| CURRENT EVENTS Marijuana Use - Interesting Interview

[rammerjammer]

Off the top of my head, I can say that the US is the only country in the world (or maybe one of only two, I forget)

The US and New Zealand.

From my understanding, New Zealand has a tighter rein on their advertising than what the US allows.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Popularity DOES equate to benefits. Cannabis is one of humanity's longest used mood altering substances. We wouldn't have artifacts of its use for thousands of years if it wasn't effective and beneficial.

Oh yes, if all the cool kids do it, it's got to be beneficial. We wouldn't have artifacts showing lead pipes were used for thousands of years if they weren't effective and beneficial.

 

[musso]

Oh yes, if all the cool kids do it, it's got to be beneficial.

Being cool has nothing to do with it. When customers demand something, it's self evident that it provides value.

We wouldn't have artifacts showing lead pipes were used for thousands of years if they weren't effective and beneficial.

I already noted:

But long term harm depends on a long list of variables including frequency of use, dosage, quality/purity of product. But then everything that applies to cannabis applies also to pharmaceuticals and processed foods to an even greater degree!

The distribution of water from point A to point B provides value to humans. The more affordable the means of distribution the more widely water may be dispersed. Yes, people benefit from easily accessible running water, but similar to say, fast food, with convenience and affordability comes a cost, often delayed. If you have a better alternative to distributing water to the masses in a less toxic piping system that remains as affordable, reliable, and durable as lead, I'll invest in it!

But the thrust of my replies isn't that cannabis is harmless any more than anything else is harmless. My point is about proportion. You're making a mountain over a molehill, particularly considering that alcohol and drug prohibition created a criminal element that has long subverted the democratic and representative process. You can't nerf the world for everyone. Stupid people will make stupid mistakes. But when you try to preemptively protect everyone via prohibition, you create black markets for the mafia and intel agencies who work together for plausible deniability and a demonic pharma industry that pays politicians to lock us down until we inject their "legalized" toxins into our bodies.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Being cool has nothing to do with it. When customers demand something, it's self evident that it provides value.

Fentanyl is in high demand for street use. That is self evident. It provides value?

 

[musso]

Fentanyl is in high demand for street use. That is self evident. It provides value?

Learn a little about the science of addiction. Gabor Mate is a great resource. Drug abuse isn't the problem. It provides relief to the problem, likely unresolved trauma, hopelessness, chronic pain, etc. It's a rational response. You can thank the legacy of drug prohibition and the legalized cartel of prescription drugs for people without insurance resorting to more dangerous and artificial substances. You can also blame the government, its endless spending, endless wars, endless crises, its unenforced border, etc. for the cultural decline from which more and more people wish to find an escape at any cost. You're blaming the symptom rather than the cause. We should address the causes of the despair while making the most natural, least-harmful, and most affordable means of self-medication readily available via the market. There will always be people who resort to abuse, but we know how to limit their number and make abuse less lethal and less imposing upon others.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Learn a little about the science of addiction. Gabor Mate is a great resource. Drug abuse isn't the problem. It provides relief to the problem, likely unresolved trauma, hopelessness, chronic pain, etc. It's a rational response. You can thank the legacy of drug prohibition and the legalized cartel of prescription drugs for people without insurance resorting to more dangerous and artificial substances. You can also blame the government, its endless spending, endless wars, endless crises, its unenforced border, etc. for the cultural decline from which more and more people wish to find an escape at any cost. You're blaming the symptom rather than the cause. We should address the causes of the despair while making the most natural, least-harmful, and most affordable means of self-medication readily available via the market. There will always be people who resort to abuse, but we know how to limit their number and make abuse less lethal and less imposing upon others.

I get it now. It's the system that causes 100M deaths a year, or the users' unresolved trauma, parents, or just a bad prescription drug benefit. Nothing to do with good or bad choices, or perhaps even something as radical as personal responsibility.

You don't want to "nerf" the world, but you want to understand the causes and resolutions for worldwide despair, and collectively address them...talk about endless spending.

 

[ElephantStomp]

I get it now. It's the system that causes 100M deaths a year, or the users' unresolved trauma, parents, or just a bad prescription drug benefit. Nothing to do with good or bad choices, or perhaps even something as radical as personal responsibility.

You don't want to "nerf" the world, but you want to understand the causes and resolutions for worldwide despair, and collectively address them...talk about endless spending.

Marijuana has absolutely nothing to do with any other drugs or the 100M deaths

 

[musso]

I get it now. It's the system that causes 100M deaths a year, or the users' unresolved trauma, parents, or just a bad prescription drug benefit. Nothing to do with good or bad choices, or perhaps even something as radical as personal responsibility.

