The Netherlands will be especially impacted by this. We refused actual legalization for many reasons, many of which will be invalidated by Germany decriminalizing. Our current stance on weed is so confusing that it's hard to explain to any foreigner, but strictly speaking weed isn't legal and not even decriminalized... But yes, Amsterdam is in The Netherlands.
This sounds like the confusing US laws. Cannabis is illegal (very illegal) nationally. But several states decided to stop prosecuting these crimes, and the states do most of the policing in the US - so it’s all but legal in many states.
I wish there was a legal standard whereby if the state stops prosecuting a law, the law automatically can be invalidated by a court. We have lots of things that are illegal that are only used by prosecutors when they want to throw the book at someone.
> This sounds like the confusing US laws. Cannabis is illegal (very illegal) nationally. But several states decided to stop prosecuting these crimes, and the states do most of the policing in the US - so it’s all but legal in many states.
That's not an accurate explanation of the situation in the US.
Cannabis is illegal at the federal level. Separately, it is illegal in some states too (although fewer and fewer as the years go by). States do not have the power to prosecute people under federal law, so in states where the state has legalized marijuana, prosecutors (DA, AG, etc.) have no basis to file criminal charges.
The federal prohibition means that people can be prosecuted for possession on federal land, or if a federal agency (such as the FBI) takes enough interest to enforce the federal law, but they rarely bother at this point.
> I wish there was a legal standard whereby if the state stops prosecuting a law, the law automatically can be invalidated by a court.
What you are describing is actually closer to the Dutch system. Marijuana is illegal there, but because it's been "tolerated" (best translation of the Dutch word) for long enough, it's not actually legal for them to enforce the law anymore. (Well, sort of).
If you want to get kicked right off a jury start talking about nullification. Waiting in my jury pool to be called/dismissed one of the prospective jurors started handing out FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Amendment) flyers to anyone who was interested before we went into the courtroom.
Thanks didn’t know it was actually congress. Makes more sense to me now. But does congress even have authority to regulate that? Does it fall under unenumerated rights that fall to the people? I guess I remember hearing they regulate it under interstate commerce?
Basically, if they can somehow connect it to interstate commerce - even if it very indirect, like in this case where growing something for personal consumption affected demand - it's "constitutional", supposedly.
This is the case that explicitly extended this reasoning to drugs:
If someone were willing to fund a campaign telling people why they should nullify a certain law, and the people agreed, eventually they’ll just stop prosecuting it because it won’t stick.
Technically, there’s nothing illegal about a judge telling the jury about nullification either.
No problem. I read another comment that said it would not be legalized. But now that I read the responses to that comment I feel like I probably shouldn't have taken that comment as the truth.
I sincerely hope so because I get the pain a lot of Dutch people felt: Even as a liberal drug policy activist (formerly on EU level) I despised the smoking tourism: People not knowing their dose who will randomly fall in front of your bicycle or generally stumble across streets without being able to look left or right. I only fell in love with Amsterdam again after a drug policy meeting late January one year: Without hordes of stoned tourists Amsterdam was a really pleasant experience - even in coffeeshops that usually told you to "smoke quickly and fsck off!" one could sit quietly, chat with friends and instead of the "fsck off" the waiters come and ask whether one would like to have another coffee.
Well, it's not about that. It's that one of the reasons the Netherlands never legalized is that the rest of Europe didn't. So we were afraid that we'd become a place where international criminals come to produce massive amounts of weed legally to then export it illegally. When countries surrounding us start legalizing, we have no reason not to.
Since growing weed is purely done by criminals right now, we're also afraid to legalize because legal weed farms might get issues with criminal involvement or threat because the criminals lose a huge income source. If we don't legalize however when Germany does, we'll then get a bunch of trafficking from Germany to the Netherlands.
We're in a bit of a pickle and it'll be interesting to see what our Christian/Liberal/Progressive government will come up with. I expect them to just ignore it and continue by doing pretty much nothing until it's a real problem.
> Since growing weed is purely done by criminals right now, we're also afraid to legalize because legal weed farms might get issues with criminal involvement or threat because the criminals lose a huge income source. If we don't legalize however when Germany does, we'll then get a bunch of trafficking from Germany to the Netherlands.
Oregon legalized weed and this hasn't been a huge problem. But if people fear it is, the solution to this is simple. Make it easy to become a legal grower.
I'm in Oregon as well. There have been many news stories in Southern Oregon about the large cartel operations that are bigger than before legalization, because now they more or less blend in with the legal growers. They also involved trafficked humans to work there with passports withheld. Some of the increase has been attributed to California's drought, so they're moving north to greener pastures, so to speak. The illegal growing is more than twice as much as licensed growing. Twice. I don't know how you can say there is no problem.
> The $2.78 billion in illegal marijuana found in Southern Oregon dwarfs the nearly $1.2 billion in legal marijuana sold at shops in the entire state in 2021.
> Behind the scenes, immigrant workers may face threats of violent retaliation against their relatives in Mexico if they complain about living and working conditions at illegal sites, or the withholding of wages.
> “The cartels will kill their family back in Mexico. They know there is a realistic likelihood that would happen,” Barden said.
> “We’ve heard of the threat of harm to your family if you don’t go with us”, Daniel said. “And then they are transported up to the location. From what we are understanding, these workers are not paid until the end of the year when the shipment goes out and the money is brought in. There’s not like a weekly payroll going on here.”
> Sixteen other state and federal agencies joined the Josephine County Sheriff’s department in the raid, including the Department of Homeland Security. The operation included more than 1,300 acres of property as well as 200 workers.
> Officials found workers living in squalid conditions, which included sleeping on cardboard mats or inside tends. Workers denying that they had been trafficked, Daniel said. The Department of Homeland Security offered victim services to the workers, but all turned them down, according to Daniel. This could be for several reasons, including fear of their employers or immigration authorities.
> Sergeant Cliff Barden, of the Oregon State Police Basin Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team (BINET), said illegal grows in Klamath County are clearly linked to drug cartels. He said the cartel’s strategy in the area is to overwhelm local agencies and resources with the sheer volume of production, ensuring that much of the operation will go unnoticed and ultimate generating immense profits.
> “They are intentionally trying to overwhelm the system,” Barden said. “And that is why it is so difficult.”
Take coffee for instance, it's widely grown in South America--is most of the production run by cartels?
Or is it just that cannabis is a high-value crop, and it's easier to move the produce around the USA from within, rather than having to smuggle it over the border?
And if cannabis is a high-value crop, is it because not all states have 'legalised' it?
What if the whole world legalised cannabis, would it become like coffee?
Yes, it's because there is a large black market in states that haven't legalized it and in a lot of cases, they're selling it cheaper than the stores where it's legal. The state sanctioned growers all have to have their products tested in labs for purity, pesticides as well as percentage of THC/CBD. The stores (separate entity) also have heavy regulations and security requirements as these are strictly cash businesses (since it's still federally illegal, you can't use federally regulated banks, or credit cards). It's expensive to do so. There is also quite a high state tax on cannabis sales. Illegal growers don't have any of that. It's also a lot simpler to cross state lines than international borders as most states don't have border checks. I know California does to check if you have fruit on board (large agricultural state trying to prevent various pests/diseases), but out of hundreds of trips across the border we were only actually inspected once and that was likely because we were in a camper so they couldn't just look in the window and see.
As a different example, there are "dry towns" where alcohol sales are illegal. The bordering bars where it is legal do very well.
waaay back hemp was grown for fiber. Hemp for THC can be grown just as cheaply as hemp for fiber. With no meddling it would be very very cheap - $2 a pound or less.
The selected sterile hybrid female plants are smaller than the old hemp used as rope = lower yield, so it will not be as cheap as hemp fiber = $250 per ton. $1 a pound is $2000 per ton, so it will be in that range if totally unregulated.
> we were afraid that we'd become a place where international criminals come to produce massive amounts of weed legally to then export it illegally
I remember a few years back, someone in the Dutch police claimed the Netherlands was on its way to becoming a narco-state [1].
I'm ignorant about the domestic issues there, so correct me, but it seems like the legality of drugs is a separate issue to the control of organised crime in the country.
NL is still a central hub for drug traffic. This is a consequence of the NL ports being very efficient. Belgium and Spain are other entry points for cocaine. But there have also been some high profile arrests of drug lords in the NL, such as the arrest of Tse Chi Lop, the head of the Sam Gor syndicate, responsible for a $8bn per year meth trade.
I never understood why it is exactly that The Netherlands were kind of against the drug tourism. I mean, I'm sure your average pot head tourist is not that much trouble and leaves quite a bit of money, no?
I studied in The Netherlands and always thought I'd be proud as a country to be that "progressive" in a sense -- especially once it became clear that other countries were following.
> I'm sure your average pot head tourist is not that much trouble and leaves quite a bit of money, no?
aha, they literally only come for weed and prostitutes, let's say it doesn't attract the most well behaved people in the world. Imagine the typical German or English 20 something years old tourist in Mallorca but instead of being drunk they're stoned.
Low travel cost + mass tourism + young adults + drugs = problems. You can travel there for 70 euros back and forth from any major city in Europe
Fall into canals; move in flocks between narrow city centre streets making a lot of noise; bike around with disregard to common traffic rules.
I'm not Dutch and I really enjoy going to Amsterdam, have friends living there, etc. From what I gather those are the main complaints, just annoyances and not really major problems.
Financing criminals when these same tourists go searching for other drugs, that's a real issue.
Disclaimer: I don't believe that weed is a gateway drug and I'm very pro decriminalisation of drugs and legalisation of recreational cannabis.
Be loud at all time of the day/night, litter, piss on walls/cars, etc.
> What exactly do you think stoned people do lol
There are many subsets of stoners, just like a guy drinking half a bottle of red wine at every dinner isn't the same type of alcoholic as the guy emptying a vodka bottle everyday by noon.
I used many drugs, with many people, some people are just trash, sober or drugged, drugs don't transform them into well behaved and civilised people
> What exactly do you think stoned people do lol
What kind of people travel hundreds of kilometers for a joint sand some titties behind a window ? ...
Amsterdam has lots of issues with tourists that fly in, spend a few days, cause a lot of problems, do a lot of drugs, visit one or two high profile tourist destianations (which puts an oversized burden on these few places), and then fly out.
Instead Amsterdam wants to court tourists who fly in, spend a week or two, go to many tourist destinations, spend a bit more money at many locations. It spreads it around the city/country, does less wear and tear to a few places, and makes the locals lives much nicer.
Countries with loads of tourists have loads of trouble with them. Those problems are amplified when you’re flooded with college kids who are away from home for the first time and getting high for only the first or second time of their life.
I guess there was enough trouble that some people thought it was worth trying to cut back on. Money isn’t everything
The Dutch also have an incredibly advanced information/agriculture/tech/corp economy. I'm no expert on this but I'm pretty sure that the money from the tourism might not be as much to the Dutch as we would like to think.
Personally, in 2010 I definitely walked across 8 lanes of traffic the wrong way on my first day in town… Must have been an actual highway. I have a vivid memory of cars revving their engine at me.
In Canada the crossing signs with a countdown display how much time you have left to cross not how long the wait will be.
I never understood why it is exactly that The Netherlands were kind of against the drug tourism.
