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but getting blind drunk in the street every night for them is fine. Ridiculous.
Like smoking, alcohol is a huge industry in Japan. It’s “normal” for Japanese companies to addict their employees to their products and because the companies ARE the government, they enact incredibly protectionist laws like this to prevent external competition.
Their economy depends on it. It’s super gross. Like America and guns, or Sweden and flatpak furniture (the last one is a half joke)
If Japan starts being a cannabis producer, they’ll 180 so fast you’ll get vertigo.
I bet they’d produce some bomb ass bud though. It would also look pretty as fuck as each nug is meticulously sculpted into a tiny little bonsai.
One hundred percent.
I was shocked at how often you just see people laying passed out on the sidewalk or sleeping on a bench. Japan is an insanely different place after the bars start closing. Was genuinely uneasy with how many people everywhere just had zero control of themselves.
There’s a reason why countries with proper transit infrastructure view alcoholism as a novelty.
I’m honestly not sure what you’re saying. Countries like the US with poor public transit infrastructure think alcoholism is serious solely because of people who drink and drive?
Honestly, i think the reason is that just the right amount of alcohol dependency is amazing for capitalism. Dont get me wrong, I’m not judging anyone. I understand and I enjoy a drink myself. I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about it.
It keeps you consuming and it makes you forget all the bullshit you had to put up with all day. It dulls your your problem solving, your creativity and (most importantly) your empathy, so supervisors, middle managers, department managers and execs are less disinclined not to beat down on those below them.
I’m not saying its some grand conspiracy. I’m saying, those in power have known exactly the right drugs to administer to the masses in order to placate them. The Romans knew to give wine and not cannabis. The British army knew to give rum & brandy but not weed.
In fact, all of them were legal. Then, capitalism really took off and, totally unrelated in sure, every drug other than alcohol suddenly became illegal.
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.
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.
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.
A population that old and conservative loves shit like that. Also, the government urging young people to instead drink more alcohol sounds like something straight out of the Soviet Unions playbook.
Drunk people might accidentally get pregnant and help with the population. Really an obvious move
FAS
I have a friend who moved from the UK to South Korea. He says that drugs is extremely illegal so everybody just gets totally wasted on alcohol there and that that’s extremely normalized.
If someone from the UK is saying this, my god it must be bad.
Korea is famous for their drinking
The UK doesn’t compare, Russia and Ireland are behind them
They have no rules on alcohol advertisements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWBIufbD6aE
You can guess all the rest
We definitely have issues with alcoholism here. I think part of it is that a ton of small businesses (as well as larger ones) are ones that survive on alcohol revenue. I remember when I lived in the US, a lot of bars and breweries would fight legalization claiming it would hurt their business. I think they are stuck in the mindset that no one will leave the house or something, but that’s just speculation on my part.
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.
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.
If its like the US they get buckoo tax monies they aren’t getting from canna.
to be fair states that have legalized are getting tons of ganja tax monies.
They can’t stop people from making bathtub wine.
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.
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.
Whatever it takes to get people to take some shrooms and chill all the way the fuck out
Also, dealers don’t check ID.
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.
It’s Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it’s the work culture.
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.
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.
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.
It’s not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.
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This is worse than you think. Most countries don’t criminalize use, only possession. Criminalizing use like Sweden does likely means that even having cannabis in your system is illegal and could lead to fines, criminal record, and jail time. It’s insanely backwards.
What if they consumed cannabis a week before in the legal country?
You are a criminal. Just like when you rape a child in a country where it’s legal (statutory rape based on age) you are held liable in your home country if the AoC is higher than in the country you visited.
So if an American drinks a beer in a German biergarten or in a park in france they should be charged with violating the open container law?
No, because that’s not criminal law.
Weird ass analogy there 🧐
It’s probably the most widespread and established law around the world. Only the age limits differs, but hopefully backwards countries like most of Europe, South America, China and the Philippines will catch on soon.
I don’t have hopes for the middle east.
In most cases if you are a tourist and are accused of minor crimes you just get deported unless you’ve done something else more serious. Detaining someone on a short term visa is awkward (what if their passport expires while in custody?) and kicking them out of the country accomplishes the same thing as jailing them.
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.
While the possession and cultivation of marijuana are already banned in Japan, the country will prohibit its use as well, setting a prison sentence of up to seven years for violation.
Ok, so that clears that up.
This is so fucking backwards it’s not even funny
Can’t be arrested for smoking if your buddy holds the bong for you I guess
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…
“A plant known for opening the mind and making you question things? That’s illegal.”
