A population that old and conservative loves shit like that. Also, the government urging young people to instead drink more alcohol sounds like something straight out of the Soviet Unions playbook.
Drunk people might accidentally get pregnant and help with the population. Really an obvious move
FAS
I have a friend who moved from the UK to South Korea. He says that drugs is extremely illegal so everybody just gets totally wasted on alcohol there and that that's extremely normalized.
If someone from the UK is saying this, my god it must be bad.
Korea is famous for their drinking
The UK doesn’t compare, Russia and Ireland are behind them
We definitely have issues with alcoholism here. I think part of it is that a ton of small businesses (as well as larger ones) are ones that survive on alcohol revenue. I remember when I lived in the US, a lot of bars and breweries would fight legalization claiming it would hurt their business. I think they are stuck in the mindset that no one will leave the house or something, but that's just speculation on my part.
Alcohol leads to fucking and they need more babies. From a logic perspective it makes perfect sense.
No one smokes weed then gets overly horny.
No one smokes weed then gets overly horny.
yes they do lol
Weed is an aphrodisiac though?
Indeed, especially for women in my limited experience. Hmm, do I want to really commit SuicideByWords by mentioning a small sample size?
Having one woman as a friend is still more than none.
Yes.
Also alcohol is a depressant. That's how "whiskey dick" happens.
Also alcohol is leading cause of overdose. How are more dead people going to make babies?
It would be hard to quantify the effect but you also have the alcohol induces risky behavior aspect that would lead to more births though. Somewhat balancing your impotence and toxicology effects at least. Overall probably still a net negative.
Man, high sex is so good though. For me, it's like I get tunnel vision around the sensuality, enveloped by sexual desire, where the only thing that exists is my partner, and for that time we are purely sexual beings. Every touch elicits goosebumps, every nerve at attention, like my entire body is a sexual organ in the throes of hedonistic pleasure. I never feel more connected to my partner, and for some reason it also lends itself really well to aftercare; like, once we've cleaned up and/or caught our breath, I just want to cuddle and continue to feel the safety and comfort of their warmth.
Truly the best kind of sex imo
Wait till you try it on hallucinogenic.
That straight up sounds like a terrible time, I'm not gonna lie
Could be amazing, could be horrible. Just like anything on hallucinogens.
Depends on how you deal with them. I quite enjoyed sex on acid, when I did acid
No one smokes weed then gets overly horny.
Ummm..... Yes?
I can only talk for myself but never in my life did I have sex more crazy, borderline fucked up, as that one time me and my partner smoked weed before jumping in the sheets.
Alcohol on the other hand turns me into a useless sack of meat. Literally the end times for any boner of mine.
If alcohol consumption fixed declining birth rates, Japan wouldn't have an aging population and Russia wouldn't have been facing a demographic collapse even before the Ukraine invasion.
This isn't about boosting sex, it's about being a conservative policy counterweight to opening the door to legalizing medicines derived from cannabis.
My guess is that it's a result of an internal NJP compromise between center right and hard right factions: only agreeing to allow liberalized medical cannabis policy, if the law also increased the scope of, and penalties for, recreational uses.
But that's just my assumption based on my limited understanding of Japan's post-war uniparty government.
The original propaganda against weed, called Reefer Madness, was all about how black men would smoke weed and then literally couldn’t stop themselves from raping white women because they got so horny.
(I guess I have to point out that of course that isn’t true)
No one smokes weed then gets overly horny.
Yes we do.
I wouldn't be so sure about that... Sex on psychedelic substances is quite an experience, compared to alcohol which numbs.
Weed is not a psychedelic.
Ok, I was not precise in my wording – but THC clearly is a psychoactive substance through which people can observe profound experiences and have intense physical and emotional perceptions.
Then what's with the 420-girls porn?
WTF? Japan, you're supposed to be doing the opposite!
Tbh, I don't expect any culture that considers tattoos to be taboo to be cool with weed.
Yeah, they have some nice things going for them but Japanese culture still very patriarchal and conservative overall
That's why they will fail
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.
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.
They're preoccupied trying to figure out how to get their population to stop disappearing.
The population is aging badly
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.
And yet alcohol shall not be banned.
What are they thinking?
And unlike cannabis use (as far as I'm aware), alcoholism is actually a real problem in Japan, because drinking alcohol is not only socially acceptable but downright enforced.
It's even worse, because over a third of Japanese are allergic to alcohol and probably shouldn't be consuming for increased health risk.
I know what you mean, but it's not an allergy but the lack of a gene to metabolize alcohol properly. So it's more comparable to lactose intolerance (which over 70 percent of Asians also have).
It's not an "allergy", but it still has detrimental health effects. Not having the enzyme greatly increases cancers related to drinking, among many other health impacts.
Allergy is just a way to explain it more simply.
If its like the US they get buckoo tax monies they aren't getting from canna.
to be fair states that have legalized are getting tons of ganja tax monies.
They can't stop people from making bathtub wine.
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.
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.
Whatever it takes to get people to take some shrooms and chill all the way the fuck out
Also, dealers don't check ID.
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.
It's Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it's the work culture.
It's not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.
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.
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."
"Someone's asking for sources on wild claims, quick, let me google some correlations!"
If you look at the link between alcohol and mental health disorders, cannabis is way safer, and there's not even a direct causal link to what would cause these correlated issues with cannabis use, unlike with alcohol, where there's a clear causality.
Someone's asking for sources on wild claims, quick, let me google some correlations
You say that like it's a bad thing. What else am I to do when someone asks for sources? I've read similar research in the past and went to find it again.
If you look at the link between alcohol and mental health disorders
That's whataboutism.
I've read similar research in the past and went to find it again.
Correction, you've googled similar studies before. I'm pretty sure you haven't read them. There's literally nothing there except sampling bias and weak correlations.
No, it isn't. It's not "what about alcohol" as in "let's not talk about cannabis, but talk about alcohol instead".
It's a "you don't understand the actual risks involved, you don't understand that you're linking things you think they prove something (even without reading them) that confirms the bias that has been programmed into you, so here's some context to make it more understandable"
The context being objective science not having found any causality with mental health disorders and cannabis, and honestly, not even proper correlations.
If this was about the dangers to mental health, then those dangers would be objectified, and alcohol would be considered more dangerous and prohibited. If for some reason the prohibition of cannabis doesn't come from objective science, but pure political shitcanery, then it wouldn't care at all about the objective facts of any of the risks, but it would pretend to — even going so far as to completely make shit up
Which is exactly what is happening here, and you're perpetuating it. Probably without realising it, but you are.
There's clearly no convincing you. By all means, continue to spread the myth that cannabis can do no harm to anyone, and eventually the wrong person will believe you.
Remember when you were talking about whataboutism, trying to discredit my entire comment?
Well, now you're doing what's called "a strawman." At no point have I said or even implied that cannabis is literally harmless.
That's probably because I'm trying to defend my initial statement, and I didn't realize you were only taking issue with the sources I presented.
In light of that, excuse my accidental strawman. But also, I don't really care to argue about the veracity of the research presented by the NIH.
But also, I don’t really care to argue about the veracity of the research presented by the NIH.
Aaand that's sort of my point.
