caretaker

There was an episode of Murphy Brown where Jim went out to find pot for her when she had cancer... actually I've done it too. That was when it was over $300/oz and money was tight plus having to find it in the bar so it took a lot of time and money to get just a little bit. It would have been great if there had been a system to allow medical use of CBD oil and tinctures, but this was long before legalisation and that hadn't been proposed.

Lion in Winter

This. Everything is just chemicals. The difference between the legal and the illegal ones is politics (Zappa, I think). Putting people in prison, or fining them, over the use of a plant is absurd at best, and at worst has caused misery and death. Legalise it, thereby taking the gangs out of it.

My legs are actually quite long. I could make Canada in about six hours I think.

caretaker

If Mexico legalises recreational use of marijuana (and it seems likely) the US will be stuck between 2 pot selling countries, and that's got to put some pressure on. Gangs are pretty resilient, and will either buy into the legal business or continue profiting from the black market, but if profits go down enough they can still concentrate on meth and fentanyl and guns and turn a good dollar. Taking police focus from chasing marijuana possession convictions and applying it to other areas is welcomed by everyone.

Steerpike

I'm just now getting (re-)started on my exploration of cannabis, so I'm paying more attention to details that I would otherwise. After about 2 months of trying edibles and concentrates, I'm now trying the actual 'weed' (or 'bud' or 'flower'). All legally. Yesterday I paid $40 for 1/8th oz (3.5gram) of 'flower'. I bought a fine scale so I could measure exactly what I'm using, and I found that 0.1g of the flower was more than enough to quite seriously 'do what I wanted' (in my case, relax / feel good / etc). So even at $40, that's 3.5 / 0.1, = 35 'doses', or just over $1 per dose. As a recreational user, that $40 ends up being $50 with taxes/etc, but my neighbor actually gets it for $30 and no taxes as a medical user.

Before I moved on to the actual 'weed', I was using 'oil-filled 510 cartridges', which are basically a concentrate delivered in a tiny cartridge that you heat with a dedicated device ('pen' or 'battery' - a $20 item). Those also cost about $40, but because the contents are refined / concentrated, their capacity is described differently and you can't compare easily. My gut feel regarding the cartridges is that they are even more cost-effective; I have yet to use up one cartridge and I've had them for months!

I'm new to all this so no expert (I was a heavy weed smoker when I was 20, but that's way in the past now!). What I can observe is that - I've tried 5 cartridges so far, with different contents (sativa-heavy, indica-heavy, hybrids, etc) and NONE of them have given me a 'good high'; and now, I've tried 3 different 'weed' or 'flower' packages so far (one sativa, one sativa dominant, one indica dominant), and ALL THREE have delivered 'excellent highs'. I'm vaporizing the weed, not smoking it (vaporizing does require a device that costs $50+). Everyone's experience can be different, but the moral of my story is that you do need to experiment quite a bit before you find what works. The five cartridges have all given me some degree of 'anxiety' or 'paranoia', while the three weed attempts have all made me as mellow as a pussycat ... so I'm reluctantly going to abandon the cartridges and focus on weed for now (the 'cartridges' are super convenient, no cleaning required, just 'press a button and go'; vaporizing weed requires loading, unloading, cleaning, etc). I've just ordered a $150 upgraded vaporizing device since I'm having such success with the weed.

EDIT - the '510 concentrate cartridges' contain 500 mg (.5 gram). Cost about the same - $40. But since it's concentrated you can't compare it to the 3.5g of 'flower' you get for about the same price.

scrubbedexpat091

My wife keeps reading articles on CBD oil, supposed to help with some mental health stuff apparently, but problem she has is all the other medications she takes, nobody knows yet it seems about CBD and prescription drugs at least the pharmacists and doctors she has called. Her doctor didn't say not to, but the doctor also had no idea about interactions nor did the pharmacist.

