Seems like an appropriate time to have a pot hot topic, since pot will be legal across Canada the day after tomorrow. Amusingly, among other things this has created an existential crisis for Canada’s Marijuana Party, who now have no major reason to exist.
So: please share your thoughts on this particular drug. Does it make sense to legalize it? Should other drugs be legalized? Think this’ll change how or how much people use it? Do you enjoy “the reefer”?
I personally haven’t used pot in over a decade, but legalizing it seems fine to me. It seems consistent with alcohol and cigarettes being legal. To be honest my biggest annoyance with pot is how much people make a lifestyle out of it. I hope over time with it being legal this aspect kind of dies away.
I don't know, man. I think smokers pretty much make a lifestyle out of it too. They might not call it that, but they kind of center a lof of their actions around smoking.
The RDM finds pot is actually a pretty insidious drug for some people. He's seen several completely lose their drive and basically tank their lives to become massive potheads. He's also seen far more people smoke pot and not descend into a spiral of nothing, so the issues might be more specific to the people than the drug.
Legalizing it is probably the smart thing to do overall. Most drug policing (at least in the US) is very dogwhistly. It's widely used by cops as a way to hassle and arrest minorities at really high rates.
The RDM has been right: 263,194,431,295,771,222,402,819,021,768 times.
WaWard wrote:The RDM is too damn right all the time.
Making it legal and regulating it is best in my mind. Prohibition in the US taught us that. Making it illegal doesn't mean it won't be used, and legalizing it won't eliminate all of the negative consequences of its use, but regulating it means we're at least taking responsibility for the negatives and (hopefully) are able to address those problems more effectively than when it was illegal, i.e. lowering the barrier to entry, or fear of punishment, from entering rehabilitation programs.
Plus, there is potential medical utility for various components of marijuana. We already use a drug called dronabinol (Marinol), a synthesized cannabinoid, to stimulate appetite in patients undergoing chemotherapy, and it works for a lot of patients that have failed on other treatments or that are undergoing particularly nasty chemo regimens (apropos of nothing, we also use 4% cocaine solutions as a local anesthetic in certain surgical procedures). There's a lot of woo-ey nonsense out there that seems to treat marijuana as a curative for a wide range of disease states, but by making its use legal, that also opens up the way for a lot of research to separate the wheat from the chaff, and even reveal novel uses and, on the flip-side, better understand the long-term risks associated with its use.
Isn't it actually a really valuable treatment for intractable seizure disorders? Not that the cancer treatment supplement alone isn't enough to justify decriminalization.
The RDM has been right: 263,194,431,295,771,222,402,819,021,768 times.
WaWard wrote:The RDM is too damn right all the time.
It’s a treatment for ulcerative colitis which I have. Likely the dosage would be much lower than what is sold for fun. Do you not have legal medical marijuana in trump nation???
WaWard wrote:It’s a treatment for ulcerative colitis which I have. Likely the dosage would be much lower than what is sold for fun. Do you not have legal medical marijuana in trump nation???
Not federally. Some states do, but it's always a federal crime.
It's still considered the worst category of controlled substance on a federal level here, so it's super hard for companies to do research on in the US. Only some states have it medically, and even then there are extra hoops to jump through because what if someone got high!?!?!?
The RDM has been right: 263,194,431,295,771,222,402,819,021,768 times.
WaWard wrote:The RDM is too damn right all the time.
Yep, in the US, it's regulated as a schedule 1 drug, which includes meth, heroin, etc. In fed law, it is aupposed to be for substances that have no legitimate nutritional or medical purpose (except for cocaine and GHB when used for specific med applications - a layperson in possession of GHB without an rx would be charged with illegal possession of a sch 1). Having been on the research side as well, it is a huge pain to do research on. You have to do daily inventories, quantities are extremely limited, and discrepencies of mere micrograms can land you in hot water and put a rapid end to your research.
As to questions of medical utility, I can't speak to a lot of it. There's a lot of naturopathic bullshit claims out there, along with individual anecdotes of utility (the ones that seem to get the most play in news cycles deal with chronic pain and seizure disorders) and the ones that do have data backing it up are either low quality or small sample size studies, so their results aren't generalizable, but at best, promising results for larger-scale studies. I have no doubt that we will find a lot of things it can be used for, but until there's more rigorous, properly-blinded, and well-controlled studies, I'm withholding judgement and simply telling patients that, right now, the data isn't strong enough for me to recommend.
The big problem with all of this is that, even if you can prove efficacy and safety (which I'm pretty confident that there will be for several indications) in the US, if it's not regulated as a medication, the efficacy and safety of individual products will not be known. This is because of a stupid 1994 law called the "Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act" that effectively made all supplements and vitamins immune from premarketing demonstrations of efficacy, potency, and safety. So even if marijuana could effectively treat ulcerative colitis, if you bought a vial of marijuana oil that wasn't regulated as a medication, you have no idea what's in that bottle, and the FDA will only step in once enough people start getting sick or dead, like what happened with ephedra.
Last edited by Mitsurugi CP on Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mitsurugi CP wrote:Making it legal and regulating it is best in my mind. Prohibition in the US taught us that. Making it illegal doesn't mean it won't be used, and legalizing it won't eliminate all of the negative consequences of its use, but regulating it means we're at least taking responsibility for the negatives and (hopefully) are able to address those problems more effectively than when it was illegal, i.e. lowering the barrier to entry, or fear of punishment, from entering rehabilitation programs.