Yes, we should take the harms of any substances seriously, but to be frank, the risks in cannabis are comparable to caffeine, and on an objective level, even smaller. So my deeper point is that people should realise that attitudes can be deeply "programmed" by our environment (and I'm not talking about some malicious and purposeful propaganda, except at the very start of it, after which society just sort of did it's thing), and we should realise to readjust our attitudes towards cannabis to be more like our attitudes towards coffee. For example, it's not often you need to worry about someone's caffeine consumption, but that too is a thing sometimes. The worst example I can think of is a middle-aged woman I worked with who made coffee 4x stronger than anyone else, no-one else would drink it (except for me as well, but with a lot of cream and sugar, and much much less than her). She was so caffeinated, it really did show up on her skin and definitely on her behaviour. She was very, very mildly psychotic, and I use that not in the colloquial, but clinical sense. In the sense that she was very mildly hypomanic and slightly confused at times, making a lot of mistakes in our work, to the point that she was prohibited from taking any of the orders that came from the government, because they didn't want to pay for her constant fuck-ups. Other times it's perhaps a young-ish person who is doing too many energy drinks, or it's my 93-year old grandma who has anxiety and who's hands shake, but who says she won't stop drinking coffee.
I'd say my worry for someone using too much cannabis has been much on the same level. It used to be bigger, when I was younger, and somehow believed the studies that only talk of these correlations, until I understood that none of them had any substance, always just "analysing" previous work and when you look into those, they're more questionable than the newer ones.
We've accepted a work culture in which you can make jokes about how you "can't even function before my first cup of coffee", and that's completely fine. But if I say "oh damn, I just can't get to sleep without a good bowl full of indica", a lot of people would instantly consider me an addict of some sort, while the other perhaps a not-so-funny character in an office sitcom.
Thank you for the apology, but there really was no need. Still, very mature of you, rare on online forums. tips fedora
edit Oh here, have an image as well.
the risks in cannabis are comparable to caffeine, and on an objective level, even smaller
OK maybe? I think it depends on the user. Excuse my falling back on anecdotes now, but I don't think I've met anyone whose had a panic attack from drinking coffee (though I would not be surprised). However I know several people who have had panic attacks from ingesting THC.
I agree that we are too blase as a culture about the relative risks of caffeine and alcohol dependence. I just get frustrated when people parrot the notion that cannabis has never hurt anyone. I even support the cause to at least decriminalize it and even legalize it for adults, though we need better education about the potential risks. I've only ever seen warning labels about the habit-forming nature.
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!
More whataboutism. We're talking about weed. And I'm not making the blanket statement that no one should smoke weed. I'm saying it does have health risks that should not be ignored.
Also it's offensive that you would trivialize the suffering that people go through in a panic attack.
but getting blind drunk in the street every night for them is fine. Ridiculous.
There's a reason why countries with proper transit infrastructure view alcoholism as a novelty.
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?
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.
Like smoking, alcohol is a huge industry in Japan. It's "normal" for Japanese companies to addict their employees to their products and because the companies ARE the government, they enact incredibly protectionist laws like this to prevent external competition.
Their economy depends on it. It's super gross. Like America and guns, or Sweden and flatpak furniture (the last one is a half joke)
If Japan starts being a cannabis producer, they'll 180 so fast you'll get vertigo.
I bet they'd produce some bomb ass bud though. It would also look pretty as fuck as each nug is meticulously sculpted into a tiny little bonsai.
One hundred percent.
Honestly, i think the reason is that just the right amount of alcohol dependency is amazing for capitalism. Dont get me wrong, I'm not judging anyone. I understand and I enjoy a drink myself. I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about it.
It keeps you consuming and it makes you forget all the bullshit you had to put up with all day. It dulls your your problem solving, your creativity and (most importantly) your empathy, so supervisors, middle managers, department managers and execs are less disinclined not to beat down on those below them.
I'm not saying its some grand conspiracy. I'm saying, those in power have known exactly the right drugs to administer to the masses in order to placate them. The Romans knew to give wine and not cannabis. The British army knew to give rum & brandy but not weed.
In fact, all of them were legal. Then, capitalism really took off and, totally unrelated in sure, every drug other than alcohol suddenly became illegal.
This is worse than you think. Most countries don't criminalize use, only possession. Criminalizing use like Sweden does likely means that even having cannabis in your system is illegal and could lead to fines, criminal record, and jail time. It's insanely backwards.
Sweden is nuts. When I moved here, I was shocked. It's really backwards. Everyone drinks here, but weed is something like heroin to them. They should all smoke weed.
As a swede: Word. It's backwards as fuck here. The previous government didn't even want to investigate whether or not to decriminalize, because doing so (investigate, mind you) would "send the wrong signals". Yeeah fuck science and people's lives when you have "signals" to worry about.
There is a rather new, more or less scientific-oriented party around in all our EU countries, you might want to look into their platform (VOLT). Not affiliated btw, but they sparked my interest.
(VOLT). Not affiliated btw, but they sparked my interest.
Intentional or not, I'm here for it lol
About 1000V per millimetre air gap, give or take.
Argh :D
When I traveled through Europe, I left Netherlands on a train, and ended up in Sweden with a couple hash joints left. I found a secluded area near train tracks to smoke, and even then it's like I could feel the illegality of it. It was made worse by the fact that everyone walks or bicycles there, so random passerbys kept coming along making me feel tremendously exposed. 1/10 would not recommend.
On the other hand, smoking a hash joint and chatting with friendly strangers in the weed cafe's of Amsterdam was sublime, 10/10 definitely recommend.
First week after we moved here - article in local newspaper: Schoolboy caught with drugs scandal. Those frs did drug tests and he had some THC in him. 17 year old. I remember thinking where the F did we move to...
All of this crap stems from one individual named Nils Bejerot, who was the anti drug guy for the government back in the day (he also coined the term Stockholm Syndrome, and was against comic books because he thought they would make children grow up to become violent). He considered drug use to be an infection in society that could spread from person to person, and the only way to stop the infection is a zero tolerance policy and to make society fear drugs. And oh boy did all that propaganda work. Still today, 36 years after his death. Through that lense, the article you mention "makes sense". It's incredible the effects one person can have.
No thank you, and I'd really like it if people stopped smoking it in public places. Many marijuana users seem to have very little regard for other people. Absolutely reeks of it at many central stations, on the subway, commuter trains and busses. Quite literally makes me sick. At least most tobacco users have the decency to not ruin enclosed public spaces for the general populace.
At least most tobacco users have the decency to not ruin enclosed public spaces for the general populace.
Because we banned them doing that just recently? And could and probably should do the same if any actual action or progress could be had these days?
Precisely. The fact is it isn't just tobacco users banned from doing it, but all smokers. Difference is that weed users don't give a crap.
Hmm... Is that true? It's not like smoking bans are actually all encompassing its still mostly local precident and business decisions.
I am not sure I have seen someone smoke weed where they couldn't smoke a cigarette, or where banned a cigarette smoker might illegally light up anyways, other than vapes which are still also in high contention and not exactly banned.
I think you just have a stigma and an axe to grind that specifically singles them out because of a internal problem you have.
Anyways, good luck with that.
All laws on these topics in Sweden apply to "tobacco and tobacco-like products". Items included in this specification are tobacco, other herbal products for smoking, as well as electronic devices (which in turn encompasses electronic cigarettes and "similar devices").
I hate public smokers with a passion. But you must realize that you have effectively zero exposure to people that contain their smoke by doing it at home or using a method without smoke production. And there could be a lot more of those.
The last line is especially golden for me since I live in the Netherlands so we have plenty of weed being smoked but the vast vast majority of public smoke hinderance is from tobacco smokers. If they decide to smoke in public they have absolutely no shame and will literally do it at places like bus stops and just outside restaurants. Weed smokers rarely do that here. So if I were to believe you it seems to just be correlated to people with shitty attitudes rather than the substance.
