[HN Gopher] US drug control agency will move to reclassify marij...
___________________________________________________________________
US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana
Author : JacobHenner
Score : 392 points
Date : 2024-04-30 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| vkou wrote:
| It's actually wild what the executive can get done in an election
| year... With the side effect of dangling bait for legislators to
| take a contrarian, nationally unpopular position.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Election year and not to mention that the President's numbers
| are in shambles with younger voters. This move feels extremely
| transparent to me.
| jborden13 wrote:
| Similar to paying off random citizen's student loans?
| flawsofar wrote:
| Well I mean: doing things that people want them to do to get
| elected. Not the worst problem?
| segasaturn wrote:
| Of course not, that's how democracy works!
|
| My actual issue with this is:
|
| a) it should have been done sooner. Waiting until
| $election_year to do something popular has severely damaged
| the growth of cannabis industry
|
| and b) it's another executive branch rule by decree that
| could be reversed as soon as 6 months from now after
| election day.
| flawsofar wrote:
| Ah, I agree. It is a good move with a side of bullshit.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > it should have been done sooner.
|
| Not everyone agrees though. I don't want it legalized or
| normalized more.
| itishappy wrote:
| What about reclassification?
| kbelder wrote:
| I wish it was completely legal and completely non-
| normalized.
| sevagh wrote:
| >as severely damaged the growth of cannabis industry
|
| Do you own weed stocks or something? How is the growth of
| the cannabis industry supposed to be the mandate of a
| government?
| segasaturn wrote:
| Regulation shouldn't cause harm for causing harm's sake.
| We already know prohibition doesn't work, so why did they
| drag their feet on repealing regulation that is both
| harmful and ineffective, is my concern.
|
| Also to answer your question about weed stocks: I used to
| own cannabis stocks but dumped them about a year ago. Big
| mistake! They've doubled in price over the last week
| presumably from this news.
| vuln wrote:
| It's pandering and on the edge of buying votes. Unlike
| Student Loan "forgiveness" which was a direct purchase of a
| vote.
|
| And no I doubt this will rouse the pot smokers to vote,
| perhaps mail in, as they don't have to do actually
| anything.
| flawsofar wrote:
| If everyone buys votes using one issue or another, using
| cannabis to buy votes should be the least concern of
| anyone.
|
| While you can make some amount of case that the timing
| makes it a manipulation, is this really the manipulation
| that bothers you?
|
| I would rather there be no manipulations. But in a
| country that divides itself on infantile identity
| politics, fight fire with fire.
|
| It is not a fair game. You can't demand perfect
| intentions around this issue when politics is full of
| much worse actors.
| vuln wrote:
| The timing is complete bullshit. Politicians "pocket"
| issues like this and pull them out during an election
| year "look how much I care about you!!! Vote for me!!!"
| They could have and should have done this a very long
| time ago.
|
| It's obvious to everyone that the democrats are losing
| their bread a butter voters, young people and black
| folks. This gets waved around for the nth time and
| everyone gets excited.
| flawsofar wrote:
| are you really going on a downvote revenge spree? lol
| philipkglass wrote:
| On HN you can't downvote a direct reply to your own
| comment, so vuln did not downvote your reply.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| It's wild to me that people think "buying votes" is a bad
| thing. The whole point of democracy is to align the
| interests of the state's leaders to its population. If
| anything, politicians don't buy votes often enough!
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Politician runs on a platform of 'Hey 51% of the
| population, if you vote for me I'll take the other 49%'s
| money and give it to you!', proceeds to win by 2%.
| Democracy in action!
| jimbob45 wrote:
| My favorite was the cancellation of a ban on menthol
| cigarettes because it would turn away black voters despite
| the NAACP ardently encouraging the ban[0].
|
| [0]https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/health/fda-menthol-
| cigarettes...
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| Honestly the biggest uptick of weed use I've seen in my peer
| groups is in the >= 50 set for pain management, sleep,
| and...fun.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yeah, now that it's "windows open" weather, we are smelling
| it a lot; source is definitely in the over 50 demographic.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Yeah, he's doing something that's reasonably popular among
| everyone. How dare he?
| thegrim33 wrote:
| A third of the population, 111 million citizens, do not
| want it legalized. I wouldn't consider that "popular among
| everyone". https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2024/04/10/facts-abo...
| triceratops wrote:
| Your own link says it's 70% in favor of legalization and
| 29% against. 29% is as close to "a quarter of the
| population" as it is to "a third of the population" - 400
| basis points.
|
| Putting it another way nearly 3 quarters of citizens want
| it legalized. That's massive. It's as close to unanimous
| consensus as you can get on a hot-button issue like
| drugs.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The bureaucratic process will take about two years. It's
| definitely not getting done in time for election.
| gnicholas wrote:
| If it takes multiple years, then it gives voters a reason to
| support the candidate that will support the process post-
| election. Basically, vote for Joe if you want Mary Jane.
| nerdjon wrote:
| In fairness we do also see the opposite, which is kind of a
| problem with the 2 term system.
|
| In a presidents first term they are incentivized to do just
| enough to not piss of the other side enough to get some crazy
| numbers out but do enough to appease the current voters that
| they tried.
|
| But then in the second term any worry about being re-elected
| goes out the window.
|
| Like I am still convinced that Obama was in support of gay
| marriage before he publicly said it, and just waited until
| after he was re-elected. At that point what was he going to
| loose?
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think it dovetails with the Administration's recent pausing
| of outlawing menthol cigarettes which has been reported as
| adversely effecting African Americans. It's blatantly
| political, which giving the people what they want and all, but
| it's disingenuous when these things only occur at election
| time. The President could have done this on day one.
| romellem wrote:
| It has been a multi-year effort to get the DEA to reclassify
| marijuana, starting in _2022_. It starts with the President
| telling the HHS to provide a new recommendation to the DEA, and
| the finally for the DEA to decide what to do on that
| recommendation.
|
| - https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| Germanion wrote:
| Finally!
|
| Then hopefully the f... UN can do that too.
|
| I'm totally shocked that the UN has such a hard and shitty drug
| policy.
| spaduf wrote:
| Wasn't that a project of Reagan's?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I believe the concept of drug 'scheduling' was introduced in
| the Controlled Substances Act under Richard Nixon: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cannabis_laws_in_t....
|
| Reagan had his War on Drugs, which resulted in the
| imprisonment of an order of magnitude more nonviolent drug
| offenders: https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs
| skhunted wrote:
| There was a debate in the early 80s on whether the country
| should concentrate on treatment or enforcement. Reagan
| introduced zero tolerance policies. He usually chose the
| wrong approach.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Reagan introduced zero tolerance policies. He usually
| chose the wrong approach
|
| That doesn't seem to clear cut with the recent failed
| (and now backpedaling) experiments regarding
| decriminalization and legalization of most drugs.
| asveikau wrote:
| It's more like the stuff that doesn't work is being
| pushed again.
| Alupis wrote:
| On it's surface it seems to have worked better than these
| experiments. Otherwise the experiments would not be
| getting rolled back...
|
| There's very few if any fans of what played out in
| Portland, for instance. Overt drug usage exploded and
| became a much worse problem. The exact opposite of what
| proponents had hoped.
|
| Some will say "but they didn't do it right" or similar -
| tired arguments we hear every time pet policies fail.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| This is a very un-nuanced take on what happened in
| Portland, and lines up with what the uncritical and
| uninformed national reporting about Portland has been
| saying.
|
| It was not successful, but it was also never effectively
| funded, not implemented well, and rolled out in a rush.
| Alupis wrote:
| > It was not successful, but it was also never
| effectively funded, not implemented well, and rolled out
| in a rush.
|
| So... like almost every government program? What makes
| you convinced it can actually be achieved in reality?
| With real people, real politicians, real budgets that get
| robbed for other pet projects down the line...
|
| Even if it was achieved in reality - let's pretend to
| wave a magic wand - what is the expected outcome? Fewer
| people doing hard drugs than before? That seems difficult
| to accept given all consequences will effectively be
| removed... how many celebrities (with effectively
| unlimited resources) struggle their entire lives with
| drug abuse - in and out of rehab, etc. It seems it's
| better to prevent people from becoming addicts in the
| first place, vs. attempt to treat/mitigate addiction
| after it has formed.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > What makes you convinced it can actually be achieved in
| reality?
|
| It may never be achieved, regardless of my or your
| personal views on the subject at hand I think reasonable
| people can agree if you try and do something but do it
| poorly, and it doesn't work, that's not necessarily a
| failure of the thing but more a failure of the execution.
|
| ex: I'm bad at welding so therefore welding is not a good
| way to hold two pieces of metal together, is an
| invalid/incorrect conclusion.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Bad execution undermines otherwise good policy.
|
| Ideas don't execute themselves and when someone doesn't
| deliver the goods, it is human nature to question their
| decision making ability in the first place.
|
| Being defensive or arguing nuance is fine in theory, but
| in practice bad outcomes tend to reinforce biases.
|
| I would prefer fully baked ideas that are rigorous and
| practical rather than purely utopian and just hoping for
| the best. One does not roll out underfunded programs that
| play with safety and health.
| Alupis wrote:
| And... when dealing with humans - policies are often not
| enacted like we thought they would be in our head's under
| ideal conditions.
|
| Policies are implemented by politicians and government
| drones, are beholden to budgets and meandering political
| sentiment of the population, etc. ie - they will never be
| implemented "correctly" - so we should pick the policies
| that are the hardest to get wrong and/or have the least
| negative side effects.
| asveikau wrote:
| You strike me as the type of person who doesn't know that
| US urban crime decreased in 2023.
|
| The novel thing in world of illicit drugs is that
| fentanyl is very hard to dose correctly, so death rates
| are higher than before. That new fact on the scene makes
| long term comparisons difficult. But, I would say given
| the dropping crime rates of the last 40 years, we're
| doing better than the previous waves of "tough on crime"
| policy including drug wars from the 1980s and 1990s,
| despite incarcerating a lot fewer people. So I think
| these "experiments" absolutely are working. That
| effectiveness may however be overshadowed by the specific
| dangerousness of fentanyl in the illicit market.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| What does that have to do with treatment programs?
| Alupis wrote:
| Well, enforcement is a form of treatment - just not the
| form some might want.
|
| We're trying the other way and failing right now. Perhaps
| we should figure out why...
| superb_dev wrote:
| Enforcement is not a form of treatment, regardless we've
| been trying enforcement since the 70s and it's been a
| disaster. Why would you want to double down on that?
| Alupis wrote:
| > Enforcement is not a form of treatment, regardless
| we've been trying enforcement since the 70s and it's been
| a disaster.
|
| This is often said - but what do you actually mean by
| disaster? Hard drug usage is objectively lower in strict
| enforcement areas vs. non-enforcement areas like Portland
| was briefly.
| superb_dev wrote:
| There is a lot that I could talk about, but America's
| prison population comes to mind first. America has the
| largest prison population in the world, and they're
| essential a slave class. They get fewer rights and are
| forced to work for whatever company wants their labor.
| skhunted wrote:
| _....but what do you actually mean by disaster?_
|
| Our prisons do a horrible job at rehabilitation. Our
| prisons themselves contain lots of drugs. Our prisons
| are, in my opinion, immorally run. As a nation we believe
| in retribution and are fine with prison rapes and other
| abuses that occur there.
|
| The drug war has been a disaster in terms of cost/benefit
| regarding how much we've spent on it. It's been a
| disaster in terms of civil liberties. We Americans like
| to think we are free but walking around with $10,000 in
| cash will, if found out by police, result in it being
| seized. Civil asset forfeiture has caused many innocent
| people to be punished. It has been a disaster in terms of
| our national incarceration rate. Incarceration for drugs
| targets poor and minorities. Rich people rarely go to
| jail for drug use. For example, Rush Limbaugh got a fine
| and drug treatment.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Those policies were not well funded or implemented, we
| should keep trying alternative solutions to the status
| quo.
|
| In contrast to the "war on drugs" which has been
| extremely well funded, and implemented to the cost of our
| own liberties, tried for years and has not been
| successful either.
| Alupis wrote:
| > tried for years and has not been successful either.
|
| What's the measurement for success?
|
| It seems, from a casual observer's perspective, we have
| fewer people trying hard drugs when the consequences are
| strict and known. We have more people trying hard drugs
| when the consequences are removed.
|
| Neither system will achieve 0% drug usage - so which
| policy results in fewer people trying hard drugs?
| Hasu wrote:
| > What's the measurement for success?
|
| It's not "the number of people who try hard drugs", which
| isn't a particularly interesting or meaningful number
| (lots of people, including myself, _try_ hard drugs but
| never end up hooked on them and are productive members of
| society).
|
| Try "the amount of harm caused to society". The drug war
| destroys more lives than hard drugs. It's a policy
| failure.
| Alupis wrote:
| > The drug war destroys more lives than hard drugs. It's
| a policy failure.
|
| Again, this does not seem as clear as you attempt to
| present it.
|
| In areas with decriminalized hard drugs, drug usage
| dramatically increased. It has a direct impact on the
| lives of the users, and also secondary impacts on the
| lives of everyone around them and/or has to deal with
| them.
|
| Drug usage is not the so-called "victimless" crime some
| position it as. It has a lot of effects on society as a
| whole.
| Hasu wrote:
| > In areas with decriminalized hard drugs, drug usage
| dramatically increased. It has a direct impact on the
| lives of the users, and also secondary impacts on the
| lives of everyone around them and/or has to deal with
| them.
|
| Absolutely. I'm no stranger to the impact of drug abuse,
| as I've had family and close friends become addicts.
|
| Even so, the drug war is way worse. It adds violence and
| danger to drug use, making it more dangerous for users
| and those in their proximity. It increases policing and
| police militarization and violence. Punishments for
| possession destroy families and career prospects.
|
| Every ounce of prevention bought by the drug war costs a
| pound of pain.
|
| > Drug usage is not the so-called "victimless" crime some
| position it as. It has a lot of effects on society as a
| whole.
|
| Responsible drug use is pretty victimless. Drug abuse has
| victims. But that's no different than alcohol, and
| banning that also caused way more harm than it prevented.
