Tag Archives: recreational marijuana use

Why Is The Government Even Involved In This?

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On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the Biden administration is considering a ban on menthol cigarettes. Haven’t they got more important things to deal with? This is happening at the same time states are legalizing recreational marijuana use. I guess the marijuana lobby is spending more money than the tobacco lobby at this point. Also, why simply ban menthol cigarettes, why not just ban cigarettes? All you are doing by banning menthol cigarettes is make smoking less pleasurable for smokers, you are not doing anything to help them deal with their tobacco addiction.

The article at Fox News is actually concerned about the impact the ban will have on President Biden’s election chances in 2024.

The article reports:

The Biden administration’s proposed menthol cigarette ban could become a thorn in the president’s side during the 2024 elections, political operatives planning to run ads attacking him have told Fox News Digital.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initially proposed rules prohibiting menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars in April 2022 to “prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers” and to “help adult smokers quit.” After missing its August deadline, the agency said it remains a top issue, and they are nearing the end of the process.

“Finalizing these two product standards remains a top priority for the FDA,” Brian King, the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, told Fox News Digital. “The posting of both rules on the [White House’s Office of Management and Budget] website means they have reached the final step of review for regulatory documents.”

The proposed ban has faced worries from critics who say it could lead to heightened border problems with Mexican drug cartels saturating the U.S. black market with the prohibited products. Politico reported that it has also divided Black leaders, with some arguing it would lead to over-policing against the community.

The article notes:

“Criminalizing cigarettes as the Biden administration promotes heroin injection sites is bad policy and bad politics,” Brian Colas, a Republican operative and former campaign manager to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, told Fox News Digital. “Expect to see targeted campaign ads aimed at shop owners, law enforcement and those impacted by the pending ban.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Remember when adults had the right to do stupid things without government interference?

Considering Some State Laws, This Actually Makes Sense

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On Sunday, The Daily Wire reported the following:

NBA officials and the National Basketball Players Association reached a new tentative labor agreement over the weekend that no longer penalizes athletes for using marijuana and removes the substance from the league’s drug testing program.

Both parties reached the new seven-year Collective Bargaining Agreement early Saturday morning, which still needs players and team governors to ratify the deal before becoming official.

Recreational use of marijuana is legal in twenty-one states, and medical marijuana is legal in many others. To prohibit athletes from using something that may be legal in their home states makes no sense. I disagree with the legalization of recreational marijuana, but banning the use of a substance that is legal in many states makes no sense.

The article notes:

Aside from changing its position on marijuana use, The Athletic details other negotiations in the tentative agreement, which include allowing NBA players to promote and/or invest in betting and cannabis companies, sign non-gambling endorsement deals with sports betting companies and invest in teams in NBA and WNBA teams via an NBPA-selected private equity firm — among other terms.

According to the outlet, the reversal would go into effect this summer through the 2029–30 season if both parties do not opt out by the end of the 2028–29 season.

The article concludes:

“The Band-Aid has been ripped off in the sports world,” Durant said. “It’s kind of an undercover thing that players use cannabis and use it throughout when they’re actively playing.”

Former NBA players, including Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Allen Iverson, have also been open about their cannabis use, according to Insider.

NBC Sports reported the National Football League reduced potential penalties for marijuana three years ago in a similar deal but did not completely exclude testing for the substance as more states started to legalize cannabis for recreational use — creating a conflict between the league and the law.

It will be interesting to see if this decision impacts the quality of play in the NBA. I do suspect that marijuana might be useful in dealing with the kind of pain that professional athletes deal with. Masking that pain might result in better athletic performance, but it also might result in further damage to whatever is causing the pain. Again, it will be interesting to see what impact this decision has on the National Basketball League during the upcoming season.

 

This Is Not A Good Idea

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On Tuesday, One America News reported that Maryland had voted to legalize recreational marijuana and possession up to 1.5oz for people 21+.

The article notes:

It will also create a path to expunge or re-sentence convictions. In MD, police are ~3x more likely to arrest Black people for marijuana despite equal use among white people.

The article includes the following tweet:

ChudsOfTikTok@ChudsOfTikTok
Missouri voted to decriminalize & have recreational sales of marijuana at a 6% sales tax!! Legalize, Tax, Regulate! Congrats Maryland & Missouri!

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This is NOT good news. In October 2018, I posted an article based on a New York Times story of a man who was addicted to marijuana. Please follow the link to read the entire article. This is not a harmless drug.

The article at rightwinggranny notes:

On October 6, Neal Pollack posted an opinion piece in The New York Times. The title of the opinion piece is, “I’m Just a Middle-Aged House Dad Addicted to Pot.”

The opinion piece details the author’s journey from using marijuana regularly in his 20’s to the realization that he was hooked on the drug.

Here are some highlights from the article:

I started smoking regularly in the ’90s, when I was in my mid-20s. Pot made everything better — food, music, sex, cleaning — and it made nothing worse. I got depressed less often. I laughed all the time.

