Senator McConnell is not known for his support of medical or recreational marijuana legalization but I view this as a step in the right direction. Take that, DuPont!
I'm glad that mr "say not to anything drugs at all costs" Sessions was fired. We need more sensible drugs laws. Not saying make everything legal, but all things in moderation and commensurate, including punishment.
Monopolization of the healthcare system and drug criminalization are two sides of the same coin. With headlines about opioid abuse epidemics, and looking back at how ridiculous the war on drugs is, and how ridiculous it is to have cannabis as a Class I substance, it's difficult to argue that the medical system is somehow functioning well when it comes to drug regulation.
Take acyclovir, which is an important antiviral medication. Research has shown that it's safe for over the counter use, which review panels have acknowledged, but those panels have still recommended against OTR availability because they're afraid of "setting a precedent" with regard to OTR availability.
Drug regulation really has not increased safety at all; it only increases the power of monopolies, legal or illegal.
That being said, clearly the current system has flaws. Perhaps the FDA could alter their requirements for sale to approximate "does not cause harm", with additional classes for "provides more benefit than harm", etc. The problem is, how do you get drug companies to pay for effectiveness studies if they don't have to? This would actually disincentivize such studies.
That already exists but for desperate subsets. Some chemotherapy drugs are themselves ironically carcinogenic - sometimes for the same area they are meant to treat. If they work better than the standard of care they get approved. Since if you already have cancer "might give you cancer in a decade" is an improvement over cancer now - especially since relapses are already a risk.
I think the real issue with FDA regulations are monopolism related more than approval - not that they haven't made the occasional boneheaded move like being reluctant to approve superior sunscreens.
Allowing reimportarion and government bulk purchase negotiations would cut margins and offer good safeguards against monopoly exploitation since if it is cheaper to ship something circularly you are getting ripped off.
Senator McConnell is not known for his support of anything that doesn't benefit him, his donors, or his party. If he's swinging this way it's because he's got an agenda and he's horse-trading, in the same way that Bismark was alright with reforms like public education since it quieted down the radicals and kids who knew Trig could make better artillery officers. Hell, McConnell's official memoir is titled "The Long Game."
I'm reminded of a Vox analysis of McConnell behavior[1]:
“The cardinal rule of McConnell is he will do anything to acquire more power, or to achieve an outcome he thinks achieves his political interest,” says Adam Jentleson, a former aide to ex-Democratic leader Harry Reid.
“I don’t think he’s a conservative; I think he’s a transactionalist. I think he wants to keep the title of majority leader,” says Jason Pye of the conservative activist group Freedomworks. “His vested interest is taking power.”
The regulated psychoactive cannabis is way too strong for me.
As long as its treated differently in its own licensing regime and establishments I think some form of education should accompany it, for consumers. Given generations of bad information.
Its come up with others here in California, the THC products are REALLY strong and offputting for us casuals. The hybrids have potential
It’s actually way, wayyy more nuanced than that unfortunately. THC is only one of a plethora of components at play (it’s been bred for higher and higher THC content for decades, mostly ignoring the other, more medicinal parts).
Only recently have I started seeing products in dispensaries with cannabinoid/terpenoid profiles to give a more accurate picture of the effects, I think we’re going to start seeing more products that are essentially blends of pure THC/CBD/CBN/CBG/etc + specific terpenes to make very effective targeted medicines.
what would be a good place to have a primer about this, what is the public's understanding of this currently, especially in recreational legalized areas
how do we get to more holistic and broader knowledge for consumers. I agree that locking people up and taking their children isn't a productive use of the state in response to marijuana, and I can perceive this blanket legalization needs some fine tuning primarily with consumer education, something more akin to what you might see from a consumptive drug in the federal regulatory framework.
I have to ask: is terpene an actual scientifically defined word? I've only ever heard stoners use it to describe different marijuana strain's scents. Googling it yields nothing but pot-related results. How have I made it through so many years of studying plethoras of high level scientific subjects and am just now hearing this word? Now on HN nonetheless...
IANA (botanist, chemist?), but terpenoids are in most plants, e.g. pinene is abundant in pine trees, responsible for their smell, and happens to modulate cannabis’s subjective effects in very interesting ways.
A blend good for sleep might have a good amount of THC and CBN (and maybe some CBD) plus the mycrene and beta-caryophyllene terpenes (associated with the more sedating strains).
