While I am not a fan of cannabis, I am a fan of its decriminalization.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Clunky phrasing/reporting but I might attribute it to this. POCs get screwed in the drug wars harder than whites by a sizable margin, so it makes sense if they would see that as pretty important.
My biggest issue with drugs that make you feel good is that they can also make you feel good when you should be feeling bad. Alcohol has the same problem, but I'd argue that it is not able to make people feel as good and without less risk to oneself.
Sometimes you do have to feel like shit because things are like shit, and that might create wild mood swings but drugs up the precipice and create a dependency, making those situations even worse. Sometimes you just shouldn't associate or be open to the perception of "transcendental experiences", basically shifting the weights of good and bad in your brain, in mundane or shitty situations. And if you use them when things are good, it can be too tempting to use them when things are bad or stressful. I don't consider drug junkies a problem because it is illegal, I consider them a problem because of what the drugs do to them psychologically, potentially adverse health side effects aside. I know too many people who become self-indulgent pricks because of drugs.
We barely are able to manage alcohol abuse and dependency, and are now adding a more potent drug into the mix. It does have a lot of potential for medical use, but I don't want to begin drinking something and having something in my body I don't want or that it becomes easier for people to spike in to "lighten the mood" too. Hopefully it is kept in check when it passes, but if it passes everywhere, it won't be just predominantly a case of tourism cannabis like in Amsterdam.
are now adding a more potent drug into the mix
Cannabis is nowhere near as potent as alcohol by any metric
If it weren't, it would not be getting prescribed for medical purposes.
I'm not sure I understand. Cannabis isn't just a more potent form of alcohol. They have completely different effects on a variety of different body parts.
Weed can be classified as a depressant, stimulant, or hallucinogen, alcohol can be classified as a depressant or stimulant, but what I'm concerned about isn't about those distinct effects, but the psychological effects.
Our bodies have had millenniums of evolution to optimize for social and personal development, and not only is it falling behind with the size of modern societies, but this is an external override of the system based purely out of an ability to buy it. The psychological effects of drugs were one of the key driving crisis behind the Opium War, I think it's sensible to consider whether society can handle the longterm consequences for this. Even Amsterdam's government is constantly struggling to determine where to draw their line. Doesn't matter what year you search about it, if you look for news about Amsterdam's marihuana it will always have articles about issues regarding its regulation.
I hope you are right, but as someone who is not interested in consuming it and does not wish to see it appear in small letters under general store labels and who is already in a higher crime zone because of the presence of drug dealer hotspots and the people who've become dependent on drugs, I'm just concerned about how it will affect my way of life.
Aspirin must be some wild shit.
These are awful reasons for poor conclusions. You should stop.
Aspirin is potent, yes. Feel free to disagree, don't be a jerk about it specially when your comment is largely an absence of argument.
Highlighting bad faith and sloppy argument is more important than addressing nonsense on its face.
You're in here insisting that private prisons can't be so bad, because we're not executing jaywalkers or whatever. That's not worth taking seriously. Politely refuting that as if it's asked out of innocence or informed sincerity would be a mistake. You should fucking know better. The same way you should be able to figure out, all on your lonesome, how potential medical uses for a drug don't somehow make it "more potent" than anything that'll fuck you up over-the-counter.
Benedryl's effects get buck-wild if you take a handful. We let kids buy it. You know alcohol does harm, in basically any quantity, but we still leave it unregulated, except for production standards and age requirements. So the idea that marijuana could only possibly be worse, just because it's restricted, is a childlike insistence on a just and rational world.
Have you looked outside and seen that, lately? Does everything work the way you expect it must? Not one injustice or absurdity, as far as the eye can see?
Are you happier to be called-out at this length?
Guy. Relax.
He's sharing his viewpoint. You might not agree with it. You have no call to be escalating into "bad faith" "sloppy" "childlike" "weak trolling" and so on.
I'm leaving this up, I don't see a reason to censor you from speaking to people this way if you want to, but you need to chill.
