You must log in or register to comment.
Did Sagan say that in writing? I know he wrote a few things about his experiences with pot, but those were informal, anecdotal writings, and this sounds much more formal, almost like a public statement meant for publication, or a speech.
Here is a summary with a link to the PDF: https://bigthink.com/health/carl-sagan-on-smoking-marijuana/
If there is one thing weed is really good at, it is making people okay with being lazy and with their current situation. LSD on the otherhand, can really make you rethink everything.
what’s wrong with being content and finding peace? The productivity drive has been driven into you by capitalism and leads to mass discontentment and suffering. One must detach from endless striving to achieve true enlightenment and happiness, and weed can do that and chill people out and cure them of their “protestant work ethic” which is a cultural disease.
Inherent in this type of “weed makes you lazy” rhetoric is that it makes other people lazy. You want everyone else working endlessly and tirelessly implicitly here, that they must face endless burden for your benefit. It’s a form of social control where you are attempting to force your values onto others instead of respecting their right to chose what they do with their own body and life.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/smoking-weed-more-emphathetic-study/ Fwiw.
My partner has an Rx for his myriad of autoimmune stuff. It really helps him when he isn’t feeling well.
Kinda blows my mind that capitalists so desperately want marijuana to be illegal. It’s basically the closest real-world analogue to Brave New World’s Soma.
You want the populace to be complacent? You need to let em blaze it.
There’s already plenty out there to keep a population complacent. Also, the prison industrial complex and all that surrounds it is big business.
This is why I really fear it. Then again it helped me find god. Which i then realized structurally does create the complacent worker through pacifying rather than inciting any real change. So I am back to thinking it is a crutch.
Sensitivity and fellowship, yet my (former) friend who is a big stoner has gone all-in on conspiracy theories and is championing the Reform party in the UK because Labour are apparently race traitors. Guess weed can’t do all the lifting.
Can’t win em all. Also, weed in the UK is rubbish /s
If you are as smart and educated as Carl Sagan, I’m sure weed isn’t doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah for people like Sagan, the “serenity” he’s referring to is probably more about quieting his mind.
Maybe weed isn’t relevant in that case, let’s not forget that in the US, weed was promoted by liberals and opposed by the MAGA crowd.
Yeah that quote is very naive and privileged.
To make an apple pie you gotta first create the universe. Def a stoner thought lol
Don’t forget “from scratch” lol
“Scratch” his itch for some of that killer skunk weed, the devil’s lettuce!
Removed by mod
Although I don’t agree with illegalization of cannabis, I do have to point out that thc content has gotten dangerously high from like a decade ago. Before, it was like 4%, now it’s nearing 19%. So I don’t feel comfortable recommending people to start recreationally smoking marijuana. It leads to serious mental issues and addiction in some cases. What triggers those “some cases” I don’t know but I don’t really want to try and find out.
“I’m biased against cannabis but also I’m afraid of it”
“I call people ‘afraid’ when they point out the current dangerous path of a drug that drives a 45 USD billion industry.”
I biased against meth, but also afraid of it as well. Doesn’t mean I’m going to go out of my way to try it and assess whether it’s really as bad as they say. I also won’t try out any poison, random pills I find, or anything I have to inject.
Fear is a healthy thing sometimes, mate.
I keep hearing that it’s supposed to be much stronger these days, but my experience is just the opposite.
I was a heavy weed smoker in my young years, smoking standard generic pressbud, and it got me nicely stoned. I even had a couple of years where I was growing my own, so I’m very experienced with fresh homegrown weed, which was beautiful. Tasted great, with a very satisfying intense high. Then I quit smoking for a few decades.
I recently started smoking again in my retirement, and was looking forward to trying this stronger weed I was hearing about. I’ve tried legal weed from various states, and none of it gets me nearly as stoned as the cheap pressbud of my youth.
This is just anecdotal, but that’s been my experience.
I also have anecdotal stories of my friend’s life being ruined by weed addiction. We can all have some anecdotal evidence but more scientific evidence is coming out saying that there are higher levels of thc and if younger children smoke weed it will fuck them up. I do agree that using marijuana cautiously and medicinally can help but I can’t possibly recommend smoking for fun.
A consequence of its prohibition. History keeps on repeating itself, yet we never learn.
The street market and mainstream market both rely on structure and tactics.
