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Did Sagan say that in writing? I know he wrote a few things about his experiences with pot, but those were informal, anecdotal writings, and this sounds much more formal, almost like a public statement meant for publication, or a speech.
Here is a summary with a link to the PDF: https://bigthink.com/health/carl-sagan-on-smoking-marijuana/
Kinda blows my mind that capitalists so desperately want marijuana to be illegal. It’s basically the closest real-world analogue to Brave New World’s Soma.
You want the populace to be complacent? You need to let em blaze it.
Weed leads to more open mindedness. Why bother using it as an opiate of the masses when you have actual opiates. Push those instead while throwing anyone who has touched weed into the private slave system for superprofits.
There’s already plenty out there to keep a population complacent. Also, the prison industrial complex and all that surrounds it is big business.
This is why I really fear it. Then again it helped me find god. Which i then realized structurally does create the complacent worker through pacifying rather than inciting any real change. So I am back to thinking it is a crutch.
Sensitivity and fellowship, yet my (former) friend who is a big stoner has gone all-in on conspiracy theories and is championing the Reform party in the UK because Labour are apparently race traitors. Guess weed can’t do all the lifting.
Can’t win em all. Also, weed in the UK is rubbish /s
If you are as smart and educated as Carl Sagan, I’m sure weed isn’t doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah for people like Sagan, the “serenity” he’s referring to is probably more about quieting his mind.
Maybe weed isn’t relevant in that case, let’s not forget that in the US, weed was promoted by liberals and opposed by the MAGA crowd.
Yeah that quote is very naive and privileged.
If there is one thing weed is really good at, it is making people okay with being lazy and with their current situation. LSD on the otherhand, can really make you rethink everything.
what’s wrong with being content and finding peace? The productivity drive has been driven into you by capitalism and leads to mass discontentment and suffering. One must detach from endless striving to achieve true enlightenment and happiness, and weed can do that and chill people out and cure them of their “protestant work ethic” which is a cultural disease.
Inherent in this type of “weed makes you lazy” rhetoric is that it makes other people lazy. You want everyone else working endlessly and tirelessly implicitly here, that they must face endless burden for your benefit. It’s a form of social control where you are attempting to force your values onto others instead of respecting their right to chose what they do with their own body and life.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/smoking-weed-more-emphathetic-study/ Fwiw.
My partner has an Rx for his myriad of autoimmune stuff. It really helps him when he isn’t feeling well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s causal, but it could also be that more naturally empathetic people trend towards weed to cope with the reality that our society is brutal and predatory and uncaring. I know I need weed just to cope with living in a fascist society where almost everyone around me shrugs their shoulders at genocide.
Also it could be shared confounding variables like the fact that more poor, young and POC people smoke, and old rich white people have drained themselves of all empathy
Whatever gets you through the day. Glad to have others with heart around. :)
To make an apple pie you gotta first create the universe. Def a stoner thought lol
Don’t forget “from scratch” lol
“Scratch” his itch for some of that killer skunk weed, the devil’s lettuce!
Although I don’t agree with illegalization of cannabis, I do have to point out that thc content has gotten dangerously high from like a decade ago. Before, it was like 4%, now it’s nearing 19%. So I don’t feel comfortable recommending people to start recreationally smoking marijuana. It leads to serious mental issues and addiction in some cases. What triggers those “some cases” I don’t know but I don’t really want to try and find out.
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“I call people ‘afraid’ when they point out the current dangerous path of a drug that drives a 45 USD billion industry.”
I biased against meth, but also afraid of it as well. Doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to try it and assess whether it’s really as bad as they say. I also won’t try out any poison, random pills I find, or anything I have to inject.
Fear is a healthy thing sometimes, mate.
I keep hearing that it’s supposed to be much stronger these days, but my experience is just the opposite.
I was a heavy weed smoker in my young years, smoking standard generic pressbud, and it got me nicely stoned. I even had a couple of years where I was growing my own, so I’m very experienced with fresh homegrown weed, which was beautiful. Tasted great, with a very satisfying intense high. Then I quit smoking for a few decades.
