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Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#361

Post by pm90 »

chx wrote: post #294

I have a very simple world view which, I guess, could be considered a radically liberal one: everyone can do as they please as long as it doesn't tread on the same rights of another person. You want to inject, snort or sniff something? Go ahead! It's your body, after all. Neither I, nor any government should have anything to say about this. Obviously, you should not operate a vehicle while intoxicated and we need to…

Because of its popularity and its relatively benign effects. It isn't a drug that will induce addiction or cause long term health damage (well... that we know of). And it certainly seems much less harmful than the other psychoactive drug that we have legalized (alcohol).

But I think popularity is probably the biggest factor. Its when you see your own family/friends' family being destroyed by criminal convictions resulting from marijuana use does it create a strong push to legalize the stuff.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#362

Post by jherdman »

chx wrote: post #294

I have a very simple world view which, I guess, could be considered a radically liberal one: everyone can do as they please as long as it doesn't tread on the same rights of another person. You want to inject, snort or sniff something? Go ahead! It's your body, after all. Neither I, nor any government should have anything to say about this. Obviously, you should not operate a vehicle while intoxicated and we need to…

> why only cannabis?

You've got to start somewhere. Bear in mind legalization didn't pass with sweeping support, the Conservative right is still largely opposed.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#363

Post by DanBC »

RankingMember wrote: post #358
titanix2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ren…

Correlation != causation. Your anecdote could just as well be about surfing (or anything really). I've known people who started surfing and got so into it that they started traveling in a van and talking about surfing all the time, not working or saving money. Should we ban surfboards to prevent this terrible fate? > On the macro-scale, cannabis and others drugs are a big factor that fuels France suburb separatism Do…

It's immensely frustrating when people deny any possible harm that cannabis can cause. We _know_ that cannabis can cause psychotic illness; that cannabis can surface an underlying illness that wouldn't have been a problem with cannabis use; that cannabis can make existing illness worse; that it can be addictive; that it can make violent people perpetrate acts of violence.

Importantly, this denial is counter-productive. It works against efforts to legalise drugs.

Campaigners need to be honest about the negative aspects of drug use, and provide solutions for these - because there are solutions for all of them.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#364

Post by RankingMember »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #284
fredley wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would making it illegal have prevented this?

I'm Canadian and I think legalization is the right choice, but I think there is some dishonesty on both sides, which is doing everyone a disservice. The anti-cannabis people will say it's a "gateway drug" and that it will destroy your life, while some elements on the the pro-cannabis side would have you believe it's some sort of panacea. The reality is that it can cause intense anxiety and paranoia in some people, an…

I agree, but I understand the strategy that was being employed by the pro-legalization crowd to a certain extent. Cannabis had been demonized so thoroughly and for so long that you could say "cannabis is a generally safe substance that should be legal but can have some negative effects" would it would be filtered out to the average non-partaking American ear as "cannabis is dangerous and has negative effects!!!!!"

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#365

Post by dh-g »

sandworm101 wrote: post #338
dmix wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great and underrated point. We were handed a huge economic advantage over the US and other western countries in terms of developing the talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. I know someone involved in the industry in Canada and they flew to Uruguay, the first country to legalise it, to learn from them and create connections. This role will be pioneered by Canada in many ways and it's much differe…

>>...talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. It is a plant, a crop like any other. As a practical matter it is no more difficult than farming apples or corn. (It actually grows wild over much of Ontario.) The only specialized infrastructure is that dictated by regulation. Sure, Canada does have a jump on building out the regulatory infrastructure, but that isn't something we can sell. We aren't going to be e…

Ontario winters are too cold for any wild / feral plants to survive.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#366

Post by jeffdavis »

rtkwe wrote: post #310
refurb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same law that’s been used to prosecute other crimes, the federal govt jurisdiction over interstate commerce. That decision goes back to federal govt controls over wheat prices. Some guy said “i’ll grow what I want, I don’t care about the price controls” and the courts agreed with the twisted logic that it impact interstate commerce, thus they have the power to control it.

The logic in that case isn't really that twisted. One single guy growing more than allowed for personal use won't move the market but if the court ruled in his favor anyone would be able to do the same which would reduce the demand for wheat. If the government has the authority to regulate price controls at the national level control of all supply is kind of required.

