The circus is the US. The ringmaster is in DC. We all live in the circus, surrounded by clowns and lions, but if you set the tarp on fire, we all burn. We need a new circus.
Absolutely, and the DEA is a fucking failure, we have an opioid epidemic and they’ve done absolutely nothing to help the US. Complete fucking bullshit agency that does NOTHING to help the American people.
Probably not, all of the hardcore Biden supporters I’ve met on this website are just utter scum who will never admit to anything no matter how obvious it is, like how this obviously could have been done at any point but was saved for an election year, or how rescheduling it instead of just descheduling it entirely keeps it federally criminal and breaks campaign pledges he made in 2019 and 2020
Best thing you can do is just try to leave some truthful information where some people might see it and ignore the replies
You clearly have very strong opinions, but I bet life would be more fun if you stopped seeing utter scum and saw more neighbor, sister, husband, friend…
Maybe we shouldn't make laws about what adults can do because it wouldn't be good for children. Unless you think we shouldn't have beer festivals, to protect the children, and no food not pureed should be available for purchase, to protect the children.
Sorry for making such a niche reference. I was joking about a specific tweet by a specific German politician. This was only meant for any German reading the comments.
I say this as a pothead. If you're smoking in a public area where it's not specifically designated and there's people there that don't want you to, you're an ass.
Honestly, I would have absolutely no problem with cannabis being legal but you can’t use it in public. If I can buy it, take it home and use it without fear of arrest, that’s all I ask.
Just treat cannabis the same way we treat alcohol and I'll be happy. It'd be nice if we had cannabis bars where I can buy it and consume it in the location.
My biggest objection to smokers is the stink. Maybe it’s not as cancerous as tobacco, but why should I be stuck with a jacket that smells like pot after walking out the entrance to my building or walking through the park? Can’t smokers (of anything) just try to be courteous of non-smokers?
I have sympathy for them because they’re kind of fucked. They’re addicted, but they can’t smoke inside, and their job only gives them a few minutes to take a smoke break, so what else can they do? I hate the smell too, but forcing an addict to just stop smoking is not fair to them either.
To an extent, smoking in public is fine. My regular smoke spot is in a park. But I also hike 20 minutes to it explicitly because its as far away from everyone else as possible, and the wind is usually going away from them.
Maybe I'm overcautious, but I remember walking down the street as a kid and just hating the smell of cigarettes. I never found weed as bad, but I don't want to br the asshole who's the reason some poor 8 year is holding their breath as you walk past them.
I was thinking public municipal streets and the like, not out in the middle of nowhere.
And honestly, I’d apply that to cigarettes too if we wouldn’t be forcing a bunch of addicted people to quit cold turkey because they can’t take smoke breaks at work.
I know Biden tasked the FDA to investigate reclassifying it, which should be a win, but until the FDA actually finishes the reclassification it won’t show in the polls. If the bureaucracy can move fast enough for this to get done before the election, it could mean a decent little bump for Biden.
Well, it’s already in front of the DEA, and then it goes to a White House committee. Good news there is that Biden would be directly in charge of a White House committee. It apparently took a lot of effort to get the DEA to pull their heads out of their ass, but it’s done now (hopefully).
It is arbitrary. While what classification a substance is may have some grounding in research, it’s mostly up to what interest group has either lobbied to get something under or whatever group law enforcement wants to be able to get easy charges for. Cannabis was Sched I because it made it easy for law enforcement to get big sentences for minorities and the counter culture participants of the day. Same thing with LSD and psilocybin.
All the DEA scheduling is just pick and choose your charge for whatever ideological ax they want to grind. Hence why things don’t line up with reality
Overdose of MDMA can cause seratonin syndrome, which can be fatal; and long term use might be linked to depression and anxiety (again, by the way it interacts with seratonin)
It definitely should be rescheduled too, since it is not dangerous enough and definitely has potential for medical use (couple therapy was it’s original use)
This isn’t a new position for Biden with regards to his presidency. Here’s his statements on it over 4 years ago in Feb 2020:
Biden’s campaign told POLITICO that in his remarks on the recording, he was simply “restating his cannabis policy,” which includes eliminating criminal penalties linked to marijuana, erasing marijuana-related criminal records and “letting states set their own policies regarding legalization of recreational marijuana while further effort is made to study the effects of cannabis use.”
If he wanted to do that he’d have pushed his AG to deschedule it entirely
The attorney general doesn’t set the drug classification level, that’s the DEA. This is power was established by a law passed by congress, so if Biden had his AG try to overrule that some states would sue and the Supreme Court would clearly side with them. He could have his AG refuse to prosecute any cannabis crimes, but that would immediately be undone the next time a conservative AG takes over and prosecutes everyone who got a pass now. Also, they’ve already been ignoring any cannabis prosecutions where it’s someone following state law.
Apart from congress passing a law legalizing cannabis (which is not possible with the republican house, not to mention most of the senate) having the DEA reschedule it is the only “permanent” path forward. And it has to be done to the letter of the law because you know some republican states will challenge this move.