Look at shitty foods. They don’t need to be shitty… It wasn’t prohibition that made food unhealthy. But they made them that way.
Look at our news, it doesn’t have to be filled with shitty entertainment tactics and drama, but it is and it’s unhealthy to our society.
Addiction and emotion is marketed regardless of mainstream or street.
And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck. This is true for all illicit drugs, as they tend towards becoming more potent when they need to be smuggled (e.g. why fentanyl is often added to heroin, as it delivers more potency per gram).
If you legalise and regulate it, suddenly that pressure is taken away. Cannabis is produced in consistent and known strengths, distributed in packaging that clearly states the potency so people can make informed choices about what they take.
And this rising potency is a direct consequence of cannabis being illegal. Producers are breeding stronger and stronger strains with higher THC content and lower CBD to get the most bang for their buck.
this isnt exactly true. (my instinct is to say it’s completely false but i could be wrong!) in many states, it’s medical marijuana that is >20% THC and the cheap public stuff is unregulated below that amount. so you have people getting a bogus medical card, buying up 30% strands, and smoking an ounce a week and going into psychosis. source: stoner drug counselor
historically, yes! that was definitely a motivator. but the current system perpetuates it deeply
It’s mainly just a talking point to get weed money out of the black market.
just guessing here, but I’d think it’s getting perpetuated, as people expect or are used to the potent stuff.
Also not sure if the price is adjusted to strength, but I’d also suspect that people would buy stronger stuff and use less of it, so it lasts longer
(pure speculation on my end)
I’m sure many do but unfortunately i haven’t met or heard about any of it… whether it’s in the world or on r/trees or wherever. People rolling up giant blunts, etc. it’s crazy the way people overindulge! they say it’s spiritual and then binge on it… it’s like downing an entire bottle of communion wine lol
I was taught alcohol consumption where I grew up the same way. Consume as much as possible.
It’s lame.
you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right? i’m personally not a fan of the “high THC-A % at all costs” commercial grows and there is a wonderful variety of 3% or less CBD hemp or type 2s with 4%
you know you can just smoke/vape 5x less material, right?
this is very true and something i practice myself, using as little as possible
and yet… that’s not how most people use the drug. meth is similar! did you know that if you were to microdose meth you could theoretically use it as an ADHD medication? and yet where are all the microdosers? why does my city have a rampant meth problem?
thankfully cannabis is not nearly as destructive as meth but the parent comment is right: cannabis is becoming more and more problematic in people’s lives due to the high THC content and the cultural rubber banding effect. we’ve gotta reckon with the fact that this miracle drug is still a drug that messes with our NT systems quite a bit
Edible packaging informs of THC content in milligrams.
I’m glad stoners are so eco-conscious that they’re not wasting plastic on packaging.
I need like an upvote plus button. Like a “nice!” button. I’m always fighting the urge to post “damn that’s funny” all over the place.
An upvote should cover it I suppose, but it’s not satisfying.
Anyway, good one
There is lemmysilver (with ! at the start)
I’ve been a huge pothead for decades and I honestly haven’t noticed an increase in content while smoking regular weed. I think that’s the branded stuff that sends you out of orbit.
But if it has changed, that just means I smoke less to get to the high I like by smoking the equivalent of one joint during the day. It’s so much less smoke for my lungs this way, I’m not complaining. Lol
When I was a stoner I just reached a point where it didn’t effect me the same way.
Like I would smoke more but it would just be the same level high …but I felt like I needed it any time I did anything. Maybe I didn’t increase my bowl size much but the frequency increased.
Looking back it was such a a waste of my time and money. I was trying to chase this medicinal effect I was reading about but I never found it.
I still use it, but I don’t use it during the day like before.
Really nice thing for us green dragon enthusiasts though.
When I show up to an in-person interview high, in hopes they’ll think that’s my regular behavior:
I mean… if you are always high then that isn’t wrong is it?
The one and only time I ever had a boss/supervisor ask me if I was high on the job, was the one day I showed up sober. And then when I said I wasn’t he was like “that sucks; I am.” 🤣
I’m on year 11 of pulling this off lmao.
Wish we could smoke with you now and talk about K2-18b.
K2-18b is a nothing burger. The scientist who made the announcement has done similar before, he seems to really want to be THE person who discovers life on another planet so he skews facts and ignores other facts just for the small chance of being right. Watch this: https://youtu.be/HYjYvKoQVeM
:(
You still can. You probably have at least one atom from Carl in you by now.