Rather than replying to specific claims I've made, you're creating straw men. You remind me of the viral Cathy Newman interview with Jordan Peterson where she repeatedly says, "So what you're saying is...". No thank you. Either you're not engaging in good faith, or you're obtuse, or you're just too stubborn to reply to what I've actually said.

You don't want to "nerf" the world, but you want to understand the causes and resolutions for worldwide despair, and collectively address them...talk about endless spending.

After you familiarize yourself with the work of Dr Gabor Mate to better understand the causes of addiction, you can familiarize yourself with results of Portugal's drug law reforms about two decades ago. You'll learn that it reduced government expenditures. Reducing the number of activities and products which are illegal, reduces the burden of enforcement and incarceration, which reduces costs to taxpayers. Liberty is cheaper than tyranny.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Rather than replying to specific claims I've made, you're creating straw men. You remind me of the viral Cathy Newman interview with Jordan Peterson where she repeatedly says, "So what you're saying is...". No thank you. Either you're not engaging in good faith, or you're obtuse, or you're just too stubborn to reply to what I've actually said.

After you familiarize yourself with the work of Dr Gabor Mate to better understand the causes of addiction, you can familiarize yourself with results of Portugal's drug law reforms about two decades ago. You'll learn that it reduced government expenditures. Reducing the number of activities and products which are illegal, reduces the burden of enforcement and incarceration, which reduces costs to taxpayers. Liberty is cheaper than tyranny.

You said everything in demand has benefit. You also said that because pot artifacts exist from thousands of years ago then people couldn't have been wrong that they have benefits.

People have been wrong about many things for many centuries. Substances pursued by individuals for short term pleasure may not have long-term benefits. I gave a few obvious examples.

Liberty is indeed cheaper than tyranny, but it's a personal expenditure that too few are willing to make.

 

[musso]

You said everything in demand has benefit. You also said that because pot artifacts exist from thousands of years ago then people couldn't have been wrong that they have benefits.

People have been wrong about many things for many centuries. Substances pursued by individuals for short term pleasure may not have long-term benefits. I gave a few obvious examples.

Riiiiiight ... and I also said many other things which qualified my perspective which you seem unwilling or unable to juggle. Demand indicates value prima facie. Like I've already noted, there are costs, both short term and long term, to EVERY decision, depending on a host of variables which may or may not apply to everyone all the time. People in despair discount the future in proportion to the intensity of their despair. If your headache is bad enough, you'll go ahead and take a pill that is proven to damage your liver, am I right? Everything which applies to drugs applies to every other edible substance. Let's not even enumerate the industries and technologies which add convenience and have lengthened life spans but have also produced other long term harms. Like the great Thomas Sowell said, "There are no solutions, only trade offs."

Meds and psychoactive substances are complicated and not experienced uniformly by all. The more complicated an issue is, the more it should be left to free people and free organizations to sort out in ways most customized and servicable to them. The products and services least regulated by the State (i.e. most regulated by free competition) become the most affordable and the most improved products and services. As a result, customers of these products and services become the most informed. Conversely, the products and services most regulated by the State (i.e. least regulated by competition) become captured by special interests with political influence which leads to a lesser informed and lesser served public.

The War on Drugs has been an undisputed and unmitigated catastrophe. It neither began with public health in mind, nor did it improve public health over time. However, it did manage to create organized crime sydicates which eventually merged with our intel community, creating a whole bunch of crises, at home and abroad to the present day. It did manage to create the disasterous pharma industry while restricting (if not abolishing) the supply of affordable natural remedies sought out by desperate people in need. It did manage to create a long list of victimless crimes to lead to the largest incarcerated population on the planet inside the "Land of the Free," along with a corrupt private prison industry that perversely lobbied for tougher laws. It did, until recently, destroy the hemp industry which would have otherwise provided the public and the planet over the last century plus, with a plethora of healthier, more sustainable, more affordable medicines, tools and products.

An informed and protected public comes from transparency and sunshine, not from prohibition, censorship, and bureaucracy. Experts protected by government priviledge on this and many other issues have been proven to be corrupted time and time again. Therefore, the only answer is via competition among producers and suppliers to get safe and effective products in the hands of informed customers. The market isn't a utopia because it is, after all, comprised of fallible humans. What we should prefer though is for humans to be kept free to challenge, dispute, persuade, and compete with each other rather than to be captured customers of State-granted monopolies and slaves to State-approved drug dealers.

