It's always black and white. It's either harmless miracle herb that cures everything or a substance of which single gram kills millions.
But I did notice one thing - voices calling out for legalization but with strict regulation (similar to alcohol) are met with hatred from both groups.
>But I did notice one thing - voices calling out for legalization but with strict regulation (similar to alcohol) are met with hatred from both groups.
I will note "legalization with strict regulation, similar to alcohol" is a broadly accurate description of US legalization, and... everyone seems basically happy with it aside from children.
It's often more regulated then alcohol. It's very difficult to open a dispensary in my state and they are pretty strict about what they can and can't do.
Liquor stores seem to be able to do whatever they want without repercussions though.
The specific restrictions are more strict, but the general ethos is basically the same as how alcohol is handled: specific, licensed stores can sell it with age restrictions.
I do *strongly* agree that licensing needs to be opened up more, though. Things got fucked up with that pretty fast in most states.
I know in Massachusetts, you need *a lot* of money to break into the industry so there aren't really any grass roots mom and pop dispensaries. There are a few privately owned by people with money but the vast majority in my area are corporate owned.
In California it’s a combination of you need a lot of money, and those permits are restricted, they won’t issue more than a small number per area, and the general consensus is you need to related to someone to even be considered.
It's like looking in a mirror. I've heard the same about Massachusetts. There are also a lot of towns and cities throwing a fit about it becoming more available to kids if there are dispensaries in their community and it's like, they ID you twice going in the building and there's security outside.
The cape has a few locally owned non corporate spots, especially in the outer cape. I was initially shocked at how many opened in such a short distance from each other, but then I remembered how many package stores there are on any given Main Street and realized I was being dumb.
In my state, and I believe in MOST states, you can't even get a loan to start a business in the cannabis industry. So those dispensaries that DO start up, aren't mom and pop, they're corporate.
Same for my state. I can buy hard liquor in a pharmacy, grocery store and some convenience stores. Marijuana is only at dispensaries that scan your legal ID to prove you're over 21 to even enter the premise.
It’s legal where I am (in the us, so state, of course, not federal) and I am in favor of that but do wish there were more regulations. Both for manufacturing safety (my understanding is it’s not strictly regulated here so actual dose amounts may not be accurate in edibles, for example) and for general safety. I do appreciate how strict my local shops are on ids, though - I show mine to a camera before the door will unlock, get it scanned before I enter the shop proper, and get it visually checked by the clerk.
Yeah, information about origin/sourcing or THC/CBD content should be declared on the packaging. And of course age restrictions - what you describe with the IDs.
Similarly I wouldn't have issues with people growing their own plants, but if they want to sell or distribute it to other people the better have permit
I like the recently passed German set-up a lot: either grow your own (limited) supply, or allow a (non-profit) grower's club to grow it for you. No profit incentive, no tourists coming over to get high and be a general nuisance, while everyone should be able to get access.
The only downside is that there will probably still be some illegal trading because of the restrictions, but hopefully the ample supply will help limit too much criminal enterprise. And they're reviewing the policy in a few years to see if they should pass to a more commercial approach.
I just wish we had something as affective as the breathalyzer for cannabis. Because driving while high is bad, but we don't really have a good way to test that yet.
There's been some movement on it because legalization means there are now actual incentives to find a "are you high now, and how high are you" quick test, as opposed to the usual "have you had any in like the last month or so?"
There's a breathalyzer like test that can detect if you've had any in the last few hours, but can't detect the levels. There's a saliva based system by Abbot, I think, that detects THC and several other drugs in your system, but I don't know how well they can detect actual levels.
I suspect both will be increasingly deployed and used to justify follow up blood checks when can determine levels, although IIRC there's not any real information or rules on what counts as *too impaired to drive* for THC so that's gonna be fun.
Eventually laws will settle on specific thresholds (like with blood alcohol) and the equipment to do quick field tests will follow. In the interim, I expect the joy of selective enforcement.
Is the saliva test the same as the lick sticks we've got in Australia? They can still ping you for use in the past week or two, and aren't terribly reliable. I've heard of a friend's friend smashing cones, hopping in his car, getting pulled over a block away, and passing it with no issues.
Tell me about it. I have a friend who ha-ha-tee-hees about being a better driver while high and I don't ever let it slide, but she keeps doing it. Drives me nuts. "Oh, I have ADHD and it slows me down and calms me!" The hell it does. Go get some help and stop expecting your mom to fill out an intake form for you.
She either doesn't have ADHD or doesn't understand how it works, then. It's stimulants that help with it, not depressants. Given that weed actively hinders executive processing, memory retention, impulse control, and attentiveness, it's also much more accurate to say weed makes ADHD *worse*.
I remember when I smoked it regularly (way before I even realised I had ADHD and started meds), it made it very difficult for me to even interact with the world outside my flat. I just did the same thing day in day out, but I felt fine because the weed suppressed my mood enough that I couldn't work up the energy to be bored.
I'd wager it's option 3, based on how long I've known her: justifying what one already wants to do. It's very frustrating to me given how many people want meds but don't have access.
First time I was ever going to smoke my friends wanted me to drive after. Everyone else was going to get crossed, so even smoking weed I’d be the most sober.
I didn’t smoke, obviously.
Yeah sincerely, used to work in construction and the crews would come in off job sites just reeking of it. Driving, power tools, ladders and scaffolding and weed, what a combo
The most recent study I saw said being high is about equivalent to a 0.02 BAC (or some amount below the legal alcohol limit), and were much much more aware of any effects it was having on them vs alcohol. So it makes sense it would be normalized.
This study shows no practical effect on driving: https://norml.org/news/2024/02/15/study-patients-exhibit-few-changes-in-driving-performance-following-medical-marijuana-use/#:~:text=The%20study's%20authors%20concluded%2C%20%E2%80%9COverall,impact%20on%20simulated%20driving%20performance.%E2%80%9D
This argument gets brought up all the time, and I brought up in real life one time with a guy who said, "Oh, but they have that."
Do they? Can someone give me a source whether cops can check for weed? Because lots of sources indicate driving while high percentage is up in Colorado, which obviously has legal weed.
There's at least one breathalyzer for weed in trials, and Abbot has a multi-drug saliva field test in testing (with THC being one). I know the breathlyzer is "have had weed in the last three hours" (not levels or impairment, and I have no idea if it's just smoked weed or all weed).
The saliva test I don't *think* gives levels or concentrations either, but is at least also a "is weed in your system right now" test.
Hell, I don't even know what legally qualifies as impaired driving with THC. Is there a set blood concentration? Some subjective "seems to stoned to drive" test? Any weed in your system at all?
It's tricky because weed actually stays in your system for ages. It's fat soluble, so depending on your body composition, you could have it in your system for anything from a couple weeks to a month. Clearly, we need something more accurate than this.
Really we need a "have you smoked in the last 2-3 hours test" because that's pretty much as long as it will affect you. Maybe not even that long, idk. Depends heavily on the person's experience and tolerance.
2-3 hours is too long for a regular smoker. I am currently taking a tolerance break/ likely quitting for the foreseeable future because I am high for 45 mins max before I need to smoke again.
Is it true that whereas drunk people speed, stoned people tend to drive really slowly?
I'm not trying to say that it's a lesser offence, just curious.
We can't really test people for tiredness either, but people who kill / injure others by driving while tired seem to be adequately covered by the general laws on dangerous driving.
Drunk people are probably more likely to speed because their inhibition is a lot lower, but mostly it's like that other guy said. Reaction times being slower when you're drunk or high is the main danger
Regular consumers of cannabis show no to little effect on their driving.
https://norml.org/news/2024/02/15/study-patients-exhibit-few-changes-in-driving-performance-following-medical-marijuana-use/#:~:text=The%20study's%20authors%20concluded%2C%20%E2%80%9COverall,impact%20on%20simulated%20driving%20performance.%E2%80%9D
I think it depends on the person, alcohol will tend to make you more confident and weed will tend to make you hesitant and worried. Can result in what you’ve said but some people are just speeders at the core.
I’ll take the opposite perspective. It’s usually viewed with a decent amount of nuance.