It's a subset of the problem of overtourism in general.
I mean, I'm sure your average pot head tourist is not that much trouble and leaves quite a bit of money, no?
Actually they don't, and that's precisely the problem. They come over on EasyJet, check into a shitty hostel, score some weed, buy a shawarma (and maybe some fries), oggle the working professionals in the red light district for a bit, and then leave a few days later.
This is a stereotype of course and not 100 percent true -- but it also probably intersects about 60 percent with the spending profile of the average weed tourist. On average not usually the type to visit anything other than the most obvious tourist destinations, or patronize any of the better restaurants, or avail themselves to any of the amazingly cool stuff that city has to offer.
It's a bit of a mixed bag, but usually the tourists that visit for drugs aren't the ones that spend money on good food, hotels and museums. This is a broad generalization, I know, but may just come for the weed, get hella stoned, drink too much and cause issues in the city. British stag parties are the worst example of this. These groups treat Amsterdam more like a theme park than a city... But that's just Amsterdam.
A lot of the drug tourism isn't the stuff like that, that you're probably thinking about. A lot of it happens in border towns and is essentially trafficking by criminals. They come to the Netherlands, buy quite a bit of weed and go back to their home countries to sell it. In those countries it's illegal, hence the criminal part. These are not the types of people we like to have visiting our country.
This is one of those confusing things as immigrant in NL, on one side the toleration allows all those weekend smokers tourism, especially in amsterdam and it helps the economy (well, debatable) but then the whole coffee shop activity (you can sell but you can't buy) is clearly borderline illegal and by legalizing it could help put under the sun a lots of underground world.
and maybe hit on those narco gangs which looks like are behind de Vries assassination
I sure hope this will come ASAP. As much as I like to stroll through Amsterdam and around, after 10+ visits, often quite long with various people that were/are important in my life, I wish to just buy stuff while experiencing other places and cultures.
It is expensive place with miserable weather. Dutch ladies are always a nice sight though. Plus those drunken crowds of mostly young British around Red light district won't be missed by me.
Not sure what you mean by "not even decriminalized". If the basic status of cannabis in the NL as I understand it -- it's technical illegal, but obviously tolerated (and penalties are never enforced unless you really step out of line) -- then what other word would you use? Leg uit alstublieft.
I think the legalization of cannabis in Europe has a lot of potential. I just wish that we would take measures to avoid the ever increasing levels of THC dosage in weed to insane levels, like you see in the US or California specifically. I firmly believe that cannabis can do a lot of good, but the poison is in the dosage. It has been shown in the past that increasing THC while decreasing CBD leads to an increase in negative side effects, some being permanent [1].
Let's see how it'll work out. I also think it's quite funny that the German meme "Bubatz" has made it into the highest levels of our government.
When I lived in Arizona before it was legal, the vast majority of weed came from Mexico. A quarter pound cost $200 and was a mix of male and female plants, full of seeds, grown in fields. I was a daily user for about 20 years.
I moved to coastal state where it was legal. Now it's all hydroponically grown, all female and all seedless. I was a daily user for about 12 years and had to completely stop using it. It would always help my stomach if I had stomach problems, but eventually I had stomach problems daily and the only fix was more weed. It turns out the weed was the cause of and solution to all my problems.
I'm struggling with this now. Daily cannabis user for 15 year or so, started puking not long after I'd switched primarily to concentrates. I've landed in the ER several times, and been hospitalized a handful of times for dehydration. Usually once an episode starts, a cocktail of ativan, reglan, and pepcid is about the only thing that'll get me out of it.
I've tried to quit cannabis several times now, but usually break down after a week or so when the night sweats and nightmares set in. I've been able to mostly get things under control by avoiding all concentrates and daily doses of nortryptiline and protonix, but quitting entirely is turning out to be really hard for me.
Just a suggestion - have you tried tapering your dose down? It is usually easier to stop a strongly formed dependency by gradually reducing the dose, instead of just stopping altogether.
Reduce daily intake by X% every week. If a given step down ends up being too painful you just go back to the previous one for another week and then try a smaller step next time. Optimum X varies by drug but I’m sure there are recommendations specific for cannabis out there.
It sounds like you have the desire to make a change, with persistence and the right technique you can definitely make it happen.
I live in Canada where there is legal weed, and even some of the legal cannabis makes you sick because it’s grown with chemicals and not flushed or it’s contaminated with powdered mildew or other shit. And it’s able to pass what little QC there is, and it makes me sick.
So I buy from people that have been doing it for decades and smoke their own stuff as QC.
If it’s too strong smoke less, but clean cannabis is the solution for that.
I've found concentrates way too strong for me. I've had conversations with friends where we both say we miss the cheap weak stuff. I've actually moved to microdosing concentrates. Using a tiny amount, no more than the head of a toothpick, gives me more control over how strong it is.
The other thing you can do is switch to concentrates. This also makes it easier to quit because you know how much you're taking in so you can slowly taper down.
This is why I’ve avoided concentrates. I’ve tried (and enjoyed) them all, but I was already concerned that my tolerance to plain old weed was too high. I knew if I got too into wax and shatter, I’d end up chasing the dragon (or at least the weed version of that) and potentially worse (i.e. cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome).
Concentrates are something I treat myself to just a few times a year. Everything in moderation… including the occasional excess.
"but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can." ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I've always liked that quote as I have seen it over and over again in people I know. Those that can use and moderate to just a recreational use vs committing to a full on daily use (addiction by most acceptable use) is very small. I love to partake when I have the time and lack of responsibilities requiring all of my faculties. But when I've tried the daily use and watched my capabilities diminish has shown me that I'm not fully functional with that daily use so I just keep it in the recreational realm. From my 100% unschooled medical perspective, those that think they are 100% with daily use are just lying to themselves.
Yeah. I wish that we determined who the actual "junkie" is on a case-by-case basis, not by the fact of consumption alone. I medicate for the same reasons mentally sick people do, but I actually have a physical brain damage and my limbic system might be the region affected along with many others. I am able to treat the mental issues, and the same medication happens to help with the incontinence I have. If I told anyone about it, they would consider me a junkie. I do not even get high from it, for fuck's sake. It makes me more neutral, otherwise I'm an emotional wreck, full of suicidal thoughts that I end up acting on eventually as I used to.
I go through intentional withdrawal every N months to reduce my tolerance. I tend to keep the dose as low as possible. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I do not. I might buy that box that has a lock with a timer on it or something. ^^
I do not consider myself a junkie just because I am dependent on it, similarly how people are not junkies for depending on beta-blockers. They need it, and I need it too. It just happens to be something some people tend to abuse. Well, I do not wish to suffer because of them. Again, I do not get high, I do not get any of those feelings that would make me crave it. Many people might, but many people do not have the same medical condition as I do, I guess.
As I said, I am not "100% with daily use". I sometimes fail at controlling the dose, because sometimes my issues are worse, but... I wish I did not have to depend on it. It fucking sucks. I do not want to depend on it, but I have tried every psychiatric medications there is during my years... None of them helped one bit. I had no idea that what I am taking would work either, I stumbled upon it by accident. Again, I wish I did not need this, but I am afraid I will die taking it unless they find a proper treatment or cure for what I have. But yeah... it sucks. I could talk about it more, like how I cannot even get out of bed and do my damn job without it and such, but welp.
I switched to shatter because it was much cheaper at the quantities I was doing. Then one day I was disgusted by the whole situation and went back to flower. I didn't like the idea of needing to use a blow torch to smoke shatter out of a crack pipe. Too many real life responsibilities and just getting too old for that.
There was an article this past week in the nytimes about this where a young woman was experiencing this. The diagnosis was "Cannabis hyperemesis." The article is here if you are interested:
I would not have been able to quit without the antacids. I think it is a mistake to take them continuously though. They are supposed to be taken two weeks on, two weeks off. Don't try to quit the weed until you start on the two weeks on cycle, then take them continuously while you get over the weed. Take all the hot baths you need.
Why are you still smoking concentrates? Switch back to flower. Then slowly get flower with lower thc percentages. I have never been addicted to anything so its hard for me to relate so I dont want to cast negativity your way but friend if something is hospitalizing you go see an addiction specialist yesterday. Replace the addiction with something else that makes you feel good, start running or going to the gym. Good Luck!
OP here on a different throwaway (because I already killed the session from yesterday). To be honest, I had to step away because of your comment.
It is incredibly frustrating that every single time I've shared the situation in, some jerk chimes in with their preconceptions, often without even reading the information put in front of them.
For instance my last trip to the E.R was the first in a few months. During triage the nurse confirms their existing records that Droperidol is the only medication I'm known to have a negative reaction to -- something that is documented, because multiple times in the same E.R, Droperidol has caused every muscle in my body to go twitchy. My chart indicates the Ativan/Reglan/Pepcid cocktail consistently works. P.A. comes into the room, first thing he asks is why I'm still smoking cannabis. He follows that up with orders for fluids and... Droperidol. Tells me he doesn't want to go the Ativan route because it can be habit forming and I'm already an addict. I spend the next couple hours twitching in addition to puking, until shift change, when the doctor who took over finally hit me with the right set of meds.
And yes, I've been trying to get the mental health assistance I need. Unfortunately it is spectacularly difficult to find help unless you're either rich or destitute.
Friend if my relatively harmless comment is triggering you to the point you are deleting accounts you should really not be participating in discussion forums on the internet. I hope you remove yourself from situations that upset you and focus on getting well. All the best and I actually really mean this as 1 human to another; I'm sorry you are going through what you are going through and I sincerely hope you get better.
Maybe I am off, but when drawing from my 25 years of consumption and trying most of variants - outdoor, indoor, low potency, extreme dutch ones and everything in between, local hash in morocco, india and nepal, homemade milk, cookies, vaping and oil vaping; eating and oil vaping are most potent to me, joint least potent and I avoid them if possible.
I don't like eating due to very long ramp up and it last for too long for casual evening, it may be great summer weekend festival item.
What I want to say - even most potent oil vapes regardless of sativa/indica/cbd mix, it was just about dosage. 1 hit was a pleasant light trip, 2 was a nice strong one, 3 really strong but manageable for simple stuff. I once had 6 draws while walking in village & forest - I really went far away form this reality, hypnotizing street lights, dancing on empty streets. Couldn't trust myself which normally never ever happens on weed. It ended up OK somehow but oh boy beware.
If one doesn't have any self control, it may cause issue - till it hits you fully (which is cca 5 mins with vape oil, unlike ie joint/pipe which is almost immediate), you may have already taken too much. But that would be the problem with hard alcohol too, there its more like 30 mins and we all have seen enough shitfaced folks in our lives who took too many shots too fast.
So education, explanation - potency, indica/sativa mixing, literally learning consumption of cannabis and products. Its not complex but it ain't primitive linear alcohol 'high' (or more like low) regardless of type of drink.
I still consider oil vapes the best product for me, chirurgically precise amount of high, very convenient, and very reproducible once you are familiar with given strain.
> But that would be the problem with hard alcohol too, there its more like 30 mins and we all have seen enough shitfaced folks in our lives who took too many shots too fast.
Yeah, but at least their body will jolt them into stopping. The absolute worst vommiting I had in my life was thanks to alcohol. Often after a night of getting wasted I don't want to touch alcohol again for a while.
