This isn't complicated: marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
I'll add that I've also experienced this with caffeine: I've got more than one health reason to quit (heart arrhythmia, anxiety, insomnia), but I had a hell of a time quitting, with multiple failed attempts (now a few months out and hoping it sticks this time). And when I talk about it to the people around me, I get shocked and even defensive reactions. But my life is so much better when I'm not drinking coffee. Which is not to say that's the best decision for everyone.
I've had the same experience with caffeine- I am very addicted and without it the withdrawal includes a bad headache, serious fatigue, and not being able to think about much else except wanting caffeine. Yet lots of people have told me with a straight face that I am "wrong" and caffeine is not addictive.
Interesting, I also have the same symptoms as you, including insomnia even if I limit coffee to early AM. I think these effects are characteristic of "slow caffeine metabolizers," e.g. people for whom caffeine has an unusually long half life. My hypothesis is that for these people blood caffeine levels stay relatively high 24/7, so the body never gets to adapt to functioning without it, making addiction more likely.
It's weird to me that people seem adverse to the idea that peoples bodies and genetics vary, and one persons experience isn't going to be the same as another.
I don't think it's common to claim there's no such thing as caffeine withdrawal -- that's extremely well known and documented. The headaches and fatigue from going cold turkey are the worst.
But at the same time there's valid debate over whether that should be classified as an addiction rather than a mere normal dependence. Because for most people, it's relatively simple to taper down their caffeine intake by e.g. 10% per day and end it after a month and they're fine. They don't find that psychologically difficult, they don't need to go to rehab, they're just slightly tired and maybe intermittent slight headaches during the process. That's all -- which is why it's generally much better than cold turkey.
Addiction is often associated with something that normal willpower has no control over, that adversely affects your life. That's not generally the case for caffeine. Everyone I know who has wanted to stop drinking coffee has managed it when they decided to. Which is not the case with things widely understood to be addictive in some people, e.g. alcohol, tobbacco, heroin.
So there's an important distinction here that I don't think we want to erase. Dependency != addiction.
The DSM-5 does not use the terms dependence or addiction as standalone diagnostic categories. It unifies them under the concept of "substance use disorders," describing a spectrum of use and classifying severity based on the number of symptoms present.
I've always heard "caffeine withdrawal" explained as symptoms of dehydration from people who drank mostly coffee, go cold turkey, and do not replace with water.
I don't know who's been telling you that, but no, that is false.
The main cause of headaches in caffeine withdrawal is believed to be the fact that caffeine affects the blood vessels in your brain, and that cutting out caffeine therefore changes blood flow, and your body takes a few days to readjust to that.
Water is irrelevant here. Which is easily demonstrated by the fact that caffeine withdrawal is the same whether you've been drinking large, hydrating American-style coffees, or tiny Italian espressos, or been taking caffeine pills without water at all.
I'm surprised that people don't know that caffeine is addictive. I'd think most adults have accidentally withdrawn from it at some point.
I just tapered over the last two weeks, easier as an iced tea drinker. I measured what I drank one day in grams and then had 10% less the next day, decreasing by the same mass for the next 10 days. No side effects at all and it's there if I want to go back.
I did the exact same thing you did, except with cold brew concentrate, when I wanted to quit caffeine one time (in preparation for a dental surgery, where I decided I would rather not be taking caffeine while recovering). Would recommend for anyone who is trying to 'kick the habit'.
Funny story: at my first programming job, there was a coworker that had never had coffee before. Then he tried some and started drinking it everyday. Then he realized “he couldn’t stop” after it was time to start paying the coffee club dues (somehow there was an IT shop without free coffee).
It is surprising, but from my experience, there are some people that actually don’t realize it’s addictive.
i think it's very individual. I get a lot of caffeine when i need to work through a bunch of stuff (and probably developed tolerance, etc) but when there is a lull at work or a vacation, i feel 0 need for it, don't take it and feel 0 side effects from quitting for a couple of weeks.
If you want to kick caffeine, I recommend switching to caffeine pills and continue using as many of them as you need to feel normal, then start ramping down the dose. Since pills are discrete it's hard to cheat. When I do this I usually start at 400mg (sometimes 600mg) a day then over the next month ramp down to 100mg a day until finally going to zero. It takes me about a month before I can function normal with no caffeine.
...then a few months later I decide to start again. Oh well. I've done the above about half a dozen times. It's fairly easy to defeat the chemical addiction which I experience as you describe (really awful headaches, fatigue, lack of concentration, etc), but eventually I'll pick it back up to get a little extra edge.
Something I used to do is make a big pot of coffee and sip on it throughout the day, which was very hard to regulate (and it was also just too much caffeiene). Now I make a single cup of coffee in the aeropress and I use 16 grams of beans which i weigh manually. And I only have one cup of coffee in the morning instead of multiples throughout the day.
Point is, weighing beans and using the aeropress helps me keep my dosage consistent so I don't go overboard.
Decaf is pretty good these days; When I don't feel like ditching the actual cups of liquid I swap over. It's certainly what I reach for in the afternoon if I want another coffee for whatever reason. Might be another option if you still enjoy the ritual of coffee making and consumption.
