At a press conference in downtown’s tallest skyscraper, [CEO Damon] Shively said he and business partners will begin in Washington State and Colorado, where rules for legal pot come online this year, and wait as voters pick off prohibition across the country. Flanked by lawyers, a state lawmaker, and former Mexico president Vicente Fox, Shively said he is a “couple weeks” from an initial $10 million milestone, and within three years, he fully expects to open—some medical marijuana and some recreational marijuana—a dozen branded stores in Washington State, another dozen stores in Colorado, and as many as hundreds in California (a state where only medical marijuana is currently legal but where voters are widely expected to legalize recreational pot in 2016).
A glimpse into the the commercialized pot market was evident in a menu of marijuana strains that hung in the back of the room, designed to capture the classic Latin American esthetic of tequila or cigar marketing, promoting future products with the gusto of a fast-food signboard: The “exclusive hand-selected variants” featured familial homages like “Diego Reserva” (the firm, Diego Pellicer, is named after Shively’s great grandfather) to local nods like “Juan de Fuca,” also the name of a waterway northwest of Seattle.
This guy has $100 million to blow so whether or not his ditch weed company is successful, he’ll be lobbying hard.
Mnemosyne
Someone brought up a recent fatal mauling in California a few weeks ago to illustrate how horrible and vicious pit bulls are, but it turned out to be pretty much exactly what I thought — the owner was using dogs to guard his drug operation. I was slightly wrong about which drug, though — I assumed it was crystal meth, but he actually had a pot farm. He is now being charged with murder.
BGinCHI
Tax the shit out of the profits and put the money into education.
If we’re going to be stoned, let’s not be stupid.
cathyx
Sounds like I should invest in this business. It will only grow.
Linda Featheringill
I understand the support of El Presidente. If marijuana were legalized in the US, a large chunk of the problems between US and Mexico would be erased.
As an aging hippie, I find the whole process verrry interrresting.
Cassidy
I would rather shower in prison than smoke…well, actually, no. I can get behind this. I hope his 100 million can help end the War on
Black PeopleDrugs.Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If we changed the name to flash, would everyone be OK with drug use?
(Please someone get that reference.)
Violet
Apparently kids are ingesting a lot more of it in Colorado and ending up in the ER:
Suffern ACE
I do wonder if Bed Bath & Beyond and Willams Sonoma are going to start selling overpriced pot smoking equpment. A Good Grips pipe. A Caphalon bong.
Cassidy
@Violet: Jesus Christ, just because it’s in a brownie doens’t mean eat the whole fucking pan!
cleek
@Suffern ACE:
and we can all drool over the All-Clad vaporizers while resigning ourselves to having to buy Cuisinart instead.
but a good Henckels grinder is well worth the money. OXO can suck it.
Violet
@Cassidy: Some of the kids were as young as eight months. Probably doesn’t take a whole pan of pot brownies to cause them some problems.
aimai
@Violet: I wonder how this compares to kids ending up in the ER with alcohol poisoning? There have been more reported deaths from binge drinking and vomiting, as well as car crashes, from drunk driving than there ever have been from overuse of cannabis.
That being said, as one of the few Americans in her 50’s who never even tried the stuff, I actually think this will be a bigger societal change, from top to bottom than gay marriage. I mean, gay marriage merely slots people into fairly ordinary categories and lets them live perfectly ordinary lives with the people they love. Legalizing p*t is going to legalize selling and buying, thus destroying one set of criminal fortunes and creating a new set of legal ones while offering people in general a new way to anesthetize themselves against the pain of living. We might see the teenage use of various household chemicals actually decline. We might also see the p*t growers start growing less strong versions in order to encourage people to spend more on bulk buys, kind of like watering down the liquor.
liberal
Finally! A special interest we can believe in!
NonyNony
@Violet:
Jesus Christ. Some people are farking stupid.
Would these people hand their kid a jello shot too? Or even leave one out where the kid might grab it and drink it?
ant
I find it hard to believe that there were any real danger or consequences to these people that ingested pot with out knowing it.
Oh nos, they got high for a day.
What did the EM room people do? Tell them to go take a nap?
cleek
@NonyNony:
yes, probably.
Redshirt
The Feds have been absolutely silent on this. Colorado is on the verge of full, legal operations, and when that happens, the entire state government will be involved in the illegal drug trade (from the Fed’s perspective).
What happens then?
Something’s going to break.
Cassidy
@Violet: Gotcha. I assumed teenagers. Stupid ass parents. When I smoked (cigarettes) I sure as shit didn’t leave my pack around for little hands to get ahold of. WTF?
askew
I am curious to how this impacts drug testing for jobs in CO and WA. If it is legal, it should be excluded from drug testing. And what about federal jobs? I know if you want to work for the FBI you have to answer questions about whether or not you smoked pot in the past 10 years. If you live in CO and WA, does that question no longer automatically kick you out of the pool of applicants?
And I am amused by the outrage among some of the hippies who were pushing for marijuana legalization over the commercialization and big chains getting into this industry. How naive to think that big industry wouldn’t try to horn in on this new market.
NonyNony
@aimai:
We’ll probably also see growers growing new strains that are more addictive, much like the tobacco companies did. It’ll be a race to see which method turns out to be more profitable. (I’d bet that stronger stuff that’s more addictive will win because this is America and nothing succeeds like excess).
I’m hopeful that criminal fortunes will be destroyed by this, but I’m worried that the big money these days seems to be in meth.
Cassidy
@askew: DEA won’t take you even if you tried pot recreationally as a teenager.
Persia
@BGinCHI: The problem is that usually the profit money doesn’t go to education. See also tobacco and alcohol, where a) nothing goes to prevention or treatment and b) the health costs are much, much higher than the diddly shit we get out of the taxes.
Pot’s less harmful than tobacco or alcohol AFAIK (though I’m not sure what it will look like when RJR, etc. pumps it full of God knows what) but I suspect that aspect of the model will remain the same.
NPR did an interesting profile on a drug dealer in NYC who sells there illegally because he wasn’t making much profit legally in CA. IDK how that will figure into all this either.
oldswede
Juan de Fuca is also a geological fault line off-shore of the northwest states. This is the one that could drop Seattle into the ocean.
Look it up and start worrying.
ant
We’ll probably also see growers growing new strains that are more addictive
Sigh. Pot isn’t physically addictive. It just isn’t.
ok?
Redshirt
My hunch is if the legalization movement continues and the Feds drop the criminalization of marijuana, the industry will be a mix of the wine business, the microbew industry, and the coffee shop market.
I’m shocked we’ve come this far so quickly.
cathyx
@oldswede: Maybe if you got high you wouldn’t fret over it so much.
Cassidy
@ant:
Funny you put it that way because it can be mentally/ emotionally addictive. But that’s neither here nor there; lab grown pot with addictive properties plugged in. I have zero doubts that big tobacco has shit in labs, waiting for the go ahead.
WereBear
This actually makes me think it will actually work. Because nothing gets concentrated effort in this country more than the possibility of raking in lots of moolah by doing it.
I would be totally unsurprised to discover much of the impetus and cash is from tobacco interests looking to swap commodities.
kindness
@Violet: I get Medicinal Edibles at my local outlet (Harborside). The problem with the edibles as opposed to the inhalants is that with the inhalent you’ll know in under a minute how much of this I should be able to responsibly take.