While I'm not proposing "doing nothing" about this problem, how much of this is likely to be a "hangover" from prohibition. Based on absolutely no data whatsoever, my instinct would be that demand for high-THC/low-CBD products would decrease as access to cannabis becomes less novel.
Same with nicotine vape pens, 35-50mg salt ones have a comparable dosage to cigarettes (and are pretty gross) but it's easy to slowly move down to 5mg.
This was impossible before with just cigarettes [1], which only had a 'lite' option which I doubt had any less nicotine. The only option was to quit. Weening off via 5mg is way easier.
[1] Besides maybe the nicotine gum which is even grosser
Funnily enough, a law in Germany just went into effect today that makes it far cheaper (assuming you vape less with more nicotine, certainly holds true for me, I’m on 0mg nowadays) to vape with a lot of nicotine. The law is essentially a tax per ml. But doesn’t care what ml, pure propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine, flavor concentrates, nicotine, whatever, as long as the intended use is for vaping.
I'm not sure where you're getting those numbers from. The vape shop near me sells nicotine salts in 25mg/ml to 50mg/ml ranges, which roughly translates to 2.5% and 5% strength. I've never seen something so low as 5mg/ml.
Interesting, I'm used to the US market. Back when I was a regular user (as opposed to sometimes-caving-and-buying-a-dispo quitter), salts were usually 25 and 50, with lower strengths provided by freebase nicotine juices. I think the last freebase juice I bought was a 3 or 6mg, but those were less common.
Disposables are usually 5% salts over here, afaik.
Being too high can be really uncomfortable for a lot of people. Some strains produce more unpleasant side effects than others, as well (although people will often react very differently to the same thing, of course). I didn't believe there was any such thing as weed I wouldn't like before I gained legal access. Now I know better.
Perhaps there's been resistance to talking about this much because it's a new freedom and consumers are afraid too much criticism could lead to that freedom being yanked back away. However, I have noticed more conversation about finding the right level of CBD... so I think your instinct may not be far off.
My intuition is similar, especially as older and less "drug oriented" users continue to enter the market. In Massachusetts, a lot of dispensaries show the THC level, and I usually just buy the one with the lowest content.
> without any clear guidelines or regulations from government officials, the cannabis industry has taken a page from the tobacco and alcohol industries’ play book and developed strains of marijuana and concentrated marijuana products with much higher concentrations of THC, the psychoactive component that causes addiction. The more potent a drug is, the stronger the possibility of addiction and the more likely the person will continue to purchase and use the product.
Doesn't seem like there's any incentive to reduce potency.
I opened with "I'm not proposing doing nothing" - I do think measures to remediate this problem in the short term are a good idea, in line with the fears outlined in your article.
Nothing in your article tackles my main point though?
> the cannabis industry has taken a page from the tobacco and alcohol industries’ play book
As a slightly off-topic aside: tobacco I'm less familiar with (I wasn't aware of efforts by the industry to grow strains of the plants with higher nicotine content but it seems unsurprising), but including alcohol here is bizarre. Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process. And even then, maybe they're talking about distillation, but that process predates the industrial revolution by 100s maybe 1000s of years.
Tbh this throwaway statement kinda makes me question the article...
> Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process.
Ethanol is naturally occurring.
That said, I agree that including alcohol here is bizarre. As far as I can tell there has never been a monotonic increase in ABV; instead, there is a large selection ranging from high alcohol content to even alcohol-free (which is so unpopular in the US as to be barely worth mentioning, but quite popular in Germany, and I'm now seeing large and even regional breweries in the US produce AF versions of their most popular beers).
> Unless they're talking about distillation
Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process, so I'm not sure what difference you're alluding to here.
> Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process
How do you define “most”? - but I’m pretty sure non-distilled/non-fortified alcoholic beverages (wine/beer/etc) make up more of the alcoholic beverage market (whether in litres or dollars) than distilled/fortified beverages. I think they also are a lot more if you were to count SKUs (number of varieties of non-fortified wines/beers/etc > spirits/liqueurs/fortified wines/etc)
My brain organizes things as "beer, wine, and alcohol (aka spirits)" as opposed to "alcohol, including beer and wine". And an "alcoholic beverage" is just either a spirit alone or a spirit mixed with something.
Probably because that's how my state organizes the stores (with wine/alcohol in separate stores from beer, so if you say "we need to buy beer" that means going to a different place than "we need to by alcohol").
“Liquor” has two senses - a narrow sense in which it refers specifically to beverages produced by distillation, and a broader sense in which it refers to alcoholic beverages in general, including wine and beer. The narrow sense is stronger in the US (and I think also Canada?), whereas the broader sense is stronger in the UK and Australia (and I would assume Ireland and New Zealand too)
Yep, liqueur is cutesy syrupy stuff made in european monasteries or whatever, typically around 40 proof. Liquor (as in "corn likker") is the stuff for getting messed up fast, typically at least 80 proof.
> Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process, so I'm not sure what difference you're alluding to here.
Most alcoholic beverages (beers, wines) are not distilled - distillation is typically only used to take a drink above the 20-30% ABV mark (spirit / liquor).
> Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process
Fermentation is a natural process. Alcohol naturally occurs in overripe fruits. Humans first discovered it by accident - fruit juices or grain-water mixtures left out would become alcoholic. In fact, non-fresh non-alcoholic fruit juice only became a product in modern times, because it was only in the modern period we developed the technology to stop the natural process of fermentation.
That said, natural fermentation (without distillation) can only get you up to 18% ABV - beyond that, it poisons the yeast and they stop producing alcohol. To go higher you need distillation/fortification.
I suspect it's a reference to the shift in preference for hard liquor over beer that happened in the US as a result of prohibition, liquor being easier to smuggle due to lower volumes. That preference persisted for some decades after prohibition ended, but arguably has turned around by now.
In that case, that would reinforce my instinct. There's certainly a recent cocktail boom, and there was a brief trend of straight vodka being popular with girls my age when I was in college, but these are passing market phases, not something systemic in the industry. By-and-large ~5% beers and ~12% wines are the popular choice today.
It seems like the biggest growth in the industry is in hard seltzers/alcopops, which range from 4-12%, but mostly on the lower end. So it does seem like in general there's a preference for strengths in a range of beer - craft beer - wine.
Speaking of trends, there's currently a trend in beer world where I am in "low-ABV" and "0.0" products. Not sure if it'll be lasting, but I guess that along with the emergence of some things like 0% wines and even "spirits" (distilled botanical infusions) is further anecdata.
Probably one of the best trends towards weight loss in the general public. Beer is often an underrated contributor to weight gain with all of the social aspects.
I think national regulation around standard strength, doses, labeling, etc. could help here in a way that legalization (or decriminalization) at a smaller level can't.
Not sure what form you buy your weed in, but typically reducing the dose is not as straightforward as it would be with, e.g. a powdered or liquid product.
> national regulation [...] could help here in a way that legalization [...] can't.
I'm not sure I follow - are you proposing regulation in addition to legalization, or instead of? I don't really understand how the latter would work (or why they would/should be mutually exclusive) but maybe I'm just misinterpreting?
I‘m not proposing laws that forbid high THC products. But there needs to be advertising. People understand that downing a bottle of vodka can mail or kill.
I would absolutely propose laws to regulate THC. One of the big advantages of legalisation is the ability to apply targeted & graduated rules to products.
You can still find lower THC cannabis at any dispensary. Most carry from 10 to 30%. Most also carry CBD flower and very low dose edibles.
I also don’t understand this argument because you can just take 1 hit and be done. No one is forcing you to finish a whole joint. Should liquor be outlawed because it is stronger than beer?
> I also don’t understand this argument because you can just take 1 hit and be done.
The increased THC concentration compared to other psychoactive chemicals seems to produce more paranoia and other negative effects in some people, so it's not just a strength issue. The effect is different if the proportion of THC to CBD increases.
It's also easier to get more THC than you intended if you're consuming stronger stuff.
> Should liquor be outlawed because it is stronger than beer?
If spirits are legal then people should at least have the choice of drinking beer.
It's really hard to dose "1 hit". It's not like a shot of liquor. And inexperienced users are not experts at hitting pipes or vapes or joints, so that "1 hit" becomes even trickier. And if you fuck up, whoops, now you're uncomfortably high for several hours!
Better to have a much wider variety of potencies available, like we have with alcohol. Especially for the casual users who have been ignored by the market because traditional dealers get most of their money from heavy users, and heavy users want the chronic.
To that second point, edibles are as easy to very specifically dose as your cooking process and ability to follow a recipe allow. Legalization makes it much easier for industrial kitchens with strict quality control to be involved. In the analogy to alcohol there's a huge quality control issue in moonshine, and huge benefits to the law abiding industrial distillers.
I've sometimes wondered if legalizing and/or regulating edibles and smoked products separately should be done with THC. No one expects alcohol and tobacco to follow the same rules. It could prevent some issues for casual users.
To be fair, in regions that have legalized it the dispensaries seem to have voluntarily organized around the idea naturally anyway: dispensaries I've been to generally are good at explaining the relative safety of edibles to potential casual users and edibles seem to make up a larger portion of their business in general.
Sure, that is something you can say to an experienced marijuana user, but the casual dude who hasn't smoked weed since college and just wants to smoke a joint... that dude just wants to smoke a joint! There is no need for scales or precision to be involved. All that is needed is some low-to-moderate-potency weed, hopefully with some CBD content.
"Use a good vaporizer or a cheap glass pipe."
You do realize that a lot of people don't really know how to use those devices, right?
Why anyone would argue against more variety of weed with better labelling is way beyond my comprehension.
So... let them do it. Once. Let us hope they will learn after their uncomfortable high. That might actually deter them from weed. It did work for me. Is it not how both kids and adults learn? If they cannot learn from other people's experiences that is.
It does not take a rocket scientists to use those devices, but if the average people is really that dumb, then we should seriously take control of their lives if we want them to be contributing to society (because that's what seems to matter the most, right?).
Plus I doubt that many, THAT dumb people who have not touched weed would start doing it out of nowhere.
No, I disagree immensely and I will explain why. I want 2-5% of THC. A joint should be like drinking a single beer to be perfect in my opinion. If you sit down to relax in the evening you don‘t drown a single shot. The joy is in the process and to feel a light buzz
Can you imagine how many problems would be solved if people could stop after 1? But you are fighting evolution, and the compulsion for more is extremely strong in myriad areas.
I think legalisation could help in this regard as long as companies are required to measure/label products appropriately. Similar to how the most popular alcohols during prohibition were spirits, whereas now there's a massive range of drinks at pretty much any alcoholic percentage you want
Do weed shops in legal states not have "light" options? Seems weird if they didn't, but I guess that might be a side effect of recent legalization. That the heavy stuff sells better to consumers who used to take whatever they could find back in the black market days.
Anyways, I'm asking because I unfortunately live in a state where it's still illegal.
They do, and their selection is constantly growing.
Shortly after it became legal (speaking for WA only here), it felt like every manufacturer chased the highest THC first.
