Marijuana Use Is Way Up
RSS
Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments
List of Bookmarks
From Politico:
Nearly 50 million people used weed in 2020, according to SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an increase of nearly 75 percent since 2009.
Who knows how honest responses are to some government survey about drug use. But, walking down the street, it sure smells like marijuana consumption is way up.
Fortunately, there are all the good side effects of legalization/decriminalization of marijuana. Crime is way down, the streets are safer because the drivers are high rather than drunk, etc etc.
Oh, wait, that didn’t happen.
Follow @steve_sailer
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Now do one about ending Prohibition.
Crime down, streets safer, etc.
Marijuana is a scourge
The few times I am forced to leave my computer and interact with the human race I inevitably hear
“I light up a joint to help with my ADHD/Anxiety”
Dude, the joint is causing your anxiety and low-self esteem because you never achieve your goals.
Anxiety is nature’s friendly reminder to go hit the gym, write that term-paper, clean out the shed.
If total vice indulgence were at fixed level, displacing other vices with marijuana is probably neutral, or even positive.
But instead, we are increasing the indulgence of all vices. Porn, gambling, and marijuana have simply been added to the menu.
Check your privilege, Steve. The pot industry is a shining example of diversity and allows the billions of Incipient-Americans out there to enrich us with their physical presence.
https://nwasianweekly.com/2013/02/laotians-top-growers-of-marijuana-on-calif-farms/
In others words, a lot more losers. If you’re an ambitious person with your head screwed on, it’s never been easier to find work because so many people these days are losers. If you don’t do drugs or get weird genital surgery, you’re way ahead of the pack.
But marijuana hasn’t been legalized. It’s still illegal under federal law. Why are the feds allowing states to openly sell it, then?
Would the feds do nothing and allow states to legalize the open sale of machine guns and silencers? Of course not. Funny how that works.
“The law” is a joke.
Covid lockdown destroyed the psyche of many Americans. All sorts of social misbehavior is way up.
1. Bad driving
2. Vehicle theft
3. Murders
4. Drug overdoses
5. “Sudden cardiac arrest”
6. Domestic Violence
Btw Steve did you watch Sam Smith’s Grammy performance last night? Looked like something out of the occult. Very sick
How long before we’ll know for what percentage of users it’s a gateway drug, or is that something else that can’t be noticed?
I suspect it doesn’t work that way. Enough losers drag us all down.
I’d be curious to know what percentage of our vast herds of vagrants heavily used marijuana at some point.
Show me it’s the same as for the general population. I’ll accept it.
Here’s one that will surprise no-one here.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoLKThIXgAAuHy-?format=jpg
https://www.westernjournal.com/got-see-pic-media-literally-changed-race-florida-bus-attacker-report/?utm_source=Email
Source? I’d read the opposite, that common street crime went down during Prohibition, as much of it before 1919 was feuled by chewp public alcohol. (The speakeasies improved our manners. So you don’t see the public rowdyness of the British Isles here today. And that out bars here have to be driven to, and from, by someone sober.)
The violence in the ’20s was almost all among smugglers and gangsters. Then there is the difference in attitudes and behavior between the Jazz Age and the Depression to complicate the comparison.
It is taken as Stephen Pinkeresque ‘just so’ today that prohibition didn’t lower alcohol consumption, it just drove it underground and made it more unsafe due to moonshine but like Steve says about dead bodies being the best proxy measure of overall violent crime, the deaths from liver damage went way down.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088683/death-rate-rate-during-prohibition
Though federal US prohibition in the sense people usually refer didn’t begin until 1920, it had actually started in 1917 after the US entered WW1 as an emergency wartime measure to save grain for food. You can see the massive decline and then massive increase after.
You hear the same about how walls can’t stop immigration maybe they don’t stop all of it, but they do deter and reduce it. Just like sandbags don’t hold back all water. This started with libertarians opposing regulations, including borders but is now common among non-libertarian (They think, most progressive liberals are now also neoliberals and outside differences in psychology seemingly advocating the same thing as right wing libertarians in most senses) liberals types who don’t care about typical left wing things like labor or industrial policy.
It’s interesting though, unlike alcohol that is socially ingrained and normal at all ages, weed has always been (Outside the admittedly highly developed subculture) a drug associated with adolescent rebellion and youth, whose very illegal status added to it’s allure, perhaps decisively so. In the US where most people move huge distances to attend college it seems like it became huge after 1968 compared to Europe. There is a whole mythos to it in the US which doesn’t really exists in Europe.
So it is interesting to me if it is an exception to this logic of if you make something legal people will obviously do more of it. Certainly a lot of people have lost their shirts investing in what they overestimated as the bonanza to come in the newly legal industry.
Yes, from my perch overseas, I figured America was getting high on its own supply.
Yeah, I smell weed in a lot of different places these days.
In the past, weed was usually smoked by a large group of teenagers or youths in their early/mid 20s. They’d usually be partying at a park, beach, house, or the woods. They smoked to have “fun” and enjoy each other’s company.
Nowadays, weed is smoked by people from a wider range of age groups. Usually, it’s smoked in isolation or with maybe 1 other person. At this point, it’s less about “fun” and more like a daily habit/addiction.
In the past, you’d see teens smiling & giggling, as they passed around a joint. Now the typical weed smoker is usually some grimy-looking 30 something dude, sitting around quietly in his car and staring off into space.
Here’s an interesting study with some data.
https://drugabuse.com/blog/whos-smoking-weed-these-days-you-asked-the-cdc-answered/
Delta 8 is legal in Tennessee. Delta 9 is the cannnaboid in real Marijuana. Delta 8 is in real Marijuana also, but in less quantity.
It’s practically the same thing, but about 4 times weaker because it binds less readily to the receptors. You can buy a Delta 8 vape and it will be filled with oodles of Delta 8, much higher than in nature with no other CBD to somewhat counteract it.
These vapes have no odor and are very popular. So in a de facto sense, many More people are using drugs than statistics would indicate. They are driving around while using also (no giveaway smell).
I think Delta8 and Delta10 should be as regulated as Delta9 (real weed), but I apparently have the minority opinion. Drugs R’ bad, Mkay.
It now can even smell that way while driving down the street. There are times when we have to drive through an urban area, and it is then that we have sometimes smelled what we used to think were skunks. It is marijuana smell coming from cars ahead of us on city streets.
The smell stinks compared to what I was familiar with in Boulder. There, I couldn’t go to a party without being offered a joint, and I partook. It smelled kind of sweet. This stuff stinks. They say it is stronger and I believe it, strong enough to stink from behind in another vehicle driving down the street.
Recently, the battery died in our Mercedes, and the locks wouldn’t open.
No way to get to the battery. The manual key entry didn’t work. Brilliant, German engineering. (My Jeep, that crappy, undependable, American truck that so many smart people say it is, sits outside in the cold and never has a problem. You want problems, get a Mercedes…)
So, I called my insurance company, USAA, for service. They are great, but they sent me a young, black guy to help me break into my wife’s pretty, little convertible, and he was a total joke. He gets out of his car, meets me, and the first thing he says is, “Are there any animals around here?”
We live in the woods, and I could see that this Sub-Saharan African character from the American, urban environment was frightened at the simple sight of being at a white man’s house in the woods. Oh, and it was dark, so much the better.
