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"Pot" has been a part of the culture for longer than either of us has been alive. The only dif now, is that in some States it is now visible. Whereas before it was mostly hidden, but still there just the same. Does having it hidden from view, really change anything? People were high in public for years and hardly anyone noticed until attention was drawn to it due to the legalization efforts.Either pot is removed from the culture, or we become - and remain - Idiocracy.
No."Pot" has been a part of the culture for longer than either of us has been alive.
Thanks for a reasonable reply, anyway.
You're right...we're not going to change each others' minds. I've been exposed to pot all my life, from junior-high, and have considered the pros and cons of legality.
You've got your own set of experiences. And you no doubt feel as strongly as do I.
But it's not MORALITY I'm concerned with. There's a lot of things I don't think are right, that nonetheless work, short-term or for one person's life. Like, say, polygamy. Or, encouraging your child to engage in adolescent sex, in the open. Or even supporting your child in teen parenting. None of which is savory, to my middle-class Puritanism; but it can work and has in other cultures.
This is different. This is impairment, which, IMHO - I'm taking facts as I see them and transposing them - will preclude the kind of society we had until just half a generation ago.
You need not agree or even try to rebut it. That's my expectation and prediction - and as it does, the truth will out, with time.
FWIW, I have experimented - just a few years ago, medically ruled off the railroad for my back and hips - experimented with pot as a pain-killer. I remembered it from my wasted youth as an unpleasant high - the befuddlement of other drugs but without the euphoria.
My memory was largely accurate. And it did nothing for my pain. Sorry...I've had past experience with codeine and even some opioids. Which I can attest, the latter are every bit as addictive as critics say; I was physiologically addicted in two days. But they offered a much-better way of dealing with pain than did pot and derivatives.
The point I was getting at is that the same people smoking the stuff now, were smoking it before it was legal. They just kept it secret. Now, it's out in the open where it can be seen by all. It was always there.No.
It was not part of Western culture. Yes, it was used, by fringe subcultures. And those who used it, were lower-class, and mostly stayed lower-class.
You can trot out "musicians." Well, I hate to say it...jazz musicians are not that far advanced from drum-circle noisemakers. Some make a living. Some are even pleasant to listen to. But before we could support jazz musicians, who dug the mellow all day and oriented around anonymous sex, pot and other gratifications...before we advanced to where there was wealth to pay for such parasites, we had to build steel mills, canals, mines and bridges.
Cultures where pot or ghanga were commonly used, were tribal bush societies, in tropical climates where there was little need to plan for survival. Like...say...Africa or the Caribbean islands.
None.what option did they/who offer?
This is going nowhere. Never enter an argument with someone who has an interest in one side...paid or emotional, end result is the same.
I'm putting a marker down on this: This societal insanity WILL NOT END, until pot use is ceased or minimized.
It, the compound and its use, came from Africa; and likely had a LARGE part in KEEPING Africa and Africans in a state where they neither independently invented the wheel nor even the most primitive of water transport.
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Cannabis is indigenous to Central or South Asia[190] and its uses for fabric and rope dates back to the Neolithic age in China and Japan.[191][192] It is unclear when cannabis first became known for its psychoactive properties. The oldest archeological evidence for the burning of cannabis was found in Romanian kurgans dated 3,500 BC, and scholars suggest that the drug was first used in ritual ceremonies by Proto-Indo-European tribes living in the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Chalcolithic period, a custom they eventually spread throughout Western Eurasia during the Indo-European migrations.[193][194] Some research suggests that the ancient Indo-Iranian drug soma, mentioned in the Vedas, sometimes contained cannabis. This is based on the discovery of a basin containing cannabis in a shrine of the second millennium BC in Turkmenistan.[195]
Cannabis was known to the ancient Assyrians, who discovered its psychoactive properties through the Iranians.[196] Using it in some religious ceremonies, they called it qunubu (meaning "way to produce smoke"), a probable origin of the modern word "cannabis".[197] The Iranians also introduced cannabis to the Scythians, Thracians and Dacians, whose shamans (the kapnobatai – "those who walk on smoke/clouds") burned cannabis infructescences to induce trance.[198] The plant was used in China before 2800 BC, and found therapeutic use in India by 1000 BC, where it was used in food and drink, including bhang.[199][200]
Cannabis sativa from Vienna Dioscurides, c. 512 CE
Cannabis has an ancient history of ritual use and has been used by religions around the world. It has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various traditional medicines for centuries.[201][202][163] The earliest evidence of cannabis smoking has been found in the 2,500-year-old tombs of Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains in Western China, where cannabis residue were found in burners with charred pebbles possibly used during funeral rituals.[203][204] Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices like eating by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus.[205] It was used by Muslims in various Sufi orders as early as the Mamluk period, for example by the Qalandars.[206] Smoking pipes uncovered in Ethiopia and carbon-dated to around c. AD 1320 were found to have traces of cannabis.[207]
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None.
