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Canada to announce marijuana will be legal by July 1, 2018
- jmcdiesel 10y agoI fail to see the reason for the delay... Just stop enforcing, period. There is no reason to continue enforcing something that you KNOW is going to be legal soon. Its just letting the last of of the money feed into the judicial system...
- ch4s3 10y agoI imagine they will more or less stop enforcing, but they probably need time to set up the legal regime for regulating sales. I assume. *edit: I'd love for someone better informed to correct me, or fill in the gaps in my assumption.
- giarc 10y agoI believe they have all but stopped enforcing people smoking it. They are still arresting those involved in major selling of marijuana, likely because it still funds organized crime.
- mabbo 10y agoThey pretty much did over a decade ago. My own brother was caught[0] by the police with a handful of joints- they ripped them up and threw the remains in a ditch. They don't care, unless you're running a very public chain of retail shops that sell weed to anyone. [0]Due to idiot friend, the officer had grounds to search the vehicle. I do not like my brother's idiot friend.
- sdm 10y agoLike almost everything about Canada, this is very much a regional thing. Cities and provinces have a lot of leeway to deprioritize things like marijuana prohibition. Just because you won't get busted for simple possession in Vancouver or Toronto, doesn't mean you won't get busted in Regina or Winnipeg. There have been over 22k arrests for simple possession since Trudeau assumed office with the promise of legalization. [1] And the government has said it will not issue pardons for anyone convicted from these arrests. [1] http://vancouversun.com/news/community-blogs/22400-pot-possession-arrests-under-trudeau-so-far http://vancouversun.com/news/community-blogs/22400-pot-posse...
- ue_ 10y agoBut still the police care enough to arrest someone who imports, views or even privately enjoys drawn pornography that appears to show fictional characters who may be under the age of 18.
- f2f 10y agowhat's the yield of a well maintained 4-plant crop, asking for a friend? i guess i should go bother /r/trees, see if anyone can gather enough neurons to conjure up an answer there. [0]
- adambard 10y agoI was also curious, so I did some googling. From https://www.theweedblog.com/how-much-marijuana-does-a-marijuana-plant-yield/ https://www.theweedblog.com/how-much-marijuana-does-a-mariju...: > growing four plants using a 600-watt HPS lamp could produce about 150 grams or 5.0 oz per plant Sounds like an upper bound.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- yeowMeng 10y agoYield is a function of energy to the foilage that feeds the flowering buds. The largest bud is usually at the top of the plant since light tends to be placed above a plant. During flowering, if you can distribute energy more evenly among the foiliage, you can increase yield by ~ 1/3 or more. Outdoor growers are reported to attach a string to the top of a plant when flowering begins, and bend the plant in an upside down `U` in order increase light distribution.
- mistermann 10y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/microgrowery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/microgrowery/ Dedicated to the cultivation of cannabis. We love pictures of your plants & harvest, discussing growing methods, and helping with grow problems.
- steve_adams_86 10y agoIndoor (and outdoor) growing is a really fascinating, information-laden, brain-stimulating endeavour. For what it's worth, marijuana growers often learn and share really awesome info that's applicable to all kinds of grows. Loads of neurons firing over there.
- chollida1 10y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-27/canada-pot-stocks-surge-after-report-of-legalization-date https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-27/canada-po... A lot of institutional money in marijuana right now, its hard to hedge so this will make alot of people breath a bit easier now.
- _acme 10y agoWhat is hard to hedge? If you have a large investment in corporations in the pot industry (although I would dispute your claim that there is a lot of institutional money in pot now), you could easily hedge against the fall of these corporations with CDS and other derivatives.
- cassowary 10y agoI am sceptical of these kinds of changes. Why is it that governments are going to such trouble to essentially eliminate tobacco, but they are permitting another problematic drug? And it's usually the same side of politics who wants to get rid of tobacco, as wants to introduce marijuana! On the face of it it's strange. I guess the only thing good about this is it might make it easier to see whether cannabis might cause schizophrenia in certain at-risk populations. :/
- viraptor 10y agoConsidering the effects, one seems much safer than the other. Are you saying that schizophrenia rates from smoking pot are higher than cancers and lung issues from cigarettes?