Bad faith is a real problem, moreso than someone identifying it. When a commenter cannot stand by what they write, projects emotion as a dismissal, and repeatedly jukes to even less reasonable claims - either mods deal with that, or users have to. Playing along is not dealing with it.
Sometimes a user's viewpoint is badly-constructed and badly-defended. Sincerity doesn't make it better. Unless you think escalation is somehow never appropriate - having a conversation derailed by nonsense is plainly an appropriate time to escalate into pointing out it's nonsense.
The thing your robot's supposed to do turns out to be really hard to automate. Bad actors don't always show up numerically even when scored by human votes. People are capable of expressing infuriating contradictory garbage in seemingly polite terms. Or: simply by making cogent and polite rebuttals to something nobody said. These are violations of civility, far more than anyone saying, cut that shit out.
I could express that frustration in seemingly polite terms. I choose to be blunt. I want to convey that the social contract has already weakened. Disagreement isn't even relevant. This is a problem of behavior and reasoning, not where some winding nonsense ends up.
There's a big difference between nonsense, bad faith, and something coherent that you just don't agree with.
Being unable to make sense of something that isn't what you believe, pretending that the person saying it must be horrible or stupid, is a hallmark of intellectual weakness. That's your option, but I would recommend that you grow out of it at some point.
The robot has nothing to do with this. No one involved is going to get banned or moderated, because everyone involved is interested at least on some level in real conversation and debate. I'm just weighing in to tell you interpersonally that I think you're being a jerk in this instance. I think it would be to your benefit to back up and realize that the person may have a point about self-medicating with weed being a bad idea after a certain point, irrespective of any legal issues. Whether or not you wind up ultimately being convinced by any of it, that's a more mature way to do it than immediately going on the warpath against them.
But calling me too intellectually weak to understand it is totally different somehow.
Again, being deliberately blunt, I have no respect for 'just because you disagree.' It's effortless all-purpose denial. Mere disagreement isn't what I'm excoriating. Reasons matter. Behavior matters. When someone clutches their pearls about the opposite of what I wrote, that is not a me problem. It derails any conversation.
This user failed at their own debate. They bitched about a one-sentence rebuttal of their one-sentence claim. They lied about a more detailed explanation for how that hypocritical bitching was also incorrect. Their "viewpoint" on marijuana's classification is a tangle of fallacies. The only point which you think they're making is so wishy-washy that it's nearly meaningless, and it's about zero percent of what's gone wrong.
You aren't calling out, you are gaslighting, and hopping on arguments made by others.
First, by trying to miscontextualize my reply to a comment suggesting it was a conspiracy by the private prison system. Please try not to answer for other people for an argument you couldn't bother to make.
Second, where am I denying the negative consequences of other drugs? Or also not criticizing alcohol? Your argument here seems to basically be there are things that are as bad or worse. It's whataboutism 101, it fails the basic logic check that I also don't criticize other drug abuse in my comments.
My concern is with marijuana because we are dealing with a post about marijuana. I also consider it more potent than alcohol in terms of its psychological affects, but it clearly affects the body differently and in many other ways can be considered less potent - but not in the way I'm concerned about.
The risks for marijuana usage are well known, and it is addictive, but we aren't talking about retaining the same medical controls as we apply to other drugs, we are talking about legalized recreational use. I have those same concerns regarding alcohol abuse, a problem that still exists no matter how legal it is even without adding cannabis into the mix. And they are quite complementary, even affecting the same risk groups.
Your comment is swinging rapidly through moods as it is in logic. If there's a cause on your side for it, I'd recommend you tone it down. I'm only stating my concerns.
Condemning a pattern of sloppy argument is what I told you I'm doing and I plainly am doing. All your comments here are relevant. That's what makes it a pattern.
