For those not familiar with US society, this is huge. Mississippi is generally regarded, true or not, as a conservative state, perhaps even reactionary.
Its government was a staunch defender of slavery, the later Jim Crow laws which mandated racial segregation, Negro voting disenfranchisement; the last to repeal alcohol prohibition; still frequently challenging abortion rights; among other such.
Mississippi is kind of a belle weather for how Southern conservative governments will lean. That Mississippi of all places legalizes marijuana means that it will probably be legalized in all 50 states within a year or two.
This was a voter-led initiative and the state legislature tried to ignore it in last year’s legislative session. The governor was not a fan either. There were some other leaders who tried to challenge it in court. So I wouldn’t make that strong of a claim that you’re making…it’s still a tough fight here and very conservative. In good news, the vote for the initiative was like 70% for it.
True, but my educated guess as an observer of Mississippi politics... The US will legalize recreational marijuana at a federal level and then give the states the ability to legalize it or not. The state will not legalize it, and if they do, then they'll leave it up to the counties to decide. Most of the counties will not legalize it because it's a very conservative state where Christianity informs the politics more than personal freedoms.
And the grassroots efforts will have a hard fight because of how the power dynamics work in Mississippi. I'm very cynical about progressive politics in Mississippi because I've been a part of the grassroots movements and seen what actually happens. 100+ years of white supremacy is very effective at keeping the power structures in tact, because a lot of the voters are disenfranchised, gerrymandered out of having much power, or have moved away.
"progressive politics" means something different to me in Mississippi than what it might in California. And it means something different to the typical Republican in Mississippi vs the typical Democrat. I define progressive politics as "social reform" for ordinary people, i.e. legalizing marijuana and making amends for the harm the former laws caused, free pre-k education, etc. Not whatever they paint it to be on FoxNews or CNN or whatever.
If you really want to make Mississippi more like California, your highest priority should arguably be to support economic freedom and moderately libertarian policy stances - not "progressive" ones.
lol what? your sarcastic comment has nothing to do with anything i said in my comment. but okay, if you want to go that route, then see what "economic freedom" and austere policy has done for mississippi's economy! (hint: it has crippled it.)
Why haven't Democrats full-throatily supported legalization? I understand why Republicans haven't, but this seems so popular it seems crazy a major political party hasn't jumped on board.
The DNC is a center-right party that America's liberal and left blocs vote for because they don't have a viable alternative.
They don't win any votes by supporting legalization (they have all those reluctant votes anyways), and publicly supporting legalization gives their far-right opposing party free ammunition (the DNC wants your kids to be stoned, urban crime, &c.). So it's all downside, with no upside.
"They don't win any votes by supporting legalization (they have all those reluctant votes anyways), and publicly supporting legalization gives their far-right opposing party free ammunition (the DNC wants your kids to be stoned, urban crime, &c.). So it's all downside, with no upside."
In today's polarized climate, you can say that about almost any issue whatsoever.
Compare the Democrats' reluctance to take on and lead on issues to the modus operandi of the Republicans, who have not hesitated to innovate and lead in the political sphere even when the ideas they float are laughed at and villified by their opposition and the mainstream media. Despite that they still manage to fire up their base, change the national conversation, and get their leaders elected.
Democrats don't have to have the equivalent of FOX News or conservative talk radio (they tried that with Air America[1] and failed), but they could show some backbone and actually lead rather than always reacting to Republicans framing the issues.
The nation has clearly moved on past believing in Reefer Madness style anti-cannabis propaganda, and even the risk-averse Democratic leadership should recognize that cannabis legalization is an issue with broad national support and that this is a leadership opportunity.
> That Mississippi of all places legalizes marijuana means that it will probably be legalized in all 50 states within a year or two.
They did not legalize marijuana. At least not in the context of what legalizing marijuana means in 2022, which I think should be that you can walk into a marijuana store and buy marijuana like other states.
The important part being that cops can still bust you for simply having marijuana or buying marijuana, or even suspecting marijuana. Which was the big problem in the first place.
