First let me say that I don't smoke marijuana. I'm not a fan.
Now, I'm glad that this happened. Franky, I was sick of so much attention and focus on something so harmless. There are horrific problems in this world that need to be solved, and some high people drinking Slurpees on a couch watching cartoons shouldn't be the focus of our attention. Plus, the tax on this will bring a lot of revenues into the state.
> some high people drinking Slurpees on a couch watching cartoons
You were probably generalizing to get your point across succinctly but to those who assume the above is true: you'd be surprised by how many lawyers, programmers, engineers, technicians etc use it every day to gain a sense of nuance the way a coffee drinker would sink an espresso for a stimulant effect.
It's also worth noting that the Indica strain is the couch-slob strain of marijuana, while Sativa is the head-high. To borrow from a reply I posted a little over a month ago: Your typical sativa high is a sensitivity to music in the way that sounds are broken down spatially, rhythms and bass seem more appealing, an intensity of thoughts - as in the small things now take on more meaning, imagery seems more interesting, colors pop, and it provides a general sense of relaxation as long as you're in a fairly predictable environment, yet you're in total control.
Alcohol which is legal versus marijuana which isn't, with no sensitivity to harm beyond fatality? No sensitivity to social issues arising from marijuana use; Can marijuana contribute to depression, for example.
You are incorrect in assuming your arguments are conclusive.
Alcohol certainly contributes to depression. It also causes a great deal of social harm. If you heatmap crime in a city bars are often the epicenters of violent crime. Factor in that the majority of sexual assaults and domestic abuse cases involve alcohol and I'm not sure what your argument is.
Alcohol contributes to depression in excess, in small regular quantities what harm is there?
> If you heatmap crime...
Again, look at all the problems I had with your original arguments. Alcohol is legal, and hence there is far more opportunity to abuse it. Small, regular amounts of alcohol is likely not be be harmful at all - all problems arise from excess, hence there is an argument for restriction, not criminalization.
Why are you talking about alcohol rather than marijuana in any case? Your comparison is a straw-man - whatever can be concluded about alcohol doesn't necessarily apply to marijuana.
Why are you talking about alcohol rather than marijuana in any case?
Your assertion was that legalizing cannabis would cause social harm. If your goal is preventing harm then you must also criminalise the currently legal recreational drugs to be logically consistent.
We'll see what Trump's attorney-general thinks about this.
State-by-state marijuana legalization has existed on the sufferance of the Democratic party on this issue. There is an immense amount of power for the Federal government to crack down on the this if they choose, and Donald Trump has never shied away from engaging in exactly such culture-war issues.
I would not even be surprised to see medical usage rolled back. There's plenty of justification: after all, Schedule I drugs are supposed to have "no legitimate medical uses", despite the reality of the drugs on it. But it will largely come down to culture war: medical marijuana is exactly the camel's nose under the tent that conservatives said it would be.
Politically, legalization is a rallying call for Democrats that pushes turnout. It can be easily snuffed by Republicans, and it will be - the same way the drug war was used in the 70s and 80s.
America made some bad choices last night and we're about to get a nice show of just how much power the Federal government can wield when one party both completely controls all the branches of government and has the will to use it as a blunt instrument of power. States' rights are just a platitude for when Democrats are in power, it's not going to slow Republicans down in the least.
It's hard to say actually. Many republicans are very strong states-rights supporters, and they would happily leave controversial issues like marijuana up to the states and local governments.
There are plenty of Republicans who like to mouth those slogans, yes. Particularly when the opposition is in power. But there have always been precious few who actually stand on that principle once their party is in power.
Those type of politicians have been forced out over the past decade, first in the Tea Party waves and now with the Trump waves. Nowadays the principle is that you get onboard or you get called a 'RINO', get primaried, and get forced out for someone who will play along.
Just look at what happened to any of the politicians who tried to stand up to Trump. They either kissed the ring or they lost. And that was before he pulled off a landslide election.
"States rights" is definitely a Republican slogan, but in truth it's applied very selectively. Witness attempts at the federal level to ban abortion and gay marriage.