Come on, it’s not LSD. It just makes you sleepy and snacky.
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.
Maybe for you, but for me it is a mild psychedelic.
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.
R2 we’re supposed to be going up not down!
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.
Ah, the “I smelled marijuana” card. That’s the lie they used to completely search my vehicle and test my saliva. Only to find I did a small amount of cocaine a week earlier. No drugs were found, and the “smelled marijuana” magically disappeared from the police report. I got a €1600 fine for DUI. My lawyer tried fighting the lie but because they found traces of cocaine use it was dismissed (zero tolerance). Just like that. I was completely sober.
For anybody wondering, the amount they found was a third of the amount that clinical studies define as the absolute minimum of waste product that is produced to feel the slightest of effects. So even if it was from usage when I was driving, that wouldn’t even have been enough to feel any effects. I was completely sober, but because I’m a young adult male that doesn’t play along with their power play, I’m marginalized and unlawfully handled.
They make us criminals but we know better.
Rich corporations and people profit, everyone else is criminalized for reasons.
Fucking idiots. Legalize and tax it. It works every time.
I actually think it would be detrimental to Japanese demographics.
They are already having a hard time trying to convince young people to give up their freedom and pop out more babies. Weed would only make them think more clearly, not blindly.
I know you’re joking but… People say that about cannabis, but there are plenty of right-wing people who love getting high. Doesn’t make them think more clearly.
I am very, very pro cannabis and I was not joking.
In my experience, cannabis does make you question authority and being told what to do (to be fair, that might just be how it affects me).
I’ve been to Japan, there is a huge culture of respect and following authority and just trusting the authority has honour. Psychoactive substances encourage you to think twice instead of trusting authority based on tradition.
Just my two cents.
Again- lots of right-wing people love using cannabis. I can tell you from living right by the Illinois border but nowhere near a big city that I see Trump bumper stickers on big trucks at the dispensary constantly.
Right and left wing are not the same as authority and lack of authority, it’s actually a different dimension (as shown on political compasses).
Japan’s issue is their hierarchy and authority, them being right wing is not really what makes cannabis incompatible.
Idk where the right wing connection came from
Trump voters specifically are authoritarian. I think you know that.
Yes, which is what differentiates them from the old country club conservatives, they don’t just have right wing views of the economy, they want a leader with absolute power.
Which is why it’s so dangerous and we shouldn’t be taking about left or right wing but authority vs freedom.
The terms right and left wing originated as a shorthand due describing monarchists and anti-monarchists. Authoritarianism is THE defining characteristic of the right. Things like economic policies only come into it because authoritarians prefer economic policies that give more power to economic elites.
I mean, you can define it differently for sure, but modern politics basically use left and right wing as whether you want more hierarchy vs equality. Once you established that, the question becomes, do you force that by authority or do you do systems thinking to get the environment to encourage that.
There are right wing people who believe in small government. They want hierarchy and “better” people to be on top, they just either want the market to decide (old school cons) or by taking it by force (GQP).
But I do agree with you, right wing politics will always end up with a minority having most of the power, the how is what separates Trump vs Cheney.
It’s not the plant, it’s what it reveals about the people using scare tactics. Cannabis makes you question authority when it’s illegal and you see how people in power have been lying to you about how dangerous it is. Legal, socially acceptable cannabis just makes you goofy.
Maybe different people are affected differently. You may be adversely affected by penicillin, I may not be. Metformin may work for you, I may require insulin?
cannabis does make you question authority and being told what to do
only when its illegal, because you start asking yourself what else they lied to you about.
i dont think this is an effect from the drug itself. the ‘creativity’ you get can go either way tbh.
You realize that birth control, plan B, and abortions are very much a thing here, right? These “we need them to drink so we can impregnate them” posts always creep me out a bit.
I don’t think the youth of Japan should pop out kids. That’s what the leaders want. The youth want a better life, which if provided, would probably make them want to procreate more (not that they have to).
My point was that cannabis is not gonna have positive effects (my guess) given how things are and how little chance there is for young people to have financial stability and comfort.
Idiotic position in 2024.
Idiotic position in 2024 BC too.
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It’s gonna create a black market
Japan sees record cannabis cases in 2023, 70% among young people
They would rather have you drink Japan urges its young people to drink more to boost economy
That’s a misleading headline. Makes it sound like 70% of young people use cannabis. The figure is that of people who were charged with cannabis related crimes, 70% were in their 20s. About 1.8% of their population had ever used cannabis in 2019.
I told a guy in Tokyo we smoke weed walking down the street in America and he looked at me like I was insane.
