36 Comments - Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 2:21 am: === Sometimes, for lots of reasons, legislating is just show business === Don’t you love a farce? My fault, I fear I thought that you’d want what I want Sorry my dear But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns Don’t bother They’re here Spot-on, Ol’ Blue Eyes. - Galway Bay - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 4:59 am: Wake up and take a look at Cap Fax. First thing I see is someone lighting a joint. Wow. Better then coffee. Gonna be an interesting day I guess. - halving_fun - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 6:44 am: But literally spending time on this is a waste of effort Thanks for the advisory that politicians love wasting our time - Bruce( no not him) - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 7:03 am: === Sometimes, for lots of reasons, legislating is just show business…=== Sometimes?? - Leigh John-Ella - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 7:28 am: Insiders professional tip: Bill filing coverage season is almost exclusively devoted to coverage of bills that aren’t going to happen. - Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 7:32 am: “legislating is just show business” And like that industry, produces mostly garbage. - Pundent - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 7:51 am: Maybe it’s all just a ploy to own the name Buzzkill Batnik. - Leigh John-Ella - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:01 am: Pundent, he doesn’t want to kill your buzz, he just wants the government to step in and mandate responsible limits on your buzz that the market and business community currently don’t impose on themselves. I’d a solid plank in the GOP platform. I’m sure they’ll be filing a 3.2 “beer” mandate soon. - Google Is Your Friend - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:27 am: I’m shocked–shocked!–that grandstanding Batman would introduce no go legislation at the behest of a special interest group. - Pundent - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:27 am: Leigh John-Ella, probably his revenge for being labeled a NARC in high school. - TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:28 am: = I’m sure they’ll be filing a 3.2 “beer” mandate soon. = I have to wonder if anyone noticed Batinick was spending time gushing over the ’success’ on the construction of the new Diageo hard liquor bottling plant in his district. For even more of a show, lets have him amend his own bill and replace ‘cannabis’ with ‘alcohol’, and see how much fun he thinks it is. - Monadnock Pigeon - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:42 am: I don’t think the technology is there to support something like this. Here’s why I say that: A few years ago, I had a conversation with John Huffman, who was a research chemist at Clemson for decades. With DEA authorization, he wanted to study the effects of THC with an eye towards its therapeutic potential. The first major problem with his research? Trying to standardize the dosing so that the trials could determine the impact of a specific amount of THC on a particular condition. Eventually, he gave up working with actual marijuana and switched his research to trying to create synthetic THC (which is why he has a Wikipedia article) so that dosing could be standardized. - TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 8:50 am: For some context on how disingenuous this attempt was; =at the behest of the Illinois State Medical Society, whose members have concerns about potency and the “skyrocketing” number of cannabis-related calls received by the Illinois Poison Center. Those calls jumped from 487 in 2019 to 743 in 2020 — when cannabis was fully legalized — and then climbed to 855 last year.= The same poison center reported this number of calls in just 7 weeks in 2020 for… cleaning supplies. =Between March 1 and April 20, the Illinois Poison Center says it received 1,024 calls of exposures to household cleaning products. During the same time period last year, the IPC received 750 calls.= For the full year; Household cleaning substances: 6,536 How about calls about alcohol poisoning? Alcohols: 4,176 Yet Mark Batinick doesn’t seem to see a need to restrict the %/proof of alcohol through legislation which has almost 5X as many calls to the poison center. Just in case anyone though he was being sincere in his ‘attempt to have a discussion’. Source: https://www.illinoispoisoncenter.org/media/ipc-fact-sheets - Leigh John-Ella - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:04 am: TheInvisibleMan … “skyrocketing” Never forget the Sun-Times is a tabloid. It’s in their nature. - Common Sense - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:06 am: The issue is with THC levels has to do with what has occurred in Colorado with the ER’s flooded with THC related overdoses and young people experiencing long term psychosis. - 47th Ward - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:29 am: === ER’s flooded with THC related overdoses and young people=== Link please. - Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:34 am: “Wake up and take a look at Cap Fax. First thing I see is someone lighting a joint.” “Wake and bake” has been an expression. Coffee pairs so nicely with cannabis, for those who like it. Something like this could drive certain people back to the black market, to get the better stuff. Isn’t that market entrenched enough, without us adding to it? Worry about convincing anti-vax constituents to get vaccinated and ease the pandemic first, before entertaining any notion about marijuana potency restriction. - TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:34 am: = The issue is with THC levels has to do with = The monthly full page ads in the tribune “Save our brains” put out by that ultra-religious group pushing to make cannabis completely illegal again. = young people experiencing long term psychosis. = From what I have seen in the research, cannabis has merely hastened the appearance and development of these symptoms that were already existing in the patients. Not that cannabis is the cause. I’d be willing to read a research paper showing otherwise, and maybe I’ve missed that. But to this point, the research seems pretty clear. What this does point