• jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    amid increasing concerns that the lack of a ban on use is promoting drug abuse by young people.

    This fucking backwards ass notion of weed as a “gateway drug” needs to die. Their reasoning for calling it that shows their idiocy, in that it’s called that because it’s cheap and harmless, so they think it will lead to people believing other drugs are similar. Imagine branding something as dangerous because it’s (Checks Notes) cheap and harmless.

    Although from personal experience, I’d say that weed is a gateway drug of sorts, in that if you’re addicted to something far more dangerous (like alcohol), using weed can act like a “gateway” to sobriety.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      And yet alcohol shall not be banned.

      What are they thinking?

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      In my experience weed can be a gateway drug when you have to buy it from a drug dealer. As an analogy, lots of people end up buying something other than what they went into Target to buy.

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Also a criminal record can fuck your life in a myriad of ways, if like me you fall in love with someone from another country and you both have weed charges neither country will let you live together even decades later destroying what’s probably your only chance at happiness.

        These rules are needlessly cruel and absurd.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Welcome to Japan, where everything, especially their mentality is fatally stuck in the glory days of the 1970/1980s.

      Even today they still use fax and computer usage is the office middling and general computer literacy is abyssal.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      It’s Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it’s the work culture.

    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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      6 days ago

      It’s not harmless. It’s linked to mental illness and increased stress. People need to stop spreading this myth.

      EDIT: I know that people are down voting because weed is incredibly popular and rarely does harm, but that doesn’t mean you should propagate the myth that it’s harmless. Your personal experience should not speak for everyone.

      Weed can easily cause intense anxiety and paranoia if the user takes more than they can handle. This is just as true for someone who is trying it for the first time as it is for someone with a long history of use.

      If you have ever had panic attacks or heart palpitations, the combined increase in heart rate and anxiety may trigger a panic attack. It’s also habit-forming enough that people who’ve had panic attacks will keep using it despite knowing they are risking a really stressful experience.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        You’ll need to cite your sources on that, though the APA style guide doesn’t have a citation format for “conservative grandparents with dementia.”

      • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        if you’re into that, just wait till you hear about alcohol and cigarettes! Anxiety, paranoia and panic attacks seem fine compared to Cirrhosis, COPD, Emphysema, Cancer, Stroke, Renal Failure, Kidney Failure, and Fatty Liver Disease. All of them painful, all of them deadly.

        But god forbid people smoke some weed 🙄 They might in very rare occasions get a temporary increase in anxiety!

  • Skates@feddit.nl
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    7 days ago

    Part of the world: takes a step forward

    Japan: not on my fucking watch

  • TheFrirish@jlai.lu
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    7 days ago

    but getting blind drunk in the street every night for them is fine. Ridiculous.

    • ngwoo@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I was shocked at how often you just see people laying passed out on the sidewalk or sleeping on a bench. Japan is an insanely different place after the bars start closing. Was genuinely uneasy with how many people everywhere just had zero control of themselves.

    • socsa@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      There’s a reason why countries with proper transit infrastructure view alcoholism as a novelty.

      • Trailblazing Braille Taser@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        I’m honestly not sure what you’re saying. Countries like the US with poor public transit infrastructure think alcoholism is serious solely because of people who drink and drive?

  • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    Wasn’t it already illegal. My wife’s cousin served two years for an amount that is so small police wouldn’t even bother to confiscate it in europe.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, it’s news to me that it wasn’t technically illegal. They still believe in the reefer madness shit and act like it.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, it’s news to me that it wasn’t technically illegal. They still believe in the reefer madness shit and act like it.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    The pant is illegal because it’s cheap to grow yourself, but if you let some drug companies make money off of processing it, then it’s perfectly fine to use…

    • x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      “A plant known for opening the mind and making you question things? That’s illegal.”

        • Laser@feddit.org
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          6 days ago

          Weed makes you question if you should get more snacks

          I haven’t tried it in a really long time though but I didn’t really like it very much. Not that I think it’s bad, but it’s a downer and they’re just not my favorite.

          Acid and 2C-B on the other hand, man. Haven’t tried other psychs unfortunately but I find them both great for their individual effects. Unfortunately, there’s the huge stigma around psychs in general plus the naturalistic crowd that makes up a proportion of psych users will only accept stuff like shrooms, peyote and ayahuasca.

      • agelord@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Could you please elaborate on how it “opens” your mind and makes you question things?

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I don’t like weed. I’ve tried it throughout my teens, but left it there.

    With that said, it’s amazing to me that we’re still having the same conversations around drugs. Decriminalise EVERYTHING! Ensure what is on the market is clean, drive the costs down to remove criminals from the market, and dedicate every police force to protecting those on the bottom rung of the drug ladder.