But there's no denying that if everyone would drop alcohol for weed, it would be better. Not because weed is harmless but because alcohol is pretty terrible health wise.
I was complaining about smoking in public places. Precisely because of health reasons smoking in and around public spaces was limited a few years ago. I'm rather sensitive (asthma & more) and I much more often smell weed than tobacco in these types of areas. At the central station almost always. One of the many reasons I'm glad to be able to avoid public transit nowadays. Besides how the smoke of tobacco and weed affects me, I also find the smell nauseating.
Besides, to me it seems pike almost every category of drug users have an excuse for why theirs is "less bad". Most often with alcohol it's "well it's only an issue of people drink too much". Fact is that almost all drug usage affects peoples behaviour and becomes a nuisance in public spaces.
I feel you in avoiding public transit. That's where my hate comes from as well. And yes, many people that do these things have have excuses. Because they need to, to justify doing their business in a place where their habit unavoidably harms and frustrates other people. I hate the fact we still allow that so readily as society. Or at least we should restrict it further to the point a normal person doesn't have to be bothered by people like that in public. It undermines public services to an extent.
But after I no longer needed to use public transit, I did start to see things in a slightly different light. And that's the only thing I wanted to say. People that are conscientious about enjoying any kind of mind altering substances will choose to do so safely and harmlessly outside of public, or in designated places like clubs specifically for that substance. Harm reduction must be central to substance use. And I know now that many people have that mentality. But that mentality is somewhat threatened exactly because they make sure nobody is bothered by them. It causes the experience to be defined by those people in public places, the loud minority.
What if they consumed cannabis a week before in the legal country?
You are a criminal. Just like when you rape a child in a country where it's legal (statutory rape based on age) you are held liable in your home country if the AoC is higher than in the country you visited.
Not mostly how this works, it is true that for underage sex many countries do have laws like that, but those are usually special exceptions to the general principle that the laws of the place where you are (or where your actions have an effect) apply and not those of your home country or any arbitrary country.
Weird ass analogy there 🧐
It's probably the most widespread and established law around the world. Only the age limits differs, but hopefully backwards countries like most of Europe, South America, China and the Philippines will catch on soon.
I don't have hopes for the middle east.
So if an American drinks a beer in a German biergarten or in a park in france they should be charged with violating the open container law?
No, because that's not criminal law.
In most cases if you are a tourist and are accused of minor crimes you just get deported unless you've done something else more serious. Detaining someone on a short term visa is awkward (what if their passport expires while in custody?) and kicking them out of the country accomplishes the same thing as jailing them.
Part of the world: takes a step forward
Japan: not on my fucking watch
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.
Yeah, it's news to me that it wasn't technically illegal. They still believe in the reefer madness shit and act like it.
reefer madness
I've never even heard of this!
Germany just legalized the recreational use of Weed, so maybe I'm gonna light a fat one and watch this piece of.... "Art". :P
Yes, watch this. Then, watch Reefer Madness - The Musical (yes, this is a real thing). You will thank me afterwards.
OMG, I hadn't heard of that.
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".
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.
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.
Rich corporations and people profit, everyone else is criminalized for reasons.
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...
"A plant known for opening the mind and making you question things? That's illegal."
Come on, it's not LSD. It just makes you sleepy and snacky.
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.
What is 2C-B?
A synthetic substance similar to mescaline, less headspace and body load, more entactogen, shorter and more manageable duration. Kind of like a hedonistic version of psychs compared to LSD.
Maybe for you, but for me it is a mild psychedelic.
Could you please elaborate on how it "opens" your mind and makes you question things?
As a teen, the main question I had was, "can I make a pipe out of this?".
Now that I'm old, the question is mostly "why the hell is this still illegal on a federal level?"
It's hard to explain. At least for me, it helps me see things from another perspective. I work in web dev, and one of my favorite activities is to smoke a little bit, then work on my side projects. Some of my best work has come from my hyper focused, high, programming sessions.
Weed really kinda follows you wherever you take it. If you wanna veg out on the couch and watch TV, it'll facilitate that for you. If you wanna go down a research rabbit hole on some obscure topic, it'll facilitate that just fine too.
Fucking idiots. Legalize and tax it. It works every time.
I actually think it would be detrimental to Japanese demographics.
They are already having a hard time trying to convince young people to give up their freedom and pop out more babies. Weed would only make them think more clearly, not blindly.
I know you're joking but... People say that about cannabis, but there are plenty of right-wing people who love getting high. Doesn't make them think more clearly.
I am very, very pro cannabis and I was not joking.
In my experience, cannabis does make you question authority and being told what to do (to be fair, that might just be how it affects me).
I’ve been to Japan, there is a huge culture of respect and following authority and just trusting the authority has honour. Psychoactive substances encourage you to think twice instead of trusting authority based on tradition.
Just my two cents.
It's not the plant, it's what it reveals about the people using scare tactics. Cannabis makes you question authority when it's illegal and you see how people in power have been lying to you about how dangerous it is. Legal, socially acceptable cannabis just makes you goofy.
Again- lots of right-wing people love using cannabis. I can tell you from living right by the Illinois border but nowhere near a big city that I see Trump bumper stickers on big trucks at the dispensary constantly.
Right and left wing are not the same as authority and lack of authority, it’s actually a different dimension (as shown on political compasses).
Japan’s issue is their hierarchy and authority, them being right wing is not really what makes cannabis incompatible.
Idk where the right wing connection came from
Trump voters specifically are authoritarian. I think you know that.
Yes, which is what differentiates them from the old country club conservatives, they don’t just have right wing views of the economy, they want a leader with absolute power.
Which is why it’s so dangerous and we shouldn’t be taking about left or right wing but authority vs freedom.
It doesn't even matter in the end. Their problem is clearly birth rate, and they were already criminalizing possession very harshly. Criminalizing use will just incentivize those that want to use to never actually return to their country. In essence making it worse.
The terms right and left wing originated as a shorthand due describing monarchists and anti-monarchists. Authoritarianism is THE defining characteristic of the right. Things like economic policies only come into it because authoritarians prefer economic policies that give more power to economic elites.
I mean, you can define it differently for sure, but modern politics basically use left and right wing as whether you want more hierarchy vs equality. Once you established that, the question becomes, do you force that by authority or do you do systems thinking to get the environment to encourage that.
There are right wing people who believe in small government. They want hierarchy and “better” people to be on top, they just either want the market to decide (old school cons) or by taking it by force (GQP).
But I do agree with you, right wing politics will always end up with a minority having most of the power, the how is what separates Trump vs Cheney.
Maybe different people are affected differently. You may be adversely affected by penicillin, I may not be. Metformin may work for you, I may require insulin?
cannabis does make you question authority and being told what to do
only when its illegal, because you start asking yourself what else they lied to you about.
i dont think this is an effect from the drug itself. the 'creativity' you get can go either way tbh.
You realize that birth control, plan B, and abortions are very much a thing here, right? These "we need them to drink so we can impregnate them" posts always creep me out a bit.
I don’t think the youth of Japan should pop out kids. That’s what the leaders want. The youth want a better life, which if provided, would probably make them want to procreate more (not that they have to).
My point was that cannabis is not gonna have positive effects (my guess) given how things are and how little chance there is for young people to have financial stability and comfort.
Idiotic position in 2024.
Idiotic position in 2024 BC too.
I work at a company that has big offices in Japan and the US (as well as many other places) and it’s pretty interesting to see the contrasts in living standards and expectations up close.
On the one hand, when coworkers visit from Japan they are disgusted by how dirty, unsafe, and uncourteous the US is by comparison. They complain endlessly about the low quality standards of the food. I picture myself having to pick worms and hair out of everything and that’s what things seem like from their perspective.