As we enter a renaisance of psychedelics and entheogenic therapy, informed by traditional and indigenous cultures largely extinguished by European colonizers, the last thing we need is a renewed fear of plants which have served and healed humanity since prehistory.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Riiiiiight ... and I also said many other things which qualified my perspective which you seem unwilling or unable to juggle. Demand indicates value prima facie. Like I've already noted, there are costs, both short term and long term, to EVERY decision, depending on a host of variables which may or may not apply to everyone all the time. People in despair discount the future in proportion to the intensity of their despair. If your headache is bad enough, you'll go ahead and take a pill that is proven to damage your liver, am I right? Everything which applies to drugs applies to every other edible substance. Let's not even enumerate the industries and technologies which add convenience and have lengthened life spans but have also produced other long term harms. Like the great Thomas Sowell said, "There are no solutions, only trade offs."

Meds and psychoactive substances are complicated and not experienced uniformly by all. The more complicated an issue is, the more it should be left to free people and free organizations to sort out in ways most customized and servicable to them. The products and services least regulated by the State (i.e. most regulated by free competition) become the most affordable and the most improved products and services. As a result, customers of these products and services become the most informed. Conversely, the products and services most regulated by the State (i.e. least regulated by competition) become captured by special interests with political influence which leads to a lesser informed and lesser served public.

The War on Drugs has been an undisputed and unmitigated catastrophe. It neither began with public health in mind, nor did it improve public health over time. However, it did manage to create organized crime sydicates which eventually merged with our intel community, creating a whole bunch of crises, at home and abroad to the present day. It did manage to create the disasterous pharma industry while restricting (if not abolishing) the supply of affordable natural remedies sought out by desperate people in need. It did manage to create a long list of victimless crimes to lead to the largest incarcerated population on the planet inside the "Land of the Free," along with a corrupt private prison industry that perversely lobbied for tougher laws. It did, until recently, destroy the hemp industry which would have otherwise provided the public and the planet over the last century plus, with a plethora of healthier, more sustainable, more affordable medicines, tools and products.

An informed and protected public comes from transparency and sunshine, not from prohibition and censorship. Experts protected by government priviledge on this and many other issues have been proven to be corrupted time and time again. Therefore, the only answer is via compeition among producers and suppliers to get safe and effective products in the hands of informed customers. The market isn't a utopia because it is, after all, comprised of fallible humans. What we should prefer though is for humans to be kept free to challenge, dispute, persuade, and compete with each other rather than to be captured customers of State-granted monopolies and slaves to State-approved drug dealers.

As we enter a renaisance of psychedelics and entheogenic therapy, informed by traditional and indigenous cultures largely extinguished by European colonizers, the last thing we need is a renewed fear of plants which have served and healed humanity since prehistory.

If the spelling was accurate, I'd swear you had AI do this...truly hilarious.

 

[musso]

If the spelling was accurate, I'd swear you had AI do this...truly hilarious.

It wasn't accurate. I'm sure you guys have a way to see how many edits I've made to that post. I think I corrected 4-5 typos, not including some insertions and copy-and-pasting. I'm rather particular with my verbiage, which makes your straw men and ad hominems all the more annoying.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

It wasn't accurate. I'm sure you guys have a way to see how many edits I've made to that post. I think I corrected 4-5 typos, not including some insertions and copy-and-pasting. I'm rather particular with my verbiage, which makes your straw men and ad hominems all the more annoying.

No, I just saw the ones you hadn't made your way to. Today's pot isn't the same as it was thousands of years ago, nor is it the same as it was twenty years ago. There are long-term implications, particularly given the THC concentrations of today. You may want freedom to choose, but there are many others who will clamor for the protection of the state once they've broken themselves. You seem to rail against every industry, but the legalized pot industry isn't and won't be any different than the legalized gambling industry: using slick ways to suck you in and drain your pockets and dignity, all the while placating an overlord who has his hand in their pocket.

 

[musso]

Today's pot isn't the same as it was thousands of years ago, nor is it the same as it was twenty years ago. There are long-term implications, particularly given the THC concentrations of today.

The market has already started accommodating customer preference in potency and variety. It's become quite sophisticated. And that's what we should all want: competition, improvisation, innovation, transparency, quality, purity, and consumer education so that people know what they're consuming. FYI, don't think for a moment that I call the current cannabis market a free market. Regulations are still prohibitive in most states to such an extent to justify black and gray markets. We should still be grateful however for any movement towards decriminalization and legalization. Altering one's lifestyle to reduce the need for any mood altering substance is obviously the ideal, but some are not able to make such changes as quickly as others.

