> Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized, so this is completely incorrect.

I don't know for sure, but does this imply that the FDA can't really regulate these dispensaries? Since the federal government's official stance on marijuana is "you shouldn't be using it anyway!" then presumably they don't feel the need to ensure purity of the product for dispensaries.

I've said for years that I'm the only person I know that D.A.R.E. was actually effective on; I'm way too much of a coward to consume things that aren't regulated. Even as a teenager I never did any drugs because I was afraid that it might be cut with something horrible like meth and I wouldn't have any recourse for them doing that.

I'm sure most dispensaries are fine, but I'm still kind of afraid of something that doesn't have FDA oversight.

Marijuana is legal for recreational use in the states where most people live. I'm in a Romney 2012 county and there's a giant dispensary on the main street that looks like an Apple store.

It is still a schedule 1 drug subject to criminal federal prosecution for possession and sale. The feds are just ignoring their obligation to uphold the law.

Lots of things that are de jure illegal are de facto legal. In many US States, marijuana meets this description.

To claim "marijuana absolutely isn't legalized" is completely incorrect. Something being illegal is more complicated than what the above poster makes it seem, unless a definition of "illegality" is used that's so broad that it's meaningless.

I mean its literally at this time in the process of being downgraded to probably schedule 2 or even schedule 3 once research is ACTUALLY allowed.

Not how the law works at all. Federal law applies to interstate issues, or when local LEO requests assistance. When a state legalizes, it means directing local LEO to stop asking for that assistance. Interstate and border checkpoints absolutely still exist and DEA absolutely still pursues trafficking. Businesses in non-prohibition states buy from in-state suppliers and deal primarily in cash. The feds have no obligation to drive into these places and start flipping tables.

The fact that it’s technically illegal under federal law may be relevant in some context, but not to my specific point, which is about the effect of the law on individual behavior. As you acknowledge, the federal government isn’t enforcing the federal law. To people in states where it’s been legalized, the federal law is a legal technicality. I had to remind my Oregonian in-laws not to bring weed on the plane recently because they forgot that they’d be in federal jurisdiction passing through the airport. (Their logic was it’s legal in Oregon and legal in Maryland…)

My point is that the legal and cultural barriers that kept young adults from heading down to their local dispensary to buy dope have disappeared. So while we were on the cusp of freeing people from smoking in the 1990s, we have just made it easy and effectively legal to smoke a different thing, and everyone seems to have forgotten that inhaling smoke into your lungs is bad for you.

> Except marijuana absolutely isn't legalized

I don't know where you live, but I buy my marijuana from a government store. There exist other countries.

Yeah, but we know where rayiner lives -- the US -- where it is not legalized. So we can refute his specific claim.

Based on the recent decision by the DEA to move marijuana from schedule 1 to schedule 3, that could be changing (insofar as legalization goes anyways)

Schedule 3 is a lower standard for researchers and prescribers but it does not fundamentally change the legal status of recreational, self-elected use. Other class 3 drugs include e.g., ketamine, a weird amphetamine (benzphetamine), and some drugs with the opioid codeine. None of these are legalized for recreational use. And my impression is that sentencing guidelines for marijuana just specify it by name rather than relying on its former schedule 1 status. It's a move in the right direction, but only barely.

The grandparent commenter was trying to blame current societal ills on the legality of marijuana and the legal availability to children, both of which are plainly incorrect, so any future legality cannot have had any bearing due to the causal nature of the universe. And even if it becomes legal someday, all current precedents involve treating marijuna like cigarettes as far as age restrictions go.

> The grandparent commenter was trying to blame current societal ills on the legality of marijuana and the legal availability to children

I'm blaming marijuana legalization for young people smoking marijuana, when they wouldn't smoke cigarettes. The fact that marijuana isn't legal in all states, or is illegal at the federal level, is immaterial to my point. In the places where my family and I live (D.C. and Oregon), marijuana has been legal for a decade. It was made legal in Oregon in 2015, after being decriminalized in 1973. Dispensaries are all over the place. In D.C. it's been legal to grew, possess, and barter since 2015.

The fact that it's illegal under federal law has no effect on people's use of it, because the feds do not bother to enforce that law on individuals. My neighborhood in downtown D.C. reeked of pot smoke way back in 2016.

> I'm blaming marijuana legalization for young people smoking marijuana, when they wouldn't smoke cigarettes.

Young people who would never smoke cigarettes smoking marijuana was already happening the 2000s, long before any state approached legalization.

I'd be interested to see actual data on that. For example, a Canadian study done after a year of legalization found that more youths tried marijuana, but that they were trying it later than average and the overall usage of cannabis among youth remained the same. Interestingly, there was also an increase to the perception of harm from using cannabis among the youth surveyed.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.09.003

In the USA, “THC-A weed” is now legalized as hemp nationwide. But the secret is that this is just 100% normal weed. There’s literally not a single thing different about “THC-A weed” vs. “Amsterdam” or “California” weed.

THC-A is just the natural form of good old delta-9 THC while the plant is still freshly harvested and unheated. THC-A is the natural, standard weed chemical that converts to “good old delta-9 THC” at 100% efficiency as soon as the weed is heated for consumption, or while the plant sits around in storage for a long time. The old laws counted THC-A as contributing to delta-9 THC content, you summed them together or converted them before testing to decide if it was hemp. Now it’s treated as a different cannabinoid and only delta-9 content determines if it is hemp or weed.

So yes, weed is now legal nationwide is the USA, and sold in brick-and-mortar stores in all 50 states…it’s just gone completely and utterly under-the-political-radar.

Also “good old delta-9 THC” edibles are legal now as well, at very high strengths, because as long as the total weight is <0.3% delta-9 THC its a “hemp gummie”.