As a German I can only imagine how it would feel like to go about with weed as freely as one does here with (much more harmful) alcohol.
Our country is unable, due to conservative politics/politicians, to accept the fact that one has a right to consume. Especially such a beneficial substance that has been used medicinally, recreational and industrially (hemp).
Wherever you live: How does it feel for you to be able/unable to freely decide what you consume, where and why?
I live in the state of Oregon and cannabis is legal now as of July 1st. I can tell you that it's a huge sigh of relief. In Oregon you're able to possess up to 1oz on your person in public and up to 8oz in your residence. You are also able to legally have 4 plants out of public view at your residence. You can be ticketed for smoking in public though- smoking must be done on private property.
I've been using cannabis almost daily for over a decade and it feels amazing to not fear the police. Aside from weed I've never had anything to hide from law enforcement. Other than that it won't change much for me. I plan on keeping my same connection.
Employers are still able to drug test you despite it being legal at the state level because cannabis is illegal under federal law. Oh well, one step at a time. I think legalization is going to spread across the U.S. very quickly. It will be hard for states to say no when they see all the money cannabis brings in from taxes.
Hey Don, thanks for the reply. I get very excited every time I read someone's words on how it actually went from illegal to abso-fu#*in-lutely legal. Even though it should be the most natural thing to have/do, it is an image of utopia for me. Our leading parties see what is going on in the States. They, still, reason with mind-buggling arguments that have been widely proven wrong by science for years now. Example: - Cannabis consumption necessarily leads to acquisition and consumption of heavy-drugs. Very much wrong. Having to get your weed from a dealer on the black market makes you more inclined to get and try heavier stuff, because the DEALER WANTS YOU TO. Regulated markets would help radically minimize black market influences. Our "Drogenbeauftragte" (the one person responsible to know about cause and effects of drugs and drug consumption) Marlene Mortler never had anything to do with learning or teaching drugs and substances. Neither Biology, nor Chemistry, nor Psychology, nor other social sciences is her field. She comes from agriculture. - Cannabis leads to schizophrenia, psychoses, depression, anxiety... They have used it all. One can argue that there exist scientifically proven correlations between cannabis consumption and psychotic events or, in VERY few cases, signs of schizophrenic cognition, BUT the good old "causation and correlation"-discussion has never reached our politicians. In the end it is just very hard to discuss the whole point "Cannabis as medicine" and "Cannabis as recreational drug" with our generally very conservative politicians.
Causation vs correlation discussion is just for some people ridiculously hard to understand. But if any argument is made about cannabis causing schizophrenia/psychosis, just tell them they have to ban tobacco, too. There is an abnormally high rate of tobacco use in schizophrenic patients. According to this Wiki article, in 2006 it was near 80% when the general population was at 20%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia_and_smoking From personal experience, I know that it is definitely above 50% of the people I've met with psychotic illnesses smoke tobacco. That's anecdotal, but still it's very strange. That correlation will pretty much always have a higher rate than any cannabis correlation will ever have (unless it is legalized and people who used to smoke tobacco decided to switch over to marijuana).Cannabis leads to schizophrenia, psychoses, depression, anxiety... They have used it all. One can argue that there exist scientifically proven correlations between cannabis consumption and psychotic events or, in VERY few cases, signs of schizophrenic cognition, BUT the good old "causation and correlation"-discussion has never reached our politicians.
There is one political party in Germany, called Die Grünen, which worked out and carefully phrased a document in which a strategy regarding the opening of four coffee-shops in Berlin is explained. It is a project planned for the hip districts Neukölln/Kreuzberg, two shops in each district.
What they did very right this time is to implement social measures to control for abuse of the drug, as well as general social education/awareness. How they want to do it is through means of some sort of consumption diary on the one hand, to register increases/decreases of use and the circumstances. Even though it is not yet accompanied by a scientific institution, such as a University facility or other third party scientists, it is one of the very first steps towards general public education. Another measure is the inclusion of social counselors (I lack a better word) inside shops. Thus, there will be educated people available to you to talk to in case you have any questions concerning Cannabis (what it is, how to use, where to use, effects, etc.) Likely, the plan will not go through government anytime soon, but there, at least, is a movement to be seen. Most politicians are forced to do so, though, because they are always fighting for votes. In the end, as a fed up German citizen, I could not care less HOW we get there, as long as we do. Thanks everybody for your replies, it's a great pleasure to read. I still fantasize about a legal high at the end of a long workday.
