6 ms·

Really fantastic news; their previous rules were allowing only local, concentrate/edibles. There was loads of excess flower biomass. Colombia (Ecuador, Peru)

Really fantastic news; their previous rules were allowing only local, concentrate/edibles. There was loads of excess flower biomass. Colombia (Ecuador, Peru) have been more open to regulated cannabis. It's pretty exciting to watch the change. Across Africa things are changing as well. The southen part is already seeing mutli-nation companies forming and pushing those governments to allow exporting of cannabis. It took a farily concerted BigCo effort to make cannabis illegal all over this planet -- glad we're finally moving back in the right direction.

vsskanth 5y ago
Curious why BigCo would want cannabis to be illegal.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  According to at least one source in the Nixon administration, it was because it was a good filter for the kinds of people that resist capitalism (non-conforming white people and minorities). Make that illegal, and you have a pretext for throwing people in jail that might cause trouble. https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/ https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminal... " In a 1994 interview, Mr. Ehrlichman said, “You want to know what this was really all about?” He went on: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. 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. 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.” " One reason it's becoming legal now is because it is ceasing to be as good of a filter.
  - raunak 5y ago
    That source is well-known to be shaky and tenuous, however. I do agree with you though.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      I agree. There's always some nebulousness as to whether getting them to actually admit out loud what they're doing reveals anything new anyway. You can just look at what they've been doing and guess most of it.
      - nerdponx 5y ago
        Because it's more evidence and it lets you make more informed conclusions and/or adjust your priors in the future. Specifically, it is evidence against the Hanlon's Razor principle that people love to quote when they want to ignore and dismiss a scary thought: the US government contains powerful forces that deliberately and consistently conspire against regular people, which work for a small number of specific beneficiaries and against everybody else.
  - username90 5y ago
    Your argument is that USA did that to fight communist ideation, not that it was pushed by big corporations. Back then politicians were really afraid that communism would eat the world, I don't see why it is evidence that big corporations were behind it.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      Big corporations fight communism because it is antithetical to their existence. Communism is the abolition of private productive property. Corporations are large private properties. Politics are the superstructure on top of base economic relationships. They do not exist in a vacuum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure
      - eurasiantiger 5y ago
        To top it off, ”communism” is an idea, a utopia: not one nation branding itself ”communist” has actually lived up to those ideals because of governmental collusion with capitalist entities and nations to enrich and empower private individuals.
- username90 5y ago
  Yeah, BigCo loves drugs since it is so easy to induce addiction and create stable customers. It isn't companies that try to restrict smoking or alcohol sales, if it was up to them they'd sell alcohol and cigarettes to kids. In fact they already do exactly that in poorer countries that doesn't have the means to fight back.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  For more reading on exactly why BigCo wanted cannabis to be illegal, see the book ”The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer: https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-1/ https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-1/ It is a rather long read, but to summarise, cannabis prohibition has roots in the industrialising 19th century where it could have competed with cotton and wood pulp. It was banned by employing racist imagery to turn people who had never even heard of ”marijuana” against hemp.

vsskanth 5y ago

Curious why BigCo would want cannabis to be illegal.

tehjoker 5y ago
According to at least one source in the Nixon administration, it was because it was a good filter for the kinds of people that resist capitalism (non-conforming white people and minorities). Make that illegal, and you have a pretext for throwing people in jail that might cause trouble. https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/ https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminal... " In a 1994 interview, Mr. Ehrlichman said, “You want to know what this was really all about?” He went on: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. 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. 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.” " One reason it's becoming legal now is because it is ceasing to be as good of a filter.
- raunak 5y ago
  That source is well-known to be shaky and tenuous, however. I do agree with you though.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    I agree. There's always some nebulousness as to whether getting them to actually admit out loud what they're doing reveals anything new anyway. You can just look at what they've been doing and guess most of it.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      Because it's more evidence and it lets you make more informed conclusions and/or adjust your priors in the future. Specifically, it is evidence against the Hanlon's Razor principle that people love to quote when they want to ignore and dismiss a scary thought: the US government contains powerful forces that deliberately and consistently conspire against regular people, which work for a small number of specific beneficiaries and against everybody else.
- username90 5y ago
  Your argument is that USA did that to fight communist ideation, not that it was pushed by big corporations. Back then politicians were really afraid that communism would eat the world, I don't see why it is evidence that big corporations were behind it.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    Big corporations fight communism because it is antithetical to their existence. Communism is the abolition of private productive property. Corporations are large private properties. Politics are the superstructure on top of base economic relationships. They do not exist in a vacuum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      To top it off, ”communism” is an idea, a utopia: not one nation branding itself ”communist” has actually lived up to those ideals because of governmental collusion with capitalist entities and nations to enrich and empower private individuals.
username90 5y ago
Yeah, BigCo loves drugs since it is so easy to induce addiction and create stable customers. It isn't companies that try to restrict smoking or alcohol sales, if it was up to them they'd sell alcohol and cigarettes to kids. In fact they already do exactly that in poorer countries that doesn't have the means to fight back.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
For more reading on exactly why BigCo wanted cannabis to be illegal, see the book ”The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer: https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-1/ https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-1/ It is a rather long read, but to summarise, cannabis prohibition has roots in the industrialising 19th century where it could have competed with cotton and wood pulp. It was banned by employing racist imagery to turn people who had never even heard of ”marijuana” against hemp.