I hope it’s in my weiner
Better give him a good wank just in case
Way ahead of ya
Thanks for blasting Carl Sagan in the ether!
hell yea
Boston City Hall is truly a legendarily gaudy building.
I was thinking what this magnificent brutalist building is
Boston city hall
Space Kermit was pretty far out there, man.
If you need marijuana to “produce insight” then that is a problem for you. It is best that we keep dangerous drugs off the street through any means.
Stop your bullshit
Stop being a junkie sympathizer
Calling someone out for spewing bullshit does not make you a sympathizer.
If you need coffee to have energy in the morning that is a problem for you.
And yes, coffee is a drug and it can be dangerous as well.
As Amaerica showed during the Prohibition and as we see today with opioids, humans will always want to alter their consciouness, no matter the cost. Legalizing drugs along with treating addiction as a disease and not a crime, would be a net positive.
Legalizing it encourages its consumption. There were high rates of people going to the ER with marijuana induced psychosis after legalizing in California (something where people probably would have been brought to the ER either way)
No, there were not. Stop your bullshit.
Stop being a junkie sympathizer
Calling someone out for spewing bullshit does not make you a sympathizer.
Bait used to be believable
Oh, everything that doesn’t conform to my world view is just “bait”
Stop your bullshit
Stop being a junkie sympathizer
Calling someone out for spewing bullshit does not make you a sympathizer.
Yes it does. You are effectively a murderer by advocating for drug addiction
dangerous? lmao
you have the worldview of a victorian era spinster
Slowing a response system clearly isn’t socially advantageous in any society where people are going to be operating any method of transportation like cars, bikes etc etc. I wouldn’t have a major opposition to it if people didn’t habitually attempt to leave the house while still high. Not to mention the consumption of it exposing others to chemicals through air pollution.
Stop your bullshit
Stop being a junkie sympathizer
Calling someone out for spewing bullshit does not make you a sympathizer.
air pollution
oh hell yes now we’re talking. so you’re in favor of banning cigarettes, campfires, candles, gas stoves, and shit why not, indoor cooking too right?
gas stoves
these also expose others to risk of death by explosion as gas stoves require gas pipes which blow up every so often, usually taking a few houses with it
You didn’t even include the most obvious one from San Bernardino. That one still haunts me. Luckily it happened in midday with surprisingly few casualties but a gas line blew up like a whole suburban block.
Indoor cooking serves a social purpose that marijuana doesn’t. We can’t just do away with it. As for the other things, they are already legal most places, if they were illegal I would most certainly oppose legalizing them and cigarettes should also be banned for the innocent people they kill through causing impaired driving and exposing innocent people to their smoke.
Indoor cooking serves a social purpose
big time yeah, but so does smoking. for that matter, so does alcohol.
We can’t just do away with it.
sure we could! we can just do it outside.
ngl if all you’ve got is “well these things are legal and this one isn’t” then i’m deeply uninterested. “but it’s illegal!” okay so what? in the u.s. at least those laws were created explicitly to target and demonize black people and progressive movements. i listed the things i did bc they’re all harmful to human health in one way or another. candles put out a similar level of air pollution to smoking cigarettes inside. campfires? oh you better believe that shit is terrible for you. my point is that you’re not really being honest about the reasoning behind your beliefs. it’s okay to say “i think this should be banned because i don’t like it.” maybe nobody will agree with you! maybe they will. at least it would be truthful.
I am not using the law as a justification but rather saying that something already being socially unacceptable for the majority of people and already being illegal is easier to counteract than something that these is no base for its elimination already. It is easier to oppose something already illegal than saying we should eliminate something from scratch even if I agree with you that it ought to be eliminated long term. Smoking and alcohol do not serve the same purpose as cooking and are unnecessary and easily replaceable.
rapidly losing interest here but illegality in no way corresponds to social unacceptability. i’m not sure why you would ever make the mistake of conflating the two tbh.
Indoor cooking serves a social purpose that marijuana doesn’t
So because you personally see no utility in something, nobody in society can benefit from it as they see fit. This is your reactionary boomer mind poking through. Taking selfish simplifications and extrapolating to them to everyone to enforce social control. You must recognize this is boomer behavior you are exhibiting. The exact logic is used to justify homophobia and transphobia.
