8 ms·

A Brief Global History of the War on Cannabis

91 points by SirLJ 6y ago

pstuart 6y ago
There's no legitimate reason to keep this nonsense going. Any prohibitionist that thinks they're helping people is horribly misguided.
- arpa 6y ago
  There are a dozen of illegitimate reasons tho, one of them being moral - decades of propaganda had made an impact.
  - abraxas 6y ago
    I maintain that the prudes want to keep cannabis illegal because unlike with alcohol most people don’t suffer from a cannabis hangover so there is no penalty for indulgence.
    - jeofken 6y ago
      I get foggy and slow the next day(s), and I’m not alone in that. Of course dose dependent. It wouldn’t be right for a judge or policeman to smoke the day before work
      - KMag 6y ago
        I've tried it a few times, but really disliked what it did to my short-term memory. For several days, my short term memory was really hampered. I also have a former colleague who had a period where he smoked a lot and went through shampoo at a crazy rate, because even after sleeping a good 9 hours, he'd wake up and shower and by the end of his shower be unable to remember if he'd already washed his hair. He's pretty sure he was washing his hair an average of 3 to 4 times per shower.
        devilduck 6y ago
        I mean since that is all anecdotal, none of that sort of thing is anything some coffee can't cure. I've also found that why I may not be as immediately sharp, my sense of insight is way different as is my sense of time, which has quite a lot of value.
      - MisterTea 6y ago
        For me it depends on the strain. I usually have three or four different kinds of flower on hand and I recently picked up one called rockstar. I'm quite experienced but the latent effects of that strain is too much for me. I smoked a bowl last night at 9PM, its nearly 24 hours later and I still want to go back to bed. And I already guzzled three mugs of coffee. Good shit but hell no on a work night. Never have I had a strain that beat me up so much the following day.
    - harry8 6y ago
      I'm not sure that's strictly true. It may be a lesser hangover or of a different nature but anecdotally there does seem to be a next day effect. I understand that over-indulgence usually leads to falling asleep rather than the significantly worse outcomes seen in casualty/ER on any given Saturday evening or need years eve.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - praptak 6y ago
      Also heavy prolonged use of cannabis does not make one a total wreck like alcohol does. It's much harder to make an example out of such person.
ergwwrt 6y ago
Why is it that cannabis grown at higher altitudes is more desirable?
- mbnull 6y ago
  AFAIK the plant produces more resin, and some compounds therein, to protect itself from the suns UVB radiation.
  - max_ 6y ago
    Where can I read more on this?
    - mbnull 6y ago
      I found this paper from 1987 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-1097.1987.tb04757.x https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-1097.1987.... You will also find lots of experience reports and discussions of appropriate light sources on numerous grower sites.
- max_ 6y ago
  What active markets actively seek such cannabis?
froh 6y ago
In the early 1990s I stumbled upon a book about hemp. It made bold claims. Like: the original Levi's jeans were made of hemp. Cash bills were made of hemp paper. You could make clothing of hemp in qualities comparable to cotton, even silky ones. It would grow extremely well, in many climates and would need little to no fertilizers or herbicides. As an oil seed it would have a higher yield than canola/rapeseed or sunflower. It would be amongst the fastest/ highest yield biomass producers. It would improve soil quality in traditional crop rotation. And it had been used by Elisabeth of England as a pain medication against period cramps, and would be helpful to chemo patients against nausea and pain, and benfitial for other long term pain patients, like some quadriplegics, also because of its few side effects and being free from habituation effects. But, the book furthermore claimed, it's a direct competitor to wood, cotton, petrochemicals --- and: despite, so the claims, having no lethal dose and being non-addictive to psychologically stable adults, it was convenient to declare it a criminal drug. I couldn't believe what I read, but the book presented itself as scientific, with tons of quotes. So as a curious student I went to my universities library, and randomly checked out quoted articles and books, three or four from each chapter. Dozens of them. Old stuff, from the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. Some even 18xx. And few recent ones, for the medical section. Mind you: we were talking about a "dangerous substance", a horrible entry level drug. Contemporary papers about canabis were hard to find in the 1990s. And every single quote I picked was correctly quoted. Every. Single. One. There sure are some who benefit from having canabis sativa prohibited. If I was running