US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

there is still a lot of cash on site due to the presence of an ATM though, and in the cash registers. the primary problem is that weed shops are incredibly attractive robbery targets due to being one of the few businesses in 2024 that handle large amounts of cash.

Signs that times are a' changing -- you can buy illegal drugs with a card now.

(Call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I don't think I'd want 50+ illegally-correlated transactions on my financial record that the government could lump into other charges...)

Yes this seems to be increasingly common, at least on the west coast. The suboptimal part is that the buyer typically gets hit with an out-of-network ATM fee for doing this, so the consumer is paying $2-5 for processing per transaction.

That's a fairly a common practice for cash only businesses, normally a different company is supplying the ATM and its cash. For example I've seen cash only ice cream shops with the same setup.

Does it actually keep cash out of the store? They might just have to keep track of it at the back of house still.

Which most take off the couple of bills for processing fee's.

The ATM is usually registered to a different business around the corner or something like that.

Business 2 owns the building and the atm, renting it to business 1, the dispensary. B1 pays the cash as rent to b2 who puts it into the ATM again. A SWAG but it's common enough in other business setups to alter costs as I understand it.

Every dispo in my area (Metro Detroit) has concrete pillars surrounding the building, usually every two feet or so.

One of the first to open a few years back got hit early and everyone seems to have learned the lesson.

First line in your link:

"The owner says around $15,000 of products and items were stolen from the store."

It doesn't mention anything about cash.

"Smash and grab" in weed shops doesn't usually have much to do with having piles of cash sitting around (though I'm sure that might happen too) - it's the product that thieves want to steal because it's got no serial numbers, it's pretty light-weight and easy to run out with thousands of dollars worth of product, and it's easy to resell.

If there's any cash in the register that's often secondary to grabbing a few pounds of high-quality product. 3 pounds of high quality weed can be valued at $20k. I doubt there's that much in the cash register at the end of the day, and good luck getting into the safe. It's much easier to run out with 3 pounds of weed.

I guess the weed can still be stolen

The poverty and gangster culture is going to stay the same so this seems like a weird kind of social take, I mean wont grifters just find another way to hurt common folk?

I mean... I can leave a 2000 USD Macbook for a toilet break in Starbucks over here without any issues and have done so regularly.

The poor San Bernardino Sheriff's department is going to need a new funding source, too.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-28/marijuan...

Mainly because your employees, suppliers, and landlord have no desire to be paid in Bitcoin.

Nobody wants to stand around for several minutes waiting for transactions to clear.

Because you can't yet purchase electricity/internet with bitcoin (directly).

That's just because crypto shills just don't get obvious facts about reality, not because obvious facts about reality aren't objectively and provably true. That's just the way cults and get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and fraud work, so stop being a shill and wondering why nobody believes or respects you, because there's a lot you don't get.

Those two specifically have super high transaction fees which basically kills their use as normal currencies.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

You can in the U.S. too. For instance, in Portland we have a neighborhood shop and you can use a debit card there because each transaction is classified as an ATM transaction. All the ban ever did was making accounting and reporting more complicated, it didn't stop state legal sales or transactions.

I’ve done it in New York City, in a really clean and hipstery shop in park slope, Brooklyn. Paid with a debit card, the whole process felt legit and professional, that was a great experience. They also offered really fancy teas and coffees.

You can sell schedule 3 drugs to consumers. Pharmacies do this all the time.

Wouldn't that be leaving money on the table? The bank that accepts business with marijuana vendors is at a competitive advantage to one that doesn't, no?

Schedule 1 -> banned from the financial system.

This is not true.

Here is a legitimate business selling schedule 1 drugs: https://www.caymanchem.com/product/10801/mephedrone-(hydroch...

Regulatory Information: DEA Schedule I

With a schedule I DEA license, you can buy this product, and the manufacturer can deposit your money into a bank.

That's why I'm not sure moving marijuana from schedule 1 to 2 or 3 will really change much from a banking perspective.

Marijuana dispensaries will still be violating federal law, no different than if they were selling sleeping pills illegally.