Many years after, we now have the other side gaining a large presence. All sorts of things from high thc to 50/50 blend thc/cbd to high cbd/almost no thc concentrates. I can confirm that it isn't just a marketing bs, tried one of those low thc/high cbd carts before, and it didnt give me the feeling of high almost at all, even after about 10 hits (normally, 1-2 hits of a typical thc cart is plenty enough for me to feel it strongly and be done).
Low thc stuff is getting very high presence/prevalence among users and in advertising as well, it isnt reserved for the backshelf as "oh yeah, if regular stuff is too strong for you, we got a shelf in the back just for lighter stuff." It is sold and presented (in marketing and among customers) equivalently to how beers are sold in terms of varying percentages. Some like 4-5% alcohol, some like 7-8%, others prefer imperial versions (typically 9-11%), etc, but there is no "this is the one type of beer for everyone, the rest is just weaker/stronger alternatives."
However, I've only noticed this type of a push for promotion and popularity gain of less-thc-strong oils at dispensaries start gaining momentum only since around 2019. However, that area has been growing heavily and feels larger than ever now, so I can only see it gaining more footing in the future.
The only solution I have found is to buy gummies and cut them up into smaller doses. I’ve found a local company that does a hybrid (sativa/indica) gummy and I vastly prefer them to the unspecified gummies which tend to be stronger than I am looking for.
I’m tempted to get seeds for a low THC strain but I’m not such a connoisseur as to make that a priority.
Most places in Massachusetts sell a pretty wide variety of oil-based tinctures that you can precisely meter out (5 - 10mg/ml, with a little dropper). Often there are varieties with high ratios of CBD:THC as well, like 1:1 and 10:1. Easier than cutting up a gummy.
Most California dispensaries I have been to absolutely have low dosage 5mg options, they also stock 100mg options, but stores listen to the market and stock based on what they can get and what people want.
It was very typical to see older folks and very light smokers to request the smaller dosages. They also seemed to trend towards vapes in the younger lighter smokers because the dosage can be fairly small.
Yeah, I've bought weed in Cali once, didn't have any problem at all finding CBD strains which are low THC (most would consider it trace amounts). Finding a strain with 0 THC (since I'm pretty sensitive and don't enjoy THC at all) is a bit harder.
The good news is, since 0 THC strains are legal everywhere in the US, you can just buy them online.
They don't show up in dispensaries much, because why go through all the hassle to meet regulations on a product which doesn't have to meet those regulations, unless they're being sold at a dispensary?
Yeah, that would definitely be difficult, as far as I saw you could get CBD powder at various places if you wanted to just add a little to a drink or do a dab.
I would love a light option but with the people I know I am in the minority. Most people I know are so use to 20%+ THC strains that they would never want something less.
Even before my state legalized, I hadn't run into anything besides high grade strains in years. I imagine it would be really hard to find low quality weed anywhere in the US at this point.
Is it illegal to grow your own? It's the easiest way to get something low THC. Hell, you can even smoke (or better, use a dry herb vape) the leaves of any plant if the buds are too strong - from my experience, they have a more relaxing effect.
Depends on the state, even among those where weed is legal. WA has a pretty terrible duality - buying is very easy, and i like how that part was handled. Growing your own recreationally (i.e., not as a registered producer/manufacturer)? Not allowed at all, unless you are a medical user, and you are limited to only 4 plants.
Yeah I never cared much for weed when it was whatever my college friends were buying in the early 2000s, it made me feel edgy and uncomfortable. I was curious when it started to become legal in the US and realized it was actually just too strong for me back then.
A small amount of some low THC, high CBD product is pleasant without being intoxicating, and so much easier to come by with everything being tested and labelled.
To me it’s comparable to the single after-work beer I have long enjoyed, vs the high grade stuff being more like… an after-work 5 shots of vodka.
Anecdote: I've never seen someone suffer anxiety from an Indica strain, but I have seen plenty of bad trips from Sativa strains.
Medical is legal where I live, and I like both (and hybrids) depending on what I'm doing. In the evening, I would stick to Indicas and Indica-dominant hybrids. Since I work, and I never use while working, I use Sativas far less, but I like them for weekends - walks, chores, etc.. It's a bright feeling and more of a head-high, but under the wrong circumstances, that bright feeling turns dark.
Particularly in the evening, Sativas can make you buzzy and unsettled. My gf thought she hated herbs until she tried Indicas. She knows how and when to use now, so she can enjoy Sativas under the right conditions.
Again, this is just my personal experience, but it tracks with my understanding of the strains, and I hope it's helpful to someone.
>The difference between Indica and Sativa is to a large extent imagined.
Can you elaborate? This is very contrary to my experience.
. . . NM I looked it up and see what you're referring to. I'll have to look into it more, because, again, it doesn't sync with my experience.
>Even if it's not most of the strains you buy today are hybrids.
I've never had an ounce of difficulty finding Indicas or Sativas at dispensaries. Maybe there are more hybrids (never took the time to count the options), but if there are quality options available for all three, I don't see how it matters. And, within hybrids, there are Indica-dominant and Sativa-dominant strains.
>of difficulty finding Indicas or Sativas at dispensaries
Finding things they call Indica or Sativa. Afaik given that there's no objective difference between the two you can call it anything you want.
I'm a relatively inexperienced smoker so take the following with grain of salt but this is what I've noticed.
Since it's a plant there's definitely differences seed to seed, soil to soil, season to season, flower to flower, etc.
Weed these days is so potent small differences in flower smoked add up to large differences in THC/CBD/etc consumed. Like you're not carefully weighing out the amount you put in a bowl. It's done by eye and by volume which both have a large margin of error.
Then there's smoking technique. How you hold the lighter, how you inhale, how much water in the bong, and so on all impact how much smoke is produced and consumed.
Then we're talking about perception. How high you are is really how high you perceive you are. And that can be affected by mood, tiredness, what activity you do after smoking, and so on.
In my experience same flower, same technique, same amount, etc can lead to wildly disparate outcomes. Most of the time it's about the same. But every so often I find myself blasted to the moon or not really feeling much.
But all that said, Sommeliers can repeatedly recognize specific vintages where I can mostly just recognize broad categories. Maybe there's weed sommeliers out there that can do the same.
I can't tell the difference between the types and have had anxiety with weed labeled as both. Individual strain and thc, cbd and other canibinoid percentages have a bigger effect then anything ime
Yes, there is something to be said about at least being more explicit on warning people about the dangers of consuming high % THC products.
An industry that can profit off addiction is being observed drastically increasing the level of an addictive substance in their product. You expect consumers to be perfectly informed. I don't. Thus, it is reasonable to discuss whether an at what threshold a product should be labelled as higher-risk. If the behavior of an industry seems malicious enough and its public health impact adverse enough, regulation is necessary.
Hopefully the canabis producers will see the low (by todays standards) THC level weed as having its own niche and market it accordingly. Like 'light beer'.
You said it was wrong. I'm trying to understand why. Are you saying that smoking joints is potentially more harmful than using a bong? I don't understand.
Everything is potentially harmful.
Not having a perfect diet, drinking a couple beers, not having 8 hours of sleep a night. Life is short, weed is generally not harmful, if you want to occasionally smoke a joint, let them smoke a joint.
I live in a state where marijuana is legal and recently tried it again for the first time in over a decade. I strolled into a recreational store and asked for a recommendation, specifically requesting a flower with a low THC concentration. They ended up giving me something ("Biker Kush") that had 28% THC, which I had only noticed on the packaging after I left the store. Gee, thanks. Anyway, then I bought supplies to make one marijuana cigarette, sometimes also called a "joint." I did not want to get too high, so I smoked one hit at a time, putting the joint out for breaks of twenty to thirty minutes between attempts. After around four of those hits spread over two hours, I did not really feel anything.
The next day, I bought a one-hit dry herb vaporizer, to be heated with a butane torch. I wanted to feel "high," and the joint had not worked. I used the same approach of waiting twenty to thirty minutes between hits with the vaporizer. In most of these hit attempts, the marijuana ended up combusting instead of vaporizing, as I had heated it up too much. For the first three hits, I did not really feel anything. However, the fourth hit was very rough, burning my throat, and sent me into a coughing fit.
Over a period of about fifteen minutes, the effect began to take hold. I decided to take a shower, and I started freaking out about halfway through, calling out to my wife. I thought I was having a stroke and suddenly felt like I did not have control over my body. I went up to bed and lied down for a long time, where my mind was racing with obsessive, intrusive thoughts. It felt like I was not the person controlling my actions or my thoughts. The feeling that I would be stuck like this forever - that I had lost my mind and entered some state of irreversible psychosis - persisted for at least an hour while I desperately tried to relax myself. After some amount of time, I got out of bed and threw up in the sink and the toilet, then went back to lie down. The entire night, I felt unable to express what I was thinking, but it was filled with the greatest worry that I have ever experienced. (I say this as someone who had actually experienced a couple panic attacks over a decade ago.)
The next day, when I woke up, the effects had subsided, but I was still left with a feeling that I was milliseconds behind the present moment. The worry that I would never feel normal again continued even after the high had diminished. It's a very difficult feeling to explain in hindsight, but after a bit of research, I think I experienced what's called "derealization." This continued into the rest of the day and a bit into the next, and it was a really scary situation for me, since I feel like I always need some amount of control over my mind. (Alcohol has never made me feel this way, though.)
Anyway, the derealization effects were gone after two days, and now, I'm afraid to try marijuana again. I would really like to enjoy the pleasant feelings reported with its use, but I'm worried that my personality is such that I just can't lose control over whatever part of my brain is affected by THC. But I also partly blame the salesperson who sold me something with such a high THC concentration, when I specifically requested something with a low concentration.
That's pretty unfortunate, sorry that happened. I smoke flower relatively often (far less than many), twice a week for the last 3 years (date nights with my wife) and have never experienced anything like that. I have on occasion gotten into a negative thought spiral where I start to obsess on some of my perceived poor choices in life but those generally last less than 20 minutes. Generally I start to worry that I don't give my kids enough attention and resolve to do so. In reality though I consider myself a pretty good parent. Instances of this are very rare maybe once every 20 times I smoke and even then they make up only a small portion of the overall period. They are not intense and no wear near panic level, just reflective.
Unscientifically I would recommend maybe next time smoking with someone else, and getting a lower % thc, try for a hybrid strain, a mix of Sativa and Indica. If you go on the website of the dispensary it will list the details. Don't over complicate it, just choose something in the 15% range if available. Then just sit down and watch a comedy or something. Have some snacks available. Only take a couple hits and call it a day. The next week try 3 etc. Its cumulative and can sneak up on you.
Thank you for the suggestions! If I do try again, I will definitely try a flower with the lowest THC concentration available. I certainly don't want to go above 15% after the recent experience. I was reading that THC concentrations in the sixties were around 3%, but I can't find any products at my local dispensary with concentrations less than 14% (!). I'm also considering dividing edibles into very small proportions and gradually increasing the dose each week until I feel something.
It just seems like a surprisingly tricky thing for me to figure out. Another recurring thought I had during the experience is that most people don't feel this way after smoking and that there must be something wrong with me. Maybe that's true, I don't know.
Why not try to buy some low potency stuff elsewhere? Joint are not good for dosing, since content is not spread evenly. I would recommend pipe for just weed. Or vape oil if you can get hold of it and take just a small hit. Edible effects depends on your stomach so that's not the best for dosing neither.
