[Maru]

‘Time to Acknowledge Reality’: The New York Times Warns America Has a ‘Marijuana Problem’
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/...juana-problem/

The New York Times argued that it was “time to acknowledge reality” and “admit” that the United States has a “marijuana problem” in a new editorial admitting that the legalization of weed in most states has had a wide variety of adverse consequences.

“This editorial board has long supported marijuana legalization. In 2014, we published a six-part series that compared the federal marijuana ban to alcohol prohibition and argued for repeal. Much of what we wrote then holds up — but not all of it does,” began the Times. “At the time, supporters of legalization predicted that it would bring few downsides. In our editorials, we described marijuana addiction and dependence as ‘relatively minor problems.’ Many advocates went further and claimed that marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits. They also said that legalization might not lead to greater use.”

“It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years. That was up from around six million in 2012 and less than one million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol,” it acknowledged. “This wider use has caused a rise in addiction and other problems. Each year, nearly 2.8 million people in the United States suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which causes severe vomiting and stomach pain. More people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders. Bystanders have also been hurt, including by people driving under the influence of pot.”

Instead of calling for a total rollback that would recriminalize the sale and use of the drug, the Gray Lady advocated a policy of “grudging toleration” that might upset “Big Weed,” which, it argues has “a financial incentive to mislead the public about what they are selling.”

“Marijuana companies, not casual smokers, are the biggest winners of Mr. Trump’s decision to reclassify the drug from Schedule I to Schedule III. The change will increase the profits of these businesses by causing the tax code to treat them more favorably. This does not qualify as grudging toleration,” it submitted before concluding: “The unfortunate truth is that the loosening of marijuana policies — especially the decision to legalize pot without adequately regulating it — has led to worse outcomes than many Americans expected. It is time to acknowledge reality and change course.”

[Crimson Dynamo]

The gateway drug,...

[Liam-]

Anybody still against the legalisation of weed is genuinely just either stupid or ignorant

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Anybody still against the legalisation of weed is genuinely just either stupid or ignorant

My way or the highway

How Very progressive

[bots]

Drug overuse is not affected by legality.

[Parmy]

Originally Posted by Liam-

Anybody still against the legalisation of weed is genuinely just either stupid or ignorant

Nothing to mix it with when they ban the fags.


Thats gonna cause a lot of monged up people unable to work after pure weed joints.


Have you thought this through?

[Redway]

No more than the U.K. has a hypocritical and trebly massive problem with alcohol (a much worse drug by all objective accounts). No medicinal, introspective, spiritual or creative benefits to speak of, and predisposes to untold crime, abuse and aggression. So let’s not even go there. But why call out the wild hypocrisy when you can just pull out the card of cannabis being a demonic gateway-drug that makes people lazy and red-eyed, while making everyone who calls out the hypocrisy (even if they don’t personally partake in cannabis-consumption) a lazy junkie who’s going nowhere with their life, even if they’re a psychopharmacologist with a Nobel prize and compelling novelist/painter by evening/Saturday-morning?

No-one here’s arguing against the benefits of alcohol in moderation (it has its place) or even necessarily teetotal (I’m definitely not) but there’s a huge cultural double-standard worldwide historically when it comes to the positioning of alcohol vs. other drugs. I’m not blindly advocating for or against anything here but looking at Thailand, Amsterdam, Canada, Portugal and the U.S. making progress (including the utilisation of psychedelics and medicinal ketamine for PTSD, OCD and relatively-treatment-resistant depression, and assuming their take in the treatment-algorithm for that point in the game, alongside irreversible MAOIs, electro-consulsive therapy and transcranial stimulation) and getting away from this idea of inherent demonisation of responsible use of substances that broaden what alcohol narrows in the moment (spirituality, introspection, creativity, people thinking deeply for themselves), while not going too far in either direction and insinuating that every existential or psychological problem can be solved by eating a bag of mushrooms just proves how behind the U.K. is at an official public-policy level, and in many sectors of casual society. It may not suit landlords, the semi-hobos who practically live in the pub. and people who can’t make a business-deal without a whisky in their hands to say it, but it’s the truth. And, again, I haven’t claimed to be strongly pro-or-anti anything at the pure recreational level. I may be, I may not be, but that’s not the point here or what I want to get into here. I’m just sitting outside the cloud of historical cultural hypocrisy and being upfront about what alcohol really is outside actual moderation and responsible use. The average person out on the town on Friday-night is not drinking responsibly. Sure, nightlife might be a bit more boring if everyone drank truly responsibly, but there’d also be a whole-lot-less random stabbings and fights over girlfriends/guys. Amongst so many other things.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Crimson Dynamo