You may want freedom to choose, but there are many others who will clamor for the protection of the state once they've broken themselves.

Oh I'm sure there will be. And to them I'd say personal responsibility is the key. Knowing what you ingest is sort of fundamental to living. In cases of fraud there is always a court ready to decide damages.

but the legalized pot industry isn't and won't be any different than the legalized gambling industry: using slick ways to suck you in and drain your pockets and dignity, all the while placating an overlord who has his hand in their pocket.

Again, legalized but still heavily regulated. Not my ideal. In a free society we would have the right to refuse and to try offering a better product to the public. Regardless, this is why society warns its members of the risks associated with certain behaviors and activities. Virtue isn't virtuous if vices are prohibited. Freedom implies error and loss as well as success and comfort.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

The market has already started accommodating customer preference in potency and variety. It's become quite sophisticated. And that's what we should all want: competition, improvisation, innovation, transparency, quality, purity, and consumer education so that people know what they're consuming. FYI, don't think for a moment that I call the current cannabis market a free market. Regulations are still prohibitive in most states to such an extent to justify black and gray markets. We should still be grateful however for any movement towards decriminalization and legalization. Altering one's lifestyle to reduce the need for any mood altering substance is obviously the ideal, but some are not able to make such changes as quickly as others.

Oh I'm sure there will be. And to them I'd say personal responsibility is the key. Knowing what you ingest is sort of fundamental to living. In cases of fraud there is always a court ready to decide damages.


Again, legalized but still heavily regulated. Not my ideal. In a free society we would have the right to refuse and to try offering a better product to the public. Regardless, this is why society warns its members of the risks associated with certain behaviors and activities. Virtue isn't virtuous if vices are prohibited. Freedom implies error and loss as well as success and comfort.

Aight.

 

[TerryP]

Caveat: I have not read this thread since the last time I posted.

Update: I've taken a few short term memory test for the hell it. It ranks with my reading retention. It's not the first time.

I'll go back and read the thread, Tim. Is it not about toleance. As crazy as this will sound, it about ability.

 

[ElephantStomp]

No, I just saw the ones you hadn't made your way to. Today's pot isn't the same as it was thousands of years ago, nor is it the same as it was twenty years ago. There are long-term implications, particularly given the THC concentrations of today. You may want freedom to choose, but there are many others who will clamor for the protection of the state once they've broken themselves. You seem to rail against every industry, but the legalized pot industry isn't and won't be any different than the legalized gambling industry: using slick ways to suck you in and drain your pockets and dignity, all the while placating an overlord who has his hand in their pocket.

You can pot that’s low in THC, medium in THC, and obviously ones that are very high.

Pot today isn’t any more addictive that pot from 50 years ago. I’m talking just normal pot not shit that’s laced with something. The benefits outweigh whatever minuscule bad there is.

You talk about the pot industry being like the gambling industry with taking away dignity and emptying your pockets, but there are far more harmful things that take those things- religion and politics being two of them

 

[It Takes Eleven]

You can pot that’s low in THC, medium in THC, and obviously ones that are very high.

Pot today isn’t any more addictive that pot from 50 years ago. I’m talking just normal pot not shit that’s laced with something. The benefits outweigh whatever minuscule bad there is.

You talk about the pot industry being like the gambling industry with taking away dignity and emptying your pockets, but there are far more harmful things that take those things- religion and politics being two of them

You're funny how you try to rationalize. Gambling and drugs are less harmful alternatives. Love it.

 

[ElephantStomp]

You're funny how you try to rationalize. Gambling and drugs are less harmful alternatives. Love it.

Spare me. Pot isn’t harmful outside of smoking it. GTFO here

 

[It Takes Eleven]

You can pot that’s low in THC, medium in THC, and obviously ones that are very high.

Pot today isn’t any more addictive that pot from 50 years ago. I’m talking just normal pot not shit that’s laced with something. The benefits outweigh whatever minuscule bad there is.

You talk about the pot industry being like the gambling industry with taking away dignity and emptying your pockets, but there are far more harmful things that take those things- religion and politics being two of them

Spare me. Pot isn’t harmful outside of smoking it. GTFO here

As usual, you cast about in double speak and fringe on nonsense, noting gambling and the noble pot industry's failings falling shy of religion and politics. I'll not defend anyone who has ill intent in the name of religion or politics - there are myriad examples of wayward individuals - but saying the pot industry and gambling, taken in their entirety, are more wholesome? Well, your statement stands for all to see.