I've tapered caffeine successfully by measuring out instant coffee. This works pretty well for managing the physical effects of caffeine withdrawal, or at least spreading them out. Basically, I 1) committed to only having the same exact amount of instant coffee, at the same exact times, every day, and then 2) every so often, reduced it a bit. Then I switched to a very moderate amount of decaf (which, yes, has a little bit of caffeine in it, but not enough to cause me problems).
I did this because I was getting withdrawal headaches most mornings, which is an unpleasant way to begin the day- I wasn't even drinking that much caffeine!
I never really liked coffee, but I drank it at work just as a pretext to talk to other people.
I didn't have a coffee maker at home at that time. So I started getting headaches on Sunday. I made the connection eventually, after my headache completely disappeared 20 minutes after drinking a cup of coffee with a friend.
It's telling that both people recommending this method have seen it fail multiple times, and are somehow rebranding those failures as successes. Every time you quit again "successfully" was because the previous attempt failed.
While I'm not aware of efficacy studies of different methods of quitting caffeine, cold turkey seems most effective for nicotine and a few other stimulants.
The irony isn't lost on me, but we're recommending a method to safely wean off the substance to prevent having withdrawal symptoms, which have prevented me from coming off from caffeine in the past.
I wouldn't frame starting up again as a failure. Quitting short vs. long term are two different things.
* stopping caffeine ingestion 8-12 hours before you plan to sleep is beneficial to your sleep. Even for people who can drink coffee late in the day and still go to sleep.
* delaying the first dose 90 minutes after waking up can help mitigate the “afternoon slump” many people experience.
I have the same issue, and it originally comes from soft-drinks like Cola, and now I have to drink tons of coffee just to not have headaches and withdrawal syndrome.
If caffeine was illegal you and I wouldn't have acquired such addiction, so there is a very big + to prohibition; it will prevent future generations to fall into the same trap.
Maybe making a law that forbids selling drinks containing caffeine to kids could be a good start.
Moreover, legality doesn’t even necessarily imply reduced cost. I’ve heard anecdotally that in California illegally produced cannabis is cheaper: it’s not taxed and there’s no cost to meet regulatory compliance for the producers.
>Making a product legal increases its availability, affordability and reach. So, the number of people exposed.
Really, a prohibition argument made with a straight face?
North American governments famously failed to maintain a ban on alcohol. How well do you think they'd fare with trying to ban sales of caffeine, given it's reach is greater (and far more socially-accepted) than alcohol?
Much better, because alcohol can be made with any grocery store items (like fruits and bread for example) so nearly impossible to ban, whereas caffeine without coffee beans or tea leaves is going to be extremely challenging.
>Much better, because alcohol can be made with any grocery store items (like fruits and bread for example) so nearly impossible to ban, whereas caffeine without coffee beans or tea leaves is going to be extremely challenging.
Don't forget the vast selection of caffeinated pop/soda, energy drinks, etc. You're talking about a wide ban here, as this is one of the world's favourite drugs, covering a very popular array of beverages. If you're daft enough to propose it, I suspect you'd be laughed out of the halls of legislatures.
Regulation of caffeine levels in energy drinks and pop is probably an easier sell, and some jurisdictions already do this.
Caffeine is long term safe to use, tapering is done easily when its necessary (see my other comment on the thread, I tapered over 10 days with no side effects). And it's a stimulant.
I was happily addicted to it for years and other than a couple withdrawal headaches when my routine got disrupted* the only ill effects was occasional morning crankiness.
I expect I'll become addicted again at some point in the future. Probably in the winter with a nice hot mug on a snowy morning. I'm looking forward to it.
I can't imagine any state or religion banning caffeine. It's the safest, most wonderful drug there is.
*Any restaurant or convenience store could fix my headache for me.
> I can't imagine any state or religion banning caffeine.
Coffee and tea have been banned for practicing Mormons for a long time. Caffeinated soda was kind of an "extra credit" ban for decades until the church more recently started pulling back on that.
> Caffeine is a stimulant, which means it increases activity in your brain and nervous system. It also increases the circulation of chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline in the body.
Extremely unlikely. Caffeine is one of the most studied substances on earth. It's not a secret that it causes a clear physiological response. There are tons of double blind placebo studies on this.
You got exposed to such substances because the law enforcement failed to apply the rules against controlled substances.
Despite this, the fact that the substance is illegal or controlled, made that less people have been exposed (and eventually addicted) than if the substance was freely circulating.
Singapore was well known to have a strong opium problem. Now they have death penalty, no opium problem anymore.
Clear example:
If cannabis cakes (space cakes) were legal, I'd consume them but they are not, and I do not trust + do not want to fund dealers. So I don't buy them.
Another example:
Alcohol is forbidden to 12 year old kids. Yes, some of them may find a workaround, and a way to buy it, but because of that you are still helping a large segment of the kids to not get early into addiction.
If tomorrow you say to the kids that they can drink wine (in French schools it was possible before for kids!), then they are more likely to get addicted.
Yes, there is still a small % that will get exposed, no solution covers 100% of the population, but if you can save 6 out of 10 addictions by regulating the substance, then you are doing a good job.
