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Pot – Weed – Marijuana – Cannabis
That is what is emblazoned on a mailing that we received prior to Christmas. The words are huge and white, followed by “It doesn’t matter what you call it, MAKE IT LEGAL. Immediate action required – send your personalized petition and mail it back today – free!” I looked at my “personalized petition” and it contained the voter’s information printed on the three-fold flyer, of both my husband and I, including our full address, and our voter registration numbers. All we had to do was sign it and pop in the mail, no postage needed! It came from “Make It Legal Florida” in Tallahassee.
It then states that the “form” if mailed, will become a “public record” upon its filing with the Supervisor of Elections, because apparently, it is a planned Amendment. The amendment is titled “Adult Use of Marijuana,” and gives a ballot summary. The big glossy, colored flyer gives some incentives. They are as follows:
- The amendment includes “strict rules” to make sure that marijuana products are clearly labeled, childproof, and not advertised to children.
- It will help combat the “opioid addiction” crisis and free up law enforcement to protect us from violent criminals and sexual predators.
- It will boost our economy and generate more than a hundred million dollars per year in new revenue to fund important priorities such as schools, healthcare, and public safety. The above words in bold were in bold on the flyer, so they took the time to point out the wonderful benefits of legalization of marijuana in the state of Florida.
Where do I begin? I was deeply offended that this organization dove into our County Records and obtained our and others voting registration records. I live in a state that already has a major drug problem. We are known as the capital of the pill-popping clinics, called pill mills. Just Google pain clinics in Florida and the articles are filled with doctors spreading the addiction of oxycodone across the country, reports if numerous arrests of physicians in the business of writing endless prescriptions for drugs, the increased crackdowns on drug distribution, etc. that go back decades.
Combine that problem with a port that is open to illegals and plenty of drugs, pouring in from Mexico and other countries. Then throw in a nation-wide drug epidemic that is stupefying generations into a state of inertia. Inertia, numbness, combined with new laws that many states are embracing, to not prosecute “petty crime”, stealing, whether from stores, homes or people, assault and drug possession… where is this going?
It all started with medical marijuana. People in pain can benefit; who can argue with that? Yes! Let’s relieve those in pain, agree there. We also knew it would be a short leap to recreational legalization and here we are. But wait! Florida’s schools, crime rate, and economy could benefit from this law passing, if we would just give in and see the light, as they pointed out in the flyer!
Who didn’t take a puff in high school or college? The tainted brownie, pot was everywhere, but not legal. Sometimes it was mixed with other “substances” to boost potency. I do remember being foggy-brained as a youth after “inhaling,” a la Bill Clinton, and then being flat out crosseyed by a strange chocolate brownie or a laced joint. We do very stupid things when we’re young. Then we grow up.
Florida is a challenging state. It is beautiful, warm, and also hosts a dark side. Here in the Panhandle, the nightly news is full of drug busts, meth heads, perverts, and suffering. How can legalizing more drugs improve this condition? We know people that hand over their pay to buy pot and beer while their families need diapers and food. Addiction is addiction. Of course, they won’t “follow the rules,” they don’t now!
So far, we are up to 11 states that have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes.
I understand that this is a product that someone 21 and over, might want to indulge in. Fine. We also know about human nature. Look what happened with vaping, a product designed to help adults kick cigarettes. Look at the states that have already legalized marijuana. Their homeless populations have grown, and drug problems have increased. My sister sent me the newspapers from her little mountain town so I can read about the local news. Maryland has just disbursed over a million dollars to her small town to combat the rampant drug problem. This is a tiny drop in the bucket of money that states are having to shell out to fight drug abuse.
Some may say oh, it’s just pot. Let’s take it out of the hands of the cartels. It’s just pot, but Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon are filled with stories of “just pot.” My friend who smoked pot for years has chronic COPD. Her son went on to bigger drugs, was incarcerated for years. It starts with just pot. Headlines of people hospitalized from consuming synthetic pot – who can tell what is what with a can of worms?
I went to CVS today. On the counter was a sample bottle of hand lotion containing cannabis. Pot leaves were on the label. It’s turning up everywhere… even teabags at the local farmer’s market. Can we think a moment about having a society that is coherent, present, healthy, energetic, aware, and vibrant, and not drugged up and unresponsive? Is this not the best deterrent to a burdened healthcare system, or vulnerable homeland security, while promoting healthy families and children and productive employees? Interesting that the flyer included an economic boost to healthcare! I plant to petition this with my local and state representatives, which include Congressman Matt Gaetz and Governor Rick Desantis. I believe they have good intentions for my state, and that doesn’t include more drugged-up and tuned-out citizens.
Published in General
Ha! I didn’t smoke pot OR drink beer. I’ve got you beat!
That is insane. It should make him MORE culpable because he willingly put himself in a state where he couldn’t think clearly.