If it has been illegal to sell cannabis commercially, how have cannabis companies been allowed to form and be publicly traded? I would think that federal regulation to be publicly traded would cause issues.

How the DEA schedule and the financial system interact is still unclear.

You already answered this already :)

the point is that you CANNOT legally sell schedule 1 drugs commercially

Schedule 1 means illegal under (nearly) any circumstance, commercial dispensaries fall under “any circumstance.” Drug scheduling is just a tiered system for classification in order to determine which rules to apply to its sale, distribution, and possession of the substance.

I don't see how this anything but a mandate for the DEA to crack down on recreational.

they might not be able to see the purchases if you're in a state where you can buy booze in a 7/11 or grocery store; in that case it's just a grocery purchase. but they sure as hell can see that you have a charge from "CORNER LIQUOR STORE - $47.61 - 12 APRIL 2024" and can make guesses.

This also assumes that grocery stores aren't aggressively aggregating and selling sales data, esp. those from Membership Cards. Insurance companies would love to get a hold of that data, not only for alcohol, but things like sugar and junk food purchases. I'd bet my hat they're already doing so.

I bet that in the US, no health insurer will ever pay for an insured person's marijuana.

You described a worst-case scenario. I’d rather smoke Marlboro Greens, and I promised myself 20 years ago I’d never spend another penny with them.

I could see them carrying CBD in pill / gelcap form. (It pretty much snuffs out my migraines.)

I don't think they'll carry intoxicating forms of marijuana, though. (I've never seen a CVS with alcohol, but that could be because of how my state handles liquor licenses.)

American corporations are great at retooling their business/supply chains for different products (see how quickly everyone moved into hard seltzers).

I do expect big tobacco to move in aggressively if weed is made legal.

Can't say I've ever felt that massive corps and the people that work there are super productive. In many instances they seem less productive than government.

What SMB has the luxury of being notoriously unproductive? Economies of scale are very real and tend to make larger businesses more efficient, it's true, but you'll find that causes SMBs to be lean and mean to remain competitive.

Corporate dispensaries, which are very prevalent, are notoriously lower quality

Even without nationwide economies of scale, Michigan regularly has businesses selling weed vape carts for <$10 apiece. I don't know how much cheaper we want the weed to be, honestly. It's already at least 10x cheaper than the cheapest alcoholic beverage on a buzz-for-buzz basis.

Note, they're only planning to move it from Schedule 1 (alongside heroin) to Schedule III (alongside anabolic steroids and ketamine). So, it won't be fully legal in the same sense as alcohol.

Regardless, unless Congress does something to make it legal nationally, we'll still have the state frameworks. Just hopefully avoiding the most draconian criminal charges.

Yep, some people tested this same theory out for firearms (or was it suppressors?) all produced and sold in one state in accordance with state laws. Of course the Feds shut that down and the courts agreed. The only reason they don't do this with pot is because they don't feel like it.

My one big Supreme Court wish is that Wickard gets shot down. I could actually see it happen with the current court.

According to a really old SC decision that rests on shaky foundations at best.

Interesting use of italics

There are more people involved than just clients and investors.

I think some inefficiencies are important, especially when scoped to "who can do this thing the cheapest?"

Tobacco smoke killed ALL my grandparents, well, well one of them would have died from alcohol use, as he was a fisherman and they drink a lot. My uncle died from liver and bowel cancer, the liver cancer stems from alcohol consumption, or rather it's metabolite, acetaldehyde, which is _scary as hell_: It makes cancerous scar tissue of whatever it touches, thats why alcoholics die from liver failure: it becomes all scar tissue and cannot regenerate, which is part of its function (the average adult has a liver 3 years of average age). It is also what gives the alcohol buzz. He was not a heavy drinker, but only drank wine and aqua vit/liquor, 1-2 times a year he would get shitfaced -- he was a funny drunk. I miss him. I miss all my grandparnts, they were the best and did not deserve Emphysema , lung cancer and so forth. Grandma taught me soldering, welding, basic ircuitry, how to ride a bike, composting, growing veggies, all about berries in the wild and helped me save up for my Nintendo NES,encuraged mt curiosity...I would beat the crap out a tobacco exec if I crossed paths with one, a part of me wants to torture them.