a private prison, for example. Or if I wanted to suppress cheap workers and keep them down, low and cheap. Or, as the hypothesis of the book goes, if I was in a competing industry, wood for paper, fire wood, cotton for clothing, plant oils. Or pain relievers or other medical synthetic drugs with overlapping use. But whoever benefits from prohibiting canabis sativa, it's not us, the people. The book in Germany is in 43rd revised print now: Die Wiederentdeckung der Nutzpflanze Hanf, Jack Herer, Mathias [Bröckers] I found an English title by one of the authors, but I don't know to which extend they are comparable: The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack [Herer] The German one, [Bröckers], is quoting tons of German publications, it's for sure not just a translation. [Bröckers] https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Wiederentdeckung_der_Nutzpflanze_Han.html?id=qe13DwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Wiederentdeckung_de... [Herer] https://g.co/kgs/rwZE5w https://g.co/kgs/rwZE5w
- 6y ago
29athrowaway 6y ago
> “You understand what I’m saying? 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,” Ehrlichman said. “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, Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
- apsec112 6y ago
  Unfortunately, just as a matter of historical accuracy, this is secondhand information, and both of the hands are unreliable. There's no real proof Ehrlichman said this (it was claimed by a journalist many years after his death), and Ehrlichman was a known liar who was convicted of perjury, so he's a non-credible source in the first place. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hjeu1a/according_to_many_nixons_aide_john_erlichman https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hjeu1a/accor...
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
    - nyolfen 6y ago
      well, then it is probably good that GP is saying that you are presenting unreliable evidence
bogle 6y ago
"Daddy, what did you do in the drug wars?". There's a global movement now to reverse these prohibitions so if you haven't been involved before, now is your opportunity. Here's somewhere to start: https://transformdrugs.org/ https://transformdrugs.org/
- piokoch 6y ago
  I am not sure I get the idea behind that organization. Putting people to prison because they are addicts is a dumb idea, however I read here: "Medical prescriptions – for registered users of drugs such as injectable heroin" "Specialist Pharmacists. - Sales to registered adult users – for drugs such as amphetamine, powder cocaine and MDMA" It sounds like we say "ok, you take drugs so we will sell them to you". Many drugs ruin people health (physical or mental), so I would assume we should somehow help people to give up addiction, here we are just helping them to buy drugs legally. What if someone is not able to work and cannot purchase drugs any longer? Shall those drugs be provided free of charge then? Is that really something society should provide as something free? I understand that war on drugs kind of went too far, but I think that remedy to it cannot go too far in the opposite direction.
  - bogle 6y ago
    That's great that you took the time to look. If you have more questions an excellent place to begin is "How to regulate stimulants: A practical guide" [0]. It's a free PDF or you can purchase a copy. At 300 pages it isn't a light read but there is a whole chapter on stimulant harm reduction. [0] https://transformdrugs.org/product/how-to-regulate-stimulants-a-practical-guide/ https://transformdrugs.org/product/how-to-regulate-stimulant...
  - netizen-9748 6y ago
    How about comparison to ethyl alcohol? We allow people to purchase and become addicted to vodka, whiskey, beer, etc. If someone loses their job, is it provided for free? Alcohol is a drug, it is the exact same concept.
romwell 6y ago
Given the state of recreational marijuana legalization in the US and Canada, and current developments in Mexico... ...I congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs. At least we have that to look forward to.
- yters 6y ago
  Move to Afghanistan. It is a libertarian's paradise.
  - dandare 6y ago
    Your comment sounds like a big argumentation fallacy but on a closer look it is too vague to reason about. Maybe if you stated your position more specifically it would be possible to answer.
    - yters 6y ago
      Many of the libertarian policy pushes are completely legal in afghanistan. Drug use is unregulated and there is plenty of underage sex. There is almost non existent big government interference in life, and many live the libertarian nomadic life.
      - sgift 6y ago
        Allowing cannabis is not a position unique to libertarians. The mixing with the other topics you wrote is tasteless and unwarranted.
        yters 6y ago
        Well, there is just about zero government regulation of personal morality.
  - devilduck 6y ago
    You straight up don't have any idea what you're talking about
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