I lied to reassure him. I told him no, we only have some deer, not mentioning all the other creatures including the wolf I see sometimes, and my dog upstairs.
Anyway, after failing to get into the car, accomplishing nothing, he goes back into his car and disappears for awhile. Then he come out, and I come out of the house. I smell a skunk.
There was a definite skunk stink exactly like what we have sometime gotten here from actual skunks. So, I said to him, “I smell a skunk. I said there were no animals here, but I smell a skunk. We get those sometimes…”
He laughed and said something like, “Oh, no man, that’s just the green. It’s the good green, man.”
He had been smoking that stinky pot in his car.
He never did get into our car, and they had to send somebody else. (Who, BTW, was also black, but entirely professional and skilled at breaking into a Mercedes Benz.)
My point is that all the new, stinky pot smoking I see now comes from blacks. It really does. It’s a black thang from my perspective. I think it’s even legal here now, but I don’t even care. I haven’t had any since I left Boulder.
“But, driving down the street, it sure smells like marijuana consumption is way up.”
FIFY
Not sure how much pot can be blamed for additional traffic crashes – maybe a bit from adults who have returned to periodically consuming marijuana now that it’s semi-legal, but it’s never been hard to get ahold of, especially for the younger crowd that is out and about for the night.
I knew someone who started smoking pot because he thought it would help with his alcohol addiction. This worked out about as well as you would expect.
I loathe marijuana legalization. Loathe loathe loathe it. Hate smelling that god awful stench every time I stop at an intersection in the city where I work.
We need Singapore style drug laws
I’ve heard roughly the same. Years ago the historian and author Roger McGrath was on the History Channel and he said violent crime in the 1920s and ‘30s was directed more towards institutions than individuals. Yes, perhaps a bank would would be robbed or a couple watchmen carrying a payroll would be shot, but for John or Jane Doe to be mugged walking down the street was still uncommon enough for it to be shocking.
Marijuana and alcohol are an awful mix. Don’t ask me how I know.
“Recently, the battery died in our Mercedes, and the locks wouldn’t open. No way to get to the battery. The manual key entry didn’t work. Brilliant, German engineering.”
As I said to my Germanphile brother who swears by owning Audis and Porsches when he tried to convince me to buy a BMW: “If German engineering was so f🤬ing good, why did they lose two wars last century?”
I tend to agree with the general consensus that current German cars are made to lease for three years and turn in. Any longer than that and you’re begging for problems. I’ve heard 50:50 agreement/disagreement from BMW and MB owners on that view.
That said, and returning it to the ditchweed, 🚬 Mercedes Benzes ain’t exactly cheap. And I’d be lighting up USAA’s phone line reminding them that I am not paying extortionate rates to insure a MB with them only to have Rasta-man roll up, scratch his noggin, light a spliff, and completely fail at his job AND drive off fully toked. 🤯🫠
I own a Dodge and I wouldn’t take that crap.
Why don’t you just attach a link to Reefer Madness, Steve?
You have convincingly shown in post after post that the Ferguson Factor and the reaction to the death of George Floyd are highly correlated to the increase in anti-social behavior. Can you demonstrate a similar correlation for the increase in weed usage?
Weed smoking is a vice. Society needs to manage vices by balancing toleration and prohibition, trying to find the point where social harm is minimized. Was whole scale prohibition the optimal point?
I’d argue that if we’re going to review policies for recently legalized vices, we’re better off going after gambling. You can gamble online and anytime I watch a sporting event half the commercials are for betting apps. That’s the equivalent for pot smokers of having a bong in your iPhone and constant weed commercials during episodes of BoJack Horseman.
Who cares?
The War on Drugs is one of the biggest wastes of time in history.
Legalize the drug.
If the GOP had legalized marijuana, they’d do well with young people. Facts.
My quip, “Damn, it smells like a Raider game around here”…seems to apply to more and more spaces with each passing year.
“But, walking down the street, it sure smells like marijuana consumption is way up.”
Smoke particles are hundreds times larger than a virus, so how is it you can smell marijuana through your CDC-certified SARS-2-COV-19-BA.2 face respirator and goggles?
Bingo!
America started going downhill at the same time normal White people started smoking dope.
Change my mind.
It’s like that at all the parks in and around the city here.
Heck, you can even smell it in the parking lot of my former MIC plant.
Thing is, the contract security guards will never catch it because they never walk the lots, they just cruise from corner to corner in their little Chevy crossover at all hours.
It’s known that the computer-aided modeling and simulation tools are now so powerful that all automakers are able to use them to squeeze every last penny from every part and system from a vehicle while ensuring they are reliable for the first two leases.
Screw the Feds. State law should override Federal dictate.
Steve also wrote “But, walking down the street, it sure smells like marijuana consumption is way up.” Yes, this stuff you smelled is the stinkweed. It’s all over.
I don’t partake, but I sure miss the times when pot smelled like burning dry leaves. I also really like the smell of pipes and those clove cigarettes.
Almost all cars can be gotten into with a wedge and then the appropriately shaped stick or old-timey metal clothes hanger. However, the wedge is tough on the door. Keep the Jeep, Buzz. (Mechanic friend says the straight-6’s on those Cherokees are very solid engines.)
Why bother? Whites don’t seem to care.
Supposedly the Norks quietly normalized pot so their helot class wouldn’t care about the awful living conditions.
We need Singapore-style just about everything.
And we’re about as likely to get it as Nigeria is.
What facts? Young people will do whatever they’re told, by Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, television, what have you.
Add tattoos.
Along with the basics on lying, stealing, killing, sex in marriage and family, Christianity brought us de-tribalization–the “special sauce” of the West–and some–very pleasant–norms against body defacement.
Unfortunately, Christian norms are so … goyische, white bread, yucky and had to go.
We’re so much better off now. And people look so darn good, too!
John Ratey, M.D., professor at Harvard Medical School, says that strenuous cardio exercise is the best treatment for anxiety and depression and is the best prevention against Alzheimer’s /dementia.
It’s also the best way to keep your brain young (or to grow your brain). Strenuous cardio exercise releases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) or as Ratey calls it, “Miracle-Gro for the brain”.
I have basically zero experience with normal grass, but in dealing with potheads who can’t get a hold of the real deal, I have a lot of exposure to “K2”, or synthetic cannabinoids, which they smoke instead. I got a secondhand whiff though a closed door this morning for just a minute or two, and I had a splitting headache for several hours after. I’ve seen people turned into semi-ambulatory zombies by it; if the new, more potent weed ( https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-weed-became-new-oxycontin-marijuana-psychosis-addiction ) is making people feel ok with smoking this garbage, it probably is a bad thing
Sign me up for:
“Your right to smoke your spliff ends at my nose.”
I’ve never tried recrational drugs, unless you count alcohol, which I can take or leave. What’s the appeal of marijuana?
Chronic pain is criminally under treated in the USA today. So smoking pot beats the hell out of a life of misery.