A butterfly flapping its wings in China reduces the demand for wheat.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#367

Post by hosh »

sandworm101 wrote: post #338
dmix wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great and underrated point. We were handed a huge economic advantage over the US and other western countries in terms of developing the talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. I know someone involved in the industry in Canada and they flew to Uruguay, the first country to legalise it, to learn from them and create connections. This role will be pioneered by Canada in many ways and it's much differe…

>>...talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. It is a plant, a crop like any other. As a practical matter it is no more difficult than farming apples or corn. (It actually grows wild over much of Ontario.) The only specialized infrastructure is that dictated by regulation. Sure, Canada does have a jump on building out the regulatory infrastructure, but that isn't something we can sell. We aren't going to be e…

It is my understanding that Canada has world-class expertise in greenhouse cultivation of edible crops, including tomatoes. Many of the out-of-season crops, such as tomatoes available to the US comes from Canada (though here in Phoenix, much of that comes from Mexico).

That expertise has also been exported, to people trying to set up greenhouses in Minnesota (US).

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#368

Post by jeffdavis »

int_19h wrote: post #106
jeffdavis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a broad reading? Under what reasonable interpretation of the Constitution does the federal government have the power to tell you not to grow plants on your own property for your own consumption?

Under Wickard v. Filburn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn You can argue that it's not a reasonable interpretation - I would agree with that. But it is a long-standing one, and there are a lot of things that the feds do today that hinge pretty much solely on it - and that includes pet issues for both the left and the right. Just to give one example, aside from enabling the feds to ban weed, Wickard al…

It's totally unreasonable, but I agree with you that it's not going away any time soon.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#369

Post by thatcat »

sandworm101 wrote: post #338
dmix wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great and underrated point. We were handed a huge economic advantage over the US and other western countries in terms of developing the talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. I know someone involved in the industry in Canada and they flew to Uruguay, the first country to legalise it, to learn from them and create connections. This role will be pioneered by Canada in many ways and it's much differe…

>>...talent and infrastructure to support weed sales. It is a plant, a crop like any other. As a practical matter it is no more difficult than farming apples or corn. (It actually grows wild over much of Ontario.) The only specialized infrastructure is that dictated by regulation. Sure, Canada does have a jump on building out the regulatory infrastructure, but that isn't something we can sell. We aren't going to be e…

I'd suggest that it is closer to hops than apples or corn. The primary metabolic end products are volatile oils contained in a flower rather than carbohydrates produced in a fruit/vegetable.

Metabolic engineering via genetic alteration has much more potential here since the types of oils produced can vary significantly, making the biotech aspects of growth more important than conventionally farmed produce.

The growth infrastructure will have to interface with the same plant and will have significant similarities regardless of the scale and accounting requirements you are limited to by regulation.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#370

Post by zachrose »

dalbasal wrote: post #313
zachrose wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drug prohibition has been a categorical failure in every outcome it was intended to achieve. The following flavor of comment has been made many times on HN, but since I’m halfway through Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow I’m in the mood for making it again here: The drug war has been “successful”, because its goal was to incarcerate, disenfranchise, extort, terrorize, and break apart the families of minori…

This is (imo) a terrible failing in our political thinking. We narrate our stories using abstractions & personifications, mixing symbolic and regular language. What we end up is more poetry than anything. It sounds good when it expresses our feelings. This is (to quote Monty python) no basis for a system of government (or thought). What/who's intention was it, that you mention above? Are we talking about actual indiv…

Forgive me for not having more details on hand right now. So far in my reading of her book, Alexander’s thesis has three main prongs of support.

The first is historical. When we look back at Jim Crow, do we say that grandfather clauses and literacy tests were about improving the quality of citizen engagement at the polls? Of course not. Jim Crow was designed to reaffirm a racial hierarchy within the constraints of the new constitutional amendments. Is it inconceivable that we would get policies designed to reaffirm racial hierarchy in the colorblind constraints of the civil rights movement?

The second is rhetorical. What specific appeals did politicians make to support the War on Drugs? What images did they use?

And the third, as a comment below points out, are the results of the drug war. Was it carried out in a racially evenhanded manner?

The War on Drugs is large enough that there can be no smoking gun tape of politicians conspiring to pull one over on society and do the racism again.

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