Has US cannabis legalisation been naive?
I am, or perhaps was, very supportive of the idea of decriminalising cannabis. Seemed sensible, surely it will all be fine? But perhaps it won't be like Amsterdam where people enjoy it in cafe's, sort of like coffee (or is that just the tourist promo?).
The total de-regulation in the US means it's looking much more like Big Tobacco in the 50's according to the ex Health Commissioner for New York City and then Philadelphia, previously a supporter.
See the article here (first in STATNews.com and found via Genetic Literacy).
Manufacturers are manipulating THC levels to more than 10 times the potency of the weed that many of us used to enjoy in our youth. (Same way vape companies are manipulating levels and availability in products). It's basically a different product, and many of even the legal products, let alone the illegals, are now super addictive and it is a Wild West of different products and ways of getting it into the body, with growing negative health effects in some areas. Some, we hope will have beneficial effects for medicine and in recreation, others, from a quick internet search are sure to be totally pseudo nonsense. But hopefully only harmful to the wallet.
Tobacco companies are buying up producers, (as with vapes, they are banking on it as a new replacement tobacco product), and also like vapes retailers are piling in to sell weed products on every street corner. Lifestyle marketing is following the same trajectory as vapes in the US, so the Weed store can sponsor the football team as we have here for vapes.
He suggests regulating these products like tobacco - but I think in the US at least the genie is already out of the bottle and it's going to be tricky to put it back in.
Not sure what is happening in the UK, though last year I read Christopher Hodges OBE review of 'UK Public Policy & Regulatory Stewardship of the Legal Cannabis Industry - here
I hope we are doing lots of foresight and stakeholder engagement on unintended consequences and learning from the mistakes of cigs and vapes.
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