Discussion for article #226305
You may want to check that sidebar quote â unless itâs true that -9% of Americans think the drug should have been legalized in 2010.
One of the keystone arguments in getting pot legalized was that it was not as harmful as alcohol, that is to say, not as addictive. But as a continuing promotional strategy, it makes no sense. Almost everyone I know that smokes, drink at the same time, and the former really in most cases enhances the latter. I donât see why these folks cannot leverage one another. If I owned a winery, Iâd be thinking about how to promote my product in terms of its salutary effect when smoking weed.
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It is certainly true that comparisons to alcohol are useful arguments when discussing cannabis legalization. Alcohol is a substance that most Americans are familiar with. The consequence of the prohibition of alcohol are still fresh in our memory. So the argument is an easy one to make.
It is not, however, a strong argument. It can easily be dismissed by saying, âdo we really want to add one more legal drug? Alcohol is a huge problem, which we clearly couldnât prohibit due to wide spread use, do we really want to encourage people to use a new drug?â Furthermore, if you are arguing that people should use pot instead of alcohol, you are making a drastic and baseless assumption that there is a strong overlap between heavy pot users and heavy alcohol users, and that the reason people drink and not smoke is due to the current legal environment
The other arguments for legalization of cannabis flowers are much stronger arguments. Clearly we have selective enforcement, with black people far more likely to be arrested for pot than white people. Spending billions throwing people in prison has not reduced use. By any reasonable judgement, prohibition has cost the country far more than the potential public health harm.
The MPP approach may work well in changing opinions. It does that, however, because it gets people to think, not because it is a good argument in itself. The potential for it to backfire, and make an enemy out of an industry which could be an ally, makes it a very poor approach.
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I agree with your post, but also think the weed advocacy groups are looking at it in two different ways: the first is the argument against alcohol prohibition was settled almost a century ago because the social ills and risks associated with alcohol were acceptable to society, and if weed is less so, than why not allow both? Leveraging the public willingness and acceptance of some risk and harm for something they enjoy. The second I think is having to decompress the residual public image that weed is soooooo harmful that it shouldnât be legalized or people will become irredeemable potheads, in which case the contrast to alcohol is something even non-users can identify in the social debate.
If I was a winery owner, my yield might provide about 4 tons of grapes per acre per year that would sell for perhaps $2,000/ton if they were really high quality. I would be looking at converting to weed that, if market prices stay constant, would yield over $2,000 PER PLANT and which I could plant well over 100 plants per acre. Basic agronomics would almost require me to replant my land with weed.
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To you here that are Prime members . . .
If it interests you, and you havenât seen it already, take the time and read through this thread over in the HiveâŚ
How Dangerous is Marijuana? (362 posts)
~OGD~
http://forums.talkingpointsmemo.com/t/how-dangerous-is-marijuana/1041
I enjoyed this articleâŚAs highly amusing to see the booze industry try and play the victim as it is to hear revivals of pre WWII maryjane horror stories.
Regarding the âpocket changeâ cost the article neglected to mention home growers of which there will be many both for the high and because the plant itself is highly interesting. Unlike booze, pot will join tomatoes, basil and green peppers as a staple of summertime home gardeners and a lure for a whole new element in home invasionsâŚand, since many aficionados have been saving seeds for decades, craft pot might become as big as craft beer and a competitor to any Big Herbâs (Big Fabricâs, Big Lubricationâs) on the horizon.
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âThe minute you unleash the opportunity to make millions and millions of dollars, no matter how dangerous that is, people are going to try to do it,â said Alex Wagenaar, an alcohol policy researcher at the University of Florida. âOur capitalist system is great for a lot of things, but itâs not a great thing for drugs that are habit-forming, addictive, and have huge health care and social costs attached.â
Geez⌠Thatâs the point. For centuries the alcohol industry has made millions by selling a drug that is âhabit-forming, addictive, and [has] huge health care and social costs attached.â Iâve seen many more lives ruined by alcohol than by weed, AND most of the lives ruined by weed were not ruined by using the weed but by the punishment for using weed.
Remember the old âPartnership for a Drug -Free Americaâ with their ludicrous scary ads about the dangers of pot (this is your brainâŚ)? Guess who set up the program and provided 90% of the funding: the alcohol industry!
Think about this. The article states that many people only smoke weed when they are drinking, yet the weed is the one that is classified as a gateway drug. Sounds to me like itâs the other way around: without the alcohol these folks wouldnât smoke weed so alcohol is the real gateway drug. (There is a lot of scientific support for that theory, but you have to read between the lines as most marijuana research is so slanted against weed.)
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âWe simply want those adults who will be enjoying a beer or two at the race this weekend to think about the fact that marijuana is an objectively less harmful product.â
Canadians are sensible peopleâso unlike we Americans.
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I think thatâs the rub right there. If enough legit vineyards with massive acreage choose to re-plant with cannabis, it seems likely that market forces would eventually bring the price of cannabis way, way down. Its current price is just a side-effect of its illegality.
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I think both points are right. There will certainly be a market for âcraftâ weed, strains bred in a certain way. On the other hand, as many readers certainly know, basic pot is really, really easy to grow. It may not be the most amazing pot. But itâs pot. Tobacco on the other hand is a much more complex crop to grow. And booze obviously has a fermentation process. Take the illegality costs out of the mix and the costs should go very low.
I would also make a second general point. I was the one who had the idea for this article. I got familiar with the general topic of the brewing battle between these lobbies just from conversations in DC. And as I hope was clear from the piece, the piece is supposed to be totally agnostic of whose right or any of the pros and cons. I just found the battle or quasi-battle itself fascinating.
