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Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

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Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#61

Post by wahnfrieden »

dagw wrote: post #55
wahnfrieden wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's awful for beer, for one example. It means that breweries can only produce things for mass markets. Governments demand a base amount of each single item so that they can create and meet demands. They won't take special, small-batch items, because they're looking to stock shelves all over. This drastically alters what breweries are able to experiment with (if at all). If you view marijuana as a commodity item, the…

They won't take special, small-batch items Don't know about how it works in general, but that definitely isn't true in Sweden. Individual stores must carry a certain 'standard' stock, but beyond that they are free to stock whatever products they want in, and it's not uncommon to see small orders of only a half dozen bottles of something obscure. And even if your local store doesn't stock some particular thing you wan…

Ah so is it partially privatized then? I was using Canada as an example, though the particulars vary by region there. Fortunately they are moving more and more toward privatized liquor sales, giving breweries more freedom.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#62

Post by wahnfrieden »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #52
wahnfrieden wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's awful for beer, for one example. It means that breweries can only produce things for mass markets. Governments demand a base amount of each single item so that they can create and meet demands. They won't take special, small-batch items, because they're looking to stock shelves all over. This drastically alters what breweries are able to experiment with (if at all). If you view marijuana as a commodity item, the…

Many people love nice ales, wines or whiskeys, but the bottom line is - all of them are meant to intoxicate you. Therefore, I would be a bit dubious whether it is really ethical to make something seem less dangerous. It's just like selling chocolate cigarettes to children, surely it builds some sort of mental image of cigarettes being good.

Curious why you think the only or primary reason for brewing tasty ale is to deceive? There's a lot wrong with this but for one, I'm not talking about Budweiser coming out with a smoother lighter tasting drink. Many craft ales have such strong flavor (without correlation to strong abv necessarily) that make it difficult to drink faster than sipping and in large quantity, unlike the macrobrews that are intended to go down easily with minimal flavor, more for "drunking" than "drinking", an important distinction.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#63

Post by dagw »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #61
dagw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't take special, small-batch items Don't know about how it works in general, but that definitely isn't true in Sweden. Individual stores must carry a certain 'standard' stock, but beyond that they are free to stock whatever products they want in, and it's not uncommon to see small orders of only a half dozen bottles of something obscure. And even if your local store doesn't stock some particular thing you wan…

Ah so is it partially privatized then? I was using Canada as an example, though the particulars vary by region there. Fortunately they are moving more and more toward privatized liquor sales, giving breweries more freedom.

Alcohol sale to consumers is 100% run by the government with strict guidelines and pricing controls and with no sign of privatization in sight. However each store has a certain amount of autonomy as to what they carry.

Alcohol distribution to the stores however is largely privatized. So anybody is free to set up a company that imports and distributes alcoholic beverages. But they can only sell to bars, restaurants or the government run alcohol stores.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#64

Post by dagw »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #53
plorkyeran wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works for alcohol in several countries, and while I don't think any of them have managed to show any actual benefits from doing it that way, it's also not a total disaster.

Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and apparently some parts of Canada have government owned shops. I guess it's all to inflate the price to the ridicule in an attempt to reduce the consumption. Can't blame them, they do indeed drink a lot.

Speaking only for Sweden, it's not simply that they raise prices, it's more that they flatten them. So a $10 bottle of Vodka will cost you $35, but a $120 bottle of whisky might cost you $80. For example I was very surprised when I was in England a few years ago and found that certain British ales I enjoy where cheaper in the Swedish government monopoly shop than in the English supermarket.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#65

Post by D9u »

roel_v wrote: post #51
D9u wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40 grams per month is slightly more than one joint a day. Some people consume more than that, some less, but 40 grams a month is nowhere near the amount held by dealers.

In systems where production is allowed, cannabis sativa is bred to be much higher potency and quality than what is available on most underground markets across the world. While 40 grams is obviously much less than what is held by dealers, it is more than what even heavy users of high-quality marijuana consume over a month. With THC content of some Dutch varieties now approaching 15% (although the content of generally…

The fallacy that modern cannabis is more potent now than it was in the 1960's is based on flawed methodology.

In the 1960's cannabis researchers didn't have access to the old world drug varieties found in Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, et al. The cannabis which was widely available in the 1960's was mostly low grade hemp type varieties which found its way to the "New World" by way of Spanish mariners who brought cannabis sativa varieties to Mexico for use in ship's riggings and sails.

The common misconception that "hemp" contains no psychoactive compounds, or negligible amounts of it, is patently false, as those Mexican progeny of the old Spanish strains of cannabis were quite popular among the counter-cultural hippies of the 1960's and 70's.

This is not meant to infer that all hemp varieties are good sources of THC, etc, but is indicative of the variations of genetic expression found within cannabis, be it cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, and cannabis sativa.

