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Regarding the lawsuits that Oklahoma and Nebraska filed against Colorado, the federal government has asked the Supreme Court to stay out of it, so, that's good, right? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/12/16/feds-ask-supreme-court-stay-out-lawsuit-over-colorado-marijuana/77457652/
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Dec 17, 2015 17:38
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At some level, couldn't you argue that it's no different than alcohol or fruits and veggies? Laws are different in different places, it's on the person to know. It'd be like arguing about banning Sunday liquor sales and then being upset when people go across the border to buy and come back.
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Dec 17, 2015 19:03
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If anyone is interested, I started a thread in the Election subforum to specifically discuss the electoral prospects of legalization this election, with a poll. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3756249
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Dec 17, 2015 19:14
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Boywhiz88 posted:At some level, couldn't you argue that it's no different than alcohol or fruits and veggies? Laws are different in different places, it's on the person to know. It'd be like arguing about banning Sunday liquor sales and then being upset when people go across the border to buy and come back. Yeah, but the difference is that it's illegal federally, and while states have claimed the right to make it legal, it's not really clear they ought to be allowed to do that.
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Dec 17, 2015 19:18
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Was not aware that Delaware had passed a bill to decriminalize which goes into effect tonight: http://blog.norml.org/2015/12/17/delaware-decriminalization-law-takes-effect/ Looks they'll be a rush to decriminalize before legalization.
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Dec 18, 2015 01:57
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Congress quietly ends federal government's ban on medical marijuanaquote:Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. Merry Christmas, everyone 
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Dec 18, 2015 08:19
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Thanks, Paul Ryan!
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Dec 18, 2015 08:45
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anyone know what that could mean for VA patients eligible for MM in MM states? edit: article says dec 16th 2014...? 500excf type r fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 18, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 20:28
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TACD posted:Congress quietly ends federal government's ban on medical marijuana So is rescheduling an inevitability at this point is that just wishful thinking?
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Dec 18, 2015 21:06
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Aliquid posted:Thanks, Paul Ryan! Paul Highan
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Dec 18, 2015 21:14
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Dmitri-9 posted:So is rescheduling an inevitability at this point is that just wishful thinking? Considering, as mentioned before, that the article is from 2014, I'm going to take a wild guess and say no. The Omnibus budget bill that was passed recently does continue the federal ban on interfering with states that have legalized, though. But reclassification is still total wishful thinking.
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Dec 18, 2015 22:12
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Well that depends what sort of time table you're talking about, I don't see it happening in the next couple years but surely it's going to happen eventually. I'd guess that once you see half the states or more with legalization you're going to see more of a push for rescheduling, but that depends a lot on who the president happens to be once we get to that point.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:05
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It's unfortunately a politicized matter because Republicans know in their gut that the people most excited about legalization tend to be the people who don't vote for them, so to them there really isn't anything to gain by assisting legalization and decriminalization efforts. Democrats appear to be sensing that a lot of the people who vote for them want legal weed, so they're doing stuff like pushing for decriminalization. Only a handful of politicians in congress (if that) are ardently pushing cannabis legalization and I think change will be upon us when a congressmen or someone who wants to serve in congress can call for legalization and that stance not being seen as a wacky thing (eg Bernie Sanders) . As it stands most congressmen are very reluctant to do that. And let's be honest, most people who support legalization do so because they want access to legal weed or believe that something they once did and enjoyed should not be criminalized. The debate is fundamentally about the morals of consuming cannabis, and the population is saying: No, it isn't immoral. I think only a minority of people (such as intellectuals) push for legalization because they think "the drug war failed" or legalization would help strengthen civil rights etc. The emotions about cannabis have changed. Which is why I was bothered by this article on Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/17/10413134/marijuana-legalization-surveys This article argues for legalization for intellectual reasons (because the drug war has failed) but the substance of the article makes an emotional case against cannabis use and basically continues cannabis stigmatization. Someone on the fence could very well read this article and think "Nah, legalization is too risky."
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Dec 19, 2015 10:03
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starry skies above posted:I think only a minority of people (such as intellectuals) push for legalization because they think "the drug war failed" or legalization would help strengthen civil rights etc. The emotions about cannabis have changed. Which is why I was bothered by this article on Vox:
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Dec 19, 2015 15:16
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EX250 Type R posted:edit: article says dec 16th 2014...?
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Dec 19, 2015 15:57
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starry skies above posted:And let's be honest, most people who support legalization do so because they want access to legal weed or believe that something they once did and enjoyed should not be criminalized. The debate is fundamentally about the morals of consuming cannabis, and the population is saying: No, it isn't immoral. This depends on what you mean by support, if you're talking about the entire ~55% of the population that claims to support legalization I think the most common reason is "who cares, it's weed" as in they think it's a waste of time for law enforcement to go after. The issue here is that most of these people aren't super passionate about it and ultimately don't care too much either way about what happens.