I recently started smoking again in my retirement, and was looking forward to trying this stronger weed I was hearing about. I’ve tried legal weed from various states, and none of it gets me nearly as stoned as the cheap pressbud of my youth.
This is just anecdotal, but that’s been my experience.
I also have anecdotal stories of my friend’s life being ruined by weed addiction. We can all have some anecdotal evidence but more scientific evidence is coming out saying that there are higher levels of thc and if younger children smoke weed it will fuck them up. I do agree that using marijuana cautiously and medicinally can help but I can’t possibly recommend smoking for fun.
A consequence of its prohibition. History keeps on repeating itself, yet we never learn.
The street market and mainstream market both rely on structure and tactics.
Look at shitty foods. They don’t need to be shitty… It wasn’t prohibition that made food unhealthy. But they made them that way.
Look at our news, it doesn’t have to be filled with shitty entertainment tactics and drama, but it is and it’s unhealthy to our society.
Addiction and emotion is marketed regardless of mainstream or street.
And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck. This is true for all illicit drugs, as they tend towards becoming more potent when they need to be smuggled (e.g. why fentanyl is often added to heroin, as it delivers more potency per gram).
If you legalise and regulate it, suddenly that pressure is taken away. Cannabis is produced in consistent and known strengths, distributed in packaging that clearly states the potency so people can make informed choices about what they take.
And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck.
this isnt exactly true. (my instinct is to say it’s completely false but i could be wrong!) in many states, it’s medical marijuana that is >20% THC and the cheap public stuff is unregulated below that amount. so you have people getting a bogus medical card, buying up 30% strands, and smoking an ounce a week and going into psychosis. source: stoner drug counselor
historically, yes! that was definitely a motivator. but the current system perpetuates it deeply
It’s mainly just a talking point to get weed money out of the black market.
just guessing here, but I’d think it’s getting perpetuated, as people expect or are used to the potent stuff.
Also not sure if the price is adjusted to strength, but I’d also suspect that people would buy stronger stuff and use less of it, so it lasts longer
(pure speculation on my end)
I’m sure many do but unfortunately i haven’t met or heard about any of it… whether it’s in the world or on r/trees or wherever. People rolling up giant blunts, etc. it’s crazy the way people overindulge! they say it’s spiritual and then binge on it… it’s like downing an entire bottle of communion wine lol
I was taught alcohol consumption where I grew up the same way. Consume as much as possible.
It’s lame.
you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right? i’m personally not a fan of the “high THC-A % at all costs” commercial grows and there is a wonderful variety of 3% or less CBD hemp or type 2s with 4%
you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right?
this is very true and something i practice myself, using as little as possible
and yet… that’s not how most people use the drug. meth is similar! did you know that if you were to microdose meth you could theoretically use it as an ADHD medication? and yet where are all the microdosers? why does my city have a rampant meth problem?
thankfully cannabis is not nearly as destructive as meth but the parent comment is right: cannabis is becoming more and more problematic in people’s lives due to the high THC content and the cultural rubber banding effect. we’ve gotta reckon with the fact that this miracle drug is still a drug that messes with our NT systems quite a bit
Edible packaging informs of THC content in milligrams.
I’m glad stoners are so eco-conscious that they’re not wasting plastic on packaging.
I need like an upvote plus button. Like a “nice!” button. I’m always fighting the urge to post “damn that’s funny” all over the place.
An upvote should cover it I suppose, but it’s not satisfying.
Anyway, good one
There is lemmysilver (with ! at the start)
I’ve been a huge pothead for decades and I honestly haven’t noticed an increase in content while smoking regular weed. I think that’s the branded stuff that sends you out of orbit.
But if it has changed, that just means I smoke less to get to the high I like by smoking the equivalent of one joint during the day. It’s so much less smoke for my lungs this way, I’m not complaining. Lol
When I was a stoner I just reached a point where it didn’t effect me the same way.
Like I would smoke more but it would just be the same level high …but I felt like I needed it any time I did anything. Maybe I didn’t increase my bowl size much but the frequency increased.