You're saying marijuana must be worse than alcohol. You don't have to make up that I've accused you of calling alcohol harmless or whatever. Your reasons for declaring marijuana "more potent" are nonsense. The context of your reasons - like saying verbatim "the private prison system is abusive, but if it were as bad as you say they would be arresting people from jaywalking" - is just plain horseshit. 'Things can't be this bad unless they're worse' is not an argument. There was in fact a deliberate effort by assholes in power, to make marijuana illegal, despite a lack of any scientific or medical evidence. Insisting it cannot be so, because surely the government has good reasons, and we're just waiting on "an objective perspective" to finally undo this injustice - is several fallacies at once. You can't or won't deal with the possibility the status quo is simply wrong, and has been since before you were born. Like the fact it's not already legal must mean its criminalization remains legitimate and rational... because we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Even glibly using the word "addictive" is misleading bordering dishonest. Pot has no withdrawal symptoms. It's less physiologically addictive than caffeine or sugar, and yes, I saw where you already mentioned caffeine. I note that you're not hemming and hawing about whether caffeine should be illegal. Just whether you, personally, might perchance consider cessation. I also note that all your chin-stroking about known risks does not include the psychological impacts of going to prison. Because whatever the hell you imagine the somehow-still-ambiguous impact is, for this recreational drug that's already omnifuckingpresent, it seems flatly impossible to argue that what we're doing is better for users and for society.
Which is why you haven't.
You've only mused about vague negatives, and spread uncertainty, and accused everyone else of being quite rude for pointing out that's shite behavior. 'But what if you're supposed to feel bad right now? And if you're feeling good, that's also bad, because you might use it when you don't! It'll surely be more potent than alcohol, a drug that can kill you if you do too much, or stop doing too much.'
You underline this shite behavior by reading my aura through the screen and projecting wild mood swings. I have negative respect for tone policing. It's an abuse tactic. Be better or stop talking.
Sorry, my fault for trying to engage with you.
The reason it needs to be prescribed is due to its status as a schedule 1 drug, which was done as a tactic to target blacks and anti-war activists and 'legally' be able to imprison them.
At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The biggest incentive to not change that ruling since then, was private prison lobbiests, who financially benefit tremendously from having as many prisoners (effectively slave labor) as possible.
Alcohol was not made a scheduled drug because:
- It generated lots of taxes
- everybody drinks, including the people making the laws, and that'd be an awko-taco moment for a politician if discovered drinking after putting a whole bunch of people in prison for it. It was would've been much less useful as a political tool.
- The Prohibition wasn't terribly popular, and a 'Prohibition round 2' wasn't terribly appealing.
I'm not a fan of alcohol either, which is also why I commented on it. I'm even considering whether I should lay off of caffeine because of its effects as a stimulant as I grow older as a longterm user of it.
The problem I have with your logic is that it delves into the line of conspiracy. Sure, the private prison system is abusive, but if it were as bad as you say they would be arresting people from jaywalking. It's also generally illegalized outside of the US except for a few specific tourism hotspots, which even I would agree are not a risk factor.
Government are very aware of the effects of drugs and was even weaponized during the Opium Wars. They do generally have some interest in a stable society. Legalized marijuana may be viable, but my impression of it is that it's not without risks and it has certainly be politicized more than it should when what it really needs is an objective perspective that is difficult to attain.
The problem I have with your logic is that it delves into the line of conspiracy.
Private prisons alone are a multi-billion a year industry, and as with any corporate community with vested interests, they lobby congress to sway them to their interests. If you consider that to be going too far into conspiracy, then I can only offer that this phenomena of a corporate plutocracy has been well studied by respected universities, and compiled into easily digestible books, examples such as:
Affluence and Influence, by Martin Gilens, professor of politics at Princeton University. Martin and a colleague, Benjamin Page, analyzed 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They concluded that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
Who Rules America by G. Wlliam Domhoff, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at University of California, Santa Cruz. He explores the history of how a corporate plutocracy formed, how their social circles operate and reinforce their positions, and their financial incentives.
None of those people are on the fringe, they are operating purely on verified historical fact and solid scientific rigor.
if it were as bad as you say
There's more people in prisons doing so-cheap-it's-slavery labor now than there were actual slaves in the US before it was abolished.
317K people were arrested for Marijuana in the US in 2020, a low from 500k the previous year.