With the edibles, you have to eat it once to judge. More than once I’ve spent a concert or a night in my living room plastered to my seat because I really should only have eaten 1/2 of that brownie. So, you learn. But having learned I really do enjoy those Giants games at AT&T park a whole bunch more than if I was only drinking the $10 beers.
The problem with kids eating the stuff. That is just incredibly poor parenting. Don’t blame the edibles. You gotta hide that stuff. Put it where they can’t get to it. That’s what we did with ours.
The Moar You Know
He’s got the right idea: the successful marijuana businesses won’t look like bars, but like Starbucks.
Gonna be interesting times when every state west of Texas has legalized it, and the Feds will still have to proceed under the legal fiction that it’s illegal.
NonyNony
@ant:
And soybeans normally aren’t resistant to Round-up. So I fail to see how manufacturing new strains that are has any kind of barriers. We live in the future.
(And weed is already psychologically addictive – as anything that makes your body feel good is. Which is why I intentionally used “more addictive” there rather than just “addictive”.)
ant
@Cassidy:
Yes, that is true, especially for certain types of people.
But so fucking what. Same can be said about sugar, soda, sex, video games, the innerwebz, fapping, work, gambling, and plenty of other things.
kindness
@NonyNony:
Sorry but cannabis is not addictive. You have no medical data to back that statement up. Some folks are compulsive but it isn’t the weed that is evil there.
The Moar You Know
@Violet: Here’s a theory. Far from “kids are ingesting a lot more of it in Colorado”, try this on for size: parents are no longer shit-ass terrified of taking their kids to the emergency room and winding up in jail.
Shakezula
Does anyone remember the Bloom County cartoon where Sen. Bedfellow visits the farmer? “Take a bushel home for the missus!”
Yep. You also have a plant that is far less fussy that tobacco and they can plow some of the money back into free pot for cancer patients if they want that PR boost.
Redshirt
@The Moar You Know: Absolutely. The Amsterdam Coffee Shop example is a real model to follow as it combines lots of different things in one setting – retail sales, food, social space.
In Colorado, they’ve approved the use of vending machines in marijuana selling establishments, which is just incredible. Think of all the packaging folks that need to get to work!
Cassidy
@ant: I’m not gonna argue with you. I have no issue with people smoking pot. I do take issue with the fiction that it isn’t addictive being peddled. I think that’s an unecessary bit of propaganda. Marijuana can be addictive, but pretending it isn’t in any way shape or form makes for better talking points, but ultimately undermines the argument for legalization. The trurh is good enough.
Aimai
@ant: read the article. In young children and infants it sounds like it operates as a central nervous system depressant and they can stop breathing.
jayjaybear
@kindness: o/` But most of all you’ve got to hide it from the kids… o/`
Cassidy
@Cassidy: Hell, I’d smoke pot if I was in a line of work that was cool with it.
DecidedFenceSitter
@askew: In a cleared world, even if it is legal in the state, it is still illegal federally and will disqualify you from obtaining a clearance.
Redshirt
@Shakezula: It makes sense for the tobacco companies to get involved, as the business is pretty similar – you’d have local farmers growing a plant, delivering it to a large processing facility that then dries/cures and processes, packages, and then distributes.
But that would seem to apply mainly for lower end marijuana. Higher end would be more like wine, with specialized growers and processes, probably all self contained.
RP
There’s pretty huge difference between physically addictive and mentally/emotionally addictive. And I don’t see any evidence that pot can be made as addictive as tobacco in a lab. It’s possible I guess, but if someone did that and didn’t disclose that information they’d be opening themselves up to massive litigation.
Persia
@Cassidy: Seriously, those fuckers put ground glass in chewing tobacco so people could get a better high. They will do anything.
Persia
@Aimai: It is basically a depressant. I’m not surprised that injesting a shitton of it could hurt a kid. Kids can get hurt by taking too much caffeine, this is basically the other end of the scale. It’s not likely and yeah, I blame the parents, but pot isn’t a magical panacea that never hurt anyone ever.
Lee Rudolph
@aimai: And we will certainly see some Monsanto-style shit going down, I predict with no fear that the future will be any better than it’s going to be allowed to be.
Lee Rudolph
@jayjaybear: …hide it in your gun-safe with the Lugers…
DFH no.6
So, mistermix, why do you think this guy’s stuff would be ditch weed (maybe you’re being snarky)? I hope this dude’s little project works out.
From what I know, there really isn’t a lot of ditch weed out there compared to the “good old days” of, say, the 70s, when it was widely “available”.
From what I hear, what you can get “on the street” today even in places like, oh say, Arizona, is primo stuff that goes for about $60 and eighth or so. Stuff today is so good that an eighth goes a long way, so that $60 compares favorably with the best stuff (like Columbian Gold) from those good old days, when an ounce of the best could be had for around $50/ounce (and ditch weed was $10-$20/ounce). From what I’ve heard, anyway.
Oh, and Violet, that “poisoning” article was 20 grades of bullshit.
Not that there haven’t been ER visits by children (some even infants) who have gotten into some pot (typically in brownie or similar form).
But it isn’t “poisoning”. Not by a long shot.
It’s (obviously poorly-supervised) kids ingesting pot, getting high, then being taken to the ER (mostly by the same stupid and negligent adults who let them get a hold of it in the first place) where they are observed for a while until the high wears off.
No toxicity, no “overdose” (you can’t OD on pot). The high wears off in a couple hours at most, and no permanent damage. It’s not a fucking poison, at all.
Yeah, kids shouldn’t be getting high on anything (not least because they can get hurt even by falling over or whatever other dangers when they are not in full control of their faculties). But getting high on pot is the most innocuous high possible.
There are about 10,000 other things to be far more worried about kids getting into than some pot brownies (start with cleaners under the kitchen sink and go from there).
What a fucking crock, and it’s only purpose is to continue the stupid demonization of pot.
Anyone who gives any credence to this “kids poisoned by pot” nonsense is an idiot.
Shakezula
@Aimai: In older people – say late teens – an overdose can cause severe vomiting. Or so I’ve heard.
Anything taken in sufficient quantities can make you very sick. My sister once got into the salt when she was an infant. This required administration of ipecac. But dying from pot consumption would take some doing.
Redshirt
I’ve heard stories of someone’s Aunt or Grandma eating a pot brownie then freaking out cuz they’re stoned, but that’s an understandable issue – they have no idea what’s happening. They get freaked, stressed, and then the body starts seizing up. These are the responses to panic, not necessarily marijuana.
catclub
@NonyNony: “Would these people hand their kid a jello shot too? Or even leave one out where the kid might grab it and drink it?”
I think the answer in many cases is yes.
DFH no.6
@ant:
Yes, exactly what you said.
MCA1
@Redshirt: Completely agree with this. There are a couple of factors, but I think this is not going to become a situation where it’s really hard to find some product outside of Costco and massive pot chains and it’s all distributed by 3 or 4 companies that own 98% of the market. For one, the industry already exists, and in very fractured, small producer form: there are so many small time growers out there that the inevitable big money investment in the industry is likely to be a consolidation and rollup effort, not a top down imposition and then we have to wait 20 years for people to get disillusioned and leave in rebellion to go start their own thing (like the beer industry). Some will sell out, and some will maintain what they’re doing now because of the second factor: they know that, unlike 25 years ago, there’s a mature, completely constructed consumer appetite in the United States for niche products trading on authenticity, smallness, exclusivity and non-corporate aspects of the brand. They have Starbucks and Sam Adams to thank for that.
