Growing marijuana on the cusp of legal in NYS

And…

https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/methadone-oral-route/side-effects/drg-20075806

And maybe consider closing the border to stop drug flow at least a bit??? Just saying. Maybe put a dent in human trafficking as well? Ya just never know.

And to the subject. If your in a Medical Marijuana legal state? Or a recreational legal marijuana state. You unequivocally give up your second amendment rights. The question is on the Federal background check. Yes. We have one. If you legally own but a gun it is on the Federal registry. Regardless of the BS spewed. So. Feds currently Trump states. Ammo, bullets, powder, reloading equipment. Legally or illegally obtained weapons etc. Enter here “anything the feds want to use against you” can and will be a reason to arrest you for lying on a federal form or being in breach of a federal law. Good luck.

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Rehab is not something the government provides adequate funding for, and private programs are extremely expensive. How to Pay for Drug Rehab | Does Medicare, Medicaid or Insurance Pay?

I don’t think that someone addicted to drugs is likely to have the patience to wait out a long waiting list in order to get methadone treatment which is not a replacement for the opioid high and only reduces withdrawal symptoms.

Methadone treatment is a completely different topic than full drug decriminalization, but I certainly do believe that those that need it and can’t afford it should be provided access without delay. The sooner someone is on state supplied methadone instead of expensive opiates the sooner a likely violent criminal is rendered a non-threat, all the way around. I expect the investment is rewarded far beyond the initial expense.

Really, the only point I’m trying to make here is that we need to look at solutions to crime, all crime, in a manner that is a lot more pragmatic instead of with Old Testament mentality of revenge- revenge shouldn’t be the main basis and states with the most punitive systems of justice also tend to have the highest levels of crime. This can start with drug addiction because it is less politically charged than other crimes.

Drug seizures in Portugal:

Also there are some potentially severe penalties:
Info from Wiki
Individuals found in possession of small quantities of drugs are issued summons. The drugs are confiscated, and the suspect is interviewed by a “Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction” (Comissões para a Dissuasão da Toxicodependência – CDT). These commissions are made up of three people: A social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney. The dissuasion commission have powers comparable to an arbitration committee, but restricted to cases involving drug use or possession of small amounts of drugs. There is one CDT in each of Portugal’s 18 districts.

The committees have a broad range of sanctions available to them when ruling on the drug use offence. These include:

  • Fines, ranging from €25 to €150. These figures are based on the Portuguese minimum wage of about €485 (Banco de Portugal, 2001) and translate into hours of work lost.
  • Suspension of the right to practice if the user has a licensed profession (e.g. medical doctor, taxi driver) and may endanger another person or someone’s possessions.
  • Ban on visiting certain places (e.g. specific clubbing venues).
  • Ban on associating with specific other persons.
  • Foreign travel ban.
  • Requirement to report periodically to the committee.
  • Withdrawal of the right to carry a gun.
  • Confiscation of personal possessions.
  • Cessation of subsidies or allowances that a person receives from a public agency.

Most of this drug seizures came from Brazil or Morocco… this drug is not to Portugal.

I’ve talked now to an anesthesiologist two times now who wanted to know what schizoaffective disorder and marijuana use does to me. I told him the truth. It does nothing. It makes me more social and happy and I am onto one project and then the next.

He’s been very interested in the pain management properties of it since he graduated. I’d say the guy is 35-40. Maybe 42.

I have zero pain in my shoulder when I smoke after shoulder and hand surgery. W/o smoking marijuana, I have a ton of pain. It simply vanishes…

Marijuana is a social drug and it’s fun & it’s always been that way. I like the fact that it’s stronger…

Dax

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Glad to hear it works well for you. Some aren’t so lucky. A relative uses marijuana daily but can only work part time because of knee and back pain.

It always has; calms my mind too where to the point of there’s nothing going on there. lol. seriously though

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hybrids that are 70% sativa and 30% indica or 60%/40% the same that do not create a psychotropic buzz are what I smoke. It just so happens this is the type of buzz I’ve always preferred.

Pure indica is like someone turning off the lights. The person feels like gravity is pulling them closer to the couch fabric or their feet if they’re standing/working etc-. It also puts people to sleep… quickly.

Pure sativa is the image of a bulldog with it’s face out the window of a car with it’s lips flapping and skin flapping and “Whooosh” coming over them; sativa feels like “zoooooooooooom”. Eventually thru trial and error you find certain named strained that are propagated from the same mother plant infinitively.