Yes, but with such restriction that it effectively still gives plenty of room for the government to be able to use marijuana as a reason to abuse people.
Sure, Mississippi is making progress, but it is 2022, we have the internet, a decade plus of other states actually legalizing it and making it easily accessible to everyone of age, and so my expectations of “legalizing” it are much higher than they were 20 years ago.
> That Mississippi of all places legalizes marijuana means that it will probably be legalized in all 50 states within a year or two.
Doubtful! The state legislatures in these states are generally more conservative than the population and are generally against these measures. In Wisconsin for example there is currently no chance of legalization because the state legislature is gerrymandered within an inch of its life for some of the most radical republicans in the country, despite the fact that generally the state votes for democratic representatives at the federal and state level.
>That Mississippi of all places legalizes marijuana means that it will probably be legalized in all 50 states within a year or two.
I highly doubt it. And at a Federal level it will never be legalized. The Biden administration has no plans and the folks involved are just playing games and never had any intention of fulfilling their promises.
I think it’s a generational thing… and there is no reason to think the Republicans who have demonstrated they’re much better at politics (much to my personal dismay now that the Republicans are no longer low-tax, small govt) won’t just say “hey we are for legalizing it too” as young republicans tend to not care about it being legal or not. The most accurate poll you could do is just “should marijuana be legalized” and then capture the age groups. That’ll tell you all you need to know.
Gun rights are mostly in hands of SCOTUS now and Republicans did exert a lot of effort to get their candidates there, though in a context of a more general power struggle.
Mississippi currently takes the right to vote away from 10.6% of it's voting age population (worst in the country), and 16% of it's black population (3rd worst in the country), due to past felony convictions. And there are many ways to earn yourself a felony in MS, often for things that wouldn't be elsewhere.
While there are both legal and legislative attempts to change it, as of now:
Mississippi currently has no provisions for re-enfranchising those with a past felony conviction, other than by a direct act of the legislature or governor for that specific individual (which is very rare).
Steal $1,001 of stuff when you're 18 and you'll likely never get to vote again in your life even if you never have another encounter with the wrong side of the law.
Got nothing to do with myself. I self-hate myself for lots of other reasons than having grown up in a particular place, as does anyone with a modicum of self awareness.
There's a lot of things I love about Alabama. Even the state government occasionally gets things right, like universal pre-K. But they have a long way to go.
I lived in Vicksburg MS in the late 80s. Went to vote with my dad once, we had to drive out into the middle of the boonies to do it. I asked him “why did they put the voting place way out here?” We lived closer to the city, most black people in our district did as well, so they put the place to vote in a place where you would have to drive 30-45 minutes to do it.
I was talking about the historical disenfranchisement. Although some argue that the disenfranchisement of felons is similarly motivated, especially considering how easy it is to get a felony in Mississippi
When will we start seeing legislation forbidding employer discrimination against legal cannabis users in the form of drug tests?
No one cares if you've had a drink over the weekend, on your own time, as long as it's not affecting your on-the-job performance. Some companies have parties where alcohol is served, and going for drinks after work is quite common.
Yet so many companies require you to take drug tests before you get hired (and some have regular on-the-job drug tests), to prove you haven't used cannabis in the last 30 days -- even in states where it's legal, and even if you have a prescription for it.
This is obvious discrimination, and I hope one day the law recognizes it as such and forbids it.
Pennsylvania seems to have started pushing towards that in the middle of last year:
"On Aug. 5, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania held for the first time that Pennsylvania's Medical Marijuana Act (MMA) allows an employee to sue his or her employer for taking an adverse employment action based on the employee's status as a certified user of medical marijuana."[1]
The biggest barrier here is testing, IMO. There is no reliable way to tell if you are under the influence of marijuana _right now_. The only way an employer can guarantee you are sober while working (to shield themselves from liability) is to give a traditional drug test.
Are there reliable ways to tell if you are under the influence of other drugs other than alcohol? Can a similar test be provided for opiates, hallucinogens like DMT and other substances? Cocaine won't show up after a few days, but MJ will show up for weeks after usage.
