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One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

latimes.com

161–170 of 170 posts

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is nothing that stops the federal US government from throwing someone in jail for growing / transporting / using / processing payment for marijuana." I always wondered about that. Has there been any chatter about someone trying to get a federal court to nullify the law? I have no idea how that can work.

> Has there been any chatter about someone trying to get a federal court to nullify the law? I have no idea how that can work. The US has signed up to a treaty that requires us to treat marijuana as an illegal controlled substance. That requires an explicit act of Congress to abrogate, and no court is going to find otherwise.

> The US has signed up to a treaty that requires us to treat marijuana as an illegal controlled substance. That requires an explicit act of Congress to abrogate, and no court is going to find otherwise.

It probably should, but you may be wrong about the weight of legal opinion: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/donald-trump-can-unila...

In any case, the relevant treaty is not self-executing, and there is no mechanism to force Congress to criminalize drugs if it chooses not to even without explicitly abrogating (or even the President unilaterally disavowing) the treaty. Foreign countries could try to bring a case against the US before the ICJ, but even if successful, that wouldn't actually force changes to domestic law.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's neighbors to the north both have 1500+ establishments. Oregon isn't exactly big, but due to massive overproduction and no sales tax prices in Oregon are approaching sister crops like hop. Wtf is going on in California.

> Wtf is going on in California. Forreal. As someone in Canada watching the weed thing play out, my prediction is that Cali would legalize and then utterly dominate. Like the medical and recreational stuff is there, the weather is great for growing stuff, including weed, and with 40 million people -- more than all of Canada -- there is a huge base of investment capital and consumers to pull from. Why isn't California…

I believe the current limit in California is a 1 acre parcel - that's in effect until 2023. Many counties in California still don't allow cultivation at all. If you look at the licenses that are being granted (public database), you'll see that none of the Southern California counties are even granting those 1 acre outdoor permits.

There's probably other reasons as well, but this might be part of it.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't want any kind of smoke in public places? I know I'm well into the minority on this one, but I think it's antisocial behavior to smoke anything where the general public will catch so much as a whiff of it and the people who knowingly do it are jerks, but for some reason this is very normalized behavior. I'm not anti-drug though; smoke whatever you want cloistered away from the public.

> What if I don't want any kind of smoke in public places? Then you can stay at home.

everybody gets so easily triggered now.

let them. I really don't give a shit if people think smoking weed in public is antisocial behavior lol

you aint seen nothing yet

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco causes cancer through Tobacco-specific nitrosamines generated during curing and burning. It’s not simply a matter of burning leaves.

That is debatable; burning leaves or burning anything can mess you up with extended amounts of exposure. Firefighters have above-average rates of cancer, including lung cancer. This suggests that inhaling lots of smoke from ANYTHING on the regular isn't good for you. Example: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/cancer-biggest-killer-...

Burning leaves is no more harmful than deodorants.

Burning known and non debatable evidence of toxic chemicals in tobacco leaves harvest curing.

Marijuana comes out ahead.

So much misinformation about drugs. Heroin is safer than alcohol if moderately consumed. Addiction wise, not so great. but Tobacco is said to be harder to quit than heroin.

I can attest to that.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's neighbors to the north both have 1500+ establishments. Oregon isn't exactly big, but due to massive overproduction and no sales tax prices in Oregon are approaching sister crops like hop. Wtf is going on in California.

> Wtf is going on in California. Forreal. As someone in Canada watching the weed thing play out, my prediction is that Cali would legalize and then utterly dominate. Like the medical and recreational stuff is there, the weather is great for growing stuff, including weed, and with 40 million people -- more than all of Canada -- there is a huge base of investment capital and consumers to pull from. Why isn't California…

California has had a leading role in the black market trade for decades. It’s the legal framework that has been out of sync.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#166
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell me about it. I openly smoke marijuana in public places. Why? It's a LOT LESS HARMFUL THAN SECOND HAND TOBACCO. I see uninformed parents scowling at me for blowing marijuana smoke away from them while they are smoking cigarettes infront of their kids. Anyways, if you see a guy smoking weed around Robson square, that's me.

What if I don't want any kind of smoke in public places? I know I'm well into the minority on this one, but I think it's antisocial behavior to smoke anything where the general public will catch so much as a whiff of it and the people who knowingly do it are jerks, but for some reason this is very normalized behavior. I'm not anti-drug though; smoke whatever you want cloistered away from the public.

then you should stay home, where no toxic fumes from cars, buildings, factories, cigarette smoker and airborne virus can affect you.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right it is an outlier and some would say not ideal. It is transparently a breakdown of rule of law into realpolitik given constraints and the redundant levels of powers - from what is fundamentally bad law and consistent failure to respond to facts on the ground. It brings to mind the old bit of legal philosophy about unenforceable laws breeding contempt for the law in general. The Federal government can tec…

While I don't disagree with much of what you said, your characterization of schedule 1 generally is factually incorrect. There is still testing of schedule 1 substances; as of 2017 there were more than 590 researchers registered to study schedule 1 substances. Both THC and CBD have been approved for medicinal uses (Marinol and Epidiolex respectively).

Yet the whole reason medical marijuana 'broke out' of doctor control in California was the DEA threatening to arrest any doctor who wrote a prescription for it. So it went off of something other than the prescription of a registered doctor undermining their point with their zeal.

Schedule 1 substance research has long had far more 'propaganda machine' orientation than science orientation however with the agenda transparently reflected in studies.

All of the giving spiders drugs studies to look at their webs while it may have some slight neurological value ignored the bleeding obvious with some examples like the 'caffeine' webs.

http://www.learning-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/spid...

Of course those webs looked sparse, caffeine is a known neurotoxin to insects! That is why plants produce it in the first place and spiders wouldn't even have much reason to develop a resistance given most species have a carnivorous diet, their prey would have more of a reason to and prey that is dying of neurotoxin would be far less likely to survive to land in their web. Perhaps caffeine's inclusion among the study was a snide point on someone's part about the applicability of spider models to vertebrates.

Meanwhile they knew about MDMA use therapeutically yet it took to the 10's to start using it for PTSD again in clinical trials. Sorry lost generations of veterans - there was another war for you to be a casualty of.

It is still having politicians try to practice science - and I'm not sure how applicable those two are when they were dragged from them kicking and screaming essentially. It is still a political process instead of a scientific one.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#168
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't want any kind of smoke in public places? I know I'm well into the minority on this one, but I think it's antisocial behavior to smoke anything where the general public will catch so much as a whiff of it and the people who knowingly do it are jerks, but for some reason this is very normalized behavior. I'm not anti-drug though; smoke whatever you want cloistered away from the public.

I personally hate the stench of weed. Prohibition is good because people think twice before making an entire street reek just because they want to get high.

i dont know what part of earth you are from

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which treaty is that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... This was the first result for both “drugs treaty” and “Narcotics treaty”.

Although the treaty does seem to be pretty clearly prohibitionist, there is some debate (covered under "Possession for personal use", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...) as to whether or not the treaty requires member states to prohibit possession for personal use.

Re: One year into legal pot sales California doesn’t have expected bustling industry

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States can choose to do things that the federal government explicitly does not allow Not true at all. Take slavery, for one obvious example.

Parent post is correct. GP is incorrect. Constitutional Federal law trumps State law. See the Supremacy Clause. It's why actions at the Federal level normatively should be thought through and constructed extremely well. It obliges everyone to play by those rules once passed. In reality however, realpolitik tends to limit Federal reach.

Yeah, I meant Constitutional law trumps state law but states can also decide to keep doing it, betting that the federal government won't bother to enforce.
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