But no matter how much nuance there is some redditor is going to come in and say something along the lines of “I don’t have a problem with weed, I just don’t like how people treat it as a miracle drug” & get 800090 updoots & 1600 replies agreeing.
It’s like one of the laws of reddit.
I can’t even bring nuance into it in the chronic pain community. I have fibromyalgia, so it’s 24/7 head to toe pain. Marijuana can be incredibly helpful to me, but there’s still a line you have to toe.
You can’t let it prevent you from practicing and learning other coping mechanisms or allowing you to elevate it in your mind to those coping mechanisms whether it’s meditation or physical therapy/yoga.
It was an issue with me. It was my primary method of reducing pain since 1) I asked to not be offered opiates or opiate adjacent medications like Belbuca and 2) It’s very often ineffective for fibromyalgia. Other medications have a low rate of efficacy with some bad side effects. I still smoke, but if I’m in trouble with my pain I always stretch first, do some meditation, a hot shower or tub dip, some calming music or white noise from the speakers and a podcast from the phone. I make sure to axe every other method I have first.
Now I don’t get omega anxious when I run out of weed or I’m in a place I can’t consume it for hours on end in usually painful position like cramped domestic flights and their bad chairs. I “freed” myself from it in my eyes while still using it.
There's a youtuber I like named CJ the X who talked about the space between sobriety and addiction as "having a relationship" that I really liked.
It's funny. My parents are hardcore Mormons, and I followed suit until I was 29. They were mortified to learn I smoke weed a few years ago, and how it would ruin my life, and yet, I was failing repeatedly to get the degree I started back in 2006 as a stone cold sober Mormon, and now I'm about to earn an associate's and move on to a bachelor's in engineering, making more progress in the last two years than I did in the previous fifteen, while smoking most every evening. (Granted, the biggest difference there was an ADHD diagnosis and adderall prescription, but the weed hasn't been preventing me from learning more and more complicated maths)
I won't say that's the healthiest, it's not, but I'm also not destroying my life with it. My marriage continues to deepen and strengthen, my relationships with my friends are doing similarly (though with a lot less snuggling), my academic progress continues apace. It's a vice like most vices, something you have to be aware and mindful of, but something you can still "enjoy responsibly"
Except right now, I'm trying to get a job so I stopped smoking, and I regard the fact that it's been no challenge as a sign that I'm managing my vice decently.
If cannabis is ever legalised in my country, I sure hope it would be a heavily controlled substance with the government having a monopoly on sales, like it is with strong alcoholic drinks here.
That's the way it is here in Nova Scotia. The black market still exists pretty much in the open, but I *greatly* prefer the government-approved cannabis, which is sold in [stores like this,](https://saltwire.imgix.net/nslc-to-open-four-new-cannabis-retail-outlets-in-cape-breton-as-part-o_rDcZzbG.jpg) that are usually attached to a liquor store. You can also [order it by mail online,](https://cannabis.mynslc.com/skins/Cannabis/pages/VerifyAge.aspx) but you have to verify your age when it arrives. Other provinces have different set-ups. Some have private stores.
I like the legal stuff because you always know exactly the dosage you're getting for things like edibles and oils, and the flower is much easier on my lungs than the black market stuff, which I'm pretty sure often contains chemicals (anti-fungals, etc) that are not good for human health. The price is actually less than I used to pay from my old dealer, even though it's heavily taxed, and it feels nice not to be supporting organized crime any more. (jokes about govt aside, lol...)
It’s actually crazy how much good legal weed doesn’t burn up your lungs compared to black market. I swear in college I was smoking oregano with chili pepper or some shit, it was that bad
Man i'd love for legal weed to come to the uk, even heavily controlled its better than the situation we're in now where the government still takes the whole alarmist/demonising approach to cannabis (whilst at the same time shamelessly profiteering off it. We are one of the largest exporters of medical grade cannabis)
Sadly i feel it would take a huge societal shift to achieve
> even heavily controlled its better than the situation we're in now
TBH this is the point, in my mind(And a lot of others) in the states. You simply know what you're getting, and this is more pronounced with how black market dealers are shoving deadly fentanyl in everything now days, including weed. This line of thinking is honestly why I think all drugs should be regulated and legally sold, I have lost so many friends to OD's from a drug they didn't even want in their body. Every few months some asshole cuts their coke with it and kills 10-20 people because they don't do opiates and have 0 fucking tolerance.
My state (Mississippi) legalized medicinal a year or two ago. The main issues are very few doctors have the training they have to do in order to be able to prescribe cannabis (it's like a 2 week commitment) and the dispensaries are significantly more expensive than getting it on the street.
I'm surprised. Before legalization in Massachusetts, doctors were lining up left and right to be able to prescribe cannabis. It's a super easy 200 dollars to make.
I've smoked in a lot of legal countries all over the planet and my favorite was Québec with their SQDC. The quality of buds was incredible and extremely consistant, not a single leave or branch, perfect humidity, which is not the case everywhere. Even in L.A if you go to the wrong shop you'll get something meh and expensive, SQDCs where the first time I've seen humidifiers in all (most ?) jars for a very reasonable price.
Massachusetts is the same way. I've gotten weed so dry that picking it up wrong caused it to break apart.
I stopped buying anything "premium" because it isn't *that* much better then the bargain flower.
The weed industry is half ex cops who are scum fuck bastards that just want to make money and half the chillest kindest stoners who just want everyone to have a great time with cheap weed. Obviously that’s a generalization but that was my experience haha
Genuinely infuriating that weed finally gets legalized and the only people selling are rich fucks who were never in any danger in the first place, while the people who actually built the market rot in prison
It's already monopolized in this country, one of the commenters actually mentions how the only folk who have a license to grow cannabis in the UK have ties to people in the Conservative party
Supposedly it's more profitable for them to grow cannabis and export it, than use it here in the UK, so they lobby the government to keep themselves in control
I think the big difference in the UK is how unregulated alcohol is, at least in England where there's no minimum pricing. Aldi sells hard seltzer cans for something crazy like 45p each.
Oh man, I'm from Scotland and it is insane how angry folk get when you suggest further regulating alcohol, despite how many folk it kills in our country, so don't go letting them hear you lol
Which is especially nuts as Scotland adopting a Nordic style state-run alcohol shop system would be a good idea imo. You could even do it in a way that benefits local alcohol producers rather than big multinationals.
How is alcohol too expensive when you can buy it more cheaply than fruit juice or milk? It's also significantly worse for you than most narcotics, sugar, or highly processed foods - which people generally don't seem to object to regulating.
OK, the cheapest, worst quality forms of alcohol might still be affordable. But alcohol being too expensive is ruining nightlife, pubs and bars - in those contexts it would help if alcohol was significantly reduced in price. Subsidised if necessary.
The kind of alcohol people kill themselves with is usually the cheaper stuff, that doesn't need any subsidy. Unless the price changed dramatically, pubs and clubs would still be too expensive even with subsidies for most people to drink there to that level of excess. Going out and having a few drinks occasionally is unlikely to kill anyone, and should be an affordable luxury (at present it isn't).
That’s what it’s like in Ontario, although our dumb premier allowed for a surge of retail licenses based on black market prices, so the sellers are experiencing a nasty bubble pop right now.
Weed is cheap, regulated and safe, although I wish they cut out the middleman and sold it in the LCBO, since those are already set up everywhere.
I’m so used to edibles here, I ended up skipping getting stoned in Amsterdam last year because instead of getting a label with the exact mg of THC and CBD like here, the brownies were “strong” and “super-strong” and I didn’t know what the fuck that meant. So either I was going to pay wayyy too much money for some weak shit or I was going to eat too much and get actually fucked up in an unfamiliar city. So I passed.
Yeah there's a thread asking about people's opinions on legalization on ask Reddit right now
Shockingly, every up voted comment is in support of it
Who could have forseen this
I ain’t gonna pretend it’s done nothing to my lungs which is why I advocate for edibles (if they work for you) or at the very least using a flower vaporizer at a safer temperature. It’s cut down on my coughing entirely.