| mholm wrote:
| The approach promised in Oregon failed because the
| original intent of the decriminalization was to also
| increase support for rehabilitation. This never ended up
| happening, so drug users were thrown back into the
| situations that got them into drugs in the first place,
| instead of being given a way out.
| vmchale wrote:
| SE Asia/East Asia at least have much harsher attitudes on
| drugs. US is pretty forgiving to drug users &c.
| latchkey wrote:
| Thailand legalized it.
|
| Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, it may be illegal, but it is
| everywhere, along with everything else.
|
| Singapore is restrictive, but that's across the board anyway.
|
| Let's not forget that betel nut is everywhere... another
| plant based drug.
| djbusby wrote:
| Tobacco too
| latchkey wrote:
| You're not wrong, but I'm thinking more about the things
| that are marked as illegal today.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| US is only lenient when compared to even more severe
| steamrollers of human rights. Executing individuals for drug
| possession is absolutely unconsciousable and unacceptable.
| Incarceration being less diabolical does not mean it is not
| still highly diabolical. Countless lives were and continue to
| be destroyed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Selling hard drugs for a profit is diabolical. It also
| ruins lives.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Yet alcohol remains legal.
| akira2501 wrote:
| You're welcome to start making your own alcohol and then
| selling shots on the street. I'm sure you'll notice the
| difference very quickly.
| fragmede wrote:
| Compared to selling hard drugs on the street? Technically
| what you're describing is against the law, but given that
| people are selling hard drugs on the street, I doubt you
| could get the cops to care.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| The state killing people is always unjustified since you
| can't prove 99%+ really did the crime. In fact, we can show
| the states and feds have put to death many of their own
| innocent citizens.
| Alupis wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but why does anyone care what the UN
| thinks about this subject? They cannot, and will not do
| anything about _anything_ anyway...
| cess11 wrote:
| It's a matter of treaty law. States punched out a treaty on
| drugs and then promised each other to stick to it, pressuring
| other states to buy in.
|
| Leaving a treaty means you change your relation to the other
| signatories and possibly a regulatory body that took part in
| developing the treaty. Sometimes it's cheap, sometimes it's
| been a justification for horrible atrocities over decades and
| decades.
|
| In this case the latter is true. Ditching the UN convention
| is almost like saying you owe a lot of people restitution for
| the nasty things you did.
|
| Which is why the UN needs to take the blame for the
| convention on drugs to go away, the signatories most likely
| won't.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Weed being illegal on a federal level has had some interesting
| effects. Because of these laws, all legal weed has to be grown,
| processed, and retailed within a single state. So much industry
| and local employment has been created by the legal barriers in
| place.
|
| It's probably still a net positive to release the federal
| restriction, but I hope all these small/mid sized businesses
| don't get gulped up by big tobacco or other mega corps
| RobRivera wrote:
| 'Time for them to perform due diligence and refactor their
| operations to take advantage of the new legal landscape to
| retain competitive pricing inorder for' all these small/mid
| sized businesses don't get gulped up by big tobacco or other
| mega corps.
| pm90 wrote:
| American corporations are great at retooling their
| business/supply chains for different products (see how
| quickly everyone moved into hard seltzers).
|
| I do expect big tobacco to move in aggressively if weed is
| made legal.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Hasn't really happened in Canada. I think a small-player
| alcohol company did move in, but only after the bubble
| popped.
|
| Turns out legalization of a drug doesn't lead to massive
| increases in consumption. Who knew.
|
| Definitely kneecapped the black market though: most moved
| to the legal side and black market prices cratered.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Lobbyists don't care about uncapturable black market
| money. The legal market has led to massive increase in
| legal, taxable money, so now is exactly the time for big
| tobacco to start salivating over the idea of capturing
| all of those transactions.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Marijuana use has massively increased in the US as states
| have legalized it.
|
| Users have doubled:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/264862/cannabis-
| consumpt...
|
| Use among users has also increased 20%:
| https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/962353
| Retric wrote:
| 20% increase in consumption isn't exactly what I would
| call massive.
|
| Looking at historic trends the point where pot was first
| legalized for recreational use isn't obvious. If anything
| the long term upward tends started long before
| legalization which didn't seem to have significant
| impact. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/article
| s/10.1186/s...
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm surprised it's not more personally if the numbers are
| accurate. A lot of pretty casual users in professional
| jobs were mostly not going to find a friend of a friend
| to do an illegal transaction with. But they'll go into a
| dispensary now and then.
|
| But you really see that reflected in the doubled number
| of users which is probably the more relevant number.
| otherme123 wrote:
| If I could face consequences for using drugs, I will deny
| it even after being positive in a test. Of course, once
| legalized, I'll have no problem saying that I used in
| once or twice a year. Being it legal, safer and out of
| the dangerous black market, there will be some new users.
|
| Same happened after alcohol prohibition: more people
| consumed after the ban was lifted, but consumption was
| safer. But rarely people that didn't consume during the
| prohibition went on alcohol binge after the end of the
| ban. They just drank a couple of beers per week, maybe
| even a glass of bourbon twice a year, now that they can
| buy and consume it safely.
|
| Thus the stats you linked doesn't necesarily show a
| "massive" increase in use, but many people using it
| sparsely now and many people now admiting to use it that
| were using previously. In fact, while statista.com shows
| a 100% increase, the second and more controlled study
| shows only a ~20% increase that makes more sense (far
| from _massive_ ).
| pseudosavant wrote:
| I'd bet alcohol use went way up after prohibition too.
| Both in number of people consuming, and on how much they
| consume on average.
|
| I've personally known people with terminal cancer who
| wouldn't use marijuana to manage pain and nausea because
| it is federally illegal. They suffered more than they
| should have. Is lower use always good?
| The_Blade wrote:
| Denver definitely had perverse consequence. people eking
| out a living selling weed on the street quickly turned
| to... harder substances. people will get their dollar and
| people will get their high
| jiayo wrote:
| Big tobacco might have stayed out of the fray but since
| legalization the vape giant JUUL owns and operates
| dispensaries.
| rascul wrote:
| Juul is Big Tobacco.
| jerlam wrote:
| Hopefully, the small/mid sized businesses hold a niche in
| the same way that craft brewers have maintained their
| existence (until they get acquired).
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Agreed -- but I think nobody knows quite how it'll play
| out.
|
| I think of the thriving microbrewery scene (vs not just
| Budweiser et al but so-called "premium" beers from
| megabreweries that don't hold a candle to the local stuff).
|
| I also wonder about the degree to which psilocybin might be
| following THC's path, wrt state vs federal laws....
| kgdiem wrote:
| Yes really good point. Won't it still be up to the states to
| decide what the regulatory environment will look like -- eg
| they can choose to preserve these jobs through existing
| regulatory frameworks in the same way that certain goods cannot
| be shipped to certain states
| alistairSH wrote:
| Note, they're only planning to move it from Schedule 1
| (alongside heroin) to Schedule III (alongside anabolic
| steroids and ketamine). So, it won't be fully legal in the
| same sense as alcohol.
|
| Regardless, unless Congress does something to make it legal
| nationally, we'll still have the state frameworks. Just
| hopefully avoiding the most draconian criminal charges.
| kgdiem wrote:
| I read TFA after commenting. I think that is even more
| interesting; it'll be very helpful for better understanding
| the safety profile of marijuana.
|
| Still curious to see how this may affect cannabis commerce.
| Will CVS have cannabis extracts behind the pharmacy
| counter?
| tialaramex wrote:
| One very important thing this does is get rid of a really
| glaring error. As a Schedule I drug, Marijuana supposedly
| is completely useless, its only role is as a potential
| danger and that's why nobody must have any - except, we've
| known for many years a bunch of people find it useful as a
| therapeutic drug, so that's clearly wrong and the Schedule
| I status is an error. Perhaps there shouldn't be any
| Schedule I drugs at all, the idea seems misconceived, but
| certainly if there are Schedule I drugs, Marijuana doesn't
| belong among them.
|
| Meanwhile in Schedule III it's a judgement call. Schedule
| III drugs like K or steroids are drugs we know are useful,
| your doctor can prescribe them, your hospital pharmacy has
| them, but we also know they get abused. That sounds _much_
| more like marijuana, and, to be honest, alcohol. Can we
| justify Schedule III for Marijuana and yet not for Alcohol?
| It 's at least a serious question whereas the Schedule I
| status was just nonsense.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yeah, I largely agree. Alcohol is broadly available/legal
| due to historical quirks, not sane regulation in relation
| to other similar (social impact, not chemistry) drugs.
| Same for tobacco to an extent.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Also booze is _really_ easy to make. Marijuana is hardly
| _difficult_ but if you ain 't got any plants somebody has
| to smuggle them to you, whereas if you've got a bunch of
| say, apples, or potatoes, or berries - which are just
| food - the only thing that prevents you from having booze
| is constant oversight to ensure you don't allow the food
| to be converted into booze.
|
| I can see tobacco becoming effectively a Schedule III
| type substance, made only when it is deemed necessary for
| some reason and not generally available - New Zealand
| tried to set off on that path, the UK is attempting it
| now, unlike booze (or marijuana) which has a population
| of people who say "Hey, that's fun, don't take that away"
| the smoker are almost all against smoking, they see it as
| an unpleasant mistake they made rather than a choice
| they're glad to have taken.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Shit, you can _accidentally_ make alcohol.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| A couple quick thoughts, having worked in the legal cannabis
| industry (now a few years out):
|
| - Consolidation is already happening in a lot of ways, in some
| cases despite state laws designed to prevent it
|
| - Consolidation by big tobacco seems less likely than probably
| other major industry incumbents (in the long run, I'd bet on
| companies primarily oriented around alcohol)
|
| - Federal posture since Cole (when first states legalized
| recreational, partially rolled back under Trump/Sessions but
| seemingly not as much as was feared at the time) is largely
| what prompted strong local laws; it's based in analysis of
| interstate commerce; federal legalization could have a similar
| analysis without undermining existing strong local laws; the
| tradeoff would probably be large disparity of justice between
| states (on party lines)
|
| - A much better outcome would be a central rule not just to
| legalize, but to more strongly incentivize justice for people
| affected by draconian laws in the first place. This is a pipe
| dream, but it should be the focus because any compromise will
| start with that.
| omgCPhuture wrote:
| Tobacco smoke killed ALL my grandparents, well, well one of
| them would have died from alcohol use, as he was a fisherman
| and they drink a lot. My uncle died from liver and bowel
| cancer, the liver cancer stems from alcohol consumption, or
| rather it's metabolite, acetaldehyde, which is _scary as
| hell_: It makes cancerous scar tissue of whatever it touches,
| thats why alcoholics die from liver failure: it becomes all
| scar tissue and cannot regenerate, which is part of its
| function (the average adult has a liver 3 years of average
| age). It is also what gives the alcohol buzz. He was not a
| heavy drinker, but only drank wine and aqua vit/liquor, 1-2
| times a year he would get shitfaced -- he was a funny drunk.
| I miss him. I miss all my grandparnts, they were the best and
| did not deserve Emphysema , lung cancer and so forth. Grandma
| taught me soldering, welding, basic ircuitry, how to ride a
| bike, composting, growing veggies, all about berries in the
| wild and helped me save up for my Nintendo NES,encuraged mt
| curiosity...I would beat the crap out a tobacco exec if I
| crossed paths with one, a part of me wants to torture them.
|
| I smoked for 15 years, turns out quitting was easy, once you
| undestood the way the addiction works, but nobody considers
| that they developed oral fixation from sucking on a potennt
| noootropic habit forming substance all day,
|
| But then we have Silvy Listhaug (politician): Marijuana will
| continue to be banned because she is a mom, she told the
| reporter photographing her smoking cigarettes. I hope she
| gets lung cancer.
|
| Personally, as a monkey with a lump of fat in my head called
| a brain, I think drinking fat solving solvents are a bad idea
| for that reason alone.fMRI scans shows white brain tissue in
| drinkers literally dissolves over time.
|
| The increase in marijuana use is mostly due to 3 factors:
|
| * Nobody is hiding anymore.
|
| * We become more people every day.
|
| * More & more people realise alcohol sucks.
|
| The UK and CAnada's offcial stance on alcohol is that there
| is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol consumption.
|
| The war on drugs is going well in Norway: Cocaine & MDMA
| purity averages above 80%, Racemic amphetamine is cheaper
| than hash now, and the hash is good as anything you can find
| in dutch coffeeshops. ..and it is all getting cheaper at the
| same time. The war is being lost so bad the police have
| stopped issuing Narcotics stats 2 times a year as mandated
| and dropped it to once a year. Last year crystal meth
| averaged over 99% purity, 99.2%-99.6% according to Kripos
| Crimelab!! 5000 mafia families in Europe alone funds their
| organized crime with proceeds from the artificially high
| price of cannabis caused by the ban, legalizing and taxing it
| resoanbly would snuff out those and would be a massive blow
| to organized crime. GHB is fueling a rape epidemic here. Oh
| and you can legally buy poppy seed and grow them here...
| jjulius wrote:
| ... what?