91 points by SirLJ 6y ago

There's no legitimate reason to keep this nonsense going. Any prohibitionist that thinks they're helping people is horribly misguided.

arpa 6y ago
There are a dozen of illegitimate reasons tho, one of them being moral - decades of propaganda had made an impact.
- abraxas 6y ago
  I maintain that the prudes want to keep cannabis illegal because unlike with alcohol most people don’t suffer from a cannabis hangover so there is no penalty for indulgence.
  - jeofken 6y ago
    I get foggy and slow the next day(s), and I’m not alone in that. Of course dose dependent. It wouldn’t be right for a judge or policeman to smoke the day before work
    - KMag 6y ago
      I've tried it a few times, but really disliked what it did to my short-term memory. For several days, my short term memory was really hampered. I also have a former colleague who had a period where he smoked a lot and went through shampoo at a crazy rate, because even after sleeping a good 9 hours, he'd wake up and shower and by the end of his shower be unable to remember if he'd already washed his hair. He's pretty sure he was washing his hair an average of 3 to 4 times per shower.
      - devilduck 6y ago
        I mean since that is all anecdotal, none of that sort of thing is anything some coffee can't cure. I've also found that why I may not be as immediately sharp, my sense of insight is way different as is my sense of time, which has quite a lot of value.
    - MisterTea 6y ago
      For me it depends on the strain. I usually have three or four different kinds of flower on hand and I recently picked up one called rockstar. I'm quite experienced but the latent effects of that strain is too much for me. I smoked a bowl last night at 9PM, its nearly 24 hours later and I still want to go back to bed. And I already guzzled three mugs of coffee. Good shit but hell no on a work night. Never have I had a strain that beat me up so much the following day.
  - harry8 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's strictly true. It may be a lesser hangover or of a different nature but anecdotally there does seem to be a next day effect. I understand that over-indulgence usually leads to falling asleep rather than the significantly worse outcomes seen in casualty/ER on any given Saturday evening or need years eve.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - praptak 6y ago
    Also heavy prolonged use of cannabis does not make one a total wreck like alcohol does. It's much harder to make an example out of such person.

ergwwrt 6y ago

Why is it that cannabis grown at higher altitudes is more desirable?

mbnull 6y ago
AFAIK the plant produces more resin, and some compounds therein, to protect itself from the suns UVB radiation.
- max_ 6y ago
  Where can I read more on this?
  - mbnull 6y ago
    I found this paper from 1987 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-1097.1987.tb04757.x https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-1097.1987.... You will also find lots of experience reports and discussions of appropriate light sources on numerous grower sites.
max_ 6y ago
What active markets actively seek such cannabis?

froh 6y ago

In the early 1990s I stumbled upon a book about hemp. It made bold claims. Like: the original Levi's jeans were made of hemp. Cash bills were made of hemp paper. You could make clothing of hemp in qualities comparable to cotton, even silky ones. It would grow extremely well, in many climates and would need little to no fertilizers or herbicides. As an oil seed it would have a higher yield than canola/rapeseed or sunflower. It would be amongst the fastest/ highest yield biomass producers. It would improve soil quality in traditional crop rotation. And it had been used by Elisabeth of England as a pain medication against period cramps, and would be helpful to chemo patients against nausea and pain, and benfitial for other long term pain patients, like some quadriplegics, also because of its few side effects and being free from habituation effects. But, the book furthermore claimed, it's a direct competitor to wood, cotton, petrochemicals --- and: despite, so the claims, having no lethal dose and being non-addictive to psychologically stable adults, it was convenient to declare it a criminal drug. I couldn't believe what I read, but the book presented itself as scientific, with tons of quotes. So as a curious student I went to my universities library, and randomly checked out quoted articles and books, three or four from each chapter. Dozens of them. Old stuff, from the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. Some even 18xx. And few recent ones, for the medical section. Mind you: we were talking about a "dangerous substance", a horrible entry level drug. Contemporary papers about canabis were hard to find in the 1990s. And every single quote I picked was correctly quoted. Every. Single. One. There sure are some who benefit from having canabis sativa prohibited. If I was running a private prison, for example. Or if I wanted to suppress cheap workers and keep them down, low and cheap. Or, as the hypothesis of the book goes, if I was in a competing industry, wood for paper, fire wood, cotton for clothing, plant oils. Or pain relievers or other medical synthetic drugs with overlapping use. But whoever benefits from prohibiting canabis sativa, it's not us, the people. The book in Germany is in 43rd revised print now: Die Wiederentdeckung der Nutzpflanze Hanf, Jack Herer, Mathias [Bröckers] I found an English title by one of the authors, but I don't know to which extend they are comparable: The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack [Herer] The German one, [Bröckers], is quoting tons of German publications, it's for sure not just a translation. [Bröckers] https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Wiederentdeckung_der_Nutzpflanze_Han.html?id=qe13DwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Wiederentdeckung_de... [Herer] https://g.co/kgs/rwZE5w https://g.co/kgs/rwZE5w

