In spite of being nonsensical, I appreciate the former because it echoes the sentiment that up to today, it seems like the war profiteers have won more than any particular side in this insane "War on Drugs." Also, the circular logic of the statement fits with the theme of insanity.
I think both the Trump admin and the Biden admin have revealed how the White House is not as powerful an influence over the unelected bureaucracy as we have hitherto imagined. Many, many influences and vested interests at work in the executive branch that watch presidents come and go.
In this case it doesn't matter. Biden has been a dedicated drug warrior throughout his whole political career, and he probably ain't gonna go soft now.
Why would any organization fighting for funding be inclined to undermine their reason for existing? And why would any rational person be interested in what they have to say about a topic that is well outside their area of expertise (medicine)?
Organization, sure, but the question is better posed to the humans in that organization.
So, why would DEA agents want to undermine their agency's funding?
Ethics. Morality. The desire to not be a horrible excuse for a human being inflicting needless pain and suffering and destroying the lives of the people their agency is ostensibly charged with serving. Not perpetuating the horrible status quo that's corrupted the spirit of their mission and accepting the will of the people.
I believe Marijuana can get quite dangerous by now that can induce psychosis in many people. Some say you need an inclination but to me it seems it can hit anyone. I knew some heavy users and may be biased because of this, but there are reports of similar cases.
Weed isn't the drug that your hippy parents smoked in the 60s anymore. Years of selective growing increased psychoactive substances to insane levels never found in the plant previously. It was also the logistical problem created by prohibition that made this process beneficial. Sure, people would have done this anyway for the drug to become more potent, but I believe free availability would have countered this development.
Of course even with its potency it is still one of the softer drug. Alcohol can be just as destructive.
That seems fair, certainly the "it's natural, it cures everything" kind of arguments are tissue-paper thin, but you'd think there'd be some acknowledgement of its common use for pain-management, and there are even FDA-approved medications derived from cannabis[1].
It's better for certain types of pain management than opioids (and way less risky than them), seems to be at least fairly effective as an anti-anxiety drug (look into stats on the percentage of Americans who are on prescription anti-anxiety meds—it's probably more than you expect), and, from my own experience, is vastly better than any of the prescription or OTC sleep aids I've tried, with less-scary common side effects as a bonus on top of the greater efficacy and better results the next morning (zero extra grogginess/hangover, provided I get the dose right).
[EDIT] I may be understating the sleep-aid thing—just knowing that I've got a bag of gummies and that if I pop one a couple hours before bed I will fall asleep quickly that night, with minimal ill effects, does wonders for my state of mind throughout the day. Even having prescription pills for it before didn't, both because their effects felt more like "being drugged", so, seemed scarier/more-harmful, and because I knew I'd wake up the next morning feeling like shit, even if I got a full night's sleep.
Actually, here's another thing: it's almost certainly less harmful to your health to get high semi-regularly than to get drunk semi-regularly. Even if all cannabis did was replace a measurable percentage of alcohol use, I'd be very surprised if that didn't improve population-wide health markers, and that's just from its recreational use. Not a medicinal use, but still an improvement to population health.
My take is that marijuana's medical benefits are small, but greater than alcohol's. I can't think of a single metric by which marijuana is worse for a person than alcohol, so if we allow alcohol, there's no reason we shouldn't also allow marijuana.
Even more: there's basically zero medical benefit to tobacco, and if there are 1 or 2 areas where it's slightly beneficial, there are a thousand where it's vastly worse. If tobacco isn't a schedule 1 drug, there's no way in hell marijuana should be.
I don't use marijuana and have no personal stake in this. If it were federally legalized today, my own personal life wouldn't change a bit. I just think it's ridiculous that we're clutching pearls about whether marijuana is good for you when other things that are objectively much worse for you are perfectly legal.
My take too. It has not followed anywhere near a normal process for a medically safe/effective drug to be approved. I'm for it being completely legalized but the medical aspect is very weird.
The DEA has not helped this at all but MJ is basically legal at the state level(s) because activists successfully argued against the war on drugs and via political will. Not because MJ treatments have been proven scientifically safe & effective.
The thing I am most skeptical of is the safety of delivering the drug via smoking raw Marijuana. This is completely off the reservation compared to most medical drugs.