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| I've got my tinfoil hat on but I totally believe this to be due
| to the lobbying efforts of big tobacco. Purely because
| cigarette sales continue to decline and vaping is becoming more
| and more regulated and, therefore, less profitable.
|
| But marijuana enjoys high markups, pseudoscience "health
| benefits", and is becoming more and more acceptable to
| Americans each and every year.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I don't even think that's that tinfoil hat-y
|
| What else will I spend my billions in revenue on if I can't
| advertise and have to hide all my employees?
| cm2012 wrote:
| Being gulped up big corporations is good. They will much more
| efficiently serve the market. SMBs are notoriously
| unproductive.
|
| Though maybe you want your drug dealers to be unproductive, for
| society's sake! I may take this back...
| soperj wrote:
| Can't say I've ever felt that massive corps and the people
| that work there are super productive. In many instances they
| seem less productive than government.
| ehvatum wrote:
| What SMB has the luxury of being notoriously unproductive?
| Economies of scale are very real and tend to make larger
| businesses more efficient, it's true, but you'll find that
| causes SMBs to be lean and mean to remain competitive.
| cm2012 wrote:
| There are many many ways to look at this data, but here's
| one: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good
| ,fl_pr....
|
| Bigger companies can pay a lot more because they are more
| productive. And further research has shown its the same
| pool/type of people at each.
| ehvatum wrote:
| Your implied point that prices will drop with the
| introduction of interstate competition and access to
| finance and interest by mega-corps is well taken. You are
| certainly correct, there.
|
| Notwithstanding grey-market limitations, people have
| their motives for accepting the inefficiency of starting
| or staying small. Potential, for example.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Even without nationwide economies of scale, Michigan
| regularly has businesses selling weed vape carts for <$10
| apiece. I don't know how much cheaper we want the weed to be,
| honestly. It's already at least 10x cheaper than the cheapest
| alcoholic beverage on a buzz-for-buzz basis.
| MarCylinder wrote:
| Corporate dispensaries, which are very prevalent, are
| notoriously lower quality
| RankingMember wrote:
| It's also made touching the financial aspect radioactive- none
| of the big credit cards want to have anything to do with it so
| all transactions are cash, which makes things more
| difficult/risky for operators.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Also made research very hard too.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The research component seems the biggest boon from this. I
| assume Schedule III is much easier to get approved for.
|
| Which in turn will increase the number of studies.
|
| Which will in turn provide more support for eventual
| legalization.
|
| Research being blocked (often by the DEA) was one of the
| biggest hold-ups.
| golergka wrote:
| > I hope all these small/mid sized businesses don't get gulped
| up by big tobacco or other mega corps
|
| Why not? Laws of scale would drive the price down while
| improving the profit margins, both clients and investors would
| win.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| There are more people involved than just clients and
| investors.
|
| I think some inefficiencies are important, especially when
| scoped to "who can do this thing the cheapest?"
| bumby wrote:
| > _I think some inefficiencies are important_
|
| To add a bit, the importance of some inefficiencies are
| lost when viewed strictly through an investor lens. E.g.,
| investigative journalism is expensive and largely
| inefficient regarding the profitability of a newspaper.
| Redundant inventory/equipment is largely inefficient until
| low-probability events effect supply. Small businesses may
| be inefficient but provide economic stability to a non-
| urban center etc. etc.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| Keeping in state doesn't help. It's still interstate commerce
| even just picking a plant and smoking on site non-commercially.
| Just walking an object within 1000 ft of a school, non-
| commercially, is interstate commerce.
| NewJazz wrote:
| According to a really old SC decision that rests on shaky
| foundations at best.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| They'll never give it up. It would mean the end of the
| civil rights act, and tons of popular regulatory regimes
| that apply to in-state only trade. And the return of in
| state over the counter machine guns.
| mr_spothawk wrote:
| Relevant case:
|
| Wickard v. Filburn United States Supreme Court case
| Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, is a United States
| Supreme Court decision that dramatically increased the
| regulatory power of the federal government. It remains as
| one of the most important and far-reaching cases
| concerning the New Deal, and it set a precedent for an
| expansive reading of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce
| Clause for decades to come. The goal of the legal
| challenge was to end the entire federal crop support
| program by declaring it unconstitutional. An Ohio farmer,
| Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his
| own farm. The U.S. government had established limits on
| wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer,
| to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more
| than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty.
| In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold,
| it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone
| "interstate" commerce. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn)
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I hope all these small/mid sized businesses don't get gulped
| up by big tobacco or other mega corps
|
| Calling it: CVS and Walgreens will move into the medical market
| for this. You think these little shops will be able to process
| health insurance payments when that sector gets in on it? lol
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| You described a worst-case scenario. I'd rather smoke
| Marlboro Greens, and I promised myself 20 years ago I'd never
| spend another penny with them.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| LOL @ Marlboro Greens :-)
|
| They'd be insane to not go with that name.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| the marlboro man has traded in his horse and cowboy hat for
| some natty dreads and a gravity bong. Joe Camel now sports
| a wook blanket and a heady crystal wrap. can't wait to see
| what the overly happy and diverse Newport pleasure party
| goers have adopted
| jeffwask wrote:
| Marboro Green with 200 hundred additional chemical
| additives for your enjoyment.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Aka the 'backdoor removal of social security'
| hollerith wrote:
| I bet that in the US, no health insurer will ever pay for an
| insured person's marijuana.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I'll happily take the other side of that bet.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I agree it's unlikely. THC may have some medical uses, but
| smoking it certainly does not.
|
| Perhaps gummies/edibles would be covered under some
| circumstances -- but to be a prescription or even an OTC
| "medication" it has to go through FDA approval to
| demonstrate efficacy and document the side effects, and it
| will have to be manufactured to pharmaceutical standards of
| potency and purity, which will make it more expensive.
|
| I think it will most likely be like alcohol: sold for
| recreational use, age-restricted, and not medical.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I could see them carrying CBD in pill / gelcap form. (It
| pretty much snuffs out my migraines.)
|
| I don't think they'll carry intoxicating forms of marijuana,
| though. (I've never seen a CVS with alcohol, but that could
| be because of how my state handles liquor licenses.)
| adventured wrote:
| Walgreens sells cigarettes, cigars, basic alcohol (beer,
| wine, hard seltzers etc), occasionally liquor, nicotine
| patches & packets, and snuff. They sell OTC Narcan, and now
| OTC birth control. They moved into the last two items
| pretty much immediately upon availability.
|
| They'll definitely look at their options for the marijuana
| business as they can safely do so legally.
| MarCylinder wrote:
| Big corps are already an issue. They may not be able to move
| product over borders, but they can move money and resources
| cryptonector wrote:
| Under Wickard even all-in-state marijuana trade would still
| fall under the Interstate Commerce clause and be subject to
| federal criminal statutes, regulations, and taxes.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep, some people tested this same theory out for firearms (or
| was it suppressors?) all produced and sold in one state in
| accordance with state laws. Of course the Feds shut that down
| and the courts agreed. The only reason they don't do this
| with pot is because they don't feel like it.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I believe that case is not resolved yet.
| jajko wrote:
| Big tobacco means even more pressure to normalize it, globally,
| via UN just like they pushed it down the throat of every nation
| worldwide including those where its sacred plant for millenia
| like India or Nepal. US reversed decades of severe oppression
| and is leading free world (I know Canada, I know) so there is
| massive hope our idiots in EU and elsewhere will seriously wake
| up, even if in some primitive cargo culting effort.
|
| I don't mean half-assed decriminalization here and there which
| still feeds very healthy criminal ecosystem and for end user of
| say weed doesn't change a zilch in anything, I mean same legal
| treatment as tobacco and alcohol, we don't prescribe that for
| anxiety do we, its all fun and chill and introspection (for
| me). Its 2024 FFS, and we see idiocy live where politicians are
| lying in the cameras to please old conservative folks for next
| elections.
|
| I want to buy edibles, happy to pay any tax they slap on it. I
| want to buy a single joint, of strength and power I want to
| choose. Or vapes. Not some overpriced mediocre shit from
| paranoid desperate illegal immigrant standing in dark corners
| of shady parts of cities. Give that man an honest job on some
| weed farm or distribution system.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's sometimes even smaller than states. Many waterways are
| federal, meaning islands have to grow their own in order to
| avoid having to transport weed from one part of the state to
| another part of the same state across a federal waterway.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| This discrepancy had the effect of jump starting the prominence
| of large _chinese gangs_ in the marijuana and fentany and money
| laundering business in the USA, incidentally contributing to
| home shortage because they bought homes in California to grow
| pre pandemic and in Oklahoma now. There's lots of older
| articles about California but some recent OK news
| https://www.kosu.org/news/2024-03-18/gangsters-money-and-mur...
| roschdal wrote:
| It's a trap, you will be drug addict.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I can already walk down the block and legally buy weed in the
| US so, in many places this is not really a change.
| Rovoska wrote:
| Honest question, are you a bot?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Nicotine and alcohol are more addictive than weed. Why aren't
| those illegal?
| RankingMember wrote:
| While it being moved to Schedule ~II~ (Correction: III) rather
| than removed altogether is a bit disappointing, I'm not gonna
| miss the forest for the trees on this one: this is a big deal
| after all this time.
| morley wrote:
| It's moving to schedule III, though the new company it's in
| really highlights how it should be descheduled instead:
|
| > It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some
| anabolic steroids
|
| Hopefully the first step but not the last.
| Liquix wrote:
| sure, marijuana shouldn't be considered 100% harmless, but
| it's ludicrous to argue it does the same amount of damage to
| people's bodies as ketamine (abuse can lead to kidney
| failure, bladder cystectomy) or even some sched. IV
| substances such as alprazolam (seizures from withdrawal can
| be fatal).
| cflewis wrote:
| As someone who has taken ketamine for medical purposes and
| marijuana for not, it is utterly off-the-charts bonkers
| that they are classified identically.
|
| A large dose of ketamine literally disconnects yourself
| from reality. Weed makes you tired.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Why should subjective effects direct the scheduling of
| these drugs?
| chucksta wrote:
| What should they be based on?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| You think a large dose of weed to someone who's not used
| to it just makes them tired?
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Benzo addiction is very dangerous. Withdrawal can lead to
| life threatening or altering outcomes. I have a hard time
| understanding what property the scheduling is based on
| RobotToaster wrote:
| At least according to one study, cannabis does slightly more
| harm than both of those, although that harm is still tiny
| compared to that done by alcohol. https://www.researchgate.ne
| t/publication/285843262_Drug_harm...
| briankelly wrote:
| They do score ketamine higher than cannabis in "harm to
| user", but cannabis has a much higher "harm to others"
| score.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Ah, good catch. Yeah, I'll take the progress even if it's not
| exactly where I'd like policy to be ultimately.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| So now it is de-jure easier to get than ADHD meds instead of
| just de-facto easier.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| Naturally occurring human hormones should not be scheduled at
| all, they should be available over the counter to anyone over
| 18.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| At the very least researchers won't have to jump through as
| many hoops to study it.
| viccis wrote:
| I agree. To me this feels like Biden, who loathes cannabis and
| has opposed its legalization at every turn, found a good way to
| still sontewall legalization and move the goalposts to distract
| everyone enough that they think he's done them a huge favor.
|
| This will be nice for certain things, particularly payment
| processors for dispensaries, assuming that card processors
| don't continue to get in the way (don't see why they would).
|
| But this won't fill the huge skill gap in public sector
| computer security due to weed getting in the way of clearances,
| for example. And for people in non-legal states, they will have
| to continue to use black markets to get it or gray markets like
| the "THCA" loophole (thanks unfortunately go to Trump for that
| one).
|
| We shouldn't tolerate politicians delivering us half solutions
| when it's on issues _that don 't need compromise_ due to
| popular support!
| dev1ycan wrote:
| I'm sorry but after seeing how american gradually get into worse
| and worse drugs, and seeing channel 5's video on people using
| tranq... yeah I think complete ban on drugs for non medical
| reasons is the best choice.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, because Prohibition was such a ringing success. Just
| because someone says you can't do something does not prevent
| someone from doing that thing. If people want something badly
| enough, they will find a way. When that want has progressed to
| being a literal need from addiction, the ways found will become
| more and more bold/risky.
|
| Hell, even if you added the drug that blocks the opiate
| receptors into the water supply like fluoride so everyone is
| getting dosed, addicts will just switch to bottle water.
| Legislation does not prevent anything. It only increases those
| deemed as a criminal.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I downvoted you because while it may not have been successful
| at getting Americans to stop drinking, it was effective at
| reducing violent crimes caused by drinking, as well as the
| negative health effects such as liver cirrhosis. The anti
| drug control crowd has done a great job commandeering popular
| opinion on this topic. I found this (non-academic) article
| informative to this end.
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-
| highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
|
| Edit: to the downvoters, I look forward to future academics
| and politicians being absolutely shocked when it turns out
| the absence of evidence is in fact not evidence of absence
| and there are a myriad of negative health and societal
| consequences from legalizing marijuana use
| kstrauser wrote:
| Well, minus the whole organized crime thing, which is a
| pretty gigantic elephant in the room.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, it seems pretty disingenuous to call Prohibition a
| success because one stat went down.
| djbusby wrote:
| Which means ban tobacco and alcohol as well?
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| Don't forget coffee...
| kstrauser wrote:
| People wanna get high. There's a plausible hypothesis that we
| invented farming to have a more reliable way to make beer. We
| have 2 main options:
|
| 1. Attempt to ban it.
|
| 2. Accept that people are going to get high, and try to limit
| the harm.
|
| The first has been a complete and utter disaster. The second --
| e.g. applying the same rules about who can use it and where
| they can use it as alcohol -- is the only sane option.
|
| Prohibition is about as effective as abstinence-only education
| and for many of the same reasons. We can either work with how
| we wish people would behave or how they're actually going to
| behave.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| 3. Make our society so pleasant to live in that people want
| to experience their day-to-day lives with their minds free
| from drugs.
| Extropy_ wrote:
| In what sense is your mind free in a world where
| psyotropics are prohibited? LSD and psilocybin aren't
| addictive or habbit-building, think about that. Don't knock
| it 'till you try it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Why? Drugs are fun. I drank a hot cup of coffee this
| morning and enjoyed the warmth, taste, and way it made me
| feel. Those were all pleasant sensations that would be hard
| to get another way. Why shouldn't I be allowed to
| experience them?
|
| Roller coaster rides are fun and cause a release of
| adrenalin in me, which leads to feeling hyperalert,
| excited, and energized. That's fun! I don't want to live in
| a society that wouldn't let me enjoy adrenalin releases.
|
| This morning my wife told me she loved me, and I enjoyed a
| nice wash of endorphins from it. What's wrong with enjoying
| that?
|
| The common thread here is that there's not a clean dividing
| line between "bad" drugs and "good" drugs. All animals
| enjoy certain chemicals. We're evolved to. That's what
| makes us (in nature) dig into food that's healthy for us,
| and drives us to reproduce. A mind free from drugs is going
| to die of misery in relatively short order.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| This is the "limiting harm" part of 2.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Drugs aren't just an escape from suffering. I have a very
| good life. I also like having a beer with friends or, yes,
| smoking weed with friends. That amplifies an already
| positive experience.
|
| If you magically eliminated all suffering in my life, I'd
| still enjoy a beer at dinner.
| itishappy wrote:
| I've watched the same videos, and the impression I got was that
| the main gateway drug for tranq was prescription painkillers
| prescribed legally by a doctor.
|
| Maybe we should consider banning drugs for medical reasons
| too...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Outpatient opiods being prescribed to the degree they were 20
| years ago was clearly wrong in hindsight.
| btreecat wrote:
| Ring ring, 1920s are calling, they want their prohibition back.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| tranq is an adulterant added to fentanyl. I don't think that is
| apples to apples here. The entire opiate ecosystem is honestly
| insane at the moment. The only street drug available is
| fentanyl and it's often mixed with the vet drug tranq which is
| horrible for humans. It prevents wound healing. I would say
| there needs to be some kind of harm reduction done in this
| space too because apparently fentanyl cannot be stopped.
| jMyles wrote:
| In addition to prohibition being impossible (and a policy
| failure in every case where it has been tried, without a single
| historical exception - one of the most consistent policy
| outcomes in all of political science), it also isn't cognizable
| to define the word "drug" for the purposes of your calculus
| here.
|
| Would you ban coffee? How about sugar?
