Said Josh Keats, the co-founder of Henry’s Original, a marijuana company, quoted in "How the marijuana 'green rush' fell apart/A cannabis glut in several states has depressed prices for legal pot, pushing small businesses into turmoil" (WaPo).
Apparently, business is terrible, and we're supposed to hope the demand for the famous weed will increase. I'd like to see the federal ban end, mostly because I disapprove of the chaos of partially legalized marijuana. I don't like seeing rule-followers treated worse than people who think the federal part of the law doesn't matter. So I guess I'm for increasing demand in the sense that I want unfairly restrained rule-followers to have equal access, but I hope most people will say no to drugs. And too bad if a lot of people thought they'd get rich quick by jumping into the marijuana business. It's an easy-to-grow plant, and if the federal ban is lifted, people will mostly have one more houseplant. Right? If they want it at all.
Posts
98 comments:
'It's an easy-to-grow plant...'
No expert, but I don't think it's that easy to grow if you want a quality product in the end...
"I don't like seeing rule-followers treated worse"
Also on immigration? If so, why vote for a Dem ever again?
Legalization is being conflated with commercialization as a policy objective.
A guy I know ancillarily connected to that industry is diametrically opposed to Federal legalization for the following reasons:
1) He specializes in financial services to that industry, which would make him obsolete in a world where specialization in weed-corp, just regular corp, isn't needed.
2) The tobacco majors, Dow, and other S&P giants that would swoop in an monopolize the industry with untold billions in already paid for capability in R&D.
3) Federal regulations are a double-edged sword. For just as much as against. Federal legalization would represent an 'undiscovered country' of potential new regulation of an industry - complete with lobbyists - that would likely hurt the industry as it is familiar to every one now. "The Devil You Know" syndrome.
There are others, but these were his big 3.
I understand the MJ that is used to day is significantly stronger than when we were young...Although I've never touched the stuff.
Biden-Covid-Flation hurts. marijuana is expensive at the legal pot shops here.
Not hard to figure out that people are growing their own.
MJ is scary now. And real stoners still buy from their connection because legal is too expensive.
There's a huge black market. But maybe that's because there are still a few dry states to sell to.
If the cartels lose this business, they've always got other products.
It is definitely the salvation for the industry
I read this as "salivation". (Got the munchies?)
Growing the good stuff is not as easy as keeping a ficus alive, but there are so many quality private growers that legalization is almost pointless, re: incurring the overhead of a brick and mortar store and/or greenhouse, plus all the associated licenses, regulations, taxes, et al.
It is definitely the salvation for the industry
I read this as "salivation". (Got the munchies?)
From "religion is the opiate of the people" to literal drugs are the opiate of the people. That's progress! Brother, can you spare a lotto ticket? Amazing to witness in my lifetime the replacement of industrial and retail jobs (aka evil capitalist exploitation) with state and local welfare budgets increasingly dependent on addiction. No exploitation there.
Big money to be made in pot.
I'm surprised the Dems didn't do it during the first two years of Joe's term.
An excellent grift for the Dems as it plays to their base, creates grateful voters and more money for pols.
We are becoming Pottersville and that's what the Dems want. A country that doesn't own houses, drunk, destroyed families and gamblers. Pathetic.
2) The tobacco majors, Dow, and other S&P giants that would swoop in an monopolize the industry with untold billions in already paid for capability in R&D.
This is what I'm waiting for. My understanding is that the tobacco companies are basically ready to go the minute it gets legalized.
I would like to understand DUI traffic laws wrt marijuana. Because cars blow past me smelling like reefer all the time on the roads. If it were an open container, it would be illegal. We have pretty strict rules about what BAC is illegal, whether or not the person seems impaired. But driving while high seems like it is the Wild West as far as laws and enforcement goes.
Also, weed smells so bad now.
The industry and the government likes the kinda sorta quasi legal in some places model we have now. Legalization brings competition. They don’t want that…
FleetUSA, most craft brew is higher % than the Schlitz/Bud/Miller of the past too. I don't hear people arguing that beer is somehow more dangerous now that you can pretty easily find a 6%+ beer at most bars
I recall joints getting passed constantly at certain parties and concerts, today the constant puffing is no longer required to get a buzz.
