stumpy01

Member
New York haven’t legalised it. They’ve de-criminalised it.

I am not entirely sure what the difference is, but there is a difference.

Means they’ve made possession no longer and offence and left the black market intact. You’d imagine it basically legalises self growing.

It’s basically a halfway house. I’m against it because it does leave the black market intact, I just see no logic to that in the slightest.

I’d doubt that decriminalisation will be the end point for NY, they’ll fully legalise in the coming years no doubt.

Legalisation will eventually come here. Unlikely under the tories though. But one government will come along that will be happy to hoover up the tax money.

take the best from other countries and use that

Which is a good soundbyte. But which bits?

From the BBC yesterday 50% of cannabis in Canada is still bought illegally. Anecdotally from friends there those who already smoked still buy it illegally. The customer base for the shops is the middle classes, housewives and tourists. I.e. little has changed on the illegal side and more people smoke and all do it in public.

It’s like that other political thing, brexit, you can’t have your hash brownie and eat it.

I just think the positive arguments made for legalisation are complete fantasy.

Lets look at Heroin in a dutch context. Heroin addicts in the Netherlands can IIRC register and get a safe fix in a safe place. This make heroin addiction very dull and boring. It also kills the illegal market. Add to this the open sale of cannabis meaning kids who want to get high have something easily available to get high on. Add to this the police time saved from not chasing users giving more police time to chase dealers / importers

Result – over the last 20 years the number of heroin addicts has reduced dramatically and the average age increased – showing almost no people are now getting addicted to heroin. completely the opposite to the UK

So that is one clear and obvious benefit to the country of sensible drug policies

I don’t believe the dutch model is perfect – but its a lot better than what we have.

take the best from other countries and use that

Which is a good soundbyte. But which bits?

Different approaches for different drugs

I would go for the dutch / Swiss /. Uragauy / Portugal type approach to heroin. Make it a healthcare issue and set off with harm reduction as the aim. this sort of approach is proven to work basically by making heroin addiction really dull.

I would go for a full regulated market in cannabis – Canada its still new and not settled down but again the evidence is that this leads to harm reduction and takes money out of the black economy. Uraguay is the same IIRC – state controlled market there.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2019/jul/29/ive-seen-how-cannabis-legalisation-works-in-canada-britain-could-do-it-better

thisisnotaspoon

Subscriber
take the best from other countries and use that

Which is a good soundbyte. But which bits?

From the BBC yesterday 50% of cannabis in Canada is still bought illegally.

Customer loyalty is no doubt a strong force! You’d imagine over time, that’ll change.

TJ. Heroin and other ‘harder’ drugs are obviously a very different case, and I agree entirely that their addiction should be treated as a health and social care problem not a police matter. But that’s a small number of users with big problems.

Cannabis, LSD, amphetamines, MDMA etc (add to that list, alcohol, caffeine and sugar if you want) have different problems. There’s better arguments for legalising MDMA IMO than cannabis.

By quality, I presume you mean strength. I bet the actual quality is better, less bulked out with crap.

More that the shops had stock sat on shelves for weeks or months going stale. An illegal dealer doesn’t for obvious reasons.

Of course, another way to look at that figure is a 50% reduction in illegal dope in 12 months. To be fair, that sounds pretty good to me. Plus C$186 tax revenue in the first 5 months alone.

Other way arround (this is combining the 50% stat from the BBC and anecdotal evidence from friends so may be less than accurate). Number of users has doubled, the shops generally supplying new users and the amount of illegal activity remains the same.

TINAS – but the dutch experience shows that you cannot deal with them in isolation. a part of the success in reducing heroin usage is the easy availability of cannabis

I do agree that taken in isolation Cannabis legalisation seems daft – but given the huge amount of the population that smokes it regularly then its obvious prohibition doers not work. so some alternative approach needs to be taken based around healthcare and harm reduction

For me looking at the evidence from around the world a controlled market is IMO the best approach

From the BBC yesterday 50% of cannabis in Canada is still bought illegally.