But I also lost my temper for no reason. Did I yell at strangers in public? Probably. I barely remember, because I was stoned. But I do remember that once, high as a promotional blimp, I got into a bar fight with a former friend and broke his tooth with a beer bottle.

Back when my writing career was booming, I got invited a couple of times to do readings in Amsterdam, a bad gig for a pot addict. Once, after ingesting a couple of THC pills, I dumped a pitcher of water over my head and insulted the Iraqi representative to National Poetry Day Amsterdam. Another time, I pulled down my pants and flashed a crowd of several hundred. If I had any boundaries, weed erased them thoroughly. The boom ended fast.

…In early November (2017), I had the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream of attending a Dodgers World Series game. I spent way too much money on a ticket that turned out to be fake. So high that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked, I started screaming outside the stadium. If I’d been sober, I would have just called the vendor and gotten a refund. That’s what I ended up doing, eventually. But not before security guards surrounded me.

I looked into a car mirror and saw an old man, sobbing over a baseball game. That was the moment I accepted that I had a problem. Three weeks later, I quit.

The author goes on to say that he believes marijuana should be legal. I disagree.

In January 2019 Imprimis reported:

Most of all, advocates have told you that marijuana is not just safe for people with psychiatric problems like depression, but that it is a potential treatment for those patients. On its website, the cannabis delivery service Eaze offers the “Best Marijuana Strains and Products for Treating Anxiety.” “How Does Cannabis Help Depression?” is the topic of an article on Leafly, the largest cannabis website. But a mountain of peer-reviewed research in top medical journals shows that marijuana can cause or worsen severe mental illness, especially psychosis, the medical term for a break from reality. Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly are about three times as likely to develop schizophrenia, the most devastating psychotic disorder.

After an exhaustive review, the National Academy of Medicine found in 2017 that “cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Also that “regular cannabis use is likely to increase the risk for developing social anxiety disorder.”

Legalizing marijuana for any reason will not solve problems–it will only cause more problems.

Does North Carolina Need Medical Marijuana

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In the past, my objection to medical marijuana has been based on the abuses I have seen in other states. Before California legalized recreational use of marijuana and after California legalized medical marijuana, the last four or five pages on the newspapers in California were filled with advertisements from doctors who were willing to prescribe marijuana for pretty much anything from dandruff to a hangnail. The medical marijuana clinics were simply supporting the recreational uses by placing a very thin veneer over the recreational use of the drug. Now, some other problems with marijuana are coming to light. Even as we learn that marijuana has some valid medical uses, we need to look at the downside of legalizing medical marijuana.

On Wednesday, The Carolina Journal posted an article that contained some warnings about legalizing medical marijuana.

The article reports:

Dr. Christian Thurstone, director of behavioral health at Denver Health and professor of psychiatry at University of Colorado, held a media event in October warning North Carolinians not to repeat Colorado’s mistakes surrounding medical marijuana. He was invited to speak by the Triangle Christian Medical and Dental Associations in reaction to N.C. Senate Bill 711, the N.C. Compassionate Care Act.

The bill passed the state Senate 36-7 on third reading in June but did not move in the state House before session ended. A similar bill is likely to be introduced next session and could be considered in 2023.

Thurstone spoke for about 45 minutes and then gave those attending a chance to ask questions.

Thurstone’s main criticisms were that SB 711 allows marijuana in any form for patients, including powerful food products; allows marijuana as a treatment for too many conditions; allows for more than one caregiver to handle the drug; spreads distribution throughout the state, so counties don’t have the option of opting out like they do in Colorado; permits distributors to own more than one center, which led to commercialization of the marijuana business elsewhere; and allows those under 18 to receive marijuana if they have a signature from guardian without specifying safeguards to prevent forgery of signatures.

He said, “This bill is about creating an industry,” and is less about creating a compassionate new form of treatment available.

…Thurstone went through a number of slides showing data about the immediate but temporary bump in those under 18 using marijuana after their bill passed and the more sustained increase of those 18-25 using marijuana (which is now at 32% compared to 23% in the U.S. overall).

Later he spoke about the boom in new powerful products like gummies and drinks that were legally available and advertised. Many of these products and strains have 20-30% THC, which is 10 times stronger than traditional marijuana which had 2% or 3% THC.

The “concerns” section of the speech was subtitled “cars and kids,” as those were the two main areas he said N.C. should keep in mind. For cars, he mentioned a spike in traffic accidents where the driver tested positive for marijuana, rising from 9% in 2009 to 21% in 2019 in Colorado. And despite jokes that high drivers are better because they drive slower, he said the evidence shows they have twice the risk of car accidents, due to difficulty staying in lane, slower reaction times, more weaving, and worse attention and distractibility scores.

Medical marijuana is not compassionate. It creates more problems than it solves. The explosion of vape shops in the state in recent years has as much to do with the increase in vaping as it does the idea that when marijuana becomes legal for medical use (and then for recreational use, which will follow), the shops will already be in place.

Make no mistake–medical marijuana will follow a path very similar to Oxycontin–it may begin well, but it will not end well.