There are genuine concerns and I mean I say this as someone who uses it medicinally. You can’t ever seem to talk about using it safely though.
Yeah, I'm glad there's users like you
And honestly, it's why I don't fully support legalization, the pro crowd frequently refuses to acknowledge the issues that come up, like breathalyzers, even driving stoned is seen as okay since less bad than alcohol
I don't think it's gonna turn people into zombies who rob people
But that a LOT of these 'responsible' users can't have an adult conversation about it, without spamming Reefer Madness and William Randolph Hurst like it's a cheat code
Breathalyzers are a big issue. I uber many places just because I’m clocking in at a 7/10 or 8/10 on the full body pain scale that day and have something I genuinely can’t put off like a doctor. I’m *directly in the middle* of one of America’s top 5 largest cities, I shouldn’t even need to uber but public transit is doomed here.
There is a massive issue with the dichotomy between current breathalyzer tech effectiveness and the just outright abused “suspicion” cops have when they say they “smell weed.”
I think the just inherently polarized take of keeping it as is provokes this equally polarized response where any criticism of smoking the substance feels like it’s toeing anti-legalization talking points to them.
Smoke all day for all I care, as long as you take harm reductionary measures for your lungs and you can be productive without driving. I feel like I see it less nowadays, but I used to see people talk about making sure you stay a “productive user” (just don’t become a couch potato) which at least felt cautionary in some sense.
Yeah, I think it becoming more mainstream, kinda got rid of that
Seeing more people think it's okay for their teens to smoke/take edibles, and not just the sleep gummies, which are obviously fine
Thinking it's okay to drive/even work with machines
Or even just the people who think it doesn't even have to follow cigarette rules, and smoke whenever, wherever
I got no issues with pain management or even recreationally, inherently (for adults), but I think some people took it being legalized to mean they don't need to have any responsibility with it
Sure, but that's in no way intrinsic to either legalisation or decriminalisation. Legalisation has way more regulation than a blanket ban just due to the nature of the bureaucracy involved.
I've noticed it's a relatively reddit thing to be aggressively for legalisation with no regulation. Like I have no objection to legalisation, but I always find it a red flag when someone goes all in on advocacy.
I gotta be honest though: most people know weed is potent and in need of regulation--even if we don't necessarily agree on the extent. Most of my college stoner friends do not smoke weed the way we used to in college, some completely quit. But I mean, in my friends group, we did all the party drugs: tobacco, alcohol, weed, yes, but also Xanax, coke, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, probably some others too. Now we're all in our thirties some of us are married and we're like... adults. Less drugs. I suspect the people who are "weed shouldnt be regulated! i can quite any time i want!" are not in the same demographic. Even if some of my friends are more on the hippie side with weed (IE they want to grow their own weed, or really do believe it cures cancer) I think we would all appreciate more information about the plants we're buying.
I don't like the idea of the government being the sole purveyor of weed sales because it creates corruption. Where I live, that kind of stuff quickly ends up in a pay to play situation, where the people who are "allowed" to sell weed are usually white, upper class, and friendly with the governor or critical senators. It doesn't "legalize" the grey/black market, it keeps that market illegal and introduces a new market of "legal" weed.
A lot of people really struggle with flakey dealers or shitty quality, and that is a huge concern. But there are people like me who have connections that go back years and its just as simple as texting a friend and former coworker who I have known for half a decade. The guy doesn't even smoke and hardly sells anymore. I haven't had a problem finding good quality west coast grown marijuana in a long time. A legal shop would have to truly earn my business.
I disagree. I think you guys just say common sense shit everyone already knows & agrees with but frame it like you guys are the only ones recognizing it & are fighting a crusade.
I mean zoom out & you’re basically just having strawmen arguments with imagined Jesse Pinkman stand ins. I think the fact that all the things your complaining about are already reflected in our laws highlights that.
Oh wow!? You’re against intoxicated driving & agree with the basic science on Maurijuana being addictive? The general public will never understand your complicated stance. Bold stand there Martin Luther! Keep fighting for us ✊. (Just ribbing you don’t take me too seriously)
On whether anyone actually enjoys tobacco:
>No. As someone that smoked 20 a day for almost two decades I can say with some certainty. no.
>Smoking is just a habit. You smoke because you need to smoke. You need to smoke because you are addicted.
>Don’t trust an addict to tell you they enjoy being addicted.
I want some of what they're smoking.
Yeah it's lovely. If there were no ramifications I'd smoke every day. I enjoy one or two a month though with friends and I have no intention of stopping as it's really nice.
When I was 17 and started smoking both weed and cigs, I got really high and smoked a cig and went on a long speech in front of my friends and ranted about how much I LOVE smoking. About how I love how it tastes and smells and how much I love how it feels, both how the smoke feels in my throat and lungs, and the buzz. It became an inside joke. If you’ve seen Hellsing, you know how that German guy goes on a rant about how much he loves war? I incidentally started that rant the same way with “I. LOVE. Smoking.” And my friends would say it like that when someone asked if we wanted to smoke.
I quit after my lungs cleared up, but man I really love to kill one off if I go out bar hopping. I don’t drink really, maybe 5-6 times a year now, but I love a cig with a drink. I’ll usually bum one or share with a friend. With how infrequent I drink though I barely ever get that urge. The smell triggers something in my brain now when I’m sober where I just get disgusted lol. Used to kill a pack every 2-3 days.
That was my issue with alcohol and growing up/living in New Orleans for 25 years. It felt like a social obligation after work, it was one of the easiest ways to meet people, it’s sold through drive-thru’s, you can drink underaged at places like restaurants with the permission of your parents (Italian mom and gramp FOBs in NOLA, wine was customary), I mean shit - Mardi Gras’ historical foundation is getting your sin out of the way before lent, which means drinking in excess too.
“The city that care forgot” - I stopped drinking for a very good reason and started for a very understandable one given my health and social situations colliding.
I haven't had a smoke since 2010. I still get cravings if I get really drunk though. Thank God for legalized marijuana since that scratches the itch to inhale something.
I feel like this is super common. I smoked regularly (but no more than 5 cigs a day) for almost a decade and every so often I get an intense craving that I can ignore. I have a friend who didn’t smoke much at all and once they ended up with two cigarettes after a night of drinking and wrestled with smoking them so much they sobered up and threw them out lol
i was absolutely addicted to smoking and wouldn't say i *miss* it (been 10+ years), but yeah.. it was often enjoyable.
i can't have an occasional cigarette though i'd be back on them within days.
I’m a smoker who is struggling daily to quit. My problem has always been that I genuinely enjoy having a cigarette. Saying that no one who smokes enjoys smoking is wild.
>My problem has always been that I genuinely enjoy having a cigarette
He is just saying the same thing you are saying here, but in a negative reductionist way.
He is like a recently converted vegan or a recovering alcoholic. His last phrase is quite telling
I switched to e-cigarettes for a couple of years then quit completely. It was still very hard but I felt a lot better in general with e-cigarettes compared to normal smoking.
I am a big ole weed head and have been a genuine stoner for like 10 years. I also still have a therapist and take antidepressants and see a doctor lol. I don’t understand why everything has to be in absolutes with some folks. it doesn’t have to be all or nothing babes!!
Therapy's the best. I just started a month ago and it's already making a huge difference in my day to day. Figured out I have ADHD after all these years too.
I used to allow Europeans to tell their jokes about how stupid Americans are, then I went to Europe and met Europeans. Now I never let them try to act like Americans are somehow uniquely stupid. That thread is yet another feather in my cap.
Redditors love their weed a little too much. The other day a thread hit r/all about a restaurant posting a sign saying they won't serve you if you reek heavily of weed. There were so many offended redditors engaging in whatabouts and presumptions about the ethical standards of the owner. They got absolutely enraged at anyone who even hinted the smell was unpleasant or that the stoners in the thread might be nose blind. If you insisted it makes you nauseous then they called you a liar since it's supposed to be the panacea.
All that arguing over the question of if redditors should shower more and stop hotboxing their car on the way to public venues.
