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Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#401

Post by alacombe »

GhostVII wrote: post #261
alacombe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit, the RCMP has been pretty active here in BC to close illegal "dispensaries". By all likelyhood, this won't stop after this bill, as I trust the liberals to have properly secured weed's distribution. "Depenalization" would have been 10x better than this "legalization".

Just because they are closing places that sell weed, doesn't mean it is illegal, just controlled. Alcohol is legal, but the Ontario government is still going to close down any store selling it without authorization.

I guess you are an easterner not minding to have the government step in their everyday lives.

This is a problem with weed as there is a pretty solid underground distribution network. If the price for legal weed stay lower than "legal" weed (because of the tax and all the administrative bs), then criminal orgs will keep making plenty of profit, rendering the bill essentially pointless. I don't want a fancy multi-million dollar weed tasting store, or ponder for hours if a 1985 indica is better with red meet than a 1992 sativa. I just want my ounce and be left in peace.

The liberals have grossly misunderstood the consumer population...

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#402

Post by _ugfj »

olalonde wrote: post #317
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…

That's also typically the libertarian position (e.g. there shouldn't be victimless crimes).

If you mean Ayn Rand style libertarianism I refuse that. I also believe we should have a society that works together and helps the less fortunate.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#403

Post by bitL »

AngryData wrote: post #399
bitL wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have many problems caused by alcohol and cigarettes, costing taxpayers billions in unnecessary expenses. I get it, people need to escape reality they live in. We know that some weed smokers end up schizophrenic and that in general smoking weed weakens one's will, so in many cases we end up with grown up children going only after the things attainable by easiest efforts. There are also some legit medical us…

Smokers at least, and im sure it would also apply to alcohol abusers, actually costs less money because they die much faster and easier (conveniently usually just before retirement age), they are offered less health treatment options overall because of their smoking, and they miss out on the most expensive healthcare, old age care when you need two hips, two knees, and 30 medications a day. The idea that smokers cost…

Alright, I was under impression that a typical mid-term oncological care often needed for heavy smokers is still very expensive - were there any recent pricing adjustments?

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#404

Post by iaml »

bitL wrote: post #396
iaml wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view is justified and valid, but have you considered what happens to those same people you care so much about now? They just get some from street, and it's not only impossible to reliably notify them of any danger, they risk incarceration afterwards as well. That's not mentioning questionable quality of street drugs and substance lottery. You might be tempted to say that without legislation population exposure t…

It's difficult to figure out proper approach, I agree. However, there also must be a strong negative reinforcement for the sake of learning - e.g. inserting one's hand into hot flowing lava should scar one both physically and mentally so that this person and anyone seeing them doesn't attempt the same. I know a guy who was fairly smart and decided to take LSD at university in his "teaching assistant" room, and make n…

I was born in a pretty rough city of a pretty rough country and it was a popular past-time for my peers to get a hold of some non-prescription meds and overdose on them hard to catch a glimmer of a trip. I'm sure a lot of them damaged their mental & physical health doing that. If those exact drugs were illegal nothing would change, except the label of the drug. I think stopping people by law is pretty pointless and highly ineffective, so maybe alternatives are better.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#405

Post by bambataa »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #205
jjgreen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

Doesn’t that show how much easier it is to overdose on heroin than alcohol?

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#406

Post by ta1234567890 »

3131s wrote: post #307
ta1234567890 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really, name a European country where I won't be jailed for having even an ounce of cocaine? Spain. A couple of years ago I was in Madrid and went out to a bar with some friends. One of them tells me to come outside with him, then he proceeds to prepare some cocaine lines on the roof of a random car parked on the street right outside the bar. When he's about to snort them, some normal looking guys approach us (…

For an ounce though? I picked that amount because it's not a lot, but it is generally considered to be more than a "personal use" amount. You're best bet in the US getting caught with that much or more is to just get robbed by the cops, which actually happens all the time.

Have no idea how much my friend was carrying in terms of weight, didn't have a scale with me. Also, it would have probably been in grams not in whatever weird units you guys use in the US.

Jokes aside, it's confusing the way you used the expression "an ounce", given that "an ounce of" something is usually used to express just "a bit of" something.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#407

Post by PhasmaFelis »

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…

There's a lot more to the weed market than just plant, harvest, sell. When I was in Seattle, the legal weed stores often stocked close to a hundred different strains of the plant alone, plus a huge array of food, candy, beverages, accessories, etc. Selecting your inventory and dealing with suppliers takes knowledge and skill, just like managing a grocery chain.

A street dealer who may, on a good day, have half a dozen random strains available may have a small head start, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#408

Post by workinthehead »

yodsanklai wrote: post #265
ada1981 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment is correct. It’s not even a controversial position, as it’s been stated publically by the people who crafted and implemented the legislation that this was the stated aim. And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. This cognitive censorship is something to be outraged about - flies directly in the face of the Establishment Clause of the first Amem…

> And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. I know it's a common meme on HN but I find it hard to believe that the whole world decided to ban cannabis just because the US wanted to. It may have been a contributing/deciding factor in some places but there must be more to it.

The world follows the US in all kinds of arenas, often because the US strongarms them into it.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#409

Post by gwerbret »

mmt wrote: post #142

One of the topics that hasn't yet been mentioned (which surprises me, especially for HN), which I believe I saw originally when this legalization was still merely being proposed was how it would affect medical/pharmaceutical research. With such national legalization, an entire developed nation (with relatively diverse genetic backgrounds, even) will be open to clinical trials. Besides finally providing ammunition to…

It turns out that cannabis is, and has been, extensively researched for years, in Canada and elsewhere (researchers could apply for special access). Thanks to this work, we know that there is one, exactly one robust, reliable clinical application of a cannabis chemical that stands out: to treat otherwise hard-to-treat childhood epilepsies. The chemical responsible for this is cannabidiol, which is the most abundant non-psychoactive molecule found in the cannabis plant. The other tested clinical applications include pain relief (works great for some people against some types of pain, continually fails clinical trials in most types of pain, not better than the standard of care), nausea relief (not better than the standards of care), sleep (very variable and low quality clinical data from multiple trials), inflammation (very variable and low quality clinical data from multiple trials) and headache (very variable data, etc). Most of this work has been done on the various non-psychoactive chemicals in cannabis, popular and otherwise, since tetrahydrocannabinol is kind of useless at clinically-relevant doses.

I think we'll find out in a few years that most of the hype around cannabis is just, well, hype.

Re: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use

#410

Post by nomocrypto »

gardnr wrote: post #99
drb91 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree FWIW, but I suspect capitalists would be fine discriminating blindly against all colors of a lower class. Race has always been an effective means to this end in America: if the people feeding your wallet are at each other’s throat, they might not notice who’s pocketing the cash.

I wonder if this got downvoted for the racial sentiment or anti-capitalist view.

Well, it’s HN so both are equally likely.

Edit: it’s like y’all’re allergic to satire.

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