Activists swear that it's safe to inhale MJ smoke into your lungs and you won't get cancer but it's extremely hard for me to believe with a straight face. Almost any type of smoke you inhale into your lungs has very bad side effects over time. We can make it legal but then we might discover it does increase lung cancer rates like tobacco once you daily smoke for 30 years. It's possible no one has really been able to smoke it at that level due to it being so criminalized.
I agree this doesn't matter for a terminal cancer patient cause they are dying but so much of medical MJ has seemed like a political foot in the door to get it legalized for recreational use.
There are certainly people who view medical marijuana as just a way to get high legally.
There are also people who are certain that access to medical marijuana saved their lives. The example that comes to mind was someone who was dealing with significant nausea / appetite issues that had caused dangerous weight loss that no other prescription medications could manage. Medical marijuana ameliorated these issues when nothing else had.
This doesn't mean MJ is a miracle drug, but it does meam that there is a significant group that quite genuinely supports medical marijuana for medical reasons.
I don't know enough to have an opinion on marijuana's medical benefits, but in principle at least I agree. Unfortunately, "we live in a society, man," and that society requires that you find some way to transform I want into I have no choice before it'll let you do something it feels icky about. There are numerous examples of this that I won't list here because I don't want to digress into other hot-button topics, but I bet you can think of at least two right off the top of your head.
With that in mind I think starting with medicalization was a smart strategic move. The only other options were to make a lot of Americans less controlling, or to convince them that they're wrong, and, well... good luck with either of those.
I am reminded, from time to time, that one of my high school classmates is living out a 25-year federal sentence after being convicted on marijuana conspiracy charges.
On the other hand, I can get marijuana delivered to my house.
> I am reminded, from time to time, that one of my high school classmates is living out a 25-year federal sentence after being convicted on marijuana conspiracy charges.
There has to be more to this right? Trafficking tons of the stuff? Repeat offender? Violent history? enhancements?
edit, since people clearly are against this comment: I'm not arguing that that the "more to this" justifies the 25 years, only that "25 years for a marijuana conspiracy" isn't the whole story and we'd all benefit if we were able to judge the whole story rather than some person's stylized version of the story.
they were allegedly involved in a project that moved marijuana across the south by truck, and they were the only defendants who did not plead guilty and agree to a deal, and were subsequently the only ones sent away for real time.
my partial understanding is that they were involved in the laundering and/or obfuscation of funds, they probably had strong suspicions about what was going on, but there was enough easy money that they did not demand answers.
they felt insulated from the crimes about which they had no concrete knowledge.
claims were made at trial that were demonstrably false, but they refused to admit to things in a plea that they did not do or have knowledge of. which was the wrong call under the circumstances.
What's worse is realizing that the majority of people in jail for selling even the smallest amount of weed are black, while the majority of people who own legal pot dispensaries churning out industrial levels of weed are white. Add in the famous Eichmann quote, and it really seems like this is a deliberate result of the system.
That's a bit of partisan rewriting of history by Democrats who want to distance themselves from their role in the drug war.
The fact is, the Controlled Substances Act [1] passed both houses of Congress with near unanimous approval, and the war on drugs was still supported by Democrats like Clinton and even Biden decades later. [2]
And most of the arrests aren't made by the DEA, they are made by local police in jurisdictions controlled by Democrats (including many black Democrats).
Where do Democrats come in here? This is a direct quote from an individual. Democrats certainly share blame in this mess, I don't think I or anyone in this thread implied otherwise.
Is it even a direct quote? It first appeared in public in 2016, over 15 years after Ehrlichman's death, and has been challenged by numerous people.[1]
But I'm not here to argue about the alleged quote, I'm here to dispute the broader claim that the war on drugs was somehow manufactured by Nixon to target his enemies. The war on drugs was bipartisan from the beginning.
So if you believe that the racial disparities might be "a deliberate result of the system", as you said, then blame for that would extend far beyond Nixon, right up to our current President.
> I'm here to dispute the broader claim that the war on drugs was somehow manufactured by Nixon to target his enemies. The war on drugs was bipartisan from the beginning.
This presumes that leftists and civil rights activists weren't also a thorn in the side of Democrats as well as Republicans. Democrats are famous for paying lip service to the causes of racial justice and workers rights, and then failing to deliver for these groups when in office because not enough of them are dedicated to these causes. They are also famous for being just as beholden to corporate interests as Republicans. I can absolutely imagine plenty of Democrats happy to witness law enforcement crack down against these groups. Civil unrest is bad for business after all.
> So if you believe that the racial disparities might be "a deliberate result of the system", as you said, then blame for that would extend far beyond Nixon, right up to our current President.