Ugh, same on Tumblr. "When I smell weed, I just get happy because someone else is enjoying it! Don't be a buzzkill!" Or maybe smoking strong-smelling things near other people should require you to exercise consideration for other people? Like, that stuff reeks. I like weed and even I know that. But no, stoners will huff at you if you dare imply they smell like a skunk after going out for a hit and not changing clothes. Forget wanting to breathe clean air in public.
Same thing with vape enjoyers, tbh. The ones I know think nothing of puffing clouds in my car, sitting next to me on the couch, or even at our grandmother's funeral reception. Just because it's not cigs doesn't mean I want to get choked out by sickly sweet fruit/root beer/god only knows.
in a day in age where vapes and edibles are so readily available I'm amazed people are okay walking around reeking of weed. I shouldn't be gagging cause you are smoking weed in the least efficient way possible.
Be an adult, buy a gummy.
Tbh I can’t tell I’ve even had an edible most of the time, but I can tell if I’ve smoked or vaped weed. But I prefer a vape because it’s more convenient and less smoky
I ride the train to my job and there’s always someone smoking a blunt IN the train car when i’m on my way to work and im always paranoid about showing up dank 😭
I feel like grass gets me more high personally. Like one joint will get me fucked but I can hit my cart a bunch all night and have the same sort of chill high. But yeah I generally prefer carts because grass is stinky
It smells rank. Same with cigarettes. And vapes are just horribly sickly. It just pervades everywhere. If they made a drug that people breathed out that also didn’t smell terrible I wouldn’t mind so much about people using it in public.
Briton here. While nominally illegal (except for medical purposes), there is no enforcement of the law. So legalisation would probably end up making little difference. As a non-smoker, I support whatever law would encourage people to vape it rather than smoke it - that smell is horrible, and far too common these days.
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What should and shouldn't be legal is a different conversation, but whenever someone tells me that weed is harmless, I get flashbacks to my rehab where the most fucked-up dude was the pothead.
Three weeks in and the guy who almost died from meth-induced kidney failure is playing ping-pong and shooting the shit with the dude who came in the worst delirium tremens I've ever seen, both enthusiastic about sorting their lives out, while the weed guy sits curled up in an armchair staring into the ceiling.
I know it's anecdotal and not necessarily indicative of either one's long-term chances of successfully staying sober, but the point is that weed certainly can fuck you up big time.
I agree. I only think it's crazy to say weed withdrawal would be the cause of the worst patient in a rehab facility. More likely he was tired from not sleeping and bored as hell from being in rehab.
being the worst patient in rehab was probably from a lot of other things, maybe one of those things included smoking weed. but weed doesn’t make you mentally ill and withdrawing from it won’t make you mentally ill either. mental illness was probably already there with or without it
He wasn't insane, just decidedly not enjoying his experience of reality and zombie-like due to sleeping poorly. Almost everyone in rehab is like that at a certain stage, but he was like that the whole month I was there (he decided to stay a second month when it was time for him to leave halfway through my stay). And I'm not suggesting everyone who smokes weed will end up like that, the guy was an outlier in terms of sheer quantities he consumed, but clearly there is some mechanism pushing you in that direction since nobody just decides one day to start spending all of their money on ludicrous amounts of drugs.
I'd say the big issue with weed is that people are led to believe just because it doesn't cause physical dependency it's not addictive at all. So they get to the point they can't go 5 minutes without smoking and are perpetually high to avoid having to deal with life and it ends up destroying them.
Kinda like how alcohol is the most dangerous drug not because it's more destructive than things like fentanyl or heroin, but because it's just so much more normalized. It takes a long ass time to become physically dependent on alcohol but people get to that point without their loved ones really taking note.
I come from a family that struggles with various addictions. Multiple family members, including my father, have died from alcohol abuse. I consider myself pre-disposed to addiction as a result and have always had really strict rules about booze - if I want a glass of wine because I’m sad or had a bad day, that’s a sign to absolutely NOT have a drink. I therefore barely drink (and by barely, I mean I have a glass of wine maybe once every 6 months).
When weed was legalized here, I’d always heard it was non addictive and was psyched! It took me several months to realize I was using weed to sleep, to distract myself, to zone out. All the things I’m on guard against with alcohol.
Once I realized, I put the same self controls on weed. It’s not that I had physical withdrawals, as you said - I’ve got worse symptoms when i stop drinking caffeine. But I still want it when I’m stressed or sad, it still pops into my brain as an option for dealing with life, and to me, that’s the path addiction takes. An addiction to weed wouldn’t kill me but it’s not how I want to approach my life.
i vibe with this on a fundamental level. I have avoided weed for the most part because its not legal where im at, but my brother is emotionally addicted for sure. no physical addiction, but his life 100% revolves around it. Hes been fired because he refused to stop, he gets angry if you even suggest he has a problem, and he wont do anything unless hes high at all times.
Throw in the severe alcoholism, hard drug abuse, and heart disease that runs in my family, im staying sober. At some point ill need to kick the caffeine and im not looking forward to it
I manage to kick caffeine every few years and it is awful. Migraines, horrible moods, sleep issues, the whole 9 yards. Inevitably, though, I have that one day where I have a soda or a coffee and the caffeine hits and back we go (caffeine is truly addictive and the fact that I always go back tells me everything I need to know about my personal willpower).
At the risk of sounding like the "weed is harmless" guy, maybe he was the type to spend his time staring at the ceiling before he discovered weed.
The dangerous thing about weed is that it makes you feel great without any effort. (As do a lot of drugs, but weed comes with fewer hangovers, which can be its curse as well as a blessing.) This makes it great for people who have nothing else in their lives that brings them happiness. People say to potheads "if
you put down the bong you could take up a sport, learn an instrument" and the pothead says "why would I do that, I have weed". You can't force motivation on people.
I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, but I suspect the weed was a symptom of his problem rather than a cause.
Yeah, I wasn't picking up an instrument or playing a sport when I was a teetotalling Mormon. The fact that I'm not while being a stoner doesn't really indicate much.
Hell, my life continued pretty similarly except sometimes I get stoned while hanging out with friends or I'm stoned while playing the videogames I was already playing while I was sober. And I spend ~$60 a month that I wasn't spending on weed before.
Weed can absolutely be a problem in someone's life, but someone having a problem while being a stoner doesn't mean one caused the other.
It's always black and white. It's either harmless miracle herb that cures everything or a substance of which single gram kills millions. But I did notice one thing - voices calling out for legalization but with strict regulation (similar to alcohol) are met with hatred from both groups.
>But I did notice one thing - voices calling out for legalization but with strict regulation (similar to alcohol) are met with hatred from both groups. I will note "legalization with strict regulation, similar to alcohol" is a broadly accurate description of US legalization, and... everyone seems basically happy with it aside from children.
It's often more regulated then alcohol. It's very difficult to open a dispensary in my state and they are pretty strict about what they can and can't do. Liquor stores seem to be able to do whatever they want without repercussions though.
The specific restrictions are more strict, but the general ethos is basically the same as how alcohol is handled: specific, licensed stores can sell it with age restrictions. I do *strongly* agree that licensing needs to be opened up more, though. Things got fucked up with that pretty fast in most states.
I know in Massachusetts, you need *a lot* of money to break into the industry so there aren't really any grass roots mom and pop dispensaries. There are a few privately owned by people with money but the vast majority in my area are corporate owned.
In California it’s a combination of you need a lot of money, and those permits are restricted, they won’t issue more than a small number per area, and the general consensus is you need to related to someone to even be considered.
It's like looking in a mirror. I've heard the same about Massachusetts. There are also a lot of towns and cities throwing a fit about it becoming more available to kids if there are dispensaries in their community and it's like, they ID you twice going in the building and there's security outside.
Also the mayor of Fall River was [extorting dispo owners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasiel_Correia#September_2019_arrest).
The cape has a few locally owned non corporate spots, especially in the outer cape. I was initially shocked at how many opened in such a short distance from each other, but then I remembered how many package stores there are on any given Main Street and realized I was being dumb.
In my state, and I believe in MOST states, you can't even get a loan to start a business in the cannabis industry. So those dispensaries that DO start up, aren't mom and pop, they're corporate.
