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> In March, Insys launched a multinational study of 190 children to evaluate cannabidiol as a first-line therapy for infantile spasms. We are eager to see how w

> In March, Insys launched a multinational study of 190 children to evaluate cannabidiol as a first-line therapy for infantile spasms. We are eager to see how well the compound performs when given in the first days and weeks of the condition. If it turns out to be effective, cannabidiol would represent a substantial improvement over current drugs, all of which have serious side effects: One, for example, causes irreversible vision loss in as many as one-third of the children who take it. Its ok to sell: "a drug that causes irreversible vision loss in as many as one-third of the children who take it" Its against the law: canabidiol from a plant, or even grow the plant yourself

e40 8y ago
This shows the derangement of the people in charge. Why is this? Why this derangement on the subject of cannabis? I've read a fair amount, and every time I've brought it up, I get downvoted to hell. So, I'll ask: Anyone have a hypothesis on why a large number of our leaders, who happen to be older white men, are insanely against this plant?
- existencebox 8y ago
  No need to hypothesize. The rampup of the drug war under Nixon was largely to attack blacks, hippies (antiwar), and other counterculture figures. [0] "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, Nixon's domestic policy chief) In the interim, it became a wedge issue and via "tough on crime", an extension of certain party platforms, (also in that it has effectively become the status quo for some population segments) and I think persists largely as some combination of the above. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...
  - mc32 8y ago
    >tough on crime" Yeah, Clinton and her “superpredators”. Decades later she follows thst gem up with “basket of deplorables”. Politicians will politick.
  - andrewhn 8y ago
    Being that I dont trust CNN, do you have any other first hand sources, a video or a recording of this interview? Its my understanding that Ehrlichman never actually said this.
    - existencebox 8y ago
      I don't feel like you gave the article due diligence; dislike of CNN aside, as you'd see that they are very open about the quote being contested (No surprise, given the sensitivity), but given the fact that Nixon contested pretty much all the things that we DO have on tape of him saying, (Some of which is in this exact vein, e.g. [1]) and that the end result of their policies WAS exactly as the quote describes, I find your disbelief somewhat surprising. (ESPECIALLY given Ehrlichman's role in watergate) Nonwithstanding, I'm pretty sure the original source was via Dan Baum here [0], but given the preponderance of evidence towards an occams razor interpretation of Nixon's policy and the lack of any meaningful evidence to the contrary, it seems extremely reasonable to accept this as legitimate. [0]http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archila/DanBaum_2016.pdf http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archila/DanBaum_2016.pdf [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2010/12/nixons_jewish_problem.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20... “going after all these Jews. Just find one that is a Jew, will you.”
    - throwaway-hn123 8y ago
      Hey, feel free to go fuck yourself. Ignorant racist troll.
  - wyoh 8y ago
    That doesn't explain why it is banned in most countries around the world that didn't have Nixon nor blacks.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      It’s an interesting point. I’d be interested to know the history of cannabis prohibition in Europe and Central America.
- tekromancr 8y ago
  Because, combined with a police state and selective enforcement, its prohibition is an amazing tool for filling prisons with black and brown bodies.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    And thanks to the 13th amendment, once found guilty of a crime, are legal to be slaves. Again.
    - komali2 8y ago
      This is fact, so I'm curious why it's being downvoted. >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Did I maybe miss a supreme Court case where that bit of it was neutered?
      - mywittyname 8y ago
        Probably from the people who think those in prison are not slaves, but are "earning their keep."
        pc86 8y ago
        It's likely less about "earning your keep" and more that you're being punished.
      - dx87 8y ago
        It's probably getting downvoted because they're trying to evoke an emotional reaction by comparing forced labor as part of a prison sentence with literally keeping people as your personal property. If we're going to call any instance of the government forcing you to do a job you don't want "slavery", then here's a list of countries where the majority of the population has been forced into "slavery" without even being found guilty of a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Countries_with_mandatory_military_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Countries_wit...