You don't understand how addiction works. Most people can try almost any drug and not get addicted. Some people will seek out drugs and get addicted no matter what the laws are. Banning the drugs does nothing to help most people, because they don't need any help, they don't have the genes, the impulsivity, the lack of executive functioning for it to be a problem!. It does plenty to harm the people who are going to get addicted anyway.
And I mean, if you have to use Singapore as some shining example of your vision of the world, you're pretty far into crazy land already. There is no way to meaningfully enforce drug legislation without violating human rights en masse. History has proven this again and again.
I live in a state where sports betting was recently legalized and suddenly a lot of people are addicted to gambling who weren't before. There're also many people who got addicted to legally prescribed pain medication, it seems unlikely all of these addicts would have sought out heroin from a sketchy drug dealer had they not been introduced to the pain medicine first.
You'd be surprised how many heroin addicts have chronic pain problems.
Chronic pain is a strong predictor of opioid addiction, but the opioid crisis is mainly caused by wild overprescription of and over-reliance on these drugs in the medical industry. This is also why it's so specific to the US. This is a question of regulation, not legality.
Gambling addiction is not something I'm willing to comment on, because I've not studied it nearly as much as I have drug addiction. But I can see the same points applying there; regulation is also an important topic, not just legal status.
My country has a state monopoly on gambling. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either, and I could easily see a completely hands off approach being much worse.
Just because you can effect health improvements by strict government controls, I don't think that means we should.
> Now they have death penalty, no opium problem anymore.
Hardly a policy that I think makes sense in the US.
We could solve 6/10 instances of obesity by a strict governmental intervention into diets. I don't think that would be "doing a good job", even if the health outcomes would be improved.
We could eliminate tons of cancers by banning both tobacco and alcohol. I don't think we should (as a non-user, I hate everything about tobacco; I could easily reduce my ~20 drinks/year to 0).
We could eliminate a lot of greenhouse gas emissions and heart disease by banning the farming, sale, and consumption of animals. I don't think we should.
I'm skeptical that Singapore's policy is working as opposed to driving the drug trade underground. Draconian drug restrictions haven't worked in the US, and the death penalty wouldn't do anything here.
What about personal freedoms? Is eroding our individual rights really worth criminalizing something like coffee just because it might be physically addictive?
> If caffeine was illegal you and I wouldn't have acquired such addiction, so there is a very big + to prohibition
This is true, but this argument can be made for anything with downsides.
If cars hadn't been made legal, maybe commutes wouldn't be so bad. If TV hadn't been made legal, maybe people would get out and get more exercise. If the internet hadn't been made legal, maybe fraud would be less widespread.
Yet a majority of caffeine users don't get addicted, and the increased productivity and freedom seems well worth the trade off on prohibition. There are better solutions to addiction than making everyone else suffer.
I think a majority of caffeine users are addicted, given the prevalence of idioms on shirts/mugs/etc like "don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee," etc. Most coffee drinkers I know feel at the very least tired if they don't have a morning coffee, even if they got enough sleep; that lethargy is a withdrawal symptom from a stimulant.
That being said it's a very socially acceptable addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are non-dangerous (and unless you drink a lot of coffee daily, mild), so people may not feel it's an "addiction" in the same way they think of e.g. heroin, alcohol, etc.
I agree it shouldn't be illegal, and that mildly addictive substances with safe withdrawal symptoms should be legal (i.e. not opiates, but marijuana, coffee, etc). Alcohol is a weird one! It's obviously horrible for you, addictive if you drink it enough, and the withdrawal symptoms are lethal, but our societies have socialized it enough that few enough people become alcoholics — and enough people want it — that bans are worse than allowing it legally, because the downsides of prohibition are a strong black market + gang/mob activities, whereas the downsides of legal alcohol are less widespread in their badness.
Exactly, booze is legal, some people get addicted but prohibition does more harm than good. Cigarettes are even worse they really have no benefit of any kind to anyone, its pure, deadly addiction and totally level for adults.
> Cigarettes are even worse they really have no benefit of any kind to anyone
No benefit of any kind to anyone?
Jesus, the arrogance of this guy. What makes you think you can make such blanket statements about everyone's experience like this?
Cigarettes are great for getting a boost of energy, or for having an excuse to talk to a stranger. And sure, both of those are things that we shouldn't need in a perfect society because we should all have enough time and calm to sleep and mental health care to get over our social anxieties. But that's not the society we live in--we live in a society where we can't be arsed to provide insulin for type 1 diabetics or school lunches for children. Giving nurses reasonable hours or high school students realistic dating advice aren't things in our society. So you'll have to excuse people for using the fucked up solutions that are available rather than the perfect solutions that aren't.
I'm not even a cigarette smoker, I just have a basic sense of empathy.
Your attitude to cigarettes sounds awfully similar to what people said about mj 20 years ago. Someone i know actually thinks there’s a link between a crack down on smoking and mass shootings. Just a pet theory, but some folks just need to chill out with a cig behind the maintenance shed.
According to our shared oral mythology about bootlegging gangsters, yes. According to all available crime and health data from the time it was an incredible success.
Crime fell. People got healthier. There was less domestic abuse (people forget that temperance was first and foremost a women's movement). None of this was outweighed by the increase in organized crime.