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Dec 19, 2015 17:29
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Marijuana has the benefit of being an economic resource (i.e., it's actually grown in the US), having widespread familiarity because lots of people have used it, and actually having fairly benign side effects (at least avoiding certain edibles, etc). You usually only need one or two of these to make a strong effort for legalization. For example, Tobacco has the first property, and alcohol has the first two properties. With that in mind, it's no wonder that legalization is advancing so much. Other drugs don't have the same factors. Cocaine can't easily be made in the US*, consumption of cocaine has actually been steadily dropping over time (the numbers I'm seeing show ~0.5% of the population used cocaine in 2011, versus 1% in 2006), and the chances of an overdose/bad side effects are much higher. Other drugs have the same issues, though at differing rates (eg, LSD probably doesn't have that bad of side effects, but almost no one uses it). In addition, for many drugs there's the idea of treating addiction that doesn't exist for Marijuana. So basically, Marijuana is a perfect storm of factors that other drugs don't have and probably shouldn't be treated the same due to those factors. *Although apparently the coca plant is adaptable to many environments, so maybe this could happen.
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Dec 19, 2015 17:59
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computer parts posted:
Wet tropical highlands; iirc they need to be over 2000m elevation for quality product but not susceptible to freezing. I figure the furthest north coca can be grown is in Chiapas or thereabouts.
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Dec 19, 2015 19:05
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Aliquid posted:Wet tropical highlands; iirc they need to be over 2000m elevation for quality product but not susceptible to freezing. I figure the furthest north coca can be grown is in Chiapas or thereabouts. It sounds like if you did this species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythroxylum_novogranatense it would be doable in a greenhouse. I don't know what it would do to the quality of the cocaine though.
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Dec 19, 2015 19:10
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Who's up for some Kona blow?
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Dec 19, 2015 19:11
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computer parts posted:It sounds like if you did this species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythroxylum_novogranatense it would be doable in a greenhouse. I don't know what it would do to the quality of the cocaine though. Oh wow, that's a way lower elevation requirement than I had read. I'm thinking maybe the alkaloid content goes up with elevation maybe??
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Dec 19, 2015 19:19
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these are hilarious lmao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rHm8GbTHyE
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Dec 19, 2015 19:30
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computer parts posted:Marijuana has the benefit of being an economic resource (i.e., it's actually grown in the US), having widespread familiarity because lots of people have used it, and actually having fairly benign side effects (at least avoiding certain edibles, etc). You usually only need one or two of these to make a strong effort for legalization. For example, Tobacco has the first property, and alcohol has the first two properties. With that in mind, it's no wonder that legalization is advancing so much. This is a good point, and it is a shame, really. I would rather see every other drug legalized rather than weed. It is just so.. inelegant.
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Dec 19, 2015 20:11
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Maoist Pussy posted:This is a good point, and it is a shame, really. I would rather see every other drug legalized rather than weed. It is just so.. inelegant. Thankfully elegance is not something people consider when talking about legality 
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Dec 19, 2015 20:20
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Maoist Pussy posted:This is a good point, and it is a shame, really. I would rather see every other drug legalized rather than weed. It is just so.. inelegant. You have to take victories where they come. It's still worthwhile to prevent putting hundreds of thousands if not millions of nonviolent marijuana offenders behind bars.
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Dec 19, 2015 21:49
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The end game for me is where most drugs are decriminalized at the very least except for things like antibiotics etc.
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Dec 20, 2015 00:46
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Cantorsdust posted:You have to take victories where they come. It's still worthwhile to prevent putting hundreds of thousands if not millions of nonviolent marijuana offenders behind bars. Not sure if I agree with you on that. I mean, incarceration is probably a waste of money, sure, but other than that it seems ok.
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Dec 20, 2015 01:31
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Maoist Pussy posted:Not sure if I agree with you on that. I mean, incarceration is probably a waste of money, sure, but other than that it seems ok. Are you just shitposting or do you really believe this?
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Dec 20, 2015 01:59
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Powercrazy posted:The end game for me is where most drugs are decriminalized at the very least except for things like antibiotics etc. For me, if the DEA was going to crack down on anything, it'd be the sketchy quality research chemicals with no safety profile or even impure prescription drugs being shipped in from abroad.
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Dec 20, 2015 05:43
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Maoist Pussy posted:It is just so.. inelegant. What the gently caress does this mean?
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Dec 20, 2015 06:07
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Xandu posted:For me, if the DEA was going to crack down on anything, it'd be the sketchy quality research chemicals with no safety profile or even impure prescription drugs being shipped in from abroad. Ironically, these are both the most protected psychoactive substances and some of the most dangerous because of the limitations of the Analog Act.