- black6 8y ago
  I dug into campaign finance when a single state representstive tabled a bill to allow on-site sales at local breweries (the rep had received >$19,000 from AB-InBev over the past 10 years) and one of the things I noticed was that EVERYONE got pharma money. Lots of it. You can say campaign contributions don’t buy votes til you’re blue in the face, and then I’ll sell you a bridge. edit: I should clarify that medicinal herbs one can grow oneself scare the profit-hungry pharmaceutical industry, and they will (and do) spend money to keep such plants illegal. There is also money from private prison companies who earn profit on the incarceration of citizens who stand to lose money if marijuana is fully decriminalized (I’m not going to pull a number out of thin air, but I believe it is a majority of inmates who are locked up for victimless drug crimes). State and local police departments love to receive federal grants to keep on fighting the war on drugs. There is so much money and effort against the legalization of a f’ing plant, and from so many sides, that even a well-meaning politician can look at the “evidence” and believe the public, as a whole, wants to keep Mother Nature illegal.
- ivl 8y ago
  Because they're fearful and they have support from fearful people who want to punish drug users for no reason. Moral panics are some of the worst things in existence. Leads to absolute garbage like the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. I'm astounded that psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD are all scheduled so harshly.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  Drug laws can be selectively enforced to give criminal records to people of color. Then the state can refuse to give people with criminal records the right to vote. There's no immediate gain for a politician to reform these laws (the people affected can't or don't vote), the other legal drugs already have huge lobbies to pay the politician, and the law and order crowd has a sizeable popularity that is hard to budge with any sort of non punitive solution until it affects them directly and personally.
  - cletus 8y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted as I think the empiric evidence supports the position that drug laws (and many others) are selectively enforced on the basis of socioeconomic status and race. Cocaine is a schedule 3 stuff. Cannabis and crack cocaine are schedule 1.
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      Further support is the fact that most politicians support punitive action against people with drug possession charges, rather than mandating treatment. There's solid evidence that drug crisis can be solved in the long term by access to treatment, and more evidence that punitive measures increase crime and continue the poverty cycle. The only reason to support the current drug laws is literally because you want more crime and drug use.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      As further suggestive evidence of this, watch the correlation between donors/friends of those same old white guys entering the MJ business, and the rapid "evolution" of the willingness to switch stances on legality. You can even evaluate this without malice: Some say MJ is dangerous, and some say it's great. The status quo is that it is banned. Changing that creates the risk that it is bad and the change will be blamed on you, but legalizing will not bring you much glory, so you support the status quo until you have sufficient incentive (most likely $$$, but a strong push from the public instead of "meh" would also count). That said, I find a mix of opportunism and greed to be the most likely explanation.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I'm very pro weed, and as such have had a lot of conversations with non-smokers about its benefits. What I've come to realize is that a lot of more conservative people are really against any mind altering drug. Yes it's hypocritical that booze isn't classified as "mind altering" and is fully accepted. If I'm totally honest with myself I have to appreciate where they are coming from to a degree. I in no way think that marijuana is bad and I think it's actually extremely beneficial in many ways, but it is, for lack of a better word: strong. Getting drunk can make you act like an idiot and be life threatening but it doesn't really change how you think, it just sort of shuts down pieces of your brain. Weed in some sense changes who you are. I think this effect is what a lot of people are afraid of. So in the end I don't think "older white men" are actually being racist (intentionally) but they are just conservatives who are really uncomfortable altering their state of consciousness. I don't agree with it, but I think it's often a good faith argument on their part.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nugga 8y ago
    Yeah, sometimes I've been wondering if there's a natural unconscious resistance or barrier in ourselves or in the ego programming, that is averse or even hostile to loosening up or the very idea of there being something beyond it that weed and plenty other drugs may come to show, because even when confronted with scientific studies and evidence to the contrary they can often double down or divert the conversation to some argument error or non sequiturs or nonsensical statements. No one should be forced to do drugs of any kind but what is it with this 'baseline hostility' towards altered states?
- Anon1096 8y ago
  Personally I'm anti drug use because of how many friends and family members I've seen turn their lives to shit after starting weed etc. I know there's a lot of fine users but so many of my friends turned to weed to cope and then from there went onto harder stuff like crack/cocaine. And really, I don't support people altering their mind states through the use of recreational drugs, alcohol included. It saddens me to see that no one can see any reason against drug use besides "it locks up black people in prison" because for me at least, that has nothing to do with marijuana legislation at all.
  - deelowe 8y ago
    This article and the associated discussion thread you're contributing to here has zero to do with recreational use. Is this the core issue? People can't separate the two? Do people generally not realize that because of how it's scheduled there is no possibility for medical use and that this is starting to look like a really bad thing given the circumstances?