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Make money for yourself and live your best life.
|
| There's no point in caring too much about anything or anyone
| else. Free will and all that.
|
| Not my problem. I have insurances and pay for services.
|
| I've pretty much accepted that most people are just there to
| destroy society. So I stopped caring about anyone but myself.
|
| The only people I will get up and help are my direct blood
| relatives.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Normalising marijuana can have long lasting negatives effects on
| the society. It doesn't make sense to celebrate getting people
| hooked on yet another legal drug. A safe, productive and
| prosperous society cannot be built by drug addicts.
| CPLX wrote:
| Maybe some day someone will explain what "normalizing" means,
| specifically what people mean by the "don't normalize X"
| construction.
|
| Pretty sure between Dr. Dre and Willie Nelson weed got
| normalized decades ago by any definition I understand.
| umvi wrote:
| "Normalize" in this sense means "to make culturally
| acceptable". A thing can be legal but still be taboo, for
| example, in Japan tattoos are legal but you might get
| discriminated against at an onsen if the owner doesn't want
| tattoos on display in their establishment.
|
| Weed might be "normalized" in some communities, but a large
| portion of Americans will silently judge you if you are a
| recreational drug user regardless of it is weed or cocaine or
| fentanyl. Contrast to, say, beer or wine, which the majority
| of Americans will not silently judge you for indulging in
| moderation.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Contrast to, say, beer or wine, which the majority of
| Americans will not silently judge you for indulging in
| moderation.
|
| In point of fact, it's often flipped around. It's only been
| the last few years that I can tell someone I don't drink
| and be met with lots of, "Good for you!"s rather than
| silent judgement.
| qup wrote:
| I never had a drink until I was 27, and at the time, I
| found it easier to keep that a secret than to talk about
| it.
|
| But you're right. I'm not drinking again, and people are
| way less likely to question that choice now. I can't
| remember the last time it was questioned, actually.
| CPLX wrote:
| Well yeah. But thats why the premise makes no sense. At
| this point weed is as culturally acceptable as anything
| else as far as I can tell. And I travel a lot, that's true
| in Texas and NYC and wherever else.
| grzeshru wrote:
| Has society ever been safe, productive or prosperous? I'd argue
| it hasn't. I think smaller collectives have managed to eek out
| a bit of solace but society as a whole has always been at each
| other's throats. Our notion of productivity is mostly moved
| forward by one hand not seeing the other.
| golergka wrote:
| Modern first world countries are incredibly safe, productive
| and prosperous by any historical measure. You have to have a
| completely skewed perspective not to see this.
| causal wrote:
| I don't smoke tobacco, I seldom drink, and I don't use
| marijuana. Those are habits I hope my kids avoid too.
| Nonetheless I would never wish for a world where my kids go to
| prison for failing to avoid them.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| But they do. Your kids will be put to prison for drunk
| driving, drinking in public places or you will go to prison
| for buying them booze. Is it an oppressive world? Do you feel
| the urge of strongly fighting against it and promote alcohol?
| I'm amazed how people regard fighting for legalisation of yet
| another drug as some sort of a freedom fighting act.
| triceratops wrote:
| > A safe, productive and prosperous society cannot be built by
| drug addicts.
|
| Historian Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was
| built on a collective caffeine and sugar high, from imported
| tea and cane sugar from its colonies and trading partners.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| Don't forget about tobacco and opium.
| triceratops wrote:
| I don't think the Brits were using the opium when empire-
| building.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Sorta right, sorta wrong, premise is weak -- Weed is NOT
| PHYSICALLY ADDICTIVE. It can be psychologically.
|
| Beer / hard liquor IS PHYSICALLY addictive. Cigarettes ARE.
| Caffeine IS.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Sugar is! AND it causes great long-term harm, hard to
| quantify how much since there is basically no control group,
| since it's given to children early on, it's put in near
| everything, and it's cheap as dirt.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I don't think sugar is physically addictive, as in your
| body gets negative physiological symptoms from cutting
| back.
| lambdaba wrote:
| True, I misread the comment, although for someone
| consuming a lot of sugar quitting cold-turkey is going to
| be uncomfortable physically.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Serious question: Do you feel just as _strongly_ about alcohol,
| nicotine, gambling and sugar? Those all have an enormous
| societal costs as well.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Of course not, those are _normal_. /s
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| I've seen way too much harm done by alcohol than good.
| Unfortunately, it's already normalised since ages, but I'm
| glad it's getting regarded in a negative light more and more.
|
| People complain about being sent to jail for weed as if this
| they are suffering a political persecution, but people can
| get in legal trouble for drinking alcohol in public places or
| illegally producing or selling it as well. In some European
| countries, if both parents are caught drinking alcohol at the
| same time, even just beer, they'll be stripped of their
| parental rights. Imagine if that would be a law in America
| for people who smoke weed. This would be called a genocide or
| something along the lines of political persecution, some
| absolutely laughable arguments.
|
| Cigarettes are straightforward evil and harmful. The usage of
| tobacco is extremely idiotic, it was normalised and promoted
| by the tobacco companies for profit, despite all the known
| negative effects.
|
| Gambling must be strictly forbidden. It's pure evil and it's
| only harming both people and society. In America, gambling
| isn't freely available to people, same as in many other
| countries. Try to run a casino in your back yard and get to
| enjoy the company of some handsome guys in blue. Is it
| oppression?
|
| Sugar should be limited, same as many other harmful
| components used in the food production. Excessive usage of
| sugar leads to obesity which again, is bad for everyone.
| European countries pretty much do some really good job in
| this regard.
|
| I'm really annoyed by the hypocrisy of people who so eagerly
| try to promote and normalise weed as if this is going to help
| everyone. It wouldn't. I really wouldn't want to see my
| children smoking it, offered by some chavs who would be
| friends of their friends I would not approve because of their
| low behaviour. Weed is same bad as _alcohol, nicotine,
| gambling and sugar_ you mentioned. It slows down intellectual
| development of children and degrades the intellect of adults
| as well. Yes, weed can be a good antidepressant or a pain-
| relieving medication - if consumed for a short period of time
| and strictly when it 's necessary. This whole hysteria with
| legalisation of weed reminds me of tobacco companies
| aggressively promoting cigarettes through the media back in
| the previous century or modern pharma peddling opioids.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Ok, only leafy greens and protein pills for you, plus 2 hours
| of exercise per day and a mandated 9:30 PM bedtime. It's for
| your own good.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I bet a huge portion of the people here are physically addicted
| to caffeine, a powerful psychoactive stimulant.
| lambdaba wrote:
| As Terence McKenna used to say, caffeine is legal because it
| keeps the worker bees working throughout the afternoon.
| zingababba wrote:
| He said that while high on cannabis, most definitely.
| lambdaba wrote:
| He was a self-confessed chronic user, granted, it was
| old-school weed so I don't know how that would scale with
| what's available nowadays.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think this is why North Korea allows marijuana and meth.
| lambdaba wrote:
| It's hard to know where to start when someone espouses this
| mentality, but I suggest you start with looking up a chart of
| addiction VS harm for different substances, you might be in for
| a surprise.
| btreecat wrote:
| Yet it's often claimed that civilization and brewing alcohol
| grow in tandem. We certainly have evidence of its importance in
| Egypt, Europe, and Africa come to mind as traveling along side
| cultural growth.
|
| https://www.tota.world/article/1611/#:~:text=The%20first%20b...
| .
|
| Do you have evidence to support your counterclaims?
| vundercind wrote:
| It's a less-harmful alcohol substitute. I have multiple friends
| who've gone "California sober" and it has sure looked like
| nothing but a good change.
|
| It's by far the best sleep aid I've personally found.
| Practically miraculous. Huge change for the better, I've gone
| several months at a time without it on a couple occasions since
| starting and holy crap, life used to be terrible. Extremely
| low-risk, doesn't leave me hung over feeling like a lot of the
| legal sleep aids do. Plus, hell, it's a lot of fun to watch
| some MST3K while it's kicking in.
|
| Almost no serious interactions, so you can take it while ill
| and having to take other drugs, to help (enormously) with sleep
| or appetite or whatever.
|
| For that matter, having a damn effective pain reliever and
| sleep aid that you can just keep on hand for when you get the
| flu or something, and not have to go suffer through a waiting
| room for a prescription _while ill_ , is a giant QOL boost.
| timbit42 wrote:
| > hooked
|
| Tobacco and alcohol are much more addictive than weed, yet they
| are legal.
| astura wrote:
| They aren't planning on legalizing it for recreational use,
| this move would just reclassify it from schedule 1 to schedule
| 3.
| jjulius wrote:
| >A safe, productive and prosperous society cannot be built by
| drug addicts.
|
| Yet much of it has been, and continues to be built by, people
| who use drugs.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > A safe, productive and prosperous society cannot be built by
| drug addicts.
|
| Between alcohol, nicotine and arguably caffeine, every vaguely
| successful society was built on drugs.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Here in Canada, it has been rather eye opening the extent of
| cannabis use. There are more cannabis shops then mcdonalds. You
| can grow your own and most people do. There's online options.
|
| A society which criminalizes something so popular and widely
| used; will ultimately fail at their prohibition.
|
| The next step for society would be to attempt at changing
| opinion, but what are the unintended consequences? The answer is,
| bad news.
| guyzero wrote:
| But there's as many shuttered pot shops in Toronto as there are
| open ones. I think the industry is still shaking out and
| there's a lot of volatility.
| akira2501 wrote:
| There's a common notion that I've noticed, which is that if
| you just open up a "pot shop" that you'll make money hand
| over fist, meanwhile, they're fairly complex retail
| operations to run and you can loose your hat just as quickly
| as with any other business.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Same thing happened with cupcake shops and craft breweries.
| jiayo wrote:
| Except cupcake shops and craft breweries are allowed to
| differentiate (gluten free, superhero themed, we only sell
| wild fermented German beers...) while the legal cannabis
| retailers in Canada are more akin to owning a Subway
| franchise.
|
| You must purchase your cannabis from a select set of
| suppliers chosen by the government (yes, the very same ones
| your competition must purchase from), you are not allowed
| to offer discounts/freebies on cannabis products (only
| rolling papers or similar non-psychoactive products). It is
| still illegal to operate any kind of venue that allows
| consumption, so while you can decorate your retail space
| like an Apple store or a Pier 1, you can't run trivia
| nights or do movie screenings or anything that might result
| in people patronizing your business over the one next door
| offering the same product for $0.05 cheaper.
|
| Pre-legalization, I could go to a store (not legally
| operated) and look at the bud in the jar, smell it, and
| make decisions based on something other than a sealed
| package with no artwork or description on it. Some stores
| even offered consumption of "dabs" which is a great model:
| those things cost a lot of money and aren't really fun to
| have in your home and maintain, and it was very competitive
| with "a pint after work". All of this went away after 2017.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm referring more to the "several times as many as the
| market can sustain get opened" phenomenon. Around here,
| every just-out-of-college set of buddies decided they'd
| get into brewing a few years ago. Probably 75% of them
| were gone in a year or two.
| arecurrence wrote:
| While this is true, the remaining stores are continuing to
| capture more business. Users who only make legal source
| purchases are over 70% of the market now
| https://globalnews.ca/news/10367758/legal-cannabis-sales-
| pro...
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| It's not a particularly easy industry to value add. Growing
| pretty good weed is probably less work than a brewery - and I
| have a very hard time telling the difference between the
| hundreds of different strains.
|
| Then you have to have security, your staff is high 24/7,
| banking is a mess..
|
| Growing might be more pleasant than running the shops but
| then you better like agriculture
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| You think most people in Canada grow weed?
| ravishi wrote:
| I read that as "most people [who smoke weed] grow their own".
| Also a bold statement but way less absurd than "most
| Canadians grow weed".