The gateway drug,...

How many people have fatally overdosed on cannabis (impossible), exploited (intentionally or not) blurred lines in sexual consent, started fights and beat their wives on weed relative to alcohol?

[Maru]

Don't worry, it's an America problem. It doesn't actually impact anyone else.

[Parmy]

Originally Posted by Redway

How many people have fatally overdosed on cannabis (impossible), exploited (intentionally or not) blurred lines in sexual consent, started fights and beat their wives on weed relative to alcohol?

How many has it spiralled into a world of depression, suicide or dependency...?


What would the age limit be?

[arista]

[It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years.]

Yes, making it Legal
has made a mess of it all.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Parmy

How many has it spiralled into a world of depression, suicide or dependency...?


What would the age limit be?

Less than alcohol. Alcohol is objectively a much worse drug than cannabis, whether it suits people individually and their personal biases to say it or not. That’s just a fact. There’s no reason in the world for cannabis to be illegal when poison in a bottle (ethanol) is perfectly legal, and still manages to be a driving cause of incarceration, rape, liver-diseases, death and violence even when legally regulated. Cannabis, even on the raggedy-est of black markets (so long as it’s not spiced), has never killed anyone. Just say weed messed you up personally and leave it there. You rode the boat on rocky shores, probably for the wrong reasons and almost certainly without the likes of CBD alongside to round off the edges, and puked. That’s it. For every anecdote like that there are a trillion of alcohol actively ruining people’s lives, the drinker themselves and the people around them. There’s no genuine competition.

A lot of issues that unmitigated THC gives people are because we don’t educate people towards responsible, healthier, balanced use. That’s a side-effect of illegality and ignorance, not another reason to keep it illegal. Pointing that out doesn’t make you a hapless stoner or even necessarily someone who takes so much as a sip of CBD-chamomile tea, just like not wanting a return to alcohol-prohibition (ala 1920s-America) doesn’t make you a raging gutter-alkie who uses vodka for mouthwash. You might likewise be teetotal altogether. Either way, cutting through all-that just means you’re not blinded by bias, hypocrisy and culturally inertia. Alcohol is a hard drug and group-1 carcinogen that causes more harm, destruction, death and ruined lives than most other drugs put together. It just gets a free pass because it’s universally legal and happens to be deeply culturally embedded, so people are more inclined to turn a blind eye and make excuses for it. But that doesn’t have to be you or anyone-else, wherever you sit on the spectrum of consumption of any of these substances. You might be completely abstinent, you might be an occasional and highly curated user, you might be more dependent but still not blinded to the universal truth of it-all.

In any case, illegality reduces education, quality control and understanding of balance. Many other corners of the world know that now and still aren’t nations of monged-out zombies, but the U.K. officially lags way, way behind and remains obsessively and hypocritically alcohol-forward and very in-your-face about it, because it’s just everywhere. That doesn’t help anyone. Is cannabis harmless? Is it a good idea to use it every day if you’re not taking it medicinally? No. It just isn’t worse than alcohol, and to insist otherwise is just-plain hypocrisy.