  - jakelazaroff 8y ago
    Can we not agree, though, that scare tactics around victimless crimes (in the sense that the victim is also the perpetrator) are demonstrably ineffectual? Abstinence-only sex education, for example, correlates positively with teen pregnancy rates [1], whereas opioid overdose education is shown to decrease opioid death rates [2]. Without getting into the moral argument of whether or not people should be able to choose to alter their mental state through drugs (are we cool with coffee as well?), it seems clear to me that the best policy is one of education and harm reduction, not FUD and prohibition. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/
  - anon08142018 8y ago
    Can you understand the perspective from other people who have literally never seen anyone move on from weed to crack cocaine? Have you ever asked yourself if prohibition was the best way to combat drug problems? I would suggest reading the book "Rise of the warrior cop" and then ask yourself if you still support prohibition.
- Rotdhizon 8y ago
  I feel this way, but apply it to the whole country. A vast majority of people who grew up in the mid to late 90s act like cannabis was created by the devil himself. But why? I get that most people dislike it because it's been illegal all their life, so they look down on it. I like to use Red from that 70s show as a good example. Look how much he hated it, he hated it with his entire being. Why though? It never did anything to him, never affected him in a negative way, why does he have such an ingrained pure hatred for it? > I do not partake of cannabis. This is just a topic that interests me. Now I understand that the hatred for it in modern politics in large comes from a financial perspective. You get into the whole war on drugs, how it's a talking point for potential candidates, how the funding for it is padding pockets, etc. This hatred goes beyond that though, people despised weed way before it become a common symbol of degeneracy. It's not just cannabis though. This whole ideology can be applied to many topics. Where older people grew up being taught to hate it, while younger generations seem to be more rational and open to understanding that these taboo subjects may not be as bad as society wants you think. Some other topics that fall into this category include abortion, female workers/pay, war.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    It's easy to buy into propaganda when you have no first-hand experience with something. Access to information was much more limited back then and censorship was much easier. It's not like most libraries would have a cannabis section in the 60s. If I were constantly told by a number of authority figures that Argentina was a war-torn shithole with rampant poverty and violence, I'd likely believe it. I've never been there, I don't know anyone from there, and I have no reason to suspect those who I trust are liars.
- heurist 8y ago
  In addition to blatant racism, I suspect much of it is due to the potential for cultural and spiritual revolution should marijuana (or psychedelics in general) become legal. We can look to the 60's for an example of what can happen when mind-altering substances become widely used recreationally. There were a lot of other factors at play then, but the growth of counterculture and subsequent pushback was the origin of many of today's political battles. I can see why conservatives are afraid of that rapid change - it will be incredibly disruptive to the established order. (I disagree with their fears).
  - hmschreck 8y ago
    Michael Pollan's "How To Change Your Mind" delves into this in some depth. As someone who has found some actual relief from previously crippling anxiety using cannabidiol, I'm really hoping to see progress on this front. It's all upwards from here for me.
- colordrops 8y ago
  Besides the external reasons already mentioned by several commenters here, often these older white men are people who made a decision to ignore their morals and values and make sociopathic decisions for the sake of power and financial gain. Marijuana and psychedelics are drugs that induce introspection, the opposite of alcohol. A sociopath that introspects usually has a bad time. These drugs represent a threat to their mental fortresses.
  - bdamm 8y ago
    I think you're right, to a point. Let's not forget that we're talking about a country that amended its constitution to outlaw alcohol, and this state of governmental failure remained in place for over a decade. So there's more going on here than just preferring drugs that bolster amoral decision making.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  There are a lot of conspiracy theories in the replies to you, but IMO it is yet another example of the weird outcomes generated by an incredibly complex system which is heavily influenced by starting conditions and path dependency.
- eip 8y ago
  Ganja cures the Babylon mind sickness.
  - mz00 8y ago
    Curious about what you mean by that.
    - eip 8y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewfitn50Os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewfitn50Os
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  I would suspect you get downvoted because you imply that it's mostly "older white men" who are deranged. Is Rodrigo Duterte a white man? Is Prayut Chan-o-cha a white man? In fact, it seems that most of the countries where it's legal in one form or another are lead by white men. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis
- brandall10 8y ago
  Its criminalization is seen by conservatives as fighting back against what the counter-culture of the 60s unleashed. When the basis of objection is largely emotional facts aren't all that helpful.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Supporting the war on drugs because you need to differentiate yourself from the left is like supporting the patriot act because you hate terrorists. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Neither are legislation that stand on it's own merit once you look at it with the benefit of hindsight. That said, the "counter culture" gave us the war on drugs, gun control, probably a couple other curtailments of personal freedom that I'm forgetting, they reduced public support for the civil rights movements of the time and provided an excuse for the three letter agencies to greatly increase their amount of domestic surveillance. In return we got out of 'nam a year, maybe two, earlier. I don't see why people romanticize the culture shifts of the 1960s. Their intentions were good but their methods flawed and their results worse.