20-30 mins between hits is too much, if you don't feel anything after 5, max 10 minutes it won't come. You describe it like that, so it contradicts 25 years of my experience though...
It may be true that weed won't be the best for you, depends. I had this experience with few people, it was all just in their head, too much anxiety and fear but that's enough to ruin any trip, anytime. But I would give it another (different) chance before you give up on it completely.
If you have friend who is doing it and you feel comfortable around them, try it with him/her. They can 'guide' you and calm you down if required. Remember, sugar will take trip down if needed (plus it tastes amazing when high). Or most junk food like hamburgers, pizza etc., also an experience above any Michelin * restaurant when sober.
I'm not even sure where I can buy low-potency stuff. Looking online, the lowest at the dispensary where I bought the first thing is around 14%. Sixties THC concentrations were reported to be around 3%. What I'd really like to do is to try 1%, increase to 2%, etc., until I find something that works for me.
Yeah, I know thirty minutes is too long between hits, but I was trying to be as conservative as possible about it. That's why I'm kind of upset that, even being as careful as I was, I still ended up freaking out.
I can't think of anyone I'd feel comfortable smoking with. My wife was sober the entire time, thankfully, and helped a lot. She tried to guide me out of the negativity, but I ended up just feeling like I was too afraid to tell her she wasn't really helping. I did read about the sugar thing beforehand, but in the moment, eating was the last thing I was thinking about. A glass of juice might have helped, in hindsight.
You might be best off with edibles. There you can break down the dose and try incrementally higher doses. I find it's much easier to microdose with them
> The feeling that I would be stuck like this forever - that I had lost my mind and entered some state of irreversible psychosis - persisted for at least an hour while I desperately tried to relax myself.
Prototypical bad trip.
Unless you are a mutant or were not inhaling at all you were certainly ingesting high amounts of THC and were getting higher while not subjectively realizing it. By the 4th hit you were far gone.
Would be like being annoyed that the world was spinning after you drink a 5th of vodka...
But how does such a dramatic change happen when waiting twenty minutes between hits? My wife was also an objective observer of my behavior in between hits and noticed no changes between the first three. The experience after the fourth was extremely different - more than I think one hit could possibly provide. My understanding is that joints and one-hit vaporizers are the best option to "control" how much you are ingesting. My experience, though, is that it did not provide a good amount of control. When I was not accidentally combusting the cannabis, I was unsure if I was inhaling anything from what was supposed to be the "vaporized" amount. Maybe it's because of my lack of consistent and good heating and inhaling practices.
>more than I think one hit could possibly provide.
Most likely right about that.
I know its a very individual experience for people so it seems like you have a higher threshold for "feeling high" and you blew right past it before you noticed. Vaping plant matter is typically a more concentrated way to ingest. If anything I'd try combusting small amounts and gauging your reaction that way. However I know people that get anxious or have panicked previously are more inclined to do so again, you get scared of having a similar experience and prime yourself to do just that.
My understanding is that lungs are an extremely inefficient way to get chemicals other than oxygen into the bloodstream (by specialization of what the lungs are intended to do). Twenty minutes may not be enough time for your lungs. Anecdotally I've known people that don't get high until two hours after their first hit.
Personally, I prefer the efficiency of the stomach and digestion system myself. It seems much more reliable.
Your exact experience is similar to mine. I also worried that I broke my mind and would now suffer from psychosis. Turns out, I had just consumed incredibly potent weed, like you did.
I think experienced users know how much they can smoke and are equipped to make rational decisions. I buy weed in the 15%-19% thc range. I know if I share a bowl with my wife then after that bowl we are good for whatever we want to do that night as long as we are home. I smoke far less if I am leaving the house and interacting with people, then I limit it to 2 hits off the one hitter. This is because of experience though, I know my limits and what I am attempting to accomplish. The issue is individuals who equate weed with a harmless drug. It is harmless in that you are virtually guaranteed not to die from it but if you over do it things can be rough. Never understood why people feel the need to start with 3 or 4 hits of something they have never tried before. Take a hit, relax. See how you do. If its your first time, then that's it, next time depending on your experience try 2 hits. No need to start at maximum. You need the slow increases over days to understand your limits, experience comes with time. Its like trying alcohol for the first time, taking a shot of everclear and 5 minutes later deciding it had no effect so you take another shot. Its not a good idea.
I would recommend to consume only low THC + high CBD strains.(1)
For me the difference of these strains to some of the modern high THC + low CBD ones is comparable to drinking a good glass of wine versus chugging down some highly potent moonshine.
Some moderns strains are completely overbred and dangerous to some people in my experience.(2)
Knowing the Germans, I‘m optimistic, they‘ll regulate it properly, so that everything you will be able to buy legally, should be quite safe.
Higher concentrations allow people to use less material. That higher concentrations cause harm is not clearly established. There are always people who will manage to misuse and hurt themselves with anything, even Hacker News.
There are, they are called “landraces”, but you have the problem of replicating the original genetics with a dwindling / deteriorating supply of old seeds. Or if it’s not that, trusting that what you are buying is actually what it advertised.
There's ditchweed everywhere almost. It's been influenced by domesticated varieties but after a couple years a patch will be pretty well back to "landrace" and potency will depend on how much predation and insect load it gets.
Strain called Durban Poison is supposed to be one, relatively common to find in dispensaries. I actually got some yesterday so I know what I am doing Saturday night :)
I was able to start buying lower-potency weed in California as soon as recreational stores became established. Now, I'm waiting around for the same in NY and buying weed that is way too strong in the meantime. A joint as 10-15% THC with some CBD is an entirely different experience than the 25% and up THC that most dealers sell (and that's usually all they sell).
> I just wish that we would take measures to avoid the ever increasing levels of THC dosage in weed to insane levels, like you see in the US or California specifically.
The trick is to educate consumers. And yes today's pot is way stronger than what people used to smoke back in the 80s, but people also don't smoke a handful of joints but one or two... for me, that argument is a bit of a scapegoat.
This is an opinion piece written by a Psychiatrist. Hardly conclusive or convincing. Also focuses on teen use so not sure it has much relevance for the vast majority of users in Legal jurisdictions.
My aunt made her own hash oil (legally, from NL). It was for the CBD, her husband (my uncle) had cancer. She grew her own. This way, it is more or less standardized.
Standardization is a problem with decriminalized and illegal drugs.
How does this apply with edibles or oils? I assume since most of those are sold with a published THC level, there's an incentive to produce stronger plant? Less plant for more edible/oil/whatever?
Black markets that are already setup take a bit to knock down, and even just taxes can keep them running for years (there's a moderately strong black market for cigarettes, for example).
For things that are NOT in the process of being banned entirely, sin taxes may do more harm than good.
It does take some effort to knock down, but I think the failed war on drugs will mean that there will be little to no effort to knock anything down and therefore we will have the worst of both worlds.
If you legalize it, you can regulate the THC content by legalizing only weed with a maximum THC concentration, and/or by taxing it based on THC levels.
I remember this happening even during the mid-1990s while I was at university. At the beginning there would be a lot more giggling after smoking, but as things like skunk started replacing the milder stuff it evolved into a more stupefied feeling. I stopped smoking weed soon afterwards as I couldn't seem to get hold of the lighter strains and hated the feeling of the stronger ones.
[Edited to remove a badly-worded piece of anecdata that probably wasn't pertinent].
I did not intend to ask a question. I know for sure that a lot of potheads really want to push their recreational drug as a miracle do all drug, while ignoring all the negative effects.
The negative effects are well documented science. The positive effects are all vaporous claims from questionable studies.
Really goes to show the objectivity of HN, that I get downvoted for this.
You are getting downvoted for your dogmatic and set in your ways views. HN is a place for curiosity and your responses are not increasing curiosity they are closing it off.
It's worth noting that almost all medicinal drugs have negative effects. Certainly there are people who promote cannabis as a cure-all, and that's pretty ridiculous. But it's equally ridiculous to assume that it has no medicinal uses. You even mention one (pain relief) in your comment!
If you are operating from a place of fact and not opinion, you can also express that by sharing the evidence. Otherwise it's just empty claims on empty claims.
If you want to challenge an empty claim, do it right. Or, don't be a jerk. Either way.
I think you're underestimating the pain relief thing. I know multiple people who never touched the stuff recreationally, developed a chronic pain condition (arthritis, in one example), and now swear by it. The only alternatives with similar effectiveness are opioids, which are arguably even more harmful.
I don't touch it myself, but even as an independent observer the benefits there are clear.
You also misread. The other stuff is the racist part. This part, "rising potency", is just a predictable effect of prohibition and "change of literally anything" causes Fear in the noobs.
That could be the an explanation for only having high potency weed in areas where it's prohibited, but it's equally available here in Canada where it's legal. I think people just like it.
With respect, it sounds like you're having a bad day, and it's coming over as if you want a fight. I agree with you that prohibition causes all kinds of undesirable effects - including yet another route for racism to express itself - but you need to use more temperate language if you want a substantive discussion.
I don't think that makes sense? What are you attempting to communicate?
I'm saying that high potency products are still sold in legalized areas as there's demand for it.
I remember having issues years ago finding low but not non-zero THC products on the government website. I had to get 17% which is still high. Things may be different now.
In South Africa Cannabis has been legal for personal use in "places where you have an expectation of privacy" (but selling is still illegal) for several years now. So far the world has not ended, the country doesn't sit around stoned all day and we're not all hooked on Heroin.
There's talk of introducing legislation to restrict quantities (government has plenty of securicrat control freaks), but since that violates the very principles which underpinned the Constitutional Court's overturning the legislation that made weed illegal in the first place, I can't see it going very far.
Wording: Germany will not legalise Cannabis. Maybe it will be decriminalized, but there is basically no chance of legalisation (too complex/expensive of a process).
I have no reason to trust the SPD that they will deliver on this, they are the infamous poster child for betrayal. They are the kind of party that would sell their entire voting base if it served the acting politicians individual careers.
If they will do it, then it will be leveraged to the max, right before the next critical election.
> Wording: Germany will not legalise Cannabis. Maybe it will be decriminalized, but there is basically no chance of legalisation (too complex/expensive of a process).
I was told so from a credible source a couple years ago. What I can recall: legalisation would entail complex legal work, to a degree where that option is essentially not on the table. This is supported by the fact that "Legalisierung" is not part of the political language wrt topic, instead they refer to "Kontrollierte Abgabe" (~'controlled distribution').
> I was told so from a credible source a couple years ago
I'm not sure if you have noticed it but there where elections last year and the new coalition that formed has the legalization of cannabis as one of its official goals. Your "credible sources" might have been right a few years ago, but the political landscape has changed.
> This is supported by the fact that "Legalisierung" is not part of the political language wrt topic
Of course it is. The expert consolidation which is part of the creation of new law has just concluded. Now the federal ministry of health will create a draft law and publish it by the end of the year.
Trouble is, nobody could bring the topic up right now without burning their career. Between Corona and Ukraine, trying to allocate time for the cannabis legalisation debate would simply be political suicide. And those topics will probably be present until (at least shortly before) the next election, which might see the rise of the CDU again, which will be the end of any cannabis debate whatsoever.
That is what a friend of mine working in the Bundestag said.