50% isn’t bad in a relatively short period of time.

Markets need time to adapt, and of course it’s fairly easily and risk free to produce untaxed cannabis and under-cut the legal stuff at a big margin. It will adapt though.

bad idea. Expect a mental health crisis at some point. I expect the illegal trade to continue by offering stronger and more interesting produce.

This make heroin addiction very dull and boring.

You’re saying people get addicted to heroin because of the thrill that it might kill them?

Its certainly a part of it. Read Christine F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_F.

There is no rebellion nor thrill of behaving illegally in going to a dull government office and having a free fix there. Its certainly a strand of the Dutch / Swiss experience that by taking away the rebellion / thrill aspect you reduce addiction. Just a part of the solution.

Edit – not the thrill of risking death but that of rebellion and illegality

Number of users has doubled

OK, I misunderstood that. So you’re saying everyone buying pre legalisation has carried on buying illegal weed and on top of that there’s also an additional 100% increase of users buying from state shops. I’d be interested to read up on that, have you got an article / study?

Cheaper than a council flat with a bypassed meter and slave labour?

I understand the arguments against the war on drugs. I just think the positive arguments made for legalisation are complete fantasy.

It would be interesting to see some actual figures — you make a good point about the black market taking full advantage of criminality throughout the supply chain. But at the same time, it seems likely that the current pricing is probably driven more by what the market will bear than by what the product costs to produce. Plus the fact that if a guy moves in undercutting the current prices he may be enthusiastically encouraged to cease trading by means of the forcible application of hard heavy objects to sensitive body parts — a practise unlikely to persist in a legalised market.

and yes – a commercial grower will be cheaper than an illegal one – economies of scale

Given a lot is grown indoors, under lights using stolen leccy, the costs of the illegal stuff is probably below market rates if they had to pay for the electricity they’re using. I assume if you grow it outdoors it takes much longer to grow and the yields are much lower…

Another “harm reduction” aspect is that by creating a legal market in cannabis you kill the synthetics market completely. that reduces harm.

the synthetics market will continue as it will be much cheaper to buy and is currently much cheaper to buy than the real stuff for the hardup/ homeless people who buy it.

You cannot tell me places like China are going to stop making it.

No but you kill the market completely. No one will buy synthetics on the black market if cannabis is available. That again is the Dutch experience. there simply is no synthetics market there

Given a lot is grown indoors, under lights using stolen leccy, the costs of the illegal stuff is probably below market rates if they had to pay for the electricity they’re using.

The devil is in the details, isn’t it?

I think the main cost would be one of labour: a commercial grower would have to pay the going rate for this sort of work I guess.

I don’t think the cost of electricity or raw materials is terribly significant tbh. I’m not really an expert, but I did a bit of poking around online earlier and figured out that to grow indoors you’d probably want a 400W light per square meter of plants, and that you’d expect 450-600g of saleable end product from that square meter. To produce that, you have a period of vegetative growth where you keep the lights on 24/7 — that might last 6 weeks (depends on the strain you grow). Then you have a flowering period where the lights are on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours — that might be 8 weeks, again dependent on the strain. You also need air extraction for cooling.

Based on that I think your electricity costs for that square meter would be just over £100 for 450-600g, or around 16-21oz in old money. I think someone quoted current street price of £20 per 1/8th oz, so depending on what you grow, and how successful you are in doing so, that £100-ish of electricity might yield around £3000 of sales.

In other words, even if you paid for the electricity, it’s not a massive overhead relative to the current street price of cannabis. Clearly there’s more profit to be had from stealing the leccy, but I bet the main motivation for doing so is more about not having any paper trail for paying the bills than the cost of the electricity per-se.

handybar

Member

I’m sorry, but you have misunderstood my intentions.

Anyway.