But then some of them move to the US because they can’t handle the stuffy, oppressive attitude in Japan. Everything is about what you can’t do or aren’t supposed to do. One guy said he was so relieved to go to the US where people know how to say “we can find a way to do that.”
From your description alone, knowing only the US and not Japan, it sounds like Europe is the middle ground. Not as free, but less socially oppressive. I mean, in Japan it's mean to walk while you eat.... how deep is the interference running?
Edit: Am from Europe, sorry should have added this.
Europe's pretty free mate. Especially when you get cancer. You get to keep your house!
I know lots of people who have had cancer and no ones lost their house.
There are two kinds of freedom, negative and positive liberty. US has a lot of negative liberties, they dictate little in what you can or cannot do, but is lacking in positive liberty, they don't support you very well to do what you want to do.
While Europe might have less negative liberty, their generally better social welfare system grants people more positive freedom.
Yes the Bill of Rights are specifically what the government can not do to / take away from you. They are individual rights and liberties.
That’s a misleading headline. Makes it sound like 70% of young people use cannabis. The figure is that of people who were charged with cannabis related crimes, 70% were in their 20s. About 1.8% of their population had ever used cannabis in 2019.
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.
This is so fucking backwards it's not even funny
Can't be arrested for smoking if your buddy holds the bong for you I guess
I told a guy in Tokyo we smoke weed walking down the street in America and he looked at me like I was insane.
It's just a fucking plant
Evey plant is a fucking plant if you in-plant it far enough.
Great way to regress in societal development.
Just Japan doing Japan things.
This is to close off profit to anyone but those selected. They know they are going to incarcerate more people, too.
Great. Now the Korean mafia can get busy. 🤦🏽
What a wierd fucking reason to not currently punish weed consumption and then to use such an antiquated reason to criminalize it. The whole article read like something out of 1920's-1950's America. So dumb.
1a. It's a relatively small incentive to get people to emigrate, particularly the young.
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]
I thought they already did that. (Didn’t a number of touring rock stars, including IIRC one of the Beatles, get busted for having it?)
Use vs. Possession
Possession is the behavior that’s typically illegal, but use is legally tolerated because people can be exposed to it (the article gives the example of farmers being exposed while producing legal hemp).
Hi
Hello
Is it Mary Jane you are looking for??
I always figured the stories about Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Germany etc being liberal paradises were simplistic and overblown, but it's still surprising to see such a backwards position here.
Japan? Liberal Paradise? Since when????
Japan has been highly patriarchal, hating of foreigners, especially gaijin, and fairly conservative overall if only from a Shinto/Tao/Buddhist perspective than a Christian perspecitve like the rest of the west.
The weabos who dream of living in Japan would be fairly ostracized unless they spoke perfect Japanese.
There are growing trends in the youth, but their conservative patriarchy is still holding strong for now.
On a side note, the massive amount of US debt Japan owns combined with the Yen carry trade means there could be a dramatic economic/societal shift in a short period of time, were anything volatile to happen.
This is the first time I've even heard the idea of Japan being a "liberal paradise". I thought it was widely know Japan was super conservative.
In fairness, "gaijin" is any foreigner. And a lot of laws in Japan are very much based on warped Christian values (can't imagine who they got that from...).
But yeah. One of my best friends is Japanese American and the way she sums it up is: You know you truly understand the culture of Japan if you realize why you only want to visit for a few weeks at a time.
With bonus points for anyone who can read quickly realizing why the general stance toward APA is "Only if you get a REALLY good deal"
Japan? Liberal Paradise? Since when????
My thoughts exactly. It is left of the US on a few things like social safety net and healthcare, but mostly the same (which, compared to much of the western world is still quite far to the right).
hating of foreigners, especially gaijin
Wat? What do you think that word means?
would be fairly ostracized unless they spoke perfect Japanese.
Source?
There are growing trends in the youth, but their conservative patriarchy is still holding strong for now.
Getting them to vote would help. Obviously anecdotal, but a lot of young adults I knew didn't vote.
I'm from the US and have been living in Japan almost a decade. I don't speak perfect Japanese by any stretch, but I can generally handle myself unless we get into certain medical jargon or legalese. I own a house and a small farm. Your premise on being ostracized is false, however; racists gonna racist so policies or people that exclude others aren't generally going to give a shit if the person speaks flawless Japanese. On the other hand, I think the internet has a kinda warped view of what living here is like and how foreigners are treated. There is racism, particularly in trying to get an apartment. I've also been treated like a normal person more than I've ever been treated like some outside or zoo exhibition.
Maybe excitement I get when I speak Japanese even just OK is a beautiful thing compared to France and Quebec trying to speak French.
But I will say South Korea is racist as fuck and being white and talking to a girl will get you and the girl attacked but worse of all mostly the girl.
And yeah clubs, dating, and housing in Japan are not great but it's definitely as with always a nuanced gray that is hard to explain to people who like a simple answer.
Don't know about the rest, but the South Korea part is simply complete bs
Wasn't in 2015 when I hit on a girl for helping me navigate the subway system.
Well, context definitely matters. We don't know what you did, how you did it, if she was with her bf, how sane was her bf etc etc.
I don't want to negate your personal experience but I doubt it was just normally casually "talking to a girl" that got you in trouble in a normal situation.
Also 2015 is almost 10 years ago, it's not really accurate to define it as the current situation.
As for my source, I'm white, my wife is Korean, my ex was Korean, and I hang out alone with female Korean friends a lot.
Some very old grandpa may be not very happy about skinship in public, but that's all.
Never to the extent of being attacked or harassed, it's usually just looking at us a bit with a grumpy face.
This being said, it's not all perfect.
Some families may be less open than others in accepting a marriage with a foreigner (old generations, young people just think it's cool usually).
And not only about white people. The mom of a friend was grumpy about her son marrying a Japanese girl, for example (even if he lives in Japan)
But even so, nowdays is rarely open hostility.
Of course idiots are everywhere. So I'm pretty sure there are young guys saying "white guys steal our women!1!!" and getting angry.
Also, an important note is that these days the fight between "feminist" Korean women and men against them is getting bigger. This can influence especially the mind of young men.
I was approached by a Korean boy asking me about how women are in my country because all Korean women sucks and are terrible.
In that context, I'm sure some guy will use dating a foreigner as an excuse to say how shit and easy Korean girls are.
Anyway, exceptions aside the average population is pretty much fine with it, especially in big cities.
It's not like Korean men don't like white women too, after all.
Sorry if this is too long, but we're all here to share knowledge about those countries anyway
I find this to be largely true, especially of older people, for foreigners who live there. But not to discourage a visit: you are very welcomed as a tourist in most places in Japan, and any Japanese you speak will be appreciated.
Where do you hear those stories?
You may need to re-evaluate where you're getting your information from
The only thing good about Japan is their transit system.
Their cities do look clean af. The people there seem to have a higher baseline level of mutual respect than most Western nations. Unless you're a foreigner.
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.
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?
i live in the same state as Mitch McConnell, so if I fear going to Japan, it's probably for a good reason.
Maybe you are smoking to much and your paranoia is showing?
That's a rude thing to assume. The paranoia comes from the fact that I'm genderfluid, pan, polyamorous, a furry/therian, and otherwise outwardly queer in a deep red state.
That has nothing to do with Japan and sounds like you just wanted to bring it up.
Yes it does--I live in a Nazi state. If I feel safer here than Japan, then something is extremely wrong.
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).
