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Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

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231–240 of 342 posts

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#231

The really interesting studies will be longitudinal IMO. It's almost certainly not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking marijuana is harmless. Should also be interesting to see what marijuana culture develops when the entire country is allowed to consume it legally.

> It's almost certainly not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking marijuana is harmless. it is known not to be harmless. it can cause cardiovascular issues. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2006.08.001

Probably not if you eat it, though.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#232
post #47

How Canada interfaces with the rest of the world promises to be a bit screwy. For just one example, consider airline staff. Some Canadian airlines have already banned employees from using pot. Obviously, the general public doesn't want to fly with pilots that are high in more than one way. These airlines also have to operate in countries, like the U.S., where their employees could be detained or expelled for even adm…

Will it be terribly different than how US states that have legalized marijuana interface with federal governmental entities? Plenty of folks in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, some of the New England States, and California work for the federal government and have to tell them that they do not use marijuana. Similar with airline pilots, etc based out of these States.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#233
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Munchies can be about eating anything. Just make sure you got plenty of fruits and veggies or go for a long session of oral sex. Nobody ever got in bad shape for eating a full bag of baby cut carrots or a whole tray of peaches.

Wow. One of those things is not like the other...

What's wrong with the tray of peaches :P

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#234
post #47

How Canada interfaces with the rest of the world promises to be a bit screwy. For just one example, consider airline staff. Some Canadian airlines have already banned employees from using pot. Obviously, the general public doesn't want to fly with pilots that are high in more than one way. These airlines also have to operate in countries, like the U.S., where their employees could be detained or expelled for even adm…

> On the bright side, we could finally get some quality data on the health impacts of pot Doesn't this already exist from other countries where it's been legal for decades?

> Doesn't this already exist from other countries where it's been legal for decades?

There is no other country in the world where marijuana has been legal for decades.

However, that doesn't mean that research into the effects of marijuana doesn't happen, including in the U.S. Marijuana is actually one of the most well-studied drugs in existence - we have a much clearer understanding of the short- and long-term effects of marijuana than we do of almost every commercially-produced pharmaceutical on the market.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#235
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not in free speech etc. What's your source on this? Free speech is enshrined as a "fundamental freedom" in the Charter. There are reasonable limits as well, to ensure that things like hate speech are deemed illegal.

I've met a number of people (all American, so I infer it's due to some American news sources) that believe Canadians are arrested on a regular basis for flimsy and arbitrary claims of hate speech, and those arrests are political. The same people tend to believe we wait six months and probably die before getting cancer treatment because of our socialized medical system. So chalk it up to Canada being used in the parti…

It's definitely our media not on the side of citizens. How many lies do your hear about your health care system?

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#236

The really interesting studies will be longitudinal IMO. It's almost certainly not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking marijuana is harmless. Should also be interesting to see what marijuana culture develops when the entire country is allowed to consume it legally.

It certainly isn't completely harmless, very few things are. Subjective perspective - smoking is really bad, can be dramatically improved with good vaping but its still harmful. One of the great side effects of legalization - health-conscious people have less damaging options for consumption. Eliminated by eating the material, but then effects are a bit different. There have been some rumors on lower sperm count/lowe…

I frequently hear teenagers and young adults say things like 'Cannabis is harmless', 'not as bad as alcohol', etc.

The issue here is the initial research consistently shows us the opposite - frequent cannabis use appears to cause developmental delay and may cause _irreversible_ mental illness in adolescents that is in at least one case worse than alcohol.

Let's take Schizophrenia as an example:

  Increased Risk of Schizophrenia from Alcohol and drugs:

  Cannabis: 5.2 times
  Alcohol: 3.4 times
  Hallucinogenic drugs: 1.9 times
  Sedatives: 1.7 times
  Amphetamines: 1.24 times
  Other substances: 2.8 times 
source: http://schizophrenia.com/?p=793

Direct link to study - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...

Since the brain doesn't fully develop until 25 I don't disagree that alcohol and other legal substances are dangerous for adolescents but from the initial research we are seeing Cannabis is in some cases more damaging than alcohol and requires further study.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#237
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not in free speech etc. What's your source on this? Free speech is enshrined as a "fundamental freedom" in the Charter. There are reasonable limits as well, to ensure that things like hate speech are deemed illegal.

I've met a number of people (all American, so I infer it's due to some American news sources) that believe Canadians are arrested on a regular basis for flimsy and arbitrary claims of hate speech, and those arrests are political. The same people tend to believe we wait six months and probably die before getting cancer treatment because of our socialized medical system. So chalk it up to Canada being used in the parti…

You can chalk it up to Jordan Peterson and his fanboys insisting that white men are the most oppressed group in this upside down new world we live in. That segment really likes to paint Canada as the thought-police boogie man.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost certainly not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking marijuana is harmless. it is known not to be harmless. it can cause cardiovascular issues. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2006.08.001

Probably not if you eat it, though.

i suggest perusing the bibliography before you get your hopes up.

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#239
post #136
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Canada is leading in personal freedoms", perhaps in weed laws, not in free speech etc.

Any examples in regards to free speech?

A somewhat entertaining one is that a business in Quebec cannot have an English-only sign on their business; the sign must have French, and French must be more prominent than English[1]. Zooming out a little bit to the Canadian Charter, there's two significant pieces that are relevant:

- the limitations clause: "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

- the notwithstanding clause: (too long to paste but here's Wikipeida's summary): "The Parliament of Canada, a provincial legislature or a territorial legislature may declare that one of its laws or part of a law applies temporarily ("notwithstanding") countermanding sections of the Charter, thereby nullifying any judicial review by overriding the Charter protections for a limited period of time"[2]

Basically, we have "freedom of speech", but it's not an absolute right, it's limited by "reasonable limits" (as decided by the courts). Further, even if the courts decide that some kind of provincial law violates the charter, the province can invoke the Notwithstanding Clause and continue enforcing the law. I'd argue that, in general, this all works out pretty well, but it's not really that strong of protection relative to the American Constitution.

[1] https://www.educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/language-laws-and-doi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

Re: Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know

#240
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of "monster under the bed" psychology used by opponents of this stuff, same happened with gay marriage. It's an exploitation of information asymmetry basically, most people simply don't have time to really look into details of everything, so the default "safe" position is generally seen to be the status quo unless they personally experience something wrong (either themselves or via part of their close s…

You mean pot is safe, Muslims are not waiting to kill me on every corner, and if a homosexual person looks at me I won't catch AIDS? What about that healthcare thing? I heard free healthcare will turn me into a communist.

>>I heard free healthcare will turn me into a communist. God, if that's the case I would have been campaigning twice as hard to get it in place!
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