Should Marijuana be legalised?

i think JiC is concern trolling?

Maybe a little. I just mean for people arguing it is safe, then how can you simultaneously concede it's, say, not safe enough that you want someone in a position of authority using it? Yes, no more so than alcohol, but that's more an argument for the abolition of alcohol than it is for the legalization of cannabis.

How about you convince me the harms you fear are worse?

I think that's kind of silly and circular (not you, just the argument). As I understand it, ridiculous and arbitrary restrictions have made it impossible to freely study cannabis and its effects, longterm or medical or otherwise. But the contradiction I pointed out almost negates that: everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society, but ... so what, we've decided it's not going anywhere. The benefits to legal cannabis seem ancillary: decriminalize and it helps people legally, tax it and it helps the government financially. But the product itself? Its benefits and effects are more nebulous and inconsistent and anecdotal, as far as I've read.

Anyway, like I and you said, there's no "convincing" me. Legalization is the clear direction we are heading in. But I'll be the first to concede I don't know the legal ramifications or regulations at all. For example, how does regulation and enforcement in, say, Amsterdam compare to Washington? I have no idea. Are we (US) generally more legal? More strict? The same? How is Canada handling it? No idea, it's all so ad hoc. But I'll say it will be and is a fascinating experiment to live through.

everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society

the sources of alcohol have been symbiotic with society for so many millennia, changing us and being changed, that i'd honestly have no idea where to begin evaluating the quality of the relationship, but i'm confident no one needs to call the cops

The answers to all those questions are freely available if you really cared to know them.

everyone knows alcohol is overwhelmingly bad for society

Everyone does not know this.

xpost

Yes, not everyone, but I thought the cost (literal and figurative) to society, from alcoholism to violence to drunk driving deaths, was pretty well known. Maybe not!

The answers to all those questions are freely available if you really cared to know them.

How about a link or two? I did a quick search for Colorado vs. Amsterdam, and every article (for good reason) was from 2014.

I just mean for people arguing it is safe, then how can you simultaneously concede it's, say, not safe enough that you want someone in a position of authority using it?

Tandem sky-diving is safe, but I don't want the President issuing executive orders while HALO jumping.

This is a foolish argument. No one is going to say pot or alcohol are completely harmless. They are just not harmful enough to toss people in jail over.

No argument!

.

If you hired a babysitter for your kid, would you rather she be stoned or sober? Would you care?

the amount of everyone's time josh in chicago has wasted is like a nerdstrom poindexter x 1000 but everyone likes and puts up with him anyway because he's like a dad and stuff i guess

that's not cool.

No dadshaming on ilxor.com

I barely see students smoking cigs on campus anymore

I saw a neighborhood teen, who I was familiar with because he had bullied my son in middle school, walking down the street smoking a cigarette the other day. The sight put me in this really weird headspace where I wasn't sure whether to be grossed-out by him hacking on a Marlboro or happy that he wasn't Juuling like some fucking nerd all the other teenagers I see around town.

As an anti-inflammatory, is it even as effective as ibuprofen?

btw ppl with crohn's shouldn't take ibuprofen as it can exacerbate intestinal bleeding

yup. acetaminophen only.

Iirc the current line is that ibuprofen isn't very good for anyone, and should be seriously limited. In fact, also iirc, that ibuprofen is added to many Rx opiates to intentionally make them unpleasant in large doses.

Same with acetaminophen though.

And aspirin has its problems as well.

I ate an edible a couple of days ago to coincide with my menstrual cramping, nausea, back pain. They should pack that in every tampon box.

Do guys ever use turmeric capsules for inflammation?

Do *you guys

I know a bunch of people here do fresh curcumin or make golden milk/tea.

the neurological element of marijuana impact the pain process above and beyond the anti-inflammatory benefits

How about a link or two? I did a quick search for Colorado vs. Amsterdam, and every article (for good reason) was from 2014.

Oregon's Measure 91, November 2014:
https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/marijuana/Documents/Measure91.pdf

Revised statutes, 2017 (passed 2018):
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors475B.html

Canada's Cannabis Act, 17/10/2018:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-24.5.pdf

Curcumin is (or can be in certain formulations or something) a COX-2 inhibitor like ibuprofen or Aleve for pain relief but IIRC that also means it has the downsides of those related to heart issues.

btw ppl with crohn's shouldn't take ibuprofen as it can exacerbate intestinal bleeding

live in the right state and it's easy to forget that cannabis isn't legal everywhere

josh iirc you even posted at length about a cannabis tour through western states you took in the last year or so?

The results we are getting with our current approach do massive amounts of harm in my view. How about you convince me the harms you fear are worse?

^This!! Case of "the devil you know..."

Yeah, sort of. I mean, it's not why we were there, but when you're there it's pretty visible (though nowhere near as ubiquitous as alcohol). I mostly went to a couple of places out of curiosity to see how it works. The craziest is when you go on some drive through the forests in crazy militia land and there's a dispensary sitting in the middle of bigfoot country.