Because I'm tired and angry at the state of the world.
::: spoiler Bangkok Post - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Bangkok Post:
A population that old and conservative loves shit like that. Also, the government urging young people to instead drink more alcohol sounds like something straight out of the Soviet Unions playbook.
Drunk people might accidentally get pregnant and help with the population. Really an obvious move
FAS
I have a friend who moved from the UK to South Korea. He says that drugs is extremely illegal so everybody just gets totally wasted on alcohol there and that that's extremely normalized.
If someone from the UK is saying this, my god it must be bad.
Korea is famous for their drinking
The UK doesn’t compare, Russia and Ireland are behind them
They have no rules on alcohol advertisements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWBIufbD6aE
You can guess all the rest
We definitely have issues with alcoholism here. I think part of it is that a ton of small businesses (as well as larger ones) are ones that survive on alcohol revenue. I remember when I lived in the US, a lot of bars and breweries would fight legalization claiming it would hurt their business. I think they are stuck in the mindset that no one will leave the house or something, but that's just speculation on my part.
Alcohol leads to fucking and they need more babies. From a logic perspective it makes perfect sense.
No one smokes weed then gets overly horny.
yes they do lol
Weed is an aphrodisiac though?
Indeed, especially for women in my limited experience. Hmm, do I want to really commit SuicideByWords by mentioning a small sample size?
Having one woman as a friend is still more than none.
Yes.
Also alcohol is a depressant. That's how "whiskey dick" happens.
Also alcohol is leading cause of overdose. How are more dead people going to make babies?
It would be hard to quantify the effect but you also have the alcohol induces risky behavior aspect that would lead to more births though. Somewhat balancing your impotence and toxicology effects at least. Overall probably still a net negative.
Man, high sex is so good though. For me, it's like I get tunnel vision around the sensuality, enveloped by sexual desire, where the only thing that exists is my partner, and for that time we are purely sexual beings. Every touch elicits goosebumps, every nerve at attention, like my entire body is a sexual organ in the throes of hedonistic pleasure. I never feel more connected to my partner, and for some reason it also lends itself really well to aftercare; like, once we've cleaned up and/or caught our breath, I just want to cuddle and continue to feel the safety and comfort of their warmth.
Truly the best kind of sex imo
Wait till you try it on hallucinogenic.
That straight up sounds like a terrible time, I'm not gonna lie
Could be amazing, could be horrible. Just like anything on hallucinogens.
Depends on how you deal with them. I quite enjoyed sex on acid, when I did acid
Ummm..... Yes?
I can only talk for myself but never in my life did I have sex more crazy, borderline fucked up, as that one time me and my partner smoked weed before jumping in the sheets.
Alcohol on the other hand turns me into a useless sack of meat. Literally the end times for any boner of mine.
If alcohol consumption fixed declining birth rates, Japan wouldn't have an aging population and Russia wouldn't have been facing a demographic collapse even before the Ukraine invasion.
This isn't about boosting sex, it's about being a conservative policy counterweight to opening the door to legalizing medicines derived from cannabis.
My guess is that it's a result of an internal NJP compromise between center right and hard right factions: only agreeing to allow liberalized medical cannabis policy, if the law also increased the scope of, and penalties for, recreational uses.
But that's just my assumption based on my limited understanding of Japan's post-war uniparty government.
The original propaganda against weed, called Reefer Madness, was all about how black men would smoke weed and then literally couldn’t stop themselves from raping white women because they got so horny.
(I guess I have to point out that of course that isn’t true)
Yes we do.
I wouldn't be so sure about that... Sex on psychedelic substances is quite an experience, compared to alcohol which numbs.
Weed is not a psychedelic.
Ok, I was not precise in my wording – but THC clearly is a psychoactive substance through which people can observe profound experiences and have intense physical and emotional perceptions.
Then what's with the 420-girls porn?
WTF? Japan, you're supposed to be doing the opposite!
Tbh, I don't expect any culture that considers tattoos to be taboo to be cool with weed.
Yeah, they have some nice things going for them but Japanese culture still very patriarchal and conservative overall
That's why they will fail
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.
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.
They're preoccupied trying to figure out how to get their population to stop disappearing.
The population is aging badly
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.
And yet alcohol shall not be banned.
What are they thinking?
And unlike cannabis use (as far as I'm aware), alcoholism is actually a real problem in Japan, because drinking alcohol is not only socially acceptable but downright enforced.
It's even worse, because over a third of Japanese are allergic to alcohol and probably shouldn't be consuming for increased health risk.
I know what you mean, but it's not an allergy but the lack of a gene to metabolize alcohol properly. So it's more comparable to lactose intolerance (which over 70 percent of Asians also have).
It's not an "allergy", but it still has detrimental health effects. Not having the enzyme greatly increases cancers related to drinking, among many other health impacts.
Allergy is just a way to explain it more simply.
If its like the US they get buckoo tax monies they aren't getting from canna.
Is that supposed to say beaucoup?
Yeah, well, shut up 🤣
Can do, bucko ;P
Bone apple tea
TIL how to spell beaucoup.
TIL people use it in English.
And not to be confused with Boku.
to be fair states that have legalized are getting tons of ganja tax monies.
They can't stop people from making bathtub wine.
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.
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.
Whatever it takes to get people to take some shrooms and chill all the way the fuck out
Also, dealers don't check ID.
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.
It's Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it's the work culture.
It's not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.
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.
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."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425748/
"Someone's asking for sources on wild claims, quick, let me google some correlations!"
If you look at the link between alcohol and mental health disorders, cannabis is way safer, and there's not even a direct causal link to what would cause these correlated issues with cannabis use, unlike with alcohol, where there's a clear causality.
You say that like it's a bad thing. What else am I to do when someone asks for sources? I've read similar research in the past and went to find it again.
That's whataboutism.
Correction, you've googled similar studies before. I'm pretty sure you haven't read them. There's literally nothing there except sampling bias and weak correlations.
You can do that for literally anything
No, it isn't. It's not "what about alcohol" as in "let's not talk about cannabis, but talk about alcohol instead".
It's a "you don't understand the actual risks involved, you don't understand that you're linking things you think they prove something (even without reading them) that confirms the bias that has been programmed into you, so here's some context to make it more understandable"
The context being objective science not having found any causality with mental health disorders and cannabis, and honestly, not even proper correlations.
If this was about the dangers to mental health, then those dangers would be objectified, and alcohol would be considered more dangerous and prohibited. If for some reason the prohibition of cannabis doesn't come from objective science, but pure political shitcanery, then it wouldn't care at all about the objective facts of any of the risks, but it would pretend to — even going so far as to completely make shit up
Which is exactly what is happening here, and you're perpetuating it. Probably without realising it, but you are.
There's clearly no convincing you. By all means, continue to spread the myth that cannabis can do no harm to anyone, and eventually the wrong person will believe you.
Remember when you were talking about whataboutism, trying to discredit my entire comment?
Well, now you're doing what's called "a strawman." At no point have I said or even implied that cannabis is literally harmless.
That's probably because I'm trying to defend my initial statement, and I didn't realize you were only taking issue with the sources I presented.
In light of that, excuse my accidental strawman. But also, I don't really care to argue about the veracity of the research presented by the NIH.
Aaand that's sort of my point.
