We dropped cigarette use with a massive anti smoking campaign that lasted decades. Not by hiding it behind the counter.

We used many approaches, which should be applied to the currently promoted drugs you see being sold in stores.

How come I can’t extend your outrage to churches? Seems a reasonable expectation since we’re hiding things that destroy lives.

Churches… the building? Or religion? I’d love to organized religion die, but church buildings should stand as either historical landmarks, or repurposed to house the homeless.

Where do we start?

I’m assuming then, that you aren’t aware of the decades of research on cannabis, especially when smoked, showing harm in other areas of human health?

Have a read.

To think that you could eliminate or hide everything that offends someone from life completely is also a childish outlook.

“Everything”. I never suggested such.

Look, we were able to drop cigarette use by using simple strategies like not having them displayed “in your face” at shops, and cutting advertising.

If we can’t do the same for other drugs, then it’s due to a lack of trying.

Safe in the sense that it won’t kill you outright like fentanyl.

But it’s not safe.

It doesn’t have to be as bad as other drugs to be a cause for concern.

It need to all go.

Sounds like we agree.

I also don’t want to see maple magats, huge diesel trucks idling with no one in them, indigenous people being arrested,killed and harassed for existing, churches…I hate fucking churches…every single one needs to go.

Not sure what any of that has to do with drugs harming kids, but OK.

Google maps also has all those places. They’re promoting hatred and alcoholism.

They are. We agree on that, too.

You sound like a child.

OK. We seem to be agreeing on the same things, so… I guess you sound like a child, too? 🤔

I have concerns about drugs influencing our most vulnerable, and the external pressures that make it difficult for them to avoid it.

As an alcoholic, one would think you’d agree that it’s a problem.

Not sure what your personal beef with me is, though. 🤷‍♂️

You’re lucky, I guess. Even just driving/riding around, I see cannabis shop signs everywhere. And I don’t want to see them, so I can only imagine how they stick out to an addict or vulnerable person.

Enjoying a joint every now and then is far safer than toking every 30 minutes.

The problem is, what Health Canada once labelled as “heavy use” is pretty much normal use these days. Daily use, or using multiple times a day, is very common.

If people (and teens) were only consuming once in a while, I doubt we’d be in this mess.

They consume often, partly because they’ve been told “it helps with XYZ”, so they self-medicate, which leads to greater problems. But also because they believe it’s “safe”.

Single cannabis use can also lead to acute impairment and puts stresses on the body. I’ve never heard of someone getting in a car and killing someone because they were impaired on having chocolate that afternoon. 😆

Only marketing I’ve seen is anti-drug ads

Recently, or around the time of legalization? Even pulling up Google Maps will highlight the cannabis shops, which is an insidious way to promote them.

The “experts” looked a lot different on 2016 Social Media… and that’s what drove much of the public support.

The real experts would have never wanted cannabis to be sold and promoted the way it has been.

Prohibition

I don’t think prohibition is the way to go. But we (society) should treat these drugs like we treat cigarettes: keep them out of view (i.e. “behind the counter”) and stop allowing them to be marketed at every street corner.

I view it from the perspective of someone who might never want to get into drugs, or may have recently become sober: they see cannabis shops at every turn, they are being primed to fail, and that’s not right.

We were able to get sensible people to stop smoking once we stopped allowing cigarettes to be displayed and marketed everywhere. I feel we need to do the same for cannabis (and alcohol) because of the harm we are causing to the most vulnerable in our society (youth and the poor).

Ah ok, “they” meant cannabis magazines.

Before legalization, there really weren’t many other places promoting cannabis (maybe there was, but marketing back then was very different from now), so the promotion of their safety came from those sources (unfortunately).

Worse yet, as the plans to legalize were getting closer, I remember a massive push on social media by people promoting cannabis as a cure-all for just about anything: mental health, cancer, anxiety, bowel problems, etc. They used the Trojan horse of “medicinal use” to bring it into everyone’s life.

I’m sure there was industry influence, because it was extremely rare to see people pointing out the harms of cannabis back then.

