horrible like meth and I wouldn't have any recourse for them doing that.
I'm sure most dispensaries are fine, but I'm still kind of afraid of something that doesn't have FDA oversight.
I'm blaming marijuana legalization for young people smoking marijuana, when they wouldn't smoke cigarettes. The fact that marijuana isn't legal in all states, or is illegal at the federal level, is immaterial to my point. In the places where my family and I live (D.C. and Oregon), marijuana has been legal for a decade. It was made legal in Oregon in 2015, after being decriminalized in 1973. Dispensaries are all over the place. In D.C. it's been legal to grew, possess, and barter since 2015.
The fact that it's illegal under federal law has no effect on people's use of it, because the feds do not bother to enforce that law on individuals. My neighborhood in downtown D.C. reeked of pot smoke way back in 2016.
Young people who would never smoke cigarettes smoking marijuana was already happening the 2000s, long before any state approached legalization.