Cannabis

[FredClogs]

Drawing analogues between alcohol and other drugs is a confused debate. There is no doubt alcohol is as or more dangerous than many prohibited drugs but that's not a valid argument to legalize those, i think. It's an argument to possibly take a look at gaining parity between alcohol and E, weed, LSD, cocaine etc (I'd put opiods in a distinct class) but that could be achieved by tightening controls on alcohol as well as by loosening control of other drugs.

[TurboHatchback]

I think it has been established that weed isn't good for you but then so are lots of things and I don't believe that prohibition is the answer. I have never partaken and feel no particular desire to but I would legalise it, tax it and regulate it. If the strength were measured and subject to legal limits then the product would be much less harmful, the tax take would be huge and there would be a legion of other benefits. Weed is so prevalent now that I don't think usage would increase either so I don't see a downside.

Voldemort said:

In addition to the usual reasons for legalisation, let's not forget one of the most obvious and often overlooked.

It's a plant.

Take a long think about that: it's a plant. It grows naturally all over the world.

What if they outlaw broccoli?

I agree with this, banning a plant does seem ridiculous regardless of what effect it has. I'd quite like an ornamental weed plant for the patio despite having no desire to set it on fire and inhale it.

[Astacus]

RichTT said:

It's actually had the opposite effect in the legalised states in the US. But it will be dependent on the taxes. If its profitable people will grow it, the more people grow then the larger the source is and the cheaper it gets. More and more growers are actually going out of business because it is no longer profitable to grow it. There is such a glut of product. If people were given the option to buy non-sanctioned weed from a dude in a smelly little flat over heading to a shop on the street I think that even if its on parity cost-wise people will choose the shop option.

Yeah this is an interesting phenomenon. I bet there were hundreds of people who thought they would make a killing growing weed once it was legalised, but like all commodities, as you say, its all about the price supply demand triangle. I am guessing the massive over supply in this case is triggered by the large number of people who thought it was a very profitable business. I suspect the winners will be those who consolidate and can ride out the early market fluctuations. The price will creep back up once there are a smaller number of suppliers, thats for sure.

I still think there will be a cheap end of the market supplied by weasley little blokes who can "get you stuff" cheaply, but nice middle class stoners will get their stuff on line from a legit distributor

[Shuvi McTupya]

Astacus said:

Yeah this is an interesting phenomenon. I bet there were hundreds of people who thought they would make a killing growing weed once it was legalised, but like all commodities, as you say, its all about the price supply demand triangle. I am guessing the massive over supply in this case is triggered by the large number of people who thought it was a very profitable business. I suspect the winners will be those who consolidate and can ride out the early market fluctuations. The price will creep back up once there are a smaller number of suppliers, thats for sure.

I still think there will be a cheap end of the market supplied by weasley little blokes who can "get you stuff" cheaply, but nice middle class stoners will get their stuff on line from a legit distributor

I am sure growers would need to be licensed and those licenses wont just be given out to anyone.

Theresa Mays husband has an interest in a 45 acre medicinal marijuana 'grow op' and if the story i read is true 'we' export a st load of the stuff.

[Blown2CV]

caned it in teenage years, went off it big time after it nearly sent me mental. It's far from harmless, regardless of what people say.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Blown2CV said:

caned it in teenage years, went off it big time after it nearly sent me mental. It's far from harmless, regardless of what people say.

Out of interest, how long ago are we talking about, was it the super strong stuff that we have now, or the more standard stuff in the 80's?

And how did it nearly send you mental? i always thought i was super mellow but i realised after i stopped smoking all the time that in fact I had been very tightly wound and short tempered in certain situations.

I found lots of situations easier to deal with, without getting annoyed after i stopped.

[Blown2CV]

Shuvi McTupya said:

Blown2CV said:

caned it in teenage years, went off it big time after it nearly sent me mental. It's far from harmless, regardless of what people say.

Out of interest, how long ago are we talking about, was it the super strong stuff that we have now, or the more standard stuff in the 80's?

And how did it nearly send you mental? i always thought i was super mellow but i realised after i stopped smoking all the time that in fact I had been very tightly wound and short tempered in certain situations.

I found lots of situations easier to deal with, without getting annoyed after i stopped.