This is disgusting and a very significant point. As usual, these laws to de-criminalize crime, came under Obama and other liberal leadership. There is nothing that anyone with a shred of common sense would see as a positive. This should be its own post.
The same with shoplifting. Steal less than a certain dollar amount, and the police won’t come.
Which means they steal said certain amount from different stores several time a day . . .
Yeah, that’s kind of my line of thought. Same for drunk driving.
Speaking of drunk driving…we have a way to test for that. We do not have a way to test for marijuana-impaired driving. It is possible to test for THC in the system, but the half-life is such that it does not tell whether the subject is currently under the influence or the drug was used days or weeks before. So, the “impaired driving” judgement is made empirically by the police at the time of the traffic stop. No quantitative blood or urine test. How do y’all think that will work out in court?
Some of the metabolites are active, and if the amount taken was way over a strongly psychoactive dose, the consumer can be under the influence for days.
This is a plant with extremely complicated pharmacology, and the mode of consumption also affects how the drug is distributed. Look up decarboxylation of THC-A and CBD-A.
Newly discovered cannabinoids will probably spawn a family of new designer drugs, and legitimate pharma research:
By comparison alcohol is a very simple drug. It’s soluble in the body’s water compartment and is a general cellular poison, with some toxic metabolites… but we don’t have alcohol receptors whereas we do have a complex system of widely distributed receptors (with many already known genetic variations) for endocannabinoids. There are two major endocannabinoids. Their receptors are quite promiscuous, interacting not just with endocannabinoids and phytocannabinoids but with many similar plant (and synthetic) chemicals.
For example, an alkyl amide in Echinacea angustifolia and E. purpurea binds to CB1 receptors, and this seems to mediate a long term immunomodulatory effect. Another alkyl amide in E. angustifolia inhibits the activity of an enzyme which breaks down the first… and also THC and CBD. Oh, and the endocannabinoids? They’re made from omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids, so if your dietary intake of essential fats is out of whack your endocannabinoid system can’t work right.
Back to alcohol for a minute: When I was a kid we had Pyracantha bushes in the yard. The berries fermented, and lots of (New World) robins would come and get loud, falling down drunk. I don’t know about bees and educated fleas, but other vertebrates like alcohol.
And also with the help of George Soros. I don’t have the time for a full post, but here’s an update with a horrifying example:
The second linked story with Robert Stacy McCain’s emphases:
The suspect is in the wind. Pretty good for a first day in office!
Yes. Organized rings. They hit outlet malls hard. Gee, I wonder what it does to prices.
Thank you for pointing this out. I’m tired of the “but XYZ is legal” argument too.
Unlike other medicines, pot is sold on the upsides, not the downsides. A typical pharm ad has a long list of adverse reactions that may happen, just to the human body. The downsides to pot legalization is that it still requires a regulatory and police force. I’ve read that the cartels actually move here to grow their pot and are pushing more potent drugs. There are still going to be illegal growers, like all the black market side businesses that already operate. And the legal growers want more police enforcement, not less. The taxes collected are not pure profit, money will have to go back in for a regulatory agency, police, and I think there will be a big need for rehab work in the future.
It bothers me that when something is legal, many beleive it is safe. I’ve read that pregnant women are smoking pot to alleviate morning sickness. Bet there is an increase in children needing special attention in school in the future. I also have read that children and pets have gotten into edibles and that isn’t a good thing. Yummy gummies with pot seem a bad idea if you have children in the house.
The DEA’s current classification of cannabis doesn’t make research any easier, nor does the fact that a lot of work has been done by growers and chemists which was mostly targeted at getting high, with the results mentioned above: the stuff on the streets can be really strong.
The related current experience of ER personnel can’t be ignored, either.
That said, my mother is anxious and somewhat demented; when her anxiety winds up her dementia is worse. Like many anxious people, over the years anxiety has come to be sort of like caffeine for her but she managed it with her intellect, which is both declining and tires more easily than it used to, and she’s starting to sundown. Prescription anxiolytics make her vertigo worse.
So far, CBD has been helpful. We started with the preparations obtained on her physicians recommendation which can contain over 0.5% THC. A 15:1 or 20:1 CBD:THC ratio seems to be about the sweet spot with those preparations. She doesn’t tolerate the taste, so capsules are in order. Her physician and I decided that what with her COPD, inhalation be it smoking or vaping would not be a good choice which looks like a smart choice these days.
Dose calibrated topicals with some TCH in them are insanely expensive. Pill size is a problem, so I’ve been obtaining liquid products and filling small gelatin caps. This also permits smaller more frequent dosing than with commercial pills. She seems to need less CBD when accompanied by THC in that ratio, but dealing with dispensaries is annoying and taxation keeps driving prices up.