Smoking less is likely healthier, no?
If you want to argue that various cannabis derivatives like 'wax' and such are more dangerous as they allow consumption of products much more intoxicating than weed (Ala ever clear in alcohol) then make that argument ... but the whole 'weed is stronger these days' ignores the same thing has happened with alcohol and we do not care about it there.
It's pretty easy to grow, and grow well. People are just very lazy.
@Mr. Wibble
It gets even more sinister once you realize that with legalization it becomes white-bread for the pharmaceutical industry to touch...and fiddle with it.
The tobacco majors are like little babies compared to that industry. Don't let their current prescription/rx business-models fool you. Everyone would get in on this.
Recent stories in the Omaha media about young people dying of fentanyl. The Dems have created the American drug culture. They own it. The blood of the 100k Americans who died of fentanyl is on the hands of Joe Biden and the Dems.
The Dems are destroying America right before our eyes. It will get worse in 2023 with more drugs and 10m illegal aliens.
Well, another post where I need an actual hit to comment on it in an informed manner.
The chaos? There's no chaos. There's federalization. That's why we don't have "one rule for 320 million people".
Anyway, the Feds aren't keeping you from growing one MJ plant for your personal use. Even if its on the books, its not being enforced. Lets get real: Decriminalization leads to Legalization leads to Big MJ with a few large companies making zillions.
We'll never get a handle on the MJ problem till the old boomers die off. To them its always 1968 and MJ is so so cool.
It could be interesting on the roads this year with a lot more stoned drivers. "Pottersville" is right.
Demand creates supply. Then new "industry" appears and suppliers will flood in to meet that need. Inevitably more suppliers will be available than the need would justify. Those with capital, efficiency and other good business practice will survive. Those without will be subject to "turmoil".
Happens all the time, movie rentals (ask your Granny what those were), Vape shops, etc.
Now throw in the MJ sales will solve our taxation shortfall effect... "Legal" pot will always be more expensive than even really good black market pot. Especially when the legal system is, in many places, turning a blind eye to possession of small quantities.
Legalizing Cannabis, may prove to be huge mistake. I'm saying this as a former user.
"Henry's Original" sounds like ice cream, or popcorn, or old-fashioned candy.
If we are legalizing pot, can laudanum and old-fashioned patent medicines be far behind.
Certainly much safer than fentanyl.
Joe Smith said...
No expert, but I don't think it's that easy to grow if you want a quality product in the end...
speaking from Personal Experience*, pot's not that hard to grow.. Much easier than mushrooms
Personal Experience* If said experience took place in this country; be assured it happened in the last century; WELL behind the shadow of the statue of limitations
But WAIT! IF/When the feds legalize it, it will be possible to do medical research on it..
Goodbye claims of "pot don't cause cancer!"
Goodbye claims of "pot cures asthma"
Goodbye claims of pot isn't as bad as tobacco.
Think About it! it's nearly illegal to smoke tobacco, but pot is legal? WTF?
Rule following is getting more generational. As in, the oldsters are more apt to obey, maybe because that is what they have always done. I see it in my father-in-law, a genuinely great person and Democrat for his entire life who is aghast that many people no longer trust the FBI. Not sure why older people still trust authority, but in my view, especially since approx. 2000, there's little reason for anyone to blindly follow just because that is what congress says or that any certain institution used to be respected (law enforcement, academia, media). Set aside who has taken control of many of those institutions.
To justify non-compliance with the federal weed ban, there's this from MLK: "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." The federal weed ban is more nutty and comical than unjust, an anachronism overtaken by the popular will as expressed in the contrary laws of many states.
"The chaos? There's no chaos. There's federalization. That's why we don't have "one rule for 320 million people"."
It's one thing for the states to have their own laws (as with alcohol) but it's quite another to have a federal ban, which goes everywhere and is making the state's legalization incomplete and very complicated. And we have a spectacle of federal law breaking. It's absurd that this has gone on for years.
We do have one rule for 320: the drug is illegal. That's the federal law. So what's this other crazy nonsense? You apparently don't even see it because you're not taking the federal law seriously. Some of us do take it seriously. I won't even walk into one of those stores (which I've passed in front of in Colorado and Michigan).