    I read a book from a former officer a while back, where he’d spent two years working on infiltrating a drug network. It was successful, and they not only shut down a major network of drugs, but arrested around 100 people, and removed tons of illegal weapons from the market, and arrested several people in the network known to police for being involved in several murders. They believed that the drug market in the UK during this time had been disrupted “for three hours”. That was all it took for another gang to take over, and apparently it’s those successes that cause a lot of people to leave drug enforcement - after all, what’s the point?

    There almost seems to be zero benefit to drug criminalisation, other than “old conservatives hate it”.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The police love drug criminalization because it gives them widespread latitude to hassle pretty much anybody they feel like whenever they feel like, because “drugs could be involved.” Marijuana especially, since stoners are generally fairly nonthreatening folks but “I smelled marijuana” is a zero-effort way to instantly manufacture a fictitious probable cause for anything.

      • x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        Ah, the “I smelled marijuana” card. That’s the lie they used to completely search my vehicle and test my saliva. Only to find I did a small amount of cocaine a week earlier. No drugs were found, and the “smelled marijuana” magically disappeared from the police report. I got a €1600 fine for DUI. My lawyer tried fighting the lie but because they found traces of cocaine use it was dismissed (zero tolerance). Just like that. I was completely sober.

        For anybody wondering, the amount they found was a third of the amount that clinical studies define as the absolute minimum of waste product that is produced to feel the slightest of effects. So even if it was from usage when I was driving, that wouldn’t even have been enough to feel any effects. I was completely sober, but because I’m a young adult male that doesn’t play along with their power play, I’m marginalized and unlawfully handled.

        They make us criminals but we know better.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      7 days ago

      Rich corporations and people profit, everyone else is criminalized for reasons.

  • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    While the possession and cultivation of marijuana are already banned in Japan, the country will prohibit its use as well, setting a prison sentence of up to seven years for violation.

    Ok, so that clears that up.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      7 days ago

      This is to close off profit to anyone but those selected. They know they are going to incarcerate more people, too.

  • DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    1a. It’s a relatively small incentive to get people to emigrate, particularly the young.

    2b. wp:Cannabis in China

    (my bold)

    In 1985, the People’s Republic of China joined the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and identified marijuana as a dangerous narcotic drug, and illegal to possess or use it. The penalty for marijuana possession in China is disputed from various sources, but according to the Law on Public Security Administration Punishments, marijuana smokers shall be detained for 10 to 15 days and fined a maximum of 2,000 yuan.[16][17] However, the cultivation of cannabis for industrial purposes (hemp) has never been prohibited in China.[1]

    On another hand, cannabis seeds have been continuously listed in the Chinese Pharmacopeia[18] and hemp has never been prohibited in the history of the country.[19]

  • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    Shocking: Nazi country bans plant because worker productivity, or something. I wonder why their suicide rate is among the highest of any country in the world?

    Get your fucking act together, Jesus Christ.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      7 days ago

      Japan is not a “Nazi country.” If you meant “fascist,” they’re not exactly that either.

      Extremely xenophobic and unfriendly to outsiders? Oh yeah. Nazis? The fuck are you talking about?

      • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 days ago

        i live in the same state as Mitch McConnell, so if I fear going to Japan, it’s probably for a good reason.

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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      7 days ago

      While Japan’s suicide rate isn’t the lowest, the rate in the US (where you live per your comment response) is HIGHER than here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

      I also don’t understand how you get Nazi from Japan. Japan is both left and right of the US on a number of issues (though being left of the US position in some things isn’t a high bar). Do I like the government here? Not particularly (and neither that of the US as both make some pretty bone-headed decisions in my opinion). Is it a Nazi hellscape? Absolutely not.

      I’m originally from the US and have been living in Japan for just under a decade. I have universal healthcare (including dentistry and vision), own a home, run a small farm, and have amazing neighbors who largely treat me like anyone else (wherever you are in the world, there’s always that one person). I have good worker’s rights as a full company employee and more legally guaranteed leave than the US (and yes we’re allowed to use it).

      • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Yeah, they have some nice things going for them but Japanese culture still very patriarchal and conservative overall

          • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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            7 days ago

            That plus a massive amount of inherent isolationism plus an extreme birth shortage and an already very aged population.

            The writing is on the wall in many ways unless major, unprecedented changes were to be made. Japan in a hundred years will be unrecognizable without them.

          • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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            7 days ago

            That plus a massive amount of inherent isolationism plus an extreme birth shortage and an already very aged population.

            The writing is on the wall in many ways unless major, unprecedented changes were to be made. Japan in a hundred years will be unrecognizable without them.

    • Blackout@fedia.io
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      7 days ago

      They are some of the most repressed puritans. I would always try to get my friend to leave work early (in reality on time) so we could do something but they will not stand up for themselves. Have to put in the minimal 10hrs per day in a 40hr workweek or you are a slacker.