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > You can grow your own and most people do
|
| pffft... source? I know about 1 person who grows their own for
| every 100 who smoke.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I grew weed durring covid, it's like taking care of a baby
| for weed that's mostly OK. I sold everything after two
| attempts. I learned alot about gardening though lol
| josefresco wrote:
| I visited Montreal last year and finding a recreation cannabis
| shop was not easy. Google maps is filled with "head shops" that
| don't sell weed, and apparently at some point all shops became
| nationalized (correct me if I'm wrong) which means there were
| private shops in existence but then shut down further polluting
| online listings. I eventually figured this out (after visiting
| what I thought was a cannabis shop that was actually a deli)
| but as luck would have it, they were all closed when I was
| downtown.
|
| Coming from the US, Massachusetts specifically this was a major
| step backwards. Granted we are spoiled, especially in my region
| where there's 2-3 shops per town but I was not expecting it to
| be _that hard_ in progressive Canada.
|
| Edit: I looked it up and only the "SQDC" (1) is authorized to
| sell Cannabis. 1: https://www.quebec.ca/sante/conseils-et-
| prevention/alcool-dr...
| thegrim33 wrote:
| "A society which criminalizes something so popular and widely
| used; will ultimately fail at their prohibition."
|
| So .. all the countries in the world, e.g. Japan, China,
| Singapore, UAE, etc., etc., where marijuana is very illegal,
| failed? It seems to be working just fine for them. Since we can
| provide numerous counter examples to your claim isn't your
| claim instantly invalidated?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Here in Canada, it has been rather eye opening the extent of
| cannabis use.
|
| When I visited Quebec in 1997, I saw a lot of people openly
| smoking cannabis in public. Once I smelt weed, turned around,
| and saw a kid, probably about 12-14, just sitting on a bench in
| public smoking a joint. I wasn't in a shady part of town,
| either.
| mannyv wrote:
| One major effect of this is that weed stores will be able to use
| banks and payment processors legally once the regulators catch
| up.
| ncr100 wrote:
| THEREFORE they will be able to move CASH money out of their
| stores TO BANKS, resulting in fewer "smash and grab" incidents
| ... aka, "Hyundai meet storefront of weed shop."
|
| Looking forward to this, silly to see so many Kia "boys" being
| used for gross violence crimes when regulation changes could
| lessen it.
|
| > https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/seattle-pot-shop-
| cr... for example
| pests wrote:
| Every dispo in my area (Metro Detroit) has concrete pillars
| surrounding the building, usually every two feet or so.
|
| One of the first to open a few years back got hit early and
| everyone seems to have learned the lesson.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Those short pillars are called bollards.
| jcims wrote:
| Every fan of physics is recommended to look up bollard
| test videos.
| yuppiemephisto wrote:
| Just did! =)
| wallaBBB wrote:
| And one of the best Twitter accounts:
| https://twitter.com/WorldBollard
| squigz wrote:
| I just browsed this far longer than I'd care to admit.
| NewJazz wrote:
| The poor San Bernardino Sheriff's department is going to need
| a new funding source, too.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-28/marijuan.
| ..
| justinator wrote:
| I guess the weed can still be stolen
| leptons wrote:
| First line in your link:
|
| >"The owner says around $15,000 of _products and items_ were
| stolen from the store. "
|
| It doesn't mention anything about cash.
|
| "Smash and grab" in weed shops doesn't usually have much to
| do with having piles of cash sitting around (though I'm sure
| that might happen too) - it's the product that thieves want
| to steal because it's got no serial numbers, it's pretty
| light-weight and easy to run out with thousands of dollars
| worth of product, and it's easy to resell.
|
| If there's any cash in the register that's often secondary to
| grabbing a few pounds of high-quality product. 3 pounds of
| high quality weed can be valued at $20k. I doubt there's that
| much in the cash register at the end of the day, and good
| luck getting into the safe. It's much easier to run out with
| 3 pounds of weed.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| A lot of them have wiggled around this problem by offering
| "atms" at the cash register. You pay with a debit card, but
| it's not a normal transaction, it's an ATM withdrawal! I don't
| understand how the money is vended to the business, but it
| keeps it out of the store
| swalling wrote:
| Yes this seems to be increasingly common, at least on the
| west coast. The suboptimal part is that the buyer typically
| gets hit with an out-of-network ATM fee for doing this, so
| the consumer is paying $2-5 for processing per transaction.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You can use a brokerage account that reimburses atm fees.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Or a credit union.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's pretty small potatoes though compared to going to a
| bank yourself and making a transaction for cash you don't
| normally have around. Maybe there's an ATM down the block
| but that's not the case for many people.
| filoleg wrote:
| And those ATMs around the block from a dispensary (or
| even in the same buildimg) would still charge a fee for
| withdrawal anyway (as they are always a third-party ATM
| and not a bank one, so you get that big message on the
| screen about an extra fee for withdrawal).
| garciasn wrote:
| Use a credit union or bank that doesn't charge ATM fees;
| that's what I do. Any CU-related ATM withdrawal is always
| free and I get 10 ATM withdrawals a month with fees
| reversed.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Unlimited fees reversed with Schwab checking. No monthly
| fee to figure out how to avoid, either.
| ada1981 wrote:
| So they just eat the fees?
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Yes, even exorbitant ones like on a cruise ship or
| casino. Free checks, too. And mutual funds with lower
| fees than Vanguard. But virtually no physical branches
| (most locations are brokerage offices only) so not ideal
| for depositing cash or getting a cashier's check... use
| something else for that.
| wnevets wrote:
| That's a fairly a common practice for cash only businesses,
| normally a different company is supplying the ATM and its
| cash. For example I've seen cash only ice cream shops with
| the same setup.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That's not what he's describing. In this case there
| actually is no cash or traditional ATM involved on-site.
| It's connected to the dispensary POS, not a physical ATM.
| (They often have a regular ATM like you describe also,
| though.)
|
| So you do an ATM transaction, but the money goes to the
| dispensary somehow. I do not know how it works on the back
| end, but I've used it as a customer. It's lovely and can
| even be done over your phone.
| wnevets wrote:
| Oh interesting. Does it appear on your end as a cash
| advance when using a credit card?
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Nope. ATM withdrawal. My bank even reimburses the ATM fee
| associated with it
| czscout wrote:
| An ATM withdrawal with a credit card is a cash advance.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Oh my bad, read the question wrong. They just don't
| support CCs. Debit only
| NewJazz wrote:
| Does it actually keep cash out of the store? They might just
| have to keep track of it at the back of house still.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| you answered it yourself
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Signs that times are a' changing -- you can buy illegal drugs
| with a card now.
|
| (Call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I don't think I'd want
| 50+ illegally-correlated transactions on my financial record
| that the government could lump into other charges...)
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Do they have jurisdiction to go and do that?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If you get hit with a federal charge and they care
| enough, federal prosecutors can absolutely dig into your
| financial records.
|
| That said, I imagine it would only get done if they
| really wanted to throw the book at you...
| biomcgary wrote:
| "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| sure they do. for example it's illegal to be in
| possession of marijuana and a firearm. the purchase of
| said MJ would be pretty good evidence that could lead to
| other warrants. That's the Hunter Biden gun charge.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| It's oddly not. Only to be a user or addict with a
| firearm. IIRC if you just like the way weed looks in your
| hand that doesn't make you a user, and there's plenty of
| reasonable doubt you're guarding it for grandma or
| whoever.
|
| Of course people are still being convicted of weed and
| firearm, but it gets recorded as gun law violation and
| nobody cares, cuz left hates guns and right hates weed,
| so they'll never repeal it.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| oh fair enough about the "user" vs possession. but my
| point was they could possible use this info to get a
| warrant to surveil you to catch you using it.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| They don't need that. I was served a federal search
| warrant after a detective wrote an anonymous officer
| claimed an anonymous DOG accused me of wrongdoing.
|
| When 3rd order anonymous interspecies hearsay is
| sufficient for a warrant it means a warrant is just a
| rubber stamp.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| fair. its not hard to get a warrant. but your info in the
| database could still make you a target
| vkou wrote:
| Even a rubber-stamp warrant process serves a point, by
| making the police identify _who_ they are targeting, as
| opposed to targeting everyone, and deciding who to charge
| after the fact.
|
| Warrants aren't supposed to be hard to get. They are only
| supposed to stop the most blatant fishing expeditions.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| The Silver Platter doctrine prevents your financial
| institutions from handing over that data unbidden, but
| they can do so by request from law enforcement.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| there is still a lot of cash on site due to the presence of
| an ATM though, and in the cash registers. the primary problem
| is that weed shops are incredibly attractive robbery targets
| due to being one of the few businesses in 2024 that handle
| large amounts of cash.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I think the ATM isn't actually dispensing cash. You're
| doing an ATM transaction for a certain amount of money, but
| what you're actually getting is weed.
|
| It's not just "You can buy with cash, and we conveniently
| have an ATM available to get cash if you didn't go to your
| bank."
| mikestew wrote:
| _It 's not just "You can buy with cash, and we
| conveniently have an ATM available to get cash if you
| didn't go to your bank."_
|
| I have heard from a _very_ reliable source that the ATMs
| in most weed shops on the Eastside of Seattle dispense
| cash because you 're going to be required to pay with
| cash at the counter. There are allegedly a few
| exceptions, but the majority of shops accept only cash
| and the ATM dispenses bills.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Out of the 15+ SWIM has been to in WA state, SWIM has
| never seen a dispensary take anything but physical cash
| (bills and coins).
| 14u2c wrote:
| Nope, it's just a regular ATM operated by a 3rd party
| company. You get cash from it then give them the cash.
| The store will also often reimburse for the ATM fee.
| filoleg wrote:
| Often enough, it isn't an actual ATM. You pay at the
| counter like you usually would using a card or an NFC
| payment method (e.g., Apple Pay), but the payment reader
| processes it as an ATM withdrawal transaction (hence an
| extra transaction fee of a few dollars). There is no
| physical cash involved at any point in this (at least not
| on the dispensary premises).
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sure, for people that want to pay 5$ more for every
| transaction.
|
| Probably a good number of people don't.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Where I've been, they round up to the nearest multiple of
| 5, and the extra you pay is kept as credit on your
| account towards future purchases.
| millzlane wrote:
| That's kinda shitty. They just give us the 5 back cash.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Maybe this is a state by state thing? I have never
| observed this in WA.
| mikestew wrote:
| I've heard Origins in Redmond does this, IIRC. But I
| believe that to be the exception, not the rule.
| neilv wrote:
| Is the payment service operating in a regulatory gray
| area or loophole?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| My brother supervises at a dispensary. They are not
| attractive robbery targets at all. They have a lot of
| security. Like a bank, they expect the amount of cash would
| bring trouble if they were not prepared. Unlike a bank,
| they don't dispense much cash (just petty change) so they
| don't even have to leave much in the drawers, which are
| emptied frequently and dropped into a safe nobody there can
| access.
|
| They have cash-handling processes similar to a casino, but
| again, they have much less than a casino or bank to take.
|
| Employee theft is a much bigger problem than robbery,
| because you can imagine who works at them, but even then,
| it's hard to get away with.
|
| You'd be much better off robbing a busy gas station or the
| like.
| flawsofar wrote:
| > you can imagine who works at them
|
| This is disgracefully elitist. White collar crime hurts
| more people.
| Spivak wrote:
| Golden rule of customer service is you can not demand
| service while simultaneously degrading the people who
| provide it to you.
| yogurtboy wrote:
| That dig at employees of dispensaries is really low
| millzlane wrote:
| I've known directors to steal from companies so the
| stereotype doesn't really jive.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > Employee theft is a much bigger problem than robbery,
| because you can imagine who works at them
|
| This is lazy thinking.
|
| Any business dealing in cash and desirable inventory will
| have theft problems. In fact, the inventory doesn't even
| have to be desirable. Consider office supply theft. It's
| rampant; a cost of business to some degree. And part of
| the motivation is simply the righting of perceived
| wrongs.
|
| Employees will always take from their employers, in every
| industry and at every class level. In industries where
| there are no "things" to take, the employees simply take
| back their time.
| leptons wrote:
| > the primary problem is that weed shops are incredibly
| attractive robbery targets due to being one of the few
| businesses in 2024 that handle large amounts of cash.
|
| It's also the product that's the target much of the time -
| it's got no serial numbers and it's light-weight, and easy
| to resell.
| loeg wrote:
| The ATM is usually registered to a different business around
| the corner or something like that.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| How? It's still federally illegal to sell schedule 3 to
| consumers without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing. The
| banks would still be knowingly in conspiracy to transmit
| illegal drug money and a litany of felonies for recreational or
| purely state-licensed 'medical'.
| mannyv wrote:
| You can sell schedule 3 drugs to consumers. Pharmacies do
| this all the time.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| 'without a DEA licensed rx and dea licensing'
|
| Rx under DEA scrutiny is nothing like rec or laughable
| state controlled medical 'recommendations'. You pull that
| shit as a provider on controlled scripts and your charts
| get audited, your DEA license gets pulled.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| But it does mean that it will actually, for the first
| time ever in living memory, be possible for someone to
| fully federally legally possess a THC-active form of
| cannabis without further Congressional action. I'm not
| sure if a state-legal cannabis supply chain could be
| fully federally legal in this context, but imagine if a
| pharma company goes through the FDA approval process for
| a THC pill and then doctors prescribe it for patients
| based on their medical judgment that it will help
| alleviate pain for some chronic condition like Crohn's
| disease. (I expect both of those steps to happen in
| practice, over time of course due to how many
| prerequisites exist for FDA approval, to the extent they
| haven't already been begun.)
|
| Imagine a noncitizen in that situation being able to tell
| a border officer, or a citizen being able to tell a
| security clearance investigator: "Yes, I do use THC.
| Here's my prescription and the bottle from the pharmacy."
| and being confident of no negative repercussions.
| Wonderful progress compared to where we are now.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| Agree with the sentiment but isn't legal marinol roughly
| fulfilling that niche of THC pill?
|
| You could already get THC script, in that context this
| seems like a half hearted concession for flower to stall
| and poison legalization efforts by giving a victory
| poisoned with DEA licensing that inserts the nasty
| tendrils of the weed hating DEA into medical flower.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > for the first time ever in living memory
|
| My parents are still alive and they were alive when THC
| was legal.
|
| This is what's bonkers to me, THC being criminalized
| happened very recently.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| Very briefly. Until recent history the 10th amendment was
| understood to constrain the government from going outside
| enumerated powers, like intrastate commerce. This is why
| they needed an amendment instead of law to federally
| outright ban alcohol. Thus weed had an essentially
| unpayable 'tax' that got overturned by Timothy Leary
|
| Then it was legal for like a year until feds realized
| they didn't need to follow the Constitution and they just
| outright made it illegal, no matter if it's actually
| interstate.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > it will actually, for the first time ever in living
| memory, be possible for someone to fully federally
| legally possess a THC-active form of cannabis without
| further Congressional action.
|
| Interesting point of history, the Federal US Government
| has actually been running a small medical program for
| almost 50 years.
| https://www.mpp.org/policy/federal/federal-governments-
| medic...
