91–100 of 165 posts
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I suspect that legalisation of weed is going to be a blip in history and they'll heavily tax it to phase it out. It just doesn't make sense to encourage people to breathe in smoke.
Marijuana is a drug that encourages people to be less political active(the "laziness" effect) . I would think governments would like such a thing in politically unstable times.
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Everything other than the education component seems inherently wasteful to me. Is there a way to see that these funds are reallocated going forward? Edit: public health could be alright, but there's no way to tell at this level of specification. It would be great to see some improvement in mental health services, for instance.
Seriously? Without even knowing the details you are able to conclude this is wasteful? In what universe is addiction treatment and police wasteful? I get that not all police are good and corruption exists but try living in a place without a functioning police force and then call it a waste.
Well, I do actually know some of the details concerning what gets filed under those categories, and I see instances of significant waste. I've also traveled extensively in less predictable parts of the world, and have had experiences in the U.S. that I wish had been mitigated by a capable law enforcement effort. But on the measure, I am still in favor of a more focused and constrained police presence.
Also based on observation, I feel that the breadth of activities that may be referred to as 'addiction treatment' is disconcerting. I do support programs that can be shown to actually help people, of course.
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are you seriously proposing making something illegal because you don't like how it smells?
That's clearly what I have proposed. Let's ignore the decades of research that clearly indicates that smoke produced from burning any form of cigarette is carcinogenic and triggers allergy symptoms and complications caused by chronic illnesses like Athsma in others. It takes a certain level of inconsideration to sit there and cause other people to breathe smoke. How much would it impact someone, say yourself, to kill…
when i was 12 i was sledding in a park and an overwhelming smell of cigar smoke came over me. i found the guy and asked him to stop smoking because it bothered me, he said "get out of here kid". when i was 12, it felt unjust. today, i consider myself audacious and inconsiderate for even asking.
>> And here I thought this wasn't /., reddit, or 4chan. Wrong.
likewise
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>The deleterious health effects of cigarette smoke is the burning plant matter... I don't think you can say that at all. Of course burning plant matter produces carcinogens, but studies of marijuana smokers haven't found any conclusive evidence of greatly increased cancer risk. There have been some studies that show that smoking tobacco and marijuana together increases cancer risk beyond that of tobacco alone. Smokel…
> studies of marijuana smokers haven't found any conclusive evidence of greatly increased cancer risk There is epidemiological evidence that marijuana smoking is associated with lung cancer. "Greatly" is subjective so I can't really comment on that.
"findings from a limited number of well-designed epidemiological studies do not suggest an increased risk for the development of either lung or upper airway cancer from light or moderate use, although evidence is mixed concerning possible carcinogenic risks of heavy, long-term use,"
"In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared to the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco."
By greatly, I meant as bad as tobacco which dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer.
The previous poster was commenting on the health risks of tobacco being caused entirely by burning plant matter. However, the evidence suggests this isn't true.
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> Supply is pretty low because the only companies who have licenses are medical marijuana companies that already had a license, more companies will become licensed soon. It's also a high risk business. You might invest millions on growing a crop only for the Federal administration to change policies in a few years and come in and blowtorch your crop.
Why would they blowtorch it? Them there wouldn't be any evidence for the Federal indictment.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/22/feds-destroy-1-billion-in-...
http://calcoastnews.com/2011/07/feds-raid-sanger-pot-farm-de...
Either way, you won't get it back and your investment is gone.
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>I think the concern was that we're just replacing illegal cartels with legal cartels. If that means fewer bear traps and less rat poison in our national parks, it's a win as far as I'm concerned. >Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from…
Am I reading that correctly? You are saying that poor people are stupid?
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>I think the concern was that we're just replacing illegal cartels with legal cartels. If that means fewer bear traps and less rat poison in our national parks, it's a win as far as I'm concerned. >Second, vice taxes tend to be regressive, the poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes. Some of the "education lotteries" (state lotteries that benefit education) are basically mechanisms for transferring wealth from…
Buying a lottery ticket is no more irrational than buying a movie ticket. It buys you a little thrill -- the possibility that you may become rich.
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I don't believe it will be quite the same. Big Tobacco really profits off the fact that most people can't grow tobacco year round, and thus must purchase it at some point throughout the year. That basic fact is what ensures those companies never die. Tobacco was always grown outdoors, and there was never a need to research how to cultivate it clandestinely, be it indoors or small numbers. On the other hand, pot can b…
As far as easy to grow, I don't know, I don't have the greenest thumb in the world, but it's been pretty darn hard for me. Then if you start talking about real quality, as far as I've seen from some documentaries, it requires a lot of dedication and knowledge to get the kind of quality that I'd smoke consistently. I guess my point is, practically speaking, I see 99% of people still buying it even if it's totally lega…
You can grow your own tomatoes, too, but most people don't, and even those that do usually recover from the gardening bug after two or three seasons.
Also, I expect commercial growers will start using GMO and hybrids. You may in fact be unable to grow your favorite variety of pot because you can't get ahold of viable seeds for the strain you want.
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> Consuming marijuana in edible or vapor form possesses no risk of cancer. I would like to see a citation of a study that is powered to detect population-level effects which demonstrates that claim. As an aside, I'd also like to see solid data on vapor form tobacco. There is not a definitive study at this point to demonstrate safety or clearly delineate the risk. It would be nice the be able to give meaningful guidan…
I've been in the vapor scene for a while, I'm starting to hear a few horror stories about liquid build up in the lungs. My guess is over use but its something to watch for. Regarding pot not causing lung cancer I can't really argue, emphasima on the other hand is a very real thing. While this is anecdotal, my mother is a nurse in a country town where there are a lot of weed only life long smokers and most of the old…
That may be true, but how much does your average pot smoker actually smoke in a day? My dad was a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker, which is forty cigarettes. I have yet to run into someone who smokes four cigarettes worth of pot in a day, and while I'm sure they must exist from what I can see the average is more like an amount similar to the tobacco you'd find in a quarter of a cigarette.
So let's do some back of the envelope math Colorado: 5,268,367 people (2013 est.) Pot Tax Revenues: $98 million That's $18.60 per person. Assuming demand is constant across the U.S. (which is probably not true, but let's go with it) U.S. population: 317,580,230 (current est.) That's $5,906,992,278 in tax revenues for the entire country. 2014 is expected to be even bigger. So what could the nation do with $6 billion+…
It turns out that the tax benefits pale in comparison to the slight reduction in car accidents caused by drunk drivers (because pot use seems to displace alcohol use.)