Was just listening to radio 2. They said Canada legal weed suppliers can’t keep up with the demand, the quality is poor. And its twice the price of illegally sourced herb. But there has been some reduction in organised crime. They’re only about 10 months in to this. They mentioned anything from one to fifteen years before the UK follows suit. So essentially, no idea.

Interesting listen on R4 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07j59qf

I think the main cost would be one of labour: a commercial grower would have to pay the going rate for this sort of work I guess.

It’s already happening in the UK – & surprise surprise, a Tory was involved…

The Controversy Around Theresa May’s Husband And His CBD Company

This is an interesting discussion, have any of you read The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer? It’s about the benefits and prohibition of hemp and cannibis.
The Dutch system has reduced the amount of users and the amount that they use, which has had many benefits for the society. My experience was that I was a heavy user before I moved there, smoking a 1/2oz a week. I moved just round the corner from High Times, which was open most of the day and would visit few times a week to start with due to the novelty but it slowly went down to once a week as I assimilated into Dutch culture.
The down side to decriminalisation is that organised crime gangs are still the main profiteers, dope is smuggled into the coffee shops where it is then legally sold in small amounts.
It really needs to be legalised to disrupt the cycle. Depending on scale a legal plantation would be able to produce a massive amount without many overheads once established. If it was grown in polytunnels you wouldn’t need to use so much electricity for heating and lighting, these things can get up to 25°c in February in the North. . You can grow up to 2.6 million seedlings in those things on around a half acre site, they would need more space as they grow but at around 25p per plant you could still make a profit or grow them on. They’d be ready to harvest every 3 months!

Given a lot is grown indoors, under lights using stolen leccy, the costs of the illegal stuff is probably below market rates if they had to pay for the electricity they’re using.

They steal the electricity to avoid suspicion more than about cost savings

I think someone quoted current street price of £20 per 1/8th oz,

that’s decent, who’s yer dealer? 😆

about £60/70 a quarter is more likely. I usually pay £50 for 5 gram when the notion takes.

can be had for cheaper obviously if you buy in bulk.

I’d also suggest if canada can’t keep up with demand then it’s probly too early to tell as yet as they haven’t adjusted properly yet. It’s early days there, so really too early to draw conclusions, They’re obviously not the best at spotting an good capitalist operchancity. 😆

Better of looking at the west coast states in america to see how they are getting on i’d imagine. Colorado and Washington have been legal for recreational for a good few years now..

Just the same as with brexit the government plays the gullible and uneducated like a fiddle. A few leaflets here and there, big queues of brown people on facebook.. biased reporting in the media and the gorps are lapping it up. There’s no hope. Save yourselves.

PrinceJohn – that link you posted is pretty tenuous.

Philip May doesn’t have any involvement in investment decision making for the company he works for and he’s also not a director I.e. he’s just an employee.

So when the article says “his company” it is akin to saying that checkout staff at Sainsbury’s are company owners or saying that anyone who works for Lloyds (who buy and sell shares on behalf of customers) are arms dealers because some customers hold shares in BAE.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-may-husband-philip-job-married/

trumpton

Member
bad idea. Expect a mental health crisis at some point.

As someone who has worked in acute and forensic mental health for the best part of 15 years. Cannabis induced psychosis, in my experience, is relatively rare. Synthetics are the problem (as well as meth here in Oz). Cannabis /can/ bring forward a psychotic episode which may or may not have happened anyway, but honestly actual psychosis caused purely by THC is not common. What you do get is a pre-existing mental health problem with substance misuse as a co-morbidity, which can exacerbate symptoms. CBD actually has anti-psychotic properties – not that I’m suggesting anyone with say Schizophrenia chooses CBD over mainstream anti-psychotic meds!

seosamh77

Subscriber
I think someone quoted current street price of £20 per 1/8th oz,

that’s decent, who’s yer dealer? 😆

about £60/70 a quarter is more likely

Wow things got pricey? I remember it being about a tenner for a henry and 25 for a q. It’s been a while!

Drac

They steal the electricity to avoid suspicion

Except sudden spikes in power consumption arouses suspicion.