Alcohol clear has huge health repercussions when itâs used to excess or for people who become addicted. Casual, not in excess use, seems generally fine. At least fine enough that people should be allowed to make their own decisions. Precisely because so few studies have been done, I donât think we should imagine that heavy use doesnât have health repercussions. After all, it is smoking. If you smoke several joints a day, I donât think thereâs any way thatâs good for your lungs.
For me just personally, casual use is probably fine. And the social costs of criminalization seems vastly more damaging to society than whatever âgainsâ you get from preventing usage. And I think we know that people who want to smoke a lot of pot are already smoking it.
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Sociologically, I find the use of this article to gain members a bit too clever. You realized how many and how passionately the Primers were/are about this topic and saw a marketing strategy. But I do not have to make this place work, so whatever. I hope it works because this is a story that should be read.
I can smoke legally here in Arizona because I am eligible for medical marijuana. It is most often (there is no always in chemo) the quickest way to quell nausea. Of course it should be legal. I am one who does not drink but a glass of wine a few times a year. Alcohol makes me stupid, marijuana makes me and most people who use it happy and curious. There is no better way to have a bad mj experience than mixing it with alcohol.
I have some of the best cancer treatment available just across the street. They are fine with it.
I have never been disappointed when I expect the world to be upside down. Big Pot, Big AlcoholâBFD. I am going to live and marijuana will make it much easier to swallow the poison I need.
Shout out to Monsanto for Agent Orange: the US Armyâs drug of choice for gardening in the jungle.
Oh contraire, a study in Toronto resulted in no harm to the lungs from smoking mary jane, in fact it showed a small decrease in lung diseases in smokers. Often what seems logical is in fact untrue. You should read the side effects of the drugs they give me for nausea, and they are pills so they take time to work and nausea can and seems to last so long when one is under its influence. I have very good care and both my doctor and his head nurse (she travels the world lecturing on oncology) say if it works for me, great. And I have some cancer of some lymph cells in my lungs. Go figure.
But I do not smoke joints and I only smoke a small toke of certified medical maramedicine when that queasy feeling rises from my stomach. Because, like you I am skeptical about how much is too much.
âAfter all, it is smoking.â
Well, much of it is. But vaporizing is becoming extremely popular, especially here in California at medical mj dispensaries. It is cleaner, no ash, no combustion, better stealth, much less smell, no hard-to-clean bongs or pipes. No smoke, just vapor.
Each of the four MDs I have seen to get my recommendation letter each year really pitch vaporization over smoking.
And to boomerâs point, the well-known UCLA Med School study also actually hinted at a lower correlation of non-tobacco smoking cannabis users to lung cancer, iirc. They couched the assertion, not wanting to say something over-the-top like âavoid lung cancer, smoke weed.â And the differential was very small. But it was actually favorable to the cannabis userâwhich hints at even more beneficial medical applications, if research could just move forward unburdened by stigma and statute.
Yeah, to be clear: I have no preconceived notions on Potâs health effects. I just donât think we should assume it is harmless. It certainly seems to me like heavy smoking would have some ill-effects on your lungs. But that doesnât mean it does. Like another reader said, one of the many benefits of legalization is that these things can be studied. We have ways of figuring these things out.
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Not to mention the fact that several joints a day is a very high amount of weed, and still far less than the quantity of smoke in 20-30 cigarettes a day.
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We are seeing in Washington that there is a craft to growing modern, indoor cannabis. When all pot is tested, there is a huge marketing push to get the THC% as high as possible. On day one, I bought weed that was 20% THC. Havenât seen anything close to that more recently (which is a bad sample, as I have only been back once). The problem is that choosing when to flower and when to harvest, even time of day to harvest, have an effect on THC% and taste.
The Seattle Times had a series called âFrom Seed to Saleâ which followed a company struggling to get product to market.
I have yet to smoke any hybrid strain of legal marijuana that comes close to the hash that was very common before Nixon shut down the hash market in Afghanistan. Nepalese Temple Ball and Black Afghani were a couple I tried. And Thai Sticks of marijuana were very much like those hashes. We can all buy everclear alcohol, does not mean you have to drink the whole bottle. More THC means less smoke. Less smoke, less worries about unproven dangers of mj smoke. To each their own, but keep the cops out of my body.
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What about the BHO and other concentrates that are around these days? I have no experience, but I imagine they are quite potent.
I had to research to know what BHO is (A hash oil made using butane gas).
Hash oil is the oil in hash. That oil contains the THC. Hash and the oil in hash referred to as hash oil have been used by humans longer than many of the people who grow and process it think the world has existed.
I would not suggest doing anything without knowing someone you trust who has tried the very compound or plant you are considering injesting, convincing you that it will make you feel better.[quote=âboomer, post:18, topic:8406â]
More THC means less smoke. Less smoke, less worries about unproven dangers of mj smoke.
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But that only goes to far. To connoisseurs of both alcohol and marijuana the flavor is very important and often the most important consideration. Vaporizing is losing favor because it removes the flavor along with the smoke, and the finest tasting buds end up tasting just the same as seedy mex.
There will be an almost never ending next greatest tasting, knock you on your ass strains of buds and extracts.
When you find a form of THC that can cure what ails you, from nausea to panic attacks, to all kinds of pains, to inspiration to create or problem solve, I hope you can benefit from it legally. Otherwise and always, be careful.
Another question relevant to this topic: should there be Big anything? Why donât our representatives and their agency enforce the antitrust laws on the books? Could it be we let Big everything Be the law?