- codr4 8y ago
  There are several reasons, and this list is far from complete: Hemp threatened the cotton industry. Cannabis was more usual among Mexican immigrant workers, which is why they renamed it to something more Mexican sounding. It was a convenient way of breaking up the hippie movement and avoiding Vietnam war protests. It has many medicinal uses and less side effects than the artificial crap we call medicine these days. It scrambles the programming, people start asking themselves the wrong questions when using it. It allows the government to conduct a war against its own people, and discriminate freely; while claiming to protect. And on it goes... States have managed to foment different levels of social stigma. In Sweden, where I was born; you might as well do crack cocaine in most peoples eyes.
refurb 8y ago
Interesting! This is the same Insys that is currently under investigation for paying kick-backs to doctors to prescribe fentanyl![1] [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/nyregion/fentanyl-subsys-drug-kickbacks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/nyregion/fentanyl-subsys-...
gnulinux 8y ago
What drives me crazy is, if you go to a psychiatrist today and lie about having hard time sleeping, they can immediately prescribe you Ambien which not only causes dementia and other neurological problems in long term use, but systematically makes people do absolutely batshit crazy things they'll never remember the next morning. In the US, drug regulations are absolutely ridiculous and have no scientific basis, it is randomly decided by a few individuals and systematically affect the lives of each and every person living in the US, citizen or not. I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  >I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen. $$$.
  - sizzle 8y ago
    CBD and THC can easily be monetized for profit so what's the issue?
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Competition, as in, ease of home drug creation.
    - SerLava 8y ago
      The issue was that we wanted a new loophole for the 13th amendment. We also really wanted to permanently "deport" Americans who had brown skin. There's a lot of money in that.
      - simplecomplex 8y ago
        Don’t know why you’re downvoted, since the Controlled Substances Act was meant to disrupt African American and leftist political efforts, according to Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman. They couldn’t raid black panther meetings for legally possessing guns, but they could for smoking joints and selling drugs. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/poli...

e40 8y ago

This shows the derangement of the people in charge. Why is this? Why this derangement on the subject of cannabis? I've read a fair amount, and every time I've brought it up, I get downvoted to hell. So, I'll ask: Anyone have a hypothesis on why a large number of our leaders, who happen to be older white men, are insanely against this plant?

existencebox 8y ago
No need to hypothesize. The rampup of the drug war under Nixon was largely to attack blacks, hippies (antiwar), and other counterculture figures. [0] "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, Nixon's domestic policy chief) In the interim, it became a wedge issue and via "tough on crime", an extension of certain party platforms, (also in that it has effectively become the status quo for some population segments) and I think persists largely as some combination of the above. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...
- mc32 8y ago
  >tough on crime" Yeah, Clinton and her “superpredators”. Decades later she follows thst gem up with “basket of deplorables”. Politicians will politick.
- andrewhn 8y ago
  Being that I dont trust CNN, do you have any other first hand sources, a video or a recording of this interview? Its my understanding that Ehrlichman never actually said this.
  - existencebox 8y ago
    I don't feel like you gave the article due diligence; dislike of CNN aside, as you'd see that they are very open about the quote being contested (No surprise, given the sensitivity), but given the fact that Nixon contested pretty much all the things that we DO have on tape of him saying, (Some of which is in this exact vein, e.g. [1]) and that the end result of their policies WAS exactly as the quote describes, I find your disbelief somewhat surprising. (ESPECIALLY given Ehrlichman's role in watergate) Nonwithstanding, I'm pretty sure the original source was via Dan Baum here [0], but given the preponderance of evidence towards an occams razor interpretation of Nixon's policy and the lack of any meaningful evidence to the contrary, it seems extremely reasonable to accept this as legitimate. [0]http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archila/DanBaum_2016.pdf http://www.antoniocasella.eu/archila/DanBaum_2016.pdf [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2010/12/nixons_jewish_problem.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20... “going after all these Jews. Just find one that is a Jew, will you.”
