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Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#201

Post by thinkingemote »

maym86 wrote: post #90
toomanybeersies wrote: post #73

Meanwhile in Britain, the former leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, spoke out and claimed that the war on cannabis had been "irreversibly lost". He was quickly shut down by Theresa May, who categorically ruled out legalisation or even decriminalisation [1]. I don't understand how politicians can stand up and claim that legalisation would have substantial negatives, when every experiment with legalisatio…

Seems like with weed it's just a matter of time but in the case of the conservative government why change it if their older voter base isn't asking for it and a portion of them would have a negative reaction if they did. I guess they think the risk of loosing some of their base is too high. I love the work of David Nutt, who was fired from the role of Government drug advisor in the UK for trying to change the governm…

The only way for it to come is via the medical route channel, as seen in the recent news story. "Think of the poor suffering innocents"

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#202

Post by flukus »

fsloth wrote: post #190
nickik wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it was all about domestic politics then there would have been no reason to to that.

Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation. Once the officials are legally bound to do something, they will start doing their business as effectively as possible, including, perhaps, feeding back the message to the higher ups that they need international co-operation. The higher ups cannot say "we don't care" because that would immediately politically de-legitimize the drugwar effort. Hence, all polici…

> Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation.

You're not wrong (well you arebecause even that doesn't work), but things like cannabis are entirely domestic so no international cooperation required. The harder stuff typically originated from places that weren't close American allies so our cooperation wasn't particularly important.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#203

Post by brandonsometig »

trixie_ wrote: post #56
elchief wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states that age is a factor and children and teens are at risk. Marijuana age of consent is 19

If you read any weed forum you’ll find endless posts of people who can’t smoke anymore because it causes paranoia and panic attacks. Same with me, used to be fun and now it causes anxiety. There are definitely some long term effects and changes to the brain that have not been sufficiently studied. Luckily it will be much easier now to do those studies.

Could be because of the insane THC levels in street cannabis. At least if it was legalised it could be regulated to be under a certain level.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#204

Post by thinkingemote »

teekert wrote: post #152

Funny story: I'm from the Netherlands and was 15 and on vacation in France. All the kids smoked weed, which they got in the harbor. They were surprised I never did it because it was legal in the Netherlands, all I could say was that you had to be 18 to get it so I couldn't get it.

Is the a cultural difference with Dutch people? Are they more, lets say, level headed or pragmatic in nature compared to their French neighbours?

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#205

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

jjgreen wrote: post #199
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a (former? never say never) injecting drug user of Heroin, methamphetamine, and quite a few other water soluble substances, I fully agree with the parent comment. I never bothered getting addicted to Heroin. You have to stick to the rules: never use more than two days in a row and don’t use it consistently, if in doubt half your dose, and never use alone but always with at least one other who knows how to administ…

Sensible and honest advice like this saves lives

Yes! And it works in practice:

A friend overdose in my loungeroom one evening. He’d taken a lot of Valium, a little bit of a alcohol, and then half the heroin I sold him. After a 15 minute argument he took the rest of the Heroin. I tried to tell him he’d already taken some but couldn’t remember.

Anyway, he started going a bit blue: Cyanosis. Became progressively and rapidly more difficult for him to speak and stay alert.

Called the ambulance, put him in the stable side position, watched his breathing, he was ok. Ambulance arrived, started administering breathing assistance and naltrexone. They commented he required a lot of naltrexone. He came to, they took him to hospital for observation over night. I rode with him in the ambulance and sat with him in hospital for a few hours.

No long term harm. Still friends, and I like to joke he owes me his life.

Friends don’t let friends die from overdosing on opiates.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#206

Post by amarant »

mseebach wrote: post #184
iDemonix wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was quickly shut down by Theresa May, who categorically ruled out legalisation or even decriminalisation [1]. Britain is the biggest exporter of Cannabis in the world. The 90-acre farm in the UK is owned by British Sugar, which is owned by the husband of the UK's Drugs Minister (facepalm). Second to that, Theresa May's husband works at a firm that is the largest investor in... you guessed it, British Sugar. Why…

Yeah, well it's either that, or the significantly simpler explanation that involves very simple electoral maths: the tories are going to get exactly 0 voters to cross over on this policy, but tons of core tory voters might stay home on election day.

this is the problem with our current implementation of democracy. it's more of a popularity contest than it is about doing whats right & best. It's bloody hard to think of an alternative that would work better in this front, while also avoiding risks of turning into a dictatorship, though.

hopefully someone smarter than me can think of a way.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#207

Post by alex_hitchins »

mseebach wrote: post #184
iDemonix wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was quickly shut down by Theresa May, who categorically ruled out legalisation or even decriminalisation [1]. Britain is the biggest exporter of Cannabis in the world. The 90-acre farm in the UK is owned by British Sugar, which is owned by the husband of the UK's Drugs Minister (facepalm). Second to that, Theresa May's husband works at a firm that is the largest investor in... you guessed it, British Sugar. Why…

Yeah, well it's either that, or the significantly simpler explanation that involves very simple electoral maths: the tories are going to get exactly 0 voters to cross over on this policy, but tons of core tory voters might stay home on election day.