The interesting thing to me will be how and when the industry dials back the strength of the product. From what I’ve read, the stuff on the street today is ridiculously strong, and knocks people who haven’t smoked in 15 years off their feet. Criminalization eventually leads to an understandable ratcheting up of potency for obvious reasons (there’s a reason not many people were brewing beer during Prohibition). So the product needs to be transformed a bit to be something that (a) won’t turn people off, (b) is something that will appeal to people who just want to hang out on the back porch and get a little bit high with their friends at the tail end of a dinner party instead of braindead and unable to function at the kids soccer game the next morning, and (c) is in the right dosage to sell some volume for highest revenues.
Redshirt
@MCA1: Well said. In this case, it’s just like beer. There will no doubt be the “Marlboro” marijuana which is cheap and lower end. Buy a pack of twenty joints to go to a concert or for hanging out at the lake, etc. It’s like Budweiser beer. At other times, you’ll go with a higher end product to go with a nice meal, or for a classy gathering. Then you go to the local coffee shop and buy an eighth of high end bud.
Cassidy
@DFH no.6: You could have just said “I’m full of shit. ignore me.” .
Violet
@The Moar You Know: Could be. The article states:
I don’t know if parents whose kid had trouble breathing would not take them to the ER because they thought or knew the kid had ingested pot and were afraid of what would happen to them (the parents). If a parent’s kid isn’t breathing, my guess is they’d be frantic and take them to the ER in most cases. Couldn’t a parent be accused of negligence or worse for not taking the kid to the ER?
MCA1
For those quaking about how the tobacco industry’s going to naturally swoop right in and take over the pot industry and then start injecting us all with killer toxins and adding addictive substances to the plant, please, take a step back. It’s 2013. The tobacco industry is withered and got the shit sued out of it in the last two decades; the legalization of this drug is being overseen by state regulatory agencies and because it’s pot even Republicans are on board with regulating the shit out of it; and the marijuana industry already exists so the product won’t be getting introduced to the public by RJR. Part of the basic appeal of marijuana is its purity and simplicity, and in 2013 enough of the people who will be consuming legally sold pot in this culture will demand purity. It’s possible that over time the product gets watered down or hybridized or whatever, but not likely that ever becomes the norm and we’re just opening ourselves up to another avenue for the evil ADMs of the world to poison us all to death. But it’s a hell of a lot more likely that Anheuser Busch becomes a major player than it is that Phillip Morris does.
The Moar You Know
@Violet: Only if they die. Otherwise no one needs to know about it.
Joel
@Cassidy: Besides, ingesting the stuff gives the crappiest high.
Not that I would know, or anything.
DFH no.6
@Aimai:
Yeah, this is a real problem to be concerned about.
Ever heard of anyone, of any age, actually diagnosed as “stopped breathing” because of pot?
Neither have I. Because it doesn’t happen.
Aimai, I’ve been reading and enjoying your comments throughout Left Blogistan for years. You are waaay smarter than this.
That article was on the order of the typical rightwing email chain that takes a kernel of truth about something and turns it into, say, Obama banning praying to Jesus at West Point or some damn thing.
In other words, mostly bullshit with an ulterior motive that can only be propelled by lying because the actual truth doesn’t conform to the ulterior motive.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, I suspect it’s a little more like guns — careless idiots decide that something that’s okay for them to use must also be harmless for children, so they leave it sitting out where the kids can get to it. And, yes, careless idiot parents who let their toddlers have access to pot brownies should face the same penalties as careless idiot parents who let their toddlers get into a fifth of vodka, because a dose that’s okay for an adult is not harmless to a child.
Joel
What would Peter Tosh do?
Joel
@Cassidy: People might not realize this, but caffeine isn’t naturally part of cola. It was the solution to two problems:
1) Coffee roasters had an excess of caffeine left over from the decaffeination process.
2) Soda makers didn’t have enough kids drinking their product.
Problem solved!
kindness
One can be a proper parent and still smoke. In our home it isn’t a moral issue as we don’t feel it is immoral. It was a people issue because you just don’t tell everyone what you do. We smoked in front of our daughter. But we made a point of making sure she knew at a very early age that not everyone agreed with our point of view and so you don’t tell people what we did just to stay out of that trouble.
We kept the product hidden and it was really no issue until she reached 16 and started stealing our stash. Then we put a lock on that drawer. My other half had an 18 year old rule that she held to. Me, I smoked with my daughter several times prior to her reaching 18 but never with her friends or when they were around. Only her. She wasn’t allowed to smoke in our house till she turned 18 and her Mom did give me the evil eye when I smoked with her but it was all good. No harm came of it.
Our daughter is now 31. Has a degree in accounting and works for the state as an auditor. She is very well adjusted. Still smokes from time to time and is now facing the very same issues with her boyfriends 10 year old son.
Life goes on.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
Wait, really? You can’t picture any way at all that ingesting pot could be bad for a three-year-old?
I mean, I know you guys have a vested interest in claiming that it’s completely harmless, but come fucking on. The reason there are children’s formulations of OTC drugs like aspirin is because you can’t give the same dose to a child that you can to an adult. But it’s impossible for an adult dose of pot to be harmful for a child?
Cassidy
@MCA1: I would love to have your optimism (not making fun), but I don’t see how corporations don’t dive into this and try to extract profit at any cost.
@Joel: I’ve never ingested it. I stopped smoking pot back in the 90’s before I joined the Army. I do know that anything in a large enough dose becomes a poison. Anyone telling you otherwise is peddling propaganda and bullshit.
Violet
@Mnemosyne:
But letting a kid have access to a gun, and then the kid shoots and kills someone, that’s not something that needs to be punished because “the family has suffered enough.” Ugh.
DFH no.6
@Cassidy:
So, smart guy with your “mentally/emotionally addictive” nonsense (ant at 32 pretty much had the proper response to that) what do you disagree with in what I wrote?
You say I’m full of shit. Back it up or go fuck yourself.
I’m good either way.
Redshirt
What a silly argument! Of course anything can be dangerous if an infant eats a ton of it. Hell, you can die by drinking too much water. We’re not talking about the dangers of drinking water.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
I suspect there’s a certain overlap between parents who think it’s okay to leave guns laying around and parents who think it’s okay to leave drugs laying around. These are the idiots that child-proof caps were invented for, because they can’t be arsed to keep dangerous things out of the reach of their children.
Redshirt
@Cassidy: Of course the big corporations will get into this market – there’s big money to be made. But like with microbrews, there will be a ton of alternatives. Tons. As mentioned, there is already a large and robust small time grower industry out there. They are not going away, and the big boys won’t put them out of business.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
I have personal experience in my family with someone who became addicted to marijuana. But I guess that doesn’t count, because it doesn’t fit into your worldview where marijuana is so harmless that a three-year-old can eat a pot brownie with no ill effects.
ETA: To be clear, the fact that we had a marijuana addict in our family is not an argument in favor of keeping it illegal any more than having an alcoholic in the family is an argument for reinstating Prohibition. But people who try to claim that marijuana is completely harmless for everyone, everywhere, are harming their own cause.
aimai
@catclub: Yes. Also: people really don’t grasp how dangerous ordinary household cleansers and soaps and electric plugs are. Pot in the house is no different than anything else–you have to be baby and toddler aware of it or rather situationally aware that there might be people in the house who do not know what it is and how/when it is to be ingested. People no longer lock up their liquor cabinets–people used to lock up liquor when they had servants in the house to prevent the servants from tippling–and they stop hiding/locking up the chemicals under the sink after the baby stops being a toddler. But sometimes they should keep practicing sensible precautions w/r/t food, drugs, drink, and chemicals.