There are 1.2 Million people incarcerated in the US (40k of those for Marijuana alone), compared to 483K in all of the EU. This is despite the EU having more than double the US population.
they would be arresting people from jaywalking
Drug users were so heavily demonized over so many decades, that we don't really bat an eye if someone is imprisoned for drugs. Do you believe people would be passive if life sentences for jaywalking became a thing?
It’s also generally illegalized outside of the US except for a few specific tourism hotspots
Illegalized, but usually the penalty is only a small fine, not prison as a federal offense, and many of countries in the EU have decriminalized it for personal use, not just tourist hotspots.
Government are very aware of the effects of drugs and was even weaponized during the Opium Wars
my impression of it is that it’s not without risks
Marijuana is nowhere near as dangerous or addictive compared to any other commonly available recreational drug. Cigarettes, Opium, and alcohol, are far more addictive and damaging, all of which create a tremendous amount of societal costs, for families, medical facility overload, and societal.
I won't say people can't become dependent on weed, and kids should probably avoid it, but it inherently has no real withdrawal symptoms compared to any other substance, and is far easier to quit cold turkey than virtually any other drug with no physical harm.
The punishment for marijuana is completely disproportionate to the societal damage it is capable of causing, which in the worst case scenario, is minimal. To justify its criminalization by looking at the damages of opium use is bizarre when all of the above is taken into account. If we were to seriously consider that point of view deserve merit, then we must also seriously consider that unhealthy and addictive food should rightfully be criminalized as well. We have mountains of data and research showing how much societal harm they cause, and how addictive they can be, and in fact, are designed to be.
The problem with your comment wasn't that private prisons are a problem, it's the conspiracy of implying they are wholly responsible for the drug war. The private prison system abuses an opportunity, but they are not the ones defining and creating those opportunities.
You are ignoring how international the criminalization of cannabis is by looking at facts through rose tinted glasses. Check the link to your map again, it is not "decriminalized" in many EU countries, at best it merely labels them as mixed and does so subjectively, since in many cases it admits it is illegal but applies a subjective criteria to determine what makes it mixed. It's also unclear why in Germany it opts to mark it as approved/decriminalized because medical marijuana is allowed, when many of the mixed labels are the same as well. Read my original comment again, my criticism doesn't really apply to medical marijuana.
Using the excuse that there are worse drugs is just whataboutism 101. There's a reason those examples also have heavy legislation surrounding them in most countries, but I would argue that our societies are still struggling to deal with their negative consequences. Now we are adding more drugs into the mix that are complementary to those, making them more potent, and even affect the same risk groups. But what I'm also worried, beyond negative side-effects and addiction, are the psychological consequences.
Feeling like shit is something evolution left so that we could shape our relations and priorities with, to, and versus society. When it's too much then you have depression and it can be a medical condition, but you are supposed to feel like shit because the circumstances are shit, you are supposed to deal with shit, and you are supposed to gain experience from other times you deal with shit because the gravity of shit usually means of having to employ approaches that are shitty and need to be particularly nuanced to avoid making them even more shittier.
Psychological studies aside, as someone who lives near a drug dealing hotspot, it isn't the addiction or the negative health consequences making a lot of drug users act like shit, it's the erosion of the capacity to perceive what's right and wrong because you are always giving yourself a transcendental pat in the back even when surrounded with the people who have committed violent crimes to sustain their drug habit. Drug users can become jerks, and yes, you don't need drugs for that, but there is already enough toxicity in the world, it adds more of it. More importantly, maybe you do need to become a jerk but by taking drugs you won't really know whether it's really the drug making you become a jerk.
And yes, addictive food should and is becoming criminalized. That's why some countries/states are putting taxes on junk food and soda. The effects are negative, they are addictive, and even psychological with some of the shit that's allowed. Food and beverage companies aren't your friend, Coca-Cola was Cocaine-Cola at one point of its history. Don't get started en excessively sugary cereals and refined carbohydrates that may be linked to the increase in autism. Again, whataboutism.