Looking back it was such a a waste of my time and money. I was trying to chase this medicinal effect I was reading about but I never found it.
I still use it, but I don’t use it during the day like before.
Really nice thing for us green dragon enthusiasts though.
When I show up to an in-person interview high, in hopes they’ll think that’s my regular behavior:
I mean… if you are always high then that isn’t wrong is it?
The one and only time I ever had a boss/supervisor ask me if I was high on the job, was the one day I showed up sober. And then when I said I wasn’t he was like “that sucks; I am.” 🤣
I’m on year 11 of pulling this off lmao.
Wish we could smoke with you now and talk about K2-18b.
K2-18b is a nothing burger. The scientist who made the announcement has done similar before, he seems to really want to be THE person who discovers life on another planet so he skews facts and ignores other facts just for the small chance of being right. Watch this: https://youtu.be/HYjYvKoQVeM
:(
You still can. You probably have at least one atom from Carl in you by now.
I hope it’s in my weiner
Better give him a good wank just in case
Way ahead of ya
Thanks for blasting Carl Sagan in the ether!
hell yea
Boston City Hall is truly a legendarily gaudy building.
I was thinking what this magnificent brutalist building is
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Space Kermit was pretty far out there, man.
Boston city hall
Yeah, that’s one of the things that I disagree about with the world’s most senior space cadet.
I must ask why; the prohibition of it doesn’t make any sense to me at all. It’s all but proven fact that it’s not any more harmful than either smoking cigarettes, or drinking alcohol.
Both of which are completely legal to consume all day, every day.
Weed simply doesn’t deserve the status it is given, it was placed on schedule 1 as a gigantic middle finger from the ruling class, against the working class. They did it to punish those they saw as their lessers, and so they could have the police rough up anyone because they owned a small amount of the substance. But the cigarettes and alcohol they’ve enjoyed for decades and many of them have profited from? Those are fine. This new thing (at the time) that they aren’t profiting off of? Let’s make it illegal, so we can force everyone to use the things we do profit from.
That’s basically the backstory here.
Why you, or anyone would oppose lifting that prohibition is confusing at best, racist/classest at worst.
I’m genuinely curious how you have come to have the position you do. If you don’t like it, nobody is going to force you to use the stuff, same with alcohol and cigarettes. So why do you care?
TBF, just imagine what a place the world would be if the world leader’s idea of quality downtime would be a fat bong, Cartoon Channel and pizza.
Cartoon Channel
And here I am studying Kanji instead while high off my ass. Lol
Either my fellow stoners need to broaden their horizons or we have terrible stereotypes about weed smokers. 😅
People don’t need to make their leisure time productive.
My leisure time only happens to be productive. I don’t remember the last time I put on some cartoons because I smoked weed like people say. That’s not who I am when I smoke and it’s fine to point that out.
To each his own, and though I have never consumed any kind of drugs nor think I ever will (nor can’t understand the need of drugs beyond medical field, pretty much contrary of what it is stated in the quote of this post), I concede keeping it illegal while at the same time alcohol and nicotine are both completely legal is one of the reasons I still think our so-called “civilization” is extremely idiotic, mediocre and pathetic. Either make all of them legal but regulate their consumption or make it so it never bothers anyone else or anything else in any way, or make all of them illegal - but the disparity of current legislation about all of them around the world is just nonsense.
Are they completely legal though? They’re age-restricted everywhere I can think of, and you can’t drive or operate heavy machinery under their influence. So they’re, like, legal but with a couple of caveats?
That is the “legal, but with regulations, make it not bother anyone else” part.
Illegal simply means that if you have/consume said substance, there would be legal consequences (fines, imprisonment).
These restrictions and rules of use don’t make the drug itself illegal, they just make it illegal to use in certain scenarios.
Yeah, sure, but it’s obviously a matter of degree. Ketamine is illegal to use in certain scenarios and also a front-line medical treatment. Chocolate, OTOH, has absolutely no restrictions that I’m aware of. I admit that I’m just nitpicking language choice here, though, and there was no need for me to say anything
How come?