Let just say Clinton, Obama, and Biden could have honored what their party strive for. They didn't. This is why the other Presidents are better as consistent with their message rather than being "dicking bimbos", orator of lies and "hope" or "greatest fraud".
Jerry spent some time in Michigan
A twenty year vacation, after all he had a dime
A dime is worth a lot more in Detroit
A dime in California, a twenty dollar fine
Note that "a dime" refers to a "dime-bag" of weed, or $10 worth of the stuff. 20 years in prison for personal possession in Michigan (at the time), while it was a $20 infraction in California for the same amount.
Marijuana as schedule 1 is one of the dumbest things we have ever done. The fact that it remains in the modern era speaks to how incompetent the US has become.
Right. Here's another branch of the same government that holds a patent for "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants" from 2003 (filed in '99).
Abstract: Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH 3 , and COCH 3.
Not sure I'd call it "incompetent". Maybe something more like diabolical? Overt government disinformation, giving federal "authorities" the right to raid and plunder any person or organization involved in harboring plant material.
The term is regulatory capture. There are a number of financial motives behind blocking legalization: drug and booze makers protecting their turf, religious wingnuts seeking moral relevance, law enforcement and DEA contractors. At some point the weed industry will grow large enough to have its own lobbyist army.
The exoteric explanation seems incompetent because it's veiled in racism and xenophobia to protect and promote corporate and national interests. You can see this just in the terminology used in the laws, like using the term "Marihuana" to invoke anti-Mexican sentiment for heavily taxing the use of hemp fibers in 1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937
Luckily for us DuPont introduced a wonderful petroleum-based "man-made organic textile fiber" (Nylon) in 1938, featuring it heavily in the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon#Early_marketing_strategi...
What bullshit. I have a prescription for a cream containing CBD and THC that has almost totally removed arthritis pain in my hands. Really life changing for me.
oh, true. found some pro marijuana sites that said it came from marijuana, but per more reputable sites it's just contained in marijuana, but derived from hemp. Thanks!
The difference between "marijuana" and "hemp" is only legal, not biological, so a distinction without a difference. Hemp growers use a variety bred to have little THC in it. The species is the same.
The species is the same but it is a biological difference, in the same way that a Chihuahua and a Wolf are genetically the same species but in fact quite different.
Hemp is marijuana. It is also found in the buds that you can smoke to get high. I believe they are somewhat competing components and their concentration depends on when you harvest a plant. It has either more THC/CBD depending on the time chosen.
Didn't know doctors prescribe it. Hemp is relatively closely related to nettles, which are also used for some therapies for arthritis. Maybe there is another component that helps? Could be a coincidence of course.
I told my Doctor that I was using over the counter CBD ointment. He told me that prescription CBD + THC ointment would be more effective, and he was correct!
Placebo effect. CBD and THC are not well absorbed topically and there's no data on transdermal bioavailability, so the effective dosage would be unscientific and unknown. The majority of CBD creams fall within the category of snake oil to dupe consumers into spending money just as they do on beauty products. THC absorption by the skin is very low.
While some CBD products I do believe to be snake oil, what basis do you have for products containing both CBD and THC to only being effective as a placebo? CBD isn’t truly effective without THC and the THC is what basically turns the snake oil into a legitimately effective product. Additionally, everyone’s sensitivity to marijuana differs and while skin absorption may be “low” that does not mean none and even the effects of a low amount can be felt.
> what basis do you have for products containing both CBD and THC to only being effective as a placebo
Read the article. Because without carrier molecules, cannabinoids cannot be effectively absorbed to do much more than provide minor, dermal-area effects. There's no getting high, and not much deep penetration of anything.
> CBD isn’t truly effective without THC.
Truly what? Based on what evidence? 10 mg of pure CBD in a lipid sublingual tincture is calming if you've ever tried it. Easily distinguishable from placebo.
If I understand correctly, the answer is "they probably did need to, but didn't bother".
You'll sometimes see articles say "these states have legalized marijuana, but it remains illegal at the federal level". If the DEA did choose to try and enforce marijuana prohibition in one of these states, the state would be able to sue, making the argument that the US constitution does not give this power to the federal government. The federal government would probably argue that it did have this power under the Commerce Clause.
My understanding is that the DEA has avoided putting itself in a position where this could be litigated.