I don't know. A lot of Tory voters today will have medical complaints and be informed enough about medical cannabis to want to try it. Recreational use would be nice, but I'd be less angry with the world if we got medicinal use through. Theresa May by categorically denying recreational use doesn't just show she is doing her job badly, it shows how much she is out of touch with people. Add to this her apology about Grenfell and not being sad enough.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#208

Post by titanix2 »

stabbles wrote: post #154
teekert wrote: post #152

Funny story: I'm from the Netherlands and was 15 and on vacation in France. All the kids smoked weed, which they got in the harbor. They were surprised I never did it because it was legal in the Netherlands, all I could say was that you had to be 18 to get it so I couldn't get it.

It's not legal, it's tolerated in law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gedogen )

I which it isn’t. I’ve seen a high school friend falling into that gradually: he started speaking about cannabis to the point it became its only topic of conversation. Then of course he hanged only with people with similar interest. He became weird during the breaks and needed to smoke something, anything. After that when I went to the university he became a small dealer. He got enough money from that activity to rent an apartment and buy all the newest gaming consoles. So he didn’t project himself into the future: no studies, no saving. He finally got into debt because of his girlfriend not paying her part of the rent. Sad story because it was not a dumb guy but the addiction makes him made very bad life choices.

On the macro-scale, cannabis and others drugs are a big factor that fuels France suburb separatism and in some case finance terror attacks. Sorhere is a need for a real prohibition or for a legalization to stop this underground economy.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#209

Post by tome »

iDemonix wrote: post #165
toomanybeersies wrote: post #73

Meanwhile in Britain, the former leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, spoke out and claimed that the war on cannabis had been "irreversibly lost". He was quickly shut down by Theresa May, who categorically ruled out legalisation or even decriminalisation [1]. I don't understand how politicians can stand up and claim that legalisation would have substantial negatives, when every experiment with legalisatio…

> He was quickly shut down by Theresa May, who categorically ruled out legalisation or even decriminalisation [1]. Britain is the biggest exporter of Cannabis in the world. The 90-acre farm in the UK is owned by British Sugar, which is owned by the husband of the UK's Drugs Minister (facepalm). Second to that, Theresa May's husband works at a firm that is the largest investor in... you guessed it, British Sugar. Why…

And if they did want to legalise it someone else could use exactly the same evidence in the opposite direction! "Of course she wants to legalise it. Her husband owns the cannabis farm!"

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#210

Post by r3bl »

koyote wrote: post #200
fsloth wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is a very US centric view but the war on drugs is very international." US basically dictates global policies in the block of countries not part of the soviet sphere of influence during the cold war. US defends it's position in the global community using every trick and leverage available. If something is illegal in the US you can be quite assured they will try to apply leverage to make it illegal everywhere els…

Although the US has a lot of influence on international culture and laws the above is simply not really true. Drug laws in Europe vary wildly between countries, with places like Portgual decriminalising even hard drugs and places like the Netherlands having an open culture when it comes to buying and consuming cannabis and other 'less hard' drugs. Then of course there's the big difference in laws when it comes to dri…

Another point of view is recently-introduced SESTA. It was a law intended to stop sex trafficing in the US. Seems like a nice bill, right?

Well, as a direct consequence of it, sites like Backpage got shut down and reddit banned loads and loads of communities that were used by sex workers in countries across Europe where sex work is as legal as it can get. Sex workers were simply cut off of their usual ways of communicating between each other and attracting customers because of a law in the US.

And the reason that the Netherlands always gets mentioned when talking about soft drugs is because it decriminalized marihuana decades ago. In reality, the way they did that was very impractical and open to loopholes that were commonly abused by the coffee shops. Dutch laws on drugs, at their current state, are way worse then the laws in places where marihuana was decriminalized recently. The reason for that is the pressure from the neighbors, because the ability to buy and grow larger quantities + open borders = more work for Belgium and Germany.

Let's compare Canada and the Netherlands. Canada: you can grow 4 plants and have up to 30 grams with you for recreational use. The Netherlands: you can grow 2 plants and have up to 5 grams with you at all times. In the Netherlands, these restrictions also apply to the supply side, so coffee shops operate mostly in a shady gray area. In Canada, they're introducing licensed supply chain.

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