I seem to be on a roll! I think this is five times in the last week that I've been too vague in my descriptions and came across as supporting the opposite viewpoint on accident. My point was that if someone wants to ban cannabis for schizophrenia reasons, if you show them the correlation behind tobacco, for them to be consistent in their ideals they will be forced to want to ban tobacco as well. But nobody has ever under any circumstances said "we should ban tobacco because it causes schizophrenia!", and it's a huge double-standard for people who are blinded by correlation meaning causation. I personally don't think that there is a shred of evidence that supports cannabis causing schizophrenia. I don't even think it "brings it out" of you, either. It's just that when you are psychotic you are highly agitated, and want to do something, ANYTHING, to get the agitation to stop. The voices/delusions are one thing, the agitation is the worse symptom. Some people resort to various things to relieve their agitation, some go to alcohol for the CNS suppression, others go to marijuana for the mellow anxiety relief, and others go to tobacco for... well as the article states nobody really knows, but once you get hooked on tobacco smoking ends up being a thing that DOES reduce anxiety. The anxiety is heightened by the addiction, but I think the big thing with psychosis is not necessarily that you care so much about what levels are you at sometimes and more interested in feeling those levels move up and down. The downward spike in anxiety levels, regardless if your destination is an anxiety level that is higher than the average person, is quite relieving. When you are psychotic you are pretty much constantly for years or even decades at an anxiety/agitation levels that are higher than average, so the downtick in levels is something that is noticeable and keeps you from completely losing it and keeping some semblance of touch with reality and your own emotions. Then you are being put on god knows how many different anti-psychotics and psychotropic medications to try and figure out which one works for you, which can take years to figure out (assuming you can/have received medical treatment). When you are on the wrong ones (which for each body is a random 90% of them), it can actually increase your agitation levels. Having an addiction that can cause noticeable, consistent downticks in agitation on your command is something that a lot of people like to have in the hard days even if it has it's own risks of increased agitation. It becomes a cost benefit analysis where the cost/risk of being addicted to tobacco outweighs the temporary relief since it can prevent a suicide out of fear that you'll forever be trapped in that state. Then these people probably have difficulty quitting once they get moderately to mostly better. As opposed to cannabis, which if was used to create those same downticks would leave them with no physical addiction to the drug in the short term meaning no increased agitation when they are not smoking, being more in control of the drugs they are consuming, and no physical addiction in the long term meaning once they get better they can just quit if they wish without insane withdrawals and dependence. And while we are at it, you know, we can just not restrict the prescription of benzos to certain psychotic patients. I can't believe how much agitated psychotic patients are denied benzos when that is basically the core usage of them at this point. In some cases they work better than anti-psychotics, especially patients who have bodies that can't really cooperate with the high-powered nature of an anti-psychotic.
This is absolutely true, which is why you have to be careful with them. That doesn't discount the actual benefits of using benzos, and I'm not a fan of when doctors prescribe them to be used daily unless it is for short term relief. There are still anxiety patients out there need a benzo once a week or so to deal with severe anxiety attacks, which wouldn't lead to dependence. In the case of psychosis, though, your options are very much different. During acute psychosis you'll be on much worse drugs than benzos. When you are on the wrong anti-psychotics for your particular body chemistry, you will likely be in the emergency room and/or hospital not because you are a danger to yourself and/or others, but because your medications are causing you to pass out multiple times each day randomly and you hit your head, the drugs can cause dystonic reactions that cause you to lose control of certain muscles and they flex without you commanding them, they can trigger parkinson's symptoms (known as psuedoparkinsons or something like that), they can even cause your psychosis to be worse and trigger suicidal thoughts. That's not to say that anti-psychotics are the devil, they are kind of a necessary evil that you have to find the one that meshes with your body, but they are really awful drugs and all doctors know this. There isn't really an alternative to these drugs at the moment. So when your illness is causing 100% of your day to be agitated causing lack of sleep, lack of perception, and constant onslaught of thoughts that do not belong to you and voices that do not belong to you, followed by trying to work through the difficulty of dealing with medication that you feel is trying to kill you (either delusionally as in "this is poison! the CIA is poisoning me!" or logically through just knowing that these medications are making you worse and trying to fight your way through the side-effects), being denied