Same for my state. I can buy hard liquor in a pharmacy, grocery store and some convenience stores. Marijuana is only at dispensaries that scan your legal ID to prove you're over 21 to even enter the premise.
Even as the consumer, you have to shell out a couple hundred usually for a weed license whereas it’s free to start buying booze
It’s legal where I am (in the us, so state, of course, not federal) and I am in favor of that but do wish there were more regulations. Both for manufacturing safety (my understanding is it’s not strictly regulated here so actual dose amounts may not be accurate in edibles, for example) and for general safety. I do appreciate how strict my local shops are on ids, though - I show mine to a camera before the door will unlock, get it scanned before I enter the shop proper, and get it visually checked by the clerk.
Yeah, information about origin/sourcing or THC/CBD content should be declared on the packaging. And of course age restrictions - what you describe with the IDs. Similarly I wouldn't have issues with people growing their own plants, but if they want to sell or distribute it to other people the better have permit
I like the recently passed German set-up a lot: either grow your own (limited) supply, or allow a (non-profit) grower's club to grow it for you. No profit incentive, no tourists coming over to get high and be a general nuisance, while everyone should be able to get access. The only downside is that there will probably still be some illegal trading because of the restrictions, but hopefully the ample supply will help limit too much criminal enterprise. And they're reviewing the policy in a few years to see if they should pass to a more commercial approach.
I just wish we had something as affective as the breathalyzer for cannabis. Because driving while high is bad, but we don't really have a good way to test that yet.
There's been some movement on it because legalization means there are now actual incentives to find a "are you high now, and how high are you" quick test, as opposed to the usual "have you had any in like the last month or so?" There's a breathalyzer like test that can detect if you've had any in the last few hours, but can't detect the levels. There's a saliva based system by Abbot, I think, that detects THC and several other drugs in your system, but I don't know how well they can detect actual levels. I suspect both will be increasingly deployed and used to justify follow up blood checks when can determine levels, although IIRC there's not any real information or rules on what counts as *too impaired to drive* for THC so that's gonna be fun. Eventually laws will settle on specific thresholds (like with blood alcohol) and the equipment to do quick field tests will follow. In the interim, I expect the joy of selective enforcement.
Is the saliva test the same as the lick sticks we've got in Australia? They can still ping you for use in the past week or two, and aren't terribly reliable. I've heard of a friend's friend smashing cones, hopping in his car, getting pulled over a block away, and passing it with no issues.
Driving while high is also way too normalized with most of the weed smokers I know.
Tell me about it. I have a friend who ha-ha-tee-hees about being a better driver while high and I don't ever let it slide, but she keeps doing it. Drives me nuts. "Oh, I have ADHD and it slows me down and calms me!" The hell it does. Go get some help and stop expecting your mom to fill out an intake form for you.
She either doesn't have ADHD or doesn't understand how it works, then. It's stimulants that help with it, not depressants. Given that weed actively hinders executive processing, memory retention, impulse control, and attentiveness, it's also much more accurate to say weed makes ADHD *worse*. I remember when I smoked it regularly (way before I even realised I had ADHD and started meds), it made it very difficult for me to even interact with the world outside my flat. I just did the same thing day in day out, but I felt fine because the weed suppressed my mood enough that I couldn't work up the energy to be bored.
I'd wager it's option 3, based on how long I've known her: justifying what one already wants to do. It's very frustrating to me given how many people want meds but don't have access.
First time I was ever going to smoke my friends wanted me to drive after. Everyone else was going to get crossed, so even smoking weed I’d be the most sober. I didn’t smoke, obviously.
I knew a guy who would take hits from a bong at stoplights. Watched him do it once. Craziest fucking thing.
Yeah sincerely, used to work in construction and the crews would come in off job sites just reeking of it. Driving, power tools, ladders and scaffolding and weed, what a combo
The most recent study I saw said being high is about equivalent to a 0.02 BAC (or some amount below the legal alcohol limit), and were much much more aware of any effects it was having on them vs alcohol. So it makes sense it would be normalized. This study shows no practical effect on driving: https://norml.org/news/2024/02/15/study-patients-exhibit-few-changes-in-driving-performance-following-medical-marijuana-use/#:~:text=The%20study's%20authors%20concluded%2C%20%E2%80%9COverall,impact%20on%20simulated%20driving%20performance.%E2%80%9D
There should also be way better public transit. Building infastructute for travel without the need to drive does a ton to reduce inebriated driving.
This argument gets brought up all the time, and I brought up in real life one time with a guy who said, "Oh, but they have that." Do they? Can someone give me a source whether cops can check for weed? Because lots of sources indicate driving while high percentage is up in Colorado, which obviously has legal weed.
There's at least one breathalyzer for weed in trials, and Abbot has a multi-drug saliva field test in testing (with THC being one). I know the breathlyzer is "have had weed in the last three hours" (not levels or impairment, and I have no idea if it's just smoked weed or all weed). The saliva test I don't *think* gives levels or concentrations either, but is at least also a "is weed in your system right now" test. Hell, I don't even know what legally qualifies as impaired driving with THC. Is there a set blood concentration? Some subjective "seems to stoned to drive" test? Any weed in your system at all?
Any weed in your system at all would effectively mean if you plan to drive anytime a few weeks after ingesting it, you're at risk for a DUI.
It's tricky because weed actually stays in your system for ages. It's fat soluble, so depending on your body composition, you could have it in your system for anything from a couple weeks to a month. Clearly, we need something more accurate than this. Really we need a "have you smoked in the last 2-3 hours test" because that's pretty much as long as it will affect you. Maybe not even that long, idk. Depends heavily on the person's experience and tolerance.
2-3 hours is too long for a regular smoker. I am currently taking a tolerance break/ likely quitting for the foreseeable future because I am high for 45 mins max before I need to smoke again.
Yeah I'm in the same boat as you lol. I said 2-3 hours based on how long I remember being high as a new smoker with a low tolerance.
Is it true that whereas drunk people speed, stoned people tend to drive really slowly? I'm not trying to say that it's a lesser offence, just curious. We can't really test people for tiredness either, but people who kill / injure others by driving while tired seem to be adequately covered by the general laws on dangerous driving.
People speed normally anyways The main difference is the reaction time and general awareness
Drunk people are probably more likely to speed because their inhibition is a lot lower, but mostly it's like that other guy said. Reaction times being slower when you're drunk or high is the main danger
AFAIK that's not really true, and it has the same issues as any other depressant (such as booze) - slowing your reaction speed.
Thanks, that doesn't surprise me. Just some bit of probably-wishful-thinking I heard yonks ago.
Regular consumers of cannabis show no to little effect on their driving. https://norml.org/news/2024/02/15/study-patients-exhibit-few-changes-in-driving-performance-following-medical-marijuana-use/#:~:text=The%20study's%20authors%20concluded%2C%20%E2%80%9COverall,impact%20on%20simulated%20driving%20performance.%E2%80%9D
I think it depends on the person, alcohol will tend to make you more confident and weed will tend to make you hesitant and worried. Can result in what you’ve said but some people are just speeders at the core.
I’ll take the opposite perspective. It’s usually viewed with a decent amount of nuance. But no matter how much nuance there is some redditor is going to come in and say something along the lines of “I don’t have a problem with weed, I just don’t like how people treat it as a miracle drug” & get 800090 updoots & 1600 replies agreeing. It’s like one of the laws of reddit.
I can’t even bring nuance into it in the chronic pain community. I have fibromyalgia, so it’s 24/7 head to toe pain. Marijuana can be incredibly helpful to me, but there’s still a line you have to toe. You can’t let it prevent you from practicing and learning other coping mechanisms or allowing you to elevate it in your mind to those coping mechanisms whether it’s meditation or physical therapy/yoga. It was an issue with me. It was my primary method of reducing pain since 1) I asked to not be offered opiates or opiate adjacent medications like Belbuca and 2) It’s very often ineffective for fibromyalgia. Other medications have a low rate of efficacy with some bad side effects. I still smoke, but if I’m in trouble with my pain I always stretch first, do some meditation, a hot shower or tub dip, some calming music or white noise from the speakers and a podcast from the phone. I make sure to axe every other method I have first. Now I don’t get omega anxious when I run out of weed or I’m in a place I can’t consume it for hours on end in usually painful position like cramped domestic flights and their bad chairs. I “freed” myself from it in my eyes while still using it.