Yes, we should take the harms of any substances seriously, but to be frank, the risks in cannabis are comparable to caffeine, and on an objective level, even smaller. So my deeper point is that people should realise that attitudes can be deeply "programmed" by our environment (and I'm not talking about some malicious and purposeful propaganda, except at the very start of it, after which society just sort of did it's thing), and we should realise to readjust our attitudes towards cannabis to be more like our attitudes towards coffee. For example, it's not often you need to worry about someone's caffeine consumption, but that too is a thing sometimes. The worst example I can think of is a middle-aged woman I worked with who made coffee 4x stronger than anyone else, no-one else would drink it (except for me as well, but with a lot of cream and sugar, and much much less than her). She was so caffeinated, it really did show up on her skin and definitely on her behaviour. She was very, very mildly psychotic, and I use that not in the colloquial, but clinical sense. In the sense that she was very mildly hypomanic and slightly confused at times, making a lot of mistakes in our work, to the point that she was prohibited from taking any of the orders that came from the government, because they didn't want to pay for her constant fuck-ups. Other times it's perhaps a young-ish person who is doing too many energy drinks, or it's my 93-year old grandma who has anxiety and who's hands shake, but who says she won't stop drinking coffee. I'd say my worry for someone using too much cannabis has been much on the same level. It used to be bigger, when I was younger, and somehow believed the studies that only talk of these correlations, until I understood that none of them had any substance, always just "analysing" previous work and when you look into those, they're more questionable than the newer ones.
We've accepted a work culture in which you can make jokes about how you "can't even function before my first cup of coffee", and that's completely fine. But if I say "oh damn, I just can't get to sleep without a good bowl full of indica", a lot of people would instantly consider me an addict of some sort, while the other perhaps a not-so-funny character in an office sitcom.
Thank you for the apology, but there really was no need. Still, very mature of you, rare on online forums. tips fedora
edit Oh here, have an image as well.
OK maybe? I think it depends on the user. Excuse my falling back on anecdotes now, but I don't think I've met anyone whose had a panic attack from drinking coffee (though I would not be surprised). However I know several people who have had panic attacks from ingesting THC.
I agree that we are too blase as a culture about the relative risks of caffeine and alcohol dependence. I just get frustrated when people parrot the notion that cannabis has never hurt anyone. I even support the cause to at least decriminalize it and even legalize it for adults, though we need better education about the potential risks. I've only ever seen warning labels about the habit-forming nature.
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!
More whataboutism. We're talking about weed. And I'm not making the blanket statement that no one should smoke weed. I'm saying it does have health risks that should not be ignored.
Also it's offensive that you would trivialize the suffering that people go through in a panic attack.
but getting blind drunk in the street every night for them is fine. Ridiculous.
There's a reason why countries with proper transit infrastructure view alcoholism as a novelty.
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?
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.
Like smoking, alcohol is a huge industry in Japan. It's "normal" for Japanese companies to addict their employees to their products and because the companies ARE the government, they enact incredibly protectionist laws like this to prevent external competition.
Their economy depends on it. It's super gross. Like America and guns, or Sweden and flatpak furniture (the last one is a half joke)
If Japan starts being a cannabis producer, they'll 180 so fast you'll get vertigo.
I bet they'd produce some bomb ass bud though. It would also look pretty as fuck as each nug is meticulously sculpted into a tiny little bonsai.
One hundred percent.
Honestly, i think the reason is that just the right amount of alcohol dependency is amazing for capitalism. Dont get me wrong, I'm not judging anyone. I understand and I enjoy a drink myself. I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about it.
It keeps you consuming and it makes you forget all the bullshit you had to put up with all day. It dulls your your problem solving, your creativity and (most importantly) your empathy, so supervisors, middle managers, department managers and execs are less disinclined not to beat down on those below them.
I'm not saying its some grand conspiracy. I'm saying, those in power have known exactly the right drugs to administer to the masses in order to placate them. The Romans knew to give wine and not cannabis. The British army knew to give rum & brandy but not weed.
In fact, all of them were legal. Then, capitalism really took off and, totally unrelated in sure, every drug other than alcohol suddenly became illegal.
This is worse than you think. Most countries don't criminalize use, only possession. Criminalizing use like Sweden does likely means that even having cannabis in your system is illegal and could lead to fines, criminal record, and jail time. It's insanely backwards.
Sweden is nuts. When I moved here, I was shocked. It's really backwards. Everyone drinks here, but weed is something like heroin to them. They should all smoke weed.
As a swede: Word. It's backwards as fuck here. The previous government didn't even want to investigate whether or not to decriminalize, because doing so (investigate, mind you) would "send the wrong signals". Yeeah fuck science and people's lives when you have "signals" to worry about.
There is a rather new, more or less scientific-oriented party around in all our EU countries, you might want to look into their platform (VOLT). Not affiliated btw, but they sparked my interest.
Intentional or not, I'm here for it lol
About 1000V per millimetre air gap, give or take.
Argh :D
When I traveled through Europe, I left Netherlands on a train, and ended up in Sweden with a couple hash joints left. I found a secluded area near train tracks to smoke, and even then it's like I could feel the illegality of it. It was made worse by the fact that everyone walks or bicycles there, so random passerbys kept coming along making me feel tremendously exposed. 1/10 would not recommend.
On the other hand, smoking a hash joint and chatting with friendly strangers in the weed cafe's of Amsterdam was sublime, 10/10 definitely recommend.
First week after we moved here - article in local newspaper: Schoolboy caught with drugs scandal. Those frs did drug tests and he had some THC in him. 17 year old. I remember thinking where the F did we move to...
All of this crap stems from one individual named Nils Bejerot, who was the anti drug guy for the government back in the day (he also coined the term Stockholm Syndrome, and was against comic books because he thought they would make children grow up to become violent). He considered drug use to be an infection in society that could spread from person to person, and the only way to stop the infection is a zero tolerance policy and to make society fear drugs. And oh boy did all that propaganda work. Still today, 36 years after his death. Through that lense, the article you mention "makes sense". It's incredible the effects one person can have.
No thank you, and I'd really like it if people stopped smoking it in public places. Many marijuana users seem to have very little regard for other people. Absolutely reeks of it at many central stations, on the subway, commuter trains and busses. Quite literally makes me sick. At least most tobacco users have the decency to not ruin enclosed public spaces for the general populace.
Because we banned them doing that just recently? And could and probably should do the same if any actual action or progress could be had these days?
Precisely. The fact is it isn't just tobacco users banned from doing it, but all smokers. Difference is that weed users don't give a crap.
Hmm... Is that true? It's not like smoking bans are actually all encompassing its still mostly local precident and business decisions.
I am not sure I have seen someone smoke weed where they couldn't smoke a cigarette, or where banned a cigarette smoker might illegally light up anyways, other than vapes which are still also in high contention and not exactly banned.
I think you just have a stigma and an axe to grind that specifically singles them out because of a internal problem you have.
Anyways, good luck with that.
All laws on these topics in Sweden apply to "tobacco and tobacco-like products". Items included in this specification are tobacco, other herbal products for smoking, as well as electronic devices (which in turn encompasses electronic cigarettes and "similar devices").
https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/forordning-2019223-om-tobak-och-liknande_sfs-2019-223/
I hate public smokers with a passion. But you must realize that you have effectively zero exposure to people that contain their smoke by doing it at home or using a method without smoke production. And there could be a lot more of those.
The last line is especially golden for me since I live in the Netherlands so we have plenty of weed being smoked but the vast vast majority of public smoke hinderance is from tobacco smokers. If they decide to smoke in public they have absolutely no shame and will literally do it at places like bus stops and just outside restaurants. Weed smokers rarely do that here. So if I were to believe you it seems to just be correlated to people with shitty attitudes rather than the substance.
But there's no denying that if everyone would drop alcohol for weed, it would be better. Not because weed is harmless but because alcohol is pretty terrible health wise.