Sam Smith, if you want a picture of the future, imagine a demon sodomizing you forever
Many years ago, Mark Kleiman had a standard lecture demonstrating how far off from reality are data from SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Based on my memory the lecture went something like this:
Mark started by noting that the USA has excellent data on domestic production and consumption of at least one drug, alcohol. Alcohol is taxed and the federal government makes damned sure it records all production and consumption of alcohol. When one compares federal tax data on domestic production, sale and consumption of alcohol, i.e. beer, wine, and liquor, with NSDUH estimates of alcohol use and consumption, the NSDUH estimates are smaller than the more trustworthy tax data.
Mark explained this with the following reasoning: Substance abusers consume larger quantities of all drugs–alcohol included–than do moderate users of these substances. For a variety of reasons having to do with sample design, sampling procedures, and questionnaire design the NSDUH underestimates both the numbers of substance abusers and the levels of their substance abuse. Hence the NSDUH underestimates the consumption of all drugs, particularly illegal drugs.
I have never been able to find a flaw with this argument. A decade and a half working as an epidemiologist in a state department of public health has further convinced me that the NSDUH is not a very reliable tool for tracking substance use, abuse, and dependence in this country.
Couldn’t the same correlation be noted, though, for much (even most) of the music that was celebrated in a recent, particularly long comment thread?
Incidentally, I have been wondering how the iSteve readership would view and react to mention of the late John Denver (1943-1997).
The Music Is You (Live at the Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, CA – August/September 1974)
After Oregon legalized pot, ordering a sandwich at eg Subway became a baffling ordeal.
Increase in osteoporosis and bone fractures are the trade off.
(With the qualified exception of “de-tribalization”, per se)
Hmm, I wonder where they got all those taboos, constraints, and sensibilities from…
There’s a joke about loud music along the lines that it’s my neighbor’s favorite music to listen to whether they like it or not. Now with the reek of weed in public spaces the punch line could be my neighbor gets high whether they want to or not. Second hand tobacco smoke in public spaces used to considered offensive now psychoactive, mind-altering smoke seems to be growing common. Pot is much stronger then it used to be. I recall watching a BBC show about a reporter sampling different types in the Netherlands. The differences in the drugs were striking.
There’s been posts about the increases in black fatalities driving. I suspect some of it is undoubtedly due to the legalization of weed. On multiple occasions I’ve seen blacks getting in or out of vehicles with clouds of marijuana smoke escaping. I am sure it happens with others but I haven’t seen it and I suspect it’s a lot more common with blacks.
Under the Constitution, anything not specifically mentioned as a function of the federal government was left to the states. This included crime control. This used to be understood, which is why an amendment to the Constitution was passed making alcohol illegal.
This division of powers has largely been forgotten. There was no amendment to the Constitution making marijuana illegal. This is a bad thing because the goal of the Founders was to limit the power of government and one way that they tried to do that was this division of powers. Bringing back this division of powers would help move us back in the direction of limited government. This is why conservatives should support things like returning abortion laws back to the states or letting states make the decision on marijuana decriminalization.
FTFY
Many adolescents today have grown up with grandparents who are avid weed smokers. Far more adolescents have such parents. It’s pretty much no different now than alcohol in terms of social acceptance. The generations indoctrinated with propaganda like Reefer Madness are overwhelmingly and (at least insofar as the subject of cannabis goes) fortunately dead.
The gang wars were dramatic and photogenic, so they get the publicity, leading people to assume the Twenties were more violent than they were.
I’ve met McGrath a few times, and even gave him a gift once.
Positive experiences I hope. I always enjoyed his commentary on the History Channel
notice it’s “strenuous”. that’s like HIIT, not going for a walk
Try a more mellow, lower THC strain.
It’s nice to think that all the losers out there make things easier for the guys w/their heads on straight. Of course being a straight white male makes you undesirable because of the constant anti-white propaganda from the govt., academia and media. You might as well smoke pot.
I visited Seattle in 2014 and it was the first time I’d seen tent cities anywhere. A cab driver I had was an older white guy who grew up in Seattle and he told me all the campers were from out of state and came for the legal pot.
Every Dominican barber and gypsy cab driver owns ( or leases) a Merc. Black drug dealers love them. It’s a prestige brand for hoodrats. In Europe they’re driven by EU muckety-mucks and big city bureaucrats, but in the US 90% of the owners are ostentatious blacks or wogs with $300 in the bank showing off for the suckers in the old country who haven’t yet availed themselves of the sweet, sweet American gibs.
The Dreaming Earth
“fortunately”? WTF?
I can’t argue with anything else that you said in that post. Depressingly, it’s all correct as far as facts go. It’s one big reason this country has turned to shit.
All the people doing all this stupid shit–we’re already starting to reap the “rewards”. I figure that I’ll try and live out what’s left to me the best I can-stay out of the coming shitstorm the best I can. Protect and defend myself and what’s mine, and then check out when the time comes.
Part of me, I must confess, since I really can’t stop what’s coming, does want to stick around long enough to see some of these two-legged shitbags get schooled when the hard rain really starts falling.
Psychiatrists counsel people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenic spectrum disorders not to use it. Hallucinogens can induce psychotic breaks. So if you’re a black tax preparer you might decide to go off on this white ER doctor cyclist, hitting him with your Lexus and stabbing him to death. Or you might be a black stripper-turned-ICU-nurse, who one day decides to floor your Mercedes through an intersection at 105 mph and kill six people. Or maybe you just join that enormous army of human cockroaches living in our streets.
Is marijuana a factor in all this? We know it can induce psychotic breaks in schizo-spectrum people which includes, what, half of all blacks? But nobody is asking these questions as we leap headlong into the great marijuana legalization experiment.
True, and it provided cultural fodder for many permanent works of art & entertainment ( Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, Faulkner’s Sanctuary, ..); movies by Hawks & other directors, starring James Cagney, E.G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, ….
Other eras were not so culturally interesting. For instance the Gilded Age.
Sneaking into this country is also a federal crime…”Why are the feds…etc…etc…”….blahblah.
The answer to 2023 is 1776.
You can get a contact high just driving thru Carpinteria these days.
LOL. Yes, the world is a much better place now that everybody smokes weed.
You’re very quick with cheap insults to our German cousins. Did the tv teach you that? I bet you say “nazi” a lot, too.
“German engineering” isn’t the reason they lost two wars.
Intelligent White people know the history of those two wars.
How strenuous is strenuous? Hillwalking strenuous or 10k strenuous?
Back on topic:
The 1920s seem like a high point of art and design. For example, golf course architecture peaked in the 1920s: lots of money _and_ good taste.
About 5 years ago I started noticing that the streets of midtown Manhattan absolutely stunk of weed every weekday morning. It’s because weed is the opiate of the masses now. Every Amazon delivery boy, Uber eats rider, shipping clerk, janitor and construction worker is getting high as a routine part of getting thru their drone job.
After 9/11 and increased border security, the weed industry focused on THC potency since they were forced into indoor grow set ups – that old school weed you smelled was probably Mexican Brown – much less potent and incapacitating.
Ive always felt this phenomenon drove legalization but not sure.
People want to get high – let them. absolute waste of tax dollars and enormous unintended consequences.
I switched to driving on marijuana rather than alcohol because cops cannot readily test for marijuana.
lll
Wasn’t Chrysler bought by Mercedes Benz?