- ams6110 10y agoYou think smoke from marijuana isn't harmful to your lungs? Particularly as it's often inhaled as deeply as possible?
- mcav 10y agoQuantity of smoke inhaled is several orders of magnitude smaller than with cigarettes. There's some evidence to suggest that, whether due to quantity or other factors, smoking marijuana casually does not substantially harm lung function[1]. [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/casual-marijuana-smoking/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/casual-marijuana-...
- ams6110 10y agoYou sound like a tobacco company executive in the 1960s. No way is inhaling smoke not harmful to your lungs.
- abrookewood 10y agoIt definitely is, but there are also compounds in marijuana that seem to inhibit cancers (citation needed). From memory, the result is that you can still get lung cancer, but the rate of it is much lower than would be expected.
- noarchy 10y ago>But the provinces will have the right to decide how the marijuana is distributed and sold. Provincial governments will also have the right to set price. I don't look forward to the potential outcome of this. Most provinces have long been saddled with alcohol monopolies that keep prices quite high, particularly when compared to neighbouring US states. I can easily see provinces setting up similar, monopolized retail systems for weed. Canada already has a huge black market in untaxed cigarettes, and if provinces are not careful with prices/taxes, the already-existing black market in marijuana will live on.
- snowwindwaves 10y agothe legitimate market will still have to compete with the black market. Many of my friends in BC prefer going to dispensaries because of the variety and consistency of the products as well as convenience vs. meeting your dealer and buying whatever he has. I also think the legitimate grow ops are going to end up being a lot more efficient because they won't have to make any effort hiding from authorities.
- eyeJam 10y agoI can never find sympathy for people who complain about high alcohol tax in Canada. Is this something that really affects your quality of life? Or is it more of personal inconvenience? Alcohol taxes violate vertical equity. And they should. Lower income individuals should not be encouraged to purchase more alcohol, since they are more likely to be vulnerable to the negative social, mental and physical effects of alcohol consumption. Reducing alcohol tax leads to a greater burden on the healthcare system.
- sdm 10y ago> I can never find sympathy for people who complain about high alcohol tax in Canada. To be fair, the OP to didn't mention anything about taxes. The high taxes on alcohol have to be paid irrespective of private or public distribution channels. The OP is more guilty of generalizing from ON to the rest of the country when it comes to public distribution channels.
- robodale 10y agoWhat the hell is Ricky going to do for money now?
- tnecniv 10y agoI'm looking forward to the episode where he confronts this development.
- canadian_yeah 10y agoThere's literally already a feature length movie called "Trailer Park Boys: Don't Legalize It". Ricky goes to Ottawa to fight legalization. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3244992/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3244992/
- iamdave 10y agoSilly as it may sound to HackerNews, I had this exact thought given the new season is starting very soon.
- jblz 10y agoIn case anyone is curious who Ricky is: http://trailerpark.wikia.com/wiki/Ricky http://trailerpark.wikia.com/wiki/Ricky
- animex 10y agoMy friend's friends apparently all grow weed in BC and they are all faced with this new dilemma of finding something new. A bunch tried to get Medical MJ grower licenses but they recently pulled them all. It's estimated BC's weed crop is worth more than it's Lumber output in terms of GDP.
- canadian_yeah 10y agoA huge chunk of BC's output is for export to the US. I'd love it if we found a way to tax/regulate it, but I'm guessing there will be plenty of jobs growing illicitly for years to come.
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- trapperkeeper79 10y agoI'm not a user but have a question for people with more experience. I recently had a few very bad experiences at the movie theatre where (a) the entire outside area smelled of what I think was weed, and (b) the person next to us in a very full theatre reeked of it. We had to leave because it was a really bad odour. Is Toronto going a bit overboard in the short term while people are experimenting or is this just the way it is going to be? I.e. we stop going to movies, etc. I'm not being judgemental .. want to try to be open about it. What does one do in this situation? I see drunk people from time to time too but I can avoid them fairly easily. MJ seems harder to avoid. I also had a run in at a beach recently where I was there to watch the sunset. The MJ user also seemed to be there for that reason .. I just moved away. Harder to do in a packed theatre.
