Jacob Sullum has an interesting article: Colorado’s Cannabis Consumption Conundrum
But once a visitor settles on a gram of Budderface or a quarter-ounce of Cinderella 99, he has a problem: Where can he smoke it? State and local restrictions have made answering that question a much bigger challenge than it needs to be.
This is something that needs to be figured out – one of the things about legalization has to be enabling a social aspect to cannabis use. You should be able to go listen to a band, or get together with people in a “coffee shop” kind of place.
And the lack of smoking places is going to drive tourists dabbling in cannabis to choose edibles, which is not the way to first experience it, in my mind.
Related: The First Colorado Hotel to Post ‘420 Friendly’ Right on Sign?. Looks like smart marketing to me.
This is the bureaucrat’s fallback position; more regulation than anyone could possibly think is realistic, followed by a gradual rollback. When I was 18 (61 now) the drinking age changed to 18. Restrictions on alcohol purchase and consumption were much tighter then than now. Gradually the rules were relaxed and society hasn’t fallen apart. The same will be the case for cannabis. Once the system is in place for a while, the people will demand a looser system, and the government will gradually move in that direction.
I’m not buying that alcohol was more stringently regulated 40 years ago, except perhaps right after the age change was made.
In the mid-1990s, when I turned 21, there were undercover/underage stings all the time. It seems to have come more out of the liability culture of the Reagan era, which ended any number of spring bacchanalians on college campuses nationwide.
What’s more, as a recent article pointed out, there are structural aspects of the alcohol industry that date to the post-prohibition policies put in place–these include forbidding vertical integration and not allowing home distilling.
We’d be wise to do what’s possible to avoid the same problems with cannabis.
Here in Alberta, Canada it is. Back when, you weren’t even allowed to see the product in the government controlled liquor stores, you wrote your order on a piece of paper, gave it to the clerk who went into the back room and returned with your bottle in a brown paper bag. There were NO restaurants with legal alcohol for sale. If you were in a bar and wanted to move to another table, you had to ask the waitress to carry your drink, she would ask the people at the table if it was OK for you to join them, then put your glass on the table. Liquor stores were only open until 10 pm, not on Sundays or holidays, and the prices were as high then in dollars as they are now. A new place opened up in town with a ‘special’ liquor licence that permitted patrons to stand and drink. With a regular licence, everyone sat and drank. Nobody stood with a drink or they would be thrown out. Bars had two doors and two separate sections; ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘Ladies and Escorts’. Women were not permitted to enter a tavern without a male escort. Lounges did not exist. The only product available in a tavern was beer. Then they permitted wine, and finally liquor. Offsales from taverns were permitted until the cutoff time for service, then you couldn’t get any. I still recall the first time I saw someone buy a bottle of whisky from the bar to take home. Nowadays, we would laugh at such rules, and so we should. Those rules are not that much different in tone and degree from the ones being adopted for cannabis sales and consumption.
It’s been a lot like that in all sorts of places in the US – even after Prohibition was overturned federally, the States, Counties, & Cities could still pass laws, ordinances, and whatnot to keep their areas “Dry” – there’s a chart (on Wikipedia iirc) that shows a listing of Dry, Wet, and some that fall between the two.
Arlington, Texas = (Right in the center of the D/FW Metroplex) – Home of the ‘Texas Rangers’, and ‘Six Flags Over Texas’, etc. Just lifted its “dry” status fairly recently… (although there was a way around it before Restaurants & Clubs could/would join a ‘club’ system-thingy forgive my lack of details = last time I messed with it was like 1999.
But you paid a couple dollars (or the Restaurant & maybe even waitstaff? did at times), And you’d get a year or two membership to some entity that was regulated by the TABC = Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the Dry county thing went away and you could by over-priced drinks w/ your meal.
Here’s the Map – Wet/Dry Status of Texas Counties 2014 – Although it’s not that helpful really, as most counties are “Partially Wet”…
Arlington’s first package liquor store set to open = Note: This was back in March 2014… – Just a mere 80 years after “Repeal Day”!
Here’s the ten TABC – ‘Local Option Election Issues’ – that places can try to vote in or out of law.
A variety of which are still in effect – across most of Texas to this day you can’t get liquor at the grocery store – just beer & wine. You [typically] have to go to a “liquor store” and they’re only open until 9pm, and not open on Sunday at all, liquor licenses are more akin to political commodities rather than a permit to ensure legitimate business operation.
I don’t think any County has successfully voted in any new “prohibitory options” in a long time – but they go thru the motions occasionally.
