This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How much of this is marijuana replacing alcohol as the recreational drug of choice?
Obviously, driving drunk is dangerous and anti-social behavior that some people do anyways. But aggressive DUI enforcement and education had massively curtailed these numbers, and a culture of how to have social drinking without drunk driving had taken root enough to curtail the worst effects. Designated drivers, uber rides, etc. In particular, some of these cultural changes could be pushed a bit more consistently than with pot because social drinking mostly takes place in bars, which can be held liable and can then encourage good behavior with things like free cokes for the designated driver and "we'll call an uber for you". With pot, this is not the case, there's no culture of avoiding driving high and nobody knows how you could push it. I also think pot stays in your system a bit longer than booze, but I'm not sure.
See also my comment about changes to the legal status of weed since 2019.
More options
Context Copy link
I made a new account to post this - opsec and all.
When I was younger I was an everyday smoker. Stoned for years straight. Anyone who is an everyday smoker can function completely unimpaired. Physically and mentally. In fact people on MJ do tend to drive more cautiously perhaps for two reasons. 1) The effects of MJ don’t lend themselves to driving like an asshole. 2) Even today, I imagine people don’t want to be pulled over while stinking like pot. Most potheads will smoke while driving. Bake out a car. Hotbox. Music. It’s a whole part of the lifestyle.
I haven’t smoked in over 15 years. If I were to take one puff today and try to drive it would be extremely dangerous. Without a tolerance it can be severely impairing. I dislike Mj today and wouldn’t partake even if offered in a safe environment. I also think MJ is not safe and wouldn’t allow my family to use it casually.
It’s hard to disentangle how many permastoned drivers are out there today compared to 15 years or so. But if more people are casually smoking and driving. It could have an affect.
I think I recall a Louis CK bit where he said modern marijuana is much more potent than stuff back in the day. Does that ring true to you?
It's been a trend since the '70s via simple hybridisation and selective breeding but since the decrim/legalisation in America what I've seen on social media is people moving from the already strong weed to ever more potent extracts and concentrations, which they then use by eating them (which counter-intuitively gets you wrecked for hours because it's too easy to underestimate and eating it sounds more benign than smoking) or by vaporising them in elaborate "dab" rigs. I guess it's driven by the previously unavailable access to industrial tech like chemical analysis services and the removal of the need to be clandestine. Now you have people on Instagram posing for photos with their kilogram balls of lab refined 98.8% pure THC.
In the '90s you might see a variety of weed that was hyped up on claims of being analysed at ~25% THC (on an ideal sample a single time). Now, at least if you live in a decrim state and my impressions are correct, you can buy all manner of products that are regularly analysed by dedicated professional labs.
You also see more interest in the other cannibinoids now that the labs allow them to be distilled out and separated by people who know what they're doing rather than mad scientist stoners burning down their houses while playing with ether after reading a couple of articles in High Times.
With that said I think there is a separate phenomenon where people spend their youth smoking lots of weed, burning off all the neurochemical novelty and good times and being left with little more than the side effects that were probably always there but weren't very noticeable because they were having too much fun. They blame it on the weed being too strong but it's more like an alcoholic blaming the nausea and broken relationships on brewers putting diesel in their overproof rum. Yeah, the rum is too strong, but if you gave a couple of shots to a teetotaller they probably wouldn't shit their pants and start a fight with a policeman. They'd probably fall over, start laughing and tell you you're their best mate.
The stupid thing about illegal drug use is that people massively disregard dosage. There's a Scott article about Adderal vs street meth where he describes how the dose street meth users are taking is something like 100x more than the typical prescription dose. At that level it's no wonder that instead of studying harder they rip up their floorboards looking for listening devices. Instead people think that doing more = being hardcore, and people ignore that an overdose doesn't have to mean dying, it just means that you experience negative and unwanted effects from having taken too much.
More options
Context Copy link
See this write-up. Anecdotal evidence, but I avoid weed nowadays as it seems far stronger than even seven years ago. The last time I used it was May and it was just unpleasant: full body shivering, anxiety, paranoia, unable to maintain a train of thought. It was like being on ket. I personally know four people who developed delusional/psychotic symptoms in the last ten years after smoking weed essentially every day for years.
I can echo this. I spent about a year in college smoking basically daily (and a couple years prior probably at least once a week). During this period my tolerance had become high enough gradually enough that it was usually at least a mildly pleasurable experience and only mildly disorienting.