  - throwaway-hn123 8y ago
    Hey, feel free to go fuck yourself. Ignorant racist troll.
- wyoh 8y ago
  That doesn't explain why it is banned in most countries around the world that didn't have Nixon nor blacks.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    It’s an interesting point. I’d be interested to know the history of cannabis prohibition in Europe and Central America.
tekromancr 8y ago
Because, combined with a police state and selective enforcement, its prohibition is an amazing tool for filling prisons with black and brown bodies.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  And thanks to the 13th amendment, once found guilty of a crime, are legal to be slaves. Again.
  - komali2 8y ago
    This is fact, so I'm curious why it's being downvoted. >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Did I maybe miss a supreme Court case where that bit of it was neutered?
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      Probably from the people who think those in prison are not slaves, but are "earning their keep."
      - pc86 8y ago
        It's likely less about "earning your keep" and more that you're being punished.
    - dx87 8y ago
      It's probably getting downvoted because they're trying to evoke an emotional reaction by comparing forced labor as part of a prison sentence with literally keeping people as your personal property. If we're going to call any instance of the government forcing you to do a job you don't want "slavery", then here's a list of countries where the majority of the population has been forced into "slavery" without even being found guilty of a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Countries_with_mandatory_military_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Countries_wit...
black6 8y ago
I dug into campaign finance when a single state representstive tabled a bill to allow on-site sales at local breweries (the rep had received >$19,000 from AB-InBev over the past 10 years) and one of the things I noticed was that EVERYONE got pharma money. Lots of it. You can say campaign contributions don’t buy votes til you’re blue in the face, and then I’ll sell you a bridge. edit: I should clarify that medicinal herbs one can grow oneself scare the profit-hungry pharmaceutical industry, and they will (and do) spend money to keep such plants illegal. There is also money from private prison companies who earn profit on the incarceration of citizens who stand to lose money if marijuana is fully decriminalized (I’m not going to pull a number out of thin air, but I believe it is a majority of inmates who are locked up for victimless drug crimes). State and local police departments love to receive federal grants to keep on fighting the war on drugs. There is so much money and effort against the legalization of a f’ing plant, and from so many sides, that even a well-meaning politician can look at the “evidence” and believe the public, as a whole, wants to keep Mother Nature illegal.
ivl 8y ago
Because they're fearful and they have support from fearful people who want to punish drug users for no reason. Moral panics are some of the worst things in existence. Leads to absolute garbage like the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. I'm astounded that psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD are all scheduled so harshly.
stevenwoo 8y ago
Drug laws can be selectively enforced to give criminal records to people of color. Then the state can refuse to give people with criminal records the right to vote. There's no immediate gain for a politician to reform these laws (the people affected can't or don't vote), the other legal drugs already have huge lobbies to pay the politician, and the law and order crowd has a sizeable popularity that is hard to budge with any sort of non punitive solution until it affects them directly and personally.
- cletus 8y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted as I think the empiric evidence supports the position that drug laws (and many others) are selectively enforced on the basis of socioeconomic status and race. Cocaine is a schedule 3 stuff. Cannabis and crack cocaine are schedule 1.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Further support is the fact that most politicians support punitive action against people with drug possession charges, rather than mandating treatment. There's solid evidence that drug crisis can be solved in the long term by access to treatment, and more evidence that punitive measures increase crime and continue the poverty cycle. The only reason to support the current drug laws is literally because you want more crime and drug use.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    As further suggestive evidence of this, watch the correlation between donors/friends of those same old white guys entering the MJ business, and the rapid "evolution" of the willingness to switch stances on legality. You can even evaluate this without malice: Some say MJ is dangerous, and some say it's great. The status quo is that it is banned. Changing that creates the risk that it is bad and the change will be blamed on you, but legalizing will not bring you much glory, so you support the status quo until you have sufficient incentive (most likely $$$, but a strong push from the public instead of "meh" would also count). That said, I find a mix of opportunism and greed to be the most likely explanation.