If I had to liken it to anything it's, I dunno, porn barns on the side of the road. It's not something you (or I at least) really think about, but they're there, and you pass them, and you pass billboards for them and stuff. Then you go into the cities and the porn barn as been replaced by a fence porn boutique with higher prices or whatever but, I assume, the same stuff. And they have their clientele, enough to stay in business, but you never really see people going in and out. The cannabis places I poked my head into in Oakland in another trip out there were pretty quiet, kind of like liquor stores with more giggling (not chemically induced, mostly lots of couples giggling at the novelty, the same, come to think of it, that you might find in a porn barn or shop.)

idk man from what I can tell the weed stores in Seattle are frequented by people going there to buy weed

idk man (haha -- i also started my post with "idk man" and i am leaving it there) -- not all vice is created equal. no one is prescribed "highway porn barn" for any medical purposes I'm aware of. If you are coming at the idea of legalization from a rubbernecking perspective, it's going to seem different than if you are a core customer.

crazy militia land and there's a dispensary sitting in the middle of bigfoot country.

Rednecks toke up, too. Just like Wm. F. Buckley was interested, there are plenty of cowboys with as much curiosity as he had. It's just that now they can do it legally in Oregon, Washington, California and Canada. Even in bigfoot country.

i was looking up these porn barns (i thought it was like a brew thru) and i got people fucking in barns.

Murder Mountain on netflix is all about that bigfoot county weed shit it's kinda interesting

weed stores are basically the most banal thing that have happened in Seattle in the six years I've lived here.

I would think people up in the mountains in the PNW would just grow their own? Like, our friends in Portland, we went to feed the neighbors' chickens across the street, and they had like five giant beds of plants growing back there.

Not everyone wants to grow their own. I mean it's great if you want to do that. but not everyone does. Just like not everyone grows their own spinach or carrots or raise chickens or whatever.

People might do that more if those products were sold at huge markups with a big tax hit.

imho decriminalization is first and foremost either a civil rights issue (re: incarceration, racial disparities in arrests and sentencing, etc. etc.) or an urgent health crisis issue (re: opening up channels for research and access given possible medical benefits, potential to circumvent or reduce the opioid epidemic and other crises). in that light, wondering whether you might get a stoned babysitter is baffling to me - - - you could end up with a stoned babysitter right now! no doubt millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter. the world keeps turning. meanwhile people are dying and getting thrown in jail.

anyway if you're concerned about the potential costs of recreational drug use, those are all better under a decriminalized status quo, right? if someone's abusing something and needs to get help, the thing itself being illegal can be a huge barrier to them seeking out that help, or to others setting up and funding programs to help them.

xp Josh are you actually arguing a point here or are you just posting

not that I haven't been guilty of just posting many times in the past but

No, I'm just posting.

The stoned babysitter thing I brought up was just as an example of cannabis not being "harmless," per se. It has an effect, which has ... effects. Which aren't always wanted and can be negative. Which, sure, is true of lots of legal things, but like I said, that's more of an argument against those things than for more of those things. Which I'm not making one way or another. It's just a discussion. Or concern trolling or whatever the fuck. If you guys all believe to a one it's a settled issue and full steam ahead, it won't keep me up at night. I've got no dog in this fight and the more people out of jail for dumb reasons the better. Maybe lock the thread for a few years and come back with "should it have been legalized?"

I once burned the bread at Subway when I was high at my shift during high school. I don't know what would've happened if I had to bake some kids.

Not trying to get on your case, Josh - - - just that your musings seem a little detached from the real stakes of the conversation, or maybe sort of on a parallel/red-herring track to the reasons being advanced for legalization, rather than answering them. Tbf my own thinking about this issue has shifted a lot over the years as I've been exposed to a lot more on the social-justice aspects and as the medical picture has become much more complete; I imagine that if this poll had been conducted five or ten years earlier, the results might not have been so lopsided, and this would be more of a lively debate thread instead of one that feels like the social consensus has been finalized.

If the question is just, why should "those other legal things are harmful" be an argument for making a harmful thing legal, then the answer is, "it's not." People bring up the existence of other legal harmful things not to say that every harmful thing should be legal, but to say that the world keeps turning despite numerous harmful things being legal. Many or most of them, we seek to regulate in ways that minimize that harm: speed limits and seat belts for cars, chain link fences next to dangerous abandoned quarries, "do not inhale" labels on poisonous chemicals. All of those things get ignored and people suffer, but we could throw it back at you and say, "so is your suggestion that we create a parallel carceral state for fence-climbers and paint-huffers, just so as to avoid being hypocrites?" More reasonably: it seems like you're just halfway to making an argument for legalizing it but with regulations and restrictions, which is what 99% of legalization campaigners are saying anyway, right?

millions of people now living have had at some point been supervised by a stoned babysitter

my favorite tortoise album

jic what the fuck are you on about ? i think you need to go smoke and think this over

And they have their clientele, enough to stay in business, but you never really see people going in and out.

Washington state collected a total of $319 million in legal marijuana income and license fees in fiscal year 2017, all but $4 million of it from the state’s marijuana excise, or sales tax. [...]

The report also shows that ... the marijuana excise tax income to the state for fiscal 2017 of $319 million grew by almost $130 million from the prior year.

Those June 2016 LCB projections covered fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2019. While they may ultimately prove to underestimate actual end-of-year marijuana excise tax revenues to the state, they nonetheless show sharp growth expected.

[...]

Sales of legal marijuana in Washington state have climbed up to $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2017 , up from $786 million in fiscal 2016, and $259 million the year before.

Maybe lock the thread for a few years and come back with "should it have been legalized?"

You already posted upthread that you have been unable to determine via google whether it has even been legalised in Washington or not

and then don't post about what you thought about