to is a need for more mental health screening in youth, if cannabis is the only thing currently bringing these existing conditions fully to the surface. Changing the percentage of THC in cannabis at the retail level is going to have zero effect on the existing brain structures of a teenager. If Batinick would like to pass a bill expanding mental health coverage and screenings in schools to catch these existing conditions early, I’d be all for that. Unfortunately his party platform seems to have a problem with medical testing in schools because freedom or something. - Roadrager - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:42 am: ==ER’s flooded with THC related overdoses and young people experiencing long term psychosis== Loved your appearance on Tucker Carlson last night, Mr. Berenson, but you really should get someone to show you how to tie a necktie now that your wife doesn’t want anything to do with you. - Jocko - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 10:15 am: ===THC related overdoses and young people experiencing long term psychosis.== If this were the case, wouldn’t psychiatric hospitals be filled with Rastafarians? - TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 10:27 am: Maybe this is just a distraction from the ‘yearly variable income tax rate’ bill batinick also submitted. HB4932 He’s on a roll with these out-of-left-field bills lately. - 33rd ward - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 10:32 am: Oh wise one, “Common Sense,” please link your data for your comments. I won’t hold my breath. Btw, there’s no movement in Colorado (or anywhere else) to re-criminalize cannabis. - Rudy’s teeth - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 10:44 am: Back in the day, we had a student whose parents named her THC. Won’t reveal her last name for privacy reasons. It was quite the district with much drug activity in the community. Coming to work every day was always an adventure. - low level - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:19 am: It would be nice if reporters included the bill number so readers could look it up on their own if they wanted. - Common Sense - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:23 am: Ok here are two peer reviewed SCIENTIFIC journal articles that show both points I made. Believe whatever you want, I was just pointing out there is some logic for limiting THC levels in recreational or medical sales unrelated to politics. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-2809 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(19)30048-3/fulltext - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:28 am: ===I was just pointing out there is some logic for limiting THC levels=== Except nobody dies from overdosing on THC. You can die from alcohol poisoning, yet I’m not seeing bills to ban the sale of bourbon and gin. - Huh? - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:30 am: To minimize or limit the THC content of pot to a particular percent, it would have to be genetically engineered for that trait. Possible. Takes time. Big Ag does it all the time with corn and beans. Best example is roundup ready beans. - Huh? - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:33 am: “bills to ban the sale of bourbon and gin.” Get behind me satan. - MisterJayEm - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:47 am: 420 > 3.2 And you can’t argue with math. – MrJM - Common Sense - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:51 am: “I’m not seeing bills to ban the sale of bourbon and gin.” And this isn’t a bill to ban cannabis. - TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 11:56 am: @Common Sense And nobody suggested banning alcohol. Just the ‘higher percentages of alcohol’, in the same way Batinick is proposing to ban the higher percentages of THC. That’s why the statement was specifically to ban the sale of bourbon and gin, not all alcohol. You can still buy that 3.2% beer, just not bourbon and gin. We are going through the exact same historical path of alcohol prohibition. After prohibition ended with the 21st amendment, many areas wasted no time trying to micromanage the now legal to produce liquor. Many of them restricted the percentage alcohol that could be sold in their jurisdiction. Read our shared history, and replace the word alcohol with cannabis, and you will see how much this fits together. - Sir Reel - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 12:17 pm: Calling for volunteers to ascertain how strong the pot is. Anyone ready to smoke a doobie? - 47th Ward - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 1:02 pm: ===Ok here are two peer reviewed SCIENTIFIC journal articles that show both points I made.=== I couldn’t open the Lancet article, but the other does not match either point you made, about “ER’s flooded with THC related overdoses and young people experiencing long term psychosis.” That study in CO found fewer just over 2,500 cases of emergency room visits that were “partially attributable to cannabis” over four years, or a bit more than two per day. It made no mention of pyschosis. Last I checked, 2 ER visits per day in a state the size of Colorado does not equal a flood. - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 1:27 pm: “Common Sense,” do you know what has actually been flooding hospitals? COVID-19. Get your shots and go take a nap. - Pundent - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 3:07 pm: I think the same folks that find themselves with “reefer madness” might be better channeling it into “covid madness.” Because from where I sit they seem to have their priorities (and data) mixed up a bit. - Correcting - Wednesday, Jan 26, 22 @ 9:36 pm: As somebody who has smoked many strains, I know that sometimes the weeds with the highest THC content are not always the most potent. That doesn’t sound right yet that is a common phenomenon. I’m not sure exactly why that is. Some people speculate it has to do with the terpene composition. It’s obvious there must be other variables besides THC content and I intend to learn more. We are still learning a lot about the weed science. Weed is like the ocean. Our understanding of this vast body is very limited, but we will always keep exploring. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.