4 ms·

The first change you're already seeing, and will see more of, is that people won't actually smoke it. Smoking joints especially, is the product of prohibition.

by M_Grey 10y ago

The first change you're already seeing, and will see more of, is that people won't actually smoke it. Smoking joints especially, is the product of prohibition. It used to be that cannabis was mostly taken in extracts orally, at least in the developed world in modern times. Even when smoked, it was typically some form of hand-rolled hashish like 'Charas'. Now you have various methods of extracting the desirable substances from the plant, and then either eat them, take them sublingually, volatilize ("vaporize") them. I don't really see much of a long-term future in smoking anything. I can't guess as to the cultural impacts beyond that, although I suspect that it will be a boon for people struggling with various forms of pain and addiction. In the latter case especially, when you see someone kick pills and use cannabis to stay off them... it's an obvious "less harmful" choice. I'd guess that Rx sleep aids will die off for most as well.

metaphorm 10y ago
I'd love to know more about the history of the joint. I was always under the impression that it was closely linked to the rise of cigarettes in western cultures as the preferred method of taking tobacco. the joint is just a cannabis version of a cigarette. was it the cigarette culture of the west that gave rise to the joint? were there other factors involved? what were the most prevalent methods of ingestion prior to joints?
- M_Grey 10y ago
  In terms of smoking, pipes and hookahs have been the strong preference, but of course prohibition made having that kind of obvious paraphernalia difficult or impossible. By contrast, in a time when a lot of people were rolling their own cigarettes, a joint with half-pot half-tobacco was truly very stealthy. You could make it with a little grass so you didn't have to buy much or have much on you, and if you had to ditch it then it was no big loss. When you were done, nothing was left, but ashes and memories. In terms of extracts, that's an even bigger case of "don't want to be caught with that on me!" as well as issues of knowledge being lost, and the fact that extracting any amount requires growing a large amount... so again the law is a factor. Joints really aren't ideal, except for stealth (in a time when most smoked), and certainly they're less efficient than a pipe, hookah, or bong. Efficiency doesn't matter as much as not going to jail though, and especially if you only had a bit of grass to mix with tobacco, it wasn't a concern. The last thing, that ties all of this together is how difficult it became to grow cannabis in the US, and the associations with racial and social issues. Over time, marijuana (and heroin) were intentionally associated with hippies and black people- "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." (John Ehrlichman) -and as a result complex social dynamics evolved that we still see remnants of today.
uxp100 10y ago
I don't think smoking will go away completely, the effects are noticeably different than vaping and edibles. Agree that in the US, it seems everywhere it is legalized non-smoke options become more popular.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I agree, but I think that vaping of concentrates, edibles, and sub-lingual preparations are the biggest in the next decade or two. Now that people with degrees can work in this space without fear for their freedom, lives, and careers, interesting things are emerging. Cryogenic removal of trichome heads, then fractional distillation of the oils with steam and CO2. The result is that you can isolate individual terpene profiles from a given strain, separate from the THC bearing oil, and the CBD bearing crystals! I think it might just end up as one of those things we all have in the medicine cabinet, in various forms.

by M_Grey 10y ago

metaphorm 10y ago

I'd love to know more about the history of the joint. I was always under the impression that it was closely linked to the rise of cigarettes in western cultures as the preferred method of taking tobacco. the joint is just a cannabis version of a cigarette. was it the cigarette culture of the west that gave rise to the joint? were there other factors involved? what were the most prevalent methods of ingestion prior to joints?

M_Grey 10y ago
In terms of smoking, pipes and hookahs have been the strong preference, but of course prohibition made having that kind of obvious paraphernalia difficult or impossible. By contrast, in a time when a lot of people were rolling their own cigarettes, a joint with half-pot half-tobacco was truly very stealthy. You could make it with a little grass so you didn't have to buy much or have much on you, and if you had to ditch it then it was no big loss. When you were done, nothing was left, but ashes and memories. In terms of extracts, that's an even bigger case of "don't want to be caught with that on me!" as well as issues of knowledge being lost, and the fact that extracting any amount requires growing a large amount... so again the law is a factor. Joints really aren't ideal, except for stealth (in a time when most smoked), and certainly they're less efficient than a pipe, hookah, or bong. Efficiency doesn't matter as much as not going to jail though, and especially if you only had a bit of grass to mix with tobacco, it wasn't a concern. The last thing, that ties all of this together is how difficult it became to grow cannabis in the US, and the associations with racial and social issues. Over time, marijuana (and heroin) were intentionally associated with hippies and black people- "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." (John Ehrlichman) -and as a result complex social dynamics evolved that we still see remnants of today.

uxp100 10y ago

I don't think smoking will go away completely, the effects are noticeably different than vaping and edibles. Agree that in the US, it seems everywhere it is legalized non-smoke options become more popular.

M_Grey 10y ago
I agree, but I think that vaping of concentrates, edibles, and sub-lingual preparations are the biggest in the next decade or two. Now that people with degrees can work in this space without fear for their freedom, lives, and careers, interesting things are emerging. Cryogenic removal of trichome heads, then fractional distillation of the oils with steam and CO2. The result is that you can isolate individual terpene profiles from a given strain, separate from the THC bearing oil, and the CBD bearing crystals! I think it might just end up as one of those things we all have in the medicine cabinet, in various forms.