Party Vibe

@tryptameanie 975830 wrote:

Aftert no doubt spending billions ;lobbying government to keep that shit illegal it’s nice to see the cancer peddlers making something that will ease the pain of those patients it creates (and also a fucking HUGE profit).

I’ve never been 100% certain that all the big tobacco firms were anti-cannabis (or even any drugs); although many US pro-cannabis activists repeat this without specifying the exact companies involved.

TBH it would be as illogical as lobbying for more regulations against matches and lighters because the can be used to start fires; and a lot of young cannabis smokers also smoke tobacco when cannabis is unavailable or inappropriate to use (such as when studying for exams), tobacco is (or at least was for my generation) one of the first gateways into drug taking of any sort.

Maybe some tobacco companies did fund DARE etc and other things like age control check organisations. but I can remember reading 20-30 years ago that Philip Morris and possibly BAT/ITL (or whatever they are called today) had both already designed branding for cannabis cigarettes when the stuff was eventually legalised.

That said I’m not sure if this is a good thing TBH.

Although I expect $89 may welll be is unrealistically high a price compared to rolling your own I can see where this is heading; a lot of the current growers in the legalised states are learning that farming is hard work and many are around my sort of age to their early middle age – Philip Morris may be trying to show them they have plenty of $$$ to buy out their farms and run everytihng on a big business/ industrial scale but that always happens in the USA to everything it seems…

it was reported as serious news on many USA cannabis websites quite recently (even though it is from 2014 and was once used an April Fools joke).

TBH if anything its a credit to Philip Morris that they haven’t tracked down and sued whoever did it; as folk have been pulled up for stuff like that.

Whats more worrying is the way the USA is going other than the excessive price [and that you wouldn’t normally use a filter] it seems perfectly believable; I can see how and why even post-legalisation a spliff that looks like a normal tobacco cigarette could be of interest to some people such as younger smokers in places like schools/colleges…

@tryptameanie 976127 wrote:

You do know about the alcohol industries massive efforts to keep a;lillegal drugs illegal. Paying for the billboards that showed Leah Betts. Commisioning huge billboards for Coors I believe that said “don’t do drugs, that way you’ll have more ime to drink”. Sick.

Yep I remember that – the big alcohol companies in the UK were already pissed off that sales were declining although the rot had already set in by the mid 1980s long before drugs culture had increased. I can understand now why Dad preferred benzos [though he did like a drink too; as a second job he ran the bar for a Chinese restaurant] as 1980s era pale lager was particularly bad; medium strength mixed drinks were full with glycol and other rough chemicals and so were cheap spirits. The only decent alcohol IMO in this country is real ale and Scotch whisky but I try and avoid alcohol as I can easily drink way too much (and then feel rough the next day).

Those 1990s clampdowns had a very bad effect on Eastern England as Paul Betts used his power as a cop to close down all the legal dance music events (including using TSG / riot squad units) and sending a lot of middle level dealers to jail but because he used dodgy grasses let others escape, this resulted in further violence including shootings – by late 90s he left the Police in disgrace and tried to start up a anti drugs group in Scotland which also got shut down and took over by the NHS Scotland).

They also led many people to do unlicensed raves in the forests for many years which ultimately led to more problems (such as road traffic collisions and environmental damage) As the alcohol industry also co-opted the clubbing culture in the 2000s, younger people are now both binge drinking and taking drugs or using heroin and crack rather than MDMA which has increased all the health and social problems

All this affects Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk to this day; the only reason Suffolk is the least worst out of all 3 counties is that even the alcohol friendly venues are highly controlled and licensing hours are being slowly rolled back (which is happening UK wide even in London) so no one has won in the end.