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This thread mod-approved by Brown Moses This topic needs a D&D thread since there's a lot going on globally in the field of ganja, big changes pending in a number of countries. The US is now up to 8 states with legal weed, but facing a challenge in the likely appointment of drug-warrior Jeff Sessions. Canada has a strong plan to legalize cannabis nationwide, and across Latin America and Europe, and even parts of Asia and Africa, there's talk of medical weed, decriminalization, and even legalization that would've been a fantasy even a few years ago. Let's talk about it.  Ground rules The previous thread got shut down for being lovely, so all we had was the C-Spam US weed election thread, so I got thumbs-up from Brown Moses for some unproductive discursions that will merit probation: - No Libertarian circle-jerking about "my body, my rights" and how the sheeple need to wake up and legalize all drugs. Stick to factual observations of actual policy, thinkpieces, political and social strategy. This was the single-worst source of lovely posting in the prior thread. - No personal testimony, nobody cares if goon WeedlordBonerhitler69 thinks weed is groovy. If you're in this thread it's no surprise that you happen to think weed should be legal. - No flights of fancy about legalizing coke/heroin/LSD, exception being if there's actual pending legislation of interest that informs the thread's understanding of global drug policy World overview Below are Wikipedia's maps for the legal status of recreational cannabis, and of medical cannabis globally. If anyone sees anything blatantly wrong or outdated, let me know and I can ping a graphics guy on Wikimedia who can update them. Medical cannabis Wikipedia map Recreational cannabis Wikipedia map North America - The US has eight legal states plus DC, 14 states plus USVI that have decriminalized (and numerous cities), 23 states with medical marijuana but no legal, and 15 states with low-THC CBD oil legalized on at least some level. That leaves us with only five states and two territories where there's total weed criminalization, and the remaining few have generally had political attempts to loosen things up in recent years.(Wikipedia listing by state and territory) - Canada's new Liberal government is planning to legalize cannabis, probably sometime in 2017, so worth watching closely in this thread. - Mexico decriminalized minor possession of cannabis in 2009, but most of Central America remains pretty conservative except for Costa Rica (semi-decrim gray area), and Belize has been debating decrim. - Most of the Caribbean is still pretty conservative, with the big exception of Jamaica which in 2015 decriminalized small possession and cultivation, and from what I see is strongly considering an actual legal ganja economy. The Cayman Islands also just legalized CBD in 2016.  South America - Basically everywhere outside of the three Guyanas has decriminalized personal possession of cannabis, and Uruguay is famously the first country of the modern era to legalize cannabis entirely, though that seems a slow process down there. - Next ones to watch: Argentina and Chile. Argentina is experiencing a US-style state-by-state legalization of medical cannabis, and Chile has had attempts in its Congress to legalize up to six plants per household for personal use.  Europe - It's a complicated patchwork so I won't go into too much detail, but basically Europe mainly liberalizing in the south, with decrim strongest in places like Italy and Spain, while France and the UK remain sticks in the mud. Something like a dozen+ EU states now allow some form of legal cannabinoid medicine (though not always herbal cannabis), and more (including Ireland) are in serious talks to jump into legalizing medical cannabis.  Africa - I've been trying to suss out if any niche countries in Africa just happen to have legal cannabis (Comoros did for a while during a socialist coup), but as best as I can tell it's technically illegal everywhere, though often unenforced. World-famous Morocco isn't ready to legalize but is at least talking about setting up a medical cannabis industry, but the big influencer to watch for is South Africa, where there's a lot of chatter about potentially loosening at least medical rules on "dagga" but with strong popular support that just might take it all the way to legal.  Asia - As you can see on the map, Asia is really regional, with strict prohibition (at least in theory) in most of the Middle East, Central Asia, and East/Southeast Asia, but a big block of "meh" in South Asia. India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan have long histories of cannabis use and weren't terribly excited to ban it, doing so mostly under international pressure, and India still allows a number of traditional uses, particularly cannabis milkshakes ("bhang") which are so common at certain major holidays that they just try to regulate it slightly rather than ban it. If lots of Western countries start legalizing cannabis, watch for South Asia to start sliding into "well if you guys don't care about it anymore..."  Oceania - Oceania has a number of countries with massively high rates of cannabis use, with Palau allegedly a global leader. Despite that, laws are mostly pretty strict against cannabis, although again often unenforced. New Zealand is slowly debating medical cannabis, and Australia just in November 2016 legalized a roll-out of medical cannabis nationwide, so that's the hot developing story in the region.  That's the current situation globally, and I'll leave some room in the first posts for a quick history lesson, and if anyone wants to write a breakdown of the complex situation in the USA. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 02:27
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[space saved for world history breakdown]
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 02:28
