City of Berkeley requires marijuana companies to give away 2% of their products to low income people

The dangerous drug marijuana became a dangerous drug after prohibition was ended. Something had to be vilified.

Watch the movie "Reefer Madness" sometime. It's hilarious yet scary at the same time.

Pot "addicts" are not prone to violence and you don't hear of them robbing gas station etc.

Various drugs are legal and/or accepted in many countries. Crime isn't anywhere near as rampant as it is here in the good old US of A.

Go figure.

 

How in this perverted world did we get from "I have a right to not be arrested for smoking pot" to "I have a right to free pot"?

This nation is getting dumber by the minute . . .

 

Not a right, a service. And a medical service at that. Stop the drama queen rhetoric. It is beneath you.

 

No government in the USA has the legal ability to force a private company to provide either product or services for free.

Berkley will eventually be challenged on this, and will have to pay for it out of their city budget if they want the indigent to obtain pot for free.

 

That's your opinion. I see no lawyer credentials behind your name so I will have to conclude that this switch in outrage from it being a right to being a legal argument is just a matter of wanting to complain about something. What is it that you really object to here? Are you against marijuana on some level and channeling your hatred into other arguments? I'm sure it's something you're not saying. We may never know. Maybe you don't know.

 

While I am a credentialed professional, it is not as a lawyer. You see no credentials next to my name because I think it's a bit ostentatious to list them outside the professional environment.

Still, what I wrote is not opinion. Berkley is trying to force the businesses to discriminate against 98% of their customers. Berkley can incentivize the sales with reimbursements or tax breaks but they cannot force the dispensaries to give their merchandise away for free, much the same as they could not force a business in any other industry to surrender its product without just compensation.

And I don't agree that everyone has a right to medical marijuana either. I can't stand duplicitous liberals insisting that people shouldn't have to find their way to the Registrar's office once a year to register to vote, but those same individuals would crawl on their bloodied hands and knees 52 times a year to get their free weekly ounce of weed. I can actually visualize some really lazy, really short-sighted people, those already fighting to make ends meet, deciding to let go of their last shred of dignity just so that they qualify for such an inane benefit. What more incentive does someone struggling need to throw in the towel? . . . this is sheer stupidity!

As for not knowing what I believe, I'm a believer that "addiction" is not a sickness we are born with. That it differentiates those who use recreationally from those who use habitually to escape reality. We all confront stress, and some of us deal with it, while others shed it. People undoubtedly respond differently to the effects of marijuana to some extent, or to any intoxicant for that matter, but habitual use is a choice . . . something we give in to.

I've known several addicts to different drugs, and not one of them has ever indicated that they were addicted within the first few uses, or that they couldn't do without it at first. Rather, in every case, they claimed to have been "draw in", "overtaken" or "snuck up on" by drugs over a period of time.

Yes, we area all susceptible to addictions, some more than others, but those of us who become addicted do so of their own free will, or lack thereof.

I could not disagree more.

Even if the rats receptors were monitored and responded positively, rats likely wouldn't know the source of the high. Humans learn it from other humans today, and know right where to return to for the next high. The very first humans to get high from marijuana almost certainly did not immediately realize the cause, and had to experiment repeatedly with multiple potential causes before pinpointing the burning weed as the source of their intoxication.

This is precisely why I consider marijuana to be a gateway drug. I think those who, becoming desensitized, can no longer affordably get their high from marijuana, then resort to more potent drugs at less cost . . . heroin being the prime candidate. Only a few weeks ago I watched a television documentary about a heroin addict who described how her introductory marijuana use escalated as she became dissatisfied with the waning high and her descent into full-blown heroin addiction in much the same way.

Personal opinion . . . some have set boundaries for themselves which prevent that escalation. Others buy into the next worst step, hook, line and sinker.

 

Oh but they do! They associate pressing a lever with it. Basic design:

-rats get catheter surgically installed in their jugular
-a lever the rats step on triggers a program to push some amount of substance through the catheter
-rat quickly associates lever with drug feeling, especially if it's addictive.

In general:

Cocaine- near instant addiction, pressing the lever hundreds of times a day

Heroin- takes a bit for them to escalate pressing, but we eventually have to limit their max intake or they'll hurt themselves

Alcohol- pretty easy to get consistent daily pressing

Nicotine- surprisingly difficult to get started (maybe the nausea it can cause?) But once they get started they press it pretty readily

THC- exceedingly rare to get an animal to press the lever, never heard of anyone getting them to do it reliably

 

Okay, so the test conditions are appropriate. Still, there's evidence that the rats may not like the response enough to want a repeat dose. After all, humans that liked to smoke it had quite an aversion to being injected with THC, as shown below:

From Human Cannabinoid Pharmacokinetics, by Marilyn A. Huestis

2.1.6. Intravenous
Although THC is not abused by the intravenous route, pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic cannabinoid research has employed this technique. Recently, D'Souza et al. administered THC intravenously to evaluate the association between cannabinoids and psychosis [48]. The double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled study investigated the behavioral, cognitive, and endocrine effects of 0, 2.5, and 5 mg of THC in healthy individuals with a history of cannabis exposure, but never diagnosed with a cannabis-abuse disorder. After 10 min, the plasma THC concentrations were 82±87.4 and 119.2±166.5 for intravenous doses of 2.5 and 5.0 mg, ng/ml respectively; the respective THC-COOH concentrations were 43.8±26.1 and 81.9±47 ng/ml. Some subjects withdrew from the study due to acute paranoia (1), panic (1), hypotension (2), withdrawal of consent due to dislike of THC effects (3), and other issues (2). One subject experienced a significant, acute paranoid reaction and was treated with 2 mg lorazepam. THC produced schizophrenia-like positive and negative symptoms and euphoria, and altered aspects of cognitive function. Plasma cortisol concentrations were not affected. THC produced a broad range of transient symptoms, behaviors, and cognitive deficits in healthy individuals that resembled endogenous psychoses. The investigators suggested that brain-cannabinoid-receptor function could be an important factor in the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders.​

 

Perhaps you need to set the rats up with a bong . . .

​

 

more ignorant old ladies getting cases of The Vapors thinking about Marijuana

 

Potentially, but I wouldn't go so far as to say humans don't like it IV. In the study referenced, only 2 of 31 withdrew due to psychological side effects. Also, IV is especially valid for inhaled substances due to the similarities in routes of administration. When you inhale a substance, it enters the bloodstream pretty immediately and directly through blood vessels in the lungs.

 

I could only read the abstract, but my impression was that 9 of the 31 dropped out, presumably after feeling "off" on Day 1 of the 3 day study.

 

meanwhile alcohol, sugar and meat are over the counter poisons

 

I was only counting the paranoia and panic. Which also happens when taken inhaled as well. I used to use, but haven't in years now because it began to give me panic attacks every time.

2 for hypotension, 1 for scheduling conflicts, 1 for not showing up at all, and another 3 for realizing they didn't like the effects. Importantly, these were non-naive users, but that doesn't make them chronic users. Most likely I'd think they signed up for the study, found out what it was, decided it wasn't for them (due to their dropouts being described as "withdrew consent"). Maybe you could make a case for hypotension, but that doesn't necessarily mean they chose to drop out, there were likely safety disqualifiers set arbitrarily high for the subjects' protection.

 

"Rich folks smoke Dokes"

From the short story Marathon Man by Stephen King

(the movie didn't do the story justice)