In other news
In the current news climate we see that some figures and events tend to dominate the front-pages heavily. Still, there a
I assume that this is the op ed that coordi was talking about. It doesn't say anything about weed and schoziphrenia. It was mainly focused on regulation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opini...
The war on marijuana brought its own costs. Every year, authorities arrested hundreds of thousands of Americans for marijuana possession. The people who suffered the legal and financial consequences were disproportionately Black, Latino and poor. A society that allows adults to use alcohol and tobacco cannot sensibly arrest people for marijuana use. We oppose the nascent efforts to re-criminalize the drug, such as a potential ballot initiative in Massachusetts this year that would ban recreational sales and home growing.
Yet there is a lot of space between heavy-handed criminal prohibition and hands-off commercial legalization. Much as the United States previously went too far in banning pot, it has recently gone too far in accepting and even promoting its use. Given the growing harms from marijuana use, American lawmakers should do more to regulate it. The most promising approach is one popularized by Mark Kleiman, a drug policy scholar who died in 2019. He described it as “grudging toleration.” Governments can enact policies that keep the drug legal and try to curb its biggest downsides.
I did find an article from ten days ago about a study related to drugs and mental illness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/healt...
A new analysis of birth cohorts in the Canadian province of Ontario has found a striking rise in the incidence of psychotic disorders among young people, a finding that its authors said could reflect teens’ increasing use of substances like cannabis, stimulants and hallucinogens.
The study, published on Monday in The Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that the rate of new diagnoses of psychotic disorders among people ages 14 to 20 increased by 60 percent between 1997 and 2023, while new diagnoses at older ages plateaued or declined.
Compared with people born in the late 1970s, those born in the early 2000s were about twice as likely to have been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder by age 20. The researchers included 12 million people born in Ontario between 1960 and 2009, of which 0.9 percent were diagnosed with a psychotic disorder during the study period.
The study was epidemiological and did not try to identify a cause for the rising prevalence. There are a number of possible explanations, among them older paternal age, the stress of migration, neonatal health problems and early intervention programs that now regularly identify the disorders at younger ages, the authors note.
I mean, when you do mind altering drugs, then you're basically playing pinball with your brain circuitry. Weird stuff will happen, and different people can be affected differently. Your own experiences isn't necessarily reflective of someone else's. A debate on drugs and society is therefore different than a debate on drugs and the individual.
Doesn't mean you should ban it of course. That people should be free to mess around with their own brains is a fine political view. However, it should be okay to point out potential risks and unknowns.
Studying the phenomena is difficult for a variety of reason, but modern research ethics is probably your biggest hurdle. Double blind studies on recreational drugs isn't kosher. For medical drugs you can at least argue utilitarianism. So you are generally left with research methods where pinpointing causes if trickier.
My personal view is that people who view cannabinoids as a wonder substance with a million upsides and no downsides are approximately as delusional as the people who pretend that cannabinoids are the moral equivalent of fentanyl.
The case for cannabinoid legalization is pretty simple and fairly compelling. A lot of people like it. A lot of people are going to use it whether it is legal or not. If people are going to use it, we might as well get the tax revenue. The costs of incarceration for crimes related to cannabinoids were devastatingly high over the decades, especially in comparison to the harm. Cannabinoids aren't helpful to the average recreational user, but they aren't terribly harmful either, especially compared to alcohol. And the risk of abuse is relatively low compared to many other substances.
I suspect that the NYT editorial on regulation was partly a result of how legalization actually was implemented in NYC. For a very long time, personal use of cannabinoids has widely tolerated. If you wanted to walk down the street in 2005 smoking a blunt, there wasn't much chance that you would be arrested unless the police were trying to get you off the street for some other reason. But buying obviously wasn't as trivially easy as it is now.
When it became clear that legalization was inevitable and in process, a million weed shops sprung up in the city almost overnight, almost all unlicensed. (Getting licensed took time and people didn't want to wait.) Every now and then, one would get shut down for being unlicensed, but a new one would pop up almost immediately. By mid-2022, I would estimate that there were 50+ weed shops within one mile of my apartment. I was pro-legalization, I remain pro-legalization, and I'm no teetotaler, but the proliferation of shops selling entirely unregulated product seemed absurd and it was hard not to wonder if a lot of other businesses were being squeezed out. It felt like a blight on the neighborhood. The only thing that has changed now is that more of the shops are licensed, but regulation of the actual product is still relatively modest.
In terms of regulation and taxation, cannabinoids eventually are going to be treated in much the same way as alcohol and tobacco. You can think whatever you want about that regulation and taxation, but it is politically inevitable in my opinion.
The article about the study concerning the relationship between cannabinoids and mental illness isn't especially noteworhty. People have been doing studies about the relationship, if any, between drugs and alcohol and mental illness since before any of us were born. It's a tricky topic to evaluate, in part for the reasons that t_d mentioned, but it certainly isn't a new topic.
My personal view is that people who view cannabinoids as a wonder substance with a million upsides and no downsides are approximately as delusional as the people who pretend that cannabinoids are the moral equivalent of fentanyl.The case for cannabinoid legalization is pretty simple and fairly compelling. A lot of people like it. A lot of people are going to use it whether it
Seems like a fine view. If we're going to let brain circuitry go brrrrrr recreationally, then regulation that stipulates how it is made, how it is sold and to whom it is sold seems like a good idea. That way you can be fairly certain a bottle of liqour contains ethanol and not methanol. Also, Junior will also have to develop a somewhat mature brain before he can get legally wasted.