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Throw some crushed ice in there;) Its what willy nelson does"))):slight_smile:

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@JimmyM
Jimmy be pimpin up

Dax

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It’s really just a plant. I don’t see all the worry. It’s quite pretty. No one should ever go to jail for it should be the take away here folks….

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Do you have thoughts on this one?

Your son may be familiar with this phenomenon. Pot activists, especially of a certain age, makes claims about pot’s every benefit over alcohol plus many others that are made up. They claim pot cures and prevents cancer. More that giving chemotherapy patients the munchies, it’ll prevent the cancer from coming in the first place!

I run into a peculiar pothead that I grew up with at area stores from time to time. The first time I heard he was looking to get a medical pot card was probably over a decade ago. By then he was no longer working at the chicken farm but had moved on to a furniture warehouse. He was, as usual, high but told me about his plans to apply for a medical card due to some workplace injury. This guy was bright but an underachiever. I’m not sure if he graduated from high school, but his sister went to Yale. The last time I saw him he was telling me he was high as always. In that day he told me that he has learned to communicate telepathically and that his family doesn’t talk at home because they just use telepathy instead. That was just one of the crazy things he told me. Per his request I added him to my Facebook list. He sends me crazy messages from time to time. It’s hard to say whether the pot brought this out of him, but he is probably using pot from the time he wakes up until the time he goes to bed.

I used more than my share of pot in high school, used it sparingly in college, and even less sparingly into my early 20s. I see it as kids stuff. My friend had “cool” parents who grew hydroponic Northern Lights in a spare room at their house. Another indicator that these were “cool” parents is that they went by their first names and not Mr and Mrs. They wound up getting into other drugs and destroyed their relationships with their three kids before trashing/abandoning their house and fleeing the state. Two turned out gay but I don’t think the pot did that, and the kids are otherwise perfectly normal. They aren’t heavy pot users as adults (like their parents were).

Even compared to my time, the late 1990s were peak pot time for me, I think the illicit stuff people use today is stronger. Nevermind the “legal” (since when were we nullifying federal laws?) stuff, which certainly is. If they’d just keep it at home that’d be one thing. Ever since it became “legal” here you’d always smell it from another car or in a store. I couldn’t go to any of the local T Mobile stores without getting a contact high. Three for three. I switched to Xfinity wireless for a different reason but when the Philippine call center rep asked why I was switching and if they could keep my business I told him they would lose my business and blamed the stinky stores. I genuinely am annoyed by it and the time I had my kids with me I was even more bothered, but the Filipino was even more bothered. He immediately got a supervisor on the line who proceeded to ask me which stores I smelled it in. I obliged but I don’t think there’s much the store employees will do. Just as my comment that I had to leave because I can’t have my kids around all that pot probably had no effect, I’m sure a complaint from the Filipino call center would’ve been little more than an annoyance.They get too many potheads in the store to be kicking people out all day. The Xfinity store was free of stinky potheads. Any potential potheads in that store had the decency to not get everyone else high along with them.

If it were me, I’d hire a bunch of Joe Fridees to give these guys (and other violators of rules where consequences are not great, if there are any at all) a hard time with lectures about law and order. Most cops wouldn’t bother but old Sgt Fridee would lecture them. Yes, I know he’s a fictional character. If there’s a way to be sure which cars are producing the pot smell then that’s a good place to start.

Edit: fixing autocorrect

Keep it in the shed by the rat poison

Potency of vaporizor extracts… yada yada yada.
In terms of effects, my Malawi flower will blow away these vape pens.

In the '60’s I had frequent access to hashish from Lebanon and Afghanistan, in the early '70’s Thai stick became a thing. I think today’s pot is only catching up to the best that has always been somewhat available. Increasing potency will increase health risk, so stay away from hard liquor, and choose the right strain of pot for your brain.

You run the risk of dying every day you get in your car, so don’t drive drunk or stoned and you will increase your risk of dying much more that day than if you smoke or drink whatever and stay at home after.

They say there is a huge health risk in eating smoked meats also.

Choose you poisons or diminish your pleasure- but we all eventually die.

