The US, like with everything, is going over the top with their weed culture imo. It’s one thing wanting to smoke joints but to make it your entire identity is just weird. In The Netherlands, where it has been semi legal for decades now, you don’t have such a prominent weed culture. Apart from tourists in Amsterdam I’ve never been bothered by anyone smoking weed. I sometimes forget we’re allowed to smoke it because of the absence of people doing it out in public, bothering others. I’ve been around the block a few times with drugs, being part of multiple subcultures who are known for their drug usage, and I’ve never met a single person making an identity of smoking weed. Not saying whatever the Dutch are doing is the perfect way, but it’s very different compared to the US.

I agree with all of this. I also really miss having access to CBD oil in Hong Kong as a means of pain management and anxiety control.

I might have recourse to better treatment for both pain and mental health in a socialist system, but Hong Kong remains capitalist and weed is an excellent coping mechanism for capitalism.

I agree with mostly everything, and echo some of the points in my other comment. I am curious as to how we should liken weed to unhealthy food, though, as from my experience and understanding it has valuable medicinal value (mentally and physically). The industry writ large is worth condemning, and the U.S. state only wants it to be legalized (in some places!) so they can use the tax money generated from purchases to ensure they can pay their military-industrial-complex beneficiaries. Speaking of, I would argue that the article’s stance is a little reductive insofar as the U.S. state is not an ideologically homogenous entity, and there is a war being waged within and without the annals of power to either legalize or further criminalize it. In either instance, the bourgeois state wins as it can collect tax revenue and find other reasons to imprison people, or can maintain the status quo in their slave-catching endeavors using drugs as the scapegoat. Perhaps that is part of why they refuse to deal with it on a federal level, it is more in line with their interests if some states legalize it and some don’t.

There’s no potential to cure epileptic seizures in an ice cream cone, but CBD and THC have been proven to help (I’ve seen it, anecdotally, with someone I’ve assisted before. Like night and day after a little THC extract). Not only is the carceral approach inhumane, but it’s also unscientific. There is much we could learn about these chemicals, including ‘psychadelics’ like psilocybin and LSD, and early testing in controlled clinical environments shows great promise in their ability to manage depression and anxiety more effectively than any SSRI that’s ever been manufactured.

I would argue for regulation, but not criminalization. Criminalization for large peddlers of opiates and amphetamines, yeah, but that would also include raiding every pharmacy nationwide. I empathize with the stinking of weed as well lol. All of my neighbors smoke like crazy and it stinks like hell around here sometimes, though the smoke from cannabis is far less lingering than that of cigarettes - usually lighting a candle or spraying something eliminates it. Not that it should be up to others to cover up your stench.

To reiterate, I agree and sympathize with China’s relationship with drugs, given their cultural and national history. Better or worse, it’s considerably different here and my own views have been in part shaped by that, I suppose.