>Politically, legalization is a rallying call for Democrats that pushes turnout. It can be easily snuffed by Republicans, and it will be - the same way the drug war was used in the 70s and 80s.
Nope. There are too many libertarian-leaning Republicans. Besides, Trump is no drug warrior.
Just to point out how incredibly wrong your "perceptions" are: this morning he released his list of things he'll do in his first 100 days and he's already pushing to ramp up the drug war.
* Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.
I'd have expected Hillary to send in the Federal troops and shut down marijuana sales, simply because she's been in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry and they're already complaining about how cannabis is cutting into their sales and profits. [0]
But Trump? Maybe not. He's a businessman, after all, and marijuana has proven to be some big business indeed. [1]
> I'd have expected Hillary to send in the Federal troops and shut down marijuana sales, simply because she's been in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry and they're already complaining about how cannabis is cutting into their sales and profits.
Actually pushing for federal legalization would result in either big pharma or big ag (which overlap considerably, anyway) controlling the business. The semi-legal status is the only reason that it cuts into big pharma's business rather than being part of it.
I wonder if this will have any effect on employer urine testing for the drug in California.
I also wonder what a Trump vs Clinton Presidency would mean for the enforcement of federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana. Would they be as hands-off as the Obama administration has been? Was drug policy or enforcement even mentioned in any debates or party platforms this election cycle?
>I wonder if this will have any effect on employer urine testing for the drug in California.
Probably none. The same thing that happened in Colorado. Smaller companies already don't care, and larger ones will always defer to federal law.
>I also wonder what a Trump vs Clinton Presidency would mean for the enforcement of federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana. Would they be as hands-off as the Obama administration has been?
It could be disastrous if Trump wins. Chris Christie has been a moral crusader against marijuana for his entire term as governor, and a potential Christie attorney general's office could come down hard on states.
Would a federal crackdown on the states affect people who are possessing for personal use or growing their own? Or would it only affect commercial entities trying to sell?
That was exactly the question addressed in Gonzales v. Raich.
From Scalia's concurring opinion:
Unlike the power to regulate activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, the power to enact laws enabling effective regulation of interstate commerce can only be exercised in conjunction with congressional regulation of an interstate market, and it extends only to those measures necessary to make the interstate regulation effective. As Lopez itself states, and the Court affirms today, Congress may regulate noneconomic intrastate activities only where the failure to do so "could… undercut" its regulation of interstate commerce.... This is not a power that threatens to obliterate the line between "what is truly national and what is truly local."
Does the precedent in Gonzales not generalize to marijuana businesses, as opposed to just home growers? Is there truly a legal distinction between the ability to "undercut regulation" of (a) a home grower whose product may end up traveling across state lines, and (b) a business that sells recreational marijuana to customers who may plan to resell across state lines?
The key term in the decision is "the likelihood that the high demand in the interstate market will draw such marijuana into that market" - this is as true of business-produced marijuana as it is of home-produced marijuana, no?
I assume I'm misreading the scope here, because investors in marijuana businesses have to have taken this into account when doing due diligence, not just relied on the Obama administration's lack of enforcement, right? Or is the entire industry built on shaky legal ground?
No distinction. The entire industry is built on shaky legal ground. The only defense available to growers, distributors, and their investors is estoppel.
Estoppel is a category of legal principles that basically allow a court to refuse to hear a claim or defense if the claimant or respondent (in this case, the government), through affirmative action or gross inaction, did something such that the law would deem it especially unfair (often the test is "unconscionable") to permit the claimant or respondent the benefit of a claim or defense.
The classic example is promissory estoppel.
The biggest problem is that most forms of estoppel are generally not permitted in criminal matters, or much more difficult to convince a court to accept.
In this case, the basis for estoppel would be that various regulators and the DoJ have made statements that they would refrain from prosecuting certain offenses related to marijuana commerce if the acts were permitted legally under state law.