Most hallucinogens are actually pretty reasonable when it comes to testing. Between the reasonably long effects, and the relatively short period where you won't piss clean, you can pretty much use a standard urine test as a test for being under the influence.
The key issue we have is that there are somewhat accurate-ish tests to check for acute and past alcohol usage, as well as defined impairment levels, but for THC we have neither breathalyzer-style tests nor impairment level standards. FWIW it's not even clear if blood should be tested for active THC, for byproducts or waste products.
That makes dealing with MJ impairment a bit of troublesome for companies... I agree that there should be no mandatory drug testing for a lot of employers that currently require one, but everything involving machinery should be allowed to have stricter standards.
> If you can do the job it shouldn't matter (and it's none of their business) if you're using a drug.
The thing is, there is no such thing as "can do the job" for operating machinery. We do have thresholds for allowed impairment from alcohol - e.g. in Germany it's if you cause an accident or show impairments of any kind with > 0.3‰ or get caught even without symptoms (aka random stop-and-blow) with >0.5‰ gets you an infraction ticket under §24a StVG, everything above 0.5‰ gets you a criminal DUI charge under §316 StGB.
These are pretty much generalized thresholds established over decades of research, and even then these lack fairness - as someone used to a liter of vodka a day will be walking straight if he only has 1l of beer, whereas your average random person won't be able to drive safely after the same amount of beer. And someone who has had only six hours of shit sleep, there is no detection at all assuming the data recorder of the truck shows that the driver has not operated it in the last 11 hours. But: it's the best we have.
For weed and other drugs, we don't have any kind of data to base a decision like "can you operate a vehicle/machinery" safely on, there is absolutely no way or standard to test for the physical ability to drive in any way and "self-assessment" of impairment state will always be notoriously unreliable. That is the problem.
I get it for machinery, but I got tested when I got a SWE job a few years ago at a BigCo. Like yes I get that you have a portion of your workforce on the ground and you need to drug test them, but come on I'm some dude sitting in his living room coding, I don't think safety is applied the same way in my "workplace"
By the way in some countries where medical marijuana has been legalized it still is practically impossible to get a prescription (because all doctors are radically conservative and don't believe in medical marijuana) and even for those lucky to get it prescribed it can be 2-5 times the price of high quality black market weed.
Australia is the poster child of this, and it's not because of "radically conservative doctors", it's because the government makes both doctors and patients jump through a series of narrow hoops to qualify.
Australia is also a fairly conservative country in many respects, so these requirements (which are definitely conservative sounding) don’t surprise me.
I got to tour that place in high school! Lived across the street for a while from the guy who ran it, too. They were hardcore evangelicals, his son tried to burn my D&D books one time. Fascinating place, definitely worth the visit, don't lean on the fence and remember they'll walk you past sniffer dogs on the way out.
>There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all the societal and family ills that that brings.
Wow, they really want to keep the liquor, tobacco and pharmaceutical industry going as long as they can. There are a lot of professional workers that smoke marijuana, business owners, successful artists, etc. The devil's lettuce might not be for everyone, but how can these people be anti-vaccine mandate (pro-choice) while still trying to prevent marijuana legalization?
My understanding, from knowing someone close to these political circles, is that there is a conflict between the religious faction and the individual-liberty faction. So whenever that gets resolved, we will see further movement on that front.
>The devil's lettuce might not be for everyone
It’s not for me. Neither is alcohol. Doesn’t mean I think it should be illegal. I don’t get why other people have this attitude about keeping things illegal simply because they don’t personally get enjoyment out of it.
They can cheat, lie and steal but as long as they ask for forgiveness they believe they are more pure than an honest pot smoker. I look forward to the day where most religions are classified as a mental illness. The fact that psychology has kind of made this exception makes me think the whole industry is pretty messed up.
Survivor bias: There are plenty of ways to consume pot that don't "stink up the place" (vaping, tinctures, and edibles among them) that are preferred by many. You're only smelling the weed from people smoking in specific ways. My brother-in-law's house smells like weed the second you step inside but is a perfectly unsmelly suburban home from the even the porch.