- cbhl 10y agoIf San Francisco is anything to go by, in the short term people will go wild and smoke it everywhere because the science says it is "less harmful than cigarettes". I'm hoping that post-legalization someone will do a study that shows "marijuana still makes your lungs black and gives you lung cancer", and we can update all the anti-smoking campaigns marketed at teenagers to cover both marijuana and cigarettes.
- dmihal 10y ago> marijuana still makes your lungs black and gives you lung cancer What? While smoking anything isn't great for your lungs, there's no evidence that marijuana causes lung cancer.
- bdamm 10y agoHow could it possibly not? Smoking anything deposits an array of ash and tar products into your body, and I have yet to observe a studied combustion byproduct that doesn't cause cancer. Also, smoking anything increases risk of infection, which in turn will cause immune stress and necessarily an increase in cancer risk. Personally I think the damage done to individual people when aggregated in sum is below the noise when compared with pollution from industrial sources, environmental pollution from consumer products, known-cancerous foods such as bacon, hamburgers, and beer, etc. So it's no reason to outlaw marijuana. But people who partake should not be fooling themselves into thinking it's healthy.
- canadian_yeah 10y agoThey are actually rushing to get it introduced by 4/20 (I'm not kidding): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-rushing-to-draft-marijuana-legalization-bill-ahead-of-420-sources-say/article34431990/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-rushing-...
- watter 10y agoThey promised it last year. A lot of people, including current health permit (authorized) users have been complaining that nothing has happened since last April. It might have won him the last election but I don't know the numbers (probably nobody does).
- bobbington 10y agoI hate how the government acts like its everybody's parent these days. I think marijuana is dangerous for your mental health, and would not use it, but I think it's insane that the government thinks it has the right to tell somebody they can't use it. If somebody wants to smoke weed what right does some unrelated person have to stop them?
- peterarmstrong 10y agoAs a Canadian, Canada should also look at legalizing non-hockey metaphors. Stickhandling as a way of describing legislation? Really?
- watter 10y agoAt least we don't call our MPs "lawmakers", that term is so bizarre to me.
- berry_sortoro 10y ago2018 pffff
- hoodoof 10y agoIf we have been wrong about prohibition of marihuana for so long, then it seems reasonable to ask "are we not wrong about all drug prohibition"? Like honestly, who really cares if people make a personal decision to take cocaine or ecstasy or whatever? It's not something I'd do, and doesn't seem good for your health, but apart from that, it's not harming anyone other than the consumer. And if all drugs are freely available and manufactured professionally then they would be much safer and more predicatable and far less likely for people to overdose due to variances in strength of street drugs. Cheap, clean freely available drugs mean that addicts don't have to dedicate their lives to their habits and thus are more likely to hold together ordinary family life and jobs.
- SimpleXYZ 10y agoNo, things are not black and white. Having a heroin vending machine next to every gumball machine is a bad idea.
- forgottenacc57 10y agoWeird. The post you replied to says nothing like that.
- SimpleXYZ 10y agoOops, I thought he said "cheap, clean freely available drugs".
- hfsktr 10y agoeveryone has a different idea of freely. Does requiring a prescription make something not freely available? What about stores that limit sales (cough syrup or whatever)? Cigarettes/alcohol have age restrictions and I would call them freely available. I took the comment to mean something more along those lines.
- metaphorm 10y agothis is a ridiculously uncharitable interpretation of the comment you're replying to. do you expect a charitable response? it looks like you're trying to provoke a flame war.
- hoodoof 10y agoI don't smoke marijuana but I welcome it primarily because I hope that freely available marijuana will mean people are less inclined to try meth. People want to get high, and if they can't get some pot down at the shop, then I think they are more likely to try much more dangerous drugs.