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Hopefully this will also help internationally. Many countries
| are just copying what the US is doing since they run a large
| part of world commerce and finance
| defiamazing wrote:
| I don't get why they don't just use Bitcoin or Ethereum.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Mainly because your employees, suppliers, and landlord have
| no desire to be paid in Bitcoin.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What does that matter? You can convert Bitcoin into cash.
| But then you can do that in an undisclosed location at your
| leisure instead of keeping a mountain of cash in your
| publicly advertised storefront location and becoming a huge
| robbery target.
|
| Also, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to find
| someone to accept it as payment, since _they_ can convert
| it to cash too. And the sort of landlords
| /suppliers/employees willing to do business with a
| dispensary seem like exactly the sort who would accept
| Bitcoin.
| buildsjets wrote:
| No sane person uses Bitcoin as a currency because it is a
| fundamentally unsound ponzi scheme for suckers. I don't
| want my salary to be subject to the vagaries and
| manipulations of the Bitcoin exchange rate.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If you don't want to hold Bitcoin or be exposed to price
| changes, you can set your hourly rate in dollars, be paid
| at the current exchange rate and immediately convert it
| back into dollars. The advantage of this over being paid
| in physical cash is that it's electronic and then you're
| not carrying two weeks salary in physical cash on your
| person for somebody to mug you.
| kstrauser wrote:
| All of the legit Bitcoin-to-cash orgs will report that to
| the IRS, and then you're back to square one: what do you
| do with that wad of cash? Orgs that don't report to the
| IRS probably aren't giving you a good exchange rate, and
| you're still left holding the bag afterward.
|
| If you're going through all that hassle, it's much easier
| just to be a cash-only business in the first place.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > you're back to square one: what do you do with that wad
| of cash?
|
| Keep it in a safe somewhere undisclosed instead of a
| retail storefront everybody knows is holding a ton of
| cash, or spend it.
|
| The point is that it moves the cash from the publicly
| visible location to somewhere nobody knows to rob.
| paulddraper wrote:
| And for all that convenience, each BTC transaction costs
| only $7 !
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So use Bitcoin Cash or any of the other alternatives with
| lower transaction fees.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| So if I as a consumer want to buy weed:
|
| I show up and convert cash to bitcoin, presumably losing
| some of its value to exchange fees.
|
| Pay the merchant my bitcoin, who then has to convert it
| back to cash losing more of its value to fees so that he
| can pay all of his staff, suppliers, utilities, etc...
|
| Why not just skip the bitcoin step and save time and
| money?
| mr_spothawk wrote:
| Because you can't yet purchase electricity/internet with
| bitcoin (directly).
| callalex wrote:
| Nobody wants to stand around for several minutes waiting for
| transactions to clear.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| I guess, but have you tried to gamble online using a CapitalOne
| mastercard? It's impossible. Your only recourse is an ACH
| transfer.
| bregma wrote:
| That's so sad.
|
| Here in Ontario Canada I can walk into a local neighbourhood
| cannabis store (one of many on every block, it seems) and make
| a purchase using my debit or credit card. I'm not sure if any
| of them even keep a cash float although I imagine they must,
| just in case granny comes in "for medicinal use".
| Alternatively, I could just go to the government-run web store
| and get home delivery through Canada Post at no extra charge.
| oooyay wrote:
| You can in the U.S. too. For instance, in Portland we have a
| neighborhood shop and you can use a debit card there because
| each transaction is classified as an ATM transaction. All the
| ban ever did was making accounting and reporting more
| complicated, it didn't stop state legal sales or
| transactions.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| The difference is in Canada it's actually fully legal at
| all levels of government, so the transaction is a normal
| point of sale transaction, it can also go through a credit
| card as a normal purchase without being subjected to the
| expensive cash advance interest rates, and so on. It can
| even be a tax-deductible and reimbursable business
| entertainment expense under similar conditions to alcohol.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its super weird how america can make things half legal.
| In canada the responsibilities are divided up between
| different levels of government. None of this legal at one
| level but not another level bullshit.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It was supposed to be that way in the US but then
| populists decided they wanted the federal government to
| do all the things the constitution said it couldn't.
| callalex wrote:
| It's easier to pull this off when the number of states
| fits on one hand.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The same is true in Canada. There are things that are
| federally illegal that are not illegal at the provincial
| level. There are also local laws that supersede federal
| law. E.g. There is no federal law against woodburning for
| home heat, but many local jurisdictions have banned it
| for air quality reasons, and provinces also have
| pollution laws. You can have something be illegal in one
| town, and legal outside of it, or illegal province wide
| but legal in another province.
|
| What is going on is that not that weed is 'half-legal' in
| the states. It is fully illegal. What is true is that the
| federal enforcers have more or less decided to leave
| people alone when the state allows the use of Marijuana.
| Pre 2017, the exact same thing was happening across
| Canada where local jurisdictions allowed cannabis use and
| sales, and the RCMP basically turned a blind eye.
| Vancouver is the most obvious example, where there was
| actually a decline in the number of dispensaries after
| weed became federally legal.
| pempem wrote:
| Extended banking services are difficult. Finding a fdic
| insured bank that will do business with a dispensary is
| hard. The business, esp those that aren't already
| multinational or national conglomerates with enormous
| amounts of cash
|
| This is really exciting to see.
| mannyv wrote:
| People are talking about schedule 3 needing a prescription,
| etc. From the financial point of view that's irrelevant; the
| point is that you CANNOT legally sell schedule 1 drugs
| commercially (with some exceptions that I can't remember).
|
| Schedule 1 -> banned from the financial system.
|
| Schedule 3 -> OK to use the financial system.
|
| How the DEA schedule and the financial system interact is still
| unclear. The important part is that once regulations are
| updated weed businesses won't be restricted from access to the
| financial system. There may be some more regs around that
| access, but I'm sure they'll be worked around.
| samtho wrote:
| > How the DEA schedule and the financial system interact is
| still unclear.
|
| You already answered this already :)
|
| > the point is that you CANNOT legally sell schedule 1 drugs
| commercially
|
| Schedule 1 means illegal under (nearly) any circumstance,
| commercial dispensaries fall under "any circumstance." Drug
| scheduling is just a tiered system for classification in
| order to determine which rules to apply to its sale,
| distribution, and possession of the substance.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "One major effect of this is that weed stores will be able to
| use banks and payment processors legally once the regulators
| catch up."
|
| Assuming banks/processors don't decide to restrict them for
| other reasons.
| feoren wrote:
| Wouldn't that be leaving money on the table? The bank that
| accepts business with marijuana vendors is at a competitive
| advantage to one that doesn't, no?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not necessarily. It depends on the risks, morals, and stuff
| like ESG. We've seen this with stuff like alcohol, tobacco,
| and guns.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| But you can buy alcohol, tobacco and guns with just about
| any payment method?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Porn and gambling are probably better examples. They're
| kryptonite to payment processors due to the chargeback
| risk.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| But will they be able to write off business expenses? Section
| 280E of the US Tax Code is, as I understand it, is the major
| killer for the whole industry right now.
|
| Edit: yes
|
| https://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/tax_implications_reclassi...
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if this means more tracking of drug purchases.
|
| Does alcohol consumption show up on credit card bills and
| filter back to insurance companies?
| markdown wrote:
| Don't be so sure. Kava is regulated by the FDA as a food, but
| many banks and payment processors refuse to work with
| businesses that sell it.
| dzonga wrote:
| however, the weed these days is much stronger, and not the one
| our grandfathers smoked.
|
| if something could be done about the thc content -- that will be
| nice.
|
| weed isn't exactly harmful -- but long term it will be
| interesting to see the consequences. now already a lot of people
| are paranoid due to weed use.
| wisemang wrote:
| One advantage to legalization (as implemented in Canada at
| least) is that THC content needs to be measured and labeled, so
| if you want to smoke something closer to your grandfather's
| level you have the choice and aren't at the mercy of whatever
| your dealer happens to have.
| paxys wrote:
| On one hand I'm very happy with all the recent policy changes
| coming down from different federal agencies, but on the other
| there's a very high likelihood that they will all be reversed a
| few months from now if/when a new administration takes over. That
| is always the downside of executive rule. With Congress
| unwilling/incapable of acting though I guess this is the best
| we'll get.
| ehsankia wrote:
| At least it'll be one fewer "both sides" argument to be made.
| colpabar wrote:
| What bothers me is that all these things are only happening
| because it's an election year and the incumbent doesn't have
| great polling numbers.
| paxys wrote:
| Well, politicians doing what people want in order to get
| reelected is kinda the point of democracy.
| colpabar wrote:
| There's no need to talk down to me.
|
| My point was that they could be doing what people want _for
| the entire duration of their term_ , rather than in the
| last few months. To use an analogy, it's like a student
| getting bad grades all year and then doing a bunch of extra
| credit assignments when they're worried about failing the
| class.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Your chief complaint is not new, it's nearly as old as
| democracy itself.
|
| Different forms of democracy have various trade-offs,
| what your describing _is the trade-off_ of representative
| democracy.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Is also partly the fault of voters for being so darn
| susceptible to recency bias. Do a lot of good at the
| start and then reach a lull and everyone's gonna hate.
| Timing can and has cost elections.
| vuln wrote:
| They only dangle the carrot when they need something, ie
| reelection.
| dgunay wrote:
| Yeah, but based on the guiding principle of democracy (govt
| by the will of the people), you'd hope to see them do that
| immediately instead of waiting years and years to do it
| when it is most strategically advantageous. I know politics
| is gamey like that by nature, but it sucks to see. The lag
| time between a policy becoming overwhelmingly popular and
| it actually being implemented is often long enough to
| radically alter the course of millions of peoples' lives.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Yeah, if only every year were election year....
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| {{Citation needed}}
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| You obviously haven't been paying attention as these rule
| making processes started literally years ago that's how much
| red tape there is to get through.
|
| And even if what you are saying was true (it isn't) isn't
| that the entire argument for democracy in the first place?
| "Politicians make good policy because they want to get re-
| elected" is how we should hope things work.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Bunch of Holden Caulfields imo who just refuse to 'vote for
| phonies' and still haven't grown uo
| hed wrote:
| It started in October 2022 (a month before midterms), if
| anything a skeptic would say that's more confirmation
| timing is suspect.
| romellem wrote:
| This is misinformation.
|
| Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services
| (HHS) to reexamine the scheduling of marijuana in _October
| 2022_.
|
| Nearly a year later in _August 2023_ , the HHS wrote to the
| DEA recommending that marijuana be reclassified from Schedule
| I to Schedule III.
|
| A month ago, the DEA was still "writing [their]
| recommendation" on what they should reclassify marijuana to
| (if any change was to happen).
|
| And just now, _April 2024_ , the DEA agreed with HHS (as
| reported by AP, DEA hasn't confirmed this yet).
|
| So no, this isn't "just happening" now, this has been going
| on for years.
|
| [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases... [2]:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-30/hhs-
| calls... [3]:
| https://twitter.com/DEAHQ/status/1772987478548287891
| sanderjd wrote:
| This kind of rule _should_ be made by an executive agency,
| empowered by a congressional delegation of that rule-making
| power to that agency.
|
| This is just the same principle as private organization boards
| of directors delegating the minutia of running the organization
| to the executives and their teams. If you think it would be
| madness for hiring decisions on individual contributors to be
| made by board votes, then you should support the delegation of
| rule-making authority to executive agencies.
|
| Yes, it means that changing the executive might change the
| rules. Congress remains free to overrule the agencies by
| passing further legislation, if they so desire. And voters
| remain free to replace the executive the next time around, if
| they want to see different rules. These are all features, not
| bugs.
|
| There is certainly value in stability and predictability, but
| there is even more value in having an executive branch of
| government that is empowered to make decisions quickly and a
| short feedback loop between the public and the government.
| paxys wrote:
| That only works if the rulemaking happens based on scientific
| reason rather than politics.
| sanderjd wrote:
| ... no, it works in general, for the reasons I went into in
| my comment.
| rascul wrote:
| > voters remain free to replace the executive the next time
| around
|
| Note that there are only either 538 or 100 voters, depending
| on which position in the executive branch.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Or 9 voters
|
| Or, if someone gets his way, just 1
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This is just the same principle as private organization
| boards of directors delegating the minutia of running the
| organization to the executives and their teams.
|
| It isn't, because the board can replace the executive
| leadership at any time, whereas the President can only be
| replaced every four years and isn't elected by the
| _legislature_ whatsoever, bypassing checks and balances.
|
| The proper way to delegate minutia to an administrative
| agency is to have them propose rules that Congress then votes
| on. The rules might be a thousand pages long and 99.9%
| uncontroversial, so _those_ rules get rubber stamped, but
| controversial changes have to go through the political
| process because it gives Congress the opportunity to refuse.
|
| > Congress remains free to overrule the agencies by passing
| further legislation, if they so desire.
|
| But that's not how it works, because now you've inverted the
| default. Before you needed a majority of the House and Senate
| and the President's signature in order to make a change. Now
| you need all that to _undo_ the change a President makes
| unilaterally -- implying that the President would veto it and
| the legislature would need a veto-proof majority. It 's not
| the same thing at all and is handing too much power to the
| executive branch.
|
| > There is certainly value in stability and predictability,
| but there is even more value in having an executive branch of
| government that is empowered to make decisions quickly and a
| short feedback loop between the public and the government.
|
| There is value in allowing the executive branch to _remove_
| bad rules unilaterally, in the same way as the President can
| veto a bill. Allowing new rules to be _created_ without the
| appropriate process is tyrannical.
| treflop wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. Support for the legalization of marijuana has
| consistently only gone up for 50 years and even more than half
| of conservatives supported it in 2023:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...
|
| You typically see flip flop rulings on issues that half the
| country actually does not support.
|
| Abortion is probably the biggest issue and that's because a lot
| of the country does not support it and this has not
| substantially changed in over 50 years:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
|
| Another contentious issue has been gay marriage but support for
| that has only risen over the years (although much more slowly),
| so generally that is another issue that I don't expect much
| flip flopping on: https://news.gallup.com/poll/506636/sex-
| marriage-support-hol...