"Controlled distribution" is legalization. Nobody says that Utah has "decriminalized but not legalized" liquor even though it can only be bought in state run stores.
Source: am German, am pissed off beyond belief about a lot of things in politics, especially the lack of will to just move forward and do something instead of debating all day.
could be some trauma leftover from a previous time they just moved forward with political goals without fully understanding them.
That said, I am rooting for Germany. It is a relatively young nation overall, and has so many things going for it. I think it has potential to become the biggest European superpower over the next 20 years
The entire german government is terminally defeatist. They've been dragging their feet on digitalization for so long, they've been dragging their feet on accessible internet for so long they've been dragging their feet on transport infrastructure, they've been dragging their feet basically everything for ages. You go to Eastern Europe and wonder how things seem to be progressing much faster there.
> You go to Eastern Europe and wonder how things seem to be progressing much faster there.
Is there a kind of fetish among germans to demonise east europe? Perhaps the recovery process after 45 years of communism is slow and takes time. And perhaps east europeans arent as inferior are a certain german ideology claims they are? Anyway pathetic analogy.
Agreed on the idiocy of the SPD ("wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten")... but this time, the Justice Ministry belongs to the FDP. They have alienated an awful lot of voters with their effective denial of reasonable covid measures, they'd be completely done for if they would not manage to get cannabis legal-ish enough that people can buy cannabis products in stores and smoke on the streets without fearing arrest.
We have elections in Bavaria and Hessen in 2023, the FDP will need at least something to show off, and cannabis is the easiest thing to pass, particularly as the Greens and parts of the SPD have long fought for it.
advocatus diaboli: the FDP has a long track record of advocating for legalisation and then voting against it or abstain in parliamentary elections. Their core clientel are small business owners and (other) anti-regulation folk, I strongly doubt that they lose big margins of voters due to their covid policy, maybe even the opposite is the case.
Point being: if the FDP is the reason to have faith in this, I'm not feeling much more confident than before.
LOL, they lost massively in all elections since the Bundestagswahl - mostly because of their disastrous performance during covid, with NRW's education minister Gebauer being the most obvious example. They may have gained some people from the AfD, but lost so much more instead.
Basically the FDP is now learning the hard way what Söder's CSU learned after the clusterfuck in the 2018 Bavarian elections: copying the far-right and ultra-libertarian demands may earn you some votes from there, but alienate so much more of the moderate vote that it can even threaten your existence.
Germany is not the US - ultra-libertarian attitudes may give you applause from Twitter crowds but not from voters.
> and "reasonable measures" - what a funny moment to write that nonsense.
The FDP vetoed anything to reasonably deal with the pandemic - they were the reason tests were cut down, they are even opposed to mask mandates, and forget about a vaccination mandate.
Yes, but... Basically other parties aren't that different. In the end it doesn't matter which color of the rainbow, or black, is going to fuck the people.
The SPD brands itself as social, pro worker, peaceful, pragmatic and economically-focused all at the same time. They woo young voters, while their core clientel is >65. They actively make policy that works against the youth (serving their main voters, which are old), while presenting themselves as the good guys to the youth.
From my point of view, this makes them pure evil, much more so than the other parties. Yes, all the parties play the power game, but not all of them have the insane level of audacity that the SPD demonstrates again and again, in every election since I'm old enough to pay attention.
I know few young people who take them that seriously. My sentiment of them being a "CDU lite" (much more conservative and much less social than they act, generally not very progressive) appears to be widely shared.
In their defense: They are the lesser evil. Which seems to basically be all that they run on nowadays (it's how Scholz became chancellor).
Which anti-youth policies do you specifically have in mind here? The SPD has done various things which were e.g. actively harmful for workers, but I don't really remember something which could be thought of as against the youth.
> since I'm old enough to pay attention
First of all... Hhhhh I like that!
Yes I agree that the socialists lift themself way higher that they should. I think the age of their politics and voters
is an effect of inheritance over decades. But it's still not a thing only the socialists have. The right wing sort of has
the same. Specially the christians. I wouldn't even say it's a very evil thing. There are young people that are interested
in politics, that's good and important. But it's by far not the most of them. I agree that it's not very smart to pretend
to be a youngster or doing politics for the future generations while not even asking them what they want and need or stepping
aside to let them fix their problems on their own.
And honestly Scholz is very suspect and unsympathetic to me. He seemed wrong when he was major of hamburg and still I don't
trust him a dime. He literally is the result of being the least garbage. At least in what the public can see.
But still I don't see how the others are much different from fooling the people. The christians are corrupt, afd is a nazi
party based on denial. The "democrats" only care about their own wealth. Green has internal issues with their concurring members
and the deep red just burried themselves over the last years and is in huge inner conflicts as well.
None of them has the motivation or will to change. It's just about getting the votes to talk bad about others and don't change
a shit. Would be good to do a 80% flush. Get new and young politicians in the parliament and keep a fifth of the old ones to
show the new ones around and explain how some stuff works.
I could make a very strong similar argument for the Greens. They are basically light-conservatives, but they brand themselves on the left side of the spectrum.
I don't know where you are from Germany but cannabis is pretty much decriminalized in Berlin already for quite some time. People buy/smoke at the streets and police does not mind.
still, you will lose your drivers license. I dont care if it is decriminalized, if i get pulled over and lose my license becuause i used to smoke 4 days ago, theres something wrong. I think this is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome: how to deal with cosumption in regards to roadworthiness
If you refuse, then you under arrest and get driven to the police station where a Amtsarzt(approved police office doctor)
will draw your blood and check if you are roadworthy
The police can do that - however, they need reasonable suspicion for it. I have refused to be tested for alcohol successfully in the past. I didn't drink anything, I just don't like such tests being routinely used when there is no indication that alcohol or drugs were consumed.
I wonder if that only works on checkpoints/ places where masses of vehicle get checked, I don't think it would work if you the only one getting pulled out(atleast ime in Baden-Württemberg), drinking suspicions haven't been more than "have u had smth to drink? "+l and if suspicion is high enough a "where have you been/where you going to ", never breathalyzers
But cannabis, wrong hair style+ couple younger people in car= did u smoke? "No "well we will make sure of that ourself"
friend of mine lost his drivers license in berlin because he drove A FKN BIKE under influence of alcohol (he was still quite in control and did nothing wrong).
>Roadworthiness or streetworthiness is a property or ability of a car, bus, truck or any kind of automobile to be in a suitable operating condition or meeting acceptable standards for safe driving and transport of people, baggage or cargo in roads or streets, being therefore street-legal.
It's crazy we are still having these kind of debates in Europe. 20 years ago most youth around 18/20 thought Cannabis would have already been legalised by now, I don't believe one second that any of the European elected official under 50 never smoked pot. The only possible explanation I see is heavy lobbying from big pharma groups or wine interests.
> In the 2012 EMCDDA Annual report, it is conservatively estimated that cannabis has been used at least once (lifetime prevalence) by around 80.5 million Europeans: almost one in four of all 15- to 64-year-olds.
This matches my personal experience (currently mid 30s in Germany) a lot closer, unless politicans are vastly more likely to smoke pot (or pot smokers vastly more likely to go into politics) I have a hard time imagining your estimate is even close to true.
> The only possible explanation I see is heavy lobbying from big pharma groups or wine interests.
More likely law enforcement.
The criminalization of drugs provides an endless supply of criminals of various levels (from the drug production/distribution itself to weapons and violence used to defend the illegal operation) and thus generates endless amounts of work for all kinds of people involved in law enforcement, from police to prisons to various subcontractors providing goods/services used by the aforementioned entities.
Most of those are not criminals because they want to hurt people or break the law on purpose and thus will no longer be criminals when drugs are legalized (instead of switching to another crime to remain a criminal). Thus, the second it's legalized, the "demand" for law enforcement services drops dramatically, and the crimes that do remain will require more effort to solve than your typical drug case.
As an American, we are well familiar with Big Pharma but the wine lobby? Is that really a thing in Europe? How influential are they around these kinds of policy?
Edit: Sorry for the barrage of questions, you've really piqued my interest.
"Wine growing makes up 15% of France's agricultural revenues while accounting for only 3% of the land area used."
"France consumes over 30 million hectoliters of wine
(14% of global output) every year, making it one of the
world’s largest consumers alongside the United States
and Italy. The average French person consumes 48 liters
of wine a year. (larvf.com)"
"When calculated per German citizen, this corresponds to an average consumption of still and sparkling wines of 23.4 liters annually per person. Of this wine, 8.7 liters are domestic still wines, 11.4 liters are foreign still wines and 3.3 liters are sparkling wines."
They definitely have some weight. For instance in a few countries they fight campaigns like Dry January.
Fun fact: one hundred years ago the wine lobby successfully killed absinthe using bogus scientific claims, and today Pernod Ricard are on their side of the lobbying.
>The only possible explanation I see is heavy lobbying from big pharma groups or wine interests.
What about church ? Last time I checked church was very much against this, and is a far larger political influence than those you mentioned. I could be wrong - but in my peer group the first people I would see vote against weed would be the religious.
there are medications better than cannabis for anxiety and depression. But no one talks about them. They're on the same level as alcohol and weed when it comes to addiction potential and harm. Just make them legal ffs.
I'm really happy I can get them from pharmacies in my country because they're not on a restricted prescription so they just give them to you if you pinky promise that you have/had a prescription. That said, it's technically illegal.
And 2: holy shit eastern European states are dumb. They are missing out on billions in sales and tourism by not legalizing cannabis alone. And now western states will legalize it and reap all the benefits. Watch how eastern states just keep complaining about the brain drain, workforce drain, money problems while doing nothing effective to combat it. Just cheap places to build factories and buy homes for retirement. Great job.
I've become reluctant to do it since many people can't properly administer them and/or fall into addiction. Then again, it happens with cannabis, too.
But eh, whatever, you're responsible for yourself.
For me, gabapentinoids and gabaergics work great. Pregabalin, Gabapentin, Sodium Oxybate are what I have experimented with and found to be good.
Currently on Pregabalin 2x150mg morning+evening. Each dose lasts 6-7 hours (and lingers for much longer, 24-48 hours). I'd recommend starting with 75mg, only on empty stomach. Effects start after 1-2 hours, if you don't feel anything, up the dose. Don't take too much, I tried 300-450mg in one dose, was too stupefying. Quitting is easy by tapering down over a week. May have 1-2 days of bad sleep or insomnia. Minimized anxiety, suicidal thoughts gone, and it even mixes well with most stimulants (for ADHD).
Pretty much the same for Gabapentin, which was great, better than pregabalin (more energy and creativity), until I quit it for ~6 months and now I have some sort of permanent tolerance. It's strange.
Sodium Oxybate (aka GHB!) is also great, easier to get but dosing is difficult, it's short lasting and has a big impact on sleep (forced me into biphasic sleep, which is actually how narcoleptics take it), can't fall asleep without it, but it's great quality sleep after ~3 weeks). Big danger of addiction, even though quitting is easy by tapering down over a week. Basically you need more than 12 hours between after the last dose. Or if you fall into a 24/7 trap (taking it every 1-3 hours), lower the dosage every day. Much harder than it sounds so just never take it more than 3-4 times a day and never more than 3-4 grams at a time.