DEA raiding dispensaries has been a thing since CA first legalized marijuana. I'm not local but it looks like it was ruled in federal court that the DEA isn't authorized to raid a business operating within state law. Not sure how this effects things regarding amendments, but thought it was worth sharing
The US Supreme Court found in 2005 that the federal government is within its rights to criminalize the growing of marijuana for personal use via the commerce clause:
All the more reason to dispense with the current constitution that enshrines slavery and violence as protected rights. We nominally took back the slavery part but then recreated it with the prison system.
I mean, anybody can sue anybody, but I'm not sure the states could successfully enjoin the federal government from enforcing federal prohibition. In fact, I think this issue has already been settled in the courts. The federal government cannot compel the states to use state resources to enforce federal law, so there's that.
There is so much federal policy based on commerce clause jurisprudence that overturning Raich and others is a pipe dream. Change will only come from slow erosion by giving the Supreme Court the opportunity through some creative cases.
<sarcasm>You know, if we legalize cannabis we'll have to legalize driving while black next. How will we legally enslave black people by convicting them of crimes and forcing them to engage in prison labor without laws we can selectively enforce against them?</sarcasm>
I knew a guy who assumed that if marijuana would be legalized, the streets would be consumed by masses constantly walking and driving around stoned.
Props to him though, for at least having some level of consistency. The same person also admitted to me he was strongly against alcohol and wish prohibition had succeeded.
As someone who rides a bike in a state where Pot is legal, there are a fair number of people who are smoking and driving, many more than before legalization. And the homeless population seems to have embraced pot as well.
The sky hasn't fallen, but when riding I give a wide berth.
There is a lot of inconsistency, but the lines between "drug" and "Recreational substance" are certainly blurred, be it for Opiates or Pot. On one hand our food and drug administration couldn't figure out why in some places they're distributing more opioids than there are people, and voters went from "pot is a medicine" to "pot is recreational". Regulation of anything was a total failure so maybe another plan.. So legalize and pay for treatment.
The only thing I am afraid of people driving high on weed is me getting stuck behind someone going too slow, most likely increasing safety for bicyclists and pedestrians.
The risk factors are probably ranked something like alcohol > using mobile/driving while sleep deprived > eating/applying makeup >>>>>>> talking to someone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>high on weed.
I actually know of someone who was hit by a high driver. Hurt pretty bad. One of the problems is there is not a way to prove pot impairment, so reporting doesn’t really exist (no breathalyzer for pot).
Maybe they think they’re driving slow but I haven’t seen any change in speed. Is it worse than texting and driving? probably not, but I suspect it isn’t great either. Pot today is very potent.
Perhaps we could redirect the DEA towards enforcing responsible use of antibiotics? You don't have to dismantle the Agency and we can do something about the antibiotic-resistant bacteria problem.
Considering there are not FDA approved treatments that have gone through clinical trials, this is in fact true, and should be treated as such until this changes.
If we want recreational use, just legalize for recreational use rather than backdoor the medical system. This would unclog a criminal justice system, reduce police encounters, and a host of other benefits that I think are desirable.
Just to point out, the "war on drugs" is just slightly veiled systemic racism in both who is targeted and for how long they are put away. Just another way for a person of color to lose their voting rights by becoming a felon.
If the US really wanted to fight the war on drugs it would take a recovery approach and treat addiction like a disease.
Anyone who's shocked at the government's anti-scientific and immoral posturing about drugs is missing the point. This isn't about science or ethics or justice. It's about money.
The US government uses drug laws to take billions of dollars from citizens every year, without having to convict or even charge them with any crime. Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to take your money, car, house, or anything else they want for any reason, and all they have to do is say they suspect your property was somehow connected to a drug crime.
Law enforcement agencies at all levels are on the take, from local cops and sheriffs on up, and the feds give kickbacks to local agencies when they contribute their loot to the feds in return for less accountability and restrictions.
This naked corruption is all you need to understand why the feds so desperately want to keep these drug laws in place.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 57.7 ms ] threadCongrats to drugs for winning the war on drugs.
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Ethics. Morality. The desire to not be a horrible excuse for a human being inflicting needless pain and suffering and destroying the lives of the people their agency is ostensibly charged with serving. Not perpetuating the horrible status quo that's corrupted the spirit of their mission and accepting the will of the people.
Weed isn't the drug that your hippy parents smoked in the 60s anymore. Years of selective growing increased psychoactive substances to insane levels never found in the plant previously. It was also the logistical problem created by prohibition that made this process beneficial. Sure, people would have done this anyway for the drug to become more potent, but I believe free availability would have countered this development.
