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Albatross wrote:

The Dreadnote wrote:Wait, how do grams convert to ounces? Also, who buys weed in grams?

Me? A tenner-bag works out at about a gram-ish, I think.

Hmm, typical price around here is £20 for 1/8oz, which I work out at 3.5 grams. I think you could get a better deal elsewhere

dogma wrote:

AustonT wrote: But I do equate heroin use and marijuana use, WTF should I care if you OD on heroin or drink yourself to death. Victimless.

Well, for one, the behavior of people addicted to heroin and people addicted to marijuana is completely different. Marijuana addiction, to the extent that it is addictive, doesn't inspire murder, robbery, and prostitution to the same extent as heroin addiction.

That said, one could legalize heroin, and still keep prostitution, murder, and robbery illegal in an attempt to control the negative aspects of heroin (though I think that's a misguided approach, as criminal deterrence relies on a conventionally rational criminal). However, even there, we're left with the increased social cost of heroin that is incurred by its lethal consequences to the user. It isn't like we can just leave their bodies where they fall.

Is there some sort of research that supports the theory that heroin use increases the propensity to commit murder, robbery, or engage in prostitution or are those crimes of circumstance? I'm actually asking.
If the most of our worries is the disposal of bodies, I remain unconvinced that the social cost is too high. It's not like if we legalized the really nasty drugs tomorrow the gutters would run with blood and clog with bodies. I'm pretty convinced that deaths by OD would likely spike and then decrease rapidly as natural selection took it's course.

AustonT wrote:
Is there some sort of research that supports the theory that heroin use increases the propensity to commit murder, robbery, or engage in prostitution or are those crimes of circumstance? I'm actually asking.

I'm not sure, there may be, but as far as I know the nominal category is "drug related offenses", with no breakdown as the drug to which the offense was related. I'm mainly working off the idea that heroin is significantly more additive than marijuana and thus more likely to induce divergent behavior in those suffering from withdrawal. Notably, unlike cannabis withdrawal, withdrawal from opiates can kill you.

AustonT wrote:
If the most of our worries is the disposal of bodies, I remain unconvinced that the social cost is too high. It's not like if we legalized the really nasty drugs tomorrow the gutters would run with blood and clog with bodies. I'm pretty convinced that deaths by OD would likely spike and then decrease rapidly as natural selection took it's course.

I suppose that the legalization, and subsequent regulation, of heroin could help alleviate even that, as many overdoses are caused by ignorance of what an overdose actually is. But then people still get aspirin poising, so who knows.

A mighty 30 seconds with Google found multiple articles on the subject. Here, LMGTFY.

The Dreadnote wrote:

Albatross wrote:

The Dreadnote wrote:Wait, how do grams convert to ounces? Also, who buys weed in grams?

Me? A tenner-bag works out at about a gram-ish, I think.

Hmm, typical price around here is £20 for 1/8oz, which I work out at 3.5 grams. I think you could get a better deal elsewhere

Nope.
Here follows a brief lecture on the economics of cannabis, based on my time as a buyer/seller.
The most obvious observation is the effect of inflation. Prices go up for cannabis growers like everyone else, and they have to pass these costs on to the consumer.
Now, you can't go around charging people £23.43 for a quantity of weed because it wouldn't work like that. Instead the quantity goes down, you're now getting 5% less instead of paying 5% more. It's possible to get a £20 eigth that actually is 3.5gram but it's very rare. Your average teenager will be getting 1.5-2g per "eigth", someone with better contacts will be getting 2.5-3g.
Now the interesting thing at the moment is that it's being sold by the gram for a tenner, both of which are nice round numbers and easily doubled to £20 for an "eigth". It's still bought wholesale by the ounce, though. Just as an aside if you want to tell if a stoner's in the room, ask how many gram are in 3/4 of an ounce (21, btw).
One curious factor of the cannabis market that intreigues me is when areas run "dry". That is to say not just one dealer is out of weed, but several. I don't know about large cities like London, but in small cities about every 3 months it'll be nigh-on impossible to come by weed for a couple of days. There might be a few guys with a stash but they won't be selling it. Essentially, all the local dealers' suppliers have failed to produce the goods. I assume this is because of police raids on the growers but i'd love to see some statistics showing police raiders on grow houses vs cannabis availability in certain areas over the next months.

Around here, most dealers use scales, and when you buy an eighth, you get 3.5 grams. That's usually $30, but sometimes $35, so that's about $10/gram. A twenty-bag is 2 grams.

Somebody said weed is inflation-proof and I have to agree, its been the same price for 20 years. The economics are a little different than in an island nation like UK i suppose.

murdog wrote:Around here, most dealers use scales, and when you buy an eighth, you get 3.5 grams. That's usually $30, but sometimes $35, so that's about $10/gram. A twenty-bag is 2 grams.

Somebody said weed is inflation-proof and I have to agree, its been the same price for 20 years. The economics are a little different than in an island nation like UK i suppose.