Federal regulation? The big companies will hire lobbyists who will advocate for expensive requirements that only big companies, with economies of scale, can comply with. The regulators will somehow sense that if they go along, there just might maybe perhaps be a cushy job inside one of the big companies. And so it goes. Who will advocate for regulations that help the consumer or the small companies? No one. Where is the money in that?
And will anyone in Congress help? Does anyone remember the Keating Five? Five Senators, including McCain, who kept the banking regulators at bay so that Charles Keating would continue to rob retired folks of their savings. Zero consequences for the Senators. Hell, McCain got the Republican nomination for the Presidency!
MayBee said...
I would like to understand DUI traffic laws wrt marijuana.
Most laws are "DWI" which is driving while impaired or "DUI", driving under the influence. This refers to alcohol or any other herb/medicine/chemical that could "impair" or adversely "influence" your driving ability. THC, like alcohol content, can be measured in the bloodstream. For example, here's the Colorado rules: https://cannabis.colorado.gov/legal-marijuana-use/driving-and-traveling
Driving while distracted is similar but doesn't rely on a certain level of substance
I think a lot of people tried pot when it became legal in their states, and didn't enjoy it enough to keep using it. The ones using it regularly were already potheads before legalization (or are the type of young people who would have become potheads), so the market hasn't grown the way the industry thought it would.
Billboards for "legal" pot start to appear about 50 miles south of the WI border with the UP. Just drive on over, no papers required. We're not partakers of the gonja, so no first-hand stories. The wife and I were offered a "long toke" at the Phish concert this summer at Alpine Valley by the jovial and neighborly fella behind us, and while we were flattered, politely declined the offer. Not because I respect the federal law -- pot isn't legal in WI!
The feds overreached and cant seem to find their way out. So they will be ignored and mocked, which they should be on this issue, and on all others where "the law is a ass."
I'm 100% with Althouse on this. Unless the Supreme Court says otherwise (I've always thought the federal ban was unconstitutional, but I'm sure there's some commerce clause mumbo jumbo behind it), there is no legal pot. That's a figment of people's imagination. And it's an idiotic way to run a country. Sanctuary cities are a similar nonsense. We aren't a country of nobles or kings, we're a country of laws. So we shouldn't be playing "let's pretend" with the law.
Ridespacemtn,
Oh, I know. I work with regulation of prescription drugs, and we're just waiting for legalization to create a whole new amount of work related to legal weed for medical use.
In Vermont, the drug is legal, but if the state police find it on you on a boat, they are Federally deputized and will enforce the Federal law on waters like Lake Champlain. It’s a remote risk, but if you get into a boating accident, it’s a real one, having Federal drug charges piled on top of boating while intoxicated when you likely believe that the drug is perfectly legal where you are.
I am sure that Lake Ontario is in the same situation, legal on land, a Federal crime on the water that is patrolled by the Coast Guard.
Some of us do take it seriously. I won't even walk into one of those stores (which I've passed in front of in Colorado and Michigan).
Very sensible. Theoretically, I might know a couple of people who travel over state lines to purchase "gummies" where they are legal and then bring them to a state where they are not. They don't seem to understand the risk they are taking.
We'll never get a handle on the MJ problem till the old boomers die off. To them its always 1968 and MJ is so so cool.
1/3/23, 11:08 AM
Oh, BS. We're over it. It's the younger gens who seem to think it's new and cool and that boomers stand in the way of legalization.
And some of those kids are really hooked on the stuff. I suspect the Rx cocktails they taking growing up have made them nervous wrecks.
I am not interested in using this drug nor do I think it’s cool. I just genuinely object to the legal disorder and unfairness.
@BarrySanders20
"...Phish concert this summer at Alpine Valley..."
Man that brings up some nostalgia. Alpine is an awesome place to see Phish.
Former coworker who did the expressway crawl at rush hour mentioned there were days when he could smell reefer being smoked around him at length. It put him back to surface street travel He figured survival odds were better on his known surface routes.
Boating is quite another issue. Intoxicated boaters are rife on the lakes around me.