Indica/sativa don’t really mean anything, strains are mostly just variations of terpenes.
I can't believe you got downvoted for basically suggesting to people who think 50% ABV whiskey is too strong to drink shots of it, mix it down with something or just drink beer.
Besides, it's leaving out a lot to say that today's weed is so strong and more so than what hippies had in the 70s. Surely cannabis strains were bred and cultivated back in the day and people with access did get the good stuff as opposed to some seedy mexican brick weed with stems and leaves in it?
If the stuff now is 20% thc and the garbage in the 70s you remember having was 5% just smoke a quarter instead, no big deal. Scales are not illegal nor expensive.
And if you desire a better THC:CBD ratio you only have to choose better, thanks to a regulated market.
> Surely cannabis strains were bred and cultivated back in the day and people with access did get the good stuff as opposed to some seedy mexican brick weed with stems and leaves in it?
No, it was universally worse, because those strains hadn't been bred yet. What you're doing is like assuming that some people in the 60s got to use the "good" computers.
Of course you didn't have stuff like White Widow or whatever in the 70s but getting better and stronger weed only requires you to grow enough plants and get enough variety that you can start noticing characteristics and then interbreeding and crossing strains to isolate them so your offspring express them reliably. You do not need high tech lab equipment to see which variety grows faster and produces more branching or bud sites or thicker buds or more thc glands etc.
If you just sow a field full of random seeds and just forget about them until harvest instead of maintaining them, removing the males, etc your quality will be worse.
Hashish - extracts - have been with humans for several centuries. I'm told my grandfather (born circa 1895, died circa 1975) expressed confusion that people would smoke "leaves" of the plant (knowing that hash was a thing, having lived in Anatolia).
The fearmongering that it's different "now" tends to ignore this.
Any regulated shop is going to have clerks ambiguously asking you your tolerance level, as if we were all running around getting high for the last 20 years with illegal and consistent reliable sources - like they did.
Then they bombard you with edibles and all kinda of concoctions, most of which are impossible to have an even distribution of THC in them. Smoking being the lowest common denominator on this menu.
This is what consumers are experiencing for now, and it can improve.
I would enjoy smoking the terrible pot we smoked 30 years ago, which got you very very high but took a good hour of smoking to do it, but I'm not sure my lungs would. It only seems good for people who like the process of smoking (which I probably do.) If you like the process of eating, you can find something else to eat after taking a bite of your edible. If you enjoyed the communal circle of playful discussion and pipe management, I'd advise playing a board game, or some other sort of verbal parlor game.
A better way to exact your dose is through edibles, like bite-sized candy. Most are 10 mg THC each, which is pretty low, but you can just eat part of a gummy if you want.
+1 for this. Edibles are great, and the 10mg cookies I used to get in WA were large, which made it easy to split them in half or quarters. 10mg would kick my ass as a casual user but 5mg was in the zone.
Takes an hour to hit you but that's not always a bad thing, and doesn't jack with my lungs.
There are a lot of high CBD low THC strains out there, as well as CBD oil that has virtually no THC in it as well (but still with lots of reported value from anecdotal reports). CBD, to simplify things, counterbalances THC, so in a strain that’s high in CBD, there should be less intense psychoactive effects and in a pure CBD oil it’s a lot the positive aspects of cannabis with no psychoactive effects.
Same issue here with strength. There's a few places that grow CBD rich hemp (with undetectable levels of thc) in Oregon and they ship around the country. I haven't been able to smoke in like 10 years and this stuff is great! Occasionally I'll mix in a bit on the other stuff to make a blend with very low thc.
What a disconnect from the population. State after state legalizing marijuana and congress moves to legalize hemp. At least at the state level people are being left alone to their own bidding.
Interestingly this will make it harder to grow high quality outdoor and even indoor (pollination risk rising; one reason it became relatively easy to grow high-quality outdoor is it the government ensured there were no males in vicinity!)
I recently learned from Narcos:Mexico that when drug cartels first created a female breed, they moved to cultivate it in the middle of a desert to ensure no cross-pollination.
When you understand that hemp's industrial value was the reason it was made illegal 100 years ago, and that now we have an exorbitant amount of politicians who truly believe the ilk their own kind shoveled out a century ago as a smoke screen, such as how getting high is so dangerous, and how we need to imprison blacks and mexicans for trying to alleviate themselves of the pain of manual labor, then it starts to make more sense.