malvosenior 8y ago
I'm very pro weed, and as such have had a lot of conversations with non-smokers about its benefits. What I've come to realize is that a lot of more conservative people are really against any mind altering drug. Yes it's hypocritical that booze isn't classified as "mind altering" and is fully accepted. If I'm totally honest with myself I have to appreciate where they are coming from to a degree. I in no way think that marijuana is bad and I think it's actually extremely beneficial in many ways, but it is, for lack of a better word: strong. Getting drunk can make you act like an idiot and be life threatening but it doesn't really change how you think, it just sort of shuts down pieces of your brain. Weed in some sense changes who you are. I think this effect is what a lot of people are afraid of. So in the end I don't think "older white men" are actually being racist (intentionally) but they are just conservatives who are really uncomfortable altering their state of consciousness. I don't agree with it, but I think it's often a good faith argument on their part.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nugga 8y ago
  Yeah, sometimes I've been wondering if there's a natural unconscious resistance or barrier in ourselves or in the ego programming, that is averse or even hostile to loosening up or the very idea of there being something beyond it that weed and plenty other drugs may come to show, because even when confronted with scientific studies and evidence to the contrary they can often double down or divert the conversation to some argument error or non sequiturs or nonsensical statements. No one should be forced to do drugs of any kind but what is it with this 'baseline hostility' towards altered states?
Anon1096 8y ago
Personally I'm anti drug use because of how many friends and family members I've seen turn their lives to shit after starting weed etc. I know there's a lot of fine users but so many of my friends turned to weed to cope and then from there went onto harder stuff like crack/cocaine. And really, I don't support people altering their mind states through the use of recreational drugs, alcohol included. It saddens me to see that no one can see any reason against drug use besides "it locks up black people in prison" because for me at least, that has nothing to do with marijuana legislation at all.
- deelowe 8y ago
  This article and the associated discussion thread you're contributing to here has zero to do with recreational use. Is this the core issue? People can't separate the two? Do people generally not realize that because of how it's scheduled there is no possibility for medical use and that this is starting to look like a really bad thing given the circumstances?
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  Can we not agree, though, that scare tactics around victimless crimes (in the sense that the victim is also the perpetrator) are demonstrably ineffectual? Abstinence-only sex education, for example, correlates positively with teen pregnancy rates [1], whereas opioid overdose education is shown to decrease opioid death rates [2]. Without getting into the moral argument of whether or not people should be able to choose to alter their mental state through drugs (are we cool with coffee as well?), it seems clear to me that the best policy is one of education and harm reduction, not FUD and prohibition. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/
- anon08142018 8y ago
  Can you understand the perspective from other people who have literally never seen anyone move on from weed to crack cocaine? Have you ever asked yourself if prohibition was the best way to combat drug problems? I would suggest reading the book "Rise of the warrior cop" and then ask yourself if you still support prohibition.
Rotdhizon 8y ago
I feel this way, but apply it to the whole country. A vast majority of people who grew up in the mid to late 90s act like cannabis was created by the devil himself. But why? I get that most people dislike it because it's been illegal all their life, so they look down on it. I like to use Red from that 70s show as a good example. Look how much he hated it, he hated it with his entire being. Why though? It never did anything to him, never affected him in a negative way, why does he have such an ingrained pure hatred for it? > I do not partake of cannabis. This is just a topic that interests me. Now I understand that the hatred for it in modern politics in large comes from a financial perspective. You get into the whole war on drugs, how it's a talking point for potential candidates, how the funding for it is padding pockets, etc. This hatred goes beyond that though, people despised weed way before it become a common symbol of degeneracy. It's not just cannabis though. This whole ideology can be applied to many topics. Where older people grew up being taught to hate it, while younger generations seem to be more rational and open to understanding that these taboo subjects may not be as bad as society wants you think. Some other topics that fall into this category include abortion, female workers/pay, war.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  It's easy to buy into propaganda when you have no first-hand experience with something. Access to information was much more limited back then and censorship was much easier. It's not like most libraries would have a cannabis section in the 60s. If I were constantly told by a number of authority figures that Argentina was a war-torn shithole with rampant poverty and violence, I'd likely believe it. I've never been there, I don't know anyone from there, and I have no reason to suspect those who I trust are liars.
heurist 8y ago
In addition to blatant racism, I suspect much of it is due to the potential for cultural and spiritual revolution should marijuana (or psychedelics in general) become legal. We can look to the 60's for an example of what can happen when mind-altering substances become widely used recreationally. There were a lot of other factors at play then, but the growth of counterculture and subsequent pushback was the origin of many of today's political battles. I can see why conservatives are afraid of that rapid change - it will be incredibly disruptive to the established order. (I disagree with their fears).