I don’t think Violet’s article is bullshit, as someone said upthread. Its just the fact that people need to be hypervigililant when there are infants and toddlers and young children present in the house or at an event where the adults are doing something (shooting, owning guns, doing alcohol and drugs) which may be dangerous for children to do as well. Its an interesting subfact that people who are mentally impaired, emotionally deficient, and also self medicating with alcohol or drugs are probably not the best judges of what is safe or not for the children around them.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Yes. LD50 for an adult is about 50 kilograms of weed. Not physically possible to ingest a lethal dose of THC. Unpleasant, yes. But not a lethal dose.
WereBear
Anything can become an issue with a small child because for some weird reason they don’t pick up feedback from their environment until it is too late.
The same kid who will spit out peas with machine-like precision will drink a whole bottle of bleach. Go figure. And be vigilant.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: No doubt people abuse marijuana, and some develop a mental addiction to it. However, I’ve never read anything stating there is any physical addiction with marijuana. There’s just no chemical path for it.
But mental addiction can be crippling. Look at people who get addicted to gaming – they can lose everything in their lives over something that clearly has no path for physical addiction.
Unlike say heroin, which is clearly physically addictive.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
We’re not discussing adults. We’re discussing toddlers who get hold of pot brownies. So your argument is that a 30-pound toddler can’t possibly be harmed by something as long as it’s safe for a 150-pound adult to eat, correct?
I’m assuming you also give adult-dose Tylenol to your three-year-old when s/he is sick. After all, that dose isn’t harmful to you, so how could it be harmful to someone who weighs a third of what you do?
newnumbertwo
@The Moar You Know:
That is exactly the difference. Now that marijuana is legal here in CO, parents don’t have to worry about having their children taken away from them and having their lives turned upside down by an expensive trip through the legal system (not to mention a conviction for child abuse that will follow them for the rest of their lives) for a 3-4 hour period of at worst mild discomfort after their kids sniffed out their edibles.
Note too that the article makes no mention of any long-term issues the kids will have to deal with after their experience with pot edibles. The trips to the ICU and other scary stories likely have more to do with the hospital covering their asses than actual medical need. That is not the case with just about every other serious case of “poisoning”.
@DFH no.6:
Can I get an amen?
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: No, imbecile. Do the math. LD50 for a 150 pound adult is about 100 pounds (50 kilos) of weed. For that hypothetical child you posit, that lethal dose is 20 pounds (10 kilos) or extract thereof.
Just how much weed do you think goes into a tray of brownies?
Well, if nothing else this thread is living proof that the pro-legalization people still have a huge mountain of ignorance and rank stupidity to overcome. I’m frankly astonished that this “Reefer Madness”-level of hysteria still exists.
I’m done here.
aimai
@DFH no.6:
You read that article through a scrim of your own “Reefer Madness” history. Actually the doctors were quite specific and quite thorough in what they were reporting. The numbers of kids affected were extremely low (to my mind) so the story didn’t come across as particularly scare and propaganda focused. I would have expected numbers like this, and a medical/public health concern like this. When any new substance turns up a bunch of times in the ER you are going to have doctors and Public Health people inquiring into where its coming from, how its being delivered to a vulnerable population, and what to do about it. The Doctors quoted in the story were not scaremongering at all–they were actually issuing a pretty standard reminder to the public that children don’t tolerate the same substances as adults do in the same way. If you had kids you would have seen exactly the same ER based cautions and surveys EVERY GOD DAMNED SUMMER when people forget to hydrate their kids, to protect them with sunblock, or to watch them at pools.
This has nothing to do with your imaginary “safe” drug. Lots of things are safe in small doses, at the right time, to the right people. Those very same things can be extremely dangerous to the wrong people, at the wrong time, in the wrong dose. This is so obviousI don’t understand what the point is in arguing to the contrary.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: So what’s your point? Bad parenting is bad? Of course you have to watch anything an infant or child puts in their bodies, be it pot, bleach, or tylenol.
newnumbertwo
@Mnemosyne:
Are you really comparing Acetaminophen, a substance which causes liver damage in adults at high dosages, with ganja?
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Waiting for you to answer my question: is it your position that it’s always safe for a 30-pound toddler to consume the same dosage of something as a 150-pound adult? Or is marijuana the magical exception to the rule because shut up, that’s why?
You can accidentally kill your baby by giving them plain water to drink, but marijuana in an adult dose is always safe, because magical unicorns will protect the baby, amirite?
Mnemosyne
@newnumbertwo:
Are you really claiming that marijuana ingested in high doses by a toddler is less harmful to them than tap water?
aimai
@Redshirt: No, you are misunderstanding Mnemo’s point. She is simply saying that pot, like anything else, falls under the heading of “things parents need to be cautious about.” Just because for some people in this country its associated with counterculture, nature, hippies or any other garbage doesn’t mean that it, like very other substance that could be ingested by children, isn’t in fact going to harm them. I don’t get what is at stake for the “pro pot” crowd here–and I by the way am not at all anti legalization. I’m pro legalization because I’m anti the drug war. But I’m pro legalizing all recreational drugs because I’m anti the drug war–that doesn’t give me any illusions about how dangerous meth or crack or heroin are for adults and children.
I think what Mnemo and I and the other parents are trying to argue is that contra the “everything’s cool” crowd pot is no more “not dangerous” than anything else that might be in your house. Its really not necessary for DFH or Moar You Know to keep insisting that unlike any other substance in the universe there is no conceivable dose that an infant or young child could be exposed to that would be harmful to their health or development. Hell, its not so long ago that we still didn’t grasp how harmful second hand smoke or nicotine poisoning could be–why should pot be any different?
Seanly
My employer rolled out a new drug use policy. When asked about states making the pot legal, they stated that all US employees would be subject to federal standards. Boo hoo.
RE: change in marijuana laws – isn’t the USA a signatory to international treaties that criminalize marijuana or classify it as a narcotic? So even if most states legalize marijuana, the hands of the federal government are tied?
DFH no.6
@Mnemosyne:
Please, you are not getting what I wrote (I’ll put that on me).
I never said pot was completely harmless, because it isn’t (one shouldn’t drive stoned, for instance, and kids shouldn’t ingest pot at all).
I specifically wrote, “Yeah, kids shouldn’t be getting high on anything (not least because they can get hurt even by falling over or whatever other dangers when they are not in full control of their faculties)”.
Isn’t that clear?
I did follow that up with, “But getting high on pot is the most innocuous high possible” because that is true. Anyone know of any “high” less innocuous than pot? I don’t. Still doesn’t mean it’s ok if kids do it – I never said that.
I called bullshit on an article that called kids getting into pot left lying around by adults as kids being “poisoned” by pot. Which is utter nonsense.
And the line from my comment you blockquoted was in regard to the article’s claim that pot can cause someone (specifically children) to “stop breathing”. If that was an actual problem it would be trumpeted from the rooftops by the “reefer madness” crowd. Ever even heard this one before? I haven’t.
Joel
btw, people need to consider the difference between “habit forming” and “addictive”
two different things with distinct behavioral and pharmacological explanations.