Prohibition was a "failure" in the sense that people like alcohol and do not wish it to be illegal. It was not a failure by any other definition (boogeyman stories about "organized crime" notwithstanding).
This is easier to see if your baseline is, "excessive alcohol consumption is a societal disaster" (which is the correct baseline). Prohibition would have to generate a staggering level of harm to match the existing harms of consumption.
This may be a long one, but Ill start with simple and see what you think --
The addiction problem is really a dopamine (co)injection problem based on the pychological aspects of earlier experience which created the gates of dopamine/seratonin/melatonin/neural transports desires that affect behavior as you mature.
The pathways that are made for each within the brain structure early form bonds, and then its layers of bonds that keep coming, but just like snow on branches, the growth is bigger, the WEIGHT is bigger on the earlier formed branches... (The pathways are formed by an experience that triggers the neurons to neuron (network) and as they do so, if firing patterns keep happening, certain pathways get higher bandwidth, and these pathways "trigger" behaviour due to high bandwidth and thats how we get/devlop/inherit/build AND CHANGE our "PERSON"-ality.
So when you're traumatised at an early age - whatever triggers in the neuro-pathways are triggered will be stronger growing up - such that if its a dopamine trauma - you'll go after that largely as you mature...
Its reversable, because your biological and physical brain is self aware (conscious, a toroid) - and so you can change your behavior of which neurals get stronger, but will power (desire) has to be the strongest thread.
(But this is how BGP was born through LSD) (look at Ciscos comments re hoffmans 100)
I feel like something that could help would be a limit to the potency. I like weed - but I really just want a 5-10% THC flower with some CBD in there for good measure (still not convinced the CBD isn't a placebo, but it's there naturally so no harm in having it). But most shops near me don't sell anything less than 20% THC. WTF?
Occasionally I can get something 10-15%. And if I'm lucky I can get something less than 10%.
Then look for high-CBD strains. The weed plant that produces lots of CBD will not produce much THC. The inverse is also true. I see CBD strains all the time that are as low as 1% THC.
Yes that's usually what I do. But I think in general the average potency at stores encourages people to do too much. It did for me when I first moved to a legal state. I had no idea what I would enjoy and just expected that the average THC content was a mid-level intensity. In reality it's at the top end.
I notice that routine caffeine consumption brings about subtle personality changes, like tendency towards aggression and neurosis. It doesn’t kick in right away, but more over the course of a couple of weeks. Not sure if this is a direct effect, or whether this is compounded by lack of sleep.
I don't fully agree with the approach of legalizing something because something equivalently dangerous is already legal. If carrying around hand guns are legal, would you allow SMGs?
If you genuinely think existing drugs are dangerous and you were severely addicted to it, shouldn't you call for regulations to prevent that from happening for others?
When questioning whether or not to make something legal, I believe it helps to frame the question as, "should someone be allowed to profit off of yet another addictive substance?"
The companies selling this stuff (yes, companies) are the real winners in Marijuana legalization. I wouldn't say the same for the "users."
Interesting. Always had exactly the opposite with caffeine. Could never tell any effects except for the nice refreshing taste. Normally have 2 cups with breakfast, but can't tell any difference if I skip it (e.g. when travelling).
I can't drink any caffeine either. I'm a fairly large guy, but even 1/4th cup of coffee at 6:00AM causes the same problems - my Apple Watch starts complaining that I have high HR, I get anxiety that blocks me from doing productive work, and my sleep schedule gets completely screwed up.
For me I strongly believe it is other alkaloids in coffee and similar plant products which I’m particularly sensitive to.
Artificially caffeinated beverages have much less of a negative effect than coffee. And coffee preparation method makes a significant difference as well. Espresso is better than drip coffee which is better than cold brew.
> For me I strongly believe it is other alkaloids in coffee and similar plant products which I’m particularly sensitive to.
This does seem to match my experience. Yerba mate doesn't produce the same reaction in me as coffee, despite having more caffeine (and no L-theanine, which could be a confounding factor when comparing with tea).
> marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
By your logic, it's futile to ban harmful products, which is a weird take. Making something illegal influences social norms. It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people." Not everyone will abide by that social signal, but most people will. Banning something where the rest of the culture is trying to normalize it probably is futile. But that doesn't mean that banning things doesn't work, or that legalizing things won't make the problem worse. It's hard to ignore that marijuana seems to be much more prevalent now that it's been legalized in many places.
It’s not weird in context. The alcohol ship has already sailed. It’s deeply rooted in European culture. That wasn’t the case for marijuana. And obviously just because one bad thing is legal doesn’t mean other bad things should be legal.
I’d note that banning alcohol has worked in societies that don’t have a deep tradition of alcohol use. While alcohol is available for non-Muslims in my home country, virtually nobody uses it outside certain westernized elites.
I think Bangladesh is one of Laziza’s biggest markets for nonalcoholic beers and malt beverages. Also don’t Hindus in BD use it as offering along with animal sacrifices at temples?
Alcohol has greater cultural and historical significance than marijuana does as context, despite killing 3 million people each year.
Claiming it's okay to lose a hand because you couldn't stop from losing a leg has never been a very sound argument. There's better premises for keeping marijuana legal than pointing to alcohol.