6y ago

29athrowaway 6y ago

> “You understand what I’m saying? 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,” Ehrlichman said. “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, Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon

apsec112 6y ago
Unfortunately, just as a matter of historical accuracy, this is secondhand information, and both of the hands are unreliable. There's no real proof Ehrlichman said this (it was claimed by a journalist many years after his death), and Ehrlichman was a known liar who was convicted of perjury, so he's a non-credible source in the first place. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hjeu1a/according_to_many_nixons_aide_john_erlichman https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hjeu1a/accor...
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
  - nyolfen 6y ago
    well, then it is probably good that GP is saying that you are presenting unreliable evidence

bogle 6y ago

"Daddy, what did you do in the drug wars?". There's a global movement now to reverse these prohibitions so if you haven't been involved before, now is your opportunity. Here's somewhere to start: https://transformdrugs.org/ https://transformdrugs.org/

piokoch 6y ago
I am not sure I get the idea behind that organization. Putting people to prison because they are addicts is a dumb idea, however I read here: "Medical prescriptions – for registered users of drugs such as injectable heroin" "Specialist Pharmacists. - Sales to registered adult users – for drugs such as amphetamine, powder cocaine and MDMA" It sounds like we say "ok, you take drugs so we will sell them to you". Many drugs ruin people health (physical or mental), so I would assume we should somehow help people to give up addiction, here we are just helping them to buy drugs legally. What if someone is not able to work and cannot purchase drugs any longer? Shall those drugs be provided free of charge then? Is that really something society should provide as something free? I understand that war on drugs kind of went too far, but I think that remedy to it cannot go too far in the opposite direction.
- bogle 6y ago
  That's great that you took the time to look. If you have more questions an excellent place to begin is "How to regulate stimulants: A practical guide" [0]. It's a free PDF or you can purchase a copy. At 300 pages it isn't a light read but there is a whole chapter on stimulant harm reduction. [0] https://transformdrugs.org/product/how-to-regulate-stimulants-a-practical-guide/ https://transformdrugs.org/product/how-to-regulate-stimulant...
- netizen-9748 6y ago
  How about comparison to ethyl alcohol? We allow people to purchase and become addicted to vodka, whiskey, beer, etc. If someone loses their job, is it provided for free? Alcohol is a drug, it is the exact same concept.

romwell 6y ago

Given the state of recreational marijuana legalization in the US and Canada, and current developments in Mexico... ...I congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs. At least we have that to look forward to.

yters 6y ago
Move to Afghanistan. It is a libertarian's paradise.
- dandare 6y ago
  Your comment sounds like a big argumentation fallacy but on a closer look it is too vague to reason about. Maybe if you stated your position more specifically it would be possible to answer.
  - yters 6y ago
    Many of the libertarian policy pushes are completely legal in afghanistan. Drug use is unregulated and there is plenty of underage sex. There is almost non existent big government interference in life, and many live the libertarian nomadic life.
    - sgift 6y ago
      Allowing cannabis is not a position unique to libertarians. The mixing with the other topics you wrote is tasteless and unwarranted.
      - yters 6y ago
        Well, there is just about zero government regulation of personal morality.
- devilduck 6y ago
  You straight up don't have any idea what you're talking about

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]