When cannabis smoking becomes legal, should it be permitted in......

[Serial_Apologist]

I might as well come clean on this. At 32, I sought and went on tranquillisers for the first time in 20 years. Just as at 12, periods on them turned out to be very sporadic. I haven't been on them much in the last 13 years. In parallel, I looked at what wasn't going right in my life, traced it all back, and wrote. At that time - and it is the worst possible scenario - I felt that I had discovered a link with a week or so in an NHS hospital at age 7. From the perspective of today, I would say that the conclusion was narrow and that broader things were involved which I did sort of acknowledge then. But I made the key error of sending it all to the NHS for help. The response was utterly dismissive towards me. My parents were interrogated without my knowledge. I kept getting one liners back to the effect that I was entirely normal. They had noted the ability to maintain work over a long period and to have what was actually an extraordinary social life given the situation. Mostly they just wanted me in work and naïve as I was to prevent any sort of action against the NHS not that it was in my mind.

What especially let them off the hook was my ability for verbal reasoning which wasn't directly accepted by them as having emanated as a reaction to trauma. I still believe I would have been quite dim witted, though uncomplicated, without it. There was also a political dimension which doesn't need tp be gone into here. It almost certainly shaped notions of whether someone was schizophrenic or not - it was so cleverly disguised in me with huge energy but I had concluded I was in private and described it in detail - and they were just not having it. There have been many twists and turns along the way and it has rarely been easy. The more erudite I have been - and it has often become quite highbrow - on the developments throughout my life - because it never leaves one - the more silent everyone has been. I am simply monitored on occasion for "anxiety" but sometimes they slip as when I was described as "a high achieving". "A high achieving what?" I asked and there was no answer. What it showed to me was that deep down they accepted my version - schizish. So I'm sort of there.

We agreed along the way from my lead that we considered schizophrenia to be a meaningless umbrella term. It was essentially a tool for societal control on what it didn't have the adequacy to manage although I was still left with a void This is not say that "anxiety" ever did it for me. It was always more than a feeling of being stressed while I could also see that there was an ego involved. I do have especial opinions about how it is viewed and quite a lot pertains to the parents and differences between between them ,Everyone knows I could write a book but there is a wariness because I am cautious about becoming grandiose and acutely aware of what is now politically correct. I don't wholly comply with that. Anyhow, I am there or thereabouts. Here or hereabouts - while not being heavily diagnosed as being in any of it. Mainly we have the conditions right. The NHS lets me manage as normal. There is a weakness here which will ensure that I wont reach old age and a book that would cause shudders unless sensibly placed as my legacy should I have the feeling to complete it. Increasingly, it hardly matters. Recent eye problems -physical - have had a fundamental impact on identity. In terms of my left eye, I may if push comes to shove choose to go blind.

I think RD Laing had it about right in his book "The Divided Self", in outlining a schizoid condition as one of uncertainty as to boundaries delineating selfhood, as opposed to the whole hog, involving hearing voices, feeling compelled to comply with their demands, Lat. Possibly, were he alive today, I am left wondering if he would not have reassessed such categorisation as equally applying to those on some autistic spectrum. Coming as I do from a family situation of a hyper-controlling father who was undoubtedly Aspergers and a mother who never upset the apple cart or put a foot wrong, that would certainly account for the relative success of my own means of coping, and that of many others, I would assume: the socially-determined "need" to adopt a persona, and then forget that one has done this until a with a qualitative change in life circumstances the realisation dawns that one is not the "me" one donned to fit in with others' expectations, is pretty much ubiquitous in social media-dominated today, sealing power relations that have long evolved to sustain the status quo as families internalise their ill-gotten duty to offload down through the generations. It wasn't coincidence that the 1960s saw the popularity of dope and stronger psychedelics as possible shortcuts to personal de-programming, when the era was so much about having personal choice, and the freedom of unfettered mind concordant with its realisation.

[oddoneout]

Are you suggesting that the existing laws on smoking would automatically apply to cannabis?

I would have thought that entirely new ones would need to be brought in to address legalisation..

This jogged a memory of a stray comment made by a friend recently and so I've just looked at what the smoking ban actually applies to. Some references give the impression that it only applies to tobacco products, but this is what the Health Act 2006 says:

(a) “smoking” refers to smoking tobacco or anything which contains
tobacco, or smoking any other substance, and
(b) smoking includes being in possession of lit tobacco or of anything lit
which contains tobacco, or being in possession of any other lit
substance in a form in which it could be smoked.

in which case it would cover smoking cannabis?

[Stanfordian]

This jogged a memory of a stray comment made by a friend recently and so I've just looked at what the smoking ban actually applies to. Some references give the impression that it only applies to tobacco products, but this is what the Health Act 2006 says:

(a) “smoking” refers to smoking tobacco or anything which contains
tobacco, or smoking any other substance, and
(b) smoking includes being in possession of lit tobacco or of anything lit
which contains tobacco, or being in possession of any other lit
substance in a form in which it could be smoked.

in which case it would cover smoking cannabis?

