Has Pot Become a Hard Drug?

[roo_ster]

http://takimag.com/article/has_pot_become_a_hard_drug_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz2RsSYn9Xb

Dude has been pro-legalization for quite some time, but has not partaken since he had kids.  Since he has a job that is not drug-tested and will have zero social repercussions if it became generally known, he decided to try some of the new, more potent weed available.

He decided to write the first half of the article sober and the second half after partaking.

More than half the country says they think pot should be legalized. This is due in part to a brilliant PR campaign that frames cannabis as a valuable medicinal herb instead of a party drug. “[T]he medical marijuana movement has refurbished cannabis’s image,” says a recent cover story in Fortune, “properly reorienting connotations away from intoxication and irresponsibility and toward wellness and spirituality.”

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. As the talk of decriminalization became more mainstream, the drug itself became more hardcore. The cannabis they’re talking about legalizing today feels more like magic mushrooms than the joints people were smoking when the discussion began.

A Slate article from last month entitled “Not That High: Today’s Marijuana is Too Strong, and That’s Bad for New Business” claims the technology has become so advanced, THC levels are now running at 25%.

I quit smoking weed because when you have kids, you need to be on call in case someone has a nightmare. You can’t tell your daughter monsters don’t exist when you’re starting to think that maybe they do.

...

The above rant sounds like a shrieking babysitter on cocaine. I have always been pro-legalization, but what I just endured has made me reconsider the whole discussion.

When they talked about legalization in the 80s and 90s, they kept saying it was just like having a few beers and it was. Today, while advocates push the medicinal angle, the benign drug they’re defending has morphed into a heavy drug.

I still think they ought to legalize it, but I think that discriminating like crazy against users in social, work, & other situations is fine & dandy.

[Monkeyleg]

The first pot I smoked was junk. Not very strong, and mostly seeds and stems.

I started getting good quality stuff in 1971 or so. A joint between two people was usually enough.

Years later I tried a hit off some of the really pricey stuff that had made it to market. It wasn't like a pot high, it was more like a hallucinogenic. Far more expensive, and much, much more potent.

I had no problem driving after smoking the 1971 stuff (I don't want to get into arguments about that in this thread), but there's no way I'd do so with the really potent stuff.

I'm told that what's on the market now is even much stronger than the potent stuff I experienced.

[MicroBalrog]

Aren't there a variety of strains of marijuana in different strengths?

[lupinus]

Aren't there a variety of strains of marijuana in different strengths?

This is my understanding.

My direct experience is limited though. Still think they should legalize it.

Unless a drug has a track record of just making people go bat *expletive deleted* *expletive deleted* crazy insane and eat people's faces, like maybe bath salts, its none of the governments or societies business so ling as they don't hurt someone while under the influence.

[Monkeyleg]

There are different strains now, but the more potent ones either didn't exist or just weren't available 40 years ago.

[Tallpine]

Wouldn't pot being legal make it more consistent and predictable  

I'm convinced that the tort lawyers can to more to curtail pot use than DEA ever could  

[lupinus]

Wouldn't pot being legal make it more consistent and predictable  

I'm convinced that the tort lawyers can to more to curtail pot use than DEA ever could  

Yes, yes, and yes.

It also normalizes the industry, legitimizes it, removes the vast majority of the criminal element, and battles get fought in court rooms with lawyers instead of street corners with thugs.

[Regolith]

What this guy did is kind of like drinking an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and complaining that it got him sick.

Bans generally result in stronger intoxicants. A stronger intoxicant means you have less product to smuggle for the same price and effect. During Prohibition, they generally ran liquor, not beer. Crack cocaine is another example.

Legalize it, and you'll see more mild strains, kind of like how beer came back after Prohibition ended.

[BlueStarLizzard]

Some of it's just basic agricultural science. It's gotten easier to produce diffrent strains that can produce diffrent highs, plus the time involved to devolpe these strains.

I personally don't see it as a hard drug. I can't say weither it's changed or not (having not been born when Monleylegs was toking up ) but I don't think it qualifies as a hard drug, unless you get the stuff that's been dusted with hard drugs (which is a whole 'nother story)

[roo_ster]

What this guy did is kind of like drinking an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and complaining that it got him sick.

Bans generally result in stronger intoxicants. A stronger intoxicant means you have less product to smuggle for the same price and effect. During Prohibition, they generally ran liquor, not beer. Crack cocaine is another example.

Legalize it, and you'll see more mild strains, kind of like how beer came back after Prohibition ended.

Kinda the point.  It is not like sucking down a couple beers with your burger & fries.

[Monkeyleg]

Bans generally result in stronger intoxicants. A stronger intoxicant means you have less product to smuggle for the same price and effect.

Stronger intoxicants means that you can have less product to smuggle, water it down and have more product to sell. Some of the drugs we did in pill or powder form had been cut ("stepped on") three, four or even seven times from the pure drug to what we bought.

I dislike the government having anything to do with the marketplace. If pot were legalized, there might be a private business that would test different brands and assign ratings or approvals. Think Snell approved motorcycle helmets.

[Nick1911]

Kinda the point.  It is not like sucking down a couple beers with your burger & fries.

Which doesn't negate that hard liquor has it's place; just as the various different genetic strains of marijuana have their place.

Smoking an entire joint of "one hit wonder" isn't a great idea in much the same way drinking a fifth of jack in one sitting isn't.