Taking the risks out of smoking dope is multiplying risks elsewhere. Flying cars anyone?
I shed no tears for the financial plight of "legal" dispensaries. Oh, there's money to be made, sure. They have to buy a license. They have to pay brick and mortar taxes. Per a discussion I had up in Canada last summer they have to buy from approved suppliers who have, and pay for, regular government inspections. And they buy licenses and pay taxes too.
It's a way for assorted levels of gov to do more things that are of no benefit to anyone but themselves. And of course the retailers get a little money but they can't compete with the street version for price.
"I just genuinely object to the legal disorder and unfairness."
I agree in principle, though I don't think in this particular case "order" will necessarily work out better as public policy.
But aren't "disorder and unfairness" features of the current regime? I mentioned immigration above, but it's not the only example.
Who wants that regime? Who benefits? Why does the public at large not object like Althouse?
"By our calculation, the illegal grows in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties require an astounding 5.4 million gallons of water a day, every day.”
Yeah I know, the drought and GW, but it's cool. It's pot.
"Life is unfair." Jimmy Carter
As a generally libertarian person, I think it should be legal on the federal level, but at the same time I subjectively despise it and wish individual communities would keep it illegal. It's hard to say whether legalization made my home state of Colorado immediately go to hell (as it indeed did), or whether it was already going to hell at a rapid pace and that's why it legalized pot. But hell it now is. I don't even recognize the Front Range anymore and I wish legal pot had never happened. It's Los Angeles now. All dopeheads, shitheads, and commie dickheads.
Blogger MayBee said...
I would like to understand DUI traffic laws wrt marijuana.
Do you have any evidence that MJ impairs driving?
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has done 2 studies, that I know of in the late 80s, early 90s. In both, volunteers smoked calibrated amounts of weed from the govt farm in Missouri. At various levels of MJ in the bloodstream they were asked to drive an obstacle course.
From zero MJ to full on stoned, there was a slight, but not significant, improvement in driving ability. Mainly because drivers drove more slowly and carefully as they got more stoned, IIRC.
In the same era, one of the Australian provinces did a study with similar results.
I can't find the NHTSA studies right now but here is an article about another more recent NHTSA study with similar findings https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15357119/marijuana-doesnt-pose-significant-risk-in-car-crashes-nhtsa-says/
So can anyone cite any studies that MJ causes unsafe driving? Not MJ and booze or MJ and any other drug. Just MJ.
John Henry
We have a lot of dispensaries in Puerto Rico where Medical MJ is legal, though only local law, federal illegality still applies.
I once went to a store thinking I would get some oil for my aged knees. I need a prescription but they could handle that on the phone with a tame doctor while I waited.
But then I found out that the state govt keeps a registry of everyone who purchases MJ or products.
I said thank you and limped off on my merry way.
John Henry
“It's an easy-to-grow plant, and if the federal ban is lifted, people will mostly have one more houseplant. Right? If they want it at all.”
Like all the cigarette smokers grow their own tobacco.
My wife and I ate dinner at some old friends' house in November and the conversation turned to health and medications as it always does with us Boomers.
The hostess, who was a UCC/UMC pastor and hospital chaplain and former nurse, began praising the physical and psychological benefits of the gummies that her son had sent from a Western state. She even persuaded my wife, who was never big (though not never high) on cannabis and its cousins, to take a few home, and start with half a square.
She hasn't touched them (I check). She'll take a half-dozen and more potent pharmaceuticals (and all vaccines and boosters) but won't even consider a little Delta-8.
I didn't mention that they can be had at any number of head shops here, or so a friend of mine tells me.
As for the federal law, as absurd as it is it's not as absurd as the federal science that has weed on Schedule 1.
Apparently, business is terrible
Not in Washington state it isn't. The parking lots are packed - at all hours - any time I drive by a shop.
It's been proven that unlike Alcohol, mind alterating drugs actually make driving safer. I recommend everyone who smokes MJ to hop in your drive while high and enter a drag race. you'll win!
Just don't drink while using MJ, even one drop. That changes everything.
I was shocked the first time I went to Ft. Collins CO after legalization. Everyone I encountered seemed really fucking stupid! Except at the courthouse, sanity prevailed there. I'm libertarian at heart, but I wish to God that people had the good sense to stigmatize and avoid this shit.