Part of the lack of Federal push is because many individual states/industries have interests in it not happening.
And one thing about the way the US has things set up, the States often function as the laboratories for social experiments. That's why you get things like Colorado being the first to legalize weed and Texas attempting to soft-ban abortion.
...yes, and we had to fight a whole war about that.
I cannot think of politically backlash stronger than "and then we went into Civil war about that topic, with the victors of the war settling the matter".
What point are you intending to make? That individual states/industries do not have the political power to influence a discussion at the Federal level?
And because of that impending banning of slavery, the South decided to bolt, instead of wait for the westward expansion of non-slavery friendly states to be added to the government.
> but how can these people be anti-vaccine mandate (pro-choice)
The context of “pro choice” referring to abortion is not the same context as “pro choice” referring to vaccinations.
Abortions do not affect anyone else, certainly not physically relative to the woman going through the pregnancy. Infectious diseases do affect everyone else. Using the term to equate the validity of the two positions is incorrect and misses the reasoning.
The pro life people don't see any difference between a 4 month old fetus and a 4 month old baby. They are both lives worth protecting. If that's how you see the world, then an abortion certainly does affect somebody other than the woman.
You are spouting dangerous nonsense. The data is overwhelming, and every death that could have been avoided, of which many are documented on social media is a tragedy.
They probably should legalize, control and de-crime-cartel the illegal cocaine industry, it would lead to better outcomes than the war on drugs. Less death, less negative medical outcomes, less load on the health system directly and indirectly through less criminal violence.
I wish so much to label OP as simple bored troll, since its so glaringly wrong on so many fronts. Then you go out in the woods (doesn't have to be literal backcountry trip) and you actually meet this kind of people who think like that.
And you see some have pretty respectable jobs and are actual part of society, not some outcasts hiding with tin foils in corn field. Any society in this world in some way. But you can't talk to them about simple, factual matters. Forget persuasion, even discussion is all but impossible.
I'm not denying that the vaccine is useful, but statistically it's _only_ beneficial to older people.
> They probably should legalize, control and de-crime-cartel the illegal cocaine industry
If the conversation goes as far as legalizing cocaine, then there is absolutely nothing to discuss. Cocaine is a highly addictive drug and I just can't express enough how many lives it took away.
> You are living in the 1950s or something.
I was born in 80s, there is no way I can live in 50s.
> At 20-something he switched to pills, a few more years later - heroine.
As someone who never used marijuana, used to be strongly against it but now think we should consider legalizing it[1], isn't a major reason for this that because of laws against marijuana anyone buying it has to establish relationships with illegal drug dealers?
Wouldn't this be much less of a problem if marijuana was sold over the counter in a pharmacy?
PS: I had a good friend die of heroine. I too care about this stuff too even if I (now) approach it from the other side.
In which sense? Weed has massive margins. Legalization means less competition, lower prices. It will simplify the process of selling, but nobody's in this "business" just for fun. They want to make money.
Legalization will indeed raise the gov's budgets due to taxation.
> Wouldn't this be much less of a problem if marijuana was sold over the counter in a pharmacy?
No. When a substance is allowed for everyone, but someone (eg school students), then it's even a bigger problem. Marijuana usage in public US schools is a massive problem. Teens find ways to buy and sell the drug. Legal marijuana will only worsen their fragile brains. It's a cultural problem, after all.
> How do you define uselessness? What's the metric?
Despite the billions we have poured into fighting illegal drugs across all western countries they are sold nore or less openly a few hundred meters from here.
> Legalization means less competition, lower prices. It will simplify the process of selling, but nobody's in this "business" just for fun. They want to make money.
Exactly.
Organized crime has massive overheads (bribes, protection, losses due to raids, probably more).
The moment someone starts selling at pharmacies their illegal marijuana market collapses even if government adds a fair tax on it like many governments do with tobacco and ethanol.
> No. When a substance is allowed for everyone, but someone (eg school students), then it's even a bigger problem. Marijuana usage in public US schools is a massive problem. Teens find ways to buy and sell the drug.