Any stoner can tell you that cannabis sativa has the ability to impart euphoria, much the same as the other two main strains of cannabis.

These "Old World" varieties, predominantly Cannabis Indica, have been continuously cultivated to produce hashish for millenia, and as natural selection shows, they were able to selectively cultivate increasingly potent varieties to get to the point where the varieties they have been growing are the source of the most potent genetics found in cannabis today.

Of further note is the supposition that consuming one gram of cannabis per day is enough to render unconsciousness for the greater part of a 24 hour period. This is nothing other than hyperbole, as I can consume 1 gram, or more, of high quality hashish per day while still maintaining my faculties and simultaneously easing my medical conditions, and not many cannabis varieties are as potent as top grade hashish.

Those 15% "Dutch" varieties are not of "Dutch" origin, they are indubitably of Himalayan origin, and hybridized by Dutch growers.

(Hawai'i resident here, thankful for medical cannabis laws)

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#66

Post by roel_v »

D9u wrote: post #65
roel_v wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In systems where production is allowed, cannabis sativa is bred to be much higher potency and quality than what is available on most underground markets across the world. While 40 grams is obviously much less than what is held by dealers, it is more than what even heavy users of high-quality marijuana consume over a month. With THC content of some Dutch varieties now approaching 15% (although the content of generally…

The fallacy that modern cannabis is more potent now than it was in the 1960's is based on flawed methodology. In the 1960's cannabis researchers didn't have access to the old world drug varieties found in Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, et al. The cannabis which was widely available in the 1960's was mostly low grade hemp type varieties which found its way to the "New World" by way of Spanish mariners who brought cannabis…

I'm not talking about levels from the 1960's, an era so long ago that it's hardly relevant for today's practices or policy. What I'm talking about is the last 2 decades or so, a time over which use has spread further than it ever has (note: I don't make any moral judgements on that, I'm just observing), and over which cannabis production has become so far developed that the advances over that time dwarf the progress that was made over the millennia before it.

There is hard evidence that THC content (to use that as 'the' indicator for cannabis potency, which is an internationally accepted practice) has risen steadily from the mid-1990's, with a topping off in the last few years at around 15-20 % for high-potency Dutch weed varieties, and 5-7 % for imported (international) varieties. See e.g. [1] (from Wikipedia) and [2] (in Dutch) from the Dutch agency who monitors exactly this. There is little reason to believe that THC content across the world in places where they import from the same places as Dutch import would be different from the content measured in the Netherlands; international measurements confirm this hypothesis.

I know it is popular amongst 'stoners' to deny that THC content has risen, mostly because it causes marijuana to be reclassified as a more 'dangerous' (therefore: punished harsher) drug as it once was in some places. It's not because something has undesirable (for you) policy implications, that it's not true. You (not specifically 'you you', but the 'cannabis always had high THC / the Indians did it 1000 years ago' crowd) have elaborate theories but suspiciously little data on their claims. Anecdotes by 'stoners' don't make accounts of the truth, the scientific method does.

Claiming that high-potency cannabis varieties are 'just modified varieties that existed for 1000's of years' is true in the same sense that saying a Ferrari is just a modified version of a Model T. It evolved from the same thing, but the differences in potency, ease of use, yield and ease of growing under clandestine circumstances are vast. I'm not using 'Dutch' in the nationalistic 'look at how awesome we are' sense (I'm not even Dutch), I use it in the internationally commonly accepted parlance meaning 'purified by high-tech and directed selection into a product that has no equal in the world'. There is a reason Dutch users look with a mix of amusement and pity at Americans who fill a whole joint with pure Mexican low-grade cannabis and still don't get the same effects as a Dutch joint that contains mostly tobacco and only a relatively low amount of cannabis.

Lastly, I'm not using 'knocked out' in the regular (meaning 'unconscious') sense, but in the drug-using sense, i.e. Cheech & Chong style stonedness. Of course, it's true that different users have different tolerance levels, and that long-time users do build tolerance, but consuming 1 gram of high-quality Dutch marijuana is not 'recreational' use; if I were to make an analogy with alcohol, it's similar to a wild night out binge drinking, not 'sipping a glass of wine on a summer evening'. You say you're using 'high quality' but without numbers, it's impossible to gauge how 'high quality' it really is (in fact, if your hash is similar to other hash world wide, it's roughly the same as the average Dutch marijuana at around 15-20 % THC; for comparison, hash made from average-grade Dutch cannabis varieties ('average-grade Dutch' meaning 'still better than the best international varieties') varies between 20 and 40 (!) percent THC content, approaching THC levels of cannabis oil, which has always been classified as a hard drug, even in the Netherlands).