El Cid
I can’t believe you are all okay with Obama banning prayer at West Point.
Bill in Section 147
@Violet: I wonder how many kids would end up in the ER if they made guns legal? Nothing more dangerous than stupid. I assume legal in CO does not mean legal for under 18.
Soon we’ll have Pot-Lite. Tastes great! Less filling!
aimai
@DFH no.6:
Yeah, no. I don’t think the article really accused the kids of “getting high” as an activity that they voluntarily chose. So you are comparing apples and oranges. I’d say that, again speaking as a parent, children can ingest things in doses that are substantially greater than an adult would if an adult were “trying to get high.” That goes for alcohol as well as (as Mnemo pointed out) water. If we are talking about infants and toddlers ingesting pot brownies of course the fault is entirely the parents. The kids were not “trying to get high” anymore than a child who accidentally drinks the parent’s glass of wine at a party (which I have seen happen) is “trying to get drunk.” But a kid can get alcohol poisoning on one drink when it would have zero effect on even a small woman or man.
Because the high you associate with pot is mild, compared to other highs, tells you absolutely nothing about its affects on small children.
The Moar You Know
One last math exercise. Let’s take that 10 kilos that has a fifty percent chance of killing a thirty pound kid. 10 kilos is approximately 320 ounces.
Now let’s cut that LD in half, just because they’re kids and special. 160 ounces.
Now let’s put a crazy amount into a tray of brownies. Gross overkill, your guests are going to be pissed because they’re really unpleasantly high. That would be 2 ounces. 1.25% of a dangerous dose.
The reality is that nobody, not even the most hardcore stoner alive, is going to toss two ounces into a batch of brownies.
Mnemosyne, you’re conjuring bullshit out of thin air. I’m relieved that most people here are treating your hysteria with the contempt it deserves.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
Again, we’re not talking about teenagers getting into their parents’ stash and smoking out, which I agree with you is pretty harmless. We’re talking about small children who find the marijuana their parents carelessly leave laying around and eat it.
Your argument is that it is impossible a 30-pound toddler who eats their parents’ stash to be harmed by it in any way because it wouldn’t be harmful for a teenager or adult to smoke it. Do you really not get how out of touch that argument is?
Again, we’re not talking about teenagers smoking out. We’re talking about small children. And, yes, I have heard of that before, not in a “OMG pot is so dangerous, we must ban it!” way, but in a, “Parents, don’t be fucking idiots and assume this stuff is completely harmless to small children” way.
newnumbertwo
@Mnemosyne:
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
aimai
@Bill in Section 147: Guns are legal. They are legal but lightly regulated. Plenty of kids and people end up in the ER because of gunshots, accidental and otherwise. But for some reason having to do with the way we classify guns as separate from other public health emergencies the article didn’t compare gunshot wounds for children with ingested poisons. Too bad. I’m betting it would be salutory.
aimai
@newnumbertwo: Thats funny but actually, again, wrong. Read the linked article that Mnemo put up or, for example, have small children or lead a group (I do!) for new parents–yes, water can be very dangerous for infants, just as lack of water can be dangerous.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I’m fascinated to discover that you think that letting your toddler eat pot is less harmful than giving them tap water.
DFH no.6
@Mnemosyne:
But I guess that doesn’t count, because it doesn’t fit into your worldview where marijuana is so harmless that a three-year-old can eat a pot brownie with no ill effects.
OK, seriously, stop putting words in my mouth. I never said any such damn thing. I said just the opposite, in fact.
If you want to argue in good faith, then not ascribing “worldview” beliefs to someone who is saying the opposite of what you claim they are is a good place to start.
Let me be abundantly clear — I do not think it is ok at all for kids (and by that I mean younger than teen age) to ingest pot. Period.
It’s also not “poisonous” if they do happen to ingest it, nor is it at all likely to “stop their breathing” (possible, I suppose, but highly unlikely).n.
These two statements are not mutually exclusive.
Pinkamena Panic
Good to know that we can have a thread where nothing disappears and nobody edits their posts and yet somehow NOBODY CAN GO BACK AND READ WHAT WAS ALREADY WRITTEN, choosing instead to argue with an infinite series of poorly-made strawmen.
God, just shut up, you fucking morons. I’m so fucking tired of dealing with the festering stupid on display in these fucking comments.
Mnemosyne
From the article Violet linked to, here’s the scaremongering and anti-drug recommendation made by the doctors who did the study:
But I’ve been assured that giving an 8-month-old baby a pot brownie is perfectly safe, so obviously those doctors are just being hysterical when they say it’s a bad idea.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: This is getting ridiculous. Show me where I said that – because I didn’t.
Look, we get it. You’ve got some serious family trauma surrounding marijuana users and usage. You admit this upthread. Take a step back and at least admit to yourself and us that you are not able to be impartial about the subject, and that you’re disregarding facts, science, and math in favor of your own very, very powerful feelings on the subject.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
Uh, yeah, they kind of are mutually exclusive. If, as you claim, pot is completely harmless to them, then why is it not okay for young kids to ingest it? Why not just leave your pan of pot brownies sitting out on the counter so your four-year-old can dip into them whenever s/he wants since it’s not harmful to them?
aimai
@Mnemosyne: I think more to the point MYK is moving the goalposts far beyond what anyone here has asserted, certainly farther than the article asserted. The article stated that the Doctors found that in young infants and toddlers THC, accidentally ingested, could affect their CNS and lead to difficulty breathing–so much difficulty that it sounds like the infants were put on machines to help them breathe. The article did not say that any of the children died of what they ingested. But neither did Mnemo or I assert that children would die from ingesting THC in large amounts. We simply don’t dismiss the article out of hand as “bullshit” because things like THC don’t “have any effect” or “couldn’t have a bad effect” or “wouldn’t kill an adult except in X dose.”
Having quite a bit of experience with infants and toddlers, contra MYK et al, it is incredibly obvious that lots of things can have a very dangerous affect on them, temporarily or permanently, that would not affect an adult. Its so obvious that it ought to go without saying. Perhaps MYK et al could stop throwing around stupid accusations like “hysteria” and assuming that the god damned perfectly well informed adults on the board are anti-pot, anti-drugs, or anti-legalization and using this article as a way of pushing that agenda? That is not what is going on here. We are simply observing, in passing since it was brought up on the blog, that when you legalize a recreational drug or a new medicinal substance and introduce it widely into society and the home you are going to need to educate people about proper care and control of the substance to protect their home environment. Its nothing but common sense–people are incredibly stupid and a whole lot of people do not grasp that what is good for an adult is not equally good for an infant.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Did you miss the part where I said I’m in favor of legalization? Because I am. What I am not in favor of, though, is pretending that marijuana is 100 percent harmless, no one ever becomes addicted to it, and your three-year-old can ingest it with no consequences, so there’s no need to tell parents to put the pot brownies out of reach of their toddlers.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Yes, thank you. This isn’t, “Won’t someone please think of the children?” It’s, “Hey, maybe we should put child-proof caps on these things and remind parents to keep them out of reach of small children, because obviously some of them aren’t aware that it’s not a good idea to give a three-year-old a pot brownie.”
kindness
Some of you (you know who I’m talking about) need to just get a room. Yea you’re all yelling at each other here but we all know what is really going on……Keep that stuff to yourselves please.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think anyone on this thread has said any of these things.
