Mike Reed
pfm Member
I Haiti zombies !
Germany sees sense and legalises cannabis
- Thread starter Finnegan
- Start date
Andrew C!
Been around a while....
'Zombie' drug xylazine found in cannabis THC vapes in UK
Cannabis vapes are being sold containing the dangerous animal tranquiliser xylazine, experts say.
www.bbc.co.uk
Any primary care NHS hospital CEO will tell you that alcohol is the biggest secondary influencing factor in ED admissions regarding drug influenced injuries.
See above link.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Again, imo, this is further evidence of the folly of prohibition as opposed to a reason to maintain prohibition. An unregulated trade is not compelled to ensure quality control. As I’ve previously conceded, legalisation/ decriminalisation will not eradicate illicit trade, but it will at least allow consumers the option of a safer, regulated product.'Zombie' drug xylazine found in cannabis THC vapes in UK
Cannabis vapes are being sold containing the dangerous animal tranquiliser xylazine, experts say.www.bbc.co.uk
Any primary care NHS hospital CEO will tell you that alcohol is the biggest secondary influencing factor in ED admissions regarding drug influenced injuries.
See above link.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Agree. And IMHO most consumers will choose the legit options, relegating the illegal trade to the margins. Drugs then becomes part of the low level background noise of scrotes behaving as scrotes, rather than the scourge on society and main driver for large swathes or criminality it is ATM.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Interestingly, one of the factors that ensured the continuation of the illicit trade in California post-legalisation was the punitive taxes placed on the sale of legal cannabis. I can appreciate taxes being raised ever higher on tobacco as part of an attempt to reduce and ultimately eradicate its use, but it seems self-defeating to tax newly legalised cannabis to the extent where illicitly produced pot remains a more attractive option.
As I previously mentioned, I was last in California in 2019 when there had been a spate of deaths that was traced to some highly toxic insecticide that had been used in the cultivation of an illicit batch.
This article is a few years old now, but it gives you the gist.
Sorry, I can't agree. The case above is of an apparently legitimately manufactured and retailed product, sold in a shop, that was adulterated. This product is subject to the usual UK consumer laws, yet it is unsafe because the mere existence of a legal trade does not compel the supplier to impose an effective QC system above and beyond that of any consumer product. Decriminalisation is utterly unregulated. At least with a legal product there are general product safety requirements to have the name and address of the manufacturer available.
I'm not convinced about this either. Counterfeit goods are everywhere, even cheap ones. I recently bought a digital watch, it turns out it is probably a fake. It was from a supplier on Ebay who said in the title that it was genuine. The thing cost £5. That's all. If you buy a presumably genuine one in Argod they are £10. So a £10 wristwatch is routinely faked. In the case of cannabis, let's not forget that this stuff is called "weed" for a reason. It grows like grass. Legit manufacture will cost nothing a tonne, so will the illegal stuff. I can grow it in my house if I choose to, it's dead easy. So unless (even if) you sell it for the same price as you do a lettuce the scrotes will want a piece. Tax it less? The stuff costs nothing, it's a dried plant. What do you pay for a bag of dried parsley? Pennies.
We see fake foodstuffs all over. Honey was recently highlighted. The stuff costs 75p a jar. 75p. Seriously. The horsemeat scandal was for minced beef costing, what, £2 a kilo? Let's not even talk about high value foods.
Decriminalisation will do nothing to regulate the stuff. Evan legalisation, as per the THC vapes above, does not imply effective legislation unless you spend a lot of time and effort making it work. Anyone who thinks otherwise is being naive or at best indulging in wishful thinking.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
The problem was the purchase of vapes containing what the purchaser believed was THC- and that remains illegal in the U.K. I agree that legal status does not guarantee quality and unadulterated product, but it ensures accompanying legislation that may be enforced to assure compliance with the law and industry standards. That is entirely different from a completely illegal product that may contain god knows what.
The stringent conditions attached to the production and sale of alcohol ensures, by and large, we don’t experience widespread methanol poisoning in this country. Given the lucrative nature of the sale of cannabis, I don’t see why the regulated sale of legal cannabis should be any different.
Legality may not be a 100% guarantee of quality, but it would be a hell of an improvement on the Wild West situation that exists presently.
In which case how the hell can I buy it in what ssems like every other corner shop?
The words "may be" are doing a lot of heavy lifting here!
Sure. And how much legal effort and cost, paid for by massive levels of duty, goes to make this happen?
It *could* not be any different, but there is a hell of a lot of spadework to do first. That has to be paid for by taxation, and we have already said that high taxation make it even more attractive to the crims.
