Today is the day that sweet smell in the air becomes legal. Truthfully, it doesn't concern me much. I was one of those people who made it through the '60's without becoming a smoker of any kind. I do not say that with pride. It just didn't make much sense to me. At one point, I wanted to cultivate an the image of an English professor. So I bought myself a meerschaum pipe. But I spilled the tobacco on my knee, and I never got the hang of the thing. It hit me that what mattered was what was between my ears, not between my teeth.
And, as a high school teacher, bud was always a problem -- out in the schoolyard or out in the street. There were always kids who smelled of the stuff. I sent more than my share of students to the principal's office. In short, I always found marijuana to be a nuisance.
Today it is no longer a nuisance. But, as Tom Walkom points out, it is big business:
Legalization is about big business. Or, to be more accurate, it’s about shifting cannabis production and distribution from illegal big businesses to legal ones.
As the tobacco and alcohol industries have shown, mood-altering substances can be immensely profitable. They are cheap to produce (it’s easy to make wine in your basement) yet face what economists call an inelastic demand curve.
Simply put, that means people will continue to buy these mood-altering substances even as their cost rises.
Industries such as tobacco and alcohol also tend to be dominated by a few big players. That’s because they rely on advertising and product differentiation, both of which are subject to economies of scale.
For instance, it’s cheaper on a per bottle basis to advertise beer if the cost can be spread over a large production run. Think Coors.
Canada’s cannabis companies are only starting and their advertising remains rudimentary. It’s not clear who will be left after the market shakes itself out. But the most obvious beneficiaries of marijuana legalization are Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.
Big Tobacco has experience in the field of inhalants and the ability to produce high-quality marijuana cigarettes. Big Pharma has the capacity to isolate the active ingredients in cannabis and market them as either pills or edibles.
And that concerns me. I suspect that, once again, big business is calling the tune.
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21 comments:
This time I don't they can, Owen. It's too easy to grow (even though it's not as simple as throw the seeds on the ground).
You don't have to smoke it. Try some. You might enjoy it I bet. I've been indulging since about '66 or thereabouts although not as frequently in the last decade or so. The doors of perception and all...
I'm sure it's not the experience portrayed in Reefer Madness, Dana. And, as you say, folks have been indulging for decades. But I'll take a pass. At my age, I have to work hard to think clearly.
Potheads will always be a nuisance, especially when they present in grinning groups, nodding or chuckling approval of one another’s idiotic comments. I’ll take the belligerent drunk who has the sense to realize his stupidity after his drugs wear off.
Wait a minute; I’ll ask myself the question before somebody else does: “Whatya so uptight for? Yuk-yuk-yuk … giggle-giggle.”
Happy drunks are relatively easy to deal with, John. Mean drunks are another story. Is there such a creature as a mean pothead?
Can't shake the stigma huh? Life long indoctrination can be hard to ignore.
Perhaps, Dana. I think that, like tobacco, it's an acquired taste.
Except for the physically addictive part you're partly right. Which is also another thing that distinguishes it from alcohol. Personally I like being happily relaxed - that may be the acquired taste part I suppose.
You’re right about that, Owen. But even though I’ve never had my face grabbed by a pretentious pothead, I still find them as annoying as the meanest drunks. And they don’t fall on their asses as readily.
Owen, I found the Rick Mercer clip of Pierre Berton instructing some young man on the finer points of rolling a proper joint. Priceless!
I'm sure that there are lots of folks who would agree with you, Dana.
Owen, I tracked down the RMR clip from, I think, 2003 of Pierre Berton instructing some young man in the art of properly rolling a joint.
As for mean potheads, my best friend is a retired Detroit police sergeant. When people criticized pot he was fond of telling them the number of times he'd attended a residence to find a suicide or a wife laying in a pool of blood on the floor and an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the table but never anything remotely like that with cannabis involved. People with the munchies tend not to get homicidal.
That's been my observation, Mound. Pot makes people lackadaisical -- but it doesn't make them mean. They may be spaced out. But they don't punch out other people.
Pot is overrated, to be sure.
Sore throat, awful taste lingering in one's mouth, feeling groggy and lethargic afterwards from what is obviously a strong sedative more than anything in spite what one is normally told about the stuff.
I, myself, have no vested interest in it. But I do get tired of hearing about this subject so incessantly, hence I, too, think it's high time for legalization of it---if only in hopes societies will finally put this subject to rest once and for all, and move on to more important matters.
Crimminalizing weed hasn't put and end to it, Tal. There are public safety concerns. Driving while high is a danger -- just as it always has been. But, surely, we can improve society by concentrating on other more important issues.
I can't even count the number of times I've driven high over the decades - including tooling around Vancouver in my '68 Datsun 1600 while stoned on acid back in the day. No accidents, no tickets, not even any stops.
The effect of driving while stoned on *me* - no one else has my experiences and I don't have theirs - is to make me incredibly mindful of what I'm doing. I speed less, I drive with greater attention, I signal more often...etc.
Maybe that's just me.
Well in my sixty fifth year on this planet I have spent the last thirty something without continuing pot smoking but I still dig seventies rock and roll. My discussions with my thirty and twenty eight year old daughters are usually based on the health issues of pot and the need to refrain from putting any thing in our lungs other than clean air. a commodity seriously deficient in our day to day lives.. I also add that with this present generations struggles to secure housing and jobs they must be very focused on the prize and try to stay mentally prepared. My observations are based on a very informative lifestyle realized during the seventies and eighties. I often conclude my discussion with the the comment that " it wasn't called Dope for nothing".MJW
That may be your impression, Dana. And maybe your're right. On the other hand, maybe you have just been lucky. When I think of what has happened to me, I attribute a lot of it to good luck.
My concerns for our three sons are the same as your concerns for your daughters, zoombats. I know that at least one of them has tried the stuff. But he decided it was an experience he didn't need.
Can't be larnin' nuthin new at this point in yer laahhves.
Much too late fer that.
So long it's been good to know ya.
A message from one of them lackadaisical ones.
In many ways, Deacon, not much has changed. There's a new source of supply. That's about it.
Until his dying day, Mound, Pierre loved playing the radical.
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