We're at a point where we can allow industries who have been silently increasing lobbying support for hemp legalization to begin to take advantage of its industrial applications while maintaining our system of slavery and socioeconomic subjugation.
Jack Herer's book 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' highlights this and is the source for a lot of the pro-hemp sentiment. It is also available online, here is a link to the chapter that highlights the paper industry lobbying to make hemp illegal - https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-4/
I second this book. Every single page is enlightening. It's a pity that some people relegate this to a "conspiracy" when the concerted effort to make cannabis illegal in the early 20th century was very open and well-documented.
There is already a wide variety of hemp strains and they are used for a variety of applications. Taller strains are for fiber. Shorter, flowering strains are used for CBD. There's a really wide range of applications for hemp but I'm not sure how many are economically viable. Processing requires water, energy, chemicals, etc.
Tree hugger me keeps hoping bamboo and hemp sourced fibers displace most wood and plastic for most of modern society's short-lived tasks. Packaging, paper, hygiene, etc.
Isn't the whole bamboo thing just a sort of greenwashing? Sure, it grows fast, but it doesn't really grow more efficiently in terms of a resource consumption to output ratio than most other trees.
Doesn't the CO2 eventually return to the concrete when it cures and hardens making it sorta the reverse of crops in long term neutrality? (Generates CO2 on creation but retrieves it eventually as opposes to capturing but returning eventually.)
Huh I thought it was the Calcium Carbonate needing to be broken free. I guess that is more good news for clean energy - get that down (not a trivial task) and you only have to worry about that component.
Bamboo can be used to hold a lot of CO2 and store it in long term products. The fiber is also being used in a concrete mix to reduce the carbon footprint and reduce weight etc.. Bamboo plantations can be great for the planet. www.ecoplanetbambooplantations.com
I'm not sure hempcrete would be able to replace most concrete since it's compressive strength is 1/20th of concrete, but it'll certainly help in some applications because it has its own advantages.
Hempcrete makes a great component of alternative homes, where environmental impact and low cost are important and structural strength/long term durability are less of an issue.
As a non-American I'm a bit baffled. Does this mean hemp was previously illegal?
In most of Europe cannabis is illegal but you can get hemp-infused drinks and food (though I personally don't care much for the taste), even energy drinks. Not to mention hemp-based textiles.
In Germany growing hemp is illegal for private individuals but commercial growers can cultivate it if they exceed a certain minimum plantation size. Sadly growing it for scientific use (rather than sourcing it from a large-scale grower) also requires official permission.
Also as a German, I think not having hemp used in the industry is not understandable.
At home we've got a bundle of hemp fiber for plumbing (water, heating pipes etc.).
Hemp and bamboo can change the world! EcoPlanet Bamboo has been doing just this in South Africa. www.ecoplanetbamboo.za.com - this farm is amazing to see how bamboo can regenerate the soil and be used for innovative products. Well managed hemp and bamboo plantations should be encouraged!
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadIt's been a long time since then and people can change but I am not very optimistic for now.
I highly recommend the book Legalize This!: The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs (Practical Ethics Series) by Doug Husak
https://www.amazon.com/Legalize-This-Decriminalizing-Practic...
Monopolization of the healthcare system and drug criminalization are two sides of the same coin. With headlines about opioid abuse epidemics, and looking back at how ridiculous the war on drugs is, and how ridiculous it is to have cannabis as a Class I substance, it's difficult to argue that the medical system is somehow functioning well when it comes to drug regulation.
Take acyclovir, which is an important antiviral medication. Research has shown that it's safe for over the counter use, which review panels have acknowledged, but those panels have still recommended against OTR availability because they're afraid of "setting a precedent" with regard to OTR availability.
Drug regulation really has not increased safety at all; it only increases the power of monopolies, legal or illegal.
That being said, clearly the current system has flaws. Perhaps the FDA could alter their requirements for sale to approximate "does not cause harm", with additional classes for "provides more benefit than harm", etc. The problem is, how do you get drug companies to pay for effectiveness studies if they don't have to? This would actually disincentivize such studies.
I think the real issue with FDA regulations are monopolism related more than approval - not that they haven't made the occasional boneheaded move like being reluctant to approve superior sunscreens.
