Osaka bans smoking on all of its streets, vaping included
soranews24.com
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Not that one is better than the other per-se. But I just find it baffling how acceptable it is to see someone publicly smoking weed at 7am on a weekday. What does this guy's day look like? How can he function high all day? At least bottomless brunch is reserved for the weekend.
There are a number of people that work while you sleep.
When I worked midnight shifts, 7am was my 6pm, if that makes sense.
Not that cannabis smoke isn’t annoying, but it’s far less annoying than cigarette smoke ever was.
I think driving while high is dangerous and inexplicably very accepted in society.
But my comment wasn't "they're hurting someone by choosing to smoke weed". It's more I feel bad that they're inebriated for much of their day and for me that's kind of sad. I've known pot-heads before and they're not exactly living their best lives and are often dependent on a substance to make it through the day.
The smell of weed does not air out — every taxi I get into stinks of it constantly.
Not only that, it has a much greater range - I usually saw a cigarette smoker but I can smell weed on the street and not see them at all.
And my car air filter kept out cigarette odor when on recirculate, but some how weed gets through and I have to close and turn the whole system off to have any hope of not stinking up my car. The number of people smoking weed while driving is honestly scary
I hope Osaka’s approach spreads
This differs from drugs like alcohol, which inherently increase people’s propensity to be a danger to others.
I guess we have had different experiences with the smell of cannabis, but back from when I worked in a hotel, the protocol for when a person smoked cannabis in a room was to just leave the window and door open for 15 minutes, and no one would be the wiser after that.
Whereas, if someone smoked cigarettes in the room, the cleaning process was far more costly.
Smoking weed is CLEARLY, OVERWHELMINGLY better than smoking tobacco by being less addictive and MUCH less likely to cause various cancers.
It's a harmful drug whose harms are simply on another order than tobacco (psychological wellbeing).
I don't really buy this or any other argument made for the virtues of an otherwise pretty terrible drug.
The answer is it’s all about tolerance and what drugs are social acceptable. The guy who smokes all day just gets back to baseline with his first joint in the day, he’s not actually high as you would be if you did that - same as with the caffeine addicts.
I think in a free society everyone should be able to put in their body what they believe is good for them - it’s a bit more complicated in real life but still…
You've gotten passively stoned?
I suppose you'd want to avoid a cannabis sauna if you want to avoid getting passively stoned.
Growing coffee also has an impact on the environment, I would argue much more than growing weed - conveniently out of sight for the consumer. But that’s not really my point here.
It seems like you may have been making a more general social commentary, but I think this is pretty separate, since this is specifically about . If you're smoking in your home - more power to you.
I don't think weed and caffeine are equivalent. One is a downer and the other a stimulant. You might get jitters with too much caffeine but that's not the same as being baked productivity wise. Sure you don't have to be productive 24/7 but chances are if you're lit at 7am, you're not being productive even when you sober up, and you'll just keep smoking.
In regards to "functional potheads", I've met a few in my life and without exception they greatly overstate their ability to function. Almost all addicts claim they're functional. Plus it can lead to psychological effects.
I think you should be able to put most things in your body. But I can still have an opinion whether it's good for you or society if people engage in this behavior. Not everything I think is bad should have a law against it.
I can’t drink coffee because the caffeine affects me terribly but that’s not true for most people.
Interesting, this has not been my experience. Certainly smoking weed is much more accepted than it used to be and cigarettes are less accepted than they used to be, but it seems like they've both ended up in a similar category. A non-smoker walking down the sidewalk might stay further away from someone smoking weed but I'm not sure it's a value judgement so much as the fact that the skunky smell seems to travel further.
Though besides giving them a wide berth and maybe causing people to scrunch up their nose, I've never seen anyone get harassed for either unless they're in a nonsmoking area or a playground or something and in that case I haven't noticed any difference in people's response.
I think it may be just your bubble
Ive never saw someone casually smoking weed on streets
It’s the first thing my coworkers remarked on when they visited our ny offices from out of the country.
This isn't even socially accepted among stoners who smoke every day once you're old enough to have a job. Not sure who you are hanging out with but people who are high all day every day are one of two things:
1 addicts, and considered so even by stoners, who have crazy tolerance and like alcoholics can function under the influence better than non addicts
or 2 they have a terrible painful disease like ankylosing spondylitis and the only effect of the cannabis is a slight reduction in pain because when your spine is pinched you don't get as much of the euphoria and whatnot from pot
Hope that clears it up
You realize the high from a joint only last a couple hours, right? He could go out to breakfast (always a fun high activity), people watch a bit (again), and then go for a walk in the park or listen to some music or whatever. And then spend the rest of the day sober. Could even go into the office fine lol.
Or keep smoking weed (that's okay too).
Chemicals affect people differently. There are some high energy, high anxiety people who can be very productive on all kinds of substances that would make me useless all day.
That said, there are also a ton of stoners just doing nothing all day. I get it though, when I was a teenager working at bestbuy I got high just to make it through the day. Now that I have to think at work it is unimaginable.