For alcohol, it's easier to know what one is getting into as it's already a known guaranteed concentration.  This is not the case of marijuana though, illegal markets don't allow for this beyond what you get for a particular price point.  It's up to the user then, to titrate the unknown, working up from small doses until the user finds the quantity that brings them to the desired level of intoxication.  I do believe that legalization would allow data about the product sold to be freely available.

I do not classify marijuana as a hard drug; even these extremely strong strains still pose little threat of harm or addiction to the user.  The user will fall asleep in a stupor before the THC blood level concentration reaches anything remotely approaching toxic.  As such, I classify THC as a lower level of harm then both alcohol and nicotine, regardless of the concentration.

All that said, as a libertarian I believe all substances, without regard to social or individual harm, should be legal.

[Fitz]

Pot is boring.


Need to legalize coke.


 

[cordex]

Potent pot has been around for a very long time.  Hashish has THC levels that can approach 70%.  Hash oil can have THC concentrations of up to about 90%.

I have never tried weed, don't do drugs of any sort and don't drink alcohol.  Even so, I agree totally with Nick's post.

[Phyphor]

I'm pro legalization.  I'm also pro personal responsibility.  You can put whatever you want in your own body, it's your body.  Just be prepared to accept the consequences if you don't indulge responsibly.  None of this "McDonalds made me FAT!" horse *expletive deleted*it that has become so common these days...

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Legalize it, and you'll see more mild strains, kind of like how beer came back after Prohibition ended.

I doubt that very seriously. Beer was very much alive during prohibition by the way

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2

[Angel Eyes]

All that said, as a libertarian I believe all substances, without regard to social or individual harm, should be legal.

<devil's advocate mode>

TNT?
C4?
Plutonium?

[CNYCacher]

Leaning libertarian as I do, keep seeing this topic coming up on libertarian-leaning social media (this thread is a prime example) and so I've been trying to learn about it recently.  Based on my research, I think the alcohol analogy is an apt one.

If you can imagine someone who swore off alcohol when he was young and beer was all the world knew how to make.  Over the years, while he wasn't drinking, mankind discovered distilling.  Eventually the guy decides he wants to try alcohol again, so he goes to the place he used to buy beer, and the guy says "We got this new stuff, rum.  Very nice."  So, with much hubris, our hero goes home and drinks a 4 or 5 glasses of it.  

The active ingredients are the same as they ever were, there is just more of it now in proportion to the inert plant material.  In that sense, I imagine it's safer for your lungs than it ever was in terms of the amount of smoke you have to inhale.  That of course assumes you know what you are doing with it and not taking way too much because you remember what you smoked 40 years ago.

Different strains are different potency, but they are also a different mixture of active ingredients.  THC is the active ingredient which everybody seems to know about, but there are also "cannabinoids".  The ratio between the two dictates the kind of high you get.  One is mostly mental and can cause paranoia if you have too much without the other, and the other is mostly physical and can cause nausea if you have too much without the other.

Here are two videos I watched recently that are very relevant to the topic:

British documentary about a woman who goes to Amsterdam to learn about this.  She makes the same mistake that the author of the article does.  She also takes part in an experiment to see how THC affects her vs Cannabinoids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ6bON_8Xmc

Louis CK telling a similar story hilariously (NSFW language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMp7H3hZjsU

[Blakenzy]

Everything he^^ said.. 

[Gowen]

Pot is boring.


Need to legalize coke.


 

The twinkie farm went out of business,  now what are they gonna crave?

[Lee]

More reason to legalize it. Illegal anything has few controls.

[Monkeyleg]

More reason to legalize it. Illegal anything has few controls.

Yep. We bought stuff that had been cut with cake mix, contained arsenic (which is itself a strong hallucinogen), and all sorts of other garbage. Pot would sometimes be laced with PCP or some other drug we weren't warned about.

[zahc]

The "today's pot is N times stronger than the pot of a decade ago" (N is generally an integer between 2 and 10 inclusive) is a mainstay with the anti-drug crowd. If it were true, pot would be 300% THC by now.

[Physics]

Yes, generally, current strains have a higher percentage of THC, because for the past number of decades, cannabis has been preferentially bred to have higher levels of THC.  This has been absolutely market driven.  Due to the number of medical cannabis users, many medical grow-ops are looking at selectively breeding for CBD (a non-psychoactive cannabinoid that has strong pain relieving properties) and reducing THC, giving less of a "high" and more of a medicinal effect.  There are even CBD salves and tinctures that you can buy, which are 100% legal throughout the states and provide good topical pain management. 

The key thing here is tolerance.  If you don't have a tolerance, of course 25% THC is going to put you on the floor.  This video demonstrates my point. 

This is on example of why the medical cannabis and legalization movements are a good thing.  When the author of the article goes to a legal retail outlet in the state of Washington next year, he's going to have a dosage on his cannabis that certifies that it is safe to consume (contaminants and such) and that it is of a certain purity.

That said, who the hell cares if this guy smoked some weed that was too strong.  Did anything happen to him?  Nope, he was fine in a few hours.  Take too high a dose of heroin and you'll understand my laughter at the notion that cannabis is a hard drug.

[erictank]

The twinkie farm went out of business,  now what are they gonna crave?

You can still get Doritos and cheesy poofs everywhere.