"Do you have any evidence that MJ impairs driving?"
The problem with researching cannabis and driving is that there's no way to measure the degree of impairment. But it stands to reason that someone who's significantly stoned will have slower reaction times and trouble making quick decisions when needed.
That might not be a problem when driving around a set obstacle course. But it certainly could be if a car stops short in front of you on the freeway, or your tires lose their grip on an icy road, or a kid chasing a ball suddenly darts into the street.
Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?
Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized
for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.
Keep in mind question 21g on the 4473
It's an easy-to-grow plant, and if the federal ban is lifted, people will mostly have one more houseplant. Right?
The plant is easy to grow.
The flower is hard to grow well.
You will need a dark room to ensure the seasonal component of production among other things.
The switch between grow phase and flower phase happens ~14 hours of sunlight a day. i.e. in August in most places in the country. Outdoor harvest in October if you only want one crop a year and you don't have any lights on in the house.
Ted said...
"Do you have any evidence that MJ impairs driving?"
The problem with researching cannabis and driving is that there's no way to measure the degree of impairment. But it stands to reason that someone who's significantly stoned will have slower reaction times and trouble making quick decisions when needed.
That might not be a problem when driving around a set obstacle course. But it certainly could be if a car stops short in front of you on the freeway, or your tires lose their grip on an icy road, or a kid chasing a ball suddenly darts into the street.
The people that are too stoned to drive have trouble finding the motivation to get off the couch.
That is why the social costs of marijuana are so much lower than alcohol.
I am not sure if cannabis cultivation falls into 'agriculture' or 'horticulture' - but neither category means big money. If the latter, it's worth pointing out that growers have to nurture and take care of the plant until late in the flowering cycle, unlike growing ornamental flowers. Don't understand why people thought that the big money earned during the black-market years would carry over to the legal industry.
You can always count on a post about weed to bring out the pearl clutching in the comments. Several serve as evidence that the stigma of consuming cannabis has nothing to do with its legality.
What a bunch of scolds - including (surprisingly to me) Althouse. Jeezus, live a little FFS.
Anybody know where to get some blonde hash?
"I'd like to see the federal ban end, mostly because I disapprove of the chaos of partially legalized marijuana."
Me too. But you realize, that will mean that we are recriminalizing untaxed marijuana. So, does that mean that the IRS will conduct marijuana raids? Or will the DEA become a tax collector? Most likely both.
The medical effect of the New hybrid cannabis plants discredits itself. It ruins young people. Maybe it’s OK limited to the old and the sick FOR its drunkenness like alcohol used to deal with pain and depression. But acceptable drugs for recreation create a path to the illegal dealer’s fentanyl laced pills sold as a better inhibition remover to enable crazy sex.
What's happening with cannabis is no different than the early years of any industry, thousands of entrants saturate the market and the business soon gets whittled down to a handful of major players.
Penny newspapers, automobiles, search engines. Now marijuana.
"Do you have any evidence that MJ impairs driving?"
Ask my former co-worker who lost a leg when his motorcycle was hit by a kid who had been using marijuana. This happened in Wisconsin. The only reason he survived was because someone stopped and applied a tourniquet.
The drunk driver blows right past the stop sign.
The high driver stops and waits for it to turn green.
It's absurd that this has gone on for years.
Absurd is exactly the correct descriptor. We live in the time of having it both ways, depending on the audience. Waiting for clarity is like waiting for godot. When the only truth that matters is "my truth" the blockchain of evidence gets a bit dodgy.
This would be true in an absolute sense whether I was a teetotaler or a notorious viper. The question of the value of truth (and its relation to the law) is the victim, tied to the tracks like poor Nell by that damned Snidely just before the arrival of the 5:13.
This, to have it both ways. Craven.
"Anybody know where to get some blonde hash?"
Yes.
Somebody does, or nobody would smoke it. I haven't had any since . . . the early '80s maybe.
The people that are too stoned to drive have trouble finding the motivation to get off the couch.
Mellow yellow. Puff the Hallucinatory Dragon. Inhaled carbon deposits. Sure, why not, their choice subject to performance.