Allowing reimportarion and government bulk purchase negotiations would cut margins and offer good safeguards against monopoly exploitation since if it is cheaper to ship something circularly you are getting ripped off.
I'm reminded of a Vox analysis of McConnell behavior[1]:
“The cardinal rule of McConnell is he will do anything to acquire more power, or to achieve an outcome he thinks achieves his political interest,” says Adam Jentleson, a former aide to ex-Democratic leader Harry Reid.
“I don’t think he’s a conservative; I think he’s a transactionalist. I think he wants to keep the title of majority leader,” says Jason Pye of the conservative activist group Freedomworks. “His vested interest is taking power.”
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/17/15970034/m...
Your article is not about how he's corrupt, it's how he can whip votes and control the senate.
He's majority whip, it's his jobs to get votes, most of the time you have to make deals.
As long as its treated differently in its own licensing regime and establishments I think some form of education should accompany it, for consumers. Given generations of bad information.
Its come up with others here in California, the THC products are REALLY strong and offputting for us casuals. The hybrids have potential
Only recently have I started seeing products in dispensaries with cannabinoid/terpenoid profiles to give a more accurate picture of the effects, I think we’re going to start seeing more products that are essentially blends of pure THC/CBD/CBN/CBG/etc + specific terpenes to make very effective targeted medicines.
"THC/CBD/CBN/CBG/etc + specific terpenes"
what?
what would be a good place to have a primer about this, what is the public's understanding of this currently, especially in recreational legalized areas
how do we get to more holistic and broader knowledge for consumers. I agree that locking people up and taking their children isn't a productive use of the state in response to marijuana, and I can perceive this blanket legalization needs some fine tuning primarily with consumer education, something more akin to what you might see from a consumptive drug in the federal regulatory framework.
A blend good for sleep might have a good amount of THC and CBN (and maybe some CBD) plus the mycrene and beta-caryophyllene terpenes (associated with the more sedating strains).
Indica/sativa don’t really mean anything, strains are mostly just variations of terpenes.
Why not just smoke a sufficiently small particle then?
Besides, it's leaving out a lot to say that today's weed is so strong and more so than what hippies had in the 70s. Surely cannabis strains were bred and cultivated back in the day and people with access did get the good stuff as opposed to some seedy mexican brick weed with stems and leaves in it?
If the stuff now is 20% thc and the garbage in the 70s you remember having was 5% just smoke a quarter instead, no big deal. Scales are not illegal nor expensive.
And if you desire a better THC:CBD ratio you only have to choose better, thanks to a regulated market.
No, it was universally worse, because those strains hadn't been bred yet. What you're doing is like assuming that some people in the 60s got to use the "good" computers.
If you just sow a field full of random seeds and just forget about them until harvest instead of maintaining them, removing the males, etc your quality will be worse.
The fearmongering that it's different "now" tends to ignore this.
Any regulated shop is going to have clerks ambiguously asking you your tolerance level, as if we were all running around getting high for the last 20 years with illegal and consistent reliable sources - like they did.
Then they bombard you with edibles and all kinda of concoctions, most of which are impossible to have an even distribution of THC in them. Smoking being the lowest common denominator on this menu.
This is what consumers are experiencing for now, and it can improve.
If the question is that ambiguous, then your answer is simply "no tolerance."
Takes an hour to hit you but that's not always a bad thing, and doesn't jack with my lungs.
We're at a point where we can allow industries who have been silently increasing lobbying support for hemp legalization to begin to take advantage of its industrial applications while maintaining our system of slavery and socioeconomic subjugation.
Do you have a source for this? I would like to investigate this angle further.
This is an exciting time for discovery.
Tree hugger me keeps hoping bamboo and hemp sourced fibers displace most wood and plastic for most of modern society's short-lived tasks. Packaging, paper, hygiene, etc.
Might have been here that I heard this: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-bad-environmentalism-is-...
Unfortunately, some of the links out from there on the topic now appear broken.
http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecoplanet_Bamboo_Group
http://www.ecoplanetbamboo.com/fsc-certification
In most of Europe cannabis is illegal but you can get hemp-infused drinks and food (though I personally don't care much for the taste), even energy drinks. Not to mention hemp-based textiles.
In Germany growing hemp is illegal for private individuals but commercial growers can cultivate it if they exceed a certain minimum plantation size. Sadly growing it for scientific use (rather than sourcing it from a large-scale grower) also requires official permission.