To frame the discussion further, I'm pro legalisation, and against the current direction in the Netherlands to further clamp down on coffee shops, selling to foreigners, prohibiting psylocybin mushrooms etc. I have at least 10 coffee shops within walking distance from my house, I pass by some every day while walking my kids to day care, and I'm a first-hand witness of the negative effects in terms of nuisance and street crime that the recent curbing of sales to international buyers has brought. I'm as much in the pro-lax-drug-policies as you can be without being an anarchist, but denying that THC content and marijuana potency has risen over the last decades is plain self-delusion.

[1] http://books.google.nl/books?id=mxP_duKXb7QC&pg=PA14&redir_e... [2] http://www.trimbos.nl/webwinkel/productoverzicht-webwinkel/a...

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#67

Post by D9u »

roel_v wrote: post #66
D9u wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy that modern cannabis is more potent now than it was in the 1960's is based on flawed methodology. In the 1960's cannabis researchers didn't have access to the old world drug varieties found in Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, et al. The cannabis which was widely available in the 1960's was mostly low grade hemp type varieties which found its way to the "New World" by way of Spanish mariners who brought cannabis…

I'm not talking about levels from the 1960's, an era so long ago that it's hardly relevant for today's practices or policy. What I'm talking about is the last 2 decades or so, a time over which use has spread further than it ever has (note: I don't make any moral judgements on that, I'm just observing), and over which cannabis production has become so far developed that the advances over that time dwarf the progress…

Look into the potency of genuine Nepalese hashish. Have a look in one or two of those coffee shops and ask about Nepalese hashish - the real stuff, I'm sure that you'll find it to be on par with the high grade Dutch hashish of which you speak.

Valid scientific study of Nepali cannabis and hashish are hard to find, and all I have is anecdotal evidence, which is of little use here, but Nepalese cannabis is where we got our most potent genetics, and we (here in Hawaii) had this variety since the late 1970's.

Your idea of American cannabis is not applicable to the top grades grown by the best growers here in Hawaii.

That our laws are more restrictive than those of the Netherlands is one reason that scientific evidence supports your claims, and is why I have only anecdotal evidence. It's been illegal here for only a relatively short time as compared to the Netherlands.

I have acquired (20+ years ago) some of the best seeds from Amsterdam, and it was not up to the level of Nepalese, or Tibetan.

THC is only one of the psychoactive ingredients in cannabis, and to only list that one ingredient while ignoring the others is one of the same mistakes made by pharmaceutical labs in their quest to somehow profit from cannabinoids. Especially since indica varieties are high in CBD as well as CBN and THC.

The chart listing seized cannabis potency fails to note the origins of the seized drug, and mentions indoor cultivation while failing to consider genetics. Not much Nepali or Tibetan is seized compared to what is seized coming into the USA from Mexico.

The second link makes no mention of Nepalese potency.

Ask Arjan (The Greenhouse) about Nepali genetics, as I'm certain that he is quite familiar with this subject.

But enough of all that, time for a funny story. I visited my sister in Oregon back in 1981, and I brought some of my best Hawaii grown (by myself) for personal consumption, and found out that my brother in law was a pot smoker so I broke out my stash to share. Well, both he and my sister could only handle a few puffs before they left me to finish what I had rolled. The next day my sister accused me of "lacing" the joint with something, which I vehemently denied. (I don't use any other drugs, excluding alcohol) She told me that "no weed can get you that high, you had to have put something in it..."

Thank you for you comments, as they are quite informative and I'm sure there is validity in them, and I do tend to be a bit prejudiced towards my favored varieties.

Aloha!

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#68

Post by tirant »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #50
tirant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think gangs will buy legal weed, including all the taxes?

They surely will because even with taxes it will be order of magnitudes cheaper than illegal one.

No, it's not. Example: Netherlands. Illegal weed is way, way cheaper than the one you can buy in any coffeeshop.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#69

Post by GFischer »

tirant wrote: post #68
guard-of-terra wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They surely will because even with taxes it will be order of magnitudes cheaper than illegal one.

No, it's not. Example: Netherlands. Illegal weed is way, way cheaper than the one you can buy in any coffeeshop.

This is being discussed right now here in Uruguay. The price government is thinking is in the U$ 2 or 3 range for a gram, which is apparently higher than the black market.

Re: Uruguay moves to legalize marijuana

#70

Post by tirant »

GFischer wrote: post #69
tirant wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Example: Netherlands. Illegal weed is way, way cheaper than the one you can buy in any coffeeshop.

This is being discussed right now here in Uruguay. The price government is thinking is in the U$ 2 or 3 range for a gram, which is apparently higher than the black market.

It's still cheap. In the Netherlands prices are between 5€ and 11€ per gram.
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