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Here's my attempt to give a rough breakdown on the history of weed in the US. The US has a long history of growing hemp for industrial fiber, thus the famous stoner reference to George Washington growing weed. Much like in Europe, there's really not much evidence that cannabis was used as a psychoactive in the colonial US, likely because (as in Europe) the strains grown weren't high in THC. Europe had a long history of incidentally using cannabis as a pharmaceutical base for lots of minor remedies, but nothing amazing. Unless anyone has any breaking data, the general consensus appears to be that cannabis wasn't really used for getting high for most of US history. This starts to change going into the 1800s due largely to two parallel tracks: the French are exposed to smoking cannabis through their adventures in Egypt and Algeria, and the Brits are exposed to it through their colonization of India. In these two distinct but converging waves, researchers in Europe start to experiment more with cannabis remedies, and a narrow hipster segment of Europeans starts to use cannabis (generally as hashish, eaten or smoked) to get high as an exotic Oriental practice. These trends enter the US by the mid-1800s, so at the same time you start seeing all these opium and coca patent remedies popping up, you also get pharmaceutical products made from cannabis. At the same time, the early bohemian crowd experients with getting high on weed, though from the coverage of the time it looks to be mostly a weird foreign novelty, as in this famous 1884 article about a upper-class twit getting baked:  Reaching towards 1900, stuff has just started to get silly with the sheer weight of abusable drugs on the market; once source I read noted how vacant lots in NYC were strewn with bottles of a coca-based nasal remedy the kids got high off of. Amidst all this abuse, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906 in the US, requiring at least proper labeling of all this crazy stuff. Right around then is when individual cities and states first start to require a prescription to get cannabis, with Masachusetts being the first state in 1911. A separate wave of cannabis use started coming in around this time, with the practice of smoking weed filtering up from both Mexico (to the Western states) and the Caribbean (to the South and East Coast via ports). Going into the 1920s especially, a number of states particularly in the West start moving to prescription-only for cannabis, in many cases explicitly mentioning its abuse by Mexicans. Here's a quote from Montana for example: "When some beet field peon takes a few rares of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." By 1933, 29 states have restricted cannabis to prescription only. By the 1930s, the international community had already started lumping cannabis proscription into their nascent war on drugs, at the particular urging of South Africa, Egypt, and Turkey where cannabis was considered a problem. It was the 30s where the US started to really ramp up public concern about cannabis, Reefer Madness and a host of melodramatic novels come out, and the US government finally steps in with the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, requiring everyone involved in the cannabis industry (farmers, pharmacists, etc) to get registered and pay a tax. Folks weren't excited about complying with the added paperwork and expense, so cannabis drops off dramatically as a patent medicine and a fiber, except for a brief spurt of industrial fiber production when WWII cut off the supply of rope materials from Asia and US farmers were called upon to produce hemp out of patriotism. In the 1970s, following a decade of surging use of marijuana as a drug, the US passed the Controlled Substances Act. This is the legislation that famously put cannabis under Schedule I, for dangerous drugs of no medical use that are totally prohibited. At the same time President Nixon set up a study about how to deal with the hippy threat, the Shafer Commission, who in 1972 concluded that weed wasn't particularly harmful and should be treated as a public health issue and civil infraction. Advice that Nixon ignored because, hey he's Nixon and he's a dick and hates hippies. A surprisingly large chunk of the country was not thrilled about the 1970 law, and pretty quickly after you see a wave of decriminalization, where individual states simply refused to enforce the federal laws. Oregon was the first to decriminalize cannabis in 1973, followed by a dozen states or so, including some real squares like Nebraska that for whatever reason thought locking people up for weed was pointless. New Mexico and Virginia even established some weak but foresightful legislation to legalize cannabis for certain medical conditions. However, shortly after that we hit the 1980s, the crack epidemic and resulting Reagan War on Drugs and everything went apeshit for a while. It took until the Clinton era for weed to start clawing back the huge political shellacking it had taken since 1970. California was the first to roll out an actually impactful medical marijuana program (and one famous for being pretty open to any condition that weed might conceivably help with). Oregon came over in 1998, and Maine in 1999, but it wasn't until the 2000s that things really got rolling. Some individual municipalities "legalized" marijuana, like Denver in 2005, but 2012 was the real breakwater, when the entire states of Colorado and Washington voted by public initiative to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes. That brings us up to the modern day; counting states where legalization is approved but pending, we have full-legal in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. DC legalized weed but is blocked by Congress from licensing stores so just has a gray market where everyone runs around with really awkward workarounds while cops roll their eyes. Fourteen states have decriminalized cannabis possession down to a civil infraction, as have a number of cities in otherwise strict states (Wichita, Nashville, Toledo, Philadelphia, etc). Around 30 states have medical cannabis, and 15 states (mostly in the South) allow some form of cannabis-based drug, usually CBD oil, but not cannabis itself. At this point, the only states that *don't* have any provision for medical or decriminalized cannabis are Idaho (governor Butch Otter vetoed CBD oil in 2015), Kansas (medical cannabis stalled out in the Lege in 2015), South Dakota (been trying for medical since 2006), Indiana (failed to approve MMJ in 2015, Pence is a dick), and West Virginia (MMJ tried and failed every year since 2010). So really only a sliver of the population is in states where cannabis is totally not tolerated by the state government, but unfortunately everyone is still under a federal law that categorizes weed right up there with heroin. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 02:28
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I've updated the post below the OP with an effort-post summarizing the history of cannabis in the US. If anyone sees a mistake or needs something changed, ping me here. I'm a decently well-read guy, but when I started reading up on cannabis history I found out that there was a whole lot I didn't know about the course of weed law in the US, so hopefully folks find the post informative.