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Dec 20, 2015 06:14
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Xandu posted:For me, if the DEA was going to crack down on anything, it'd be the sketchy quality research chemicals with no safety profile or even impure prescription drugs being shipped in from abroad. Funny thing about that, they would largely go away with no intervention were it not for the criminalization of more traditional drugs. Cracking down on research chemicals is like cracking down on the pimples on your face rather than not slathering it with grease in the first place.
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Dec 20, 2015 07:25
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I mean, on the other hand I can understand the concern. Say marijuana is legalized completely. How much political will would be left to legalize or decriminalize the other drugs. If tobacco, alcohol, and pot were legal, what proportion of the population would push to legalize cocaine? Meth? Heroin? LSD? Random research chem 273? Marijuana legalization is the foundation for all other drug legalization movements. If marijuana is legalized, I could see the rest losing steam. Still, marijuana is the number one reason for all the misery in the drug war. It's worth fighting for regardless of what happens to the rest, IMO. My hope would be that the public would see that no real harm occurred after widespread MJ legalization and that that would lead to a rethinking and requestioning of the Drug War in general.
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Dec 20, 2015 07:25
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We're going to be stuck with the local maximum that is "only marijuana policy is changed" for awhile but my impression is that it's still, uhh, harm reduced that it's worth it.
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Dec 20, 2015 07:27
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It's difficult to imagine another push for legalization beyond marijuana, but I think you have to view it in context. Marijuana decriminalization/legalization is part of the larger drug war winding down as a failure. Coke, heroin, and meth aren't likely to be legalized anytime soon, but I think we're increasingly less likely to throw users into prison and try to ruin their lives.
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Dec 20, 2015 07:45
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Here in DC, the city has started putting up these bus shelter ads featuring Mary Jane and Reggie and their little dog Kush
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Dec 20, 2015 13:08
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I really can't see any/many drugs being legalized on an individual basis like weed, other than maybe allowing increased tightly-controlled use of MDMA or DMT under psychiatric care, etc. What I could certainly see eventually happening is some kind of Portugal-lite blanket decrim, where for example people caught with opiates are mandatorily put into medical (not criminal) detox programs, maybe even free controlled injection centers, but dealers still face criminal charges. Really not seeing any "here's why coke really isn't so bad" campaign in my lifetime, but I can squint and see "incarcerating junkies is wasting taxpayer dollars and destabilizing communities, let's treat them like disease victims and not criminals".
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Dec 20, 2015 14:03
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I worry that the disease model of addiction won't tackle the root cause of problematic drug use, and mandatory medical detox programs will fail to differentiate between casual users and those with problematic use patterns though. In the Portuguese model a court can make a decision to mandate treatment, or levy a fine, or do nothing, but if you end up with the state governor having shares in detox facilities then it can provide perverse incentives to force people who don't need it through treatment.
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Dec 20, 2015 14:52
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:I really can't see any/many drugs being legalized on an individual basis like weed, other than maybe allowing increased tightly-controlled use of MDMA or DMT under psychiatric care, etc. How does this get to the root of the problem? This still means that those drugs will still be trafficked and sold by criminals, putting an enormous premium on the product. Junkies might avoid a drug charge, but everyone who wants to use harder drugs but doesn't want to register as an addict with the government (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's most people) will be paying exorbitant prices and propping up criminal enterprises. I guess heroin especially gets stigmatized so badly that people assume there's no middle ground between not using it all and being a junkie, but most users probably fall somewhere in between. An addict that is losing control has their situation exacerbated by the constant resource demands of the addiction, and will probably burn through any assets and relationships, and perhaps even turn to property crime, long before they're the stereotypical junkie that you might expect to register themselves and stand in line in public for their fix. It would be far simpler to make the drugs available in a relatively open way, with purity and prices set by the FDA/whoever. Cocaine/heroin are so easy to produce that prices could easily fall 2-3 orders of magnitude if it wasn't for the huge clusterfuck of interdiction between the producer and user. Medical resources should be freely available, but enforcing them only stigmatizes users further and forces them into the shadows. The evidence is that the majority of people with access to cocaine and heroin do not use it for reasons other than the price, dropping the price should not increase usage by enough to undermine all of the positive effects. That said, this could certainly be piloted in different locales with different drugs to measure the effects on usage rates. If this approach results in a significant uptick in addicts, it could be rolled back rather than expanded. It has nothing to do with "here's why coke/heroin isn't so bad". It's more of a question of, if people are going to use cocaine or heroin, what is the best way to reduce societal harm from that decision.
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Dec 20, 2015 15:02
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:I really can't see any/many drugs being legalized on an individual basis like weed, other than maybe allowing increased tightly-controlled use of MDMA or DMT under psychiatric care, etc. There's been some research into psychiatric uses for psychedelics. Given that they also aren't addictive and aren't too my knowledge part of the big-deal revenue stream of the major nasty south and central American narco groups (we all know how much brown people with guns scare conservatives) I could see them be the target of a decrim/reschedule. Eventually.
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Dec 20, 2015 16:22
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