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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 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.
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