- hmschreck 8y ago
  Michael Pollan's "How To Change Your Mind" delves into this in some depth. As someone who has found some actual relief from previously crippling anxiety using cannabidiol, I'm really hoping to see progress on this front. It's all upwards from here for me.
colordrops 8y ago
Besides the external reasons already mentioned by several commenters here, often these older white men are people who made a decision to ignore their morals and values and make sociopathic decisions for the sake of power and financial gain. Marijuana and psychedelics are drugs that induce introspection, the opposite of alcohol. A sociopath that introspects usually has a bad time. These drugs represent a threat to their mental fortresses.
- bdamm 8y ago
  I think you're right, to a point. Let's not forget that we're talking about a country that amended its constitution to outlaw alcohol, and this state of governmental failure remained in place for over a decade. So there's more going on here than just preferring drugs that bolster amoral decision making.
toasterlovin 8y ago
There are a lot of conspiracy theories in the replies to you, but IMO it is yet another example of the weird outcomes generated by an incredibly complex system which is heavily influenced by starting conditions and path dependency.
eip 8y ago
Ganja cures the Babylon mind sickness.
- mz00 8y ago
  Curious about what you mean by that.
  - eip 8y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewfitn50Os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewfitn50Os
stronglikedan 8y ago
I would suspect you get downvoted because you imply that it's mostly "older white men" who are deranged. Is Rodrigo Duterte a white man? Is Prayut Chan-o-cha a white man? In fact, it seems that most of the countries where it's legal in one form or another are lead by white men. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis
brandall10 8y ago
Its criminalization is seen by conservatives as fighting back against what the counter-culture of the 60s unleashed. When the basis of objection is largely emotional facts aren't all that helpful.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Supporting the war on drugs because you need to differentiate yourself from the left is like supporting the patriot act because you hate terrorists. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Neither are legislation that stand on it's own merit once you look at it with the benefit of hindsight. That said, the "counter culture" gave us the war on drugs, gun control, probably a couple other curtailments of personal freedom that I'm forgetting, they reduced public support for the civil rights movements of the time and provided an excuse for the three letter agencies to greatly increase their amount of domestic surveillance. In return we got out of 'nam a year, maybe two, earlier. I don't see why people romanticize the culture shifts of the 1960s. Their intentions were good but their methods flawed and their results worse.
codr4 8y ago
There are several reasons, and this list is far from complete: Hemp threatened the cotton industry. Cannabis was more usual among Mexican immigrant workers, which is why they renamed it to something more Mexican sounding. It was a convenient way of breaking up the hippie movement and avoiding Vietnam war protests. It has many medicinal uses and less side effects than the artificial crap we call medicine these days. It scrambles the programming, people start asking themselves the wrong questions when using it. It allows the government to conduct a war against its own people, and discriminate freely; while claiming to protect. And on it goes... States have managed to foment different levels of social stigma. In Sweden, where I was born; you might as well do crack cocaine in most peoples eyes.

refurb 8y ago

Interesting! This is the same Insys that is currently under investigation for paying kick-backs to doctors to prescribe fentanyl![1] [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/nyregion/fentanyl-subsys-drug-kickbacks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/nyregion/fentanyl-subsys-...

gnulinux 8y ago

What drives me crazy is, if you go to a psychiatrist today and lie about having hard time sleeping, they can immediately prescribe you Ambien which not only causes dementia and other neurological problems in long term use, but systematically makes people do absolutely batshit crazy things they'll never remember the next morning. In the US, drug regulations are absolutely ridiculous and have no scientific basis, it is randomly decided by a few individuals and systematically affect the lives of each and every person living in the US, citizen or not. I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen.

craftyguy 8y ago
>I can't even begin to believe how&why we let things like this happen. $$$.
- sizzle 8y ago
  CBD and THC can easily be monetized for profit so what's the issue?
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Competition, as in, ease of home drug creation.
  - SerLava 8y ago
    The issue was that we wanted a new loophole for the 13th amendment. We also really wanted to permanently "deport" Americans who had brown skin. There's a lot of money in that.
    - simplecomplex 8y ago
      Don’t know why you’re downvoted, since the Controlled Substances Act was meant to disrupt African American and leftist political efforts, according to Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman. They couldn’t raid black panther meetings for legally possessing guns, but they could for smoking joints and selling drugs. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/poli...