And, again, I say this as someone with no personal axe to grind against alcohol. I’m not even teetotal (certainly not), like I said. I love a good drink as much as the next person (but the fear of beer-gut is real, so perhaps I should swap to gin and slimline tonic). I’m a regular in the pub., I love a good bar, and so-on. The difference is I know and stick to my limits and don’t lie to myself with hypocrisy or denial about the risks of drinking past a certain threshold regularly just-because “it’s fun”. Alcohol serves a role, a function, and I’m happy to orbit within that function moderately. Past the threshold of moderation (or close enough to it), I’ve seen it ruin and end so many lives. And that’s not something to gloss over. Insisting on driving after a night out to prove to the world that you’re a big man/big woman, as another foot-note, really isn’t worth it. Free yourself up and book that Uber. You’ll enjoy the night more and won’t run the risk of driving into a tree at 4am and getting the whole car killed. That one has nothing to do with drinking in immoderation or the converse inherently; like, at-all; but it happens often enough, and it really shouldn’t. That one’s a worldwide-problem and not intrinsically tied to the U.K. (if anything, it’s worse in America, which I actually don’t prefer to the U.K. long-term, as much as I like to visit, touch base with family over-there and just have a lot to do with the U.S. and Canada in-general; the U.K. is better in many fundamental ways; it just lags behind when it comes to the official policy regarding you-know-what). But I’ll mention it while I’m on the general subject of alcohol anyway.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by arista

[It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years.]

Yes, making it Legal
has made a mess of it all.

How are Portugal, Holland, Thailand and Canada doing? Messed up? Or is it really just an American thing, in a country where guns are legal for personal possession but cause untold destruction and senseless murders?

[Parmy]

Originally Posted by Redway

Less than alcohol. Alcohol is objectively a much worse drug than cannabis, whether it suits people individually and their personal biases to say it or not. That’s just a fact. There’s no reason in the world for cannabis to be illegal when poison in a bottle (ethanol) is perfectly legal, and still manages to be a driving cause of incarceration, rape, liver-diseases, death and violence even when legally regulated. Cannabis, even on the raggedy-est of black markets (so long as it’s not spiced), has never killed anyone. Just say weed messed you up personally and leave it there. You rode the boat on rocky shores, probably for the wrong reasons and almost certainly without the likes of CBD alongside to round off the edges, and puked. That’s it. For every anecdote like that there are a trillion of alcohol actively ruining people’s lives, the drinker themselves and the people around them. There’s no genuine competition.

Fed up of people on here thinking they know the ins and outs if total strangers...


FYI, life messed me up, weed helps me to get through that life.


So **** your mouth about me, you know Jack ****.


Also, thinking you're coooler than others cause you take the smoking of weed seriously is in itself, not cool.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Parmy

Fed up of people on here thinking they know the ins and outs if total strangers...


FYI, life messed me up, weed helps me to get through that life.


So **** your mouth about me, you know Jack ****.


Also, thinking you're coooler than others cause you take the smoking of weed seriously is in itself, not cool.

I genuinely don’t swing too far in either direction, likewise. Several people have had that impression of me on here over the years but it’s bull. Exaggerated rumour that sticks for years past the point of even partial relevance. So it’s never about being cooler than others. I just really don’t think that public policy should reflect cultural inertia and historical bias over actual safety and proportionality.

I wasn’t signalling that you’re inherently messed up. And I’m genuinely sorry if you got that impression. That’s not what I meant. I’m just very anti-hypocrisy when it comes to things like this and that signals more abrasion and dogma than is actually intended. I just wanted to set the line straight. You obviously don’t want to be mischaracterised any more than I do just-because it’s fun for people to reduce other FMs to junkies based on outdated fragments that were exaggerated even at the time. I’m not attacking that weed helps you in your own way. I didn’t even know that you still partook. That was kind of my initial point.

[Parmy]

Thanks @Redway.

[Redway]

Originally Posted by Parmy

How many has it spiralled into a world of depression, suicide or dependency...?


What would the age limit be?

Were you actually talking about alcohol here?

[Parmy]

Originally Posted by Redway

Were you actually talking about alcohol here?

No, weed.

[Livia]

I believe alcohol is a much bigger problem.