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I fully agree, strong stuff was always around. Gas and liquid chromatography was not as accurate back in the day. Its accuracy is sometimes in question to this day for testing THC and CBD or any cannabinoid. But it was mostly outside the us due to federal government’s dislike of it. Or it’s like apples, if you have the tree you give your cousin the box of average ones. You enjoy the best one on the tree. Especially if one had to smuggle those apples far and at great risk. Strong cannabis has always been around. I also don’t see the problem, instead of needing 2 joints for the effect, one just needs two puffs. How is that bad?

It’s like whisky vs beer. Maybe instead of 5 beers you just need a shot.

It would not be possible to get “contact high” from cannabis terpenes (odor) anymore than you would get contact drunk by smelling the terpenes out of a fragrant bottle of wine.

Fair enough, I get that. But my neighbor hates/annoyed the smell of my compost tumbler on occasion; or if I spread manure on my beds. But he still doesn’t get to blanket ban me from gardening, fire me, or put me in jail. I don’t like BO of the guy at the gym either, but I don’t get to kick him out over it. Or the soccor mom that smells like wine Saturday afternoon; not kicking her off the field.

Besides, how about the fact that Anheiser Bush and draft kings are official sponsors of the NFL and are plastered on the tv for kids to see. Or that Major League Soccer is sponsored by Heinieken and Captain Morgan’s Rum. Or the NBA is sponsored by Anheiser Bush, Henessey, and draft kings. Might as well have big bird teaching them about the spread on Sesame Street. This bothers me much more than cannabis.

I don’t care if one bets, drinks, or stinks. But ARE you a hypocrite if you have a glass of wine with dinner? Maybe if you tilt your nose too high while you sip it if you are silently (or loudly) complaining about cannabis. To quote Dylan, “the times are changing”. If we teach our kids it’s no different then apples or comfrey then they will just look at it as grandpas back medicine. Not something dangerous and fun. Think European drinking attitudes VS USA. Specifically towards kids. Have you ever been to a frat party… yikes.

Many mentally ill people reach for the low hanging fruit to feel better or more normal. Cannabis and booze are the low hanging fruit. Does not mean the cannabis or the booze made him mentally ill. It just reflects the fact mental illness is hard to treat and many fall thru the cracks, or could get shot in law enforcement interactions while acting crazy. It’s called self medication and did not cause his craziness.

And hospital and vet “poisoning”. Please for real? If one went to the hospital before “legalization” one could loose their home, freedom, pet, and maybe kids. In the 90s they did property seizures for cannabis. Now one can walk into a hospital for help if they accidentally overdo it on an edible. Or get their dog checked w/out the cuffs on the way out. Of course there is going to be an X percent increase in reported hospital visits or vets. The difference is before one sat it out silently on their own, regardless of the medical outcome.

Think if one lost their kid, home, and went to jail if their teenager got wasted and ended up in a hospital or arrested…
…breaking news, the US has the lowest alcohol poisoning incidents reported in 100 years. Uh huh.

I am glad you recognize that with out pointing it out. Gayness and cannabis have no correlation. No more then gayness and gardening do.:point_left:

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The contact high comment was tongue and cheek. I believe the evidence shows pot to be something that does, in fact, cause psychiatric issues in people who’d otherwise not have anything significant. We’ve had about a decade of this experiment. Reefer Madness, it turns out, was not as far-fetched as we’ve been brought up to believe.

How does not wanting to be surrounded by stinky potheads when I go to the cellphone store, the supermarket, Walmart, or while driving make me a hypocrite in any way? I’m not in favor of public drunkenness, nevermind drunk driving. Somehow most drunks know better than to show up to the T Mobile store reeking of alcohol, potheads are no longer hiding it. It’s uncourteous.

I’d also send Sgt Fridee after shopping cart thieves, people who bring dogs to parks and other spaces (like cemetaries) where dogs are not allowed, and if I was a manager of one of these stores I’d tell people with unnatural hair colors to go home and not return until their hair is no longer purple/pink/etc. I’d even go after people who curse in public or who put up offensive signs like what I saw at Costco the other day (a lovely individual decorated his truck with signs calling people who disagree with him “jerk-ss” and claimed that a politician he doesn’t like has an “empty scrotum”). I realize this makes me a bit of a square to some folks, but I don’t care. The world needs more Sgt Fridee lectures!

Back to the topic at hand. I think I’ve said this already, but if I could grow it outside I would. In my state they’re saying it’s going to be “legal” to grow indoors only. I’m not going to stink up my house for something I’m not interested in using. Even if I was using it I wouldn’t want to stink up my house for it.

