Are the French correct on cannabis?

The Cannabis today is not your have a laugh mellow drug of the 60's..

 

Here in the Netherlands which is the kingdom of pot, it’s difficult to see the great danger but that being said I oppose all substances that alter consciousness including alcohol. The problem I have is legislation cause it just doesn’t work and seems to cause criminality in every place it is tried. I wish we could, practically, get rid of it all.

 

That would just send it underground raising the risk and prices (and potential crimes to make and possess it).

 

OK, I was wrong.

Your attitude on this doesn't get you ignored.

Your attitude on this gets you laughed at, then ignored.

 

Just my view of the ideal. But I’ve had enough life experience to know better.

 

You aren't alone, my friend. You are not alone.

 

This is the problem. The US continues to see the drug problem as an external problem and one of attacking the supply when the true problem is that supply comes out of demand. If America doesn’t want a drug problem it has to stop the demand and that shuts the cartels overnight. But Americans who are possibly the most spoiled people in the history of the world want to escape from their own success and their own lives for some reason and probably boredom. And I have no idea of how to deal with that!!

 

There is also the added component of addictive personalities. It has been shown that some people are predisposed to becoming addicted to certain things, of which drugs is one. I don't have an addictive personality so I never got caught up in the thrills of alcohol or marijuana or even cigarettes. I've tried all but have never used any of them again. I can't speak to what it must be like to crave something so desperately that one is willing to destroy their whole lives for it. It sounds like a horrible place to be in.

 

I agree but this behavior is everywhere and all over the world and the worst part of being human!!

 

Its another money grab - like speeding tickets - "Photo Radar" Sad that the nation who sent us the Statue of Liberty is showing such disrespect for liberty.

 

That kind of makes sense, though. We are BOMBARDED with horrible and tragic news 24/7. Prior to the internet, there was at least a few hours break in between the news stories. Then, people are told something is *wrong* with them if they are not CONSTANTLY happy. They start to feel defective and wonder why they don't feel that way all the time. We are fed a lie that everybody on tv is perfect and movies/shows are "real life" and people compare it to the REAL real life and feel confused.

Introduce some diversions of choice and you have a problem. It's almost like it's created by design. I would bet the farm we would all be shocked (or maybe not) to learn who/what is really behind the drug cartels and imports.

 

That's because the evidence points overwhelmingly in the exact opposite direction.

 

This: Nonsense

 

As noted.

Rigid, infantile & pathetic.

 

Nope.

But as noted...

 

Concur.

Pot is EXTREMELY dangerous and addictive.

Sad that some would so eagerly destroy the lives of others - many of them children - solely for the convenience of their fix.

But that's what addiction does; it destroys its host.

 

Im by no means an expert on the subject, and my knowledge is mostly anecdotal observations, but weed seems far more likely to become a dependency than alcohol. Most of the people I know who drink regularly can go long periods without alcohol without suffering negative effects, while most of the people I know who use marijuana regularly become anxious without it. Though, while its true that most of these people tended to have anxiety before they started using marijuana, they are now dependent on it to manage their anxiety. But as far as anxiety medications go, marijuana is prolly the least problematic. But its still a crutch.

 

A HORRIBLE Idea (on multiple levels).

 

Everyone reacts differently to intoxicants. For the most part weed just makes people lazy. I'd rather deal with someone high on weed than a drunk any day of the week...

 

Cannabis is a generally great drug, one of the best.

Should be legal to cultivate for personal use.

 

On the topic of most addictive and most damaging drugs, here is one classification (by the aptly named British Addiction Psychiatrist Dr. David Nutt - LOL - and his team):

1. Heroin
2. Alcohol
3. Cocaine
4. Barbiturates
5. Nicotine

This classification is based on the following criteria:

• The extent to which the drug activates the brain’s dopamine system
• How pleasurable people report the drug to be
• The degree to which the drug causes withdrawal symptoms
• How easily a person trying the drug will become hooked
• How much physical and cognitive harm the drug causes
• The street value of the drug

I've seen other "top five" classifications that take out barbiturates and get methamphetamine in there - likely more updated as those downers are not as popular now than these uppers.

Here is a more complete classification, based on a paper published by The Lancet, which establishes a method for ranking drugs of abuse (this paper does need a free subscription for someone to have access to the full text, and once one registers for free, the text itself is free, too, but an abstract is available without registration):

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60464-4/fulltext

1. Heroin
2. Crack cocaine (a faster acting and more potent form of cocaine)
3. Nicotine
4. Methadone
5. Crystal Meth (a form of methamphetamine)
6. Barbiturates
7. Alcohol
8. Cocaine
9. other Amphetamines
10. Benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Ativan, and Valium

Another update to these damaging drugs is that these days, the opiate/opioid crisis moved in part from heroin to other similar drugs such as Fentanyl, a very powerful synthetic opioid that is often fatal in overdoses.

Do observe that cannabis is nowhere to be seen in these lists of the most damaging legal and illegal drugs.