Plus, there is potential medical utility for various components of marijuana. We already use a drug called dronabinol (Marinol), a synthesized cannabinoid, to stimulate appetite in patients undergoing chemotherapy, and it works for a lot of patients that have failed on other treatments or that are undergoing particularly nasty chemo regimens (apropos of nothing, we also use 4% cocaine solutions as a local anesthetic in certain surgical procedures). There's a lot of woo-ey nonsense out there that seems to treat marijuana as a curative for a wide range of disease states, but by making its use legal, that also opens up the way for a lot of research to separate the wheat from the chaff, and even reveal novel uses and, on the flip-side, better understand the long-term risks associated with its use.
I just find the current US legislation weird, it makes no sense to me with that all or nothing approach. As usual, I much prefer the European way of dealing with this. By the way, here is some data on regular users in Europe: http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/file ... 400271.pdf
I can't talk for all countries but afaik in France cannabis possession is not a major issue that will land you in jail, you'd only get in trouble for growing it and/or selling it.
As a non-user, I don't feel like this is an issue which will change my life in any way. The main problem as far as I'm concerned is that it stinks, just like tobacco does, so I hope it won't invade the public space more than it currently does. Apart from this, as I'm neither a specialist in addictology nor in criminology*, I don't have enough data to have a properly informed opinion. I feel like a holistic approach is needed and the situation is not necessarily the same in Canada, the US, Europe and elsewhere in the world.
*In France/Belgium at least it seems that drug trafficking is often linked to much worse problems, not limited to but including financing and/or facilitating terrorist activities.
I know. Which is why I said I'm neither a specialist in addictology (bad if it make things worse) nor in criminology (good if it can be reduced). I assume there are both pros and cons to legalization, so without knowing numbers I don't know if they would cancel each other out or not.
Also when I'm talking about addictology, I'm not talking just about cannabis issues here, but about drugs in general. One of the "theories" is that legalization of cannabis might actually have an impact on consumption of more dangerous drugs, since youth would still crave transgression and move on to something much more harmful since it would no longer be "cool" to simply smoke pot.
Also, now that I think about it the situation is vastly different depending if a country provides health care for all or not. Hence I think governments have to think about their own context very carefully and a one size fits all approach just doesn't work. The main thing that would be good though is not wasting time/resources on persecuting simple non-problematic/recreational users, and making the life of researchers easier.
Calbrena wrote:
I just find the current US legislation weird, it makes no sense to me with that all or nothing approach.
If we didn't make it black and white, it'd be a lot harder to systemically deprive minorities of basic civil liberties, and we certainly can't have that.
Calbrena wrote:
I just find the current US legislation weird, it makes no sense to me with that all or nothing approach.
If we didn't make it black and white, it'd be a lot harder to systemically deprive minorities of basic civil liberties, and we certainly can't have that.
I know that. I also know how lucrative the incarceration business is in the US. The whole thing is pretty gross tbh.
Lord Golbez wrote:I don't know, but this thread is making me crave Mary Jane candies.
Have we ever had a hot topic about sugar addiction? This is a pretty nasty topic tbh. But lucrative addictions are not a problem in a country that doesn't have universal health care, right?
I would say I'm quasi-sugar addicted. I used to be more of a sugar addict, but as I've tried to eat healthier I tend to avoid it more. It's still rather difficult for me to stop at a good limit when eating sugary stuff, but it's not so hard for me to go relatively long periods without overt sugars. It's definitely not like a drug addiction, because it's not like I needed to go to rehab or something to limit my consumption. There probably is some version of withdrawal symptoms I guess, but it's definitely not at the same level.
My grandparents gave them to us whenever we'd visit in the fall, and after the first try, the rest would be quietly returned or discarded. They tasted like they'd gone rancid.
But then, I like those mallow pumpkins everyone seems to hate.
Looking up Mary Jane candies, they look like stuff I’ve had, but I’m not sure if I’ve had those exactly, or if they’re available in Canada. I do like Tootsie Rolls, though, and those are often frowned upon.
EDIT: This marijuana discussion appears to be veering towards a candy discussion. I think candy would be a fun hot topic, so probably best not to stray too far beyond Mary Jane for now. Amusingly, both of the most recent hot topics are reasonable places to discuss candy, though.
Really not noticing any difference here in Cannada aside from stoned people in downtown the eve before legalization, but then again that's not really uncommon on any regular day either.
My general impression is that people who used to do it will still do it. People who were not interested in the first place will mostly not be interested. And there are a small subset who might try it now that it's legal.
I think traveling to the US after using would make me super paranoid, even if not carrying. US be crazy man.
Accessibility seems like somewhat of a problem and iirc oils and edibles and concentrates won't be rolled out (lawl) til next year or something. I know a few people who use balms and things for pain, and find it ironic that weed is less accessible right now than it was a week ago. But hopefully that will sort itself out.
If anything it would be nice if accessibility perhaps aided with the opiate crisis. I don't know if the government is willing to throw free weed at homeless people (there was a local organization doing this in the DTES who got busted for it legally... sigh) but honestly it might not be a bad strategy.
Using marijuana to treat opioid addiction is one of the claimed uses that I'm deeply skeptical of. There's some pretty effective treatments for substance abuse that need strong social welfare programs to support. The problem is no one wants to pay the money it would cost, and there's tons of money to be made in kicking the can down the road, i.e. methadone clinics. And these groups that try to treat opioid addiction with marijuana are banking on the same principle (give feelgood medicine that doesn't address the underlying social or psychological causes of the patient's addiction), but with a drug that also doesn't treat physical symptoms of withdrawal because they act on different neuroreceptors.
My wife’s family dr totally almost prescribed my wife some pot to treat a recurring leg pain she has. But my wife declined. I knew the doctor was a pothead deep inside me. She was just waiting.