Marijuana has been used by humans for just as long, if not longer:
Cannabis was attested to around 12 000 years ago near the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, and since then, cannabis seeds have accompanied the migration of nomadic peoples. Records of the medicinal use of cannabis appear before the Common Era in China, Egypt, and Greece (Herodotus), and later in the Roman empire (Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, Galen). In the 19th century, orientalists like Silvestre de Sacy, and Western physicians coming into contact with Muslim and Indian cultures, like O’Shaughnessy and Moreau de Tours, introduced the medicinal use of cannabis into Europe.
Sigh. Age is not the same as extensive use. We’ve been brewing copious amounts of alcohol for an extremely long time. With dare I say near 100% of the population drinking. Ciao.
Marijuana was considered a black person drug. If you didn't know, the US kinda hates black people, statistically speaking. It's pretty fucked up!
According to the available information, there is no direct mention of the percentage of black people who used marijuana in the 1960s and 1970s. However, we can infer some information from the provided snippets.
In the 1970s, marijuana use became more widespread among the general population. According to Gallup’s trend by age, widespread experimentation with marijuana first occurred among adults aged 18 to 29 between 1969 and 1973, rising from 8% to 35%. It then continued to mount, reaching 56% by 1977, and remained at that level in 1985.
It is important to note that the available information does not provide specific data on the percentage of black people who used marijuana during this time period. However, we can infer that marijuana use was more prevalent among younger adults, particularly those in the 18-29 age range, during the 1970s.
In terms of the potency of marijuana during this time period, reports suggest that pot in the 1970s had THC levels of around 1%. In contrast, today, the herb you’re smoking has a lot more THC, with levels averaging more than 6-8%. Some specially grown plants can contain THC levels as high as 51%.
It is also worth noting that a 2022 analysis of marijuana possession arrests in Texas for the years 2017 to 2019 reported that African Americans comprised 30.2 percent of all possession arrests, yet Black people comprised only 12.9 percent of the state’s population. This suggests that there may be racial disparities in marijuana use and arrest rates, but the available information does not provide specific data on the percentage of black people who used marijuana in the 1960s and 1970s.
Edit: The above is kind of incorrect, the herb I smoke brags ~25%, though sources say those #s vary greatly.
Before that, it was a Mexican person drug, which is why it’s called marijuana to many people. It was a scare tactic. “These Mexicans smoke MARIJUANA!” And why I will only call it things like ‘cannabis’ and ‘weed.’
Marijuana was considered a black person drug. If you didn’t know, the US kinda hates black people, statistically speaking. It’s pretty fucked up!
John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon said the following:
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
While I agree it should be 100% legal across the board someone made a good point. Once it’s rescheduled we could see it be classified at a medicine and ban recreational use then they’ll shoot the price through the roof re-opening the black markets. It’s worth treading carefully while we learn future plans that aren’t being spoken of loudly enough.
The thing is, if it gets rescheduled it will be entirely up to the states to handle growing the plant. I fully expect places like Wyoming to continue the draconian laws (like they just did with D8, it’s a felony after June 1st, farm act be damned) but most places will just regulate based on their current laws. What worries me is the ATF being assigned as the federal regulatory body, but that would only happen with it being a taxable, saleable, product. I don’t forsee big pharma being able to do much with rescheduling, it’s too easy to grow.
Yeah, red states are holding this nation back in a huge number of ways. Wyoming still publicly defends racism and hate speech under the guise of “free speech”. Check out the statements made by the University of Wyoming regarding a guy that comes onto campus specifically to harass and spew hate at transgender people this year. The college not only gives him his own table in the student Union, they encourage him to harass people. It sparked entire groups of people to literally scream racism and hate speech at people all over town because “muh freedoms”. It’s bad. Being a minority in this state is legit scary.
Others may be forced to contort their neurons to uncomfortable angles trying to come up with reasons thisd be bad… just think of all those hurted brains!! The humanity!!!
It seems so out of touch when people make these arguments these days as they pretend like marijuana is some mystery drug that’s barely used when in reality it’s already medically legal in 4/5ths of the country and recreationally legal in 1/2 the country.
Our founding fathers grew and used hemp. For decades, the cotton industry was famously the largest lobbying agent against its legalization. It’s gotten a bad rap for centuries.
I thought the decline of hemp production in the 1950s (180 years after the American Revolution) was due to the availability of synthetic fibers. But you're saying it was Big Cotton?
I’ve read articles that state both cotton farmers and DuPont (rayon) were against it. There’s a really interesting paper that was featured on leafly.com on the subject, but I’m not seeing it now.
The only thing that proves those worries wrong is every single place where marijuana has been legalized and regulated has less crime and more taxes collected through regulated legal sales. So, just reality.
tl;dr: DEA moving cannabis, ketamine, and some other stuff to schedule III; first it goes to OMB for approval, then they have a comment period, then they issue their final ruling.
Better a couple decades late than never, I suppose, but they should really just take it off entirely. Psilocybin too.
I realize the post is about controlled substances, but the comment thread started with
The idea that something you can just grow yourself like a plant of a fungus is illegal is ridiculous on the face of it.
The idea that not being able to grow any plant you want is ridiculous is not well thought out. Something being natural doesn't mean it should be available to anyone.
I genuinely think the only legal restriction on growing plants should be if there is credible evidence that it harms the local ecology, and then a ban can be bypassed if the harmful plant is grown in an environment that would prevent that harm (eg in an indoor lab setting where seeds/spores/etc wouldn’t be able to escape).
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