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Dec 5, 2016 06:26
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Lawman 0 posted:I strongly suspect that New Jersey might legalize it soonish since our despised governor Chris Christie (aka fat reek) is a determined drug warrior and we have (a republican sponsored!) legalization bill sitting in the state house right now that would probably pass if he wasn't blocking it. The other two East Coast states to watch closely in the next two years are Vermont and Rhode Island; both of those lack a ballot initiative process so a weed law change would have to come through the legislature, and both of their legislatures have been tapdancing right around the issue of legalizing weed for about two years now. Here's a good breakdown of the situation in RI: http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20161109/mass-recreational-marijuana-vote-sparks-renewed-push-for-legalization-in-rhode-island
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Dec 6, 2016 01:02
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Maine is kicking off a month-long $500,000 hand recount of the ballots to figure out if cannabis is legalized. Question 1 won on election day but only by 1% so the opposition ginned up enough support to mandate a recount. The governor is already not thrilled about weed, and has said to the media that *if* the recount comes out in favor *and* if President Trump said it's okay, maybe then Maine can legalize. http://www.ibtimes.com/recreational-marijuana-2016-maine-vote-recount-question-1-begins-2455230
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Dec 6, 2016 03:43
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B B posted:It's Paul LePage: It's worth quoting the very first line of the article: "America’s most ignorant governor is at it again." E: it's worth quoting some catchy lines from the pro-weed state rep: quote:“The magical thing he did is he took all the bullshit from the 1980s on and put it in one video,” TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 05:27
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Though it's not likely to get too far, a member of India's parliament has proposed legalizing and setting up a regulatory framework for ganja: http://swarajyamag.com/insta/will-marijuana-be-legalised-in-india-its-up-for-debate-in-lok-sabha India is one of those countries that only grudgingly cracked down on weed due to their international treaty obligations, and purposely wrote the legislation in a way that allowed them to keep permitting traditional uses like bhang milkshakes made from weed leaves which are really popular at certain holidays. India also doesn't seem in a huge hurry to crack down on ritual weed use by saddhus (holy men). As noted in the OP, South Asia as a region has largely been unenthused about cannabis prohibition and I wouldn't be surprised to see this popping up more as the Western world loosens regulations. In a vague way, it's similar to the post-colonial attitude you see in South America, where laxness on the part of the US is seen as a sign that they can let up pressure on cannabis.
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Dec 6, 2016 08:09
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Forceholy posted:I don't either, but with the upcoming administration proposing a Muslim registry, I would not put it out of the realm of reality. Public opinion polling in the US shows around 50+% approval for recreational cannabis and 70+% approval for medical cannabis; I don't know of any simple polling on Islam to compare that too since most polls appear more nuanced, but suffice to say I imagine that weed is more popular than Muslims in the US. Do we have anyone here who's spun-up on the situation in Australia? Apparently they legalized medical cannabis nationwide and are in the middle of some huge roll-out and clinical trials, but I haven't been following it closely.
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Dec 7, 2016 01:59
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Spangly A posted:Sticking strictly to A Thing Happened, Along the lines of these kind of reports, the more I've been reading up on cannabis history, the more I've been struck by how often governments have commissioned cannabis reports and ignored them. The Nixon administration is a great example as noted above, where the Shafer Commission basically said "weed's not that bad and criminalizing it does more harm than good" and the expert advice was soundly ignored. On the other hand, Canada is finishing up its own study that's all but assured to legalize weed in the next year or so, and Ireland in early 2017 will put out its conclusions on medical marijuana. At the opposite end, you do have cases like the Netherlands and Portugal. Netherlands in the 1970s decided that weed criminalization was a bad idea and opened up its huge gray area which led to its infamous "coffeeshops". Despite common belief, weed still isn't actually legal in the Netherlands, but the gray area is sweeping enough that they have a reasonably protected cannabis economy. Portugal is another case, maybe even the top case, worth reading about if you're boning up on drug history. Summarizing from memory, going towards 2000 the Portuguese government was trying to figure out how to address its skyrocketing drug problem, but they couldn't get any political consensus amongst the key players. Then in a flash of brilliance, they decided to set up a commission, and pre-emptively agree amongst the parties that no matter what the commission decided, they'd all support it. The commission came back saying "best course of action is to decriminalize all drugs" and that's Portugal today, and it largely seems to be a success. Just a bit of deeper commission history since I mentioned India, the British Indian government held a huge study back in 1894 to find out how big a deal cannabis was, and again unsurprisingly the decision was "not really a problem". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Hemp_Drugs_Commission posted:Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable. The excessive use may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive consumers the injury is not clearly marked. The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable. It has been the most striking feature in this inquiry to find how little the effects of hemp drugs have obtruded themselves on observation. The large number of witnesses of all classes who professed never to have seen these effects, the vague statements made by many who professed to have observed them, the very few witnesses who could so recall a case as to give any definite account of it, and the manner in which a large proportion of these cases broke down on the first attempt to examine them, are facts which combine to show most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs
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Dec 7, 2016 05:02