90s. Extreme paranoia. It was a horrible time of my life but fortunately subsided a few weeks after binning it completely. Never went back really.

Everyone I've known that's done it had a period of enjoying it, followed by a sometimes prolonged period of just using it without real enjoyment, generally reclusively. Most of those had a moment where they just decided to jack it in and all of a sudden they rejoined their social groups, went out and had fun, did things with their life, maybe even got decent career and none of them have gone back. I think it just runs its course.

I reckon I will now get lambasted by people telling they use it and have a normal life, this that and the other... i couldn't really give a st. I saw this happen over and over. It's not often what i would call a dangerous drug (I don't think my experience happens to everyone, but I know a few that it definitely has), but it just seems very commonly sap peoples' life force and turn them into a boring ambitionless hermit.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Blown2CV said:

90s. Extreme paranoia. It was a horrible time of my life but fortunately subsided a few weeks after binning it completely. Never went back really.

Everyone I've known that's done it had a period of enjoying it, followed by a sometimes prolonged period of just using it without real enjoyment, generally reclusively. Most of those had a moment where they just decided to jack it in and all of a sudden they rejoined their social groups, went out and had fun, did things with their life, maybe even got decent career and none of them have gone back. I think it just runs its course.

I reckon I will now get lambasted by people telling they use it and have a normal life, this that and the other... i couldn't really give a st. I saw this happen over and over. It's not often what i would call a dangerous drug (I don't think my experience happens to everyone, but I know a few that it definitely has), but it just seems very commonly sap peoples' life force and turn them into a boring ambitionless hermit.

I think you are mainly correct. If you already have a career you are good at and enjoy, the weed will be less of an issue but if you are just plodding along, then getting stoned will mean that will probably never change.

[Blown2CV]

Shuvi McTupya said:

Blown2CV said:

90s. Extreme paranoia. It was a horrible time of my life but fortunately subsided a few weeks after binning it completely. Never went back really.

Everyone I've known that's done it had a period of enjoying it, followed by a sometimes prolonged period of just using it without real enjoyment, generally reclusively. Most of those had a moment where they just decided to jack it in and all of a sudden they rejoined their social groups, went out and had fun, did things with their life, maybe even got decent career and none of them have gone back. I think it just runs its course.

I reckon I will now get lambasted by people telling they use it and have a normal life, this that and the other... i couldn't really give a st. I saw this happen over and over. It's not often what i would call a dangerous drug (I don't think my experience happens to everyone, but I know a few that it definitely has), but it just seems very commonly sap peoples' life force and turn them into a boring ambitionless hermit.

I think you are mainly correct. If you already have a career you are good at and enjoy, the weed will be less of an issue but if you are just plodding along, then getting stoned will mean that will probably never change.

yea... to be fair i think it mainly happened to people who were at the end of Uni or just after... never really got into the real world. I guess everyone who goes to Uni has a few years where they don't really get into properly sorting their lives out, so maybe it was more to do with that and weed was just the catalyst. I do know some people that never got out of it though and despite being really clever are now doing jobs far beneath them or just generally being committed fkheads.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Blown2CV said:

yea... to be fair i think it mainly happened to people who were at the end of Uni or just after... never really got into the real world. I guess everyone who goes to Uni has a few years where they don't really get into properly sorting their lives out, so maybe it was more to do with that and weed was just the catalyst. I do know some people that never got out of it though and despite being really clever are now doing jobs far beneath them or just generally being committed fkheads.

That pretty much sums me up..i am a serious under achiever but had i buckled down when i was younger i was probably capable of great things . All of a sudden i started to notice that my bosses were ten years younger than me and took things really seriously while I just didn't really care..it was just my day job..

[PBDirector]

Genuine question for the guys with the paranoia arguments - by that point were you smoking quite regularly?

I ask because 19 out of 20 of my uni mates who smoked it did so once a week or something. And they were all fine. The guy who turned into a chillaxed zombie going nowhere was smoking a block of resin a day.

Now, to me that’s like saying the guys who drank a pint on a Sat were fine but the guy drinking a 6 pack every day wasn’t. It doesn’t seem like the problems with the herb, it’s with the person using it... so we should educate and support the vulnerable ones.