I wonder about this too, and I was quite fond of the stuff over a half century ago. Enjoying it was a statement then but now it seems pathetic that people are just smoking their lives away. I smell it everywhere when I walk around my city too. I suppose it’s a good thing that people can buy it legally, because that keeps them away from tainted grass and the other, more deadly products stocked by illicit drug dealers. But it seems like yet another symptom of the malaise that has taken over the country, expressed in staggering rates of alcoholism, obesity, superstition, violent crime, and bone-weary desperation. An MIT professor recently wrote a book called “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty”, in which he finds that generally what causes states to collapse is the grossly unequal distribution of wealth where once it was shared more equitably, and that describes the US to a T. One hopes that the defeat of the thugs in Kiev will hasten the downfall of the oligarchy that hijacked Washington over forty years ago, and brought this country to the edge of disaster.
Bipolar buddy of mine was on his program & thriving until he discovered weed. He decided he didnt need his meds any more and within 3 weeks got fired from our workplace for a manic episode and locked up in Bellevue. After they let him out, he jumped off a bridge
The 1920s were epoch-making age world-wide: quantum mechanics (Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Dirac,..); mathematics (Hermann Weyl, Noether, Keynes, R. Fisher, ..); biology and medicine (Banting, Landsteiner,..); music (mature Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg,..): philosophy (Wittgenstein, Heidegger, ..); Western literature (Joyce, Proust, Mann, Rilke, Kafka, Faulkner, Hemingway ..); film (Bunuel, Chaplin, Hawks, Keaton, …); psychology (mature Freud, early Jung,..); ..
A Periclean age.
When I was stationed in Europe, Mercedes was the car of choice for taxis in many countries.
Art Deco (the style, not the commenter) was peak American aesthetic.
We’re never having peak American anything from now on.
Agree, but I’m just pointing out they hypocrisy of the feds. They claim the ability to regulate drugs and guns through the Interstate Commerce Clause. That may well be a bogus argument, but they have nonetheless used it for the past 90 years and the courts have upheld it.
They have allowed a number of states to openly defy federal narcotics laws because marijuana is a leftist cultural signifier, while they continue to prosecute federal gun laws because guns are important to right-wing culture.
Serial killers?
Because having a portion of your population with psychosis, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder will have a major impact on your country’s functioning.
I once had to go to a federal agency in a D.C. suburb (P.G. County) where it seemed like 80% of the workers were middle-aged black women. The parking lot looked like a Mercedes dealership.
Probably it’s also partly down to the prevalence of the extremely stinky and aptly named ‘Skunk’ variety of marijuana that’s all the rage these days.
I’m pretty sure that the human nose is *extremely* sensitive to the odor of cannabis, down to the smallest parts per billion traces in the atmosphere. Likely the human sensory system is more triggered by trace concentrations of cannabis than it is to any other organic chemical compound, including the stink molecule injected in commercial natural gas.
Also, I’m fairly convinced that the stink of skunk weed is able to permeate and penetrate through at least six inches of solid masonry, brick, concrete, cement rendered wall.
When I used to arrest people for drugs they were always engaged in some other activity that demanded police attention.
Assault, robbery, burglary, arson even. If the idiots would have simply smoked or shot up in the privacy of their homes without breaking the law no one would know or care.
Fact is that I hated charging the dirtbags with drug crimes because the prosecutor would invariably craft a lovely plea deal dropping all charges in exchange for drug treatment and time served if any.
I watched a seven million dollar theft of cedar go winging out the window in exchange for four months treatment. That was enough for me.
Legalization was the most corrosive thing I have ever witnessed. And it only gets worse year after year.
The Feds want to legalize it but don’t have the guts. They want the populace zonked out on Soma. Like someone else wrote, what would happen if Montana or Idaho started selling select fire firearms and suppressors? How long before the army would move in, in force to stop it?
I was at the Beanpot tournament yesterday at the TD Garden in Boston, an annual tourney between the four Boston D I hockey schools, Northeastern, Harvard, BU, and BC. Fortunately for all us BU and BC haters the NU Huskies and Harvard Crimson won their games and will be playing for the title next Monday night.
About half way through the first period of the second game I smelled a certain sickly-sweet odor from my youth- probably coming from the boxes immediately above us. A phalanx of ushers descended on the box and the smell went away.
What I find interesting about this is that one NEVER smells cigarette smoke in sportsball venues anymore; (even the outdoor ones) we’ve made war on cigarettes to the extent that smokers of tobacco are lower on the acceptability scale than child molesters, yet we’re doing all we can to promote pot smoking. I don’t get it- I think some of the prohibitions of cigarette smoking that have grown up in the last 30 years were/are sensible: (despite the fact that the whole second hand smoke business is nonsense, or the tremendous exaggeration of the dangers of smoking) ie no smoking in government buildings, or even on airplanes (although why you can’t use smokeless tobacco in the air is a mystery to me), but the way we treat smokers as if they were some species of criminal while doing everything we can, at least here in MA, to promote marijuana use- you can’t swing a cat here in the 413 without hitting a pot shop, is puzzling.
Legalization has not decreased illegal pot trafficking or illegal growing operations in California. Mexican drug cartels as well as Russians, Asians have set up operations in California and are driving the legal pot shops out because they offer weed at a cheaper price. They don’t pay the state taxes. What does the state do? Slap them with a $500 fine if they can find the owner and if the understaffed local law enforcement is brave enough to confront heavily armed drug cartels. Drug cartels are taking over California. It is idiotic to think that cartels will give up a lucrative business just because state governments make it legal. Legalizing actually makes it easier for criminal enterprise.
Beats me.
I’ve tried two pot products that are supposed to help with pain and sleep. The sleep one didn’t make me sleep, but it did make me stagger a bit when I got up to use the bathroom.
The pain one was expensive and I had gotten it for my relative who was in intermittent pain after a surgery. No help at all for her. For my sore muscles I found icyhot to be far more effective.
Oh-for-two.
I know several rural rednecks who swear that smoking pot is the best thing in life. They look like you’d imagine, and accomplish next to nothing. Just keep those disability checks flowing!
Stellantis ……right ,it ain’t in in any Beach Boys songs…….some kind of Euro -conglomerate
Seniors 55-64 had a whopping 455 percent increase
I’m in the next age category, 65 – Dead, and haven’t smoked marijuana more than a handful of times in my life, mostly in my youth. I never liked it. However, I would now be classified as a daily marijuana user. As a lifelong insomniac, I have found that the 5mg THC gummies sold as sleep aids are better than any of the prescription drugs I have used over the decades to deal with this problem. The gummies don’t make you high, just relaxed. I wake up in the morning feeling well-rested and alert.
I think that was a joke he was making. Or maybe not. I once visited the crime lab in Chicago and they had a wall with photos of all the policemen killed in the line of duty. It was arranged chronologically and I was shocked by the huge bulge in such deaths during the 1920s. Then I thought, oh yeah, Al Capone, bang bang
Thanks for the Reason Magazine talking points.
Here’s what reality looks like:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-weed-became-new-oxycontin-marijuana-psychosis-addiction
Cops readily test with a blood test at the station, everywhere. Refusal to take the test is a de facto automatic conviction.
This is essentially the case with my mom – I got her some drops that she can take before bed, and she uses it as needed to help her sleep better, but doesn’t take it otherwise.