I smoked for 15 years, turns out quitting was easy, once you undestood the way the addiction works, but nobody considers that they developed oral fixation from sucking on a potennt noootropic habit forming substance all day,

But then we have Silvy Listhaug (politician): Marijuana will continue to be banned because she is a mom, she told the reporter photographing her smoking cigarettes. I hope she gets lung cancer.

Personally, as a monkey with a lump of fat in my head called a brain, I think drinking fat solving solvents are a bad idea for that reason alone.fMRI scans shows white brain tissue in drinkers literally dissolves over time.

The increase in marijuana use is mostly due to 3 factors:

* Nobody is hiding anymore.

* We become more people every day.

* More & more people realise alcohol sucks.

The UK and CAnada's offcial stance on alcohol is that there is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol consumption.

The war on drugs is going well in Norway: Cocaine & MDMA purity averages above 80%, Racemic amphetamine is cheaper than hash now, and the hash is good as anything you can find in dutch coffeeshops. ..and it is all getting cheaper at the same time. The war is being lost so bad the police have stopped issuing Narcotics stats 2 times a year as mandated and dropped it to once a year. Last year crystal meth averaged over 99% purity, 99.2%-99.6% according to Kripos Crimelab!! 5000 mafia families in Europe alone funds their organized crime with proceeds from the artificially high price of cannabis caused by the ban, legalizing and taxing it resoanbly would snuff out those and would be a massive blow to organized crime. GHB is fueling a rape epidemic here. Oh and you can legally buy poppy seed and grow them here...

Also made research very hard too.

I don't even think that's that tinfoil hat-y

What else will I spend my billions in revenue on if I can't advertise and have to hide all my employees?

I believe the concept of drug 'scheduling' was introduced in the Controlled Substances Act under Richard Nixon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cannabis_laws_in_t....

Reagan had his War on Drugs, which resulted in the imprisonment of an order of magnitude more nonviolent drug offenders: https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-on-drugs

US is only lenient when compared to even more severe steamrollers of human rights. Executing individuals for drug possession is absolutely unconsciousable and unacceptable. Incarceration being less diabolical does not mean it is not still highly diabolical. Countless lives were and continue to be destroyed.

Thailand legalized it.

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, it may be illegal, but it is everywhere, along with everything else.

Singapore is restrictive, but that's across the board anyway.

Let's not forget that betel nut is everywhere... another plant based drug.

It's a matter of treaty law. States punched out a treaty on drugs and then promised each other to stick to it, pressuring other states to buy in.

Leaving a treaty means you change your relation to the other signatories and possibly a regulatory body that took part in developing the treaty. Sometimes it's cheap, sometimes it's been a justification for horrible atrocities over decades and decades.

In this case the latter is true. Ditching the UN convention is almost like saying you owe a lot of people restitution for the nasty things you did.

Which is why the UN needs to take the blame for the convention on drugs to go away, the signatories most likely won't.

In response to uninformed sibling comments reflexively fearing cannabis use in drivers, see here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/

Cannabis users perceive their driving under the influence as impaired and more cautious, and given a dose of 7 mg THC (about a third of a joint), drivers rated themselves as impaired even though their driving performance was not; in contrast, at a BAC 0.04% (slightly less than two “standard drinks” of a can of beer or small 5 oz. glass of wine; half the legal limit in most US states), driving performance was impaired even though drivers rated themselves as unimpaired.

This awareness of impairment has behavioral consequences. Several reviews of driving and simulator studies have concluded that marijuana use by drivers is likely to result in decreased speed and fewer attempts to overtake, as well as increased “following distance”. The opposite is true of alcohol.

I'd be more weary of people under the influence of anger, benzos, or other psychiatric drugs.

In my experience, cannabis is a performance enhancer in these cases, increasing awareness rather than decreasing it. After all, it does improve ADHD symptoms.

i think driving is probably already dangerous enough without adding cannabis or any other psychoactive into the mix

Both of the above are illegal, though very hard to enforce.

I think that also sounds pretty scary. Seeing the state of drivers in the UK, without knowing what they’re under the influence of, if anything, it’s a pretty damning sight.