She also does well with good quality (that’s a saga in and of itself, but there are companies that produce excellent, consistent products) CBD products that contain small enough amounts of THC to be available outside of dispensaries. There is a sweet spot in dosing for each product, which takes some trial and error so for now I’m buying one in particular. It’s a whole plant product, not a CBD isolate though it’s analyzed for CBD and claims 2 mg CBD/drop, and seems to work better long term at lower CBD doses than CBD isolates.
If she takes it twice a day, she needs less per day than with one dose. Her cognitive function seems better with less anxiety, and she’s much more pleasant to be around. There does seem to be mild sedation with excessive doses; I don’t entirely buy the “no psychoactive effects of CBD” but it’s not hallucinogenic or highly intoxicating.
Have you seen pharma ads lately? They may be required to mentionthedownsidessottovoceatlightningspeedattheendofthecommercial, but they definitely sell their products on the upsides.
That is so different than toking up to get high.
Not to mention the endemic cherry picking of research to make drugs look safe and effective.
Unfortunately the cartels are that smart.
In Mexico, circa 2005, the leading four sectors of the economy were
1) Oil
2) Tourism
3) Money sent back to Mexico from workers in USA and Canada
4) Drug money
Each of the above four sectors represented about 25% of the economy. Oil sector goes up and down in its importance tot he overall economy. The other sectors remain relatively stable.
Since the 1970’s, it was common practice for the cartels to clean up one member of their family, send them off to Florida, Texas, Illinois, New York or California and help them charter a bank.
These cartels definitely contribute to political candidates and political parties. It has been said for years that one of the top two cartels supported R politicians and the other cartel supported the D’s. I can assure you that at no time did they encourage the legalization of drugs.
However they do not get discouraged when drugs are legalized. Instead they simply wait for the reaction from the part of each community that wishes to stifle legal marijuana, and then proceed accordingly.
One reason that drugs have been kept illegal is that for decades, American and European banks have been addicted to the huge amounts of drug cartel money that they get to launder.
From a recent discussion about Jeffrey Epstein over on FaceBook: HSBC Holdings is the firm that recently purchased the 20 million dollar mansion now inhabited by the man who oversees the prison guard firm whose guards were employed at the prison where Jeffrey Epstein suicided. ####
I have been following HSBC activities since around 2011. Over the last ten years, HSBC had been found money laundering, funding terrorists, and also Mexican drug cartels. Hillary buried these offenses in 2012 by negotiating the fines HSBC would pay down to a relatively small fine. (It was still a big fine – just nothing relative to the profits. We are speaking in terms of the tens of billions of dollars that the cartels had laundered through HSBC’s auspices. (I think their profit has been 80 billion.)
But according to the DEA, cannabis has no legitimate medical applications. Who are you gonna believe, the government, or your lying eyes?
Darn. I thought that /sarc tag was visible.
Baptists and bootleggers.
Or, in the case of California, the insane taxes passed as part of the legalization effort and bureaucracy… which drive many people back into the underground market.
You haven’t even mentioned the ties between Hezbollah and (at least) Sinaloa and Los Zetas. It’s my understanding that Fast and Furious was an attempt to finance and arm Sinaloa with the idea that they would help keep the other down and inform on them. Of course, the Obama DOJ efficiently decided to use the operation to promote its efforts to ban firearms in the US.
The DEA does not make that determination scientifically. That is the sort of thing you prove with studies to the FDA.
That’s true, and for some, I am not sure what the med is for. But, they do have a list of adverse effects that are noticed and talked/joked about. Pot has a lot of misinformation attached to it, both good and bad.
You could argue that is just what medical marijuana is sold as. As mentioned here also, because it is federally illegal, the pharmacology chemists have not been able to really investigate it, and that is a shame. The DEA gives docs and pharmacists authority to prescribe and dispense drugs, not state law. So, when the public votes to legalize pot medicinally first, that is a big reason you do not go the drug store (although I have seen ads for pharmacies selling the oils).
Pot strikes me most of all for recreational uses, and I think of 60 hippies, but in the last decade or so, the medicinal properties have been pushed. Alcohol can be medicinal also, and sometimes has comically been referred to as such. My mother in law used to say a beer for nursing mothers was a good thing. My brother in law claims his sugar is lower when he has a few beers at night.
I assume medicine was not regulated 200 years ago, and heard smoking took off when matches became available, the portable fire thing is handy.
Maybe I’m stereotyping, but someone who didn’t believe cannabis had downsides seems unlikely to evaluate standard pharmaceuticals on an upside-downside basis, either.
It can be easy to get tribal about using “natural” products — that is, to either fall into the “natural is better” tribe or the tribe opposed to the “natural is better” tribe. The “medicine offers many less-than-ideal solutions to many problems, some of these solutions are ‘natural’ (like diet, exercise, and supplements), some aren’t, and any way you’ll slice it, you’ll probably have to deal with downsides” tribe is a tribe that I would hope many who live with chronic medical problems would fall into through sheer experience, but it’s a tribe with a pretty lousy rallying cry ;-P
Yep. I’m a member of that tribe.