Indoor cooking is a nearly universal concept that there is not an easy replacement for in the majority of cases. Eliminating marijuana is much more achievable.
if it’s so achievable then why hasn’t it been done despite the most authoritarian police state in world history with a surveillance state and billions in funding? Despite putting millions into jail for it to bring our prison population to the highest in human history?
you
Because I oppose dangerous drugs that kill people?
Stop your bullshit
we banned them from HB hopefully the lemmygrad mods nuke their account too, this is such hilarious like 1930s era reactionary nonsense it’s hilarious. This motherfucker watched Reefer Madness and thought it was a documentary lol.
Stop being a junkie sympathizer
Calling someone out for spewing bullshit does not make you a sympathizer.
ah yes the myriad dangers of eating too many cookies and falling asleep watching nature documentaries
this scourge must end!
You’re laughing but I’m a victim of cannabis!
I used to live with someone who smoke it on a regular basis. One day I went to bed, and my room-mate stayed on the garden, smoking his joint. When I woke up, the sandwich I prepared for my breakfast was… gone.
Are you getting the full picture? An addict stole the sustenance of a poor victim, due to his illegal psychoactive substance usage! Cannabis is danger! Cannabis is steal! Don’t cannabis!
Or if you do, prepare the munchies beforehand.[To be fair with him, on the same day he prepared me a way better sandwich as apology. And it isn’t like I went to the uni hungry, at morning I just whipped up some egg farofa and problem solved.]
The actual damage that it does do through impaired driving causes actual damage through killing innocent people as well as contributes to laziness.
Who is advocating letting people drive high? Just like with alcohol, it should have a time and a place and it should be a crime to operate a vehicle under its influence.
If a substance is legal then people will drive on it. Look at it when it comes to alcohol. Drunk driving is illegal but thousands still do it constantly
They are driving under it even if it is illegal. The legality won’t change that.
Except it is effectively legal. When a group of chickens are sick a farmer will cull them. We need the same thing for these addicts. The issue is that they walk and spread the disease of addiction even after doing this
distracted driving impairs your ability to operate a vehicle significantly, better ban
talking topassengers!or you know. just invest in public transit instead and ban cars.
Do you want a bunch of marijuana smokers on public transit with you? Exposing others to the dangerous smoke and causing such a noxious odor? Even if you ban cars they still are too impaired for things like bikes which cannot be easily done away with.
“Mass shooters at Rep. Gabby Giffords’s constituent meeting in Tucson, Ariz. (2011), a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. (2012), the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. (2016), the First Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017), and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (2018), were reported to be marijuana users.” (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9462911/). They are apt to commit violent crimes beyond just what they do on the roads.
i think this is the only time in my life i’ve ever encountered someone who isn’t an arch conservative try to make the claim that weed contributes to sexual assault (per your argument elsewhere in the thread) and mass murder. did your parents leave you in a locked room with nothing but reefer madness for entertainment as a kid or something?
No, I look at the actual evidence that marijuana causes violence in things like domestic abuse (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7525024/) as well as being tied to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7084484), both of which cause violent actions. I think that we should support users in trying to get off it and focus on education rather than criminalization but it is dangerous none-the-less.
So you also advocate making alchool illegal? (overwhelming evidence of alcohol contributing to violence, domestic of otherwise) Note how I wrote “contribute” and not cause.
Human behavioural problems are complicated as well as their causes. Blaming them solely on substances is dishonest and steers us away from the real causes.
correlation doesn’t equal causation. weed is very popular and used hundreds of millions of times every day, of course it will be co-existing with all the realities of the world. It doesn’t mean that it causes them.
Sib please get on a fucking bus once in your life. You are not allowed to smoke on them, marijuana or no.
When I am on trains or subways there are often other passengers with smoke on their clothes, this is still terrible.
as someone who suffers pretty frequent migraines i can agree that it’s no fun when people are stinky in public. you don’t hear me calling for a ban on perfumes, colognes, axe body spray (showing my age here probably) etc, etc, etc.
Yes, so does lack of sleep. Put anyone in jail who pulls an all nighter
That is much harder to regulate. If someone is driving while tired then they also should be facing other sanctions.
if someone is driving while high then they should face consequences, but otherwise no crime has been committed. You can’t just do pre-crime to justify your views. Something can’t be made illegal because someone might later do something different that is illegal.