I hadn’t smoked pot in a long time but was visiting a friend about 5 years ago in a state where it was legal and ate part of a gummy while hanging out and have found it’s nice to take a 5mg now and then when socializing or just sitting around at home in the evening. I probably do this a couple times a month or so though, so not very frequent.
European tastes, as influenced by classic civilization, the Catholic tradition and the Renaissance.
Yes, maybe we could, i don’t know, come up with a synthetic opioid, safe, non-addictive, the administration of which could be coordinated with the medical profession. or people could stop treating their bodies like toxic landfills. which approach do you think would have the most beneficial impact?
The benefit of legalization is people no longer being arrested for a victimless crime.
Stop it.
My in-laws like to enjoy ‘a glass of wine’ (ex marijuana users) and one of the reasons why they are so f-ing dumb is Those ‘Wine’ Hours Add Up
Pretty much 1/4 of their life has been spent under the influence
Life throws information at you constantly, your brain is always solving a problem in the circuitry
You need to be at your peak as much as possible to accept and process as much information as you can, in order to make correct life decisions
I don’t know anyone who dulls their mind regularly who is operating at peak
Think of all of the Eureka! moments you are missing under the guise of ‘relaxation’
I got one person off of the Nightly Alcohol train about 6 years ago
Every night he would come home and drink wine with his loser gf at the time…he’d turn into a couch potato for the rest of the night
On Friday/Saturday he’d drink himself silly and spend Sat/Sun lying in bed
Well, I met him and worked my magic of slowly dismanteling all his bad habits which is what my life talent is
Now he is so f-ing active I’m worried of the opposite problem…that the dude is going to have a heart attack!
Point is when I look at him now…I think …”This is the reason why the white male was so successful…imagine if all white men got off boos and drugs…got off the couch and did stuff!”
The world would change overnight if all the white men suddenly became as active as my friend
Wanting to put people in prison for smoking weed is very bad. People are complex so I won’t say that everyone with that desire is a “bad person,” or that I want them all to die. But everything else being equal, the world is better without people who hold those beliefs. Of course the younger generations hold a lot of harmful/evil beliefs so I’m not even saying we’re better than our grandparents overall. Just that some of their old fashioned beliefs are fortunately being buried with them.
As the famous opening line goes: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In many ways, the time we’re living in now is much worse than it was 10/20/50/etc years ago. In other ways, things are better. In terms of the whole “how many people are being put in jail just for smoking a natural substance that for the most part doesn’t hurt anyone and often has medicinal properties” thing, yes things are much better than they were for a long time.
It’s terrible. People are actually driving while smoking pot. No police traffic enforcement.
Unbelievable. It’s everywhere, even in my neighborhood. Blowing around in the breeze, we can’t keep our windows open in the summer without smelling skunk weed. Pathetic people drugging themselves because they are so unhappy. Sad.
If weed ever had any mystique it’s gone forever now that you see the proles lining up for their “Your Papers!” processing, obediently submitting their CFR § 800.241 personal particulars for state scrutiny. It’s the most dispiriting, totalitarian sight you can imagine.
Why yes they were. Daimler-Benz owned them from 1998-2007, then Cerebus Investments bought them and created Chrysler LLC, Uncle Sammy loaned them some cash to stay afloat, then Fiat bought them and became Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and now they’re part of the Isle of Misfit Toys called Stellantis.
Whew, need a flowchart for that. 😅
Don’t you think I know that? They were, but not any-more! All 400 of them, they were begging me to do something. After that “thing” knocked the transporter out . . . I couldn’t . . . couldn’t.
At our nation’s gun show at the Dulles Expo Center this past weekend, my pops and I noticed the usual coterie or middle aged white men checking out the wares, but about 20% of the crowd were black. And of those 20%, about half reeked of the wacky ta-backy.
In Alex Berenson’s previous book, “Tell Your Children”, he noted the rise in psychotic episodes was strongly related to new strains of more potent marijuana. IOW, it’s not your hippie’s weed of the 1970s, it’s much stronger.
I assume this development was ultimately approved by TPTB as a way to lessen the typical American’s drive for revolution. “Better them stoned than out protesting us in the streets.” Well, it appears there’s a few other prices to pay for it as well – dudes going nuts more often, higher car accident rates, etc etc.
Pot doesn’t treat pain. Except the placebo effect.
clean out the shed
I can’t. Emmett’s got it locked from the inside.
A lot of those things suck.
Drones will be doing those delivery jobs pretty soon. With the janitorial robots to follow.
So then these folks can just sit at home on weedfare.
This right here is why when you meet a libertarian, you should beat him thoroughly. He’ll know why.
(That’s stolen from someone, but I can’t remember who)
Marijuana is a shitty painkiller.
When I was a kid in the Fifties, it was my perception that alcohol (whether wine, beer or the hard stuff) seemed to be associated with Our People (Italians, Germans, Irish etc. etc.) whereas Mary Janes, hash etc. always seemed to be associated with Slant Eyes in opium dens and “the colored.” This may reveal a definite cultural prejudice against the latter substances, but I can’t really say for sure because my perception may have been in error.
But one thing I do know–because I have personally witnessed it–is that over the years BOTH either ruined or flat-out terminated the lives of people I whom I had known. And when all is said and done, no matter how hard the “experts” try, there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.
And Big Band (say 1936 to 1950 and regardless of its relative artistic merits) was the musical expression of America at its peak of power, self-assurance and can-do spirit
Also peak Shostakovich but that’s a different matter.
This increase is most likely due to more prevalent use of marijuana for medical reasons.
There are pretty much no conditions that marijuana treats better than other available medications. The entire “medical marijuana” system is one giant scam.
His body may not exactly be a temple but looking at his tremendous energy and drive I find it interesting that Trump is such a teetotaler
I quit my occasional pot use in 1985, at age 30, simply because I had moved, fell in with a different crowd and my life was becoming more complicated (in mostly good ways).
I would not try the current stuff (and gave up smoking altogether in 1996). But I will say this for those curious about weed — I felt it made music a more intense experience and especially that it made funny things even funnier.
At one newsdesk job I worked late on Saturday nights and we could take home free copies of the Sunday NYT printed onsite. With nothing else to do at 2 AM on a Sunday morning a touch of weed made the Times’ pompously stilted writing style drop-dead hilarious, better than any spoof edition
Policemen. Private citizens had a different experience. Sure, they were breaking the law and supplying the demand which feuled the crime. However, tucked into the speakeasy one was relatively secure. The cops might arrest you, but not shoot the place up.
The police station on Beale Street in Memphis hosted a 24-hour museum covering crime in the city. I visited around 1989 or 1990. A large section was devoted to one particular assassination, but there was a lot of other stuff.
I wonder how, or even if, they’ll treat the murdered jogger or the tag-team police drubbing of late.
Actually, it looks like they won’t:
Memphis, Tennessee: Beale Street Police Museum (Gone); Museum was also a working police precinct.
The same thing happened to my Mercedes last year: battery died (it’s under the back seat), the blade key in the fob didn’t work, and I had no roadside assistance with my insurance, so I called a mobile locksmith.
The guy who showed up was the opposite of a stoner: an Israeli who spent 8 years in the IDF. He used a couple of air bladders to get the door ajar and a wire hook to unlock it. It took him literally two minutes to break into my car. The best part is, he gave me a jump start and I followed him to his Mercedes mechanic, who I still use to this day.