The price of maryjuana has gone down in the past 20/30 years for several reasons (in the UK anyway)emand is far higher than it was,synthetic lighting/cheap migration make cannabis production possible closer to suppliers, it no longer has to be shipped across from Morocco.
My guess would be that green in America is grown using natural sunlight, so would not be affected by increase in electricity prices. In England and most of Northern Europe it's grown in factories or houses, entirely dependant on expensive ultra-violet lighting. So if the cost of electricity goes up 10%, the cost of production will as well.
But I hear in California there are thousands of acres of it growing all over the place so I guess the price will be much lower, though THC content may well be lower due to lack of intensive farming.

Well, it does grow outdoors here, but mostly all of what you get is indoor grow-op. The Calgary Police Service estimated there are about 800 grow-ops in the city at any time (population: 1 million), a small fraction of which they bust each year. Many, if not most, grow-ops bypass the electrical meters so they don't pay. Most are run by organized crime.

It's big business here, why let almost all of the profits go to criminal organizations? Like I said on page 1, I believe the industry is worth 6 billion in British Columbia alone.

I don't know what the legal status is in the UK so it is hard to know how to compare to a place where it is regulated but legal or just plane old illegal.

murdog wrote:Well, it does grow outdoors here, but mostly all of what you get is indoor grow-op. The Calgary Police Service estimated there are about 800 grow-ops in the city at any time (population: 1 million), a small fraction of which they bust each year. Many, if not most, grow-ops bypass the electrical meters so they don't pay. Most are run by organized crime.

It's big business here, why let almost all of the profits go to criminal organizations? Like I said on page 1, I believe the industry is worth 6 billion in British Columbia alone.

Yep, it's the biggest cash crop in the USA.
Could be a decent income for governments, though not as much as people think. Smaller than alcohol definitely, and dwarfed by income tax. But still, a sizable amount of money.

Ahtman wrote:I don't know what the legal status is in the UK so it is hard to know how to compare to a place where it is regulated but legal or just plane old illegal.

It's illegal, if you are caught with it on you most of the time it will be confiscated.

Joey wrote:

murdog wrote:Well, it does grow outdoors here, but mostly all of what you get is indoor grow-op. The Calgary Police Service estimated there are about 800 grow-ops in the city at any time (population: 1 million), a small fraction of which they bust each year. Many, if not most, grow-ops bypass the electrical meters so they don't pay. Most are run by organized crime.

It's big business here, why let almost all of the profits go to criminal organizations? Like I said on page 1, I believe the industry is worth 6 billion in British Columbia alone.

Yep, it's the biggest cash crop in the USA.
Could be a decent income for governments, though not as much as people think. Smaller than alcohol definitely, and dwarfed by income tax. But still, a sizable amount of money.

Of course the report that said that was funded and written by pro-legalization activists.

The report, "Marijuana Production in the United States," by marijuana policy researcher Jon Gettman, concludes that despite massive eradication efforts at the hands of the federal government, "marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy."

In the report, Gettman, a marijuana-reform activist and leader of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, champions a system of legal regulation.

Of course there is now the added problem of synthetic pot.

Ahtman wrote:A mighty 30 seconds with Google found multiple articles on the subject. Here, LMGTFY.

Hoisted by my own petard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Joey wrote:
Could be a decent income for governments, though not as much as people think. Smaller than alcohol definitely, and dwarfed by income tax. But still, a sizable amount of money.

First you need to develop a reasonable estimate of marijuana use in the US. It is fairly high, though lower than alcohol no doubt. However, it is often overestimated. I recall a survey taken at my undergraduate school (where drug use was quite high) in which students were asked two questions regarding 3 drugs (heroin, cocaine, marijuana):

1) How many students (expressed as a percentage) use drugs?

2) Do you use drugs?

The results were categorized according a range system (ie. if you answered "53%" to the first question, your response was recorded as 50-55%), and most students (about 70% of respondents) indicated that they believed 50-55% of students used marijuana (no allowance for rate of use), while the actual number of respondents who reported themselves as using marijuana was something like 20-25%.

For the curious, the most popular response for cocaine and heroin was 0-5% while the reported rate for cocaine was 12% and the rate for heroin was 6%.

Edit: The survey was sent out in two waves, covering the entire school (~1600 students) with a total response rate of ~85%.

To be fair most people aren't going to admit on a survey at their college that they take drugs. I'd be absolutely shocked if 50%+ of people I was in high school and college with didn't currently smoke or had smoked within the last 2ish years.

Hulksmash wrote:To be fair most people aren't going to admit on a survey at their college that they take drugs.

You would be surprised, hell, there are people on this forum who have done the same, and many more that has strongly hinted at it.

I mean, as far as I know, you could tell a cop that you smoked 10 minutes ago, and in most places in the US not be considered in violation of any law.

dogma wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:To be fair most people aren't going to admit on a survey at their college that they take drugs.

You would be surprised, hell, there are people on this forum who have done the same, and many more that has strongly hinted at it.

Hell, some have admitted to being drug dealers, and I don't mean legal sellers like Murdog.

I think you have me confused with another poster.

murdog wrote:I think you have me confused with another poster.

That would not surprise me in the slightest. Someone was a medical grower. I could go back and look, but I don't like to dwell on the past. It's all about the future. And donuts. And future donuts.