This is not to say that cannabis is harmless. For one thing, it has been shown to lead to car accidents; ten times less than alcohol, but still, some accidents are caused by driving while impaired by cannabis. Second, heavy use seems to induce what is caused avolition, or a lack of initiative/desire to do things. Third, there are some male fertility problems linked to it. Fourth and very important, it worsens certain mental illnesses for those who are so affected (such as schizophrenia). Fifth and this may surprise people reading this, a paper has shown that comparing cannabis users and non-users, the non-users reported better happiness and quality of life in scales that measure these aspects, and more success in life than users, especially heavy users.

In my opinion, all drugs of abuse, legal or illegal, are detrimental to many if not most people, although a less harmful pattern of sporadic recreational use does exist as well for some people, such as, there are moderate social drinkers of alcohol who live their entire lives without experiencing any trouble from it, and a small daily amount is even thought to improve cardiac risk, although physicians are wary of making this recommendation because of the slippery slope that it might trigger, and because that daily small amount can be easily surpassed, resulting in detrimental effects such as liver toxicity and a weaker immune system. Similarly, it is actually true that cannabis has some medicinal properties, for example, as a treatment for nausea from cancer chemotherapy. Nicotine has been shown to have antidepressant properties, although it is not a useful property due to nicotine being so addictive, and due to the preferred method of nicotine intake being part of a vehicle - tobacco - that contains many carcinogens. Methadone can be legally used to treat addiction to the more damaging heroin. Sure, it's replacing one addiction for another, but it's a lesser kind that doesn't contribute to HIV and Hep C spread through needles, and doesn't cause deaths by overdose.

Still, I'm very skeptical about the advantages of certain drugs, because they can be easily overwhelmed by their negative effects; and some of the above drugs are just plain damaging in a severe degree, such as the very neurotoxic crystal meth.

OK, so, given how drugs are detrimental, what do we do about them?

I personally think that repression with criminal sentences and fines like the French are implementing, are non-efficacious control measures that often backfire, creating an underground and criminal element we're all so familiar with (drug dealers, uncontrolled use of dirty needles increasing HIV and Hep C infections, prostitution to procure money for drugs, fatal overdoses, and a huge burden on the judicial and correctional system).

So, I favor Portugal's approach. They did not plain declare drugs as all allowed by law because they didn't want to issue this symbolic statement that it's all OK, but they decriminalized drug use (not drug dealing, just drug use), and they did it across the board for all drugs including the heaviest ones. So, a person caught using any drug in Portugal is still considered to be committing what they called an administrative violation rather than a criminal offense, and the punishment is a modest fine or community service, and the addicts are strongly encouraged to attend free addiction counseling sessions. So, Portugal had very large savings by not spending money with drug-related law enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration, and they earmarked those savings to create free clinics to treat drug addition and several programs of prevention, rehabilitation and social reinsertion. The people caught by police using drugs have to appear in front of a "Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction" and the Commission will set the punishment (fine, amount of it, community service, duration of it) while strongly encouraging the voluntary start of free addiction treatment, and in many cases, with the offender showing good will, the Commission will suspend the punishment and allow people to just get treatment.

Brilliant, in my opinion. The results were positive, in Portugal. Despite controversies and misrepresentations, the evidence points to success in several key indicators including a decrease in HIV and deaths by overdose:

https://transformdrugs.org/drug-dec...hat Portugal's,some has failed to materialise.

Portugal's gains since this reform was done in 2001 are currently threatened by the economic crisis, resulting in a 10% cut in the budget for prevention and treatment, which may lead to the worsening of the drug problem, again. But it is undeniable that when their programs were fully funded, they were working.

My position on this is aligned with my non-authoritarian approach to other issues of public health: for example, I favor an educational campaign to foster face mask use in the context of this COVID-19 pandemic, rather than mandatory use and fines. After all, as the saying goes, one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar, and a free country is always preferable to a dictatorship.

In drugs of abuse as well, I believe that the honey of addiction treatment decreases the detrimental consequences of drug use better than the vinegar of fines and prison time, and the Portuguese experience is real life proof that this approach works as long as enough resources are put into it.

So, it comes down to a political issue: here in the US, do we want to spend pubic money to treat drug addiction? Ideologically, many oppose this idea, but what maybe we have to realize is that we're spending the money anyway (prosecution and incarceration cost money). So maybe we should take a close look at what Portugal did. Of course, comparing tiny Portugal to huge America is probably a bit of comparing apples and oranges, but thinking about what they did is an interesting exercise.

 

Probably my biggest reason for leaving the US is the exhausting need that everyone should be happy all the time. Others would try to burden you not to look sad as is if your unhappiness is literally contagious to them.

That doesn’t appear to be an expectation here.

A bit of an aside I guess.

 

I’ve seen the police here dealing with drunks and people on scary drugs which sometimes took 5 officers to restrain but never because of cannabis.

 

Meanwhile.. In Canada.. Researchers have found a strain that helps fight COVID 19

i have no qualms about participating in the study

I will never turn down free buds

 

Are you emigrating?? To where?

I hear is at least 50K to get into Canada.. Maybe triple for Americans right now...