Of course even with its potency it is still one of the softer drug. Alcohol can be just as destructive.
1: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...
[EDIT] I may be understating the sleep-aid thing—just knowing that I've got a bag of gummies and that if I pop one a couple hours before bed I will fall asleep quickly that night, with minimal ill effects, does wonders for my state of mind throughout the day. Even having prescription pills for it before didn't, both because their effects felt more like "being drugged", so, seemed scarier/more-harmful, and because I knew I'd wake up the next morning feeling like shit, even if I got a full night's sleep.
Actually, here's another thing: it's almost certainly less harmful to your health to get high semi-regularly than to get drunk semi-regularly. Even if all cannabis did was replace a measurable percentage of alcohol use, I'd be very surprised if that didn't improve population-wide health markers, and that's just from its recreational use. Not a medicinal use, but still an improvement to population health.
Even more: there's basically zero medical benefit to tobacco, and if there are 1 or 2 areas where it's slightly beneficial, there are a thousand where it's vastly worse. If tobacco isn't a schedule 1 drug, there's no way in hell marijuana should be.
I don't use marijuana and have no personal stake in this. If it were federally legalized today, my own personal life wouldn't change a bit. I just think it's ridiculous that we're clutching pearls about whether marijuana is good for you when other things that are objectively much worse for you are perfectly legal.
The DEA has not helped this at all but MJ is basically legal at the state level(s) because activists successfully argued against the war on drugs and via political will. Not because MJ treatments have been proven scientifically safe & effective.
The thing I am most skeptical of is the safety of delivering the drug via smoking raw Marijuana. This is completely off the reservation compared to most medical drugs.
Activists swear that it's safe to inhale MJ smoke into your lungs and you won't get cancer but it's extremely hard for me to believe with a straight face. Almost any type of smoke you inhale into your lungs has very bad side effects over time. We can make it legal but then we might discover it does increase lung cancer rates like tobacco once you daily smoke for 30 years. It's possible no one has really been able to smoke it at that level due to it being so criminalized.
I agree this doesn't matter for a terminal cancer patient cause they are dying but so much of medical MJ has seemed like a political foot in the door to get it legalized for recreational use.
There are also people who are certain that access to medical marijuana saved their lives. The example that comes to mind was someone who was dealing with significant nausea / appetite issues that had caused dangerous weight loss that no other prescription medications could manage. Medical marijuana ameliorated these issues when nothing else had.
This doesn't mean MJ is a miracle drug, but it does meam that there is a significant group that quite genuinely supports medical marijuana for medical reasons.
With that in mind I think starting with medicalization was a smart strategic move. The only other options were to make a lot of Americans less controlling, or to convince them that they're wrong, and, well... good luck with either of those.
On the other hand, I can get marijuana delivered to my house.
There has to be more to this right? Trafficking tons of the stuff? Repeat offender? Violent history? enhancements?
see also: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
edit, since people clearly are against this comment: I'm not arguing that that the "more to this" justifies the 25 years, only that "25 years for a marijuana conspiracy" isn't the whole story and we'd all benefit if we were able to judge the whole story rather than some person's stylized version of the story.
my partial understanding is that they were involved in the laundering and/or obfuscation of funds, they probably had strong suspicions about what was going on, but there was enough easy money that they did not demand answers.
they felt insulated from the crimes about which they had no concrete knowledge.
claims were made at trial that were demonstrably false, but they refused to admit to things in a plea that they did not do or have knowledge of. which was the wrong call under the circumstances.
What a sickening system. No better than the inquisition. Confess and repent, or suffer torture. At least the inquisition let you change your mind.
Pretty amusing mistake, but I think you mean Ehrlichman.
The fact is, the Controlled Substances Act [1] passed both houses of Congress with near unanimous approval, and the war on drugs was still supported by Democrats like Clinton and even Biden decades later. [2]
And most of the arrests aren't made by the DEA, they are made by local police in jurisdictions controlled by Democrats (including many black Democrats).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act
2: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/25/18282870/j...
But I'm not here to argue about the alleged quote, I'm here to dispute the broader claim that the war on drugs was somehow manufactured by Nixon to target his enemies. The war on drugs was bipartisan from the beginning.