All this holds true for ethanol as well and yet all western countries realized almost a century ago that the attempted cure was worse than the disease.
We still deal with people abusing it to the point were it hurts their families, themselves and society but at least deaths due to methanol poisonings are down and there's one less lucrative market for criminals to tap into.
I'm not saying this is easy.
But after being a supporter of though-on-drugs policies for 20 years (since I was 15 and formed my first such opinions) I have changed my views.
Not because I wanted more people to get stoned or because I want it myself but because I cannot see any good end in sight.
Yes this is the truth its not a Gateway drug but you have to buy it where other drugs also are sold, sometimes they might not have weed and you try a pill instead. If we are going the illegal road then ciggarettes coffee and alcohol also gotta go, but come on let people have some fin ffs
I hate dealing with dealers but there is no other way to get weed. Shady dark corners, pushy paranoid characters, just to buy a bit of herb that grows wildly on slopes of himalaya for millenia.
Once dealer tried to push cocaine to me instead of weed pretending he didn't understand, sent him away. That's the only gateway situation I can actually imagine for weed, otherwise its nonsense in same vein as alcohol is.
so… your brother in law used opiates for 14 years until he overdosed on heroin, and you’re blaming weed? I’d say a family that didn’t help him successfully overcome his 14 year addiction is a more plausibly causal relationship, which is also absurd to suggest.
I'm not even pro cannabis - I recently decided to go completely cold turkey since I realised I was essentially self medicating for other deeper issues and cannabis just gives me brain fog - but I think your comment is pretty nonsensical.
If your brother in law transitioned from marijuana all the way to heroine, chances are his drug abuse was a symptom of deeper underlying problems, not the cause. The solution is education, not criminalisation.
You can't legalize marijuana while education is subpar. It has to be done the opposite way. Also, why to legalize something that is harmful to your body and brain [1]? I mean, there are SO many publications about it.
Easy to justify that one: the amount of deaths prevented from gang crime attributable to cannabis trade would far outstrip any potential harm caused by legalisation.
Besides, that's not a good way to look at it. The better question is why criminalise an activity that does no harm to others?
> There are a lot of professional workers that are on cocaine, business owners, successful artists, etc. Does that mean cocaine should be legalized? Absolutely not.
I think you are very wrong. I think there should be safeguards such as improper commercial storage should be unlawful. Similarly, distribution (sale) to minors and without proper packaging should remain against the law. However, I find no logic in trying to ban any substance from an informed consumer in a world where alcohol and tobacco are legal.
> In contrast, the majority of anti-vaxxers (not the crazy ones talking about microchips) ended up being more or less right with their decision.
I think they are idiots. As far as I know we don’t have any deaths because of the vaccine. It is safe. Maybe it could be more effective and I’m sure we will have better vaccines with time but there is no reason to not take the vaccine now and a better vaccine when it is available later.
> Similarly, distribution (sale) to minors and without proper packaging should remain against the law.
That will only worsen the situation in the US public schools, which is already a massive problem. If a substance is allowed to your dad, why can't you buy a bit from your classmate Joe?
> However, I find no logic in trying to ban any substance from an informed consumer in a world where alcohol and tobacco are legal.
That is a separate problem. Let's not put them all in the same bucket. There is no need to minimize the importance of what I said by bringing up other problems. Let's focus on marijuana.
> I think they are idiots. As far as I know we don’t have any deaths because of the vaccine.
Older people - yes. Younger people - no. Check the stats, as well as the side effects probabilities. They are so low that there is no reason to compare. That is EXACTLY why CDC wants to go the natural immunity route now.
> The smell of marijuana is the worst. It spreads like cancer and you can smell it blocks away
It is relative. Pollution also smells bad and so does cigarette smoke. I don't understand this argument at all because there are different methods for consumption. How about we ban farms since they smell.
> Uneducated people start from marijuana and then look for other "fun" things to smoke
No they don't. You are just equating a bad personal experience and they stereotyping everyone based off it. Marijuana is not a gateway drug. However, people being poor and impoverished without adequate help and services often use drugs.