Would not recommend it unless you're really good at self-restraint and/or quitting drugs. Quitting an a-pvp binge was easier than sodium oxybate.
There's also benzodiazepines and phenibut that I stay clear of (they act partially or fully on GABA-A, way more dangerous/addictive than those that act on GABA-B), and baclofen that I haven't tried due to unavailability.
They all have quite different effects and you need to find a right dosage/schedule. Gotta see what works best for you.
To put it in simple terms, they're mostly like alcohol without the negative effects. I have to say I've been a long time functional alcoholic (over a decade of near daily use), so either my brain craves something for GABA receptors or I've screwed it up and now this stuff works.
Still, any of them are less stupefying than cannabis (and at higher dosages close to it in relaxation effects) and have none of the occasional negative effects like paranoia.
Also, I use tizanidine to knock myself to sleep when quitting various stuff.
But holy shit, please for the love of everything learn to use medication responsibly, learn to quit them and not fall into abuse, because withdrawal can be ugly.
My impression is that many of the Eastern European states are more subject to Christian religious conservativism than in the west. And so the drugs and law and order thing is more pronounced there in pockets.
Not sure if this is a post-Soviet slingshot effect or if it never went away even under Stalinism. But old "Christian" morality seems to be stronger there, and the separation between church and state not as really as much of a thing as in the west.
It's more that those states are generally socially conservative. That social conservatism is not religious in nature, but cultural - it was also in full display under Soviets, for example. It just attaches itself to whatever contemporary ideology matches it best.
My high school classmate and, coincidentally, my SO's friend from college is currently doing time for "possession of large amounts of marijuana" - 19g to be specific.
He used to be a local weed dealer and while he knew what he was getting into and was consciously breaking the law at the time, after his first arrest a few years ago he stopped and got a regular job.
He only got involved with the court again because one acquaintance of his was charged with drug dealing and figured he could lessen his sentence by giving the authorities someone else to prosecute.
All in all a person who could otherwise continue to be a productive member of society has to spend two years in prison now.
If prison hasn't fucked them up. I really hope these people will find their way in society if there's ever a pardon, because it might be really had to adapt to normal life, even if you ended up in jail for something as stupidly innocuous as smoking weed.
>US prisons are absolutely packed with young marijuana dealers/users with effectively lifetime sentences.
No they aren't. Only 20% of inmates are in jail for drug offenses and only a tiny fraction (if there's even one) is on a life time sentence for dealing weed.
Effectively a life sentence I think means they’ll have a hard time finding a job once they get out resulting in likely reoffending at some point and ending up back in jail.
When I was younger, a lot of my friends sold the occasional bit of pot. As far as I know the vast majority of them are productive members of society nowadays.
While I have no interest in weed, I never understood why people are against it, since cigarettes are also a drug and are far more damaging to heath and the economy, and in the US kills a couple hundred thousand folks a year, or alcohol, which is a drug, and kills tens of thousands of people a year. Eliminating illegality would save in so many ways, and taxes could help offset other taxes. But no, weed is somehow more terrible...
I don't think we would ever legalize cigarettes and alcohol if they weren't already widespread. You cited the numbers yourself, it would be a terrible decision. But lots of people are already using these substances, and we've seen how well it works to make alcohol illegal...
The reason cigs/alcohol are legal has nothing to do with their addictiveness or the harm they do, so a comparison with them.
The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!
(Note: Personally, I actually support weed legalisation, because it eliminates black markets and other problems that illegality brings. But that's a whole other, more nuanced argument. See the frontpage thread about steelmanning...)
Banning tobacco is plausible because it's somewhat difficult to grow the plants. But you can't ban alcohol. Anybody can produce it. You can literally produce it by accident.
Yeast has been genetically modified to produce psilocybin ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109671761... ). Researches have yielded the equivalent of about 60g dried shroom in only 1 liter of solution. When psychedelics become as easy to produce as beer, the world is gonna be a whole lot weirder.
>The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!
This is absolutely NOT the argument against legalization anywhere that I've seen. It's almost universally a claim that MJ is uniquely dangerous and should be kept illegal for that reason.
> The anti-legalization thought is simply: Cigarettes and alcohol are already bad enough, let's not add a third substance!
Which is a stupid thought given that even when completely banned and carrying harsh penalties people still partake in drug usage. Draconian laws may diminish the ratio of users but they are still there, and draconian laws only make those people become pariahs in their societies, pushing them into deeper holes.
Singapore, Japan, Sweden, Philippines, etc. still have drugs and users, no matter how draconian prohibition is...
It's possible to have concerns about it even if alcohol is worse. I think most people are reacting to the "it cures cancer" culture which denies any negative effect.
Personally I've seen weed addiction in close friends and family and it's not pretty. It's slowly poisoning yourself while your life stagnates or falls apart. But they're convinced they're not addicted as you can't get addicted to weed.
Recovery from wake and bake will involve withdrawal symptoms and cravings, both of which have a physical basis. You can't expect flooding your brain all day and every day with a menagerie of feel-good chemicals and not expect adaptations which need to be undone.
It's common sense that your body will physically adapt to most substances consumed regularly. Most of the time that means tolerance and subsequent withdrawal when its removed, which is caused by some physical process. Weed isn't magic.
Cigarettes are stimulating in a way similar to coffee - weed is not, so the lutheran morals dominated cultures (admittedly a quite outdated generalization) look very disapprovingly upon it.
Weed was criminalized as a mechanism for white people to control black people, because weed was a Mexican and black person drug when those laws were enacted. It's all in the arguments in favor of the criminalization laws when they were passed.
nothing to do with the Protestant Work Ethic.
Sorry if the phrase "black person" is offensive, none is meant.
> "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
The war on drugs was purely designed to target hippies and people of color [1]. The sooner it is gone on all levels, the better.
Bullshit. That quote came from Baum in a 1994 interview of Ehrlichman. Baum was writing a book about the war on drugs, so why did the quote only come out in 2016? Why not put it in the book?
> "because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author."
The worst lie I've ever heard. The quote is gold for a backroom discussion.
Then Ehrlichman dies, and the quote comes out more than a decade later, when he can't dispute it; with zero corroboration except Baum, and no recording! (No recording for a book background interview of an influential US political actor?)
The quote is reddit-catnip but only spreads because of low-integrity operators in the media. Golden rule: don't put words in people's mouths after they're dead.
I'm German. The complete ban on cannabis and the begin of the full blown war on all drugs and not just opiates in Germany came in 1971, three years after the mentioned events. We only have cultural hegemonism of the US to "thank" for that.
For me hemp has always been an incredibly valuable industrial crop. It is an amazing construction material. One hectare of hemp is enough to grow material for a single family home every year.
I think you missed the point. Protestant work ethic does not want people "being lazy". In that era when workers were Black and Mexican and smoking, protestant work ethic is what is making white people in power want to stop people from having a little escape.
The trouble is that skunk is now prevalent and much, much more powerful than standard weed or hash - and the stronger it is, the more likely that it will trigger serious mental health problems like schizophrenia in a percentage of users. Also, setting aside the acute and dramatic consequences, take a walk around pretty much any reasonably sized town in the UK and before long you'll smell the characteristic smell of skunk-type weed. No matter how lenient one is the question has to be asked: is it really healthy for a society to have a good proportion of its citizens in a permanent semi-baked state? I certainly would prefer the doctor, driver, pilot or teacher for my children that does not smoke skunk, given the choice, and all else being equal.
There is no flower available which is stronger than hash.
If you think about it for a few seconds, you'll see why. You didn't because it undermines your argument, since the UK has mostly smoked hash historically.
'Smoking powerful skunk cannabis triples the risk of suffering a serious psychotic episode, scientists have found.'
'Those who reported smoking milder forms of the drug, such as hash, did not appear to be at increased risk, for instance. Murray said that, in line with this finding, he recommends hash to patients who are struggling to give up smoking altogether.'
Not that many at the moment, considering that it's an illegal substance and <2% of the population consumes weed monthly (<0.2% daily), meaning that it's consumed a lot less than cigarettes (approximately 12% of the population between 20 and 64 smoke daily). It's also primarily used by young people here, meaning that long-term effects are not yet visible. But obviously there are health factors to consider with smoking weed (heart infarcts, lung issues/cancer, mental health issues, etc) that will be subsidized by the rest of the society. I'm also concerned about the affects of weed on driving if it becomes legal and its consumption increases, as alcohol is involved in every fourth fatal car accident and weed increases risk factors for car crashes.
Germany has lots of borders to several european countries, once it is legal here there is probably no realistic way to efficiently control the transfer across borders.
They could technically leave the European Union Customs Union (EUCU), stay in the EU, and continue to be a part of the Schengen Area. Then more products could be controlled at the borders. I never said it would be a good idea.
Hope so. Here in the Netherlands we've fallen hilariously behind.
It's illegal to produce weed with the intention to sell, but legal to sell. At the same time it's illegal to have a large inventory. So criminals make large amounts of cash by illegally growing weed. And cops have to waste their time dealing with these guys.
Eventually these guys grow up and start with the more profitable stuff such as cocaine & mdma. Next step is to start ripping off other criminals, threatening local businessmen who dont want to hide your cocaine in their fruit imports...
Probably... Also suspect they fear that these guys will move on to different forms of crime to make money instead. Crime that will actually do more damage to society.
No, but Tilray ($TLRY) has operations in Germany and Portugal (for medical cannabis). Their potential moat with regards to the recreational market depends on the licensing rules to come.
Here in Canada a strange thing happened - all these weed shops openedu, wanting to see at $10/gram. They got some business but had rent, taxes, government added taxes etc - half went broke because the guvmint treated it like a cash cow and though the guvmint would replace the dealers and make big $$.
about half people went to them, maybe less. The police stopped bothering with them. Huge grow ops started up on aboriginal lands and sell in aboriginal shops on their lands and many people went there as it was cheaper than the shops.
Police had zero interest in stopping hundreds of people as they travelled as most cars held3-4 people buying 25 grams(legal max) = waste of time. dealers walked over land and bought carts full for $800-1000/pound (453 grams) just because the guvmint wanted a cash cow to milk - not seeing that fields full could be grown in the summer for $5-10 a pound.
The program stumbles on. Marijuana IPO's are dying like flies in this downturn because the principals simply stole the IPO cash and walked away - now there are dozens of lawsuits of all types. I am a spectator = non smoker of anything!!
Another Canadian observer here. The roll out was botched in parts of the country because control over licensing was delegated to provinces and some did a better job than others. British Columbia’s legalization effort has been a resounding success, in so far as there are a plentiful supply of well regulated, pleasant shops pretty much everywhere. And you can buy online easily from the government-owned store — literally it’s a Shopify site.
I do not consume cannabis, but here in BC, it has never been difficult to obtain. The difference with legalization is that it’s now just a non-issue. Not sketchy. Not dangerous. It’s just part of the fabric of daily life.
Governments like Germany should focus on maximizing access through private distribution much as is the case for alcohol and tobacco. Trying to control the retail end too much will result in a failure.
> Canada has made some progress since legalisation in 2018, but through a regionally varied patchwork of free-market and state-controlled supply systems that makes it hard to draw broad lessons
This strikes me as an odd claim. Each province has its own approach, and the provinces are large. Wouldn’t having varying approaches among different large regions be perfect for drawing lessons?