The societal damage and consequences of having people becoming lazy on their couch after smoking weed is largely underestimated.
This is the real risk with cannabis.
"Randy: Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything."
Well, also schizophrenia. Hope you like insane people wandering urban areas and harassing normal people, because you're going to get a lot more of that!
No it doesn’t. This is very very very settled science. Billions of people hVe been smoking the reefer for Millenia.
Withdrawing from alcohol has well documented, and extremely dangerous physical side effects (this is why it’s done in a hospital when possible). cami is does not.
Anyone who claims science can be “settled” immediately discredits themselves. Science is never settled, even the hard sciences, and we have only just begun to study the effects of THC. Lots of things considered 100% true a decade ago (like it doesn’t have physical addiction) have been proven as misguided myths or lies.
“Very very very settled science,” what an absolute joke. No one engaged in the scientific pursuit of truth uses phrases like this.
Weed is stronger and more available now than ever. I've seen people get constipated, get night terrors, cold sweats, etc. from marijuana withdrawals. So I think GP is right, it's left to be seen.
> get night terrors [...] from marijuana withdrawals
This one can be really bad, although it only lasts for about a week. Dreams so vivid it's terrifying, even when the content of the dreams seems mundane. If somebody were already marijuana as an emotional crutch, I think the bad dreams could have them running back to marijuana immediately.
I think you're undwrestimating it quite severely. I've had vivid nightmares every single night for months at a time after quitting weed(really heavy user).
> It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people."
Given the absurd disconnect between US law and anything resembling ethics, I doubt this is true. If you're on the left, you're as likely to see law enforcement as bad people, and if you're on the right, substitute guns for marijuana and you're likely to have very different views. While some people might think this way at a surface level, I suspect the number of people who base their view of morality on laws is vanishingly small compared to the number of people who base their view of laws on their morality.
> Banning something where the rest of the culture is trying to normalize it probably is futile.
Good thing there's no cultural movement to normalize the substance we're talking about.
> It's hard to ignore that marijuana seems to be much more prevalent now that it's been legalized in many places.
Hard to ignore, but easy to explain with explanations other than "it made things worse". Does it occur to you that maybe people just aren't hiding their use now that it's legal?
> By your logic, it's futile to ban harmful products, which is a weird take.
How is that weird? Maybe try ban cigarette and alcohol first see if it works?
I personally don't take any substances except coffee. Really wondering all those ppl who r advocating for banning weed smoke or drink alcohol personally?
But.. banning things doesn't work. People use illegal drugs anyways, and they do it openly. Legalizing weed alone didn't make the problem worse, the shift of the marijuana industry to mass production did. And that shift was caused by states granting business licenses to dispensaries. After that companies decided (just like alcohol until recently by the way) that the only metric to compete on was strength.
> Making something illegal influences social norms. It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people."
This is often used by totalitarian governments. It leads to "Preference Falsification," an idea developed by Timur Kuran.
Making something illegal for social reasons also degrades each person's sense of autonomy and self-governance. It invites jurisdiction within one's private sphere by removing each person's duty of "Obedience to the Unenforceable." Below is a key description from John Fletcher Moulton's article about it and links to an excellent Econtalk podcast discussing the idea.
Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting a preference under perceived public pressures. It involves the selection of a publicly expressed preference that differs from the underlying privately held preference (or simply, a public preference at odds with one’s private preference). People frequently convey to each other preferences that differ from what they would communicate privately under credible cover of anonymity.
Follow me in examining the three great domains of Human Action. First comes the domain of Positive Law, where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us, which must be obeyed. Next comes the domain of Free Choice, which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom. But between these two there is a third large and important domain in which there rules neither Positive Law nor Absolute Freedom. In that domain there is no law which inexorably determines our course of action, and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would. The degree of this sense of a lack of complete freedom in this domain varies in every case. . . . it is the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable. The obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself . . .
Good point. You can expand this to every issue facing society, view it through the lens of a politician trying to grab as many votes as possible and our current state makes sense.
> This isn't complicated: marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted. That might not "solve" the problem but it helps.
I'm not arguing that weed should be illegal, only that making something illegal reduces its use.
> only that making something illegal reduces its use
I'm not sure how that flies with this:
"An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found there was no increase in cannabis use among the general population or among previous users after their states legalized marijuana."
I'm confused by the article/headline, which also states:
Washington state and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, after which marijuana use saw a slight increase among Hispanic and white participants, researchers said.
Sample size of one: I never bought weed when it was illegal because I don't associate with the sort of people who'd sell it. Sometimes it would be offered to me and I would try it, but I never had or wanted to have "a dealer". But now that I can just pop into a local store whenever I want, it's no big deal.
Sure, but people like you smoking slightly more often is not actually a real problem. Addiction is a problem, and for people like me who are heavily predisposed to addiction, bans have done nothing to prevent addiction from developing, and done lots to make the lives of those who suffer from it worse, and indeed the drugs themselves more dangerous, even for casual users(it only takes one bad ecstacy pill to kill you...)
Heh, well.. you give me a bit too much credit. I went from one or two bong rips a year to most days of the week.
