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Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that many countries are taking a close look at what's happening in Colorado and Washington state to learn lessons that can be applied to their own situations and so far, the news coming out of Colorado and Washington is overwhelmingly positive. Dire consequences predicted by reform opponents have failed to materialize. If anything, societal and economic indicators are moving in a positive direction post-legalization. Colorado marijuana tax revenues for fiscal year 2014-2015 are on track to surpass projections.
Lisa Sanchez, a program manager at México Unido Contra la Delincuencia, a Mexican non-profit devoted to promoting "security, legality and justice", underscored how legalization efforts in the U.S. are having powerful ripple effects across the globe: events in Colorado and Washington have "created political space for Latin American countries to have a real debate [about drug policy]". She noted that motivations for reform in Latin America are somewhat different than U.S. motivations - one main driver is a need to address the epidemic of violence on those countries that is fuelled directly by prohibitionist drug war policies. Mexico's president has given signs he's open to changes in that country's marijuana laws to help combat cartel violence. Sandeep Chawla, former deputy director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, notes that one of the main obstacles to meaningful reform is layers of entrenched drug control bureaucracies at the international and national levels - just in the U.S., think of the DEA, ONDCP and NIDA, among others - for whom a relaxation of drug control laws represents an undermining of their reason for existence: "if you create a bureaucracy to solve a particular problem, when the problem is solved that bureaucracy is out of a job".
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday October 21 2014, @02:07PM
From the first paragraph of your link: "a panicked Denver mother told a 911 dispatcher her spouse was acting erratically after swallowing marijuana candy and a prescription painkiller for back pain."
Prescription pain killers are very similar in effect to alcohol, completely unlike marijuana. Like alcohol, many people get violent on opioids. They don't on marijuana.
That sensationalist propaganda you linked is like a headline screaming "candy kills child" when the child had a Hershey bar and then drank drano.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by black_trout on Tuesday October 21 2014, @04:36PM
Also, the implication that this wouldn't have happened if this man didn't have easy access to legal marijuana (or opioids) seems out of place. Instead, this is a story of an unstable man who could have just as likely been pushed over the edge by something more mundane:
"a panicked Denver mother told a 911 dispatcher her spouse was acting erratically after hearing on the television the McRib was Back."
(Score: 2) by velex on Tuesday October 21 2014, @11:32PM
Picking out the first incident makes it easier to discredit as being a propaganda piece, especially since there's a drug interaction involved. For all we know, the guy might have had a few beers in his system to boot.
There was a second incident apparently, and this one is more concerning since it involved edibles only:
The dispensary clerk told the group of four friends to cut the cookie into six pieces and eat one at a time, one of the friends told police. They complied, but said nothing hit them. Experts say it’s common for edibles to produce a delayed high.
But Levy Thamba, 19, ate an entire cookie.
Thamba started “freaking out,” “getting spiritual and talking about his sins” in French, another friend told police. He wrecked the hotel room and then ran out to the hallway before friends could pull him away from a railing.
No other drugs or alcohol was involved, his friends said.
I would conjecture that what we have here are inexperienced marijuana users who aren't prepared for the effects of a powerful medicine at that dosage. That data isn't included in the article, but according to this source [nhtsa.gov], we can say if you use half a gram to roll a joint and keep the math simple then bogart the whole thing you'd probably get 25 mg at most given a very strong cultivar. Let's assume average at 12.5 mg.
So what appears to have happened in both cases is that somebody decided to do the equivalent of smoking little over 5 joints in a row before the effects of the first joint had even set in, then completely unexpectedly started tripping balls.
I mean, holy shit. So maybe dispensaries should keep foods with that much THC “in the back” and strongly encourage everybody but regulars to try something a bit less potent first. What can you do though? There's nothing that will stop people from being irresponsible asshats, not being able to follow instructions, and not realizing that they're just experiencing a drug when it finally kicks in. Although mostly not having respect for marijuana as a powerful medicine. Maybe one guy needed to go to prison for getting messed up on opioids, having way too much marijuana, and committing murder, and another guy needed to Darwin himself before fewer asshats decide to do the same thing.
Of course to put this into perspective [cdc.gov]:
Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years.
Alcohol: 88,000 deaths / 5 years / 50 states = 352 deaths / year / state
Marijuana: 2 deaths / 5/6 of a year / 1 state = 2.4 deaths / year / state
Even if we say both of these deaths were directly related to marijuana consumption in general, I'd say marijuana's doing pretty damned good. Two orders of magnitude better good. Is this the best the fear-mongers can come up with? Or are we just insensitive to the deleterious effects of alcohol?
(Note, what I linked isn't clear whether the 88,000 figure does not includes drunk driving or victims of violence perpetrated by people under the influence of alcohol. Might contain the former, but probably not the latter, so my rough calculation may be comparing apples to oranges.)
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday October 22 2014, @03:45AM
Oh shoot! My rough estimate is all screwed up. Remove the divide by 5. Multiply the alcohol deaths per state by 5, and now we're looking at three orders of magnitude safer for marijuana.
My apologies!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 22 2014, @03:28PM
I would conjecture that what we have here are inexperienced marijuana users who aren't prepared for the effects of a powerful medicine at that dosage.
I saw something similar once when I was in the USAF in Thailand. He wanted to try LSD, which I think was nonexistant there. I saw his erratic behavior, and guys who were with him the night before said it was a burn, he had freaked out on a placebo. He was given a medical discharge, I don't know if he ever got better.
There are a lot of possible explanations for the guy you mentioned. The numbers put it nicely into perspective, especially since some people go crazy for no obvious reason at all.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 22 2014, @04:13AM
Anecdote:
A friend who was a heroin addict told me a story when we were discussing his past addiction. He once invited friends over and they wanted to smoke weed. So he shoots up AND smokes weed with them. He went into a bit of detail, which doesn't need to be repeated, but in short: he went berserk. He did not attempt to harm anyone but he started acting really crazy, speaking incoherently, throwing things and jumping around like a lunatic. His friends pretty much ran out of the apartment fearing he might become violent. He doesn't remember the incident but was told by his friends.
So there might be a connection to erratic behaviour when mixing opioids and cannabinoids. Then again, mixing drugs is always risky business. The Gp's link is just FUD.