It really is strange how having a beer with breakfast is somehow worse societally than smoking a joint. I think we’re going to see pushback against cannabis abuse in the next few decades. Hopefully after it’s fully legal.
It's a matter of experience and tolerance. A heavy weed smoker doesn't get "high" in the same way as someone who only smokes on occasion. You get a buzz, a slight alteration of your inner state, but there is no huge impairment. For some people, especially those who work intellectually and creatively, it's quite the opposite actually.
Not everyone works a business day. 7AM on a weekday may be a day off, or may be someone on 3rd shift coming home and unwinding.
Weed is also not really like booze. There are no end of jobs where being a little high is probably a net positive.
The fine is small, but I think in Japan the shame is probably the real punishment - 1000 yen might buy you two beers in a bar.
What happens to people who live in non smoking apartments and don't have private outdoor space to smoke?
I'm not sure what a "reasonable" carve out for these people would look like but people aren't idiots and they tend to resent individuals, groups and institutions that make their daily behavior unlawful with the stroke of a pen and the more policy subjects on which you do that the more resentment you build and eventually it starts road blocking other actions. Doing things that way is not what sustainable government looks like.
(edit: Disclaimer before anyone jumps down my throat, obviously the political realities of public policy and compliance are different in Japan than in the west.)
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/zultws/i...
You switch to vaping (public health win!) or you move.
Nobody is gonna move over smoking. They're just gonna resent you. And that'll hamstring your next public health action or whatever because the political will just won't be there.
I can't speak for Japan, but around here most "no smoking" landlords permit vaping.
Except perhaps if you have a very specific clause in a renting contract, but I don't think anyone would bother going these lengths.
I don't think it's that clear. If smokers simply replaced their smoking with vaping maybe it would be a win, but I've noticed that the behavior when it comes to vaping is wildly different: smokers tend to vape more than they would smoke because of how little friction there is in comparison (you don't even a lighter, you can often stay indoors and it will smell less so others won't complain as much).
I even know of someone who vapes while lying in bed, and I can't imagine they would smoke a cigarette there.
They live longer?
Yes, but when the people affected become a sufficiently small minority those people have a smaller and smaller impact on local and regional elections. The culture in much of the world has shifted so firmly against smoking that politicians in these places have probably rightly calculated that the irritation from the few holdouts who still feel entitled to smoke in public is massively overpowered by the gratitude they'll get from the people who are tired of dodging tobacco smoke on the streets.
Your comment exactly captures what I mean. Every government in the west more or less shared your attitude over the past decade or two and what did it get them? A bunch of populists winning elections because people like you calculated that you could push the envelope on just about ever issue all at once and while you were all probably right individually it turns out that you can't all do that all at once. It's a tragedy of the commons problem of sorts.
Instead of treating public policy as a strategic game of "how many frogs can we boil on how many subjects and how quickly can we boil them without losing our heads?" frog boiling was treated as to be something avoided generally maybe such progress regressing things would happen less often.
Now, while I understand that Japan is not the west, I'm less than enthused to see them being sloppy like this.
Letting it "just fizzle out" is failing to protect the rights and freedoms of non-smokers.
Should we outlaw public farting too?
I’m sitting out on a terrace and you’re smoking next to me. I have to either move inside the cafe, or leave. This isn’t a hypothetical, it’s what I face every time I go out. So no it’s not a stretch.
The majority of society would rather you don’t smoke. You live in that society, so choices are to either stop smoking, or continue because what you want is more important (aka being a dick).
I don't know, I don't care. If you belong to lower social class you have less privileges, like smoking. Smoking is a luxury, not a basic necessity.
One of the shops [1] was in Taisho Ward, and the other [2] was in the basement of one of the Osaka Eki-mae buildings—both places with a working-class, nontrendy atmosphere.
But even living in a country that is perceived as "beer centric", i noticed that people are starting to be much more conscious of their alcohol consumption after covid. For the young generation, alcohol does not seem to play as big a role anymore and i would expect that this carries over to their work-life once they enter the work force.
I looked into statistics, and turns out, people didn't stop drinking, they actually drink much more, what changed is that drinking stopped being a social activity, and now is a solo introvert home activity. I think that's the real societal shift.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Keihanshin
> Public transport within Keihanshin is dominated by an extensive public system, beginning with an urban rail network second only to that of Greater Tokyo, consisting of over seventy railway lines of surface trains and subways run by numerous operators; buses, monorails, and trams support the primary rail network. Over 13 million people use the public transit system daily as their primary means of travel. Like Tokyo, walking and bicycling are much more common than in many cities around the globe. Trips by bicycle (including joint trips with railway) in Osaka is at 33.9% with railway trips alone having the highest share at 36.4%, the combined railway share (rail alone, rail and bus, rail and bicycle) is at 45.7%. Walking alone has a modal share of 8.5%. Private automobiles and motorcycles play a secondary role in urban transport with private automobiles only having a 9.9% modal share in Osaka.