Say what you want about German cars, but I love my Mercedes. I’m getting ready to spend $1,100 on a set of ignition wires and spark plugs. Since it’s an AMG V8 hand assembled by Herman the German 20 years ago, that’s going to be 16 ignition wires and 16 spark plugs, well worth the expense to drive that beast another 100,000 miles.
Not surprised tobacco has been vilified to the Nth degree and weed is actively encouraged.
There was an article somewhere last week about a city or state wanting to allow cannabis lounge to serve food and non-alcoholic beverages. The hypocrisy is laughable. You can go to a cannabis lounge, smoke a doobie and have avocado toast, but I can’t go to a steakhouse, sit in a smoking section, and have a cigar with my ribeye.
That’s not it. Your parents found out because your kid sister told them.
Excellent comment, Mr. Ganderson! I agree with all points.
Yeah, why CAN’T you chew tobacco on the airplane and spit it in your empty Chik-fil-a cup? The airlines just want to control a potential mess, but there are people, cough, cough, Spirit Airlines, cough, who make lots bigger messes than that. It’s just as with the BS about cell phone usage he last 20 years – there’s no good reason for the prohibition on them, but they want your attention during the announcements – good luck with that!
I can barely remember being in the non-smoking section of a big airliner in the mid-1980s. Starting from the front, the non-smoking section ended at my row, haha! I didn’t care. It’s not a great smell, but a few hours of 2nd-hand smoke a few times a year is not what the Docs are worried about.
When I was a cube-dweller, I told some colleagues that my taking up smoking would give me an excuse to hang out outside on the street, like they did.
I hope your hockey team wins, Mr. G!
Not hardly, Mike. You’re the one that mentioned the tax. If it weren’t taxed heavily, what would be the incentive to have a drug cartel?
“Anxiety is nature’s friendly reminder to go hit the gym, write that term-paper, clean out the shed.”
This is so true.
Jung would say that anxiety is the Self calling the ego back to its legitimate work.
Stoners leave a lot of emotional work unprocessed, which means they remain fixated at younger stages of development.
I dont know about African Americans, but Smoking marijuana is not closely correlated with aggressive driving in other minorities like hispanics or asians.
George Floyd was whiling away time in a Mercedes SUV at the street corner where and when he met his untimely end. That was probably “his corner” from which he regularly dealt drugs.
Cop, “Have you been doing drugs?”
George, “I been hooping.”
Was that why he went into the corner store? To use the restroom? Had to buy something, as a paying customer, to use the restroom? And saw it as a chance to unload one of those phony twenties?
What a great, great man. Truly an icon of black, twenty-first century America. A role model for all little colored boys.
In Paul Fussell’s book “Class” [also often referred to as “Class in the USA”]
he refers to Mercedes saloons as being appropriate modes of transport for Beverley Hills dentists and
African cabinet ministers.
Old Money East Coast Wasps remain loyal to their twenty-year-old Volvos, while the New Money
rich want something bright, shiny and new.
I know what you mean, though perhaps that is going too far 😉
I am certainly tired on my wife and children having to breathe other people’s weed when we’re walking around the LA area. (Personally, I appreciate a free whiff if I’m not driving or heading to work at the time. But my wife and more so our children are another story. They shouldn’t have to breathe it at all.)
But it doesn’t follow that because some people are smoking while driving, or in other people’s faces on the street, tens of millions of other people who are smoking on private property bothering nobody — should go to prison.
This doesn’t seem complicated:
– Punish the people smoking while driving for DWI / DUI.
– Fine the people smoking on the streets or in other public places like parks. Smoking as passengers in vehicles with open windows, on local streets, should count as prohibited public smoking too. Let’s have the same crackdown on public TOBACCO smoking too, PLEASE.
– Mind our business when it comes to other adults smoking pot in their homes / on private property, just as we do for nicotine addicts who manage to smoke their tobacco away from the rest of us.
That’s conventional wisdom you always hear people repeating. I prefer to think out of the box. We have never truly had a war on drugs. An example of a real war on drugs was former Philippines President Duterte having the police shoot drug dealers and addicts.
Hit a nerve did I?
Sorry Boomer, want some ice for that?
By the way, our “German Cousins”, are those the ones Frau Merkel convinced to be overrun by Islamic immigrants? Steve might’ve mentioned something about that once.
By the way, it’s a joke Boomer. Too fast for ya huh?
Similarly, the second man used an air bladder to flex the pillarless side window on the convertible and do the same thing.
My wife loves that car and wants to keep it forever. Since I’m the one who gave it to her, I will do my best to make that possible. It certainly is pretty.
Happy motoring.
Back in the 1930s, Aldous Huxley wrote an interesting dystopian novel called “Brave New World.”
Here’s a description.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Read about “soma.”
https://study.com/learn/lesson/what-is-soma-in-brave-new-world.html#:~:text=What%20is%20soma%20in%20Brave%20New%20World%20by%20Aldous%20Huxley,and%20complacency%20of%20the%20population.
Marijuana, opiates, heroin, and prescription drugs are modern day “soma.”
Drunk driving is a victimless crime if the drunk driver makes it to their destination without incident.
Point is the term victimless crime is too vague and disingenuous. If mom or dad is spending all the grocery money on dope, or booze, or slot machines, it’s not a victimless crime in that sense.
Thank you for trying to deal with the hysterics regarding marijuana.
This would surprise many doctors and patients:
https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2021/4/10/harvard-study-finds-cannabis-effective-treatment-for-chronic-pain
https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20100830/marijuana-relieves-chronic-pain-research-show
Is that because of the effects of pot or the kind of people who are attracted to it ?
Pablo Escobar was a pothead and whatever else you can say about him he accomplished a lot. Many programmers also use pot to help them think.
Wanting to put people in prison forsmoking weed is very bad.Good points. Tucker Carlson has also questioned why tobacco is so demonized, but marijuana is tolerated. It’s almost like our elites have an agenda, to shift smokers from tobacco to marijuana. In doing so, perhaps they want to create a passive population.
They’re already pacifying the population in others ways. For example, legal prescription drugs and soft enforcement of the border (through which drugs flow north).
It’s like the elites are trying to turn us into Zombies.
By the way, we do a lot to turn ourselves into Zombies, through our addiction to smartphones, social media, Netflix, and sports ball. Then there’s our constant binging on snacks and fast food…
Imagine an America which was free of all of the above. People would revolt and kick out the SOBs in power.
Melatonin & Magnesium Citrate can help a lot for sleep too.
Though I’m glad that you found something that works for you.
No. The shift to indoor growing exploded after 1980 due to Operation Green Harvest, a government program to detect marijuana grows from aircraft that rolled out in Hawaii around 1978 or 79 and then was taken to all fifty states in the early 1980’s. Around the same time, there was Campaign Against Marijuana Planting(CAMP) in California. Similar programs run by the US government operated in Mexico, Columbia, Jamaica, Thailand, Panama and Belize.
Hybridization became necessary to breed plants that could reasonably be grown inside under lights. Traditional Mexican marijuana grew taller than a Christmas tree and got people high. THC was not discovered until around 1985. So no one knows how potent marijuana in the 1960’s really was.