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GonadTheBallbarian posted:Right, but are raids of patients likely to spark any backlash? I know it's a bit unprecedented, but then again so is the mess we're in now Raids of *patients* seems incredibly cost-ineffective and terrible optics. Not just like "terrible but it's Trump" but more like "extremely unlikely on practical grounds if nothing else". I could see random raids on dispensaries, especially recreational-focused ones, just to shake up the market, but even that is more likely to be random and symbolic rather than a concerted effort because the DEA only has so much budget and local LEOs aren't going to be helping out. If I had to pick up my crystal ball here, I'd guess that we're going to see a few scattered raids on dispensaries, followed by *massive* bitching from the states involved, which will lead to a bunch of legal entanglements and wrangling that doesn't particularly go anywhere. It will have some chilling effect on the weed economy, pushing some folks to avoid starting new weed businesses or expanding them and thus pushing even more of the weed economy into the gray market. I don't expect it'll be chilling enough to prevent people from continuing to vote to legalize weed (recreational or medical), and in some cases might even provide a contrary effect where people are more determined to legalize to flip off the central government. I expect some of Trump's minions to be petulant enough to take random swings at legal weed, but for them not to have enough political capital to truly land a solid blow on the movement. If I turn out to be completely wrong feel free to throw this back in my face in the future, and/or compliment my insight in years to come.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:12
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Jamaica is another case with a really interesting history, and a lot of major changes recently. Despite it's weed-loving reputation, Jamaica was way ahead of the curve in banning cannabis, with the 1913 Ganja Law. Recall that the US didn't pass national-level legislation against marijuana until 1937. The most likely source for Jamaica's weed-ways is the large number of Indian laborers the British Empire brought over, which would explain why the Indian term "ganja" is the dominant term on the island. Presumably the powers that be weren't thrilled with their cheap labor getting high, particularly with the habit being shared by both the Indian and black laboring populations, so the Ganja law was supported by both the white elite and the church. Again, this was over a decade before the 1925 League of Nations treaty that put cannabis on the global radar. So the Jamaican government spent a full century using the law to smack around the tokers of the working class. Fast forward to 2015, and kinda out of the blue the Jamaican government decided to decriminalize cannabis to a ticketable offense for two ounces or less. They invited a bunch of leadership down from Colorado to advise them, which must've been a plum junket to land. There's apparently a lot of confusion in Jamaica about whether weed is "legal" now, and I can't blame them because the government is sending some mixed messages. To one degree, they put out word in the media emphasizing that weed is not at all legal yet and that's not their intent and they have treaty obligations... but on the other hand they're establishing a Cannabis Licensing Authority, there's talk of allowing foreigners with MMJ cards from their own states/countries to be recognized in Jamaica, and the government is talking about protecting their "brand" and maybe getting some kind of "denomination of origin" protection for Jamaican ganja. Also some inclarity as to whether the limit of five plants is just a police cutoff, or a full "sure, whatever, go ahead and grow five." In whatever case, Jamaica is making waves after a century of prohibition. Here are a few attempts to clarify the law that still left me confused: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Setting-the-record-straight-on-the-ganja-law_58632 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20160902/confusion-over-ganja-law-continues  TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 00:55
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Squalid posted:My utterly unrealistic dream is that the US could give authority to regulate scheduling and regulation to an actual medical body with a mandate to maximize public health based on sound scientific reasoning. If it's any consolation, the Shafer Report, with which President Nixon did wipe his rear end, probably had an influence on a good dozen states decriminalizing weed in the 1970s, and the overall momentum which slowly built up to what we have today. Though honestly I don't see it cited much directly in current weed media, which seems a shame. Though I'd also like to see the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission Report cited just because it's pretty cool and I should probably sit down and read the whole thing sometime. Speaking of Nixon, and speaking of unrealistic dreams, I harbor a secret hope that in a "only Nixon could go to China" weird strategy, the Republicans end up being the ones to de-schedule weed in this administration.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:12
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Poppyseed Poundcake posted:Can we point out how racist most weed legalization efforts and advocates are? Sure, if you have facts to back it up. Are you talking here more that key individuals are personally racist, or that legalization efforts are over-focused on the interests and priorities of white people? EDIT: if the answer is "because it's a boutique/identity politics niche issue and instead we should be focused more directly on addressing racial issues" then no, that wouldn't be germane to the thread. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 06:56
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GonadTheBallbarian posted:e. Also Ireland passed medical out of nowhere It's not finalized yet, but it's been approved by the Dáil and it looks to be cruising pretty smoothly through the process: http://www.ibtimes.com/ireland-marijuana-legalization-lawmakers-approve-medical-cannabis-bill-2455111
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Dec 9, 2016 04:30
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That may be, but a recent survey shows 48% of the Irish supporting legalized recreational: http://www.thejournal.ie/cannabis-recreational-use-ireland-poll-3115926-Dec2016/
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Dec 9, 2016 17:53
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Opiates and weed kinda breaks down to three issues: -- is cannabis safer than opiates for pain control while still being effective? -- can cannabis be used to treat opiate addiction? -- does the availability of cannabis provide an appealing alternative to opiates for people that just need to abuse something recreationally? I'm not spun-up on which med journals are good and which newspapers are citing good studies vice clickbaiting, but from a cursory glance there seems to be a growing argument for "yes" for all three, to varying degrees. Specifically there's been mainstream media reporting that opiate overdose deaths are relatively down in the states that have legalized weed, which at least on a gut level sound significant. Note that this slows down the anti-weed folks, plenty of them arguing "hmmm, people are legalizing weed and opiate ODs are up, it's obvious!". IIRC Maine in particular had people pushing "Maine has an opiate problem, why add *more* drugs to the mix?" These arguments may seem pretty ridiculous to a lot of us reading the thread, but apparently that message actually works on some significant portion of people.