I actually agree on the vaccine comments for the most part but think the rest has little evidence to support, unless you're talking about Reagan science and the D.A.R.E. propaganda about marijuana making your balls shrivel up. If you don't trust your government with mandates then maybe try reevaluating your perception on marijuana. Take a trip to Colorado and try it out if you don't have an underlying mental illness and if you turn into an asshole while you're high then you were most likely one beforehand.
> Yes, I do believe it should or at least decriminalized. There is much more danger in illegal drug trade and a dysfunctional uneducated society.
Once again, similar to what I said to the other commenter. Fix the uneducated society first. There are much more uneducated weed smokers than educated ones.
> Not any recent ones unless you're talking about youth. There are studies that show marijuana can improve brain function and capacity.
Erm... I'm a HN reader for 8+ years. There are a handful number of research papers reach the front page several times a year.
THC is able to alter the functioning of the hippocampus (see "Marijuana, Memory, and the Hippocampus") and orbitofrontal cortex, brain areas that enable a person to form new memories and shift his or her attentional focus. As a result, using marijuana causes impaired thinking and interferes with a person’s ability to learn and perform complicated tasks. THC also disrupts functioning of the cerebellum and basal ganglia, brain areas that regulate balance, posture, coordination, and reaction time. [0]
Marijuana has been even linked to schizophrenia development [1]. Let's for sure legalize it.
Do arguments like this withstand any scrutiny? Recreational marijuana isn't some crazy idea anymore. Are families falling apart in states that have legalized pot?
So, how long until we get a proper hemp paper industry? As the legal issues wane, it seems like the only remaining obstacles to higher quality paper at a lower price are industrial process and marketing issues. Seems like an industry ripe for disruption.
IDK, in countries where industrial growing of (low-THC) hemp is a thing and hemp gets used for manufacturing products, it is not "higher quality paper at a lower price", it's still a niche product for specific uses (e.g. as cigarette paper) because it's not cheaper. IIRC growing/harvesting/processing of the fiber is quite similar to linen, and so the resulting product costs are comparable to linen cloth, not wood pulp paper; industrial hemp gets used in ropes and bags but gets only limited application as paper even if it's fully legal to try.
You can get thc infused rolling papers. But most of them create the paper traditionally or with nationally legal hemp, then infuse them with thc extracts from completely different plants.
That is to say, there is no correlation with hemp paper and thc infused paper. They come from different plants and as a consumer you want them to because the different plants can be specialized to their purpose.
This is actually why I like the hemp farm bill and the proliferation of cannabinoid isolates. I can now mix-n-match my cannabinoids to create different effects, its absolutely wonderful. I'm not beholden to any specific 'strain' or chemovar
Processing hemp for fiber is an absolute bitch; and the market for the fibers isnt big enough to create a market for the processing equipment which could make the fiber cheaper and grow that market and...
Dunno what might kick it off make it viable: new boll weevil, perhaps.
Did you see they also changed the flag? Never thought I’d see the day. When I was a teenager growing up there, there was a big conversation about the flag (don’t remember why), and it seemed at the time impossible that it would ever change.
"The flag of Mississippi features a white magnolia blossom surrounded by the words "In God We Trust" and 21 stars, on a red field with a gold-bordered blue pale. It was adopted on January 11, 2021 and replaced the previous flag that displayed the Confederate battle insignia in the upper left hand corner, which had been retired on June 30, 2020."
That only works for the simplistic image of abortion (elective, easy, painless, risk free) that the evangelical death cult has been pushing. It doesn't work for the actual medical reality. The disconnect between the two is staggering, and if you don't know what I'm talking about you owe it to yourself to look into the details of the actual medical procedure. It is not elective, easy, painless, or risk free.
And while I support encouraging people to travel to route around their oppressive backwater hellholes, the ability to do so doesn't mean we should support places regressing towards being oppressive hellholes.