I’m curious, did anybody here on the couch have their first experience with edibles? I started smoking at a young age and remember not catching my first buzz until the third time I smoked. From what I understand, that isn’t uncommon. Does it work similarly for edibles?
Get educated about edibles: Eight tips for getting right dose
http://tinyurl.com/n9s2edp
Individual tolerance levels can change rather rapidly from my experience and are different for each individual. I have a friend who claims he has never attained a buzz from edibles despite trying them several times. I had no problems my first time, but it was a bit intense.
A few years back, my wife’s closest friend came to stay with us. Her whole life, she’d endured a mild but fairly constant form of melancholia. I was convinced I could show her what happiness felt like, so I asked her to trust me and try cannabis. After three days of smoking with no result whatsoever, I gave her a fair lump of hash to eat. Two hours later, she had less than half a minute of euphoric elation then reverted back to herself again. She didn’t even experience tiredness from it.
Never got high off edibles in Amsterdam and I ate three brownies for my first time . . . in fact, I never got high at all, not with the hash, kush, purps etc. Mexican brick was far more superior than all the coffee shops I went to, yet everyone who shared my stuff or whose stuff I shared, claimed to be very stoned. I wish I never bought any weed or hash while in Holland because I would have had more money for some Royal Blue Delft pottery and more money for Belgium and France. Got really high on my Mexican brick before going and got high on it when I got back from Europe.
I’m curious what next time will bring when I go back to Holland. Even the locals got seriously high on my stuff and it was noticeable, but not me. Though the mushrooms were really strong.
I got a question, had you ever been a smoker (of anything)?
If not, then that might why you didn’t ‘catch a buzz’ – the first couple times = because you weren’t really inhaling = that AFAIK is how that tends to work… Or maybe you forgot & just don’t remember the first couple times? 🙂
Seriously though, its -plausible- with edibles but I’d say that’s partly a titration/dosage issue. IMO, people really ought to smoke it their first time (or maybe vape it = if they’ve never smoked a cig, or a tobacco pipe) people comfortable with inhaling smoke down into their lungs as opposed to just taking it into their mouths) will normally notice the buzz almost right away.
And it also functions as a manner for people to know when to ‘say when’, as opposed to some types of vaping (As Hilariously Noted By Katt Williams) = when you “can’t catch the cough” – that lets you know when you’ve had enough. With a vaporizer people sometimes tend to “over-do-it”.
Much like people sometimes do with ice-packed bongs, they don’t realized they’ve gotten ‘way more than a lungful’ until the cooled smoke warms back up a bit in their lungs & expands more than a regular bong hit would – leaving them spitting out the ‘extra’ smoke & all-too-often saliva, straight into the faces of their friends who’re helping them with the bong!
AS far as “Edibles” the wait-time between ingestion & the buzz can lead to people getting a little high & really sleepy = and napping thru the best part of their first “brownie-buzz”…
Or they *pull a Maureen O.’D.owe’d* = (Yes, I DO think she should be forced to add the O’ back to to her family’s surname, and be teased about it until the end of time.)
It can be a bit like drinking on an empty stomach – or a full one – an iffy proposition, and sharing Edibles amongst non-stoners is something people gotta be careful with or the newbies may get “too-high” and swear it off like its all “bad acid” waiting to happen. We -REALLY- don’t need any more of those folks running around spreading their naiveté/ignorance.
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Back in the ’70s it was a common belief that you wouldn’t get high the first couple of times. I didn’t experience that, I got stoned to the bejeezuz on 3 hits off of the joint. I’m not sure how that belief got started but I think that I heard it out of enough unrelated people to just discount it as fiction. Maybe they just had some of that placebo weed that today’s idiot prohibitionists claim we were smoking back in the 1970s?
Here’s a better question…has that common belief persisted to the present?
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As far as drinking alcohol is concerned today’s youth don’t have the easy access that they did back in my high school daze. When I was in high school there was a perpetual keg of beer in the wooded lot next door set up by enterprising 12th graders. 18 was the legal age for beer & wine in Virginia at the time. It wasn’t any secret either. Often there was a waiting line that extended out of the woods and into the school parking lot. Police and school authorities apparently tolerated this as long as the people selling the beer were also enrolled in the school. When I started 11th grade the keg got busted in the first week because the people running it had graduated and decided that they liked the money.
Things really were different back then. Students were also allowed to smoke tobacco in designated smoking areas, which meant outside any of the entrance doors except for the main entrance.