I was complaining about smoking in public places. Precisely because of health reasons smoking in and around public spaces was limited a few years ago. I'm rather sensitive (asthma & more) and I much more often smell weed than tobacco in these types of areas. At the central station almost always. One of the many reasons I'm glad to be able to avoid public transit nowadays. Besides how the smoke of tobacco and weed affects me, I also find the smell nauseating.
Besides, to me it seems pike almost every category of drug users have an excuse for why theirs is "less bad". Most often with alcohol it's "well it's only an issue of people drink too much". Fact is that almost all drug usage affects peoples behaviour and becomes a nuisance in public spaces.
I feel you in avoiding public transit. That's where my hate comes from as well. And yes, many people that do these things have have excuses. Because they need to, to justify doing their business in a place where their habit unavoidably harms and frustrates other people. I hate the fact we still allow that so readily as society. Or at least we should restrict it further to the point a normal person doesn't have to be bothered by people like that in public. It undermines public services to an extent.
But after I no longer needed to use public transit, I did start to see things in a slightly different light. And that's the only thing I wanted to say. People that are conscientious about enjoying any kind of mind altering substances will choose to do so safely and harmlessly outside of public, or in designated places like clubs specifically for that substance. Harm reduction must be central to substance use. And I know now that many people have that mentality. But that mentality is somewhat threatened exactly because they make sure nobody is bothered by them. It causes the experience to be defined by those people in public places, the loud minority.
What if they consumed cannabis a week before in the legal country?
You are a criminal. Just like when you rape a child in a country where it's legal (statutory rape based on age) you are held liable in your home country if the AoC is higher than in the country you visited.
Not mostly how this works, it is true that for underage sex many countries do have laws like that, but those are usually special exceptions to the general principle that the laws of the place where you are (or where your actions have an effect) apply and not those of your home country or any arbitrary country.
Weird ass analogy there 🧐
It's probably the most widespread and established law around the world. Only the age limits differs, but hopefully backwards countries like most of Europe, South America, China and the Philippines will catch on soon.
I don't have hopes for the middle east.
So if an American drinks a beer in a German biergarten or in a park in france they should be charged with violating the open container law?
No, because that's not criminal law.
In most cases if you are a tourist and are accused of minor crimes you just get deported unless you've done something else more serious. Detaining someone on a short term visa is awkward (what if their passport expires while in custody?) and kicking them out of the country accomplishes the same thing as jailing them.
Part of the world: takes a step forward
Japan: not on my fucking watch
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.
Yeah, it's news to me that it wasn't technically illegal. They still believe in the reefer madness shit and act like it.
I've never even heard of this! Germany just legalized the recreational use of Weed, so maybe I'm gonna light a fat one and watch this piece of.... "Art". :P
Yes, watch this. Then, watch Reefer Madness - The Musical (yes, this is a real thing). You will thank me afterwards.
OMG, I hadn't heard of that.
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".
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.
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.
Rich corporations and people profit, everyone else is criminalized for reasons.
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...
"A plant known for opening the mind and making you question things? That's illegal."
Come on, it's not LSD. It just makes you sleepy and snacky.
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.
What is 2C-B?
A synthetic substance similar to mescaline, less headspace and body load, more entactogen, shorter and more manageable duration. Kind of like a hedonistic version of psychs compared to LSD.
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/2C-B
Maybe for you, but for me it is a mild psychedelic.
Could you please elaborate on how it "opens" your mind and makes you question things?
As a teen, the main question I had was, "can I make a pipe out of this?".
Now that I'm old, the question is mostly "why the hell is this still illegal on a federal level?"
It's hard to explain. At least for me, it helps me see things from another perspective. I work in web dev, and one of my favorite activities is to smoke a little bit, then work on my side projects. Some of my best work has come from my hyper focused, high, programming sessions.
Weed really kinda follows you wherever you take it. If you wanna veg out on the couch and watch TV, it'll facilitate that for you. If you wanna go down a research rabbit hole on some obscure topic, it'll facilitate that just fine too.
Fucking idiots. Legalize and tax it. It works every time.
I actually think it would be detrimental to Japanese demographics.
They are already having a hard time trying to convince young people to give up their freedom and pop out more babies. Weed would only make them think more clearly, not blindly.
I know you're joking but... People say that about cannabis, but there are plenty of right-wing people who love getting high. Doesn't make them think more clearly.
I am very, very pro cannabis and I was not joking.
In my experience, cannabis does make you question authority and being told what to do (to be fair, that might just be how it affects me).
I’ve been to Japan, there is a huge culture of respect and following authority and just trusting the authority has honour. Psychoactive substances encourage you to think twice instead of trusting authority based on tradition.
Just my two cents.
It's not the plant, it's what it reveals about the people using scare tactics. Cannabis makes you question authority when it's illegal and you see how people in power have been lying to you about how dangerous it is. Legal, socially acceptable cannabis just makes you goofy.
Again- lots of right-wing people love using cannabis. I can tell you from living right by the Illinois border but nowhere near a big city that I see Trump bumper stickers on big trucks at the dispensary constantly.
Right and left wing are not the same as authority and lack of authority, it’s actually a different dimension (as shown on political compasses).
Japan’s issue is their hierarchy and authority, them being right wing is not really what makes cannabis incompatible.
Idk where the right wing connection came from
Trump voters specifically are authoritarian. I think you know that.
Yes, which is what differentiates them from the old country club conservatives, they don’t just have right wing views of the economy, they want a leader with absolute power.
Which is why it’s so dangerous and we shouldn’t be taking about left or right wing but authority vs freedom.
It doesn't even matter in the end. Their problem is clearly birth rate, and they were already criminalizing possession very harshly. Criminalizing use will just incentivize those that want to use to never actually return to their country. In essence making it worse.
The terms right and left wing originated as a shorthand due describing monarchists and anti-monarchists. Authoritarianism is THE defining characteristic of the right. Things like economic policies only come into it because authoritarians prefer economic policies that give more power to economic elites.
I mean, you can define it differently for sure, but modern politics basically use left and right wing as whether you want more hierarchy vs equality. Once you established that, the question becomes, do you force that by authority or do you do systems thinking to get the environment to encourage that.
There are right wing people who believe in small government. They want hierarchy and “better” people to be on top, they just either want the market to decide (old school cons) or by taking it by force (GQP).
But I do agree with you, right wing politics will always end up with a minority having most of the power, the how is what separates Trump vs Cheney.
Maybe different people are affected differently. You may be adversely affected by penicillin, I may not be. Metformin may work for you, I may require insulin?
only when its illegal, because you start asking yourself what else they lied to you about.
i dont think this is an effect from the drug itself. the 'creativity' you get can go either way tbh.
You realize that birth control, plan B, and abortions are very much a thing here, right? These "we need them to drink so we can impregnate them" posts always creep me out a bit.
I don’t think the youth of Japan should pop out kids. That’s what the leaders want. The youth want a better life, which if provided, would probably make them want to procreate more (not that they have to).
My point was that cannabis is not gonna have positive effects (my guess) given how things are and how little chance there is for young people to have financial stability and comfort.
Idiotic position in 2024.
Idiotic position in 2024 BC too.
I work at a company that has big offices in Japan and the US (as well as many other places) and it’s pretty interesting to see the contrasts in living standards and expectations up close.
On the one hand, when coworkers visit from Japan they are disgusted by how dirty, unsafe, and uncourteous the US is by comparison. They complain endlessly about the low quality standards of the food. I picture myself having to pick worms and hair out of everything and that’s what things seem like from their perspective.