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Dec 9, 2016 21:18
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Nevvy Z posted:I think you are absolutely right but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Similar for veterans and PTSD: it's not a bad-faith argument, but it's a really niche one, but I'm fine with that if it helps convince otherwise-recalcitrant folks that there are legit uses for cannabis. Speaking as a combat vet, anything that empirically helps to keep (even just some) vets from drinking themselves to death is probably a general public good.
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Dec 10, 2016 04:59
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Apropos of both vets and opiates, ran across this little snippet of data on GoogleBooks, citing the main academic who wrote about US troops smoking weed during the Vietnam War:quote:Dr. Zinberg reported back that the army's anti marijuana campaign increased the use of heroin in Vietnam.
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Dec 10, 2016 05:46
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For other US events to watch for, expect to see a vote on legalization in Michigan in 2018. Michigan would've voted along with the rest this November, but rules changes screwed over a bunch of their petition signatures and they were left off the ballot. They're looking at a Supreme Court case to get their signatures accepted, but also standing by to do a new petitioning run if they get shot down. In either case, 2018 vote appears to be the goal: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/09/petition_drive_planned_for_201.html Medical cannabis also got hung up in Oklahoma despite having enough votes, so that one also is expected to be pushed back to 2018. Until November 2018, mainly we're watching to see what the new Trump administration does, and which states try to legalize medical or recreational cannabis legislatively. Vermont, Rhode Island, or maybe New Jersey or Connecticut seem like relatively likely states to legislatively legalize, but I'd expect that barring a complete federal stompdown we'll see a few states legislatively bring in CBD oil or medical marijuana in an attempt to stave off ballot initiatives which might be more aggressive. Recall, only six states don't allow even CBD oil, so watch for one of those to at least make the minor concession in the next couple years. But again, a lot of this is going to depend on the Trump admin stance on cannabis.
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Dec 11, 2016 03:55
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The No on 1 campaign in Maine, the folks who demanded a recount and are slowing up the recognition of legal cannabis in Maine, couldn't even manage to drum up the 10 volunteers they're supposed to supply to help with the hand recount, until a couple days in when they managed to scramble people. When called out, they got pretty huffy about it: quote:Augur bristled at criticism about volunteer numbers from the Yes on 1 campaign, pointing out that the opposition campaign is not as well funded and relies on a grassroots group of volunteers who have full-time jobs. I'm not seeing any signs that finding 3,000 mis-counted ballots is likely, out of the 750,00 ballots cast, but counting all those by hand is going to take a while, so not any chance of a (legal) Green Christmas in Maine this year.
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Dec 12, 2016 03:09
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Don't they have an interest in miscounting them? I'll assume at least *some* good faith and rephrase that as "they have an incentive to have people on their team contribute to a critical look at the count". But yeah, couldn't even round up 10 at first so fell back on the anti-protest classic "well *our* people actually have jobs so they're too busy". If you can't find 10 bored retirees in Maine who dislike weed, that's saying something. I haven't seen any good speculation as to what their actual goal is here, short of just "cross fingers and hope that somehow 3,000+ ballots are dicked up or miscounted". Just me personally I'm curious if some of this is just a stalling tactic hoping that some Federal move in the meantime changes the balance and gives the governor top-cover to just strike down the whole measure somehow. But the recount shouldn't last long enough for Trump to get confirmed, much less get Sessions into place, so again not really clear on what they're trying to do here other than just being spiteful and wasting a half-mil of taxpayer dollars. As a minor sidenote, I note the anti-weed side loves to use the David v. Goliath argument with the "poor put-upon little defenders of the right are we, facing down Big Marijuana and its profit-seekers". Instead of, you know, admitting that they basically have the entire federal government and nearly a century of legal momentum on their side. I would not be at all surprised if that was literally a provided talking point from SAM or some similar group, since it seems a recurring argument they use to try to draw sympathy. Man, I hate SAM so much, so freaking disingenuous, basically a textbook example of concern-trolling. Their leader Kevin Sabet loves to do the whole "look folks, I couldn't care less if someone wants to hang out in their basement and smoke a joint while watching a movie, but I'm deeply concerned about Our Kids and Big Marijuana". Of course, SAM doesn't back any measures that would, say, decriminalize cannabis for adults while prosecuting provision to kids, because they're totally fine with the status-quo and exist solely to pump the brakes as hard as they can.