The experts were on the side of legalization, so they weren’t really ignored. If by experts you mean people who study public health policy and narcotrafficking.

Decriminalization is one thing, and experts were certainly in support of decriminalization.

But legalization, as in “allow stores to sell these everywhere and to everyone”, just like alcohol and cigarettes, became a fucking disaster, and now we are seeing the result of what the experts warned us about.

What are these experts saying nowadays? What I see is a consensus that it has a pretty good move.

Again, they still agree that decriminalization was the right move. But experts, doctors, law enforcement, educators… all see what a disaster this has become.

We knew that normalizing cannabis and selling it everywhere would lead to more DUI, more hospitalizations, more poisoning of small children, lower academic performance in teens… just wait until the wave of long-term harm begins to surface. How will our healthcare system even handle that burden? Experts have warned us for decades, and still do.

Before legalization, pretty much every cannabis magazine and website was being cited as saying it was totally safe. Even mocked people for thinking otherwise.

That changed public opinion, and experts were ignored. These risks were known many years ago, so why has the industry been allowed to keep selling stronger strains, marketing to young people, and making these drugs available everywhere?

Now that the consequences are being seen, what are we going to do about it? This shit is being sold at every street corner, sometimes multiple cannabis shops at the same intersection. It’s nuts.

Cannabis, totally safe, they said. Nobody ever gets hurt, they said. It’s not habit-forming, they said. 🫤

Based on the CBC report, there is so much to unpack here:

“Halifax now has the third-worst congestion in Canada and the fifth-worst congestion in North America,” Fillmore said. “People here are spending 83 hours a year stuck in traffic. That’s the equivalent of 12 working days behind the wheel in gridlock.”

Mayor, people in cars aren’t “stuck in traffic” they are the traffic. The idea that putting more people on roads (by not having them use other forms of transportation) will somehow fix traffic congestion is so terribly wrong.

Coun. Sam Austin said he was disappointed in Fillmore’s motion and said bike lanes do not cause traffic congestion. He said delaying the work on bike lanes would worsen traffic.

Yup. And any work needed to expand car-centric infrastructure would absolutely worsen traffic, and then induce demand, which puts you back to square one without solving any problems.

Originally planned to be completed in 2022, about 60 per cent of the 53 kilometres of network has been done so far with temporary or permanent measures.

The bicycle network’s original expected cost of about $25 million has more than tripled, now reaching about $93 million. The provincial and federal governments have contributed about $20.8 million, leaving about $66 million for the Halifax Regional Municipality to pay over the next few years.

53km of network for $93 million???

For context, Durham Region, which has a significantly larger population, has estimated that over 200km of cycling network would cost them around $81 million.

Even so…

Halifax spends more than $50 million each year to repave streets, with this year’s capital budget totalling $314 million.

And those costs will continue to rise if the focus is on car-centric infrastructure. You don’t “get back” the money you put into road maintenance like you do with active transportation and public transportation.

They are deliberately, methodically, maliciously driving good teachers away from the province and undermining public education

I thought Doug Ford was the Ontario Premier! /s

Bookmarking “headscale”!

I only recently started using Tailscale because it makes connecting to my local network through a Windows VM running in Boxes on Linux a hell of a lot easier than figuring out how to set up a networked bridge.

This sounds like a great alternative, and it looks like it can even work on a Synology NAS.

This is because the Ford government literally withholds funding, even when the federal government pitches in. They did this with COVID, and they’re doing it now. It’s disgusting, and only voters can change that.

Yeah, I remember that. We had HEPA filters running then, too. I couldn’t go cycling during that time because of how bad the air quality was. Not good for anyone with sensitivities or lung/breathing problems.

Last night was bad (far east side of toronto… like Durham Region). It was over 180 and not only could I smell the smoke from inside the house, but my eyes were burning, too.

After closing the windows, the CO2 in here doubled. Lose, lose.

I can’t imagine being <1000km away from those fires.

These are literally cut up tshirts

I try to use old shirts as rags (ones that are too damaged to donate), but sometimes buying a 20lb box of already cut up old shirts is the way to go. LOL