How do you prevent that? Look at alcohol and how many people drive drunk. Marijuana can remain in your system for over 24 hours (even longer possibly) and many people will drive a car/a bike/go out in public. Not to mention that marijuana is often used in sexual assaults (https://adai.uw.edu/pubs/pdf/2017mj_sexualassault.pdf). I think that users deserve treatment and support rather than just off to prison but that shouldn’t make us act like the drug is some good benefit to society.
How do you prevent that? Look at alcohol and how many people drive drunk
Then ban alcohol. I’d love to see you try and eat shit the same way they did a hundred years ago when you developed your worldview
So you’re also arguing alcohol should be banned?
I am not currently arguing that as that is not the subject being discussed on this post, but yes, I do support banning alcohol and think it absolutely should be a goal to eliminate all of these useless materials that lead only to death of innocent individuals, abuse, and crime.
Well no, if you wanted to keep the discussion to marijuana then you should have stuck to actual criticisms of the drug instead of criticising potential consequences of misuse, which can apply to a lot of things. Driving unimpaired also kills innocent people, do you think driving should be banned?
Can we eliminate misuse? We have to look at it in the real word and the real word shows that misuse would occur like it does with alcohol. Unless misuse could be prevented then marijuana ought to be kept illegal.
Can we eliminate the negative consequences of a war on drugs? We have to look at in the real world and the real world shows that wars on drugs create huge slave labor prison systems for victimless crimes. Unless capitalism has been abolished then drugs wars ought to be opposed
Yes ANY means. We should nuke the entire planet before we let one dying grandma have a single puff.
Yeah, that’s one of the things that I disagree about with the world’s most senior space cadet.
I must ask why; the prohibition of it doesn’t make any sense to me at all. It’s all but proven fact that it’s not any more harmful than either smoking cigarettes, or drinking alcohol.
Both of which are completely legal to consume all day, every day.
Weed simply doesn’t deserve the status it is given, it was placed on schedule 1 as a gigantic middle finger from the ruling class, against the working class. They did it to punish those they saw as their lessers, and so they could have the police rough up anyone because they owned a small amount of the substance. But the cigarettes and alcohol they’ve enjoyed for decades and many of them have profited from? Those are fine. This new thing (at the time) that they aren’t profiting off of? Let’s make it illegal, so we can force everyone to use the things we do profit from.
That’s basically the backstory here.
Why you, or anyone would oppose lifting that prohibition is confusing at best, racist/classest at worst.
I’m genuinely curious how you have come to have the position you do. If you don’t like it, nobody is going to force you to use the stuff, same with alcohol and cigarettes. So why do you care?
TBF, just imagine what a place the world would be if the world leader’s idea of quality downtime would be a fat bong, Cartoon Channel and pizza.
Cartoon Channel
And here I am studying Kanji instead while high off my ass. Lol
Either my fellow stoners need to broaden their horizons or we have terrible stereotypes about weed smokers. 😅
People don’t need to make their leisure time productive.
My leisure time only happens to be productive. I don’t remember the last time I put on some cartoons because I smoked weed like people say. That’s not who I am when I smoke and it’s fine to point that out.
To each his own, and though I have never consumed any kind of drugs nor think I ever will (nor can’t understand the need of drugs beyond medical field, pretty much contrary of what it is stated in the quote of this post), I concede keeping it illegal while at the same time alcohol and nicotine are both completely legal is one of the reasons I still think our so-called “civilization” is extremely idiotic, mediocre and pathetic. Either make all of them legal but regulate their consumption or make it so it never bothers anyone else or anything else in any way, or make all of them illegal - but the disparity of current legislation about all of them around the world is just nonsense.
Are they completely legal though? They’re age-restricted everywhere I can think of, and you can’t drive or operate heavy machinery under their influence. So they’re, like, legal but with a couple of caveats?
That is the “legal, but with regulations, make it not bother anyone else” part.
Illegal simply means that if you have/consume said substance, there would be legal consequences (fines, imprisonment).
These restrictions and rules of use don’t make the drug itself illegal, they just make it illegal to use in certain scenarios.
Yeah, sure, but it’s obviously a matter of degree. Ketamine is illegal to use in certain scenarios and also a front-line medical treatment. Chocolate, OTOH, has absolutely no restrictions that I’m aware of. I admit that I’m just nitpicking language choice here, though, and there was no need for me to say anything
How come?