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Dec 12, 2016 03:43
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's a stalling tactic. La Page is going to try to get the pot thing stopped at a federal level. If the opponents just slow things up and take a long time finding volunteers and count really slow and start over a bunch of times or whatever they buy enough time for the governor to work out his plan to use trump to use federal resources to stop pot sale or use. He then plans to change the rules on referendums so it's harder for maine to pass any by changing the way signatures need to be distributed. There is no real meaningful recount. It's just a way to buy some days. This is kind of what I expect it is. The only good-faith reason for what they're doing would be "we genuinely believe our electoral system has a margin-of-error over 1% so let's flip the coin and see if it comes up our way this time." If you see any investigative writeups that more firmly flesh out how this can be a stalling conspiracy, that'd be useful for the thread. quote:That sounds exactly like the people arguing against gay marriage. Many of them had essentially taken the position that living in a society which doesn't force people to live by their religious doctrine was a violation of their religious freedom. It's kind of even weirder than that, it's like some anti-marriage group saying "we have no objections to people filing income tax jointly and getting all the other administrative perks, we just object to it being called 'marriage' on religious grounds." Then when you point our there's a bill to fully legalize "civil unions" in Alabama, they just clam up and walk away whistling. Do we have any Euro-goons who are following the topic closely? To my eyes, if anyone is going to go full-legal anytime soon in Europe, Italy looks to be the most promising candidate. Exception could be if Catalonia does secede from Spain, since they seem way more pro-pot in that region than in the rest of the country. That said, it'll be interesting to see if Europe (in the near future) at all goes for Colorado/Uruguay-style full legal, or does more of what Spain and the Netherlands do, "decriminalizing" without fully legalizing and just shrugging their shoulders as de-facto legalization fills in the legal gray area. In recent news, Denmark *had* been doing that for a long while in one neighborhood of Copenhagen, a squat-collective called Christiania. Until very recently, they had hashish stalls set up like they were food trucks down one whole segment of the neighborhood, hundreds of customers milling around and buying hash to smoke while playing backgammon on the patios. It wasn't technically legal but the authorities were willing to turn a blind eye so long as the area stayed calm, though they did infiltrate the area trying to ferret out the actual wholesalers and nail them elsewhere. But just this fall the cops stopped one of the bag-runners for the dealers and he shot some cops, so the neighborhood itself voted to tear down all the stalls on "Pusher Street" and ask people to stop coming to their neighborhood to buy weed: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/02/denmark-copenhagen-christiania-residents-demolish-drug-stalls-after-shooting 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 05:28
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a thing he's said, his plans on this issue is to "delay, delay" then ask trump to put a stop to it when trump is in power. Oh, I agree it's openly stated that the governor is stalling, just idly wondering if the *recount* is purely a "help the governor stall longer" tactic or whether there's another calculus to it. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 03:02
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Ireland is lurching toward legalizing medical, my understanding is it'a looking pretty probable for 2017. Likely to be overshadowed in the news by Canada (very likely) going full-legal later this year, but still a positive step: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ireland-cannabis-legalise-medical-marijuana-vote-a7451411.html%3Famp?client=safari Several of the candidates for France's presidential race this fall have come out in support of legalization or decrim, so that's another one to watch: https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2017/01/06/marijuana-legalization-in-europe-is-france-next/?client=safari Italy continues to hover over the edge of legalizing, not sure what political events would have to occur for that domino to finally fall... EDIT: Gallup just announced their October poll shows 60% of Americans in favor of legalized recreational. For contrast, it was 12% in 1969 and around 25% in the 80s and mid-90s. http://www.gallup.com/poll/196550/support-legal-marijuana.aspx TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jan 12, 2017 |
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Jan 12, 2017 06:00
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Hot drat, the governor of Guam just submitted a proposed law legalizing cannabis entirely in the territory: http://www.postguam.com/news/local/calvo-submits-marijuana-bill/article_5173e2c0-d700-11e6-a3d3-834690076b77.html As once TCC poster pointed out, Guam is right near a bunch of really strict anti-weed Asian countries, so this could do interesting things for tourism.
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Jan 12, 2017 11:05
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Cross posting with OP's permission from TCC:Abugadu posted:Guam's governor, a Republican, has begun pushing a full legalization bill.