There is probably some form of bias here, as I don’t remember all of the good drivers, but not a day goes by where I don’t see drivers wandering into other lanes, performing dangerous undertakes, lane changes, or generally being terrible drivers, and you have to wonder why.

A lot of phone drivers, for sure, a lot of ignorant pricks too, but I’d bet on a lot of inebriated drivers given their conduct.

Example of a shocker I had today, I was turning right out of a resi street, a car with no indication stopped to let me out on my right, but it wasn’t safe (very tight, little visibility) so I waved him along. I stayed there for appx 30 seconds until I realised he wanted to turn into the street I was pulling out of. He didn’t indicate once. Just a completely wild disregard for any form of road etiquette, not to mention the Highway Code.

I’ll report it from my dashcam, but I doubt anything will be done by my local police force.

I think we need far more stringent fines and forced retests (along with removal of licence if they can’t meet the standard of a learner) for anyone committing a road traffic offence or blatantly breaching the Highway Code out of sheer ignorance.

or texting or otherwise looking at their phone while driving ...

Stinky is very qualitative. Maybe you grew up around tobacco smokers and so don’t mind the smell? I hate it.

Quantitatively, marijuana smoke is less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.

I'd say putting a very large class of people into "the system" has produced a worse outcome than the drug itself would ever have had.

We don’t regulate where people can smoke tobacco because of the smell, we regulate where people can smoke tobacco because of the health impact of secondhand smoke.

It’s hopeless. Both Washington DC and New York pretty much constantly smell like weed even though people are not smoking on the streets. Its not a particularly bad problem and doesn’t bother me but I could see some people being bothered by it.

This makes sense when compared to other legal drugs. Alcohol is only seen as a problem if you get shitfaced in public. Cigarettes were/are the more acceptable form of smoking when compared to cannabis. Now that the line for cannabis is moving, it makes sense that something else will come take it's place.

The real question though is, will more or less people who try cannabis now that it's legal, know when to stop experimenting when offered harder drugs? The fact that we don't see 15 year olds making bathtub moonshine leads me to believe that there is a limit somewhere for most people. Cannabis has not been difficult to get in the US for decades if you have even a modicum of self-determination. If everyone who has abstained until now suddenly gets the urge to try cannabis, I doubt that will totally destroy that self control after a few hits. Just like many people can go to a bar and know when to stop drinking even though there are likely somewhat inhibited by the drinks they have already consumed.

Well I mean: doing things that people want them to do to get elected. Not the worst problem?

Yeah, he's doing something that's reasonably popular among everyone. How dare he?

Honestly the biggest uptick of weed use I've seen in my peer groups is in the >= 50 set for pain management, sleep, and...fun.

My favorite was the cancellation of a ban on menthol cigarettes because it would turn away black voters despite the NAACP ardently encouraging the ban[0].

[0]https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/health/fda-menthol-cigarettes...

Similar to paying off random citizen's student loans?

If it takes multiple years, then it gives voters a reason to support the candidate that will support the process post-election. Basically, vote for Joe if you want Mary Jane.

The President is the chief executive of both agencies. He didn't need to have one agency recommend it to the other for consideration over a multi-year timescale. It could have been executed within a few weeks to a few months. The office of the President knowingly chose a prolonged approach.

I feel it is misleading to call it an "effort", as if the President was struggling against the very agencies that he was elected to lead, decisively. Congress is supposed to be the slow-moving deliberative rule-making body.

If he really did struggle, it would say a lot about the growth of the administrative state and would highlight a constitutional health issue.

Well, politicians doing what people want in order to get reelected is kinda the point of democracy.

You obviously haven’t been paying attention as these rule making processes started literally years ago that’s how much red tape there is to get through.

And even if what you are saying was true (it isn’t) isn’t that the entire argument for democracy in the first place? “Politicians make good policy because they want to get re-elected” is how we should hope things work.

This is misinformation.

Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reexamine the scheduling of marijuana in October 2022.

Nearly a year later in August 2023, the HHS wrote to the DEA recommending that marijuana be reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule III.