However, as far as I know, these statements
1) never pronounced the behavior legal under federal law, but merely provided an outline for how regulators and prosecutors would use their prosecutorial discretion;
2) were generally limited to medical marijuana;
3) were otherwise heavily hedged.
For these and other reasons I don't think any major financial institutions have invested in the marijuana industry. Usually it's local, individual investors providing financing, if any.
As the law is understood today few lawyers would expect to successfully defend a federal prosecution. At the margins, given all the context maybe many judges would be more likely to favor a defendant, such as imposing unusually light sentences or being unusually deferential to other defenses. But nobody should harbor the illusion that any aspect of the state-sanctioned marijuana industry, medical or recreational, is legal under federal law.
Well, that's the argument that Wickard was wrongly decided. The case in question involved a farmer growing crops for personal use in violation of production quotas. The Supreme Court held that this purely intrastate non-commercial activity was in fact interstate commerce (and thus within the power of the federal government to regulate) because there was an interstate market for this crop and that market was being affected, however slightly, by this farmer not engaging in it.
The inclusion of the word "interstate" was clearly intended to place a limitation on jurisdiction. With interpretations like this one, is there currently a form of commerce for which the interstate commerce clause has not been construed to apply?
Serious question: Has anyone here in "IT" (including software / hardware engineering), not for the government, actually been subject to drug testing? I had it in a state government job and the military, but nothing in ~20 years of private sector tech work.
Never in SF. A friend worked for a local company that got bought up by an east coast corporation. The new HR sent out an email that the new owner required drug testing. The local group announced, collectively, that they would not be participating. "But that's our policy!" "We'll all quit and have new jobs by the end of the day." "But that's our policy!" "Not anymore."
The local group won out, and the parent corp abandoned the policy of testing their California employees.
My knee-jerk is that it's an East Coast thing. I've never been drug tested, and I've worked for companies of all sizes and types, nor have I ever heard of anybody getting drug tested in the Seattle area.
I was. I was told it was because we handled PCI and HIPPA data for various clients, and that a clean drug test was required for compliance with those rules. When I asked if now-legal marijuana coming up on the drug test would be considered a failure of the test and thus cancel my onboarding, I was told it would.
Whether or not the reasons I was given were bogus or not, I would be in no way surprised if my scenario happened at other companies as well.
> I was told it was because we handled PCI and HIPPA data for various clients, and that a clean drug test was required for compliance with those rules.
Q 1 December 2013 – Drug testing is not required in the PCI Card Production Security Requirements. Is this an oversight?
A No, PCI does not require drug testing due to the wide variances in country laws governing where or when drug testing is allowed. However, that does not preclude card vendors from requiring drug testing wherever and whenever they deem necessary.
I wasn't able to find anything relating to HIPAA, but I've worked around HIPAA since before it was passed and your post is literally the first time I've ever heard that claim. Not saying you're wrong, just that this is a new one to me.
HIPAA absolutely does not require drug testing, though it's (I suppose) possible that your company may have adopted drug testing as part of one of the sets of procedures that HIPAA mandates (it doesn't seem to directly address any HIPAA requirement, but it's at least plausibly tangentially related to some of the workforce-related requirements.)
I'm highly skeptical that it's related in any way (although I'd be very interested in proof that I'm wrong). If it were, it'd be almost impossible to run a health startup in NorCal. Marijuana use is not universal, but I've never worked in a shop without at least a couple of coworkers who were open about using it in their off hours.
I began smoking marijuana regularly in 2002. I have taken, and passed, multiple drug screens, including for Government, Top Secret Clearance-level, jobs. In more socially-conservative areas, which I lived, you will see more IT jobs requiring drug tests, including in the private sector (Hewlett Packard, Hynix, and Intel screened, to name a few). Since nobody has on-site testing facilities, You usually get a 2-3 day window to attend a third-party lab and let them take a sample, which gives you ample time to procure the items you need to pass them. In the event of a random (or targeted) drug screen, you will still have an hour or two, likely giving you enough time to go home and get your pre-bought equipment.