Yes, people there, generally, are less overtly racist and bigoted, and there is some cool infrastructure, but it trades in rural isolationist prejudice for tech-tainted delusional world building, at the cost of its once beautiful community and culture. Austin is scary, I have never lived in a city that so clearly feels like it has a mind of its own, that changes so much and so explicitly that when you go back to visit your old home, it is literally unrecognizable, everything it once was just poofs away in a year.
After living in a number of cities since, I understand just how weird Austin is, but not in the way it was "weird", wants to be weird. Its now like if a Stepford wife was a city: some totally flawless shell wrapped around a void. Its like if a Tesla car was city, which is perhaps a more apt similie, where it rides off its popular sentiment alone while the internals are shoestring, or at least questionable.
It trades in explicit Texas politics for extreme and swift gentrification, and a, at this point, willful neglect of social services for the communities they've, in part, helped displace. There is little love in Austin now, no matter how many granola eating hippies can still afford the rent. Most of that place is gone, or quickly dissapearing.
Give me Houston, which has comparable politics in the inner city, and the best museums and food in the state. Give me San Antonio, even, which is a more humble, but at least human place, and that does have better breakfast tacos than Austin. But Austin is gone.
I dont think the enthusiasm and attention it gets is going away anytime soon, and people will continue to move in, and it will get "cooler" in the eyes of every google employee that resides there. And property investment will continue to churn, like crude oil in a Kitchenaide. But it has gone crazy, and I see no hope in it going back, its too big to fail, and that is maybe the whole problem.
Say anything about "extreme and swift gentrification", but that's a side-effect of success. At least Texas does not have the restrictive zoning and NIMBY politics that make gentrification so much more of an issue in Blue states.
Unfortunately, Austin is utterly rife with nimbyism, and even worse, whatever the inverse of it is: new people moving into fancy apartments downtown, and then being angry that they hear the loud music so late at night, from the venues that were there way before them! Retroactive nimby? The venues that have survived are still good, but so so many were lost to residential development. Don't even get me started!
It was a few years ago, but even the nationally recognized, Beard-award winning bbq darling Franklin BBQ was going to be affected by smoke ordinances, because the new development that cropped up around it, and the existence of lots of bbq smoke. Not sure what came of it, but people were quite vocal.
Does anyone know if a state hasn't legalised medical marijuana, can medicinal marijuana (such as Marinol) be used in an ICU setting?
I've heard marijuana is sometimes given to children diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome after their 3rd surgery (Fontan) to encourage them to eat.
I've also heard medical marijuana is sometimes given to children diagnosed with Kabuki syndrome (and other syndromes) to help with seizures.
Would these two cases only be allowed/legal in states that have legalised medical marijuana?
I loved it as a teenager, but it's... aged poorly. IDK, maybe that's not fair. I am sure my standards have improved quite a bit since then. Certainly, if you like campy, cheesy sci-fi and don't mind some community-theater grade acting in the first few episodes, it'll be right up your alley. It's not as bad as, say, Tremors (same era, shlock sci-fi), but it's also not a prestige series like Star Trek. It's probably somewhere between Stargate and Farscape in terms of quality.
From what I remember, it started out promising, but very quickly devolved into cartoonish camp where every parallel world had a silly theme like "Halloween world" or "America is still British wot" world. And then there was plot arc about Cro-magnons trying to take over the multiverse.
I will agree with the other comment that it's between "stargate and farscape in terms of quality" and also point out that it's a great comparison and a glowing recommendation.
If you go into it expecting 2020s era prestige production, you will be disappointed, but if you liked the 90's SciFi channel it's fun. That said, not every episode is good, and ymmv.
Cannabis should be regulated no differently than tomatoes and cucumbers. It's great to see this baby step, but unfortunately a lot of medical states still gatekeep access way too aggressively. Everyone deserves access to this medicine. The rigid control framework ends up making it hard for producers too, and ultimately only the wealthiest investment groups are typically able to license/survive.
You surely mean CBD?
THC is known to have adverse effects, it's definitely not the same as a cucumber.