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Jan 19, 2017 01:53
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During the Trump inauguration, DCMJ (the folks I volunteered for who legalized weed in DC) handed out over 8000 joints to protestors. Pretty awesome event, I would imagine from the other side of the world. The news media cited one individual member who donated a half-pound of weed to the joint effort. Though that seems like a lot, note that DC allows people to grow weed but has zero provision for commercial sale, so if you're technically law-abiding you're going to be way over-supplied. Anecdotally, last time I passed through DC I had colleagues mention they had weed coming out their ears since they were growing the legal max of plants, and since you can only carry 2oz in public, for every pound of weed you need to (freely) get rid of you need to either have eight friends pick it up or make eight trips. So if you're law-abiding (and/or watched very carefully by MPD) giving away shitloads of weed is a viable option. https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/01/20/the-free-pot-handout-was-rocking-this-morning/  (The weird Smurf hat is a "Phrygian cap" which DC ganja-meister Adam Eidinger promotes as a symbol of resistance) TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 07:12
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Inspector Hound posted:Maybe it will feel like when the space race happened under Kennedy and Johnson but Nixon got the moon. "Only Nixon could go to China..."
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Jan 25, 2017 08:03
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The more I read up on cannabis history, the more it becomes evident we're at a real turning-point in cannabis history. The Wikipedia article Timeline of cannabis law is really interesting for this. You have a few sporadic pieces of anti-cannabis legislation popping up and down (mostly in the Islamic world and Indian Ocean sphere) for centuries, and only in the late 1800s do you start to see the more immediate predecessors of the current drug war, with anti-cannabis legislation in Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Romania, etc. For basically the entire 20th century, the news is almost all bad with country after country banning cannabis. Some banned it due to early anti-drug moral panic, others just because other countries were doing it even if they'd barely heard of weed in their own country, then another spot of bans in the 1960s-1970s as youth culture spread the habit around, and at the end of the 20th century a few developing countries (Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, etc) grudgingly banned cannabis under US pressure. But then look at the 21st century, and it's basically non-stop loosenings of national-level (thus not the US yet) cannabis law, particularly in Europe and Latin America. And not shown in that list but evident with a perusal of Template: Cannabis by country it seems like the majority of countries in the world are at least having a serious debate about their cannabis laws, from South Africa to Georgia to Sri Lanka. Just to pick one recent example with interesting photos, in October 2016 Ukraine had a big pro-cannabis protest in Kiev, with a bunch of young folks coming out to demand cannabis reform. Police ended up having to get involved to limit the head-busting, since a number of counter-protestors also turned out, like these fine patriotic youths:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-marijuana.html I'm still betting on Italy to come over to the Netherlands-Spain-Portugal style of enforcement relatively soon, or if Catalonia secedes they should be in on the ground floor.
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Jan 27, 2017 03:25
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As an odd aside, two rare examples of national-level cannabis laws *loosening* in the 20th century: - Burma legalized production and sale of cannabis in 1939 - Comoros legalized cannabis in 1975 after a communist coup, to better gain the support of revolutionary youth who apparently liked weed.
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Jan 30, 2017 01:50
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PT6A posted:They're already in on the ground floor as part of Spain, no? Spain is one of those "legal vacuum" tolerant places, it's not like Uruguay where it's literally explocitly legal. I'm just saying that if Catalonia secedes, given that it's the most weed-centric part of Spain I could see them reforming with fully-legal weed from the start.
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Jan 30, 2017 04:13
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It occurred to me that I hadn't heard much in the way of updates out of Alaska in the last few years, so did a little googling. Stores are up and running, and Alaska just collected its first full month of pot taxes, pulling in $80k for the state for November. Lots of issues with supply, stores running out and shutting down for weeks, re-opening for days, etc. There are some crops coming in that are expected to alleviate this, and outside businessfolks offering to bankroll future crops for a cut, but once summer comes and tourist season picks up they expect further shortages as demand might skyrocket. Oh, and also a state rep is looking to ban any offering of discounts for active-duty military; while I agree that ADmil folks shouldn't be smoking weed per their contractual obligations, it seems an overstep to punish the *stores* for this. https://www.adn.com/alaska-marijuana/2017/01/03/alaska-collects-its-first-full-month-of-marijuana-tax-revenue/ https://www.adn.com/alaska-marijuana/2017/01/04/legal-weed-is-hard-to-come-by-in-alaska/ http://www.weednews.co/alaska-politician-proposes-ban-on-marijuana-discounts-for-active-military/ TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 06:05
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For years I would've said that Wyoming would be one of the absolute last states to loosen its cannabis laws, though I was also pretty surprised when Louisiana legalized MMJ in 2015. Wyoming has a *really* high bar for signatures for ballot initiatives, to the point where none have made the cut since the 1990s, so the usual path to success is pretty closed. But fresh news from The Cannabist, turns out that NORML got really clever and found the perfect combo for change: their new state director is a Republican former mayor and state rep, who's dead set on legalizing MMJ and industrial hemp, and has his own medical conditions that MMJ would alleviate. So basically they found a motivated guy that knows everyone at the Old Boys Club in Cheyenne and can presumably sway them far better than a bunch of hippies. http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/01/27/wyoming-marijuana-laws-norml-frank-latta/72273/
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Jan 30, 2017 23:20
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Tim Raines IRL posted:so, is the smart money that we descend into outright authoritarianism but the gestapo lets us have weed so people are cool with it? :-/ If you're absolutely intent on finding defeat in victory, sure. That's like saying "I guess we're all just okay with interning Muslims now, so long as gay people can still marry". People can be upset about more than one thing at a time, and while progressive victories may cause some single-issue folks to dial back their activism, overall it frees up more time/people/money to address other activist causes. And that's completely setting aside the progressive advantages of having fewer people enter the criminal justice system, one less violation for cops to disproportionately target marginalized people for, etc. Basically the Overton Window has just shifted left hard (on this issue) in the last two decades, to a degree that's surprising a lot of people. Might as well enjoy this ongoing achievement with good grace, while focusing on consolidating this gain and making gains on other issues.
