Canada's incoming Cannabis Legalization

[airENOwevEr778]

On 12/10/2018 at 5:26 PM, deenagood said:

Netherlands displayed positive results from drugs legalization, Canada won't be an exception. Medical marijuana has multiple advantages and health benefits, and recreational weed is not worse than alcohol and nicotine, just my opinion.

I totally agree with you. Like nicotine, marijuana has long been used for different purposes and through different ways. I guess the advantage we have now is that we know how to limit or be more cautious in using them. I'm pro-vaping for instance, since it's able to adjust the quantity of the nicotine or cannabis (oil) that you can add.

[theoowston]

Alternative medicine is more accepted nowadays due to its promising results unlike pharmaceutical medicine, alternative medicine doesn’t give a negative effect such as kidney and liver problems when it comes to long term use. As for my alternative medicine usage, I use medical marijuana. The different strain has a variety of uses and effect depending on your needs. Like this marijuana strain https://www.gyo.green/house-seeds-super-lemon-haze-bst-slh-f.html. This strain has a very potent effect on chronic pains like back pain and joint pain and a lot more.  The benefits of marijuana, specifically the THC cannabinoid, are undeniable. Let's take a look at all of the ways THC is helping patients every day.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, theoowston said:

Alternative medicine is more accepted nowadays due to its promising results unlike pharmaceutical medicine, alternative medicine doesn’t give a negative effect such as kidney and liver problems when it comes to long term use. As for my alternative medicine usage, I use medical marijuana. The different strain has a variety of uses and effect depending on your needs. Like this marijuana strain https://www.gyo.green/house-seeds-super-lemon-haze-bst-slh-f.html. This strain has a very potent effect on chronic pains like back pain and joint pain and a lot more.  The benefits of marijuana, specifically the THC cannabinoid, are undeniable. Let's take a look at all of the ways THC is helping patients every day.

You're partially correct. Things like Cannabis can indeed work well as medicines and has fairly low downsides.

 

But:

Quote

unlike pharmaceutical medicine, alternative medicine doesn’t give a negative effect such as kidney and liver problems when it comes to long term use

This is generally incorrect. In fact, most natural approaches can be very dangerous in higher doses, and are also generally far less potent (in terms of the medical treating aspect).

 

Pharmaceuticals to a large degree are based off of known natural medicinal remedies (eg: Aspirin comes from a a shrub originally). They then figure out what actual ingredient in the shrub provides the medical benefit, and they can then focus and increase the potency of that one ingredient, while minimizing side effects.

 

Does that mean pharmaceuticals have no side effects? Fuck no. But realistically, the ones that do have fairly large downsides yet are still used, are still used because there isn't an alternative that is as effective.

 

Cannabis is changing some of that, but Cannabis isn't a wonder drug. It has some very specific promising effects:

1. Chronic pain management - if you consume a high THC content Cannabis strain, part of the effect of getting high is pain suppression.

 

2. Seizure management - high CBD strains have shown extremely good promise at minimizing certain kinds of seizures - also high CBD strains don't get you stoned, because typically they contain little or practically no THC.

 

There are likely other promising uses for Cannabis as well, but those are the major ones I'm aware of. Don't believe someone who says Cannabis will cure your cancer. It won't. But it will help you manage the pain and nausea of traditional treatment and a bonus of increasing your appetite.

[Kawaii Koneko]

Interesting. I wonder if the fact that more and more U.S. States have been legalizing it played any part in their decision. With weed becoming increasingly legal at the state level here, perhaps they are concerned it will just lead to more people trying to smuggle over the border. Instead of spending even more money trying to fight it, maybe they figure they might as well make some money off taxes. Perhaps they are starting to see the war on drugs is futile and just plain silly.

 

I was in Colorado last year and stopped in at a shop to buy some weed. There was a cop sitting in the parking lot. It was the weirdest feeling walking out of the store with a bag of weed in my hand and the cop didn't do a thing. I even commented to the girl working the counter about it and she laughed and said something along the lines of it still doesn't feel real to her.

[Andreas Lilja]

Pretty nothing has changed since then, I believe consumption rate is even still pretty much steady. 

[dalekphalm]

27 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

Interesting. I wonder if the fact that more and more U.S. States have been legalizing it played any part in their decision.

Most definitely it helped. It showed mainstream society that you don't have to be afraid of Cannabis.

27 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

With weed becoming increasingly legal at the state level here, perhaps they are concerned it will just lead to more people trying to smuggle over the border.

I don't think this had much of an impact at all - Canada is a massive producer for the black market - BC black market weed is literally world renown. I'm sure some is smuggled, but I doubt it was any to influence the decision to legalize.

27 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

Instead of spending even more money trying to fight it, maybe they figure they might as well make some money off taxes. Perhaps they are starting to see the war on drugs is futile and just plain silly.

A lot of this is true - in the sense that it was a literal waste of tax payer money to incarcerate someone because they were caught with weed. Plus it was a net negative to the economy for someone to get a criminal record due to weed possession.

 

With a criminal record, your job opportunities are MASSIVELY limited. Most major employers run background checks as a matter of process for every applicant, and it's usually just a "Pass/fail" situation. The person doing the hiring usually doesn't even know what the background check pulled (eg: what crime they committed).

 

And getting a Pardon is a somewhat complicated and pretty expensive process. It used to be somewhat simple, and the fee was like $60 or something. But our former PM, Stephen Harper increased the fee to around $650 - and also increased the waiting period needed before you could apply for a Pardon. That $650 is just the fee to submit the final paperwork. There are additional fees and processes to get all of the required paperwork.

 

And for someone who is by necessity, stuck working minimum wage jobs due to not being able to pass a background check, $650 + a bunch of smaller fees is likely going to be too much for them to afford.

 

Personally, I'm a fan of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. If you broke the law, but repaid your debt to society via serving your sentence and then living a life of no crime? Then you should be forgiven and you should not be handicapped financially or economically.

 

A lot of criminals re-offend simply due to the fact that they often find out that making an honest living is difficult with a criminal record, and that they can make ends meet by doing crime again.

27 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

I was in Colorado last year and stopped in at a shop to buy some weed. There was a cop sitting in the parking lot. It was the weirdest feeling walking out of the store with a bag of weed in my hand and the cop didn't do a thing. I even commented to the girl working the counter about it and she laughed and said something along the lines of it still doesn't feel real to her.

It's rather strange, but in Canada, there's not a massive difference. You see more people smoking weed in public now - but let's be honest, people were doing that for the last several years anyway.

 

The biggest problem right now is that some provinces, like Ontario, have a shit-show of a process in place. At first, we were going to run a Crown Corporation with a monopoly, called the "Ontario Cannabis Store" (OCS). These government run stores would have about 40 locations on legalization day, and that would expand to over 100 within a year or so. They would also be the sole online store as well.

 

Well, our government changed a few months before legalization, and the new Conservative government scrapped the plan, and changed to a semi-privatized system where the OCS is the sole supplier to private retailers, and is also still the sole online store.

 

Here's the problem... the private retail stores still aren't open - and won't be until April... where 25 stores will open. Basically, the government only issued 25 private sale licenses, despite the fact that literally hundreds of private stores are capable of opening up tomorrow.

 

So, yeah. We've had legal weed for coming on 5 months now, and the only legal source is the OCS online store.

 

3 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

Pretty nothing has changed since then, I believe consumption rate is even still pretty much steady. 

There was a spike at first - novelty purchasers who were too afraid of breaking the law before to buy illegal weed. These people simply wanted to see what the fuss was about, and most of them will only ever buy once.

 

The majority of users were already black market buyers, and will simply continue their consumption trends.