"Acute and chronic use of cannabis is associated with different harmful effects on central nervous system and peripheral system including hyperemesis syndrome, impaired coordination and performance, anxiety, suicidal/tendencies, psychotic symptoms and mood disorders, cannabis withdrawal symptoms, exacerbation of psychotic disorders, neurocognitive impairment, cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, cerebrovascular, peripheral vascular diseases (Thomas et al., 2014; Karila et al., 2014), pneumomediastinum, pneumothorax, pneumopericardium, bullous lung disease, increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, desquamated interstitial disease, and appearance of brown pigmented macrophages (Milroy and Parai, 2011)."
source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2019.0148...
Those effects are FAR FAR less than alcohol or tobacco.
Alcohol causes some 40k/yr deaths (US) from liver alone, plus some 10-20k road impairment deaths, while lung cancer around 140k/yr.
Yet even states with MMJ treat it as some terrible danger where you need guarded stores, special certification, and mountains of laws, while any schmuck can buy the actual dangerous stuff with only an age check.
The substance is not the threat; the legislatures are.
Unless they meant the devil's cucumber, otherwise known as "zombie cucumber"..
> Datura intoxication typically produces delirium, hallucination, hyperthermia, tachycardia, bizarre behavior, urinary retention, and severe mydriasis with resultant painful photophobia that can last several days. Pronounced amnesia is another commonly reported effect.
> The onset of symptoms generally occurs around 30 to 60 minutes after ingesting the herb. These symptoms generally last from 24 to 48 hours, but have been reported in some cases to last as long as 2 weeks.
You can buy THC gummies and THC vapes in certain Alabama gas stations now as well. I have no idea how this works legally though because it was only relatively recently legalized for medical use here. Must be something to do with some CBD-adjacent regulation that snuck in during COVID.
The stuff I am talking about lists a percentage of THC on the packaging and people are buying it almost exclusively to get high.
I was dubious at first too, but I have talked to several people who have used them and they say they are getting a THC high, and the packaging even communicates the THC content.
But I have no reciepts. It could be an entirely illegal Enterprise given the proprietor.
> Just to be clear though, this stuff won't get you high like weed
You are absolutely incorrect. From a psychoactive perspective, delta-8 is pretty much indistinguishable from pure THC (a.k.a. delta-9). In my experience the difference is mostly about quantity; it takes about 30% more delta-8.
Unfortunately -- and this should be made absolutely clear -- that unlike cannabis itself, there has been little use of delta-8 THC throughout human history.
Its recent use is a sad consequence of the government making a relatively harmless compound illegal and driving users to use novel compounds with unknown (or even averse) safety profiles.
The long-term effects of delta-8 THC use are currently unknown, and you are basically volunteering to be a guinea pig by using it.
Much safer to use cannabis itself (and ideally grow it yourself, so you really know what you're getting).
That's probably it. I don't know enough about the product or THC chemistry pharmacology to say, but I've talked to some users who say they got a THC high from them, one of which was my mother who thought it was a cbd product when she bought them.
"There are also those who really want a recreational marijuana program that could lead to more people smoking and less people working, with all the societal and family ills that that brings."
The only entity that can end prohibition altogether is Congress. When they setup the drug laws, they made them so that there would be a massive chain of signoffs, and so that any single unreasonable person could stop the whole thing.
This flowchart makes it seem way more difficult than it actually is. The USAG and the Secretary of HHS both serve at the pleasure of the President. Biden cannot unilaterally reschedule marijuana but he can tell the USAG and Secretary of HHS to do what it takes to reschedule it.
Biden pretending he can't make this happen is equivalent to Tim Cook pretending he can't get Jeff Williams to do something. Everyone ultimately responsible for changing the schedule ultimately reports to Biden.
Its government was a staunch defender of slavery, the later Jim Crow laws which mandated racial segregation, Negro voting disenfranchisement; the last to repeal alcohol prohibition; still frequently challenging abortion rights; among other such.
Mississippi is kind of a belle weather for how Southern conservative governments will lean. That Mississippi of all places legalizes marijuana means that it will probably be legalized in all 50 states within a year or two.