On the other hand, the great binge does seem like an interesting time to live in.
Actually the right wing twittersphere is arguing that recreational use of drugs like nicotine, alcohol and cocaine were better for society because they caused people to be more active, social and creative. And pot just makes people lazy, unmotivated and stupid.
So the argument is to get rid of weed; bring back cigarettes, alcohol and coke to make America Great Again.
My personal view is that people who view cannabinoids as a wonder substance with a million upsides and no downsides are approximately as delusional as the people who pretend that cannabinoids are the moral equivalent of fentanyl.The case for cannabinoid legalization is pretty simple and fairly compelling. A lot of people like it. A lot of people are going to use it whether it
The bolded is my view as well.
You know what they say, "Great minds think alike." 😀
This is really really really bad.
This version toughens some of the requirements further, while creating a process for those whose names may have changed, particularly during marriage, to provide the paperwork necessary and further attest to their identity.
It also requires states to share their voter information with the Department of Homeland Security, as a way to verify the citizenship of the names on the voter rolls. That has drawn pushback from elections officials as potentially intrusive on people's privacy.
Let's just burn the planet down, shall we?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/...
U.S. President Donald Trump is set to direct the Pentagon to use government funding and Pentagon contracts to sustain U.S. coal-fired power plants, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a White House official.
Another shiny award....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trum...
President Donald Trump has added another shiny award to his cabinet of trophies that have just been invented, after being named “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”
This administration is just one giant cluster ****.
The unexpected but brief airspace closure in the Texas border city of El Paso stemmed from disagreements between the Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests, multiple sources close to the matter told CBS News.
Every Western democracy has voter rules much stricter than this. I understand inside the magic show it all looks real; but your basic argument we need to model our voting laws to imitate corrupt third world dictatorships that have fake elections; as opposed to the developed democratic world is incoherent from he outside looking in.
Why are moderate voter requirement rules acceptable for Canada, Germany and France; but really really really bad for the US?
And more destruction of our planet
“This is corruption, plain and simple. Old fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, senator for Rhode Island, at the rally. “This is an agency that has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters.”
Every Western democracy has voter rules much stricter than this. I understand inside the magic show it all looks real; but your basic argument we need to model our voting laws to imitate corrupt third world dictatorships that have fake elections; as opposed to the developed democratic world is incoherent from he outside looking in. Why are moderate voter requirement rules acc
We don't have a voting problem. Our system works perfectly fine as it is. The nonsense from the right is just like the eating cats and dogs argument for bringing in the gestapo.
Actually the right wing twittersphere is arguing that recreational use of drugs like nicotine, alcohol and cocaine were better for society because they caused people to be more active, social and creative. And pot just makes people lazy, unmotivated and stupid.
So the argument is to get rid of weed; bring back cigarettes, alcohol and coke to make America Great Again.
Sounds like they enjoy coke, which explains a lot. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to popularize a drug that turned regular people into a******s and a******s into unmitigated a******s, but that person has a lot of explaining to do.
We don't have a voting problem. Our system works perfectly fine as it is. The nonsense from the right is just like the eating cats and dogs argument for bringing in the gestapo.
You didn’t address the question.
Why does literally every other democracy require ID to vote, whereas if the US did this it would be very very bad.
Is US democracy superior to the rest of the world because of our more lax voting requirements and safeguards?
The weed in the 70s wasn't anywhere near as potent as it is now. Not saying that means anything. Just saying it wasn't.
Right, so they just smoked more of it. No one is chain smoking joints with today’s weed.
You didn’t address the question.
Why does literally every other democracy require ID to vote, whereas if the US did this it would be very very bad.
Is US democracy superior to the rest of the world because of our more lax voting requirements and safeguards?
Why fix something that isn't broken? This rule isn't intended to make democracy safer. Just the opposite. It is deliberately pushed by the right that knows this will cause hardships for a lot of people and their bet is most of those people don't vote republican. Not only that, but they want it to be pushed through as quickly as possible to help disrupt the midterms so they can presumably stay in power and hopefully finish the push to a full out authoritarian government. Also, did you read the fine print, this will cause huge headaches for women who have taken the last name of their spouses. How is that making a better democracy?
The answer to your second question is U.S. democracy isn't superior at all as we have learned the last year. It is being eroded by the right. This is just one more step to dismantling it.
And my whatabout is, why does literally every other first world country have universal healthcare but us?
Right, so they just smoked more of it. No one is chain smoking joints with today’s weed.
No argument here.
nothing to see here
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/12...
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche fired the acting U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York late Wednesday night, mere hours after he was appointed by a panel of federal judges.
It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to circumvent both the Senate and the courts to install favored prosecutors.
The weed in the 70s wasn't anywhere near as potent as it is now. Not saying that means anything. Just saying it wasn't.
That's more my generation. There was decent resin about but sure not as strong. And it kept you off the heroin.
More seriously it clearly needs to be properly legalises so we can buy stuff of known strength. I'd quite like to buy some low strength weed from a trusted manufacturer. It's too much of a lottery at the moment
Gotta love a country that thinks it should be easier to buy an automatic weapon than to vote.
You need an ID to buy weapons.
