The wild,winding world of New York City's legal (& not-so-legal) cannabis market
rollingstone.com
rollingstone.com
I will say though, it's legal where I am, and aside from every parking structure stinking like burning skunks, it's not as much of a 'culture' as it used to be, and you don't really find many people talking about it, which is nice I guess.
I shudder to recall the bad old days of prohibition when I had to deal with flakey, shady characters.
The legalization of cannabis has taken an amazing path. The establishment still doesn't accept it. My bishops are railing against every measure on the ballot. My landlady prohibits it. Every physician I've encountered, especially in psychiatry, hate it with a white-hot passion.
I think it's quite unusual and notable that despite legalization, cannabis has remained resolutely separate from pharmacies, regular physicians, and health care as it is. Around here, you go to a special doc, get your prescription/card/permission, go to a dispensary and get the goods. So, it's out in the open now that the Establishment doesn't like cannabis because cannabis is competition. It has very little to do with its effects or judicious usage by sane people. Cannabis is unpatentable, and therefore it's unlikely to be regulated or integrated with the pharma system of synthetic drugs.
It's so weird to have a single-drug healthcare system parallel to the mainstream one. Will dispensary systems diversify as other illicit drugs are legalized? Will they grow to become their own branch alongside naturopathy, homeopathy, etc? What will become of psychedelic treatments for mental patients? The future is weird, and I'm staying sober!
I can relate a personal anecdote. This concern is one reason I personally haven't tried weed again after an initial bad experience with it. I bought about $60 of edibles expecting to have a good time, and most of them went right into the trash after my first time on them (at a very low dose even) resulted in derealisation, brain fog, and panic attacks lasting days.
Granted, I'm likely neurodivergent, and have a history of both anxiety and hypochondriasis especially with unfamiliar experiences. But unfortunately I couldn't determine if it was hypochondriasis or psychosis. The fact that one psychotic break could be life ruining effectively vetoed challenging the anxiety, and thus I couldn't really determine if it was safe to try again.
I don't oppose weed legalisation to be clear - but it can ruin your life if you have an unfortunate brain chemistry.
Personally I never take it.
I do think if you use it more than once in a while you're wasting your life. But hey, it's your decision.
Equating recreational drugs with medication is misleading; with psychiatric drugs, dangerously so.
Branding recreation and leisure as wasted life, meanwhile, is small minded. Particularly when it comes to something so thoroughly encapsulated by even the most conservative risk envelope.
Saying this as someone who doesn't particularly care for weed.
Separating medicinal use from recreational is far from trivial.
I can pretty much assure you that someone who smokes every day is not having the same experience as you, judging their life based on your experience makes no sense.
Article went from “I can’t make money in journalism so I guess I’ll……sell drugs” to the more interesting topic of how the industry has no identity thus all sorts of misinformation.
I lost interest when he became fixated on the wild search for Black Haze.
Not that you should outsource all of your knowledge to that kinda thing, just that... in this case it'd probably be just fine.