A combination of turning 21 and becoming convinced that daily smoking was making me lazy caused me to pivot to alcohol (not a strict improvement in hindsight) and stop cannabis consumption completely.
I have tried it a handful of times in the years since and every time it has made me painfully anxious and disoriented. I attribute this to both a) me no longer having any tolerance and b) only being offered super high potency cannabis. The latter being because either everyone that presently consumes regularly has red-queen's-raced themselves to the point that they require it to feel anything, or the weaker stuff I started out on no longer exists in appreciable, widely distributed quantities.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I remember them claiming that in the 80s. Link. It's an evergreen drug-warrior claim.
It’s a fact, nobody disputes that potency has increased by an order of magnitude.
Which makes it about 112% THC now, right? If people really did usually smoke low-potency ditchweed, it was before most current smokers were born.
The link the other user posted suggests that even in the 90s potency had only reached around 5-7%. Almost all studies around limited risks to high weed consumption revolve around weed of less than 10% THC, a third of the current amount common in legal states. And a doubling in the last decade alone is also significant.
The link I posted claimed 6-14% in 1985. Like I said, this is evergreen drug warrior propaganda and I don't give it credence. I doubt they know the actual numbers and if they did they would lie about it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
70s weed had like 2-3% THC, modern US weed has 25-30%. (In Europe it’s more like 14-16%.) It is literally ten times as potent in terms of the psychoactive ingredient, yes.
The average in the early 2000s was probably 8-14%, so much of that growth is indeed in the last ten years. Unfortunately, states have adopted all or nothing approaches to a lot of weed regulation instead of just capping THC at moderate levels.
It would be interesting to see a weed regulatory scheme for THC (or CBD etc)% similar to how alcohol has a regulatory regime (beer/wine/liquor) that roughly tracks ABV.
I've never bought weed from a dispensary that didn't have that information.
It's just not particularly useful. Too many other factors.
The main difference is that many people enjoy the taste of alcohols of varying ABV, whereas outside of a very small niche of connoisseurs almost all stoners smoke to get stoned. Higher THC is always better for the weed user, since ingested dosage can be altered (although obviously it makes consuming huge amounts much easier) in a way that higher ABV is not always better for the alcohol drinker. I was in the US recently and except for a token 12% strain all flower was 26-30%. Meanwhile beer is always going to have a market over absinthe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Great idea, but I don't think it'll have legs until legitimate dispensaries become so normalised that imposing this regulatory scheme won't drive people back to their unregulated dealers. I know a guy who got a scrip to buy medical cannabis from a dispensary, 100% legal, but still bought cannabis from his dealer because it was cheaper. There are probably millions of people who live in states with legal weed with a dispensary selling quality-tested weed on every corner, but who still go to the same dealer they've gone to for years just because they have a business relationship with him. Until getting your weed from a dispensary rather than an unlicensed dealer is the rule for 80-90% of the people, there's no point imposing additional costs on the dispensary.
Yes, this is why I think a hard cap on production and sale at ~15% THC (high enough to satisfy most consumers, leaving little margin or value in illegal production of higher potency marijuana) would be best. Otherwise it’s an arms race.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Great question, I'd love to know.
In a broad sense, being stoned is less impairing than being drunk. Not categorically - one (standard) beer is less inebriating than several dabs (especially sans tolerance). But, for typical consumption, I think it's clearly the case. The asymptotic inebriation is much greater for booze - people can drive blackout drunk, incapable of telling your their name. Even a hardcore alcoholic is still very fucked up at a certain amount of alcohol. I'd much rather be driven by the typical pothead who hits the bong every ten minutes than by the typical drunk who polishes off a fifth (15 shots) a day, or even the average person after a few drinks.
This is a double edged sword: it's easy and reasonable to say "don't drink (preferably any, certainly more than ~2 units) and drive." But, since THC is generally less inebriating, people are more likely to be stoned frequently/all the time, and this almost requires driving to participate in society. Similarly, I think it's much less acceptable to show up drunk to work than stoned.
A further difficulty is the lack of THC tests for current level of inebriation. It's hard to enforce stoned driving laws when all you can tell is "this person has consumed THC in the last few weeks."
I don't have a policy proposal here - just observing how tricky the situation/comparison to alcohol is.
More options
Context Copy link
Weed is much less predictable, especially edibles.
Alcohol I can predict a reliable time period at which I will be safe to drive home. If I have two beers at the start of the night, eat a burger, and drink water, four hours later I'm fine. If I take an edible, there's no period of time until I sleep through the night where I'm comfortable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link