The war on cannabis is totally lost and the Police don't even prosecute cannabis found for personal use. Let's stop Police resources wasting time on cannabis and concentrate on a Police presence back on the streets. It's funny how so so many Police can be found for duties at football matches and in city centres at chucking out time!

[oddoneout]

The war on cannabis is totally lost and the Police don't even prosecute cannabis found for personal use. Let's stop Police resources wasting time on cannabis and concentrate on a Police presence back on the streets. It's funny how so so many Police can be found for duties at football matches and in city centres at chucking out time!

In other words de facto decriminalisation, which is what Holland has and is what a lot of people mean when they refer to legalisation(which is not the same thing)

[gradus]

I don't care whether or not they decriminalise/legalise smoking cannabis as long the smokers keep it to themselves and don't inflict it on me -I dislike the smell.

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't care whether or not they decriminalise/legalise smoking cannabis as long the smokers keep it to themselves and don't inflict it on me -I dislike the smell.

Indeed - some argy between fellow neighbours ensued from the smoking thereof outside one of the flats the other day. The skunk smell is noticeably more powerful and acrid than the friendly autumn bonfire aroma of the cannabis of my youth...

[Joseph K]

I have or have had psychosis and I still am very much in favour of legalising all drugs. I became psychotic mainly through overuse of MDMA, although other amphetamines and cannabis were involved - a person on amphetamines can smoke much more cannabis without falling asleep/becoming drowsy/feeling sick. It's a great combination. But I don't know which drug in particular caused the psychosis, probably just the whole overused cocktail.

I think if responsible use of drugs was taught from a young age, with all or at least most drugs available to use, then we could cut down on abuse. I myself started abusing 6-APB pills (this is an analogue of MDA, very similar to MDMA) because I wanted an upper, but the problem was it's a very profound brain-drain of an upper, best only to be taken at most once a month. The problem was, I didn't have access to drugs that would be less of a brain-drain. In any case, this was all on the back of years of not much work after finishing university, austerity Britain. I am aware that Ecstasy is an empathogen but frankly I wish I had taken it by myself as a first time, instead I went to a rave and had a good time with terrible people... taking it in a nice relaxed setting would have been far, far better, with my own music as well. Oh well. The rave I found utterly ridiculous but enjoyable at the same time.

I would be very happy to see the business taken away from sleaze-bag drug dealers I have known and been friends with in the recent past. And I am not a fan of alcohol. Definitely not a fan. Cannabis produces such a much more cerebral high than alcohol. I've felt buzzed from alcohol, but never euphoric, whereas I have felt very euphoric from cannabis... I can't remember alcohol enhancing music like cannabis - under the right circumstances - can.

[Serial_Apologist]

I would be very happy to see the business taken away from sleaze-bag drug dealers I have known and been friends with in the recent past. And I am not a fan of alcohol. Definitely not a fan. Cannabis produces such a much more cerebral high than alcohol. I've felt buzzed from alcohol, but never euphoric, whereas I have felt very euphoric from cannabis... I can't remember alcohol enhancing music like cannabis - under the right circumstances - can.

One of the perceived problems being, of course, that present-day cannabis largely gets sold in the skunk form, which, unlike the stuff which we took back in the 1960s and 70s, is opretty much proven to have psychotic potentials, especially in people already prone. An argument gets put forward that were presumably non-skunk cannabis legally available people would still want to go for the stronger, still illegal stuff - but I'm pretty much assured that most would prefer the safer option which offers a gentle high and takes the product off the criminal circuit.

[Joseph K]

One of the perceived problems being, of course, that present-day cannabis largely gets sold in the skunk form, which, unlike the stuff which we took back in the 1960s and 70s, is opretty much proven to have psychotic potentials, especially in people already prone. An argument gets put forward that were presumably non-skunk cannabis legally available people would still want to go for the stronger, still illegal stuff - but I'm pretty much assured that most would prefer the safer option which offers a gentle high and takes the product off the criminal circuit.

Doesn't seem like much sense in that though. Stronger kinds of cannabis can be nice. Do we celebrate the beer drinker but tut-tut the whiskey or vodka drinker? The analogy is very apt - like whiskey, a small amount of strong skunk goes much further than a lot of weaker booze or pot.

[Serial_Apologist]

Doesn't seem like much sense in that though. Stronger kinds of cannabis can be nice. Do we celebrate the beer drinker but tut-tut the whiskey or vodka drinker? The analogy is very apt - like whiskey, a small amount of strong skunk goes much further than a lot of weaker booze or pot.

Well I wouldn't advocate that! For one reason I'd hate it if we were to lose you to psychosis again, Joseph: you're too valuable an asset to this forum!

[Joseph K]

Well I wouldn't advocate that! For one reason I'd hate it if we were to lose you to psychosis again, Joseph: you're too valuable an asset to this forum!

As I've said elsewhere on this forum, the only recreational substance I take these days and for the foreseeable future is caffeine.