Sorry, not you directly. I quit drinking after college. My favorite is being preached to about cannabis by drinkers. As in the general sense. I don know if you drink or not. I should have pointed this out clearer. I was addressing your arguments and the general societal arguments in the same dialog. I apologize for seeming to have directed it at you. Everyone is entitled to their opinion my friend. Then we count the votes.

I do agree that “real” studies show a bad outcome for those all ready suffering mental illness. Especially those with schizophrenia. Just because the cannabis does not help it though, does not mean it caused it. For those not mentally ill it’s still just refer madness. We will have to agree to disagree.

I have seen almost no real studies in America. In fact until 2008 the us government would not approve any studies for cannabis unless it said in the abstract that it was specifically testing for negative affects. No real studies, and I devour the scientific journals on this topic.

The real science is being done in Israel. America is still testing cannabis with weak stuff from u of Mississippi and having people fill out surveys. Nothing like what is being consumed by real people. No blind placebo studies dosing in a medical setting. Isreal says it’s great for seizures, type 1 and 2 diabetes, and autism. As a matter of fact their seizure study in children found that a subset of autistic children responded well to cannabis and required further study. Also that the medicine was most effective in a 1:1 ratio of CBD to THC. Their government is creating novel terpene and cannabiniod profiles and patenting them for autism treatment.

Speaking of patents, how about good old Patent No. 6,630,507. For delta 9 cannabadiol. From the us patent office. It states: granted in 2003 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and covering the potential use of non-psychoactive cannabinoids to protect the brain from damage or degeneration caused by certain diseases, such as cirrhosis.

The government put its money where its mouth is not. I cannot make this up.

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Really nice writing there. Thank you for contributing with writing that is at a professional level- and believe me, that is not a comment I make to most people who happen to write things I agree with. If someone who opposes the legalization of pot writes as well I will compliment them also, hell, I even set a lower bar for that.

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Thanks for the kind words, it’s a passionate topic for me. But at the end, I try to remember we’re all friends, even if we don’t eat the same fruit or grow the same plants.

I do find another topic interesting about cannabis besides personal consumption. It’s the new(ish) use of it in automobile manufacturing. Here is a good read:
https://www.heartland.io/sustainability-news/european-automotive-companies-hemp/

Here are the highlights. Here are 6 European auto manufacturers and some of the parts of their vehicles that have leveraged hemp-based additives over the years.

  • Volvo – Uses natural fibers to cut the use of glass fiber and reduce weight.
  • BMW – The i3 has utilized hemp biocomposites since 2013.
  • Porche – The 718 Cayman GT 4 Club Sport utilizes hemp.
  • Mercedes – C-class vehicles use two dozen parts on each vehicle that leverage hemp.
  • Audi and Volkswagen – One of the original hemp automotive leaders in the early 2000’s.
  • Peugeot – The Peugeot 308 saw 25% weight savings compared to traditional plastics.

It’s not just that more than 6 European auto manufacturers are utilizing hemp. It’s that these companies are finding dozens of different use cases for hemp as an additive to the materials that they’re already using.

  • Body Panels
  • Kick Pads
  • Cup Holders
  • Wheel Wells
  • Dashboard Panels
  • Interior Door Panels
  • Upholstery
  • Seatbacks
  • Door Cladding
  • Foam Seating
  • Floor Insulation
  • Panel Trim
  • Center Consoles

And Henry Ford back in 1941. Cheech and Chong were right. Here’s the highlights:
In 1941, Henry Ford built a car out of plastic from hemp and other plant material that ran on hemp fuel. Why aren’t we driving it today? asks Return to Now.

Ford’s 1941 bioplastic Model T was made of hemp, flax, wheat, and spruce pulp, which made the car lighter than fiberglass and ten times tougher than steel, wrote the New York Times on February 2, 1941.

So I would say to summarize. Cannabis/hemp can and is used to make parts for cars without plastic or metal that is biodegradable. Hemp seed can produce hemp oil to run the car renewably and sequester CO2 as it grows (carbon neutral). It can remediate toxic polluted sites because it locks it in the roots and fibers, then till it back under to sequester soil carbon. And then at the end of the day (if we choose to) it can help us relax and be irie (or in the annoying line at comcast store sorry had to slip it in ha). Happy growing all. :scream_cat:

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