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Abortion is probably the biggest issue and that's because a
| lot of the country does not support it and this has not
| substantially changed in over 50 years:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
|
| I'm sorry, am I reading the data incorrectly, or your comment
| incorrectly?
|
| > Do you think abortions should be legal under any
| circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or
| illegal in all circumstances?
|
| > 2023 | 34(any) 51(some) 13(illegal) 2(no opinion)
|
| According these data, the vast, vast majority of Americans
| support the right to abortion, correct?
| dingnuts wrote:
| the wording of the questions aren't good, but the states
| that have recently banned it certainly seem to be catering
| to the 13% who say illegal under all circumstances, due to
| the extremeness of the actual laws passed
|
| before Roe was overturned I would have considered myself
| pro life because I don't believe in late term abortions,
| but with the new legal landscape I've become effectively
| pro choice because the new laws are so extreme that they
| ban life saving health care that has little to do with the
| life of the unborn
|
| I wonder how many are like me
| consumer451 wrote:
| > I wonder how many are like me
|
| I believe there are many, on "both sides."
|
| I deeply appreciate your reply. This is extremely
| important.
|
| The wording is what it's all about. When we put it into
| terms like "pro-life"/"pro-choice" - it does nothing to
| address the hard realities which need to be addressed
| when writing law.
|
| We all keep getting played by yes/no, right/left, binary
| word game slogans. The realities are so much more
| complex.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > pro life because I don't believe in late term abortions
|
| So something that you'd probably be interested in are the
| turn away studies.
|
| https://www.ansirh.org/research/ongoing/turnaway-study
|
| The studies ask questions of people seeking abortions who
| ultimately can't because the law prohibits their abortion
| (usually because they waited too long).
|
| One interesting finding of this study is that a big
| reason people wait too long is because getting to an
| abortion clinic is just too hard. In the Roe world, in
| some very large states like Texas there were just 1 or 2
| abortion clinics for the entire state.
|
| Late term abortions have never really been very common.
| That's because as you get later in the process, just
| doing a c section and adoption would generally be the
| more preferred route. When they do happen, it's pretty
| much always due to non-viability of the fetus.
|
| And, this isn't directed to you, but another fascinating
| part of the turn away studies is that it's fairly common
| for people seeking abortions to be in long term
| relationships with children. For those people,
| financially supporting another child isn't really an
| option and adoption is really socially taboo. (Imagine
| explaining why you aren't pregnant anymore and why you
| don't have an infant child).
| tstrimple wrote:
| > One interesting finding of this study is that a big
| reason people wait too long is because getting to an
| abortion clinic is just too hard. In the Roe world, in
| some very large states like Texas there were just 1 or 2
| abortion clinics for the entire state.
|
| This is part of the strategy against abortion. Make
| unreasonably short abortion windows (six weeks is often
| before many women even determine that they are pregnant)
| coupled with restrictive regulations designed to make the
| process as difficult and long as possible including
| multiple visits and mandatory waiting times. Throw on top
| of that the attacks on the few places which provide these
| services and you've got a situation that makes it
| extremely difficult for anyone not wealthy to get a legal
| abortion.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Is the weed strength so strong these days that actually it should
| at this class
| itishappy wrote:
| > Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as
| drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high
| potential for abuse.
|
| Is it so strong it precludes medical usage?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Are most users smoking the plant directly, or using vapes or
| edibles (which typically have a known dose)?
|
| Regardless, stronger plant just means you smoke less to get the
| effect, right? It's not so strong that a single puff puts you
| in the ground.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Should alcohol or energy drinks be re-classified because of
| distilled spirits and unhealthy amounts of caffeine?
| lambdaba wrote:
| Great, now do psilocybin, LSD and MDMA.
| Extropy_ wrote:
| DMT and mescaline too.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Do all of them. To me, government exists to mediate
| interactions between parties. Not to get involved in personal
| choices. If someone wants to rip fat lines of coke, good for
| them. Not my business.
| krapp wrote:
| Do you think people who rip fat lines of coke will never
| interact with society in any way that affects you?
|
| Of course government gets involved in personal choices.
| Every crime committed by a person is a personal choice.
| Interactions between parties are interactions between
| people. The distinction you're trying to draw here doesn't
| exist.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Legitimate crimes have a perpetrator and a victim. That's
| two parties in conflict. Drug possession only has 1
| party, the person possessing or doing the drugs, and drug
| sales have two parties who aren't in conflict.
| lambdaba wrote:
| We don't live in libertarian utopia, let's first focus on
| substances that are *obviously* misclassified, the ones
| cited before have actual benefits, the most obvious one
| being psilocybin.
| vips7L wrote:
| Do they need to have benefits? Whether they are
| beneficial or not people are using drugs like MDMA.
| Making them illegal has only caused harm.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| That _Salvia divinorum_ is somehow legal (varies by
| jurisdiction) always blows my mind...
|
| My personal opinion is that most people won't be able to
| regulate any large caches of the above-commented drugs... but
| after one or two rides on Salvia most'll keep a wide birth
| [which I recommend as "the worst experience possible; if
| somebody suggests you try Salvia _they 're bullying you_; try
| something else"].
| epmatsw wrote:
| Please. It's insane that people are dying from fentanyl
| overdoses taking molly, absolutely not the right societal trade
| off to be making any more.
| tootie wrote:
| Also GHB. Sodium oxybate is currently schedule III, but it's
| basically just a bit of chemical sleight of hand to allow GHB
| to be prescribed.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Feels like they were keeping this card in their sleeves for when
| they needed a popularity boost.
| apengwin wrote:
| It is a good thing for democratically accountable governments
| to do good things that the people want!
| umvi wrote:
| Yes, it's good for the government to not be tyrannical, but
| I'd argue that when the majority of people increasingly and
| collectively want things that are net negatives for society
| like recreational drug use, it's a red flag that society is
| in decline.
| jMyles wrote:
| You seem to be conflating a distaste for demonstratively
| failed policy, like as prohibition, with an appetite for
| what you are calling "recreational drug use".
|
| Do you acknowledge the failure of prohibition?
| MeImCounting wrote:
| I think recreational drug use is demonstrably good for
| society and part of all succesful civilizations. Take
| caffeine, sugar, alcohol and tobacco as the primary
| examples. All potent drugs and all taken habitually and en
| masse by all the most successful societies in the world.
| chucksta wrote:
| Tell that to all the people pissed off at Roe v Wade
| krapp wrote:
| The majority of people didn't want Roe v. Wade repealed, it
| was done by an unelected unaccountable panel of judges at
| the behest of a minority of Christian fanatics and a
| Conservative think tank. The least democratic process
| possible.
| grecy wrote:
| > _an unelected unaccountable panel of judges_
|
| Don't forget seriously corrupt who regularly accept
| bribes.
| tootie wrote:
| A panel of judges appointed and confirmed by elected
| officials. An electoral plurality did want it repealed.
| And based on current polls, there is not a majority who
| think it's important enough to change it back. Even if
| there's an opinion poll saying most people want abortion
| rights, that's effectively moot if they don't vote that
| way.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| > based on current polls
|
| Citation needed.
|
| Current polls indicate that "[t]wo-thirds of the public,
| including majorities of Democrats (86%) and independents
| (67%), support a law guaranteeing a federal right to
| abortion."
|
| Source: https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/poll-
| finding/kff-he...
|
| > Even if there's an opinion poll [...] that's
| effectively moot if they don't vote that way.
|
| Weirdly, your own argument is rendered moot with that
| assertion. But I agree, it's important for people to
| vote.
| tootie wrote:
| By current polls, I mean the ones showing Trump even or
| slightly ahead of Biden despite him being directly
| responsible for Dobbs. If 2/3 of the public wanted
| abortion rights, Biden would have 2/3 of the popular
| vote, but he won't get anywhere near that. Hence, most
| people don't want Roe reinstated. QED.
| krapp wrote:
| >If 2/3 of the public wanted abortion rights, Biden would
| have 2/3 of the popular vote, but he won't get anywhere
| near that. Hence, most people don't want Roe reinstated.
| QED.
|
| That isn't the way people work. Or voting. Or polls.
| tootie wrote:
| It is the only practical measure of true public opinion.
| You can also, by extension, infer that roughly 47% of
| Americans think sexual assault is acceptable and that
| democracy is undesirable. It may not be what they say or
| even what they think but it is reflected in what they do.
| krapp wrote:
| It isn't practical by any means, it's unnecessarily
| reductionist, even when one doesn't consider the numerous
| innate biases involved in polling.
|
| People are multidimensional but American Presidential
| politics forces them into a binary decision. Yet there
| are numerous reasons why people who support abortion
| might not vote for Biden. They may support abortion but
| not believe Biden is a credible choice to defend abortion
| rights. They may support abortion but vote against Biden
| to punish the Democratic Party for their response to
| Dobbs. They may support abortion but reject the
| Democratic Party altogether. They may support abortion
| but find activism at the state level more effective, and
| find other things like Biden's support for Israel more
| objectionable. They may support abortion but also support
| Trump, because pro-choice Republicans do exist, and their
| only options will be to vote Trump or not vote and all.
| And most people won't even vote at all.
|
| >It may not be what they say or even what they think but
| it is reflected in what they do.
|
| No. It may be comfortable to see people in such black and
| white terms, but the premise that unless one votes for
| Biden, one doesn't support abortion regardless of what
| else one says and does, is ... not even wrong levels of
| wrong.
| triceratops wrote:
| Abortion bans have been extremely unpopular in every
| state where they have gone on the ballot. Even deep red
| ones. I'd be curious to see what happens if every state
| holds a referendum on it.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kansas_abortion_ref
| erendu...
|
| 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2023_Ohio_Issue_1
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| OK, but at the time of Roe v. Wade, I don't think the
| majority of people wanted abortion legalized, either. I'm
| not sure the majority of people wanted gay marriage
| legalized (at the time).
|
| But even more: You don't _want_ the judges to be focused
| on what the majority want. That 's not the rule of law.
| krapp wrote:
| Yes, I'm objecting to the premise that "democratically
| accountable governments do(ing) good things that the
| people want" describes the process by which Roe v. Wade
| was repealed. It was not democratically accountable, and
| it was what only a subset of the people wanted.
|
| The Supreme Court is not an example of democracy working,
| it's a purposely anti-democratic institution.
| underseacables wrote:
| "an unelected unaccountable panel of judges"
|
| Who do you think approved Roe v. Wade in the first place
| that legalized abortion. An "unelected unaccountable
| panel of judges."
|
| Edit: If someone can find a federal law that legalized
| abortion then please, I'm all ears.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is a directional error. Roe protected liberty. Federal
| criminalization of weed impedes liberty. While ending both
| of these things returns policy to the states, one
| necessarily reduces liberty while one necessarily increases
| liberty.
| plantwallshoe wrote:
| The political group largely responsible for this has been
| consistently underperforming in nearly every election since
| it happened, so I'm not sure what point you're driving at.
| themagician wrote:
| They absolutely were. Between 25% inflation, the student loan
| relief failure, two proxy wars and the current beating of
| college students across the country, the current administration
| would have been facing record low turnout in November.
|
| I would be surprised if there is not some string attached to
| this that doesn't take place until after November. That's a
| good thing though, becuase it was seeming more and more like
| the current administration was sabotaging itself. The Democrats
| _need_ the youth vote.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| Utter bullshit. Reclassifying schedule 1 Drugs requires the
| approval of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the UN.
| Otherwise, they are just reclassifying it under an already
| reclassified treaty structure as a red herring.
|
| The Psychotropic Substances Act modified the existing schedule,
| but left other acts in tact - those other acts are the ones being
| modified by this nonsense circus.
| byteknight wrote:
| Legitimate question: How is it nonsense if it is still treated,
| currently, as a S1? If this changes anything it's not nonsense.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| I answered your question in the other comment.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'm quite ignorant about how international law and treaties
| interact with domestic policy. Could you educate me? What is
| the mechanism within US law by which this reclassification
| requires approval by that UN commission?
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotropic_Substances_Act_(U.
| .. The above link is the Act that governs the USA's
| international obligations based on our treaty with the UN to
| schedule specific drugs and under those terms only allowed to
| reschedule Schedule 1 drugs with the approval of the UN;
| often after a review of the drugs medicinal purposes by the
| WHO.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Drug_Abuse_Preve.
| .. The above is a "DEA" schedule of drug classifications that
| the government can play around with and bullshit us on. Many
| of Cannabis schedules have already been reduced based on
| specific compounds of THC under other treaties enacted before
| the 1978 alignment from above. These domestic rescheduling
| may have an affect on legal charges or banking, but cannot
| address the overarching classifier of Schedule 1 drugs which
| is the UN based on the 1st link.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Thank you for the links!
|
| I'm hoping other knowledgeable people will also weigh in on
| this topic.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The 1961 convention, which as far as I know has not been
| contravened (w.r.t. cannabis) by the subsequent acts only
| bans non-medical (and non-scientific) uses of cannabis.
| Schedule IV would probably be sufficient to comply with the
| US's obligations there, and Schedule III certainly is.
| jjulius wrote:
| >These domestic rescheduling may have an affect on legal
| charges or banking, but cannot address the overarching
| classifier of Schedule 1 drugs which is the UN based on the
| 1st link.
|
| So, you're acknowledging that changes to legal charges,
| banking capabilities and so forth are benefits that come
| from this reclassification, but you're also calling this
| change "utter bullshit" and a "red herring"?
| rezonant wrote:
| Well the UN has already done that, moving it from Schedule IV
| to Schedule I. Note that the schedules are reversed in the UN's
| system.
|
| So it appears that US rescheduling would bring drug policy
| closer into alignment with the UN than before.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/cannabis-uni...
|
| Now, there may be some procedural red tape to go through, but
| it would be odd for the UN to reject such a change when their
| own scheduling agrees with the change.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| That's under a different treaty. You're falling for the
| bamboozle.
|
| This is the origin of what you're talking about: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...
|
| Which is what this was based on:
| https://www.who.int/teams/health-product-and-policy-
| standard...
|
| Which was the impetus for what you're talking about.
| jjulius wrote:
| Help me out here, because I'm genuinely trying to grok your
| point but, for whatever reason, it's not clicking for me.
| You originally stated:
|
| >Reclassifying schedule 1 Drugs requires the approval of
| the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the UN.
|
| In response to the person above you in this comment chain,
| you then suggested that their understanding was wrong and
| that they're "falling for the bamboozle". I'm not sure how
| the NYT piece is false or a bamboozle, given that it
| clearly states:
|
| >The vote by the Commission for Narcotic Drugs, which is
| based in Vienna and includes 53 member states, considered a
| series of recommendations from the World Health
| Organization on reclassifying cannabis and its derivatives.
|
| So, at one point you say that the Commission for Narcotic
| Drugs needs to be the commission to approve the
| rescheduling, but when you're told that they did in fact do
| that, you then tell us that that's wrong. I would love to
| be steered in the right direction here, if you don't mind.
