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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8866 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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Er...

Young men at highest risk of schizophrenia linked with cannabis use disorder

Adolescents who frequently use cannabis may experience a decline in IQ over time

Now, before y'all @ me with "correlation is not causation," I don't have any strong feelings about marijuana either way. I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign. Legalized recreational drugs are the ultimate act of privatizing profits while publicizing losses (in the form of negative community externalities), and the tax revenues rarely measure up to expectations. This sounds like a recipe for the exacerbation of a negative trend in the lives of young American men (of whatever color).

I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign.

This feels like it rhymes with the argument that because most gun deaths are suicides, it's net negative for my own well being to own a gun.

It may be statistically correct, but it doesn't justify restricting my liberty to make my own choices.

It may be statistically correct, but it doesn't justify restricting my liberty to make my own choices.

Of course it may justify it, there are situations where your choices are limited exactly on these grounds - like with myriads of other illegal drugs and many other illegal activities, that limit your liberty to make many choices. What are you talking about.

If Harris had simply said she would decriminalize marijuana, I might agree with you. But what she appears to actually say is that she wants to both legalize (a step that implies greater government endorsement than mere decriminalization) and also see to it that young black men are maximally empowered to profit from slinging dope.

For the gun analogy to hold, you would need a candidate promising not only to make gun ownership easier, but also to ensure profitability and a free flow of inventory for aspiring arms dealers seeking to do deals that are currently illegal.

Perhaps legalizing marijuana would have an impact on modern reefer madness rates if there was more of a free market to allow for non-insanity-inducing weed?

To point towards the gun analogy, the market has space for everything from wood-stocked single-shot shotguns and .22-caliber plinkers, all the way to semi-auto .50-caliber rifles and ATF-baiting niche products. Who's to say that the weed market cannot also sustain a range of products with different enough CBD levels to make things safer?

Now, granted, you might still be right that a thorough decriminalization might be enough to achieve this, but we must consider the possibility that the market may have an unaddressed demand for healthier product.

I have had this thought too. If weed was fully legal but THC was capped at where it was in the black market in the late 90s rather than the ultra-potent strains we have now, most people would just buy what was legal rather than relying on the black market.

My province caps THC at 30%, that is generous for flower but is too low for concentrates to make any kind of sense. Ultimately people consume more of the less potent stuff to compensate, or go find the potent stuff outside of the legal market. That's how it's been for me when I was partaking and letting my tolerance build up. I could always reach the same level with flower than with, say, THC crystals, I'd just have to chain vape for 3 hours to get there (easy with the degenerate setup I had).

Guns have valid uses, recreational drugs have less of a claim

In b4 “but what about alcohol” yes that’s also bad but much harder to restrict given yeast and fermentable carbs are omni-available

Alcohol has a pro social use as well.

And cannabis is just a plant you can grow. Easily in fact. It even requires fewer tools and resources than making alcohol.

It even requires fewer tools and resources than making alcohol.

This is definitely false, you can make an alcoholic drink by blending fruits/berries and letting them sit for a few days. No need for seeds, soil, fertilizer, regular watering, sunshine, waiting for the plant to flower, etc.

I've never managed to try it, but the literature on palm wine suggests that palm sap will ferment to a nontrivial ABV (4% or so) in just a couple of hours sitting out unrefrigerated at what I assume are tropical temperatures.

No need for seeds, soil, fertilizer, regular watering, sunshine, waiting for the plant to flower, etc.

How exactly do you get fruits/berries without seeds, soil, sunshine, rain, waiting etc?

You buy them from the supermarket. Obviously.

Recreation is not a valid use? Why? We have a long list to go through if we just start crossing off anything that's not at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid.

Yep. The last thing the black community (or any community) needs is more drug use.

Let's also not overlook how bad the optics are here. "We heard that you black guys like smoking weed". Maybe they should throw in some benefits for 40 ounce malt beverages and scratch offs while they're at it.

The idea is that since drug dealers are disproportionately black, they must have some special expertise that will give them an edge in legal cannabis sales.

Of course, most drug dealers' comparative advantage is in willingness to risk prison and engage in violence to defend their turf, neither of which are particularly useful in sales of legal products.

Surprising no one who gave it five minutes of thought in advance, neither black nor Latino people have, in fact dominated legal cannabis retailing.

Either she didn't get the memo, or she's alluding to some sort of program that privileges black-owned (i.e. mostly white-owned with black figureheads) cannabis businesses.

The idea is that since drug dealers are disproportionately black, they must have some special expertise that will give them an edge in legal cannabis sales.

I think it’s more the idea of reparations. Given the war on drugs has hit blacks harder. They should profit more from the repeal of unjust drug laws, so as to heal their communities from these laws. Or something. I dunno it just feels like more racial welfare giveaways. But that’s the spin.

Yeah she’s alluding to the NYC program that limited licenses to people convicted of weed dealing, but just led to the proliferation of various gray market stores.

Not a fan of marijuana, but I think that Harris is banking on claiming that these young black men will have the economic benefits from legalization.

I would support a law that people who were convicted of marijuana offenses during prohibition have the exclusive privilege of owning legal marijuana businesses now.

For what duration? Eventually they’ll age out of the business. Or is this just a sneaky attempt to reenact prohibition in a few decades’ time?

I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign.

I don't think either Harris or Trump or any particular politician that's running for office has any reason to care if policies they propose would actually benefit anyone. I think the implication of Harris making this a highlight of her campaign isn't that young black men would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, but rather that pushing for greater availability is more likely to cause young black men, as well as people who believe that young black men are disproportionately likely to go to prison for marijuana use, to giver her their votes.

It was a common mode of speculation so far back as high school as to whether smoking a lot of pot made you stupid, or whether the stoners were dumb to begin with.

It makes you stupid. I have seen people who recover all right after years of heavy use. They become snappier.

I can’t speculate on whether it makes you permanently stupider, but in my experience it takes me at least a few months of total abstinence after heavy use before I’m back to my usual intellectual level.

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