In the late 60’s at our high school, there was a student smoking lounge, and the local college, which was housed in one of the local HS’s allowed smoking in the student lounge/lunchroom. It was seen as normal because something like 60% of adults smoked. Kids were almost expected to join in the fun when they were old enough. Most were in HS when they started.
The only option I’ve seen is the limos, taxis, mini-buses(?) with a driver up front ‘walled-off’ from the smoke, driving people around while they get baked.
That can’t be cheap – and it’s probably the most environmentally unfriendly manner to provide a place for people to get high AND results from people being paranoid that their property might be seized or they may be kicked-out, evicted if they “knowingly let people hangout and get high = while watching the FIFA World Cup in a sports-bar setting.
Or maybe a theater/concert setting, to see a play, or an opera, maybe a multi-comedian comedy concert.
Music seems the most likely setting – for some “Rock & Roll”, or old-fashioned “Grunge”, okay I can already feel that look… = So, maybe some “Post-Grunge”?
I’m telling you I’d do anything (just-shy of murder) to go watch Pearl Jam and get stoned “openly”…
[Note: I realized while typing – that I HAD to “qualify the remark – Because, I literally can’t imagine going to anything resembling a real ‘Rock Concert’ where people weren’t getting high.]
Pete, you posted a while back that the prohibitionists’ last fallbacks would be driving and kids. You should have added a third one. The “second hand smoke” issue. Note that Kevin Sabet likes to compare us to Big Tobacco, not Big Alcohol.
Obviously Kevin’s Big Alcohol sponsors pay him more…
Did you notice their “New Website” announcement?
Sponsored by 3 groups NFIA, SAM, and TRI. Apparently, they DO have spare money from parents to “throw at stuff”… scared parents throw money at their computer screens & Kev-Kev vacuums it up to finance his next adventure.
But they’re all “going in on” a new site together = kinda like broke college kids on a sack of schwag. Maybe, they’re getting as desperate as they appear?
The driving issue will pass away with the advent of autonomous cars (I can’t wait to see the bastards squirm when they literally lose a talking point to technology). The second hand smoke problem will persist longer. Moreover, we should prepare when future “studies” will proclaim that second hand VAPING is just as bad as smoking. Eventually though the science will catch up to public opinion as it has now; Gupta’s about face comes to mind. What will remain, however, are the child meat shield arguments. Just take a look at the garbage spewed at butwhataboutthechildren.org.
They seemed to be lacking in comments, so I helped them out. Wonder whether they will leave them up?
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The only way they can compare second hand vapors to second hand smoke would be with bald faced lies. No, I’m not saying that they won’t try that, I’ve already seen that mentioned a couple of time from some of the more extreme Ignorati.
Then there’s the contact high mythology which I’ve already seen used to argue why “designated drivers” aren’t a viable option. They do make this shit up as they go along.
Reality is that a few years of data from Colorado and Washington will kneecap their arguments. Sure, there will always be true believers. After all, some of the people can be fooled all of the time. But in the face of evidence they’ll come to be seen as street corner nutcakes on a soapbox arguing that the end is nigh.
The one way that cannabis can be harmful is with regards to certain kinds of psychological problems. The kind is that that has to do with paranoia. That kind of psychological problem has a high correlation with social isolation. One of the benefits of legalization is to reduce that problem by reducing the degree of social isolation of vulnerable smokers. However, for that benefit to really be possible, there need to be social environments where people can smoke. Even if the guy (or girl) just sits there and doesn’t really talk to anybody, the mere presence of other people in a coffeeshop (you at least surely talk to the budtender, if only minimally) makes for a much healthier experience than if one is sitting at home alone.
Here is the way I think it will naturally go without interference from State or Fed:
Howard Johnson Hotel In Grand Rapids, Michigan Catering To Pot Smokers
http://tinyurl.com/klojhpk
“their smoking rooms, of which they currently have 20, are reaching full occupancy each weekend, and the hotel’s general occupancy is increasing, too.”
Another problem that reefer madness has heaped on us along with the rest of the benefits from prohibition.
It will take decades for society to allow full freedom on marijuana use simply because they would first have to admit that they were hoodwinked by the government,,better to drag it all out than admit that.
The casual answer to this is the outdoor seating areas of various establishments are used for this purpose after the PM rush hour in Denver is over.
Global Day of Action on June 26: More than Eighty Cities Protest the Drug War
OT… here’s a good read:
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Advocates for Prison Sentencing Reform in New ‘Letter from Loretto’
Bed & Breakfast Caters To Medical Marijuana Users
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5008.shtml
3 Ways High-End Stoners Can Class It Up in Colorado
http://www.hightimes.com/read/3-ways-high-end-stoners-can-class-it-colorado
… so the Communists Mail a Disabled Woman a letter on the 13th, demanding compliance by the 20th. She gets the letter on the 20th……. God damnable Freaks.