Compare and contrast to Levine's clinics, Sanger's chambers, Whitmer's Planned Parent/hood, feminists' "keep women affordable, available, and taxable", liberals' DIE doctrine, Progressives' wicked solution, SS BLM's George "Fentanyl" Floyd syndrome, Dezi's Care through progressive prices and availability, class-disordered religions (e.g. feminism, racism, ageism, "="), mandates that appease the cargo cult with forward-looking collateral damage.
I have driven (in years past) drunk, stoned, and drunk and stoned. Most of my friends and some brothers (OK all three) did at least that much, and worse.
Looking back on my own experience, none of them are advisable but OTOH the most accident-prone drivers were not necessarily those that drove while high. To me it was much less of a challenge than driving drunk, and I had to tell one person I wouldn't ride with him if he didn't stop snorting coke. (He did, and not just for the thrill of pleasing me.)
My own accidents and speeding violations (1 or 2 each in 55 years of driving) didn't involve pot or booze. They did involve bad weather and/or lack of sleep and/or idiot passengers.
Please provide studies showing its dangerous to operate a chain-saw while drunk. I don't believe it.
The federal ban on marijuana should end because regulating the growing of marijuana is not an enumerated power of the federal government.
We need federal subsidies for these oppressed marijuana retailers!!
No one recognizes the extent of all of this because parents are ashamed, blame themselves, and suffer in silence. Even those who have figured out what is going on and are trying to save their children have nowhere to turn: there is a 6-9 week waiting list to see a Psychologist in Massachusetts, even when parents have been told that it's an "emergency," and even when there are court orders. There are exactly 2 sober houses that will accept under 18s in the entire state. Right now a family I know has a suicide-attempt child in a bed in the HALL of a hospital; they won't discharge to home because of the suicide attempt, but they can't find a Psychiatrist to talk to the kid until MONDAY (it's Tuesday now).
We are living through a mental health catastrophe. The deranged gender ideology and a weird form of Munchausen's (look up "Spooners" and be prepared to cry) getting the grade 4-8 girls; the pot is getting everybody grades 8-12; and fentanyl and suicide are killing grade 10-12 boys.
After covid there were 1.3 million college-age kids "missing" from campuses. I think I know what has happened to them. The students I know are those who have gotten through this disaster relatively unscathed, but they all have stories, and many have suffered a great deal of trauma.
If I were advising the President I would say that there was nothing he could do that would be more helpful to the children of America than to use the Federal law to seize all the assets of the pot distributors: confiscate their bank accounts, sell off the physical plants of the dispensaries, etc., and put 100% of the money to mental health treatment to try to heal some of the damage that these people have caused. You don't need to throw them in jail: just take all the money. Say nothing else. Let them rebuild if they want. Then take all the money again. Maybe then there will be a real effort to keep this stuff out of the hands of children.
For those who just really like getting high and say "well, parents should just control their children," you have no idea what you are talking about. The externalities from your "fun" have done immense and direct harm to millions of children: deaths and damaged minds and ruined lives and shattered families--the cost of your convenience, borne by someone else (but then, being grotesquely selfish and lacking in all self-awareness has always been one of the most obvious characteristics of the pot-head).
Dave Begley said...
"We are becoming Pottersville and that's what the Dems want. A country that doesn't own houses, drunk, destroyed families and gamblers. Pathetic."
Democrats are changing their party slogan to "We're not perfect, but those folks are a Clown Show!"
Blogger Old and slow said...
"I was shocked the first time I went to Ft. Collins CO after legalization. Everyone I encountered seemed really fucking stupid! "
Sort of like reading the comments on Althouse.
narr said
none of them are advisable but OTOH the most accident-prone drivers were not necessarily those that drove while high. To me it was much less of a challenge than driving drunk..
here's gilbar's hypothesis: drunks are aware of how bad they are driving; stoners don't know or care.
Drunks are like teenage boy drivers, Stoners are like 90 year old lady drivers..prove me wrong.
Both are VERY unsafe
The topic revs some people up.
Legal booze, potent psychotropics administered by health professionals to children, and fentanyl killing by the tens of thousands, but the real problem is the Boomers and their gummies . . .