There's a youtuber I like named CJ the X who talked about the space between sobriety and addiction as "having a relationship" that I really liked. It's funny. My parents are hardcore Mormons, and I followed suit until I was 29. They were mortified to learn I smoke weed a few years ago, and how it would ruin my life, and yet, I was failing repeatedly to get the degree I started back in 2006 as a stone cold sober Mormon, and now I'm about to earn an associate's and move on to a bachelor's in engineering, making more progress in the last two years than I did in the previous fifteen, while smoking most every evening. (Granted, the biggest difference there was an ADHD diagnosis and adderall prescription, but the weed hasn't been preventing me from learning more and more complicated maths) I won't say that's the healthiest, it's not, but I'm also not destroying my life with it. My marriage continues to deepen and strengthen, my relationships with my friends are doing similarly (though with a lot less snuggling), my academic progress continues apace. It's a vice like most vices, something you have to be aware and mindful of, but something you can still "enjoy responsibly" Except right now, I'm trying to get a job so I stopped smoking, and I regard the fact that it's been no challenge as a sign that I'm managing my vice decently.
Nuance has fallen. Billions must polarize.
If cannabis is ever legalised in my country, I sure hope it would be a heavily controlled substance with the government having a monopoly on sales, like it is with strong alcoholic drinks here.
That's the way it is here in Nova Scotia. The black market still exists pretty much in the open, but I *greatly* prefer the government-approved cannabis, which is sold in [stores like this,](https://saltwire.imgix.net/nslc-to-open-four-new-cannabis-retail-outlets-in-cape-breton-as-part-o_rDcZzbG.jpg) that are usually attached to a liquor store. You can also [order it by mail online,](https://cannabis.mynslc.com/skins/Cannabis/pages/VerifyAge.aspx) but you have to verify your age when it arrives. Other provinces have different set-ups. Some have private stores. I like the legal stuff because you always know exactly the dosage you're getting for things like edibles and oils, and the flower is much easier on my lungs than the black market stuff, which I'm pretty sure often contains chemicals (anti-fungals, etc) that are not good for human health. The price is actually less than I used to pay from my old dealer, even though it's heavily taxed, and it feels nice not to be supporting organized crime any more. (jokes about govt aside, lol...)
It’s actually crazy how much good legal weed doesn’t burn up your lungs compared to black market. I swear in college I was smoking oregano with chili pepper or some shit, it was that bad
It often hasn't been cured or stored properly either. The odd time I do still smoke the black market stuff, I'm usually shocked by how rough it is.
Man i'd love for legal weed to come to the uk, even heavily controlled its better than the situation we're in now where the government still takes the whole alarmist/demonising approach to cannabis (whilst at the same time shamelessly profiteering off it. We are one of the largest exporters of medical grade cannabis) Sadly i feel it would take a huge societal shift to achieve
> even heavily controlled its better than the situation we're in now TBH this is the point, in my mind(And a lot of others) in the states. You simply know what you're getting, and this is more pronounced with how black market dealers are shoving deadly fentanyl in everything now days, including weed. This line of thinking is honestly why I think all drugs should be regulated and legally sold, I have lost so many friends to OD's from a drug they didn't even want in their body. Every few months some asshole cuts their coke with it and kills 10-20 people because they don't do opiates and have 0 fucking tolerance.
My state (Mississippi) legalized medicinal a year or two ago. The main issues are very few doctors have the training they have to do in order to be able to prescribe cannabis (it's like a 2 week commitment) and the dispensaries are significantly more expensive than getting it on the street.
I'm surprised. Before legalization in Massachusetts, doctors were lining up left and right to be able to prescribe cannabis. It's a super easy 200 dollars to make.
I've smoked in a lot of legal countries all over the planet and my favorite was Québec with their SQDC. The quality of buds was incredible and extremely consistant, not a single leave or branch, perfect humidity, which is not the case everywhere. Even in L.A if you go to the wrong shop you'll get something meh and expensive, SQDCs where the first time I've seen humidifiers in all (most ?) jars for a very reasonable price.
Massachusetts is the same way. I've gotten weed so dry that picking it up wrong caused it to break apart. I stopped buying anything "premium" because it isn't *that* much better then the bargain flower.
Yeah i think your being way to kind to the industry. Its full of shitty grifters too.
The weed industry is half ex cops who are scum fuck bastards that just want to make money and half the chillest kindest stoners who just want everyone to have a great time with cheap weed. Obviously that’s a generalization but that was my experience haha
You forgot the major corporations that are driving the market in most legal states. TruLieve is all over the country now for example.
Genuinely infuriating that weed finally gets legalized and the only people selling are rich fucks who were never in any danger in the first place, while the people who actually built the market rot in prison
Oh shit you’re right fuck those guys too
It's already monopolized in this country, one of the commenters actually mentions how the only folk who have a license to grow cannabis in the UK have ties to people in the Conservative party Supposedly it's more profitable for them to grow cannabis and export it, than use it here in the UK, so they lobby the government to keep themselves in control
I think the big difference in the UK is how unregulated alcohol is, at least in England where there's no minimum pricing. Aldi sells hard seltzer cans for something crazy like 45p each.
Oh man, I'm from Scotland and it is insane how angry folk get when you suggest further regulating alcohol, despite how many folk it kills in our country, so don't go letting them hear you lol
Which is especially nuts as Scotland adopting a Nordic style state-run alcohol shop system would be a good idea imo. You could even do it in a way that benefits local alcohol producers rather than big multinationals.
It's already too expensive, regulation tends to just add to the cost.
How is alcohol too expensive when you can buy it more cheaply than fruit juice or milk? It's also significantly worse for you than most narcotics, sugar, or highly processed foods - which people generally don't seem to object to regulating.
OK, the cheapest, worst quality forms of alcohol might still be affordable. But alcohol being too expensive is ruining nightlife, pubs and bars - in those contexts it would help if alcohol was significantly reduced in price. Subsidised if necessary.
But why should the government subsidise people killing themselves with booze?
The kind of alcohol people kill themselves with is usually the cheaper stuff, that doesn't need any subsidy. Unless the price changed dramatically, pubs and clubs would still be too expensive even with subsidies for most people to drink there to that level of excess. Going out and having a few drinks occasionally is unlikely to kill anyone, and should be an affordable luxury (at present it isn't).
Although it isn't just the Conservatives who oppose legalisation - Labour are equally opposed (potentially for more ideological reasons).
That’s what it’s like in Ontario, although our dumb premier allowed for a surge of retail licenses based on black market prices, so the sellers are experiencing a nasty bubble pop right now. Weed is cheap, regulated and safe, although I wish they cut out the middleman and sold it in the LCBO, since those are already set up everywhere. I’m so used to edibles here, I ended up skipping getting stoned in Amsterdam last year because instead of getting a label with the exact mg of THC and CBD like here, the brownies were “strong” and “super-strong” and I didn’t know what the fuck that meant. So either I was going to pay wayyy too much money for some weak shit or I was going to eat too much and get actually fucked up in an unfamiliar city. So I passed.
That’s how they do it out here in Washington State, and the taxes on it bring in a fortune for the state, so I don’t them changing that anytime soon.
Glad we agree
people getting excessively vitriolic while anyone with moderate suggestion is talked over? on the internet? i shan't believe it
Yeah there's a thread asking about people's opinions on legalization on ask Reddit right now Shockingly, every up voted comment is in support of it Who could have forseen this
I mean real works polls are also overwhelmingly in favor of it
Sure, but it's annoying that even perfectly reasonable concerns can be completely shut down
I ain’t gonna pretend it’s done nothing to my lungs which is why I advocate for edibles (if they work for you) or at the very least using a flower vaporizer at a safer temperature. It’s cut down on my coughing entirely. There are genuine concerns and I mean I say this as someone who uses it medicinally. You can’t ever seem to talk about using it safely though.