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Jan 31, 2017 20:22
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Maryland is already on a 2017 roll, with a bill proposed to legalize cannabis entirely, and a bill to put cannabis legalization to the voters in 2018. http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/01/30/maryland-marijuana-legalization-bill/72480/ Virginia meanwhile is considering loosening up its MMJ laws, but has already shot down early attempts at decrim in the last week. It produced some interesting debate, including this joy: http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/01/31/virginia-marijuana-decriminalization-legislation/72636/ posted:Sen. Dick Black, R-Loudoun, recalled returning from serving in the Marines in Vietnam in the 1960s. You know you've had a really interesting 1960s experience, including tours in Vietnam, when pot is the horror that stands out in your memory. Also some units had 10-14% of American enlisted troops using *heroin* in Vietnam, so the scene in general was kinda fraught there. EDIT: weed legislation is popping up in more states than I can even keep track of at this point. A lot of it is token or hail-mary, but even just a couple states getting through this year is a huge step forward, particularly as so far the only states to go legal have done so by referendum, but now legislature movements are in the works. EDIT2: For example, in Hawaii alone a dozen weed bills were initiated by this session's deadline: http://khon2.com/2017/01/25/capitol-sees-renewed-push-to-legalize-marijuana-in-hawaii/ TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Feb 1, 2017 |
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Feb 1, 2017 05:25
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Illustrating how global the trend has been since the turn of the century:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cannabis_law posted:2000s
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Feb 4, 2017 04:47
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I'm here in the state capital building in Austin, for an lobbying day with Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy; overall pretty enthusiastic crowd and did pretty well on dressing up so we don't look like Deadheads. It's got to be 200-300 people that showed up, about 20 just to see my senator, so pretty solid turnout. The effort today is moving forward on SB269 (expanding TX's extremely narrow MMJ) and SB170 ("civil penalties" since apparently that polled better than phrasing it as "decrim"). TX only had a 140-day legislative session every two years, and they're crowded with a bunch of other controversies over immigration/abortion/bathrooms, but all we can do is give it a shot and hope something gets through. And in the 2019 session, the whole country might be in a better place... possibly.
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Feb 8, 2017 20:47
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Yeah, I'm concerned about that Trump speech too. Though as always, lord knows what he means... The Austin event had 200 pre-register, and 350 show up, so a pretty good day in Texas.
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Feb 9, 2017 01:06
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Not to pull took much of a Nate Silver "predict a little of everything and I'm sure to be right", but things are really on the verge of breaking one of two ways: -- I don't foree an actual massive crackdown and arresting individual weed buyers, but I could certainly envision Sessions creating a chilling effect by randomly loving over weed businesses. A lot of it just comes down to how much benefit they see this having, vice how much political capital it costs DOJ and Trump. It's hard to see much benefit to it other than just satisfying Sessions' personal hostility, and a general Trumpian interest in spitefulness, but that's balanced against an industry already worth billions and growing rapidly, and a majority public support for recreational and overwhelming support for medical. If it breaks this way, I'd be very curious to see if any states fast-track legalization/decrim even if they'll be barred from setting up any legal commercial apparatus, and just say "gently caress you, if you want to stop weed in Rhode Island, send your own people since we don't care." Basically whether more states would pull what DC did and just legalize without any legal commerce. -- There's already been some foreshadowing of this even from Sessions, but it wouldn't take too many moves to be a bipartisan "dammit, let's stop pretending and just admit most of the country allows weed". Congress re-schedules cannabis, and/or makes whatever modifications to banking laws, etc. and suddenly the cuffs are off and federal pressure on states falls away and the market just explodes. You would think this option would play to Trump's vanity, letting him be the kingmaker who finally resolved American's weed issues, undercut the cartels, and created billions in new business. Again I hate to waffle on predictions, but things are just really close to breaking one way or the other, since the status-quo is becoming increasingly untenable. Can we really have a full 4-8 years of states just doing whatever they want and the feds clucking their tongues about it?
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Feb 9, 2017 22:18
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