Look, you’ve been here longer than me, and that’s a long time. You’re a commenter that, until today, I had a great deal of respect for. Putting words in people’s mouths – you have, no avoiding that accusation – and throwing around hysterical accusations that your fellow commentariats are in favor of letting three-year olds have at the parental stash is not just irresponsible, it’s fucking reprehensible.
I feel badly for you. Whatever your issues are surrounding marijuana, whatever circumstances in your life caused them, I’m truly sorry for. I hope I never see this side of you again.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: So your point is bad parenting is bad?
Gotchya.
Cassidy
@DFH no.6: Well, once you started off with the whole “it’s not a poison” hysterics, that pretty much sealed it. regardless of it’s many beneficial properties, Marijuana, like any other substance, ia and can be poisonous. So, your whole little rant following that is you talking out your ass to promote more MJ propaganda. Again, peddling that bullshit is one of the things that makes it difficult to get past prohibition. You have a group of people who think it should be legalized because it’s stupid to criminalize, unfairly targets minorities, and would be an econmoic boon and then you have jackasses who pretend like it’s some kind of miracle drug and “it’s natural and good for you” and all that other bit of jackassery. Let me break it down real simple: inhaling smoke of any kind is not good for you. Period. Is smoking MJ going to kill you? No, probably not, but please stop pretending it’s good for you. In some cases the benefits outweigh the negatives. The same can be said for medicinal uses of cocaine. Having benefits is not the same as being good for you.
Secondly, as to your other bullshit, marijuana does depress the central nervous system. So, logically, a large dose of THC in a small child could easily cause a depressed respiratory system. There are multiple factors in the human body that effect how a substance interacts, to include other medications or substances, tolerance, drug susceptibility and sensitivity, etc. and these factors are exacerbated by age, weight, and development.
Anyway, I don’t give a shit about people smoking pot, but please go peddle that magical, natural drug bullshit somewhere else.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
The article that Violet linked to said that, since medical marijuana was made legal in Colorado, 14 children have been taken to the ER after ingesting marijuana, and 2 of them were admitted to the hospital. This was immediately followed by howls about how the article must be a lie because marijuana is completely harmless, so there’s no possible way that a toddler could have trouble breathing after ingesting it.
Again, if you want to peddle your magical bullshit about how marijuana is completely harmless and a study saying that, yes, some children were admitted to the hospital after gaining access to their parents’ stash must be full of lies, feel free to do that. But, like it or not, marijuana is not 100 percent safe for anyone of any age any more than tap water is 100 percent safe for anyone of any age. Reminding parents to keep it out of reach of their small children even if it’s legal isn’t hysterical drug war bullshit, it’s fucking common sense, and I really don’t get why you’re so opposed to that.
Yes, it’s weird how I get impatient with people who insist that parents shouldn’t be reminded to keep their pot out of reach of their small children because pot is always completely harmless. Did you think I was arguing something else?
Pococurante
I’ve tried the synthetics and have tasted some of the latest AP hybrids. It can be an excruciating experience unless one knows how to scale down. The synthetics can be hellacious.
Some of the recipes I’ve seen for cannabis cooking oils render as much as a pound of this very high end 12% plus THC down to two or three cups. The cooks warn you to wear gloves and a mask to avoid a trip to the ER. Serotonin overdose is a very real and serious affliction.
It is very difficult for consumers to know which cooks are very disciplined with portion control.
THC is a poison – it’s not really debatable. The plant evolved THC to keep from being eaten. What matters more than THC is the CBx ratio to each other and to THC overall. A well balanced plant takes advantage of the CBx to offset THC’s more nasty affects.
Louis CK has a great routine when he talks about being handed a joint and treating it like he was back in the 1980s.
Today’s hybrids are moonshine. We’ll see more focus on the analogous fine wines and crafted beers when the market is legal and more sophisticated.
Cassidy
@newnumbertwo: See, this is where the pro MJ bullshit propaganda comes in. Acetaminophen does not cause liver damage. In prescribed doses for the prescribed period of time, it is fairly harmless and in most cases a benefit. In large doses it becomes a poison and can cause significant, irreversible damage, although not likely to be lethal.
Larv
@Cassidy:
This really depends on your definition of poison. As others have noted above, the LD50 for pot is extremely high, much higher than many other common household items (including many houseplants and kitchen spices – should rhubarb be sold in child-proof containers?). So sure, anything in high enough doses is potentially harmful, but the safety margin for pot is really, really high (okay, pun intended).
Neither is it especially bad, unless you do it very frequently, like daily. Plus, this discussion has been about ingestion, so I’m not sure of the relevance except to reach for a reason that “pot is bad, mmmkay.”
Strawman (hempman?). Nobody has said that, and it’s equally true of vast numbers of foods, drinks, or pharmaceuticals in common use. Is acetominophen “good for you”? Is bacon? Depends on the circumstances, same as pot.
jayboat
@Mnemosyne:
Stop digging.
Keith G
@DFH no.6:
Have you ever seen Mnemosyne in action? Even when she has the facts on her side, she still tends to rebuild the discussion in a way that is totally through the looking glass.
That said:
It sure seems that small kids ingesting pot are being harmed – unless the doctors are lying.
Was it poisoning?
DFH no.6
@aimai:
Sigh.
We’re like talking past each other here or something.
I totally got that the article was not referring to kids “trying to get high”, but instead was about kids (some very young) being brought to the ER after accidentally ingesting pot that the “responsible” adults left lying around. Which is not good, but is also in no way “poisoning”.
None of these “ER visit due to accidental pot ingestion” kids demonstrated any permanent damage because it’s pretty goddamn hard (nigh on impossible) for that to happen just from the pot they ingested being in their little bodies (no “overdose” possible in any conceivable amount that could be ingested at once).
To reiterate: it is not good for young kids to accidentally get into their parents pot brownies (or whatever) mostly because it’s not good for young kids to be high on anything, for a number of reasons (with pot it’s mostly because the kids could get hurt from the decrease in motor function; e.g., they could easily fall).
It’s the bullshit claim of “poisoning” and concomitant scaremongering (not by the doctors – by the “journalist” who wrote about this as “poisoning”) way out of proportion to the actual problem that I had issue with.
Despite my moniker, I am not some stoned-out hippie who thinks marijuana is some panacea from God, man, and even kids should be free to sample the herb because it’s like totally natural, dude.
I like to think I’m a realist on the pros and cons (and relative harm and, yes, harmlessness in various situations) of weed. YMMV, I suppose.
And by the way, I am a parent, and somehow managed to safely raise two beautiful children (daughter and son) to productive and happy adulthood. In spite of my (apparent) inability to recognize potential dangers to vulnerable little ones.
Bill in Section 147
@aimai: I realize this. And I am not being serious.
I thought I was being obviously ridiculous using something legal that is dangerous and deadly and, with snark, comparing it to something that though less dangerous, apparently can be misused/abused by kids and idiots.
My issue with the comment was that if someone is poisoning themselves by misusing a product or leaving a product where children can poison themselves the problem is not the product. I would guess the CDC can list more poisonings by legal and unregulated household products than Marijuana.
As the owner of a couple smooth-bore muskets (but not a member of a well regulated militia) I do not have any problem with restrictions on guns or safety laws etc. As a non-smoker of any kind of smokeables I don’t have any issues with restrictions on pot use either but strong pot, if legally used, stored, etc. is not a problem.
