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California launches legal sale of cannabis for recreational use
California will launch the world's largest regulated commercial market for recreational marijuana on Monday, as dozens of newly licensed stores catering to adults who enjoy the drug for its psychoactive effects open for business up and down the state.
It becomes the sixth U.S. state, and by far the most populous, venturing beyond legalized medical marijuana to permit the sale of cannabis products of all types to customers at least 21 years old.
Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Nevada were the first to introduce recreational pot sales on a state-regulated, licensed and taxed basis. Massachusetts and Maine are on track to follow suit later this year.
With California and its 39.5 million residents officially joining the pack, more than one-in-five Americans now live in states where recreational marijuana is legal for purchase, even though cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under U.S. law.
The marijuana market in California alone, which boasts the world's sixth-largest economy, is valued by most experts at several billion dollars annually and is expected to generate at least a $1 billion a year in tax revenue.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 02 2018, @02:48AM
Yup. The ultra pro-cannabis "it cures cancer!" people are a complete meme [youtube.com]. But they will persist as long as the government or officials continue to push anti-drug propaganda and failed policies. (And the lack of research also helps health lies spread unchecked.)
Also consider the rise of health bloggers attacking certain food additives or promoting certain supplements with scant evidence, and reaching potentially huge audiences. It's a bit of a parallel to the "fake news" phenomenon, except instead of purely ad revenues you've got health/superfood/supplement revenues (maybe in the form of referral links for the bloggers and tubers on the ground level) and people like Dr. Oz selling pure snake oil. On the other hand you have the push to schedule [soylentnews.org] kratom [soylentnews.org], something that anecdotally helps people who might otherwise end up strung up on opioids. The plural of anecdote is not data, but the government's response seems to be less about safety and more about control. Everything's very emotionally charged, and the DEA's reflexive pushes to put everything on Schedule I (the nuclear option) don't help the situation.
Personal production and use of all drugs should be decriminalized, except maybe in cases of what you would call chemical weapons, e.g. deadly nerve agents.
Perhaps we don't even need to kill off the Controlled Substances Act + scheduling system. Instead, remove the criminal penalties tied to the scheduling system. Then maybe the lists could be made compiled using a scientific approach measuring harm and medical value instead of the fear of recreational "abuse". People could still use their recreational drugs, as long as they don't try to sell them (on a large scale). We could encourage the use of "safer" drugs like cannabis or LSD and steer people away from deadlier opioids, meth, cocaine, etc. Of course, you need an encouraged drug for each category since different drugs are used for different reasons. Kratom could be the encouraged replacement for opioids which people are getting hooked on after using painkillers like tramadol. The FDA Commissioner had some funny mixed messaging on kratom recently. [soylentnews.org]
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