A month ago, the DEA was still "writing [their] recommendation" on what they should reclassify marijuana to (if any change was to happen).

And just now, April 2024, the DEA agreed with HHS (as reported by AP, DEA hasn't confirmed this yet).

So no, this isn't "just happening" now, this has been going on for years.

[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-30/hhs-calls... [3]: https://twitter.com/DEAHQ/status/1772987478548287891

{{Citation needed}}

voters remain free to replace the executive the next time around

Note that there are only either 538 or 100 voters, depending on which position in the executive branch.

That only works if the rulemaking happens based on scientific reason rather than politics.

This is just the same principle as private organization boards of directors delegating the minutia of running the organization to the executives and their teams.

It isn't, because the board can replace the executive leadership at any time, whereas the President can only be replaced every four years and isn't elected by the legislature whatsoever, bypassing checks and balances.

The proper way to delegate minutia to an administrative agency is to have them propose rules that Congress then votes on. The rules might be a thousand pages long and 99.9% uncontroversial, so those rules get rubber stamped, but controversial changes have to go through the political process because it gives Congress the opportunity to refuse.

Congress remains free to overrule the agencies by passing further legislation, if they so desire.

But that's not how it works, because now you've inverted the default. Before you needed a majority of the House and Senate and the President's signature in order to make a change. Now you need all that to undo the change a President makes unilaterally -- implying that the President would veto it and the legislature would need a veto-proof majority. It's not the same thing at all and is handing too much power to the executive branch.

There is certainly value in stability and predictability, but there is even more value in having an executive branch of government that is empowered to make decisions quickly and a short feedback loop between the public and the government.

There is value in allowing the executive branch to remove bad rules unilaterally, in the same way as the President can veto a bill. Allowing new rules to be created without the appropriate process is tyrannical.

Abortion is probably the biggest issue and that's because a lot of the country does not support it and this has not substantially changed in over 50 years: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

I'm sorry, am I reading the data incorrectly, or your comment incorrectly?

Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?

2023 | 34(any) 51(some) 13(illegal) 2(no opinion)

According these data, the vast, vast majority of Americans support the right to abortion, correct?

3. Make our society so pleasant to live in that people want to experience their day-to-day lives with their minds free from drugs.

I downvoted you because while it may not have been successful at getting Americans to stop drinking, it was effective at reducing violent crimes caused by drinking, as well as the negative health effects such as liver cirrhosis. The anti drug control crowd has done a great job commandeering popular opinion on this topic. I found this (non-academic) article informative to this end.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...

Edit: to the downvoters, I look forward to future academics and politicians being absolutely shocked when it turns out the absence of evidence is in fact not evidence of absence and there are a myriad of negative health and societal consequences from legalizing marijuana use

Ah, that American rugged individualism. That's why y'all can be homeless in a blink or medically bankrupt.

Outpatient opiods being prescribed to the degree they were 20 years ago was clearly wrong in hindsight.

Don't forget coffee...

Do all of them. To me, government exists to mediate interactions between parties. Not to get involved in personal choices. If someone wants to rip fat lines of coke, good for them. Not my business.

DMT is a drug I’d highly recommend everyone take once but only once.

The experience of existing for a short time without the concept of self, experiencing zero sensory filters, and finally having your brain rebooted as it has a kernel panic (and going through the brain kernel load process as it does so) is mind blowing.

It’s enough to convince you that we live in a highly advanced simulation. Or one could just be high af.

Also I’m pretty sure it was based on an old version of Linux because I’m convinced I saw the kernel message “Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039“.

QED God is a programmer. :-)

That Salvia divinorum is somehow legal (varies by jurisdiction) always blows my mind...

My personal opinion is that most people won't be able to regulate any large caches of the above-commented drugs... but after one or two rides on Salvia most'll keep a wide birth [which I recommend as "the worst experience possible; if somebody suggests you try Salvia they're bullying you; try something else"].

I completely agree. People in the US need to learn that happiness cannot come from a purchase, whether it's chemicals to ingest or whatever else is being marketed to them. It's amazing what americans will do to their bodies and minds except get exercise and eat fresh healthy foods.