Marijuana smells differently now becuase is was hybridized with hashish plants from Afghanistan, to make smaller plants. New research suggest that the hashish plants are descended from a different wild population than drug marijuana. The acrid “skunk” smell of modern marijuana is a trait from the hashish plants.
I plead guilty to sportsball addiction- for all its admitted corruptions I still very much enjoy watching really good athletes ply their trade; especially hockey, which I play myself. There’s something else that makes hockey ( and lacrosse) tolerable, but I won’t write it down….
Marijuana does not merely cause schizophrenia, it is schizophrenia. If you want to know what it’s like to have a psychotic break, just get really high on pot. For many people, apparently, the experience is not an unpleasant one, and this comports with the fact that most genuinely crazy people are fairly harmless, just unproductive and strange.
However, marijuana removes the filters from the preconscious stream and lets the dreaming mind flood up into awareness, and this can be a very bad thing for some folks. Identity issues, dissociative disorders, and paranoia all result from being literally stuck in a nightmare.
Other drugs like cocaine, amphetamines, and opiates are more directly lethal in the case of overdose, but they don’t cause psychosis like pot does. Marijuana is uniquely dangerous to the mind, yet it’s viewed as harmless compared with the others. It’s actually the other way around.
My team, UMASS, doesn’t play in the Beanpot, only those four Boston (or Cambridge, in the case of the Crimson) schools. It’s fun for me to occasionally watch a game where I don’t particularly care who wins- that’s why we took the trek into the Hub of the Universe.
Well said, Mark. The Tenth Amendment has been ignored worse and longer than most of the rest of the Constitution.
Seems like too many “conservatives” don’t support state autonomy over federal dictates when the people of the State choose the “wrong” policies on pot, the admitted farce of homosexual “marriage”, or abortion.
The Z Man says it
I have never been tested.
lll
Then there’s a third option: study hard, work hard, succeed, take care of your family and your obligations … AND then smoke / eat marijuana if you choose to.
The many millions of productive, peaceful people who use marijuana don’t need to apologize for the losers who smoke it and then intrude on others or refuse to support themselves. They shouldn’t be lumped together. After all these decades, we still need to say this to people who get their panties in a bunch about pot and can’t mind their own damn business.
Punish people harshly who smoke weed while driving.
Fine people who smoke in parks, on sidewalks, or in any public place where they’re forcing others to breathe their smoke. The prohibition on smoking in public places should apply to people who smoke as passengers in a vehicle, with windows open, on local streets. This goes for people smoking tobacco, marijuana or anything else.
Punish people more harshly who sell or give marijuana to minors.
Allow employers to refuse to hire people who say they smoke marijuana or test positive for marijuana. I’d usually disagree with testing employees and applicants, for most jobs, and try not to patronize that company; but it should be their right to test and refuse to hire pot smokers.
Allow landlords to prohibit tobacco and marijuana smoking on their premises, even within apartment units. We wouldn’t move to such an apartment complex, but it again should be the landlords’ right.
Those measures are sufficient to crack down on the stoners who endanger others, or who impose on other people who don’t want the smoke around themselves or their families. There’s no need or excuse for taking away the liberty of anyone who keeps it to himself, smoking only on private property which he owns or where the owner allows him to smoke. NONE.
As for derelicts who supposedly pick a location based in part on the availability of legal marijuana — which sounds dubious — it does not apply nowadays.
No need to move to Oregon or California or Seattle for legal pot. Recreational marijuana is legal for people 21-plus under state law also in New York, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia & Maryland & DC, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, etc. It’s legal for medical use in a growing number of the holdout States.
The states where pot is legal under state law are home to 200 million Americans and that’s rapidly increasing. Florida, Texas, Wyoming, and New Hampshire are on track to follow soon enough. The bit about homeless moving somewhere for legal pot, if it was ever true in meaningful numbers, is conclusively out of date.
In any event, can anybody argue in good faith that the marijuana use of the derelicts is any major part of their personal problems? Does marijuana account for any real part of the threat that many of the homeless pose for the rest of us? Could it be instead the raging mental illness among the homeless and their constant addiction to actual devastating drugs? Drugs that, medically, are manifestly in a different league from pot. I’m referring to hallucinatory or profoundly disorienting, sometimes violence-inducing, and just simply highly-physically-addictive quickly-deadly drugs like methamphetamine, heroin, or fentanyl.
Dopers remind me of those Steve Jobs-types who don’t believe in bathing, smugly lecturing the rest of us about it at length, while we try to move upwind to get some blessed relief from them.
Hockey is one of those sports that’s not that fun to watch on tv, but it’s a lot of fun to see in person. If you look at the revenue distribution for the NHL, a disproportionate share (relative to other sports) comes from ticket sales.
If someone can’t afford to watch NHL games, he can see future stars play with the AHL affiliates. It’s easier to get an autograph or picture there too.
They don’t make them like that anymore. Your Mercedes is worth holding onto. My car only has 349 hp but it does 0-60 in five seconds, and it’s a four door sedan that is as fast as a Porsche Carrera or Corvette in the same year. I’m a land speed racer on a two stroke motorcycle on a Yamaha from the mid ’70s at El mirage with a world record and that Mercedes still scares me. It’s like a car built for the Autobahn with 130 mph tires. I have no doubt I could push it over 155 mph given the right road like on the way to Vegas.
.My other car is a 2004 GMC Sierra with a V6 with 350k miles and a 10,000 lb towing package. I gravitate towards reliable shit.
The onboard monitors on the Mercedes won’t reset, so the mechanic can’t tell me why it won’t reset for California smog. So I paid $450 to get an an illegal smog today. Living in California sucks. But I’m pretty sure if I wanted to I could I’ll outrun the cops in the California highway patrol around here. But I wouldn’t recommend it. That Mercedes AMG V8 is a beast!
You’re a child.
If you want to go land speed racing on two wheels just let me know. If you want to go land speed racing in a Mercedes AMG e55 then we can talk about replacing all of the glass with lexan, and installing a fire suppression system and buying you a fire suit and full roll cage. Also we’re going to have to spend $500 on a helmet for you to protect your brain. You’re a brave man and I think maybe you can do it. Your brain is worth more than $500 to be honest.
You are a buzz mohawk from Colorado. They don’t allow motorcycles on pikes peak anymore but maybe we can do it in a Mercedes-Benz on El mirage dry lake.
Doctors are nothing but employees. They say what their employers tell them to say.
Patients? The placebo effect. I already said that.
Are you serious? If you experience a psychotic break while smoking pot, there was already something very seriously wrong with you, or it wasn’t just pot. I don’t know anyone who ever reported anything like that.
People with severe preexisting psychological/mental conditions probably should avoid alcohol too. Should we purport to prohibit that again too?
Marijuana is uniquely dangerous to the mind? If you need to believe that, go ahead.
I do believe in showering, fortunately, as do the vast majority of Americans who use or have used marijuana. Great analogy you’ve got there. Yeah, having to make sense when people call you on spouting insulting inaccurate drivel about tens of millions of harmless people, that must be a real chore for you; you need some relief.
As for all the tens of millions of people using marijuana WITHOUT smoking in public places or otherwise imposing upon you, why would you need to move “upwind” to get relief from them? We rather need blessed relief from the stupid refusal to acknowledge that not all marijuana users are the same — any more than all tobacco addicts are the same or all drinkers are the same.