Urine tests are usually easy to pass, as it's likely an invasion of your privacy as a non-felon to watch you urinate, therefore, it is a trivial matter to have synthetic urine (bottle warmed in your inner-thigh/groin to body temperature) ready to squirt into the cup, as well as into the toilet. If I recall, it was about $25 to purchase a bottle.
Hair tests required you to purchase $30 bottles of special shampoo that would strip away anything (leaving your hair feeling like straw), provided you follow the directions on the box, which was to scrub like crazy for 15 minutes. You'd get a good 3-4 hours of clean hair to attend the lab, which is more than enough time for most people.
I now work at a (incubating) canadian medical marijuana startup, so I no longer worry about such things, but I'm sure I'll be telling the grandkids about the measures people took during prohibition eventually.
Every employer I have ever had did pre-employment drug screening. A few likely companies have even done pre-interview screening. No one has ever done anything at all drug related after the initial hire date.
It's almost like they're just checking a box on an HR form, and no one actually cares.
Never in the electronics/aerospace/defense industry in the northeast. Sure, some companies have a policy that says employees might get tested, but in my decades of experience, no one actually does.
Every IT job I've had said it would be possible I'd be asked, but none of them ever did (almost all in gov't contracting in the US). The only time I've ever been asked was for a summer job working with kids at a camp where everyone was tested once a year.
I work at a big telecom and had to pee in a cup to get hired. I have a feeling people who work in a company that has employees driving or operating heavy machinery are going to get tested. It's probably a clause in their insurance contract.
It's really nobody's business but your own what you do on your own time. Particularly when the interested party is your employer. I've never been asked and, on principle, certainly wouldn't submit myself to that sort of screening.
In Texas; The Austin American-Statesman did. The boutique financial investment company would have (they also wanted me to wear at least a jacket and tie as a never see customer developer).
Yes when I worked at a large corp in TN. I suspect they didn't really want me to stick around long-term anyway and were looking for a way to get rid of me.
Yep. I work in an IT department as a .NET developer and was subjected to a drug screening prior to hire. It's a private sector business, but we have access to PII and banking information. Edit: this is in Colorado.
You know I don't think it will. I haven't seen any information about that being the case in Washington or Colorado.
One popular example is the NFL where they contend that because they engage in interstate commerce and it's still illegal at the federal level, they will continue to enforce their ban on its use.
A lot of banks were afraid to even do business with sellers in states where it's legal for fear of fines or sanctions from government agencies.
Edit - Obama directed the justice department to not prosecute entities in states where it's legal. But it's totally possible a republican president may take the opposite approach.
Or another likelyhood; the Federal government will no longer turn a blind eye as it has in Colorado et al under Obama, and we wind up with a full on Federal / State showdown.
"States' Rights" was always a red herring, IMO. Even in the civil war, the confederate constitution explicitly banned individual states from deciding to ban slavery.
The red herring is the slavery argument your political masters have fed you to keep you happily allowing massive power consolidation to an abusive apparatus.
I was listening to the Bill Burr podcast and he was talking about rumors of pharmaceutical companies planning to try and re-demonize marijuana in states where it has become legal to regain what they perceive as lost revenue due to a decline in prescriptions. All that lobby money with a businessman in the White House, makes me wonder how it'll all work out.
That's something that I know quite a few of us here in Colorado wonder; my friend who owns an upscale dispensary doesn't think anything will change but I'm not so certain. Esp. if the rumors that Trump approach various Republicans with the idea that as Vice-President they'd be calling all the shots. Mike Pence is kind of a wild-card, I really don't know what his stance is on legal mj but the little I have read doesn't inspire confidence that he'll take a reasonable approach to this.
That there will be no reasonable approach is correct. pence is not a man to be reasoned with. He doesn't know whether or not evolution is real and espouses teaching intelligent design in schools. He is a climate change skeptic and he believes conversion therapy for gays should be publicly funded[1].
But your original post didn't simply state that you were doubtful if he could be reasoned with; you made a stronger statement: "pence is not a man to be reasoned with."