And being silly…How many people die or are injured by falling or slipping in the shower? How many times can Cassidy say shower without someone posting a reference to these statistics? Why would they?
Redshirt
This has been one of the weirder BJ threads I’ve been in. Is anyone reading other people’s posts?
Yes! It’s bad for infants to eat marijuana! Don’t let your three year old eat your stash! Also, don’t let them eat a bottle of Tylenol!
Cassidy
@Larv:
That’s the medical definition of poison. Since, we’re discussing what began as a medicla issue, I believe it to be appropriate.
I believe I said that smoking, and by association ingestion, marijuana is not likely to kill you. Again, that’s not the same as good for you. I never said pot is bad. I’m all for it being legal. I liked smoking it when I was younger, and upthread, said I would do it now if my current sector of employment was okay with it….that means nothing to this conversation and you shouldn’t be talking about strawmen. The medical reality is that marijuana is poisonous. In small doses it has beneficial properties. In large doses it can be toxic. That’s it. I’ve said nothing else about marijuana. You can smoke until you believe your fucking Tommy Chong for all I care and I’ll support your right to buy it legally, but don’t peddle that crap about it not being poisonous, not being a drug, and not [potentially] having dangerous side effects.
Yeah, I already said this, so what’s your point? This is why I get pissed off at this dumbass propaganda leaking out the ass of pro-pot advocates. Somehow, if you don’t believe the fucking unicorns came down and ejaculated rainbows all over a special plant giving medicinal properties with absolutely no side effects whatsoever, then your somehow against the recreational and medical use of marijuana. It’s fucking stupid.
Violet
@DFH no.6:
The people who did the study were from the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center. They may use the word poison with a specific meaning, perhaps like Keith G quoted above.
Here’s another article on the study. The doctors noticed an uptick in kids coming to the ER having problems after ingesting pot. They didn’t know if it was due to the change in the laws or not, so they investigated it. Fall 2009 is when the law went into the effect.
The doctors say that the commercial products are the biggest problem–the homemade stuff isn’t as potent.
Those poor kids! The doctors call for greater education of doctors on this issue. That sort of thing would help prevent kids from having invasive treatment like that. Over time hopefully the parents won’t have any need to worry about admitting that pot was in the house and it could have been ingested by the kid. And it sounds like Colorado at least is requiring childproof packaging on commercial pot products.
negative 1
@BGinCHI: Please run for office. Why isn’t literally everyone for this idea? It’s no different than alcohol, and look at the benefits of ending that prohibition (no different means it comes with the bad of alcohol too, yes I recognize).
Cassidy
@Redshirt: Exactly. It’s also a good idea to keep them out of the liquor cabinet, although a little smear of whickey on the gums does help teething.
negative 1
@Pococurante: Plenty of things are poisonous that we still use/ingest/abuse/enjoy. Alcohol is too, prohibition didn’t work out that hot. Statins are poisonous (which is why foxglove was the first one) and your body surely didn’t include benzodiazepenes in it’s evolutionary plans, either. This is an argument for children. It’s not going to be fatal or particularly toxic if used in a remotely normal fashion, and you know it. If you choose not to do it, go for it. Why can you choose for me?
DFH no.6
@Cassidy:
Is smoking MJ going to kill you? No, probably not, but please stop pretending it’s good for you.
So, your argument with me is mostly about things I never said. Can you quote me saying either of those things?
No, you can’t. Joining Mnemosyne with putting words in my mouth. And you’re the one who wrote (directly quoting you now) “regardless of it’s (sic) many beneficial properties”. You said that, not me. So does that mean you are the one “pretending it’s good for you”? Damn you’re dumb.
And you want to contend that marijuana is a poison. I say that’s nonsense, in any meaningful understanding of what a poisonous substance is.
You could argue that point as Keith G did, though I still think that what Keith quoted regarding a definition of “poisoning” is overbroad and doesn’t fit the common understanding of what poisoning is (being toxic, for one thing, which pot isn’t). But you don’t.
So my offer stands, asshole. Go fuck yourself.
Cassidy
@DFH no.6: Well, you can go with your made up definition of poison that has as much legitimacy as the hair on a unicorn’s balls and I’ll go with the medical definition. Come back when you want to have a discussion based on facts and reality.
Violet
@DFH no.6:
Here’s the definition of a poison from the US Department of Health & Human Services Poison Help website:
Pretty broad, but that’s their definition. Substance used incorrectly and/or by the wrong person.
Pococurante
@negative 1:
I never said I wanted to choose anything for anyone.
I support legalization. I’m a user. And I have no illusions when I consume cannabis, or alcohol for that matter, about the relative risks and benefits.
Redshirt
Drugs are bad, m’kay? Except my drugs. They’re good.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
I will freely admit, this whole argument has hit one of my pet peeves, which is people who insist that something is completely harmless or completely harmful. There is not a single substance on this entire Earth (and probably in the entire university) that is 100 percent harmless or 100 percent harmful. You can drink too much water and die of water intoxication. If you get acute promyelocytic leukemia, they will give you intravenous arsenic, which is normally a poison.
Even if marijuana is in the “mostly harmless” category for adults, it’s stupid to try and argue that it must also be harmless for small children and any reports of poisonings of children who get hold of a marijuana cookie or brownie must be propagandistic lies. Saying that parents in states where marijuana has been legalized should be reminded to keep it out of reach of their small children because it could harm them isn’t evil anti-drug propaganda, it’s common fucking sense.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: It is common sense, hence my wonder about what you’re going on about. Who here said marijuana was completely harmless?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@ant:
I’ve been a regular, every day (all day on weekends) type of guy for 19 years and had to stop the last couple of months to interview for a new job. It is not physically addictive. I did not get the DTs and shake or sweat because I stopped. After the first few days off I wasn’t even missing it.
It is habit forming. I had a routine. Once I got home from work I would partake and before every meal I would re-up. Also an hour or so before bedtime. But even that was easy to break. The only time I really miss it is when I want to play a video game. It increased my focus and immersion.
My wife likes to go out to eat more than I do and if I’m reluctant she tells me to go smoke. She’s manipulative that way.
I use to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for 15 years and had a tougher time quitting that. It took me a month to reduce my nicotine intake to where I could just stop altogether.
I will smoke the good stuff again because I enjoy it. It helps me sleep better. I’m calmer and generally a more pleasant person to be around with a little buzz in my brain. Some folks aren’t cut out for it – or anything like it – and should stay away. You know who you are. Hypochondriacs. People prone to paranoia.
And over the years I have smoked as much as any gainfully employed person could and could never smoke enough to where I caused myself physical harm – other than beating on my lungs. But vaporizing has eliminated that.
It’s impossible for an adult to OD on maryjane. If it could be done, I would have achieved it.
Bill
This entire argument is about the definition of “Poison.”
Entertaining, but kind of pointless.
Mnemosyne
@Redshirt:
Well, there was ant @ 15. Not to mention DFH no.6 telling us that a marijuana high is “the most innocuous high possible,” so there’s no way any kids could have experienced breathing problems after ingesting it.
I would link to more, but FYWP only lets me put three links per post.
DFH no.6
Well, as an hysterical MJ propagandizer (objectively pro-poison, to boot) who obviously believes pot is a natural, magical drug so harmless and so good for you that not only should three-year olds be perfectly ok to chow down on their parents’ hash brownies, but such goodies should be freely available at all daycare centers, my job is done here.