Many eat rather than smoke marijuana, which can’t possibly cause you to suffer second-handed smoke.
Of those who smoke, most marijuana smokers don’t smoke in other people’s public spaces — which is perhaps why you don’t seem to know any of the tens of millions of American marijuana enthusiasts who aren’t rude and intrusive with their smoking.
PS Normal, tolerant, rational adults know that we need not tolerate people spewing substances into our lungs unnecessarily and against our will. We want rude assholes to get out of our faces with their unwanted tobacco smoke or marijuana smoke in public places that belong to all of us.
We also want the other set of rude, presumptuous assholes — prohibitionists — to butt out of our lives as well, when it comes to what people choose to do in their own homes/businesses.
This is possibly the best comment ever on the daily pot smoker, from drunkard Charles Bukowski. I’ve personally witnessed this a dozen times —
It’s due to increased incidence of depression/uncontrolled chronic stress. All drug use relates to depression, or the precursor, boredom/lack of rich environment. All drugs of misuse elevate levels of free dopamine through various mechanisms. As depression is going to increase because of social collapse, drug use will increase. As unpleasant as chronic pot use is, the alternative is alcoholism or opioidism. The govt should get over itself and focus on antidepressants which are able to elevate free dopamine. MAOIs are good at this because they have a natural ceiling effect, and they reduce oxidative stress caused by MAO. One issue is that many Americans would be too stupid to abide by a small set of restrictions.
You missed my point–were you high when you read my post? LOL. Just kidding-or not.
My analogy comparing potheads to people who don’t bathe was not complaining about pot smoke or the aroma of the smoke. It was to compare the cluelessness of both non-bathers and potheads to ugly reality, and to how they harm others while thinking highly (no pun intended) of themselves.
Illegal drugs, including pot, have damaged our social fabric to an incalculable degree.
“What about alcohol?” you will now predictably whine. Alcohol is different. It just is. It’s been a part of Western civilization forever. Smoking dope for White people has not. That came about in the 1960s. I doubt that 1/2 of 1 % of all Whites smoked it, or even had tried it once, in 1960.
All I know are the results of your “noble experiment”–2023 America. Look around you and see the brave new world.
My experience doesn’t support this. A few days after a person stops, their sharpness returns. The issue is perception because alcohol has a half-life of 2.5 hours, while cannabis and as a whole lasts at least 48 hours. Chronic alcohol causes dementia.
I watch mostly college hockey- we have a good program here in town at UMASS. You’re right that hockey is better live, but the modern big screen devices have made the game much more watchable on TV.
Try to focus;
You implied that German engineering was inferior and that’s why they lost 2 wars.
People that are knowledgeable about history know you are wrong.
Homosexual “marriage” differs from the other issues you cited because of Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution:
“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.”
If Massachusetts wants to allow pot, it doesn’t mean that Texas would have to. Homosexual “marriage” on the other hand would have been forced on all if permitted by just one.
I don’t know about now but I know they flooded Washington to get the sweet gibs and legalish pot.
Cities that promised one pot shop invariably had a plethora within the first year. Every place had at least one. The only down and out street people I didn’t see using pot were those so far down they could only afford the cheapest of meth or opioids. Human wrecks living in blackberry brambles or the old shelters at public parks and the like.
All the rest smelled skunky all the time. Washington has the misfortune of decent weather year round and so while a tent is nice in western Washington, you can survive without one day below 1000-500 feet. It’s a foolish way to live but many choose it. They are a scourge to anywhere they inhabit bringing serious crime and degradation but the law makes it impossible to deal with them. Strangely enough while they infest rural areas with no services, they never seem to bother the richest areas. The laws are the same, but somehow they never settle in the underpasses on Mercer Island or the shrubbery of Broadmoor.
The same pattern wasn’t seen in any other advanced country.
It’s more likely those things are results of the Floyd Movement.
If you learned it from Cheech and Chong it must be true….
The laws are the same, but somehow they never settle in the underpasses on Mercer Island or the shrubbery of Broadmoor.
Somehow. One can’t even speculate about what might be going on, say, with the police forces in wealthy areas….
That’s a pretty narrow category. In the “psychotic behavior,” “shockingly brutal crime” and “braindead homeless zombie” categories, things seem to be much worse. Is marijuana use a factor? Is the use of increasingly higher THC marijuana a factor? I don’t know but people are (finally) starting to ask those questions.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-weed-became-new-oxycontin-marijuana-psychosis-addiction
You are correct, but I hope you understand that the 10th Amend also explains why nobody until Lincoln believed that the federal govt was its own source of organic, meaning ultimate, law giving.
Madison/Jefferson definitely didn’t believe what Lincoln believed or what Lincoln professed when it was convenient. Neither did the legal scholars of the early Republic.
This notion that the people collectively formed the federal government and made it permanent was a later invention. Madison and the founders understood that the people operating in state conventions were the ultimate source of authority (known in legal parlance as ‘organic’ authority) and, as such, could never be impeded in their desire to dissolve their association with the federal govt (the Union) and return to an condition of separate states using the old and historic definitions of such bodies (an state being an independent govt actor beholden and subservient to nobody and no other state). It was only after losing the war that states became subservient to the federal government, counties of the federal government for all intents and purposes. This is why the 10th Amendment is ignored. It is an artifact of an earlier and now archaic understanding of the voluntary union of states forever rendered involuntary by war.
What you think of as a state is, post Lincoln, just a county.
One good thing about alcohol is that, unlike pot, it is a social drug. It tends to make people more outgoing.
Very smart comment thank you.
Whereas potheads turn inwards, “zone out”.
As Steve wrote in mid ‘00s, one of the problems with cannabis is it’s basically middle age in a bong.
Young people nowadays are fat and sedentary enough already
In my own experience I found that the family medicine cabinet and liquor cabinet were the biggest gateways to the use of other drugs. I’m sure I drank alcohol before I tried any other drug. My family medicine cabinet was a treasure trove of amphetamines and barbiturates from which i sampled freely. Hell, for most of the Seventies pharmacology was an avocation. When my sons started to hit adolescence I told them to forget trying to fool me around drugs. I had forgotten more than they would ever know. I know they experimented from time to time but neither one ever went overboard. As for myself, I have not had a drink or used any drugs, except caffeine, an occasional Ambien or Benadryl, for close to thirty five years. To be honest, I don’t miss it. I miss smoking tobacco much more than alcohol or drugs.
Upscale areas typically have private security and don’t rely on cops. (Which is why people living in such places are cool with ‘defund the police’.)
If a bunch of gorillas in expensive suits deal you a beating, what are you going to do about it?
Go to the cops?
Congress ratified an international treaty binding signatories to ban substances deemed illegal drugs, as defined by a UN committee.
Well just look at the autor of this text , everybody should be as healty as him.
I mean just look at him a thin fat ugly jewwhore e begging faggot who is so sucsessfull in so many endeavors in life, just because he dont smoke pot. Lmao
But treaties in no way override the Constitution.
(Think about it from first principles, would the Founders have allowed an end run around all their checks and balances requiring only ratification by the Senate, representatives of the states???)
‘…In any event, can anybody argue in good faith that the marijuana use of the derelicts is any major part of their personal problems? ‘
Yes.