I think that stronger statement is questionable for a few reasons:
(1) It ignores the subjective element of your assessment regarding which of Pence's positions are reasonable or not reasonable. I very much doubt everyone on Hacker News would consider all of your strongly held beliefs rational, and vice versa. But that should be the starting point of our discussions, not the end of them.
(2) You gave some examples of Pence's conclusions which you consider absurd, but you didn't give clear evidence that his reasoning processes are flawed that he's "not a person to be reasoned with". For example, if you could point to some discussions where he was unable or unwilling to adhere to basic, simple rules of logic, that would bolster your case.
I think Colorado is fubar either way- once Humboldt County gets it's paperwork squared away the pot money will leave here like every other boom industry.
Even if the Federal government drops the marijuana ban completely, a lot of companies are still going to test for it because traditional prejudices against "potheads" are going to take a while to fade away among corporate management.
I don't personally care about employees doing drugs unless they are operating heavy machinery or are a similar risk to others, but lots of traditional management types feel it is right to fire clerical workers for smoking weed on the weekends.
"I wonder if this will have any effect on employer urine testing for the drug in California."
Nope. Independent contractors such as myself are generally free of such things unless it's for a gov't position, most larger companies will still test if they do any business outside of the state, and big companies solely inside the state will likely keep up the testing anyways. Mom and pop? They're probably smoking with the employees.
I think you might have demonstrated that you can't read the words that I wrote. Perhaps I should turn this into a special product for people like yourself.
He's in a tough position, same as Obama. On the one hand, enforcing federal laws is his job. Presidents really shouldn't be picking and choosing which laws they'll enforce. It's not in their brief.
On the other hand, you degrade respect for the law when so many people are against its enforcement.
Were I Trump I would propose the end of federal drug laws other than trafficking. Possession is something the states can regulate if they wish, and anyway federal possession statutes are unconstitutional. On a practical level they're grossly unfair and give state prosecutors a lot of extra power, because people can always be threatened with prosecution under federal laws, which carry much tougher sentences in most cases.
But Trump can propose anything he wants. The action has to come from Congress, ultimately.
The DEA is under the Executive Branch. Once Trump's sworn in, he's their boss. If he wanted to disband the office entirely, I'm not even 100% sure Congress could stop him.
Unsure of costs, but there is a viable alternative to urine. It's shortcoming, if you can call it that, is it only tests for drug ingestion in short-term of a few hours. IMO, that is the limit an employer's interest should cover, while at work. After work is not anyone else's business but the adult practitioner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saliva_testing#Chemical_substa...
Not really. If you're a very occasional smoker (1 time a week) and exercise regularly and eat right, you'd be clean and clear after a couple of days. It's the constant users that build up levels of THC that can last upwards of TWO MONTHS in their system.
But realistically if you're getting a urine test relating to work most people are going to get enough privacy to bring and use someone else's urine to fill the cup. Not to mention most of the time you're going to get lead time unless you're working with machinery.
Have you ever been drug screened? There's varying levels of privacy allowed depending on the company doing the screening (including absolutely none) but there's lots of policies in place to where using someone else's urine is very difficult to impossible. Part of my spouse's current job is to watch people pee for drug tests. Also I've heard of at least one company that does hair tests.
If you have enough forewarning to catheterize yourself and fill up with clean urine beforehand it's a non-issue. Obviously this is sensitive to how things are scheduled, but tends to work pretty well when one isn't closely watched between getting notice of the test and getting tested
So how does this work for people already locked up for possession. Can they be let out since if they were caught with the weed now they would not be breaking the law?
Confirmed now actually, which is nice because the entire concept of every Tom, Dick and Jane who wants a joint having to jump through medical hoops is a bad idea. For one, it really dilutes the notion of cannabis as medicine for those who truly need it, and frankly, it's just silly and wasteful.
Well MA and NV also voted to legalize last night. It failed in AZ. Maine, is leaning in favor but that is still within 1%. Assuming Maine holds the total are these 7
1. Alaska
2. Washington
3. Oregon
4. Nevada
5. Colorado
6. Massachusetts
7. Maine
---
Non States
8. Washington DC
9. Our neighbors to the north. Canada.
But in DC, marijuana sales are still illegal, which makes for an interesting situation: you're allowed to be in possession of something you cannot legally buy.