I am in Alberta and 2nd all of Primus’s comment. I turned 18, the year liquor started to really flow. My love of booze cost me big time and it lead to other stuff if you know what I mean. Pot got me back and I feel grateful there is at least one comestible that is friendly life long.
Very similar to me; folks both alcoholics, one grandfather too, couple of my bros dip too much by far, nephew on the road to alcoholism. I also drank too much, but quit before it did too much damage. Switched to pot, never looked back.
while not a problematic drinker my folks stocked a pretty full bar. I drank more beer as a young man than smoked pot. I of course tried the variety of poisons available – I cringed reading Pete’s description of his college first drunk – Southern Comfort, Slow Gin, Boone’s Farm, malt liquor… I bought my first whiskey at (appropriately) the Whiskey a Go-Go in Hollywood at 18 (at 18 I looked 16). Saw Chuck Berry don’tcha know, musta been 1969 or ’70.
But with pot everywhere in the military during the WWVN days I began the shift. Beer was the mainstream choice but one hell of a lot of us young GIs smoked weed. College switched me over. A couple of bad cases of bottle flu and my drinking became waay minimal. Now as an old fart I might drink a 6pak a year. I will take a single shot most anytime. That’s not a buzz that’s just an inner tazing. Pot I smoke daily. And guaranteed I’m in better health than most. And that does not do away with the fact of having a 62 year old body… ouch.
Wow, at the Whiskey. Too bad you weren’t old enough to see the Doors get fired every night. But that Chuck Berry Concert had to be awesome.
Somewhat related:
http://blackburnnews.com/bri-national/2014/06/24/yukon-residents-tops-in-tippling-alcohol/
Now while I can’t say this is cross-market elasticity at work, there is a lot of good pot in NB. Beer is just as overpriced here as in other parts of Canada. I bought a 26er of vodka recently to make a tincture and it cost $40.
Here in Alberta a 26 costs about half that. Taxes must be really high there.
@Uncle Albert’s Newphew Prohibitionists aren’t just limited to the Conservative Bible Thumping Republicans.
But
Also there’s Some in the Liberal Saving-The-Earth Thumping Democrat Community as well.
Now
Their also trying to use Prohibition as Good-for-the-Planet Bullshit.
Jacob has another article at Reason:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/06/04/you-can-never-drive
Kleiman actually speaks sense for once:
If he keeps this up, he’ll get a $20 gift card to Chilies for Christmas.
Well, in WA State TPTB have been trying to get people out of their cars and onto public transportation, walking, or riding a bicycle for over a decade, by reducing driving lanes and increasing bike lanes and HOV lanes and also by not doing repairs on roadways in a reasonable amount of time. This per se rule is likely just another tentacle of that bureaucratic, Agenda 21, jellyfish (octopi only have 8 tentacles, this Agenda 21 beast has hundreds, luckily in our county the county council refused to adopt the Agenda 21 rules, even under pressure from the State, but the largest city in the county welcomes that anti-human plot).
You’d think Agenda 21 would love hemp and ending the War on Drugs. Something that hypocritical cannot be good or allowed.
Sooner or later, places like Marc Emery’s Vapor Lounge will start to sprout up. And it will prove to be a major thorn in the side of the prohibs.
Why? Because of what will not be taking place there.
In my last visit to Vansterdam, I had the pleasure of visiting there, and the difference between it and the (admittedly few) bars I’ve gone to were like night and day.
Decent folks coming together to enjoy good company and the weed they brought with them there. Vastly less noise thanks to much better-behaved patrons. Better-behaved because their choice of intoxicant wasn’t likely to lead to violence. Which eliminated the need for bouncers.
Instead, they had (cute and smart) ‘hostesses’ who were very knowledgeable about their (beautiful) city, and who would happily sell you whatever (non-intoxicating) refreshments you might like from their counter. A quiet, genuinely friendly atmosphere. All-in-all, a delightful experience.
That’s what is coming, that’s what has to come sooner or later, and the prohibs can pound sand if they think they can stop this.
Yes, both there and at the New Amsterdam, they don’t put up with shenanigans. I haven’t been BC for about 5 years and then they were very efficient at keeping some of the street people and moochers out.
Not sure what’s been going on recently. I read that the place has been gentrified, they cut down the bushes in Victory Square, and Woodwards condos are bringing in the rich and driving the Pain and Wastings crowd further east out of the area.