Take ibuprofen, or aspirin, or Tylenol; or take these prescription painkillers.
The opioids were after neck fusion surgery. The codeine was long ago, for an at-work injury. I was young and callow and found that #4 Codeine tablets went GREAT with about four beers.
I could have easily become an abuser, but lining up a supply, and paying for it, was just too much like work. So, I had my fun for a time.
I got NO similar pleasure off MM.
That's not empirical.
That's testimonials.
Let me see a double-blind test, in controlled settings with neutral oversight.
Slim. Slim because there's no inhibition, anymore, about deceitful, skewed "tests." Everything from these Jabs to all the Weird Cures that pop-ups offer.even if I showed you proof , double blind and all that , , what are my odds that you will agree that cannabis is a legitimate medicine?
Last week, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Houston lawyer Matthew Zorn, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed the rationale for its August 2023 recommendation that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. The document not only contradicts the position that the DEA has long taken on this issue; it contradicts the position that HHS itself took in 2016, when the DEA rejected a 2011 rescheduling petition. The reversal shows that marijuana's classification has always been a political question rather than a legal or scientific matter.
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This article was published Oct. 4, 2023, and most recently updated Feb. 29, 2024.
As the list of U.S. senators co-sponsoring the SAFER Banking Act continues to grow ahead of a potential floor vote, Cannabis Business Times will continue to update this page regularly.
As of Feb. 28, 2024, there are 35 lawmakers signed on in support of the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act (S. 2860), which was introduced Sept. 20, 2023, as revised legislation to the SAFE Banking Act. The new legislation, like its predecessor, intends to provide safe harbor for financial institutions wishing to serve state-licensed cannabis businesses.
The bill also prohibits a federal banking regulator from requesting or requiring a depository institution to terminate a deposit account unless (1) there is a valid reason, such as the regulator has cause to believe that the depository institution is engaging in an unsafe or unsound practice; and (2) “reputational risk” is not the dispositive factor.
Additionally, proceeds from a transaction involving activities of a state-sanctioned cannabis business would no longer be considered proceeds from unlawful activity under federal law. More details on the bill are here.
The SAFER Banking Act passed the Senate Banking Committee via a 14-9 vote Sept. 27 and was placed on the Senate legislative calendar under general orders as calendar No. 215 the following day. A pending floor vote is now in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s hands.
To date, four Republicans, 29 Democrats and three Independents back the bill with sponsorship.
Below is the (fluid) list of the 36 senators who have signed their names to the legislation.
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Seventeen years ago, the federal government raided Charlie Lynch's medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, and charged him with five drug felonies. Lynch, whose business complied with state and local regulations, has been fighting to stay out of prison ever since, and last month he finally won that battle.
The Department of Justice (DOJ), which had been insisting since the first iPhone was released that Lynch should be incarcerated for at least five years, suddenly agreed to a deal that will spare him that punishment and erase his criminal record. The case, which proceeded on autopilot even as marijuana prohibition collapsed in one state after another, is a vivid reminder that the unjust, massively unpopular policy persists at the federal level thanks to presidential and congressional inertia.
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Not comparing the two...but if you want (on another thread) pot comes out the worse.
But they are comparable here. IMPAIRMENT.
Just as those who cannot think logically, cannot understand why strokes and heart failures are so common after Safe-And-Effective...so, too, can some people not see why overt acts of Public Stupidity are so common now that pot use has been mainstreamed.
And I daresay, Portugal's society is not so complex as ours, and their reporting agencies more-closely tied to censorious government.
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