The Netherlands has a similarly bizarre circumstance where it's perfectly fine (though technically illegal) to buy <5g in a shop but it's still quite illegal for that shop to be supplied with product, as commercial production is illegal and heavily counteracted by law enforcement.
Seed gifting is allowed but seed sale is illegal. The way it's happening, hydroponic supply stores are giving away seeds as the direct profit motive is there for them.
Recreational use isn't legal here (though enforcement varies, depending on where you are). Medical use has been for a while. The current government is likely to table legislation sometime next year, but no one knows yet what form it will take.
Canada isn't set to legalize until Spring of 2017. In many locations of Canada, people are still being prosecuted actively for trafficking/possession/production of marihuana.
Yes I think it is fair to include Canada in this list. MA, for example will still be illegal until Dec 15. But retail locations will not open until at least 2018.
The next administration may take a different approach to enforcement than the current one (I think it is kind of likely. But let's hope they choose not to prosecute growers and dispensaries and such.)
Trump doesn't strike me as a culture warrior, and since MJ's relevance to law-and-order issues is rather low compared to stop-and-frisk or BLM, his approach might not be all that different from the present one.
AS others have pointed out I'm not as worried about Trump as I am Pence. He seems to definitely fit the culture warrior mold and on the very conservative side.
So while this is cool I did not look at the proposition nor any of the legalities surrounding it. If anyone could answer (or provide a link explaining) the following I'd appreciate it:
* How will this change how marijuana will be bought/sold?
* How will this affect drug testing for Californian businesses? For other businesses?
* Are there any catches/gotchas to recreational use to be wary of?
EDIT: Thanks for your answers, guys! Good to know =D
Honestly. This already has been going on in CA. The medical marijuana cards are a total joke. In SF it takes ~15 minutes to get one if you are physically at a clinic. marijuana has already been sold, regulated, and industrialized in CA.
This law was really about stopping the joke about the cards and getting more tax revenue.
As far as I know the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doesn’t recognize marijuana users as a protected class. Its up to state law to recognize marijuana users as a protected class in employment if they want to. If they don't then you can be fired for testing positive for marijuana just like you can be fired for being a nicotine user in most states or you can be fired for a whole host of behaviors both illegal and legal. The companies doing drug test will continue.
If things are done similarly to in CO, where I'm familiar with the precedents -
1. Some medical dispensaries will double as recreational shops and new recreational shops will open.
2. Many CA businesses will continue to test for marijuana.
3. Maybe remember to pick up inside your car before driving out of state.
When/where can we start buying seeds? I'm gonna jump on this train. I bet I can barter my weed for those delicious giant oranges dangling off my neighbor's tree.
With the Republic of Kalifornia you never know. It will depend on how they define "6", "plant" and "grow". No laws in Kalifornia are common sense laws.
One real possibility is that government controls who can supply the saplings of the tree.
My real question is "What's happening to California's medical marijuana provisions?" I can't have opiates so I go through a lot of weed to manage chronic back and hip pain.
On his campaign trail he talked about moving it to schedule 2 or below. And he supports medical marijuana. You should be more worried about his choice of attorney general.
Excited about this passing, but this is a poor source. It starts "Recreational marijuana is now legal in California," which is false. The proposition passed, but it isn't legal til 2018.
There is a lot of misinformation about this even from the local papers.it becomes law when the vote has been certified. I highly doubt it will be certified by end of day on Nov 9.they have to wait until all mail in ballots come in before they can declare the official results so most likely it takes effect sometime end of this week or early next week but I am sure cops will start treating it like it is law already since there virtually no chance it is not passing
Now, I'm glad that this happened. Franky, I was sick of so much attention and focus on something so harmless. There are horrific problems in this world that need to be solved, and some high people drinking Slurpees on a couch watching cartoons shouldn't be the focus of our attention. Plus, the tax on this will bring a lot of revenues into the state.