my friend who works in drug court says that marijuana these days is much stronger than it used to be. “This is not your father’s marijuana.”
So how stoned would someone get on one ounce? Would you get arrested for smoking one ounce of the new marijuana, but with the old-time stuff you could smoke two ounces? Where will it be sold? Will there be brand names? Advertising? Point-of-sale posters and other marketing aids? Who are the distributors? The state?
Will there be tests like breatholators for overconsumption? What will they measure?
What a mess, so many ways this can be done wrong.
I am too verklempt.
Yes to most of these questions, other than the distributor/sales, at least here in WA. The details are being worked out, including commercial growing permits, how much to grow in aggregate and how to price it (has to be high enough for the state to take a meaningful share of tax but not so high to lose many sales to the black market). Liquor sales just went from the state to private so I don't think marijuana will be sold by the state. Very likely some subset of the retail liquor distributors will get it. There has to be some identifying hologram or whatever on the package to distinguish it from black market. Maybe actual DNA identifiers later. State already has blood tests for DUI set up.
I read the same thing in an autobiography of a jazzman, who used to occasionally smoke reefers back in the 1930s. He tried marijuana on a lark decades later in life (1970s/80s, I think), and was absolutely floored at how more potent the strains had gotten. It scared the hell out of him, and he didn’t try it again.
Although, on the other hand, I always also recall my grandfather relating his first encounter with it. He never even heard of marijuana until he was about thirty years old, but he made a trip to Houston in the late-1920s or early-1930s, and saw some Mexican woman writhing in a gutter. Perplexed, he asked someone standing nearby, and found out she was all high from smoking reefers.
So how stoned would someone get on one ounce? Would you get arrested for smoking one ounce of the new marijuana, but with the old-time stuff you could smoke two ounces?
It was never possible to smoke an ounce of marijuana worthy of the name (as opposed to ripoff ditchweed) in a single session; an ounce has always been good for several dozen joints, the more typical unit of consumption. And if the weed is more potent, one will smoke less to get the desired effect - just as a beer drinker who switches to liquor lowers his volume consumption.
What a mess, so many ways this can be done wrong.
Hard to do worse than the War on Marijuana, which only hyperinflated marijuana profits and channeled those profits into criminal hands. Our alcohol regulations may not be perfect, but they beat the Hell out of Prohibition.
I expect to be shouted down over this but how would they know how much ‘stronger’ it is? There were many strengths and varieties 35 years ago when I was in school.
Also nobody smokes a whole ounce in one sitting, it is a waste after you catch a buzz. Anything after that is wasted and you can not overdose on it!
Questions for LEOs / dog trainers: How much does it cost to train a dog? Can they be re-trained? Are they always ‘on-duty’ to alert for anything they’re trained to smell?
Just asking so please no flamings...