It had to be this way. Provinces determine how alcohol and tobacco are sold within their borders; it would have been strange for cannabis distribution to be federally regulated.
Some useful comparisons can indeed be drawn. Quebec launched with a very restrictive distribution model. BC was quite liberal. The latter province has fared much better in terms of squeezing out profits for organized crime. There are virtually no unauthorized cannabis shops in the province and very little black market activity relative to pre-legalization.
Keep distribution straightforward and analogous to how tobacco and alcohol are sold, and keep taxes on cannabis low to cut out profits for the black market.
For context, the proposed limit of 10 euro / gram taxation is the average total price in Amsterdam coffeeshops. So it would be an effective 100% tax rate. California taxes at 15% and still only manages about 60-70% control of the market.
If their goal is regulation, I think they will need to chill a little on the taxes.
I can't smoke high THC strains. I need high concentrates of CBD since it takes the energetic edge off the THC, and CBD is a natural anti-psychotic. This is why I prefer hashish over dried leaves, since most hashish has a good ratio of CBD to THC. Moroccan '00' is my favorite.
Coming a bit late to the party, but one aspect of this is that there is already massive usage of cannabis in Germany, and in many areas quite a significant amount is decriminalized.
In recent years, however, crappy cannabis adulterated with synthetic cannaboids have become pervasive--they're inferior to the real stuff, addictive, and deeply connected with organized crime. Legalization will likely result in a safer supply for everyone, while also removing a huge money source for criminals.
It's funny how different it is between regions here. In Berlin you smell it everywhere on the streets and in the bars. In Munich, if you're caught smoking, the police gets quite interested.
It's obvious how it's going to be legal in Berlin, I'm just wondering how it's going to look like in other places of Germany...
Yeah this is absurdly high, and a really bad sign if that's what the industry is asking for. My real hope for the law is that small-scale home growing will be allowed, but I'm not very optimistic.
> "European countries that have a much bigger problem with illegal cannabis use, like France, are watching very closely what Germany is doing at the moment."
The criminal activities and gang wars linked to cannabis trafficking in France are huge. It's a shame that France never took action either on legalisation or on crime...
I am not sure that whatever Germany does will have much impact in France, though.
I live in Marseille, famous for being home of the illegal traffic. In the poorest suburbs, there is dozens of 'drive through' spots, where the criminals are very friendly to the customers, almost like regular business, while being well alert for any police raid.
It is a cat and mouse game, where the police only manages to catch kids, and the sell spot just spawns at another appartment-building.
IMO, the french government is blind to think it can fight cannabis traffic by trying to stop the ilegal offer. France is number one consumer of cannabis in europe, so the demand will always create another traffic, unless you counteract with legal, and regulated offer.
> It is a cat and mouse game, where the police only manages to catch kids
They only 'manage' to catch what they want to catch considering government's policy over several decades... If they actually wanted to end this it would be ended in under a month. That's one of the big problems in France: Many of those neighbourhoods and criminal activities have been left to fester for decades without anything being actually done, so things just keep getting worse, politicians keep being 'shocked' without doing anything, and round we go.
I hope they eventually do this in the UK. Weed is basically not illegal if you’re relatively well off and white. I’ve seen a number of cops just take the weed away from a rich uni student or similar and bin it with no further action taken, but if you’re not, criminal charges await. Making it decriminalised would solve that disparity of treatment.
Eh, I've smoked near cops in London as a poor immigrant student and they've at best given me a stare or a few words. It depends on the cop but generally they are pretty lenient with non-dealers.
I really hope so as well. Black market weed in UK sucks. I've moved here recently and all the stuff I was able to get was dry deodorized skunk grown on chemicals - really sad state. It stinks a mile away, it's not fresh, you literally can feel there's something added to it that shouldn't be there. I stopped using cannabis completely at this point.
man all over the UK and continental Europe this decriminalized stuff is just like 4% THC, and the legal CBD shops can't go above 2% THC. And so we're stuck with all the "cool kids" trying to be endearing when they hear you're from the states, but its this super low quality crap with no way to tell quality.
I want r e c r e a t i o n a l like California, in Europe I don't want like 3 novelty shops in Amsterdam, I want the commercial Apple-store-of-weed style seen in California, I also agree with more tiers on THC amount and studies instead of anecdotes. I want some actual consumer protection and options based on science and letting consumers make more informed choices. The US has no adequate studies yet like clinical trials and that's pretty pathetic as the states are unequipped to do this at the standard the FDA does. Other countries shouldn't have that dilemma.
This has been true for a while - in the 1990s when effective decriminalisation wasn't on the cards, I knew the son of a judge who was caught in the middle of Edinburgh with a shopping trolley full of cannabis plants. He got arrested, but didn't get anything worse than a slap on the wrist.
I would suggest because the sentiment is a trite misrepresentation of people's experiences across multiple facets. Throughout the summer you'll smell weed constantly if you're out and about and never see anyone so much as approached by any nearby police, regardless of who they are.
2nd to edibles. As soon as I had legal access to edibles, I switched to edibles almost 100% exclusively.
It's much easier to just pop a candy in my mouth than to pack up a bong or vape. (And there's no smell to deal with, which is useful with children around.)
The dosage control is significantly easier than smoking. Where I live, the amounts of psychoactive chemicals per dose are printed on the packaging.
Just make sure you start with one (or a half) dose, and wait 2-3 hours before you take any more.
Also, if you want a "smoking" experience, without the smoke, vaping does come close. FYI: With vaping it's super-easy to get an overwhelming dose, so be careful.
The stronger stuff is simply higher bang for the buck, and in today's economy that matters more than everything else. It's too bad consumers are so disconnected from producers due to the legal situation, or else they might see a regular response to demand for more balanced buds.
€10 a gramme of bud.... I don't know about prices in Germany but I can tell you that a lot of the market in Canada would go illegal if taxes were that high here. That is more in taxes than the cost of high quality legal pot in ON/QC.
I'm in the US. It is really hard to see clever people around me using their almost pure THC at high doses. I can clearly see the negative impact coming much faster than people I know that smoked lots of lower concentration for decades. I see them having all kind of functional issues (memory, motivation, crippling anxiety when not high). And there is no way to talk to them about these negative effects. Mainly because they have been deeply brainwashed to believe that the overall effect is always positive and that all criticisms are a conspiracy by people with war on drugs level agendas.
As much as I tend to believe that low amounts can have benefits, both functional and social, what I see from this trend of heavy use of high potency material is clearly not going that way.
Has there ever been a successful civilization that had incorporated use of cannabis in general society? I am not talking about some priestly caste using it for tripping, divining, or making up scripture, I mean like the use of alcohol which actually apparently was a key factor in emergence of urban civilizations.
Related question is: do we know of any civilization that collapsed after embracing cannabis?
The answer to the concern of potential health issue of cannabis legalization is almost always "what about [this other bad product with some common effects], should we forbid it too?"
This argument always sounds like a fallacy to me, as we're talking about legalizing something that was previously not, not the other way around.
I get that the argument might be seen as relativizing by providing examples of legal substances everybody agree today should be legal, but the way this answer (and others) is always presented sounds to me excessively aggressive and non-productive. If you want to make a point, please make it, don't just stop at this absurd proposition.
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Some people (I'm not even included in that group as I don't really care about this issue) seem very concerned about the global health implications of cannabis legalization.
Instead of aggressively diminishing this opinion with whataboutisms, legalizing proponents motivated enough to answer to this person should IMO better take into consideration (and respect) this opinion.
> Instead of aggressively diminishing this opinion with whataboutisms, legalizing proponents motivated enough to answer to this person should IMO better take into consideration (and respect) this opinion.
Regarding the US: We already experimented with alcohol prohibition. It failed for the same reasons that marijuana prohibition failed. (I believe Europe did the same thing, but I'm less familiar with its history.)
You're advocating for a "nanny state" law. These are difficult in democracies.
In the US, we see debates about similar issues: Some people want to ban guns, some people want to ban abortion, some people want to ban bad drivers, some people want to require helmets for XXX.
Nanny state laws only pass in the US when the politicians who pass them know they will get re-elected. (IE, the US has some areas with very restrictive alcohol laws, because the people in that area believe drinking is a sin.)
That's great, a sliver of more freedom in the world - and long overdue.
Hopefully this will allow the police to do something about crime which is becoming a huge issue in Europe (probably thanks to lockdowns, recession, uncontrolled immigration).
I hope it catches on everywhere else but I'm definitely not going to buy their overpriced and overtaxed products - I'll just buy seeds and grow it for personal use.
> Hopefully this will allow the police to do something about crime which is becoming a huge issue in Europe (probably thanks to lockdowns, recession, uncontrolled immigration).
Definitely not everywhere in Europe - the PKS in germany shows declining levels of crime (+) as well as for violent crimes (++) since 2017 until 2021. Now, this statistics need to be read carefully since they track what‘s been _reported_ to the police with no further investigation, so there are various statistical effects to take into account when reading them (+++), but they do provide a good idea of the overall trend. If crime were becoming a huge issue in germany, one would expect an uptick in reported crimes, but that‘s not visible anywhere in the stats.
I find it crazy to decriminalise a drug in smoked form. It is often through second-hand smoke in social situations that people get addicted to a smoked drug before they start using it themselves. I'm afraid that that would lead to more addiction.
Personally, I don't have anything against it being ingested in other forms: such as "magic" brownies or vaping that don't affect other people around you.
> I find it crazy to decriminalise a drug that is supposed to be smoked. It is through second-hand smoke that people get addicted to a smoked drug
I can testify that as a child with a habitual smoker in the house, of ordinary cigarettes, it was kinda terrible. All our clothes would smell of tabacco, and teachers at school were convinced me and my brother are smokers.
after being tortured by cigarette smoke for a decate, we find them repulsive and have never touched them.
so it runs contrary to my experience, and i never heard of anyone aquiring addiction through 2nd hand smoking, but it can be damaging to the wholw familt.
Not being what more people are concerned about does not mean that it does not happen.
Although, I'll concede that cannabis is much less addictive compared to tobacco, for which this is how most smokers are made.
Second hand smoke is not how most smokers are made for _any_ drug. Generally that's peer pressure, but I see how those could be mixed up (being around smokers).
Yep, don't blame the second hand smoke, blame your own "first hand" desire to conform to the social norms and behavior of your peer group. This is why you should choose your friends very carefully.
Cannabis is not "supposed to be" consumed in any specific way. Smoking it is one way to consume it, but so are vaporizing and eating it, both very popular and with almost no harm (if any).
1. You are not going to get high from second hand cannabis smoke unless you're doing mouth to mouth or locked up with 3 other guys smoking in a closet.
2. 30% of daily cannabis smokers have trouble stopping vs 85% of daily tobacco smokers.
3. Smoking indoors uninvited is generally strongly frowned upon in most social settings and prohibited by law in areas open to the public.
4. You don't have to smoke, cannabis is also frequently prepared into "special" cookies or brownies and eaten. The downside is that you then can't have more than one cookie due to the...implications...
The American lobby strikes again, they now control the whole industry and let their domestic market grow for years, they are ready to use EU as their market, yet again