I don't think people do psilocybin and LSD to escape from reality. I'm not even sure how that would work, given how I understand tolerance works for those drugs?

You just reflexively replied with what you have been programmed to believe about mind-altering substances (aside from those exempted by the authorities). The use of "drug crisis" in reply to the substances mentioned is a clear indication of your prejudice and ignorance, given that MDMA has already been given breakthrough status by the FDA as a treatment for PTSD, psilocybin for major depression, and being studied for it's powerful anti-addictive effects, same as LSD (which had great results with curing alcoholism *in one session* when it was initially being studied in the 50s and 60s).

This entire thread is full of people who seemingly feel compelled to comment on things they are completely ignorant about, which one would hope to see less of on HN.

https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/fentanyl-test-stri...

Doesn't everyone want freedom, justice, fairness, etc.

(unfortunately everyone doesn't agree on the definition of these terms)

(also: "But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")

Yes they do, for example lobbyists and donors and buddies want to get rich at the expense of the country and its people, and the common plebs don't want that.

You have to keep some things in the bank to use in certain circumstances.

It’s all a game. The sooner you realize it and that there is no option but to play the game, the better you and everyone else will be.

And the game never ends and cannot be beaten. Any bs like “just don’t play the game bro” ok then go live on Mars and make a game there. Don’t drive on the roads, don’t use any utilities, and try to self exile.

We all prioritize things differently and I believe this process was started on October 6th, 2022 [1]. This is just one of many things the current administration has done over the last 3 years, though.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/07/biden-weed-executiv...

You just described whole maga movement and some others. It works en masse, thats why trump won first time without investing heavily into marketing, telling folks what they wanted to hear

“People aren't children to be appeased by such gestures.”

Good one.

I'm not underestimating that, I think the timing of this approval was probably politically motivated.

Sure things can take a long time when people want to slow them down or don't care about them. But things can move extraordinarily quickly when it comes to moving billions of dollars into the pockets of friends. That's basically my point.

Or shorter, given that this regulation is aimed at stoners who are notorious for having memory issues, you'd release this 6 days before an election, not six months before.

I think it is driving the decision yes, and I think bureaucracies are hopelessly politicized and corrupted.

LOL, the wisdom of the market mechanism to the rescue of the irrational voters.

sure, marijuana shouldn't be considered 100% harmless, but it's ludicrous to argue it does the same amount of damage to people's bodies as ketamine (abuse can lead to kidney failure, bladder cystectomy) or even some sched. IV substances such as alprazolam (seizures from withdrawal can be fatal).

So now it is de-jure easier to get than ADHD meds instead of just de-facto easier.

At least according to one study, cannabis does slightly more harm than both of those, although that harm is still tiny compared to that done by alcohol. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harm...

Ah, good catch. Yeah, I'll take the progress even if it's not exactly where I'd like policy to be ultimately.

Naturally occurring human hormones should not be scheduled at all, they should be available over the counter to anyone over 18.

Same thing happened with cupcake shops and craft breweries.

But there's as many shuttered pot shops in Toronto as there are open ones. I think the industry is still shaking out and there's a lot of volatility.

That's fair as well. Being invested in cannabis is a whole other beast.

It’s not a particularly easy industry to value add. Growing pretty good weed is probably less work than a brewery - and I have a very hard time telling the difference between the hundreds of different strains.

Then you have to have security, your staff is high 24/7, banking is a mess..

Growing might be more pleasant than running the shops but then you better like agriculture

While this is true, the remaining stores are continuing to capture more business. Users who only make legal source purchases are over 70% of the market now https://globalnews.ca/news/10367758/legal-cannabis-sales-pro...

There's a common notion that I've noticed, which is that if you just open up a "pot shop" that you'll make money hand over fist, meanwhile, they're fairly complex retail operations to run and you can loose your hat just as quickly as with any other business.

I grew weed durring covid, it's like taking care of a baby for weed that's mostly OK. I sold everything after two attempts. I learned alot about gardening though lol

I visited Montreal last year and finding a recreation cannabis shop was not easy. Google maps is filled with "head shops" that don't sell weed, and apparently at some point all shops became nationalized (correct me if I'm wrong)

Quebec is an oddball, they did provincially run them. They are quite available still, search 'cannabis' in google/apple maps and they'll be available.