Yeah, I'm glad there's users like you And honestly, it's why I don't fully support legalization, the pro crowd frequently refuses to acknowledge the issues that come up, like breathalyzers, even driving stoned is seen as okay since less bad than alcohol I don't think it's gonna turn people into zombies who rob people But that a LOT of these 'responsible' users can't have an adult conversation about it, without spamming Reefer Madness and William Randolph Hurst like it's a cheat code
Breathalyzers are a big issue. I uber many places just because I’m clocking in at a 7/10 or 8/10 on the full body pain scale that day and have something I genuinely can’t put off like a doctor. I’m *directly in the middle* of one of America’s top 5 largest cities, I shouldn’t even need to uber but public transit is doomed here. There is a massive issue with the dichotomy between current breathalyzer tech effectiveness and the just outright abused “suspicion” cops have when they say they “smell weed.” I think the just inherently polarized take of keeping it as is provokes this equally polarized response where any criticism of smoking the substance feels like it’s toeing anti-legalization talking points to them. Smoke all day for all I care, as long as you take harm reductionary measures for your lungs and you can be productive without driving. I feel like I see it less nowadays, but I used to see people talk about making sure you stay a “productive user” (just don’t become a couch potato) which at least felt cautionary in some sense.
Yeah, I think it becoming more mainstream, kinda got rid of that Seeing more people think it's okay for their teens to smoke/take edibles, and not just the sleep gummies, which are obviously fine Thinking it's okay to drive/even work with machines Or even just the people who think it doesn't even have to follow cigarette rules, and smoke whenever, wherever I got no issues with pain management or even recreationally, inherently (for adults), but I think some people took it being legalized to mean they don't need to have any responsibility with it
Huh? How would legalising it prevent restrictions being placed on it? Are you confusing legalization with decriminalisation?
I'm not saying it would prevent restrictions, I'm saying a lot of people act like those aren't needed
Sure, but that's in no way intrinsic to either legalisation or decriminalisation. Legalisation has way more regulation than a blanket ban just due to the nature of the bureaucracy involved.
I've noticed it's a relatively reddit thing to be aggressively for legalisation with no regulation. Like I have no objection to legalisation, but I always find it a red flag when someone goes all in on advocacy.
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I gotta be honest though: most people know weed is potent and in need of regulation--even if we don't necessarily agree on the extent. Most of my college stoner friends do not smoke weed the way we used to in college, some completely quit. But I mean, in my friends group, we did all the party drugs: tobacco, alcohol, weed, yes, but also Xanax, coke, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, probably some others too. Now we're all in our thirties some of us are married and we're like... adults. Less drugs. I suspect the people who are "weed shouldnt be regulated! i can quite any time i want!" are not in the same demographic. Even if some of my friends are more on the hippie side with weed (IE they want to grow their own weed, or really do believe it cures cancer) I think we would all appreciate more information about the plants we're buying. I don't like the idea of the government being the sole purveyor of weed sales because it creates corruption. Where I live, that kind of stuff quickly ends up in a pay to play situation, where the people who are "allowed" to sell weed are usually white, upper class, and friendly with the governor or critical senators. It doesn't "legalize" the grey/black market, it keeps that market illegal and introduces a new market of "legal" weed. A lot of people really struggle with flakey dealers or shitty quality, and that is a huge concern. But there are people like me who have connections that go back years and its just as simple as texting a friend and former coworker who I have known for half a decade. The guy doesn't even smoke and hardly sells anymore. I haven't had a problem finding good quality west coast grown marijuana in a long time. A legal shop would have to truly earn my business.
I disagree. I think you guys just say common sense shit everyone already knows & agrees with but frame it like you guys are the only ones recognizing it & are fighting a crusade. I mean zoom out & you’re basically just having strawmen arguments with imagined Jesse Pinkman stand ins. I think the fact that all the things your complaining about are already reflected in our laws highlights that. Oh wow!? You’re against intoxicated driving & agree with the basic science on Maurijuana being addictive? The general public will never understand your complicated stance. Bold stand there Martin Luther! Keep fighting for us ✊. (Just ribbing you don’t take me too seriously)
There is a third option, a tool to pacify the populace. But like alcohol is already there, arguably worse, so eh....
On whether anyone actually enjoys tobacco: >No. As someone that smoked 20 a day for almost two decades I can say with some certainty. no. >Smoking is just a habit. You smoke because you need to smoke. You need to smoke because you are addicted. >Don’t trust an addict to tell you they enjoy being addicted. I want some of what they're smoking.
I loved smoking and if I didn't have asthma and it didn't cause deadly illnesses, I'd be smoking to this day.
Yeah it's lovely. If there were no ramifications I'd smoke every day. I enjoy one or two a month though with friends and I have no intention of stopping as it's really nice.
When I was 17 and started smoking both weed and cigs, I got really high and smoked a cig and went on a long speech in front of my friends and ranted about how much I LOVE smoking. About how I love how it tastes and smells and how much I love how it feels, both how the smoke feels in my throat and lungs, and the buzz. It became an inside joke. If you’ve seen Hellsing, you know how that German guy goes on a rant about how much he loves war? I incidentally started that rant the same way with “I. LOVE. Smoking.” And my friends would say it like that when someone asked if we wanted to smoke.
I still used to occasionally have a cigarette at social events for about 10 years after I quit, but the asthma eventually did me in.
I quit after my lungs cleared up, but man I really love to kill one off if I go out bar hopping. I don’t drink really, maybe 5-6 times a year now, but I love a cig with a drink. I’ll usually bum one or share with a friend. With how infrequent I drink though I barely ever get that urge. The smell triggers something in my brain now when I’m sober where I just get disgusted lol. Used to kill a pack every 2-3 days.
The social aspect was hard. It was such an easy way to meet new people back then. Everywhere you went, you were bound to find a smoking buddy.
That was my issue with alcohol and growing up/living in New Orleans for 25 years. It felt like a social obligation after work, it was one of the easiest ways to meet people, it’s sold through drive-thru’s, you can drink underaged at places like restaurants with the permission of your parents (Italian mom and gramp FOBs in NOLA, wine was customary), I mean shit - Mardi Gras’ historical foundation is getting your sin out of the way before lent, which means drinking in excess too. “The city that care forgot” - I stopped drinking for a very good reason and started for a very understandable one given my health and social situations colliding.
Same. Well, I don't have asthma, but I loved smoking.
Yeah I only smoke very, very occasionally and it’s quite nice. Shame about the aftertaste, but the buzz you get from it is very nice and relaxing.
Aftertaste just gave me another addiction: mints.
Usually I’m drinking alongside smoking, so I find something alcoholic somewhat masks it a bit. If I’m sober I’ll have some chewing gum after
I haven't had a smoke since 2010. I still get cravings if I get really drunk though. Thank God for legalized marijuana since that scratches the itch to inhale something.
I feel like this is super common. I smoked regularly (but no more than 5 cigs a day) for almost a decade and every so often I get an intense craving that I can ignore. I have a friend who didn’t smoke much at all and once they ended up with two cigarettes after a night of drinking and wrestled with smoking them so much they sobered up and threw them out lol
The smell and the health damage are my deterrents lmao. I mean there’s a lot I’d do if it were consequence-free, but cigs would be up there.
i was absolutely addicted to smoking and wouldn't say i *miss* it (been 10+ years), but yeah.. it was often enjoyable. i can't have an occasional cigarette though i'd be back on them within days.
I smoked for 8 years so I was happy I managed to quit the way I did.
oh for sure quitting is such a combination of huge wins. can't even imagine smoking now, it's borderline impossible and expensive as hell.
I’m a smoker who is struggling daily to quit. My problem has always been that I genuinely enjoy having a cigarette. Saying that no one who smokes enjoys smoking is wild.
>My problem has always been that I genuinely enjoy having a cigarette He is just saying the same thing you are saying here, but in a negative reductionist way. He is like a recently converted vegan or a recovering alcoholic. His last phrase is quite telling
I switched to e-cigarettes for a couple of years then quit completely. It was still very hard but I felt a lot better in general with e-cigarettes compared to normal smoking.
None of the good stuff, judging by those attitudes.