So glad the points I made were so well understood, and counter-arguments to said points were made in such good faith.
By the way, Mnemosyne, what color is the sky in your world? Must be either black or white. There can be no other.
Fucking fantastic. Later.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Hmm. I’d quibble with your interpretation, but whatevs. In that vein, I’d point out you started this thread with an unrelated reference to pit bulls killing someone, as if that was somehow indicative of the evils of marijuana. But I’m sure that was not your intent.
Mnemosyne
@Redshirt:
It was really meant more as an argument against the people who claim that all pit bulls should be put to sleep because they’re inherently dangerous. It was more of an interesting factoid that I was wrong about exactly which drug was being guarded by the dogs, and pointing out one of the many reasons why keeping marijuana illegal is stupid and dangerous.
Cassidy
@DFH no.6: Don’t peddle bullshit if you want to be taken seriously.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: On that we are in complete agreement.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
Not at all. In fact, if you take off your pot-colored glasses and actually read what I said, I was saying the exact opposite: the fact that a substance is mostly safe for adults doesn’t mean it’s equally safe for children.
But, hey, you keep on alienating people who are on the side of legalization by insisting that any ideas about how to make it less accessible to children are just propaganda and fear-mongering. That went over really well here in California when they tried to pass full legalization through a popular initiative.
Redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Ironically, the medical marijuana actively lobbies against full legalization. They did so in CA. There were two groups opposing Maine’s attempt to pass a Colorado style law – Law Enforcement, and the medical marijuana lobby.
Seems shortsighted to me.
Cassidy
@Redshirt: Money. When you put “medical” on something the price skyrockets.
Ex: Protein supplements. You have many, many brands to choose from on a site like Bodybuilding.com., of varying tsate and quality. You have at least 3-5 choices in your local Walmart or grocery store. People who get weight loss surgery have to ingest so much protein after the surgery and are usually referred to “medical grade” protein mixes. All they really are is protien mixes in smaller containers for 2-3 times the price. The medical marijuana people don’t want to lose the ability to charge a premium.
Mnemosyne
@Redshirt:
I’m not surprised. At least in southern California, a lot of the supposed “medical marijuana nonprofits” aren’t exactly living up to those terms. The last thing they want is to be reined in by the government.
The growers up in Humboldt County put a lot of money towards defeating the propositions, too, because they make a shit-ton more money if it stays illegal. There’s a reason why Prohibition, corrupt politicians, and gangsters went hand-in-hand — selling an illegal substance is a hell of a lot more profitable than selling one that gets regulated by the government.
MCA1
@Cassidy: I think there’s a difference between piling in and trying to make a profit, and the sorts of nefarious things various posters seem to see as the inevitable future of Pot, Inc. going forward, though. In addition to the hyperawareness and sensitivity around what we put in our bodies, and the regulatory environment alluded to above, there’s just not THAT much money to be made here. We’re talking about a product that, if you assumed the entire non-Bible belt America went the decriminalization route in the next decade, maybe a third of the adult population would consume once a week on average (and I feel like that’s an aggressive estimate, although in another 40 years when the taboo of smoking pot has fallen away, perhaps that will change, but it’s not like the Dutch are just out there toking up daily). Call that 50 million joints a week. I bet we consume 100 million beers a DAY in the United States, and an equal number of servings of wine and liquor combined. Because marijuana is not labor intensive, not land intensive (in fact it’ll mostly be grown indoors now, cutting down shipping costs, as well), and doesn’t need to be processed or cooked or manipulated before being put to market, it will be cheap. Once we strip away all the illegality risk cost currently priced into the market and replace it with a fraction of that in taxes, I bet a joint of decent quality will be had for roughly the price of a beer. That’s a $10-15B/year industry. Apple has that kind of revenue in a month. That’s enough to get large corporate entities interested, but not to produce an industry lobby that can own legislators and systematically capture the regulatory environment, to allow it to start squeezing in addictive substances under our noses. At least not for a long while, and not in a regulatory environment where people actually desire the government to regulate.
DFH no.6
@Cassidy:
Back in, briefly (I know I shouldn’t but…)
You jumped on me with no specifics (just that I was “full of shit”) and when I asked you to maybe be specific you ascribed two alleged “MJ propaganda” statements to me about “pretending it’s good for you” and peddling “magical, natural drug bullshit” neither of which I said or even came close to saying.
I called you on that already, and you chose not to address it because you know you are wrong – nothing I wrote could possibly be interpreted by a non-disingenuous agent as me “pretending pot is good for you” or that I believe it is some “natural, magical drug”. That’s entirely your fevered imagination (well, and Mnemosyne’s, too, with her through-the-looking-glass “interpretation” of my statements as claiming pot is harmless for kids, when I’ve said the opposite over and over and over).
Your only salient point was in regard to “poisoning” and I get that there is a legitimate argument there, depending on what anyone means by “poisoning”.
So try this, if you’re not so far gone that all we’re doing is cussing at each other – the difference between being “too high” (and being high at all for a child is “too high” and not harmless — are you seeing this, Mnemosyne, you clueless twit?) and being “poisoned” by a drug (and yes, pot is a drug, and though natural is not magical) is like the difference between being drunk (or even just “tipsy”) and having what is called alcohol poisoning.
The overbroad (to me) definition of “poisoning” as occurring “when any substance interferes with normal body functions after it is swallowed”, etc. (Keith G’s quote) would have to be applied to simply being drunk, or even just a bit past tipsy from drinking alcohol.
And yet, there is a separate (more severe) category for alcohol “poisoning”. No one calls being drunk “alcohol poisoning” because that does not fit the common or even medical understanding of “poisoning”. It has to be much more severe than just being drunk, to the point of being potentially life-threatening without medical intervention.
Using the term “poisoning” in regard to these kids being brought to the hospital after accidentally ingesting was a deliberate (so I believe) attempt to put as negative a spin as possible on a bad but not likely very dangerous situation (unlike, say, kids or anyone else with actual alcohol poisoning).
“Poisoning” is a heavily-freighted term that, IMAO, was unjustifiably used in this case, and my analogy with drunk/alcohol poisoning demonstrates why I believe that.
You disagree and prefer a much lower threshold for using that word, fine, but I think that distorts the common understanding of “poisoning” to the point of absurdity (and in this particular case done deliberately, again IMAO, to demonize pot).
Yeah, but I’m just peddling bullshit, so don’t take me seriously.
Mnemosyne
@DFH no.6:
As long as you realize you’re using a definition of “poisoning” that’s different than the actual definition used by poison control centers and doctors, that’s fine.
And if you want to use the alcohol comparison, you do recognize that an amount of alcohol that causes an adult to be drunk or just tipsy can cause actual alcohol poisoning in a child, yes? So why is it impossible for you to believe that an amount of marijuana that causes an adult to get high could poison a child and be more harmful to them than it would be to an adult?
Just as a reminder: the terrible, frightening, drug war propaganda recommendations of the doctors who did this fearmongering study was (a) childproof caps on medical marijuana and (b) public education campaigns to remind parents and grandparents to keep their pot away from small children. Wow, that’s just like they’re calling for it to be re-criminalized, isn’t it?
dance around in your bones
Hours late to this thread, but on the subject of unpredictable effects of edibles…this is funny.
Prolly either everyone has either seen it already or no one will ever see it at the end of this dead thread.
Redshirt
Way to kill the drum circle.