I read that as "most people [who smoke weed] grow their own". Also a bold statement but way less absurd than "most Canadians grow weed".

Anecdote: I've had countless dealers over 20 years in many countries and continents, not once has someone tried to sell me anything else (besides hash). It's always been some cheery barefoot guy with dreads growing it in his closet.

Now that it's legal in Germany I'm going to grow my own, and experience the (surprisingly common!) miracle of harvesting the exact legal limit of 25 grams from 3 plants ;)

In that case it ceases to become a gateway drug once legal.

In my experience, the weed dealers aren't the same dealers as the guys moving the harder stuff. If you can get meth from a guy, he can probably get you coke too. But your weed guy probably can't get you either. At least, IME with NYC dealers.

This is precisely how my thought process went back when I used to use drugs heavily.

I remember a teacher telling me drugs make hair grow out of your teeth. I figured if drugs were really that bad they wouldn't need to lie about what they do.

That or the other 'gateway' pathway:

1) Govt says cannabis is the most dangerous drug.

2) I find someone who will sell me illegal thing.

3) I try cannabis, nothing bad happens.

4) Vendor has other items for sale.

Yes, it's good for the government to not be tyrannical, but I'd argue that when the majority of people increasingly and collectively want things that are net negatives for society like recreational drug use, it's a red flag that society is in decline.

Tell that to all the people pissed off at Roe v Wade

The people want to be undisturbed and untaxed by rampant mental illness too, but the average person won't acknowledge that recreational marijuana use (with today's potency levels) contributes to declining mental health.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/

https://treatmentmagazine.com/cannabis-2020-this-isnt-your-d...

That logic doesn't really hold. I'll speak generally and not about this specific administration:

If the <current government> was doing good things that the people wanted during the entire term, then they would not need to resort to moves like this alleged one when the vote is coming up. It's only if they're not doing good things that the people want that they would dangle something shiny to the electorate.

Nobody cares about college protestors, even other young people. It's the second to least important issue in recent polls.

https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024

Young people always have bad turnout anyway, so it doesn't matter if they find a new excuse to have it.

(Also they did do student loan reform via SAVE and have forgiven about 9% of loans IIRC. Probably shouldn't have though, it's inflationary, and as you can see from the above poll nobody even appreciates it.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotropic_Substances_Act_(U... The above link is the Act that governs the USA's international obligations based on our treaty with the UN to schedule specific drugs and under those terms only allowed to reschedule Schedule 1 drugs with the approval of the UN; often after a review of the drugs medicinal purposes by the WHO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Drug_Abuse_Preve... The above is a "DEA" schedule of drug classifications that the government can play around with and bullshit us on. Many of Cannabis schedules have already been reduced based on specific compounds of THC under other treaties enacted before the 1978 alignment from above. These domestic rescheduling may have an affect on legal charges or banking, but cannot address the overarching classifier of Schedule 1 drugs which is the UN based on the 1st link.

That's under a different treaty. You're falling for the bamboozle.

This is the origin of what you're talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

Which is what this was based on: https://www.who.int/teams/health-product-and-policy-standard...

Which was the impetus for what you're talking about.

I answered your question in the other comment.

Very short sighted thinking. If they beheaded Sam bankman fried there will be a clear message to not commit financial crime, and the aspiration and motivation would almost zero.

The gesture of the freeing these two brave whistleblowers is much more important than you think. Noam Chomsky calls this censorship flak of his five filters.

If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.

You haven’t even read the first paragraph of the article. It still remains controlled substance, lol

Once there is a framework for legal sale, and regulations around it, you think all these states will continue to just not comply?

Imo the states get far too much revenue from recreational taxes and I imagine the Fed doesn't want that to change either.

It's really just a few dinosaur pearl clutchers that are preventing it from being descheduled entirely

Since when is majority support the same thing as reasonable??