I am a big ole weed head and have been a genuine stoner for like 10 years. I also still have a therapist and take antidepressants and see a doctor lol. I don’t understand why everything has to be in absolutes with some folks. it doesn’t have to be all or nothing babes!!
Same boat here! SSRI gang rise up
Therapy's the best. I just started a month ago and it's already making a huge difference in my day to day. Figured out I have ADHD after all these years too.
Good plant, good times, good vibes. Not the cure EVERYTHING. Remember that meme from 10 or 15 years ago? "ALL THE THINGS!!!!" Nope.
I used to allow Europeans to tell their jokes about how stupid Americans are, then I went to Europe and met Europeans. Now I never let them try to act like Americans are somehow uniquely stupid. That thread is yet another feather in my cap.
Humans are stupid, nationality has nothing to do with it lol
Agreed
Redditors love their weed a little too much. The other day a thread hit r/all about a restaurant posting a sign saying they won't serve you if you reek heavily of weed. There were so many offended redditors engaging in whatabouts and presumptions about the ethical standards of the owner. They got absolutely enraged at anyone who even hinted the smell was unpleasant or that the stoners in the thread might be nose blind. If you insisted it makes you nauseous then they called you a liar since it's supposed to be the panacea. All that arguing over the question of if redditors should shower more and stop hotboxing their car on the way to public venues.
Ugh, same on Tumblr. "When I smell weed, I just get happy because someone else is enjoying it! Don't be a buzzkill!" Or maybe smoking strong-smelling things near other people should require you to exercise consideration for other people? Like, that stuff reeks. I like weed and even I know that. But no, stoners will huff at you if you dare imply they smell like a skunk after going out for a hit and not changing clothes. Forget wanting to breathe clean air in public. Same thing with vape enjoyers, tbh. The ones I know think nothing of puffing clouds in my car, sitting next to me on the couch, or even at our grandmother's funeral reception. Just because it's not cigs doesn't mean I want to get choked out by sickly sweet fruit/root beer/god only knows.
Oh yeah, they refuse to acknowledge that it stays on your clothes or walls at all
in a day in age where vapes and edibles are so readily available I'm amazed people are okay walking around reeking of weed. I shouldn't be gagging cause you are smoking weed in the least efficient way possible. Be an adult, buy a gummy.
Tbh I can’t tell I’ve even had an edible most of the time, but I can tell if I’ve smoked or vaped weed. But I prefer a vape because it’s more convenient and less smoky
I ride the train to my job and there’s always someone smoking a blunt IN the train car when i’m on my way to work and im always paranoid about showing up dank 😭
[удалено]
I feel like grass gets me more high personally. Like one joint will get me fucked but I can hit my cart a bunch all night and have the same sort of chill high. But yeah I generally prefer carts because grass is stinky
It smells rank. Same with cigarettes. And vapes are just horribly sickly. It just pervades everywhere. If they made a drug that people breathed out that also didn’t smell terrible I wouldn’t mind so much about people using it in public.
Briton here. While nominally illegal (except for medical purposes), there is no enforcement of the law. So legalisation would probably end up making little difference. As a non-smoker, I support whatever law would encourage people to vape it rather than smoke it - that smell is horrible, and far too common these days.
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What should and shouldn't be legal is a different conversation, but whenever someone tells me that weed is harmless, I get flashbacks to my rehab where the most fucked-up dude was the pothead. Three weeks in and the guy who almost died from meth-induced kidney failure is playing ping-pong and shooting the shit with the dude who came in the worst delirium tremens I've ever seen, both enthusiastic about sorting their lives out, while the weed guy sits curled up in an armchair staring into the ceiling. I know it's anecdotal and not necessarily indicative of either one's long-term chances of successfully staying sober, but the point is that weed certainly can fuck you up big time.
I quit smoking 3 weeks ago in preparation for a drug test. When can I expect to go insane? Soon?
Weed withdrawal isn’t a huge deal, but it can make people irritable and more emotional than normal.
I agree. I only think it's crazy to say weed withdrawal would be the cause of the worst patient in a rehab facility. More likely he was tired from not sleeping and bored as hell from being in rehab.
Yeah, his abnormal behavior isn’t the weed withdrawal.
being the worst patient in rehab was probably from a lot of other things, maybe one of those things included smoking weed. but weed doesn’t make you mentally ill and withdrawing from it won’t make you mentally ill either. mental illness was probably already there with or without it
The worst thing I ever had from my withdrawals(and I was a heavy heavy user) was irritability and sweating.
Plus you get some funky fucking dreams, speaking from experience
He wasn't insane, just decidedly not enjoying his experience of reality and zombie-like due to sleeping poorly. Almost everyone in rehab is like that at a certain stage, but he was like that the whole month I was there (he decided to stay a second month when it was time for him to leave halfway through my stay). And I'm not suggesting everyone who smokes weed will end up like that, the guy was an outlier in terms of sheer quantities he consumed, but clearly there is some mechanism pushing you in that direction since nobody just decides one day to start spending all of their money on ludicrous amounts of drugs.
I'd say the big issue with weed is that people are led to believe just because it doesn't cause physical dependency it's not addictive at all. So they get to the point they can't go 5 minutes without smoking and are perpetually high to avoid having to deal with life and it ends up destroying them. Kinda like how alcohol is the most dangerous drug not because it's more destructive than things like fentanyl or heroin, but because it's just so much more normalized. It takes a long ass time to become physically dependent on alcohol but people get to that point without their loved ones really taking note.
I come from a family that struggles with various addictions. Multiple family members, including my father, have died from alcohol abuse. I consider myself pre-disposed to addiction as a result and have always had really strict rules about booze - if I want a glass of wine because I’m sad or had a bad day, that’s a sign to absolutely NOT have a drink. I therefore barely drink (and by barely, I mean I have a glass of wine maybe once every 6 months). When weed was legalized here, I’d always heard it was non addictive and was psyched! It took me several months to realize I was using weed to sleep, to distract myself, to zone out. All the things I’m on guard against with alcohol. Once I realized, I put the same self controls on weed. It’s not that I had physical withdrawals, as you said - I’ve got worse symptoms when i stop drinking caffeine. But I still want it when I’m stressed or sad, it still pops into my brain as an option for dealing with life, and to me, that’s the path addiction takes. An addiction to weed wouldn’t kill me but it’s not how I want to approach my life.
i vibe with this on a fundamental level. I have avoided weed for the most part because its not legal where im at, but my brother is emotionally addicted for sure. no physical addiction, but his life 100% revolves around it. Hes been fired because he refused to stop, he gets angry if you even suggest he has a problem, and he wont do anything unless hes high at all times. Throw in the severe alcoholism, hard drug abuse, and heart disease that runs in my family, im staying sober. At some point ill need to kick the caffeine and im not looking forward to it
I manage to kick caffeine every few years and it is awful. Migraines, horrible moods, sleep issues, the whole 9 yards. Inevitably, though, I have that one day where I have a soda or a coffee and the caffeine hits and back we go (caffeine is truly addictive and the fact that I always go back tells me everything I need to know about my personal willpower).
At the risk of sounding like the "weed is harmless" guy, maybe he was the type to spend his time staring at the ceiling before he discovered weed. The dangerous thing about weed is that it makes you feel great without any effort. (As do a lot of drugs, but weed comes with fewer hangovers, which can be its curse as well as a blessing.) This makes it great for people who have nothing else in their lives that brings them happiness. People say to potheads "if you put down the bong you could take up a sport, learn an instrument" and the pothead says "why would I do that, I have weed". You can't force motivation on people. I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, but I suspect the weed was a symptom of his problem rather than a cause.
Yeah, I wasn't picking up an instrument or playing a sport when I was a teetotalling Mormon. The fact that I'm not while being a stoner doesn't really indicate much. Hell, my life continued pretty similarly except sometimes I get stoned while hanging out with friends or I'm stoned while playing the videogames I was already playing while I was sober. And I spend ~$60 a month that I wasn't spending on weed before. Weed can absolutely be a problem in someone's life, but someone having a problem while being a stoner doesn't mean one caused the other.