- ohstopitu 10y agoThis is great news! I wonder why we can't legalize all drugs? I have a side tracked question about this: Let's say you were in prison for dealing Marijuana. What would the status of your case be now considering that it would be legalized? (as in, would you still have to serve your term even though the crime you did is now considered legal?)
- freehunter 10y agoThey could vote to ease punishment for past offenders, but that would be an exception and not the rule. In general people are beholden to the law at the time they're caught breaking it. I got a speeding ticket, and a few months later the speed was changed to match the speed I had been doing. I still was guilty of breaking the law at the moment I was stopped. So they could put in an exception for past users, but the law defaults to what the books said at the time you committed the crime. If that wasn't the case, people could be convicted of crimes that were not illegal at the time they committed them.
- steiger 10y agoIt's always 'later', and 'later' it never happens as promised. Look at Uruguay. It is legalized - but no pharmacy sells, it's incredibly hard to find legal marijuana, and so the illegal market still thrives. The medicinal model of the USA is still probably the most successful legalizaton case worldwide.
- officelineback 10y agoI have heard Portugal's legalization system is also a huge success.
- nkrisc 10y agoI'm all for legalized marijuana, I just wish we could do away with smoking it in public (and cigarettes). I have no problem with it but the smell.
- scotu 10y agoHN: can we invent a smoking bubble barrier to stop passive smoking please? for cigarettes, weed, e-cigarettes and so on... I'm for legalization but I hate the smell and effects I'm subjected to by smokers...
- Nagyman 10y agoSmoking will continue, but I suspect that many people will choose to consume via edibles/oils/etc which won't have a smell, or vaporizers which also have minimal odour. When the dispensaries popped up all over Toronto (pre-raid) there were MANY edibles, so I assume they were popular. Sadly, after the raids the dispensaries switched to /just/ flower and concentrates. One can still order concentrates and edibles online however.
- nkrisc 10y agoI'm all on board for vaporizers, oils, edibles, etc. since they smell far less than smoking. Though I do get the appeal of the ease of smoking it.
- delegate 10y agoI see many comments here about the health and social effects of smoking marijuana and there's of course a very valid point in each of those discussions - smoking (anything) is not good for your lungs and smoking around unsuspecting non-smokers is disrespectful (and gets them high, because weed smoke is active even in the air!). But there's another angle that I'm curious about: the mentality shift that it will generate in society as more and more people start using the herb - for recreation, medication or as an industrial plant. It's a very powerful plant, people have been using it for thousands of years, because it grows everywhere and has lots of industrial uses. And of course we've all been indirectly influenced by it: by listening to the music, lyrics, books or movies created by artists who were high. It's a great companion for both the consumption and production of all types of entertainment, from videos to video games, design and even coding ! So in a way it's even more useful today than it has ever been, which is why, sooner or later it will get legalised in a lot more places. Like so many things, if abused, It's addictive and makes people lazy and demotivated, but the value it brings to its users ( and indirectly to the huge information and entertainment (and food!) industry) is quite high :) I'm just curious how will society change after, say, 50 years of legal weed ? Will we still be trying to fight wars or will everyone just chill down, smoke the herb and play their sitars in peace ? :)
- fsloth 10y ago"It's a great companion for both the consumption and production of all types of entertainment, from videos to video games, design and even coding !" The most uncharitable view of all of this? I presume it's a very convenient method to keep the dirty unemployed masses placid. Free weed and videogames. Yay.
- M_Grey 10y agoI mean... opiates, alcohol and benzos are pretty popular you know?
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoWith continuing automation and globalization further devaluing the work of the lower class, I don't have a problem with this. The social and physical effects of cannabis addiction are much lower than other addictions like cigarettes, alcohol, and opiates. If it leads to a higher quality of life for the poor while not negatively impacting our economy, who cares?
- aanm1988 10y agoI'm Canadian and live in the US. I think it should be legal, since I don't see any reason not to legalize. I'm just worried that this + Trump/Sessions in charge will make things more difficult at the border.
- sanguy 10y agoAt least Justin Trudeau will go down in the history books for something besides tanking the Canadian economy....