access to a relief to agitation because you can get addicted to it is silly. You're essentially fighting for your life at that point, either delusional thoughts that are telling you to kill yourself or you logically giving up entirely because you can't take the agitation anymore and killing yourself. If long-term dependence issues would cause people to wish to not prescribe any drug, though, they wouldn't prescribe the anti-psychotics either because weaning off of anti-psychotics is incredibly dangerous and can also cause withdrawal that causes hospitalization and long-term use of them can cause permanent movement disorders (tardive diskensia). I know there are probably some asshole doctors out there that might think this way, but I don't think this is the norm by a long shot. They do have to consider the risk of the patient getting addicted to it but there are many many cases of patients with serious conditions that need it. It's also kind of a judgment call when it comes to mental illness and issues of these kinds, so some might be better at knowing when a patient really needs it or not. Then there are the asshole patients who just want to be prescribed them so they can get high, which is also a problem they have to consider. In cases of legalized cannabis we've had to date, cannabis has always been legalized in a very limited setting and the problem has never been so wide scale as to be a public health concern. But there are issues when retail cannabis becomes so easily available to so many. I don't think it's wrong, for example, to have real concerns about the degree to which people lose productive hours and impact their job prospects. The same loss of productivity and health can still be had legally, though. Overeating, over-videogaming, over-television watching, over-drinking, over-fertilizing your lawn, over-gambling, over-whatever, are all things that can and do happen. If someone repeatedly doesn't do their job due to any of these things, we already have a solution to that. We fire them.Benzos are really nothing to write home about. The drugs all have clear indications that physical dependence comes in a relatively short time period --as in, with mere weeks of consistent use-- and that the primary factor for dependence is that withdrawal symptoms lead to exacerbated episodes of virtually all the symptoms (anxiety, insomnia, etc.) that cause people to be prescribed the drug in general.
I'm pretty sure that doctors in the U.S. vastly over-prescribe benzos simply because the recreational use and diversion are things that patients make people perfectly happy in the short term. If they become addicted, well, most of the time that becomes someone else's problem. In other words, because the drugs are legal and abundant, there's the ability to pass the buck infinitely.
That will be the the problem with cannabis. The problems will never be physical addiction, withdrawal, etc. and yet there are easily spotted symptoms that at a wide enough scale will become an issue.
THIS is the sort of thought process I wish for in a political debate. Or any other debate, for that matter. There has been another useless discussion on public television some days ago, where it was stated by state officials, that alcohol, compared to cannabis, is legal, because it has been accompanying our culture. "As an enrichment to society, alcohol and its unnecessary annually death-rate, can be kept legal, because it has been for hundreds of years." (loosely quoted). Now, I was agitated to no degree, because no on in that whole discussion even considered the cultural use of Cannabis in the last thousands of year. The fact, that they do not know about stuff (facts, findings, history) makes it okay for them to disregard any other opposing argumentation. I really do not know how one could open up those people. They are stuck in their tiny bubble, while others either suffer from the side-effects of their medication, or from no effective medication at all. Still others suffer, because what they can get is booze, whilst the only thing they wanted was to relax with a Joint.
I live in Victoria, Australia, and it currently feels like all my freedoms are slowly being stripped away by the current federal government. Some intrepid internet user has been keeping a list of shitty things that Abbott and his government have done to Australia, I encourage you to take a look: http://sallymcmanus.net/abbotts-wreckage/ On the topic of cannabis specifically, the fact that health concerns are still used as justification for cannabis being illegal while alcohol and cigarettes remain on the market is absurd. These two substances, especially alcohol, cause far more harm than cannabis ever could. I guess the government hasn't figured out a way to earn as much money from cannabis though ;)
457 Facepalms already. Doesn't his head hurt?Some intrepid internet user has been keeping a list of shitty things that Abbott and his government have done to Australia, I encourage you to take a look: http://sallymcmanus.net/abbotts-wreckage/
Wouldn't that be a nice topic for a different thread?! Why are, in general, politicians and their decisions so detached from the people? Is it so much about financial power that making decisions for the people becomes something of lesser importance? I really don't get it. I know (not personally) three politicians that I can name here in Germany that make decisions that actually benefit the working folks, the ones that mainly fall under the influence of such decisions. Not rich, working eight hours a day, one child, one car, one apartment.