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Idiotic position in 2024.
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Idiotic position in 2024 BC too.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Rich corporations and people profit, everyone else is criminalized for reasons.
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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.
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…
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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.
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.
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.
Where do you hear those stories?
You may need to re-evaluate where you’re getting your information from
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.
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
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.
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.
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”
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.
It’s just a fucking plant
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Evey plant is a fucking plant if you in-plant it far enough.
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.
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It’s not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.
It’s Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it’s the work culture.
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.
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.
Whatever it takes to get people to take some shrooms and chill all the way the fuck out
Also, dealers don’t check ID.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can do that for literally anything
That’s whataboutism
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.
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.
They can’t stop people from making bathtub wine.
If its like the US they get buckoo tax monies they aren’t getting from canna.
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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).
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. 🤦🏽