I don't think the problem with heroin addicts is that they can OD. It's the destruction to that around them is the problem. They put their addiction before everything else including the well being of their children. Eventually they run out of money they end up stealing and robbing people to get it, or prostituting themselves. And they are soon good for little else because they have an addiction and criminal record, even reformed drug addicts are unemployable.

I've lived next door to some social housing for a group of drug addicts, and they were beyond help IMO. They weren't doing cannabis, it was clearly heroin from all the marks on their arms. The police would break in every other week, they were all petty criminals stealing from nearby shops. They would spend many days sitting around the street outside drinking cheap lager and cider until the sun went down. The various substance abuse also seemed to have destroyed their minds, to even talk to one you couldn't get coherent answer about anything. On occasions they would rant rubbish or turn aggressive.

I've also lived in a building full of people smoking cannabis and never had a problem even though the purple haze was thick in the corridor at times. There was one guy who went nuts once, but he was always pretty weird and worked part time in the local Co-op while doing some degree in IT. His room always had drapes pinned up everywhere blocking out the light rather than curtains. On one side he had two tables absolutely covered in computer stuff, must have had 2-3 computers, I couldn't tell there were boxes with wires all over the place and he lived on them. And he didn't have a bed, just a mattress on the floor, on which he slept in the constant gloom reminiscent of Eugene Tooms.

murdog wrote:Well, it does grow outdoors here, but mostly all of what you get is indoor grow-op. The Calgary Police Service estimated there are about 800 grow-ops in the city at any time (population: 1 million), a small fraction of which they bust each year. Many, if not most, grow-ops bypass the electrical meters so they don't pay. Most are run by organized crime.

It's big business here, why let almost all of the profits go to criminal organizations? Like I said on page 1, I believe the industry is worth 6 billion in British Columbia alone.

Legalize pot in BC, and nothing changes. They'd just pass legislation to build a massive dome over the entire province just to hotbox the place.

Fafnir wrote:

murdog wrote:Well, it does grow outdoors here, but mostly all of what you get is indoor grow-op. The Calgary Police Service estimated there are about 800 grow-ops in the city at any time (population: 1 million), a small fraction of which they bust each year. Many, if not most, grow-ops bypass the electrical meters so they don't pay. Most are run by organized crime.

It's big business here, why let almost all of the profits go to criminal organizations? Like I said on page 1, I believe the industry is worth 6 billion in British Columbia alone.

Legalize pot in BC, and nothing changes. They'd just pass legislation to build a massive dome over the entire province just to hotbox the place.

Hah. Now that would be my kind of holiday.
Shame you couldn't do it over all of Canada. Those Great Lakes would make legendary bongs.

+1 for the legal weed. Damn cotton industry.

The Dreadnote wrote:

Albatross wrote:

The Dreadnote wrote:Wait, how do grams convert to ounces? Also, who buys weed in grams?

Me? A tenner-bag works out at about a gram-ish, I think.

Hmm, typical price around here is £20 for 1/8oz, which I work out at 3.5 grams. I think you could get a better deal elsewhere

Oh, no doubt. However, that would probably mean going to Moss Side or Deepest Darkest Salford (DDS for short) and, frankly, feth that.

My guy delivers, which usually (here, at least) means you don't get as good a deal.

So do you think it should be legalised, or not?

Phyrexia wrote:

Joey wrote:So do you think it should be legalised, or not?

If you look at all the horrible side effects I most definitely think it should be illegal. More so than it currently is, there should be harsher laws made regarding it. I think to truly end recreational drug abuse the laws need to be made harsher, not a slap on the wrists like the laws are currently, I would say a full on beating is more appropriate.

Guess I'll go get drunk and beat up my wife and child. Obviously that's okay compared to a slightly increased cancer risk in a minority of users.
If you're transposing so much negativity onto cannabis consumption, I can't help but wonder what you're really annoyed at.
Did all the cool kids at school who got all the girls smoke weed?
Or did the counseller who abused you smell of it?
Either way I suggest you chill out and let people do what they like with their lives.

Can you post a source for that stuff? An article, scientific paper, or book?

Also, I hope you are just joking about your solution to 'end recreational drug abuse' - take that kind of crap to Saudi Arabia why don't you!

Wake up - prohibition doesn't work.

Joey wrote:

Phyrexia wrote:

Joey wrote:So do you think it should be legalised, or not?

If you look at all the horrible side effects I most definitely think it should be illegal. More so than it currently is, there should be harsher laws made regarding it. I think to truly end recreational drug abuse the laws need to be made harsher, not a slap on the wrists like the laws are currently, I would say a full on beating is more appropriate.

Guess I'll go get drunk and beat up my wife and child. Obviously that's okay compared to a slightly increased cancer risk in a minority of users.
If you're transposing so much negativity onto cannabis consumption, I can't help but wonder what you're really annoyed at.
Did all the cool kids at school who got all the girls smoke weed?
Or did the counseller who abused you smell of it?
Either way I suggest you chill out and let people do what they like with their lives.

He must have hit a nerve.