I've never hurt myself or anyone else while driving under the influence of any legal or illegal intoxicant.
YMMV.
"The drunk driver blows right past the stop sign.
The high driver stops and waits for it to turn green."
Thanks, boatbuilder.
It's an easy-to-grow plant, and if the federal ban is lifted, people will mostly have one more houseplant. Right?
Believe me when I say growing MJ as "another house plant" reveals your complete ignorance. Frankly, when in flower this plant stinks to the high heavens (think skunk"). Growing indoors for the flower (the leaves contain very little THC or cannabinoids), requires large carbon-can air scrubbers that remove the actively floating molecules of stink exuding from a flowering plant. These air filters require a closed space to work, like a closet or grow box, and the plant likes it warm (85f) and super bright...necessitating the use of grow lights on timers bcuz the plant only flowers under correct conditions. It flowers for up to 2 months until the buds ripen, stinking up the growing space. Growing indoors for bud production is extremely complicated and harvest is toxic to the point of wearing protective gloves and mask. Anybody can grow cannabis easily in its vegetative state (plant growth) but when flower production begins after the Fall Equinox it is a very different ballgame and pretty smelly! Growing outdoors is easy by planting seeds in the spring and properly tending the plant until late fall. Problem with outdoor is lack of security and attractive nuisance in cities and suburbs...stolen plants just at harvest is common...the last thing you want are yard invaders to steal your bud from you. Keep it secret, keep it safe. Just a primer on growing weed by an experienced reader.
Traffic accidents have increased as marijuana is legalized, where it is legalized either by fiat or by subjective decisions to not prosecute.
It will be some time before we have adequate tools to determine if someone is driving stoned or has smoked earlier, and how much, but the tools are coming. However, it is unambiguous that marijuana damages brain development in the young and massively raises their addiction rates. There is no need to excuse drunk driving to face these facts, nor the eventually accurate stats that will come from better ways to test for being stoned while driving.
Also, those who opposed legalization predicted precisely this outcome -- collapsing legal markets and illegal ones only growing stronger and larger -- decades ago. So don't act so surprised now. You were willfully ignorant then, and you are willfully ignorant now. Maybe fewer gummies would help.
I have no dog in the pot fight, but the lies underlying the movement (better pain relief -- not true in double blind studies; promises that youth won't access the drug more readily; the medical marijuana racket; the George Mason dolts imagining that a transition to a new legal market would naturally eliminate the illegal one -- are risible and sad). Try honesty as a strategy: you just want to get high. There are a mere handful of medical conditions that benefit from the non-euphoric elements of marijuana products: MS; myasthenia gravis, and a few types of epilepsy. In all other cases, including chemo nausea and induced anorexia, real double blind research shows pharmaceuticals more effective. Still, I agree that actually chronically ill and dying adults should get high if they want to. Just stop lying about the rest of it, including driving accidents, and keep it away from anyone under 21.
That's a lot to work through early in the morning, Tina.
But you put a lot of effort into your critique and I'll address some of what you said.
I haven't (that I recall) actually defended impaired driving. I did state that my own impaired driving never hurt anyone (thanks be). If you are correct about detection improvements--and you likely know more about them than I do--then so be it, and so what?
Things change.
Nor am I surprised about the changes in the market and the products, since I made no predictions about what would happen. That would require more study of boring stuff than I care to do, and I didn't have any money or ego invested anyway.
For that matter, I never voted on any drug legalization measures that might have come up that I can recall. It looked like the trend was to legalization, now maybe it's moving back; I'll watch what happens, and determine my course from there.
As for honesty. Sure, I like to get high. When I drank, I liked it because I liked to get drunk. The use of mind- or mood-altering drugs is an optional indulgence for me, not an ethical or political imperative, and again I have not argued that cannabis is good medicine (more boring stuff). Other people have, so they can defend themselves if they choose.
My experience is that booze has diminishing returns, and getting drunk always came with a hefty price the next day and longer--and worse as I got older. I finally went cold turkey from alcohol after a few memory blackouts; I never got a hangover or had blackouts after smoking pot.
Apologies for all the blank space at the bottom of 2:35PM. I'm not sure how that happens.
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