The wild,winding world of New York City's legal (& not-so-legal) cannabis market

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/weed-dealer-new-york-legal-cannabis-business-1235071019/

by Geekette • 2 years ago

21 14 2 years ago

I’m gonna need the tldr on this one.

Article went from “I can’t make money in journalism so I guess I’ll……sell drugs” to the more interesting topic of how the industry has no identity thus all sorts of misinformation.

I lost interest when he became fixated on the wild search for Black Haze.

HDThoreaun2• 2 years ago

Basically just a bunch of stories about how NYPD decided to stop enforcing weed laws and the aftermath.

jtriangle2• 2 years ago

LLM's are pretty good at creating TLDR's

Not that you should outsource all of your knowledge to that kinda thing, just that... in this case it'd probably be just fine.

andrewstuart• 2 years ago

I thoroughly approve of legal weed because when young adults can't get high on weed they buy more dangerous drugs.

Personally I never take it.

I do think if you use it more than once in a while you're wasting your life. But hey, it's your decision.

codr7• 2 years ago

People smoke for different reasons, and have different experiences.

Separating medicinal use from recreational is far from trivial.

I can pretty much assure you that someone who smokes every day is not having the same experience as you, judging their life based on your experience makes no sense.

Zircom• 2 years ago

Your judgemental attitude is definitely a part of the problem because while you may be 'accepting' others that share your actual opinion aren't. Do you also think people that take anxiety medication are wasting their life? People that take sleep medication? People that take ADD medication? People that take pain medication? People that have a drink after work to relax? People that drink socially to have a good time?

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

You're both wrong.

Equating recreational drugs with medication is misleading; with psychiatric drugs, dangerously so.

Branding recreation and leisure as wasted life, meanwhile, is small minded. Particularly when it comes to something so thoroughly encapsulated by even the most conservative risk envelope.

Saying this as someone who doesn't particularly care for weed.

AStonesThrow• 2 years ago

Several of my neighbors work for dispensaries, and those who don't, enjoy smoking the sensemilla, as it were.

The legalization of cannabis has taken an amazing path. The establishment still doesn't accept it. My bishops are railing against every measure on the ballot. My landlady prohibits it. Every physician I've encountered, especially in psychiatry, hate it with a white-hot passion.

I think it's quite unusual and notable that despite legalization, cannabis has remained resolutely separate from pharmacies, regular physicians, and health care as it is. Around here, you go to a special doc, get your prescription/card/permission, go to a dispensary and get the goods. So, it's out in the open now that the Establishment doesn't like cannabis because cannabis is competition. It has very little to do with its effects or judicious usage by sane people. Cannabis is unpatentable, and therefore it's unlikely to be regulated or integrated with the pharma system of synthetic drugs.

It's so weird to have a single-drug healthcare system parallel to the mainstream one. Will dispensary systems diversify as other illicit drugs are legalized? Will they grow to become their own branch alongside naturopathy, homeopathy, etc? What will become of psychedelic treatments for mental patients? The future is weird, and I'm staying sober!

gosub100• 2 years ago

I'm glad it's legal, but where I'm from it's illegal to grow it unless you live a certain distance from a dispensary. So they're still doing "drug raids" on unlicensed producers, but since it's legal to possess, that clearly means the "crime" is competing with the very wealthy who secured permits to run their own dispensary! I know regulatory capture is nothing new, but that situation really drills the point home for me: "interfere with our profits? Go to prison for drug trafficking".

lokar• 2 years ago

Data point: in California my partner was getting treatment for cancer. They asked the dr and nurse about it for symptoms, they were sort of noncommittal until they said they were going to try it. Then all of the sudden there were very supportive, explaining that many other patients had seen great results.

ashleyn• 2 years ago

I can see why psychiatrists may oppose it, anyway. There's some scant evidence that cannabis wakes up latent schizophrenia in susceptible users. You never really know if you're susceptible to it or not. Even family history can betray you - if your family was historically poor and had little access to doctors, can you accurately say you know your family history?

I can relate a personal anecdote. This concern is one reason I personally haven't tried weed again after an initial bad experience with it. I bought about $60 of edibles expecting to have a good time, and most of them went right into the trash after my first time on them (at a very low dose even) resulted in derealisation, brain fog, and panic attacks lasting days.

Granted, I'm likely neurodivergent, and have a history of both anxiety and hypochondriasis especially with unfamiliar experiences. But unfortunately I couldn't determine if it was hypochondriasis or psychosis. The fact that one psychotic break could be life ruining effectively vetoed challenging the anxiety, and thus I couldn't really determine if it was safe to try again.

I don't oppose weed legalisation to be clear - but it can ruin your life if you have an unfortunate brain chemistry.

jtriangle2• 2 years ago

"Legal Weed" is a funny thing, because I know exactly zero people who live in legal states that buy it legally. They all have some kind of hookup that's much cheaper than any legal option.

I will say though, it's legal where I am, and aside from every parking structure stinking like burning skunks, it's not as much of a 'culture' as it used to be, and you don't really find many people talking about it, which is nice I guess.

cainxinth• 2 years ago

I have the exact opposite experience. All my friends and I immediately switched to legal dispensaries the moment we could.

I shudder to recall the bad old days of prohibition when I had to deal with flakey, shady characters.

HDThoreaun2• 2 years ago

Check out michigan. They implemented legal weed without corruption and the prices are great. Every dealer immediately got out of weed there because there are stores in every town selling high quality ounces for $50, and those stores regularly have sales for $35 ounces. Meanwhile here in Illinois the state went the corruption route and the entirety of Chicago has 5 stores which all charge monopoly prices.

The wild,winding world of New York City's legal (& not-so-legal) cannabis market

Related Stories