Again, if done properly. There is a lot of spadework to do first.
hifinutt
hifinutt
phone call today from someone worried about his friend , a family man spending approx 700 quid a month on cannabis out of not much wages , becoming dishevelled and not caring much and would soon i think be likely to lose their job as its having such an effect on them . obviously there are other factors causing stress but they are turning to cannabis to blot it out and its rather sad really
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
I’ve absolutely no objection to someone like yourself interrogating this issue with a fine tooth comb. Indeed, that will precede any legalisation. However, you come across as inordinately striving to find objections and prevarications to legalisation, and determined to shift the focus of the debate into an area you are comfortable with.
Issues of quality control are related to your job and your professional expertise. Fair enough, that’s an expertise to which I defer.
But my professional expertise, based on a thirty year career working with drug users, their families, and to a lesser extent dealers, is knowing what does, and what does not work in the arena of addiction and the legal status of drugs. Prohibition has been conclusively demonstrated to be a failed strategy. We need a fresh approach. We can look to be novel, innovative and forward looking. Or spend our time looking for things not to do. I know which approach will yield the most positive outcome for those individuals, families and communities blighted by drug misuse.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Well, Steve; not quite; it needs a bit of cultivation and grass does not
Some house! Unless you live in a greenhouse, of course.
In the eighties my family and I drove down to a gite in the countryside of the Loire Valley, During a long walk, we came back through vast acres of cannabis; field after field. Thought my boat had come in. Unfortunately the only effect was a very sore throat. It was presumably hemp but an interesting one-off experience.
I think we can only look at the experiences of countries/states/cities which have either legalised or tolerated/controlled cannabis sales (like Amsterdam). There are now quite a few and not just over the Pond. Amsterdam was, for many years, an odd case of being very low key, controlled and quantity-limited on the retail side but still theoretically illegal. I think I read recently that this is changing, though. I wonder if that was the only example of its type or whether any of the States or Canada etc., have adopted this half-way measure.
Cav
pfm Member
You can buy THC in every other corner shop? I bet you cannot.
Of course any product can be faked - fake branded alcohol, fake cigarettes, fake watches, fake trainers whatever.
The benefits of legalisation of currently illegal substances would be the associated legislation, regulation, inspection, taxation and so on that accompanies the production and sale of, essentially, a pharmaceutical. If people are stupid enough - and some are - to buy at unrealistically low price from some under the counter operation then more fool them.
Sorry, I got my THC and CBD back to front. You can buy CBD vapes all over the place. However the point stands, this stuff grows like, well, a weed. I can grow it in my house, I have a very nice warm conservatory and that's before I start with growlights. However witha retired copper as a next door neighbour I suspect that my growing career would be short unless there's a law change. Change the law though, it's really, really easy to home brew the stuff. It's not a pharmaceutical, it's a dried plant. I give away plums every year, nobody taking those away is stupid.
I know that we *could* put a series of controls in place, but look at the current shower in government. 3 years on from Brexit, with 3 years of notice in advance, and they haven't even remotely got their stuff together to export sodding shellfish. And a heap of other things.
No I'm not, I'm just examining the challenges in parallel situations and interrogating the proposals in that light.
I'm talking about what I know from the perspective of how I know it, as are you. SHouldn't we all be talking about what we know?
I hope you're right, but deregulation didn't work for legal /not illegal highs, did it?
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I think you have to view 'legal' highs through the prism of current drug legislation though. They exploited a loophole, and those doing the exploiting were the bad actors already in the business of supplying narcotics. The present situation is the worst of all possible outcomes: plentiful supply in the hands of organised criminal groups. They were only too happy to leap on the 'legal high' bandwagon with the same business methods, ie dodgy QC and variable strength/purity. It was just diversification of the product line. So no, of course it didn't go well, why would it, how could it have done, given who exploited it?
If you legalise, and regulate supply of the most popular drug (with a view to similar for the other street drugs in due course) you undermine the business model at source, and it becomes niche. Which makes it less attractive for the large scale criminal operators. And there's no point in them diversifying into other legal highs if users are in the main content with the legal, reliable and 'safe' official products.
Cav
pfm Member
I cannot see any Government of the mainstream legalising any currently illegal substances in the foreseeable future.
But they weren't. They were manufacturers of other, legitimate materials in factories and they packaged the new stuff and sold it retail in normal, legitimate shops as "legal" highs that they labelled up as "fertiliser" or "incense". They weren't narcotics dealers, they were just opportunists. Just like a guy I used to work with whose wife quit a factory job and opened a vape shop because it looked like an easier living than working in a food factory. The shop went well, she opened another, and another, and another. She's now pretty well a millionaire, in a very few years, on the back of a bit of opportunism.
China make her vapes, just like I imagine China made the synthetic cannabinoids. That's easy synthetic chemistry.
You do, but for something like weed that grows for fun it's always going to be attractive for home brew unless the regulated stuff sells for the price of a lettuce.
They are now illegal because the lack of regulation didn't work. Look at the history.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Yes, but home brew isn't the problem. OCGs are the problem. Undermining their business model is the objective. That and improved public safety through properly regulated quality standards.