To be honest I think my point of view is more common than you may think because admitting to it is tantamount to admitting I'm some sort of uncool uptight square, but also that I now use. Saying it won't win me friends with either side of the issue, so people like me are generally disinclined share our experiences.
no, the same public health "experts" say cigarettes should be outright banned for people under a certain age. new zealand recently banned ever selling them to anyone born after 2009, at any age
Maybe if you're going to go down the road of buying illegal substances you're not going to pick the one that is highly addictive, gives you lung cancer and makes you smell like a chimney in exchange for almost no discernable difference in how you feel? Maybe there are better trade-offs at that point, such as cocaine, mdma, ketamine, lsd, etc?
Yes. Supply reduction works in aggregate in almost all cases. Anyone that says otherwise only came to harm reduction via it being a liberal / progressive political talking point. I say this as someone that’s very left-wing and an overall believer in harm reduction. It’s just the way it’s espoused by Joe Citizen is dumbed down to the point where it’s just plain wrong.
If we legalised heroin, more people would do heroin. Gateway drugs are real. Decades of fighting against stupid Reagan-era drug policy have trained so many people to completely throw the baby out with the bathwater and brush the nuances of addiction under the rug in support of their cause, on both sides.
The argument in reality tends to be more that decriminalisation presents a net benefit literally by virtue of mitigating the criminal aspect.
I’d use drugs more than I do now if there was less of a legal disincentive. People that think they understand the tenants of harm reduction often hate to hear that, which I find absurd. It’s just…the truth. Usually I’m told “but you’re not the one we’re worried about” as if those with ‘serious’ drug addictions are somehow ‘other’. A ridiculously narrow view. There but for the grace of God go I.
I live in an area that saw drastically lower drug importations during COVID travel restrictions. We also had social policy that loaded loads of people up with money that kept everyone paid. We got to see first-hand the effects that supply reduction had on drug use, across the aggregate. There was an inarguable correlation. The issue is usually that policing action is just never that effective.
New Zealand health officials locked down the island earlier and for much longer than anywhere else during covid aside from China and they have increased social problems from it. I'm not sure the world should be following advice from that source.
Actually, Minnesota's weed legalization law might face a special session because there's concern that the law doesn't add penalties for those who sell to minors. At this point, all anyone could be charged with is a petty misdemeanor, which- like many other crimes in the state- may go uncharged.
> I'm not sure how that flies with this: "An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found there was no increase in cannabis use among the general population or among previous users after their states legalized marijuana."
Simple: there is no possible way that's true. It fails every imaginable sniff test. Anecdotally, I never purchased marijuana when it was illegal and I do now. I know many people for whom the same is true. If marijuana were made illegal again tomorrow I would stop using it. I'm a normie middle-aged dad. The only way I'm buying and consuming marijuana is if I can walk into a shop and buy it legally. There must be millions of people like me.
This doesn't require any deep insight. It would be very surprising if ease of access had no effect on consumption.
given that addictions still exist even for the most illicit drugs, I don't see that correlation.
enforcement is significantly less 'a joke' for heroin and cocaine, yet addicts still exist for the products.
also : is incarceration/penal-justice really the desired outcome here? Is the punchline here : "Would you rather be surrounded by ex-convicts or addicts?"
Anecdotally, enforcement is a joke for cocaine too. I know several people who use it recreationally, sometimes to slightly disturbing excess, and none have ever been in any legal trouble for it.
I never lived in the U.S., but enforcement is a joke in the west in general.
Countries like The UAE or Saudi Arabia don't seem to have any problems with high/drugged people on the streets for some reason, mainly because they actually enforce the rules, you take drugs, even just for personal use, you will go to jail, it's not a joke.
I've lived in parts of the US where "they actually enforce the rules, you take drugs, even just for personal use, you will go to jail, it's not a joke" and yet there are widespread drug abuse problems.
lmfao. UAE and Saudi Arabia have active moral compasses. Sure is active and pointing in some direction.
Would you send your daughter, wife, or mother to live there as a local does -- i.e. without all the special privileges that Westerners get outside of the culture's standard "active moral compass"?
No way, theocratic autocracies have “a more united look” on issues than a pluralistic democracy? That’s a feature of pluralism and a bug in theocracy — not the other way around.
Outdated as of… when?
2018 when the morally advanced civilization of Saudi Arabia decided to let women drive?
Or do you mean way back in 2023 in UAE where it’s completely legal for a husband to rape his wife and, if killed for “a good reason” (like being raped), her killer goes unpunished so long as her father acquits?
Not sure there’s much to discuss here, I think we just care about different things. You care about drug addicts not existing and you’re fine with actively “hunting” them to achieve that, I care about everyone in a society having basic legal rights and protections of law.
UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
> Or do you mean way back in 2023 in UAE where it’s completely legal for a husband to rape his wife and, if killed for “a good reason” (like being raped), her killer goes unpunished so long as her father acquits?
With all due respect, this sounds BS
> UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
No they aren't, and their drug enforcement hasn't changed a bit, probably got stronger.
> If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted. That might not "solve" the problem but it helps.
Enforcing the law is not without costs, financial and social. We’ve tested this theory, and it does not help in net.