I smoked black-market weed a few times, but I found smoking it gave me paranoid anxiety, and my lungs hated it, the edibles I tired were apparently too little THC as I felt nothing, but they were too expensive to keep trying at the legal stores...ha ha

scrubbedexpat091

US Feds just need to get with the times. Maybe the idea for the feds is to just let the states deal with it and look the other way, but not being legal at the federal level causes banking issues and makes legal pot sellers rely almost entirely on cash which has its own set of issues. Not sure of the rationale on the federal government as to why they don't legalize or at least decriminalize pot.

bats

$100 an oz on the reserve. An oncebid what i don't know. Clones, whatever they are ,are on sale but i cant remember the price. I mean to stop by and get some gummies.

Steerpike

I was thinking about you the other day ... I tried yet another 'concentrate' cartridge, and had one of the worst experiences in memory. I don't typically suffer from anxiety or depression, but that evening, after just a light 'hit', I got super anxious / paranoid. 'did I turn off the oven'? 'is the front door locked?' 'did I leave a light on?' - all that stuff ... but much worse - 'will I die of cancer?', 'will my savings run out', bad memories from childhood, the works; all racing uncontrollably through my head! I tried to watch TV to distract myself but every show had something I didn't like (totally illogically), and I decided to write off the evening and go to bed. I lay there for HOURS, not sleeping, but with crazy shit going through my mind. Having done lots of drugs as a teenager, I recognized this as just a 'bad trip', and that you need to just let it burn itself out, but it was a really 'heavy' experience. If this happened to someone with no experience, it could have been quite a problem. It was that experience that finally got me to try the 'flower' (as mentioned in my other post). For me, the flower is proving 'perfect' while the concentrates have all had some 'dark overtones'. With the flower, I have nothing but great, warm, fuzzy, pleasant thoughts ...

Anyway - I'm enjoying my exploration overall, but I think it is worth reinforcing what you said - there's definitely the possibility for anxiety / paranoia / bad thoughts to be associated with marijuana.

scrubbedexpat091

That pretty much sums my experiences with smoking it on some occasions. I once due to some peer pressure from those I was with mixed alcohol with pot, yeah not a good combination at all for me, I for sure thought I was going to die, like I was in pure panic that I was dying, lasted for a few hours, it was horrible.

scrubbedexpat091

In 1939 Vancouver saw a first of it's kind criminal court case.

caretaker

I knew a man who claimed to be Regina's first marijuana arrest in 1957. He was working at Wascana Centre greenhouses and they were getting flower seeds from Mexico.....
Pretty soon he was giving it away to his friends. He said the police grabbed him in front of the cenotaph in Victoria Park, and he had 13 joints in his shirt pocket. He said it cost him a lot of money for lawyers and took 3 years to go through the courts. As soon as it was done he went to Texas and started driving transport trucks back and forth to Mexico. He didn't move anything across the border, but every time he was in Mexico he'd buy a bag for $3 and he and his partner would hotbox the whole thing in the cab before crossing back over.

scrubbedexpat091

I always found the whole criminalization of pot weird, seems like a waste of police resources, gave who knows how many people a criminal record, and prison time, really drug use in general should be decriminalized, go after the makers, smugglers, arresting the users does nothing.

Steerpike

Interesting article today in 'Politico', describing the weird "border" (state) situation between Oregon and Idaho. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...rijuana-481211

caretaker

A random menu grab of an Ontario, Oregon store shows good selection, and prices still up there, but not as bad as many US dispensaries. Canadian "grey market" mail order prices are still about half as much (with a little shopping around), considering exchange.
https://burntriverfarms.com/pages/me...gory%5D=flower

spouse of scouse

Semi-update on my son's quest for medical cannabis. He hadn't made an appointment so I asked him why. The reason was the first appointment is $390 and there's no rebate from Medicare. As he had to stop his very physical job after MS began to make itself felt, he's not working so can't afford that. Anyone would think the Oz government isn't really keen on medical cannabis Scouse and I will pay for the appointment so we'll see what happens next.