Cannabis psychosis is an area of much debate. there is a link yes – but is it casual? Ie does cannabis cause psychosis – seems unlikely given millions smoke it and a tiny % get psychosis. Does it act as a trigger in susceptible people? Plausible but unproven. Is it co incidental – ie these people would be psychotic anyway? Or is it that people predisposed to psychosis self medicate with cannabis?

I’m with TJ on this – we need to look at the evidence. The evidence of harm from use seems to come from increased strength, and/or use when quite young. Compare the harm to nicotine, alcohol, sugar, all of which are legal and/or controlled and/or taxed.

Take a wider look at the “war on drugs”. We are not winning it, in terms of helping users, reducing crime, reducing supply, offering alternatives to the growers. The cost – financially, militarily, societally – is huge and we still keep doing the same thing over and over again.

I’m taking a guess in the dark but the lives ruined and lost due to the criminalisation of drugs must be more than the actual use of the end products. The more I read and see on the subject, the more I think we need to look at regulation and taxation.

ONe controversial example. Leah Betts. she did not die from taking mdma. She died from water intoxication because she wrongly thought she was having a bad reaction and because of the illegality she felt unable / her friends felt unable to get proper advice. sSo the only thing they remembered was that people taking MDMA are advised to make sure they do not dehydrate. So she drank 8 pts of water and thats what killed her.

If we had sensible drug laws she would have been able to get something ( cannabis / mdma) to get high on without legal repercussions( if available) and when she felt she was getting a reaction would have been able to get health advice which would have saved her life.

The failed war on drugs costs lives and creates crime. In some areas 70% of all low level crime ( muggings, burglerys etc) are committed by drug addicts seeking money for their fix.

seosamh77

Subscriber
I think someone quoted current street price of £20 per 1/8th oz,

that’s decent, who’s yer dealer? 😆

about £60/70 a quarter is more likely

I blame brexit

An advantage of legal selling of cannabis is not letting people under the age of 18 take it. It can be very damaging for people below this age to smoke it as their brains are still developing.

Wow things got pricey? I remember it being about a tenner for a henry and 25 for a q. It’s been a while!

Been that way for a good number of years now, can still buy the likes of what people call Pollen(or Polm) for about 30 quid a Q. But you are playing roulette there, it’s really just decent Soapbar that isn’t too mixed with shite! 😆 ie it’s still rotten, avoid!

The 10er a gram is for decent green. Probably risen from about 40 a Q in the mid 2000s I think. My memory is, 40 then 50 then jump up to around 70. (Previous to mid 2000s, it was all Soapbar, the change to the dominant availability Green happened around then.)

Current prices seems unaffected by Brexit, most likely due to the homegrown nature these days!

I wouldn’t say current prices are particularly expensive either, would take me about 4 or 5 days of smoking that 5g fairly solidly to finish it. So much much cheaper than a bevvy over the same period. Though, you would need to factor increased munchy consumption into that calculation! 😆

An advantage of legal selling of cannabis is not letting people under the age of 18 take it.

Because none of us ever watched porn or drank alcohol before we turned 18 🤣😂

Infact the idea that it’s something safe enough for grownups, but still illegal and therefore ‘cool’ would probably have the exact opposite effect!

tinas – again not the dutch experience. Less dutch teenagers smoke cannabis than british

Not averse to imbibing my drug of choice (alcohol) but there’s established legal requirements and scientific research describing a set level as causing impairment. So that’s what’s enforced in terms of driving, safety critical jobs or even just a work policy.

Such research based limits-with known impairment levels don’t exist. And even if they do it’s meaningless as the user doesn’t know the strength and therefore the dosage taken. This could be addressed with a move to legalisation.

What is key to ensure that the idea that (if it’s either decriminalised or legalised) it is unacceptable to drive, operate machinery, drive trains, just turn up at work unfit to do so. That would mean much more random testing.

Edit – cannabis today is on average 14x more potent than 25 yrs ago