Society as a whole would do better to take the money fighting against drug use, abuse, and sales, and instead put it towards programs that help people fight the issues that cause addiction in the first place. Mental health programs, along with support for those that have an addiction and wish to be free from it. Addiction is fueled by something lacking in people's lives. There may be an odd case here and there where someone tried a substance and got hooked, but usually addiction is a sign of a deeper mental health issue that needs to be dealt with, rather than the drug use itself.
> There may be an odd case here and there where someone tried a substance and got hooked, but usually addiction is a sign of a deeper mental health issue that needs to be dealt with
I believe it's something to do with a way to self-soothe your pain. A lot of these substances give you a little vacation away from your true self. Marijuana and psychedelics seem to amplify these issues, but people still use them to escape. I think people that use a substance just because they are interested in how it feels, they tend to not fall into the addiction, because they are merely following a curiosity rather than trying to cover up some kind of mental pain.
I think that any drug/substance that changes your mode of thinking has the potential to create mental health problems. I also think those mental problems were latent or even fully present when the user chooses to try a new chemical/drug. Trying to fill a void or fix a mental issue using chemicals doesn't usually work out too well, and I think it exacerbates the problems. You might get a little "mental vacation" from your problems, but when you sober up, those issues are often worse because you decided to ignore them. This is what leads to addiction, chasing the ability to cover up your issues by making yourself dead inside, or changing your mode of thinking to ignore what is really going on deep down.
I'm a believer that psychedelics, including Marijuana, can be helpful. It really depends on the circumstances of why you are using the chemical, and what your intentions are going into the experience.
What matters is that marijuana had a demographic that allowed the government and law enforcement to be both classist and racist at the same time. The severity of marijuana possession was jacked up so that it could disenfranchise people, some of whom just got the vote less than 2 decades earlier.
When you put a law in place under such circumstances, you forfeit the right to talk about what's right and proper. What you did was monstrous, and the only correct response is to give back what you took, let the dust settle for some time proportional to how long you took it away, and only then let some new generation of lawmakers start discussing whether it's right or appropriate to take it away again.
Whether it's worse than alcohol or not hardly matters. It's a dog whistle, and will remain so for decades.
When people are discussing equality and you bring up tangential topics, you're labeled as an enemy. You understand that, right? If not, then it's time you learned about Deflection.
One, welcome to semantic dilution. Two, a hidden agenda that people share without discussing it. And three, not helping.
There's something to that, but I think that there have also been studies that show that regardless of policy, about the same percentage of the population uses drugs and can switch to different drugs when one gets too difficult to acquire.
Lol 40 years of the war on drugs proved that wrong. Can still buy bud illegally just as easy as mum could 40 years ago. If anything there are more users today given its more socially acceptable to be a stoner than an alcoholic.
Being alcoholic is far more socially acceptable in the most of the world outside California. In the UK, most people consider anyone who uses weed a druggy loser
The recent unscientific moral panic about "skunk" has been bizarre to watch. Even conservative Germany is on track to legalize cannabis in the very near future (usage and cultivation, though perhaps not sales quite yet), and in the UK it's just not even a conversation.
Even if, for the sake of the argument, we accept that illegality reduces consumption and that it would thus reduce the number of actively consuming addicts, that is still not a strong enough argument by itself. It depends on the assumption that the reason addiction is harmful to the individual and society is only the drug's effects per se, and not the myriad of other factors that come into play when an addict needs his or her fix, such as trying to get enough money to pay for it, marginality, exposure to criminality, risk of using an adulterated substance—all of which are greatly exacerbated by the drug being illegal.
Does the drop in the number of addicts achieved by illegalising the drug make up for the increased suffering and societal damage caused by the remaining addicts now turning to more desperate measures?
You’re being voted down at the moment, but I’m not sure why.
I think we should view alcohol and cannabis very similarly. Both are potentially addictive and both can seriously harm a person’s life and family.
Both require us to address the same question: how do we handle addictive substances in society?
If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
In this sense, alcohol and cannabis are the same thing with the same problems attached.
> If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
I believe you underestimate peoples ability to ruin their own lives, regardless of what laws and regulations are put into place to try to help them.
Many people kill themselves with food, legal drugs to name a few.
We’ll be in a much better place if more people become knowledgeable in the workings of their own minds, bodies and emotions so that seeking self-destruction is less common.
I agree. I didn’t want to suggest specifics in my comment, but I think our mistake all along has been top down solutions.
People drink and eat and smoke because they’re hurting and seeking distraction and numbness. There are some anomalies where people fall into addiction more easily, but stronger family and community safety nets seem like a far better insurance against the potential outcomes of this than virtually anything else.
Pretty much every heavy cannabis user, alcoholic, or other addict I’ve met has had deep family issues. It starts early. Regulations and education might make a dent in outcomes, but the only way we’ll have happy people who don’t want to ruin themselves is to make it so they aren’t crushed under the misery and fear of taking on the world in the first place.
The two are not the same. Before the prohibition, alcohol had been legal for hundreds of years, socially accepted and permeated the culture. Can't say the same about weed.
> Your country, and even Europe as a whole, is not the same thing as humanity.
What a strange thing to say, when the previous commenter wasn't saying the opposite. They were citing when weed became legal, socially accepted, and permeating of their culture, which is the topic.