Yeah. I mean, it's a great accompaniment to some fresh fruit and cheese on a sunny day, a good album, maybe the company of a loved one. It never made me feel like a different person or like I was on a vacation from reality like alcohol could. I've known lots of people who smoke a little, or used to smoke a little and then stopped (I haven't for a long time), and also people who smoke a lot and seem to be doing fine, and also people who clearly smoke in excess, to their detriment. But I have to say that the worst potheads I've ever met seemed happy, healthy, and well-adjusted compared to the alcoholics.

you can get a prescription for marijuana within 15 mins of walking into a doctors office. we are past the peak of this, but 10 years ago you used to be able to go to a doctor that did nothing but marijuana prescriptions. and the line was out the door to the office. you walk in, pay $100-$150, and walk out with a prescription for 1 year

Experience here in Canada has shown it's not nearly the massive market that people thought it was. Tons of stores with excess stock and people losing their shirts, production curtailed. Big speculative wave when legalization was announced, and then it collapsed. Take a look at e.g. Canopy Growth's stock price over 5 years and you can see how the hype wave went.

I was curious if us Canadians were on that treaty, haha.

Yeah the irony here is that it's been the US making the most trouble on this topic. Border agents were pretty difficult for a while, and in theory they can still ban you for life for admitting you have consumed it here, even though it's legal.

I don't consume it really, but if I did I'd never pay for it online with a CC processor or anything that goes through an American data centre. The US is way too crazy about this stuff, and an overzealous border control agent armed with information he shouldn't have can ruin your whole day/week/life.

The evidence that exists suggests that heavy cannabis usage _at an early age_ is associated with the development of psychotic disorders. No state that has legalized cannabis has permitted minors to purchase it. No evidence exists that cannabis usage later in life causes psychosis. There is also a lack of population evidence that increased cannabis usage among the public results in increased rates of diagnosis of psychotic disorders. And nobody is "drugging the masses" here. The government authorizing a product for sale doesn't force you to consume it.

Affordable healthcare being chief among these. If people could go to the doctor without fear of bankruptcy, they might stop trying to self medicate with potentially addictive substances.

I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts had lost his job. He was thrilled to "only" have to pay $1000/mo for insurance on the Marketplace for his family of 6. And he confirmed it wasn't even a "Cadillac" plan!

If my back hurts, I'm probably going to reach for weed over a visit to the doctor because $10/day is a potentially more affordable than needing to shell out $8k for back surgery or physical therapy treatments for years. Maybe I get lucky and the pain goes away, or I can focus on finding a new job with better health benefits and still come out ahead financially.

Humans have been using drugs as long as we've been human. From caffeine to advanced hallucinogens.

I agree with the sentiment but it seems far more reasonable to stop criminalizing something so human as a step towards the goal, rather than put the goal before the metaphorical horse.

You don't have to look very far.

A systemic review of 26 studies [1] in 2019 found that:

"Although variability in the cannabis products used, outcomes assessed, and study quality limits the conclusions that can be made, modest reductions in cognitive performance were generally detected with higher doses and heavier lifetime use."

The American Journal of Psychiatry [2]:

"Long-term cannabis users showed cognitive deficits and smaller hippocampal volume in midlife. Research is needed to ascertain whether long-term cannabis users show elevated rates of dementia in later life."

This study published in JAMA [3]:

"...among 3385 participants with cognitive function measurements at the year 25 visit, 2852 (84.3%) reported past marijuana use, but only 392 (11.6%) continued to use marijuana into middle age. Current use of marijuana was associated with worse verbal memory and processing speed; cumulative lifetime exposure was associated with worse performance in all 3 domains of cognitive function. After excluding current users and adjusting for potential confounders, cumulative lifetime exposure to marijuana remained significantly associated with worse verbal memory..."

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7259587/

[2] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2...

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Ah interesting. So does that mean nonviolent prisoners may have already been released in the states with “legal” weed?

These conclusions are mine, based on research the AI did. None of these probabilities were directly output, it simply found lots of news articles, made simple models, researched what people have said & done historically.

That’s a good point. I’ve known people who smoke a joint every couple of hours and outwardly seem more functional than someone who has had three or four drinks.

The long term effects remain to be determined.