But then some of them move to the US because they can’t handle the stuffy, oppressive attitude in Japan. Everything is about what you can’t do or aren’t supposed to do. One guy said he was so relieved to go to the US where people know how to say “we can find a way to do that.”
From your description alone, knowing only the US and not Japan, it sounds like Europe is the middle ground. Not as free, but less socially oppressive. I mean, in Japan it's mean to walk while you eat.... how deep is the interference running?
Edit: Am from Europe, sorry should have added this.
Europe's pretty free mate. Especially when you get cancer. You get to keep your house!
I know lots of people who have had cancer and no ones lost their house.
There are two kinds of freedom, negative and positive liberty. US has a lot of negative liberties, they dictate little in what you can or cannot do, but is lacking in positive liberty, they don't support you very well to do what you want to do.
While Europe might have less negative liberty, their generally better social welfare system grants people more positive freedom.
Yes the Bill of Rights are specifically what the government can not do to / take away from you. They are individual rights and liberties.
R2 we're supposed to be going up not down!
It's gonna create a black market
Japan sees record cannabis cases in 2023, 70% among young people
They would rather have you drink Japan urges its young people to drink more to boost economy
That’s a misleading headline. Makes it sound like 70% of young people use cannabis. The figure is that of people who were charged with cannabis related crimes, 70% were in their 20s. About 1.8% of their population had ever used cannabis in 2019.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210122065355/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/22/national/japan-marijuana-law/
Ok, so that clears that up.
This is so fucking backwards it's not even funny
Can't be arrested for smoking if your buddy holds the bong for you I guess
I told a guy in Tokyo we smoke weed walking down the street in America and he looked at me like I was insane.
It's just a fucking plant
Evey plant is a fucking plant if you in-plant it far enough.
Great way to regress in societal development.
Just Japan doing Japan things.
This is to close off profit to anyone but those selected. They know they are going to incarcerate more people, too.
Great. Now the Korean mafia can get busy. 🤦🏽
What a wierd fucking reason to not currently punish weed consumption and then to use such an antiquated reason to criminalize it. The whole article read like something out of 1920's-1950's America. So dumb.
1a. It's a relatively small incentive to get people to emigrate, particularly the young.
2b. wp:Cannabis in China
(my bold)
I thought they already did that. (Didn’t a number of touring rock stars, including IIRC one of the Beatles, get busted for having it?)
Use vs. Possession
Possession is the behavior that’s typically illegal, but use is legally tolerated because people can be exposed to it (the article gives the example of farmers being exposed while producing legal hemp).
Hi
Hello
Is it Mary Jane you are looking for??
I always figured the stories about Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Germany etc being liberal paradises were simplistic and overblown, but it's still surprising to see such a backwards position here.
Japan? Liberal Paradise? Since when????
Japan has been highly patriarchal, hating of foreigners, especially gaijin, and fairly conservative overall if only from a Shinto/Tao/Buddhist perspective than a Christian perspecitve like the rest of the west.
The weabos who dream of living in Japan would be fairly ostracized unless they spoke perfect Japanese.
There are growing trends in the youth, but their conservative patriarchy is still holding strong for now.
On a side note, the massive amount of US debt Japan owns combined with the Yen carry trade means there could be a dramatic economic/societal shift in a short period of time, were anything volatile to happen.
This is the first time I've even heard the idea of Japan being a "liberal paradise". I thought it was widely know Japan was super conservative.
In fairness, "gaijin" is any foreigner. And a lot of laws in Japan are very much based on warped Christian values (can't imagine who they got that from...).
But yeah. One of my best friends is Japanese American and the way she sums it up is: You know you truly understand the culture of Japan if you realize why you only want to visit for a few weeks at a time.
With bonus points for anyone who can read quickly realizing why the general stance toward APA is "Only if you get a REALLY good deal"
My thoughts exactly. It is left of the US on a few things like social safety net and healthcare, but mostly the same (which, compared to much of the western world is still quite far to the right).
Wat? What do you think that word means?
Source?
Getting them to vote would help. Obviously anecdotal, but a lot of young adults I knew didn't vote.
I'm from the US and have been living in Japan almost a decade. I don't speak perfect Japanese by any stretch, but I can generally handle myself unless we get into certain medical jargon or legalese. I own a house and a small farm. Your premise on being ostracized is false, however; racists gonna racist so policies or people that exclude others aren't generally going to give a shit if the person speaks flawless Japanese. On the other hand, I think the internet has a kinda warped view of what living here is like and how foreigners are treated. There is racism, particularly in trying to get an apartment. I've also been treated like a normal person more than I've ever been treated like some outside or zoo exhibition.
Maybe excitement I get when I speak Japanese even just OK is a beautiful thing compared to France and Quebec trying to speak French.
But I will say South Korea is racist as fuck and being white and talking to a girl will get you and the girl attacked but worse of all mostly the girl.
And yeah clubs, dating, and housing in Japan are not great but it's definitely as with always a nuanced gray that is hard to explain to people who like a simple answer.
Don't know about the rest, but the South Korea part is simply complete bs
Wasn't in 2015 when I hit on a girl for helping me navigate the subway system.
Well, context definitely matters. We don't know what you did, how you did it, if she was with her bf, how sane was her bf etc etc. I don't want to negate your personal experience but I doubt it was just normally casually "talking to a girl" that got you in trouble in a normal situation.
Also 2015 is almost 10 years ago, it's not really accurate to define it as the current situation.
As for my source, I'm white, my wife is Korean, my ex was Korean, and I hang out alone with female Korean friends a lot. Some very old grandpa may be not very happy about skinship in public, but that's all. Never to the extent of being attacked or harassed, it's usually just looking at us a bit with a grumpy face.
This being said, it's not all perfect. Some families may be less open than others in accepting a marriage with a foreigner (old generations, young people just think it's cool usually). And not only about white people. The mom of a friend was grumpy about her son marrying a Japanese girl, for example (even if he lives in Japan) But even so, nowdays is rarely open hostility.
Of course idiots are everywhere. So I'm pretty sure there are young guys saying "white guys steal our women!1!!" and getting angry.
Also, an important note is that these days the fight between "feminist" Korean women and men against them is getting bigger. This can influence especially the mind of young men. I was approached by a Korean boy asking me about how women are in my country because all Korean women sucks and are terrible. In that context, I'm sure some guy will use dating a foreigner as an excuse to say how shit and easy Korean girls are.
Anyway, exceptions aside the average population is pretty much fine with it, especially in big cities. It's not like Korean men don't like white women too, after all.
Sorry if this is too long, but we're all here to share knowledge about those countries anyway
I find this to be largely true, especially of older people, for foreigners who live there. But not to discourage a visit: you are very welcomed as a tourist in most places in Japan, and any Japanese you speak will be appreciated.
Where do you hear those stories?
You may need to re-evaluate where you're getting your information from
The only thing good about Japan is their transit system.
Their cities do look clean af. The people there seem to have a higher baseline level of mutual respect than most Western nations. Unless you're a foreigner.
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.
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?
i live in the same state as Mitch McConnell, so if I fear going to Japan, it's probably for a good reason.
Maybe you are smoking to much and your paranoia is showing?
That's a rude thing to assume. The paranoia comes from the fact that I'm genderfluid, pan, polyamorous, a furry/therian, and otherwise outwardly queer in a deep red state.
That has nothing to do with Japan and sounds like you just wanted to bring it up.
Yes it does--I live in a Nazi state. If I feel safer here than Japan, then something is extremely wrong.
OK. Cool.
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).
Because I'm tired and angry at the state of the world.
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