I interpreted “In my (European) country around the 1990s and got common only 15 years ago or so.” as “humans in my country started using cannabis in the 1990s for the first time”. Bringing up the larger history of cannabis use in Europe is a valid point of discussion, as it is very likely that at some point in history it was also legal and ubiquitous.
Edit: As an aside, this whole discussion began with on the topic of prohibition in regard to alcohol, which for a lot of people that term specifically refers to a period in the United States during the 1920s-1933. I’m not sure if the colonel was referring to a different European prohibition or how the rise in ubiquity of cannabis in the 90s has to do with their initial point, if at all.
> “humans in my country started using cannabis in the 1990s for the first time”.
For my point it's irrelevant if people used cannabis thousands of years ago and then stopped.
My point is that weed had no presence in culture or social acceptance pre-1990. Weed is therefore much easier to ban than alcohol and not comparable to the difficulty of banning alcohol.
I don't know the history of weed in US, but my guess is that it's roughly similar.
It didn’t work out well for marijuana, either, which isn’t surprising because alcohol has much more of the features the pro-prohibition argument relies on and yet alcohol prohibition was a disaster.
I dont think making a substance illegal reduces its use. In the town where I live it was illegal to sell liquor until recently and this just created demand for unsafe unregulated products that normally can't compete with legal alcohol. Alcoholics dont really care about things like laws. They dont really care about anything. When a person is far gone enough that he or she will drink hand sanitizer, getting in his or her way will just cause more problems.
Making something illegal also weaponizes the state against an entirely new group of people. It's not something to take lightly. The FBI was just found to have framed four muslim men for a terrorism plot to bomb a synagogue. This is what happens when you make new crimes and incentivize our broken forces.
> The FBI was just found to have framed four muslim men for a terrorism plot to bomb a synagogue. This is what happens when you make new crimes and incentivize our broken forces.
Er, are you arguing that “bombing people” is a new crime invented to weaponize law enforcement against Muslims, or does your example have nothing to do with your argument?
This is what happens when you hire a ton of investigators to fight a sort of crime that only happens once in a blue moon. They start fabricating crimes to justify themselves. They might even do this unintentionally, since the line between prodding somebody into revealing their true intentions can become blurred with encouragement to do the thing.
> "Come on, I know you want to do the thing, you can admit it to me. I want to do the thing too! Here are all the reasons to believe the thing is a good idea... Don't you agree?"
This is a nice pet theory, but all real world statistics have shown this to be false. Illegal drugs have become more widely spread year after year, up to the point where some of them are now common enough to either be or soon to be legalized.
There is a pretty good evidence that making a drug illegal may reduce usage rates, but it does this at the costs of increasing the amount that is used in a sitting. This increase in binging leads to a higher rate of addiction and ODs. So while you might argue that the number of people using can decrease, this is often paired with an increase in the overall harm that drug abuse has on society (even before you account for the harm caused by treating drug abuse with jail time.)
> If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted.
This isn't really a useful place to start thinking about law and policy from, because the one thing that we have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is we're bad at enforcing the law as it relates to drug usage.
My sleep is a lot better. There were about two weeks were it was... inconsistent. I would be exhausted most of the time which helped me get to sleep but also more often anxious and irritable which would keep me up. The anxiety and irritability wore off after about two weeks, and the energy came back to what feels normal-ish at about three weeks. I do have ongoing problems with sleep, but it's become apparent that this is due to some bad sleep habits which I wasn't as conscious of when I was drinking coffee because I could just drink a bit extra the day after to make up for staying up late--i.e. I was covering up my bad sleep habits. When I actually discipline myself and follow good sleep hygiene habits, I sleep well, which wasn't the case when I was drinking coffee, even if I drank it only early in the day.
“I’m not addicted, it doesn’t affect me.” Every addict I know. Seen a number of people slowly change from it until they are no longer who they are. Never in a good way. Seen some who got off it.
One because her husband has such a bad reaction (after several years of use) that he can’t ever touch it again. She became her old self again. Not quite as bright as she once was, but personality improved to the loving person I once knew.
Unless you're one of those morons who can't tell apart psychological symptoms from physiological ones.
You won't get flu-like withdrawal symptoms after quitting cannabis, but, if you became psychologically dependant on it (eg. as a way to cope with depression), you will experience anxiety.
I genuinely hate this redefining words just to please today's political direction.
> Unless you're one of those morons who can't tell apart psychological symptoms from physiological ones.
You're about 30 years out of date with the addiction literature. Basically every modern addiction organization defines addiction as a brain disorder characterized by, "continued use in spite of harmful consequences."
Here's the American Society of Addiction Medicine:
> What is the definition of addiction? Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.
Here is the National Institute on Drug Abuse:
> Addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite adverse consequences.† It is considered a brain disorder, because it involves functional changes to brain circuits involved in reward, stress, and self-control.
I'll add that I've also experienced this with caffeine: I've got more than one health reason to quit (heart arrhythmia, anxiety, insomnia), but I had a hell of a time quitting, with multiple failed attempts (now a few months out and hoping it sticks this time). And when I talk about it to the people around me, I get shocked and even defensive reactions. But my life is so much better when I'm not drinking coffee. Which is not to say that's the best decision for everyone.