| KenArrari wrote:
| Looks like Biden is really worried about re-election.
| xp84 wrote:
| From the article: "Then there's the United States' international
| treaty obligations, chief among them the 1961 Single Convention
| on Narcotic Drugs, which requires the criminalization of
| cannabis."
|
| Ah, I see. Somehow I doubt that if the US announced it would
| withdraw from this treaty, to be replaced by an amended version,
| we'd be invaded immediately by all our (former) allies and be
| driven straight into the sea. Like, I'm sure there are
| governments even more obsessed with cannabis than we've been, but
| like, they'll have to get over it sometime.
| jjcm wrote:
| Canada got told "shame on you" when they legalized. That seems
| to be about the extent of the ramifications:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Narcotics_Contro...
| lukeinator42 wrote:
| I was curious if us Canadians were on that treaty, haha.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Major impact will also be felt at cannabis research at land grant
| universities. Aka all the experiments to prove obvious stuff like
| different cultivars affect different people differently can
| finally happen at scale.
|
| See cannabisstudieslab.com as an example of the kind of non plant
| touching research that Cannabis Studies majors have been doing
| due to the Schedule I status.
| jondwillis wrote:
| ironic use of the word "marijuana" in the title
| omgCPhuture wrote:
| The AP article has one critical thing wrong:
|
| "The DEA's proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White
| House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the
| medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential
| for abuse than some of the nation's most dangerous drugs.
| However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for
| recreational use."
|
| It is in fact because they were ordered to do so by the US FDA,
| who by law decides what schedule drugs should be in. It started
| with MDMA, then LSD, Psilocybin and marijuana. In that order.
| They signaled the DEA to reschedule all those things because, in
| fact, they are legitimate medicine and I cannot help to wonder if
| that started with MAPS (maps.org) applying to do trials with MDMA
| for PTSD and being *beyond* due dilligent.
|
| The FDA will collect data from any relevant agency whenever
| something (at least drugs( are applied for $whatever use. I have
| heard through the grapewine that the FDA were downright furious
| to learn the DEA had lied about MDMA for years while veterans are
| killing themselves daily. Much of the DEA data supposedly showed
| a ton of deaths attributed to MDMA just because a pill with a
| logo was being sold as if it was MDMA, while in fact it was
| sooooo many other dangerous things. The US DEA lies about just
| about everything. These substances are not depency-forming like
| opioids. If the DEA of any US alphabet soup move their lips they
| are lying.
|
| The empathogen and psychdelics are not even habitforming: Do you
| know what happens if you do LSD daily for a week? I do, You can
| lick an entire sheet on the 7th day and hardly feel a thing,
| which I know because I have. Israel has been leading the way in
| marijuana research for decades. 90 year old holocaust surviors
| inhale marijuana vapor,for PTSD. I find extreme relief from PTSD
| myself using marijuana vapor: The nightmares stop, and suddenly I
| sleep 8 hrs a night, a few days of that I almost forget I have
| PTSD. Then I moved back the "richest nation of earth" (and it can
| go fuck itself) and essentially have to be a criminal to get
| regular sleep to function keep a job and not live in a perpetual
| nightmare. WE have Bedrocan / Bedrolight, but nobody can get a
| script for it because of all the nonsense authorities and
| socialized medicine/psychiatry thinks about it. Terminally ill
| cancer patients have begged to try it and at least on one
| occasion die 6 days after the news that he got denied died, in
| hospital from accute opioid poisoning. THey kill cancer patients
| with opiods all the time.
|
| And WTF are DEA doing with offices in Copenhagen, Denmark?! They
| set up shop there and suddenly swedish police (SSI) has endless
| kilos of cocaine to plant and don't want the labs analyzing it
| following swedish law (the law say to destroy within 3 months of
| seizure and lab analysis and it has been all over national tv in
| the Scandinavian nations they Police active tried to stop them
| destroy man y many kilos of it, 9kg of which they were caught
| planting.). Oh, and SSI police have a tendency to become cocaine
| addicts. -All that cocaine with no oversightmakes it an
| occupational hazard, I guess.
|
| IMHO, if you go to war for me, you deserve the best treatment
| available for your injuries. MDMA assisted therapy trials have
| helped veterans I know personally. I stoppped drinking liquor &
| wine the first time I tried marijuana, 20 years ago. The UN
| removed cannabis from the narcotics list in 2020, for decades it
| was embarassing: None of its cannabinoid components ever went on
| it as no narcotic effect were demonstrated they were listed as
| psychotropic substances, along with caffeine, psychdelics,
| nicotine, alcoholm etc. The original Opioum conventions had a
| clause specifically permitting businesses to have upto 500g for
| resale in small quanties to adults. That is how Dutch Coffee
| Shios exist. The UN listedcannabis in the 1930's under the
| __assumption__ of opium like effects, nobody what was in
| marijuana until late in the 60s, many years after the 1961
| Narcotics treaty.
|
| I am still waiting for the war on tylenol, which has killed over
| 100k in US a year for decades. Remember when opioids killed 100k
| a year in the US? The entire world does, yet most people dunno
| about Iran's struggle: almost half the afghan heroin ends up i
| Iran, has for decades. Afghanistan makes about 80% of illicit
| heroin.
| jjulius wrote:
| I read all of that gigantic word salad and it's still not clear
| to me what it is that you think the AP article got wrong.
| fxd123 wrote:
| > I am still waiting for the war on tylenol, which has killed
| over 100k in US a year for decades.
|
| That is completely false:
|
| "an estimated 458 deaths due to acute liver failure each year"
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15239078/
| anonuser1234 wrote:
| For federal workers in legalized states, will they be able to
| use?
| lemoncade wrote:
| not for at least like 20 years probably
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Unlikely in the near term. As I understand it, rescheduling to
| Schedule III would mean that marijuana (and marijuana-based
| products) can be sold with a prescription. But, for a doctor to
| prescribe something, it needs FDA approval. I don't know
| when/if FDA will approve any marijuana-based treatments. And
| even if they did, this would not authorize recreational use.
| donatj wrote:
| We should legalize some of the less harmful mild uppers like khat
| while we're legalizing depressants.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| There you have it, the administrator themselves saying they
| believe in myths about cannabis: It's a gateway drug; while
| simultaneously ignoring that the drug killing people, fent has a
| perfectly causal gateway drug in vicodin/percs
|
| > Jack Riley, a former deputy administrator of the DEA, said he
| had concerns about the proposed change because he thinks
| marijuana remains a possible "gateway drug," one that may lead to
| the use of other drugs.
|
| >"But in terms of us getting clear to use our resources to combat
| other major drugs, that's a positive," Riley said, noting that
| fentanyl alone accounts for more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S.
| a year.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| It is a gateway drug. When marijuana is illegal you have to get
| it from drug dealers, who have an incentive to upsell you to
| harder stuff. Make it legal and that gateway goes away.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Anecdote: I've had countless dealers over 20 years in many
| countries and continents, not once has someone tried to sell
| me anything else (besides hash). It's always been some cheery
| barefoot guy with dreads growing it in his closet.
|
| Now that it's legal in Germany I'm going to grow my own, and
| experience the (surprisingly common!) miracle of harvesting
| the exact legal limit of 25 grams from 3 plants ;)
| paulddraper wrote:
| Vicodin/percs also require prescriptions tho.
|
| Not so much of a gotcha.
| ugh123 wrote:
| America should have a long hard look at why it takes so long to
| do something that would have been considered "reasonable" by most
| of the country 15 years ago.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think it's the same with a lot of things that the American
| government grapples with, they only do it when there is a
| politically expedient reason to do it. Whether it's reducing
| student loans, outlawing noncompete clause, or marijuana,
| elected officials don't really seem to do anything helpful
| unless there's a clear advantage for themselves or their party.
| paulddraper wrote:
| But that's factually untrue.
|
| Gallup polled support for legalization being in the minority,
| as recently as 2010. [1]
|
| Now factor in the demographics of voters vs adults in general,
| and the timeline is the opposite of surprising.
|
| [1] New High of 46% of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/144086/new-high-americans-suppo...
| ada1981 wrote:
| What an embarrassment to anyone in the DEA or public policy in
| general that this is still a thing.
|
| Not sure how the DEA can consider itself a serious organization.
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| Elections have consequences!!
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Just in time for the election. It baffles me why this took so
| long given the number of states legalizing it.
| ddp26 wrote:
| I did some AI-assisted research on this, and have come to the
| following tentative conclusions:
|
| 1. The re-scheduling will happen (90%), the administrative
| hurdles will be cleared. Only counterexample I could find was
| Kratom in 2016, which was the reverse of this situation, and the
| DEA dropped the proposal at the public comment stage.
|
| 2. Trump will not reverse it if elected (80%). He's been pro-
| states-rights on cannabis (or outright legalization) going all
| the way back 1990, and has criticized Biden on this.
|
| 3. Unlikely many US states that outlaw it will change, but I do
| predict (75%) at least one major European country will follow
| suit within a year, given Germany beat US to the punch
|
| 4. Effects in the US will be minor, outside of weed stores using
| the banking system as another comment pointed out, since most
| enforcement is state level.
|
| 5. But if there are changes, the best evidence we have on this
| comes from state legalization, where the effects are estimated to
| be huge (+3% state income, +17% substance use disorders).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| And what did the AI cite as sources for these conclusions?
| ddp26 wrote:
| These conclusions are mine, based on research the AI did.
| None of these probabilities were directly output, it simply
| found lots of news articles, made simple models, researched
| what people have said & done historically.
| bbarn wrote:
| I really don't think this is a positive in any way, unless you
| oppose recreational marijuana usage.
|
| Making it a schedule III puts it back in "Doctor prescription"
| territory, and since there's now a legal route to getting it, a
| lot of these businesses that have operated with impunity are
| breaking a different set of laws if it's schedule III. No doubt
| that laws and decriminalization statutes would need to be updated
| to comply federally. Banks may be able to be used, but only if
| you're a registered pharmacy. It's really just a lot more
| questions and a lot more people to profit on the chain to selling
| it.
|
| Most of the world still treats it as an illegal substance. In the
| US we have definitely allowed popular sentiment to make it appear
| much less harmful than it is. I'm not sure it belongs in schedule
| I, but it certainly doesn't belong OTC.
| par wrote:
| You'll be able to get a doctor rx super easily, think like all
| these viagra and adderall rx mills.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| You seem to believe that a move from Schedule I (totally
| illegal to sell) to Schedule III (legal to sell under some
| circumstances) is going to hit the reset button on state laws
| around cannabis. That seems unlikely, the states are already
| ignoring the feds on this, this is just a step the feds are
| taking to bring the federal legal landscape closer to the state
| landscape. The major changes will simply be, as others have
| stated, to make it possible to travel with cannabis (with an
| Rx) and for dispensaries and others to use FDIC insured banking
| and transfer mechanisms.
|
| Other than that, nothing is likely to change unless states walk
| back the laws they've already passed.
|
| Remember, it's already illegal on the federal level for these
| businesses to exist, and that isn't stopping them.
| bbarn wrote:
| Once there is a framework for legal sale, and regulations
| around it, you think all these states will continue to just
| not comply?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| They've been thumbing their nose at more more serious laws
| until now, why would a downgrade in consequences suddenly
| make them burn down industries that bring in billions?
| hughesjj wrote:
| Imo the states get far too much revenue from recreational
| taxes and I imagine the Fed doesn't want that to change
| either.
|
| It's really just a few dinosaur pearl clutchers that are
| preventing it from being descheduled entirely
| ttpphd wrote:
| Supposed evidence of the harmfulness of cannabis compared to
| alcohol shows that cannabis absolutely deserves to be OTC and
| available for recreational use. Popular sentiment is popular
| precisely because the supposed harm has never materialized to
| the point of justifying the paternalistic and authoritarian
| control of social groups who tend to use cannabis.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I'm not sure it belongs in schedule I, but it certainly
| doesn't belong OTC.
|
| How is it more dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol?
|
| Prescriptions are basically a formality. There are a certain
| set of symptoms you have to describe to a doctor in order to
| get any particular drug, then you go to a doctor and get the
| prescription. It has to be this way because many of the
| conditions have no non-invasive tests to determine if the
| patient is lying and as much as the DEA would like it to be the
| case, doctors are not supposed to be cops and they can't be
| effective _doctors_ if they have to play CYA all day.
|
| But at that point all the law is doing is propping up pharma
| profits and inflating healthcare costs by routing recreational
| use through the insurance system, and screw that. If you want
| to eat pot brownies then you should a) pay the market price,
| not a tax to corporate shareholders, and b) pay it yourself,
| not stick the cost on everyone who buys health insurance.
| whitakerch wrote:
| Know that the reason why it's illegal in so many places to
| begin with is because of the US. Weed wasn't really an "issue"
| anywhere. Until the US drug war began and spread to other
| countries thru international narcotic treaties.
|
| Obviously there are outliers and certain cultures where
| domestic policy was also heavily at play (Japan). But many
| European countries didn't view weed as particularly
| problematic.
| kinakomochidayo wrote:
| Great, let psychedelics be reclassified next
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not sure how this will affect the current "mom and pop" weed
| stores. I know that The Big Dogs are just raring to get in on the
| action, and I'll lay odds they have done things like preemptively
| register weed brands.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Reminder that Marijuana was made illegal 90 years ago due to
| pressure by a cartel of other drug peddlers (including opium and
| cocaine), and also a culture of pervasive racism that painted
| Marijuana as a trap that brown/black races had fallen into and
| must be outlawed for white people.
|
| Whatever you think about the effects of Marijuana on yourself or
| society, it's clear that it should have never been outlawed in
| the first place, and wouldn't have been outlawed if not for the
| factors above.
|
| It seems that the fentanyl crisis has finally defeated the
| archaic drug policy in the states, but not in the way you think.
| If alcohol and tobacco were outlawed in the US, it would
| immediately become impossible to buy them without risking getting
| a deadly dose of fentanyl. Legalization of marijuana, controlled
| legalization, is the only sane answer.
|
| (And this is coming from someone who doesn't partake)
| utensil4778 wrote:
| I just happened to spot this thread at 420 comments.
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