So if you believe that the racial disparities might be "a deliberate result of the system", as you said, then blame for that would extend far beyond Nixon, right up to our current President.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote
This presumes that leftists and civil rights activists weren't also a thorn in the side of Democrats as well as Republicans. Democrats are famous for paying lip service to the causes of racial justice and workers rights, and then failing to deliver for these groups when in office because not enough of them are dedicated to these causes. They are also famous for being just as beholden to corporate interests as Republicans. I can absolutely imagine plenty of Democrats happy to witness law enforcement crack down against these groups. Civil unrest is bad for business after all.
> So if you believe that the racial disparities might be "a deliberate result of the system", as you said, then blame for that would extend far beyond Nixon, right up to our current President.
100% agreed
Abstract: Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH 3 , and COCH 3.
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-6630507-B1
Patent showing medical value in one hand, "no accepted medical use" in the other.
More racist than incompetent. The Nixon era war on weed was driven by hatred of blacks.
Luckily for us DuPont introduced a wonderful petroleum-based "man-made organic textile fiber" (Nylon) in 1938, featuring it heavily in the 1939 New York World's Fair and 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon#Early_marketing_strategi...
Is anyone surprised?
edit: this comment is wrong.
Didn't know doctors prescribe it. Hemp is relatively closely related to nettles, which are also used for some therapies for arthritis. Maybe there is another component that helps? Could be a coincidence of course.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12100860/
Read the article. Because without carrier molecules, cannabinoids cannot be effectively absorbed to do much more than provide minor, dermal-area effects. There's no getting high, and not much deep penetration of anything.
> CBD isn’t truly effective without THC.
Truly what? Based on what evidence? 10 mg of pure CBD in a lipid sublingual tincture is calming if you've ever tried it. Easily distinguishable from placebo.
$5 says the average DEA agent uses more drugs than the average American.
Ah, then allow me to introduce you to the ATF..
You'll sometimes see articles say "these states have legalized marijuana, but it remains illegal at the federal level". If the DEA did choose to try and enforce marijuana prohibition in one of these states, the state would be able to sue, making the argument that the US constitution does not give this power to the federal government. The federal government would probably argue that it did have this power under the Commerce Clause.
My understanding is that the DEA has avoided putting itself in a position where this could be litigated.
https://time.com/4080110/dea-medical-marijuana-california-ru...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
As for why an amendment was needed in 1920 but not 1971, apparently the commerce clause didn't become the anything clause until after 1937.
If this all sounds hopelessly inconsistent and/or hypocritical, well, I would agree with you.
I agree with your sentiment that the current prison system is a major problem.
There is so much federal policy based on commerce clause jurisprudence that overturning Raich and others is a pipe dream. Change will only come from slow erosion by giving the Supreme Court the opportunity through some creative cases.
Props to him though, for at least having some level of consistency. The same person also admitted to me he was strongly against alcohol and wish prohibition had succeeded.
The sky hasn't fallen, but when riding I give a wide berth.
There is a lot of inconsistency, but the lines between "drug" and "Recreational substance" are certainly blurred, be it for Opiates or Pot. On one hand our food and drug administration couldn't figure out why in some places they're distributing more opioids than there are people, and voters went from "pot is a medicine" to "pot is recreational". Regulation of anything was a total failure so maybe another plan.. So legalize and pay for treatment.
The risk factors are probably ranked something like alcohol > using mobile/driving while sleep deprived > eating/applying makeup >>>>>>> talking to someone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>high on weed.
Maybe they think they’re driving slow but I haven’t seen any change in speed. Is it worse than texting and driving? probably not, but I suspect it isn’t great either. Pot today is very potent.
If they would defund the DEA now, how far could they push back the shutdown?
If we want recreational use, just legalize for recreational use rather than backdoor the medical system. This would unclog a criminal justice system, reduce police encounters, and a host of other benefits that I think are desirable.
If the US really wanted to fight the war on drugs it would take a recovery approach and treat addiction like a disease.
The US government uses drug laws to take billions of dollars from citizens every year, without having to convict or even charge them with any crime. Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to take your money, car, house, or anything else they want for any reason, and all they have to do is say they suspect your property was somehow connected to a drug crime.
Law enforcement agencies at all levels are on the take, from local cops and sheriffs on up, and the feds give kickbacks to local agencies when they contribute their loot to the feds in return for less accountability and restrictions.
This naked corruption is all you need to understand why the feds so desperately want to keep these drug laws in place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
https://reason.com/2021/06/11/when-is-a-civil-forfeiture-bas...
https://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/03/civil-asse...