An experienced budtender asked me what I smoked in Ireland? I said, I don’t know, it smells like petrol and gives me panic attacks.
This week the college of psychiatrists of Ireland declared that cannabis was the gravest threat to youth mental health in Ireland.
Children shouldn’t use or have access to cannabis, or any other mind-altering substance.
Why should you listen to a Limerick person about cannabis? Well, the first person to introduce cannabis to western medicine was a Limerick doctor named William Brooke O Shaughnessy, in the 1830s.
Do I want a relaxing glass of Malbec with season two of Succession? Do I want a few light cans with 3% alcohol so I don’t have a roaring hangover tomorrow? Do I want a 12% craft beer that I will sip slowly and cautiously? Because alcohol is legal and regulated.
Every time I’d buy a drink from a dealer, I wouldn’t know if the alcohol content was 40% or 90%, or even if the drink was cut with a dangerous substance.
Is drink safe because it’s legal? Absolutely not, alcohol abuse is a serious public health problem in Ireland.
CBD has been shown to protect the brain from any potentially harmful effects of THC.
Then, gangs and dealers started to breed their own weed, in massive grow houses, under lights, with hydroponics.
A legal and regulated environment, like with alcohol, would allow adults to choose cannabis varieties, based on their strength and effects.
High THC weed would still exist just like high strength spirits exist.
In 2014, a report by The Migrant Rights Centre found that victims of trafficking and slavery were being sent to Irish prisons for growing cannabis.
So, what would an Irish cannabis user do today, if they wanted to attempt consuming safe and ethical weed? They’d grow it themselves, privately, in their homes.
In 2020, Ireland took a milder criminal stance on small amounts of cannabis for personal use, to free up Garda and court time.
Construct a legal, regulated industry that creates employment, and generates taxes that can be used to fund addiction and mental health services.
Allow adults access to a safe, regulated product, where we have the informed choice to consume responsibly.
Users are reminded that they are fully responsible for their own created content and their own posts, comments and submissions and fully and effectively warrant and indemnify Journal Media in relation to such content and their ability to make such content, posts, comments and submissions available.