[2xChevrons]

Shuvi McTupya said:

I think you are mainly correct. If you already have a career you are good at and enjoy, the weed will be less of an issue but if you are just plodding along, then getting stoned will mean that will probably never change.

I agree - and it goes for using almost any substance to excess, not just weed. If your life is generally in a good place and you've got rewarding things, activities and people filling it, using weed/alcohol/tobacco/whatever just to enhance your enjoyment of the world in whatever way you fancy for a few hours a day, maybe lop the tops of some stress and slightly disassociate from the regular thoughts and routine for a bit is fine. But once you start using it to fill time, suppress thoughts and feelings in the long term and in preference to engaging with the real world then you've got problems. And if you're thrashing around in a bit of post-uni mid-20s quarter-life-crisis and don't have any real focus with your life in the doldrums then weed is an all-too-good way of making none of that really matter. You can fill hours, days and weeks of listless nothing without it really bothering you. It becomes a negative spiral but I believe a lot of the time the situation kick starts the addiction rather than the other way round.

As for the link between weed and psychiatric problems, especially schizophrenia, as far as I know that link has never been clinically proven - there's a correlation but no studies have yet been able to untangle all the surrounding factors, such as people with pre-existing (and often undiagnosed) mental health problems self-medicating with weed (and other drugs), and the fact that many mental illnesses (schizophrenia included) don't fully surface until the brain reaches its adult form in the early/mid 20s - just the sort of time that many people take up weed for the first time. It leads to a lot of "this person was perfectly fine, then smoked weed for three years and their brain melted" anecdotes but the cause/effect is hard to prove.

[vetrof]

Interesting article from the University of New South Wales about the relationship between cannabis and mental health. https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/does-cannabis-c...

[Shuvi McTupya]

PBDirector said:

Genuine question for the guys with the paranoia arguments - .

Sorry i am not really addressing your question but I wonder if a lot of the paranoia is exaggerated due to the fact that you have to be a little bit paranoid when buying and using anything that you can get arrested and potentially have your life ruined for using, even if that substance isn't doing you any harm.

Some people will no doubt let that paranoia take over, because every where they go they have to think about 'do i smell of weed, do i look stoned, have i got anything on me' etc .

Let me just get back home where i am safe..

[designforlife]

The only thing i've ever gotten paranoid about is whether i remembered to get some snacks in.

[Shuvi McTupya]

designforlife said:

The only thing i've ever gotten paranoid about is whether i remembered to get some snacks in.

That is definitely worth getting paranoid about!

[Sten.]

Blown2CV said:

caned it in teenage years, went off it big time after it nearly sent me mental. It's far from harmless, regardless of what people say.

I began to smoke it occasionally about 15 years ago. Stopped when it caused the first panic attack I'd ever had, lost it's appeal after that.

I'm still not against it, and I firmly believe it should be legalised, but the risks/side effects are real and shouldn't be ignored.

[designforlife]

on the flip side of that- i've suffered from anxiety problems since a child, and never touched cannabis until I was north of 30, turns out it's one of the few things that actually helps my anxiety issues.

But, different strokes for different folks at the end of the day.

I had a few panic attacks in my 20s after some fairly major personal events, not fun

[Blown2CV]

Shuvi McTupya said:

PBDirector said:

Genuine question for the guys with the paranoia arguments - .

Sorry i am not really addressing your question but I wonder if a lot of the paranoia is exaggerated due to the fact that you have to be a little bit paranoid when buying and using anything that you can get arrested and potentially have your life ruined for using, even if that substance isn't doing you any harm.

Some people will no doubt let that paranoia take over, because every where they go they have to think about 'do i smell of weed, do i look stoned, have i got anything on me' etc .

Let me just get back home where i am safe..

it absolutely categorically was not that, and i also am not someone with underlying mental health issues already, and i was not someone who would smoke a barrow full either.

[zarjaz1991]

I have never used it.
I never will use it.
I don't want to use it.
I wouldn't know where to buy it.

I have no desire to join what is increasingly becoming a nation of junkies, not just junkies but junkies who are proud to be junkies and seem to think it's something to brag about.

Seems my age group are particularly bad for this and I want no part of it.

I'm quite sure there's a huge number of drugged up drivers on the roads now and that bothers me.