What are these people doing?

[lexvil]

Why care?

 

[tursiops]

Why care?

FOMO

 

[lexvil]

FOMO

So long as it’s just that and not F Without OMO

 

[happy-diver]

The dope smokers that I have happened past in life would get up in the morning pull a pipe and put crap on me for having a drink, so perhaps not junkies but definitely 100% moronic imbeciles

Every last one of them
and all of them say Jim Bean unable to enunciate Beam

 

[ggunn]

The dope smokers that I have happened past in life would get up in the morning pull a pipe and put crap on me for having a drink, so perhaps not junkies but definitely 100% moronic imbeciles
Every last one of them
and all of them say Jim Bean unable to enunciate Beam

The vast majority of people who consume marijuana are not even remotely like that, just as the majority of people who consume alcohol are not raging alcoholics.

 

[mstevens]

The vast majority of people who consume marijuana are not even remotely like that, just as the majority of people who consume alcohol are not raging alcoholics.

I practice addiction psychiatry. I've had people in their 20's die in the emergency department or within hours of being admitted to the hospital despite every effort and access to vast resources. I've had many more than that die at home. None of those was in any way related to cannabis. Most were alcohol-related, the remainder opioids or stimulants (amphetamines or cocaine). None, either, was related to traditional hallucinogens such as LSD, mescaline (remember that?), or peyote.

I don't buy the cannabis as "gateway drug" argument any more than I do alcohol, caffeine, or Frosted Flakes as gateway drug. Cannabis was made illegal in order to make young black men illegal (speaking as a 60 y/o white guy). LSD was made illegal in order to keep it away from Ken Kesey and in the hands of the CIA (from whom he stole his initial supplies) which at the time was intensely interested in means of controlling the thoughts and actions of others.

When I was in medical school, pain was "the 5th vital sign" and we kept being told (by, oddly, pharma reps) that people with pain didn't get addicted to opioids irrespective of all the data and common experience that said otherwise. Thus there are tens of millions of prescribed doses of powerful opioids sitting around in people's homes (my neighbor has a mountain that his mail-order pharmacy keeps sending him) to the extent that many homes contain enough to kill multiple people.

At the same time, people are in federal prison for having several grams of cannabis, which remains a federal Schedule I substance. THC has been a legal (and extremely disappointing) prescription product (Marinol®, for stimulating appetite in, for example, cancer patients, but it never worked for AIDS patients either) my entire career. CBD remains, officially, illegal and has never been prescribable in the US. THC does not equal cannabis, nor does CBD.

Alcohol prohibition didn't make much sense and caused a lot of problems, and I agree it should be legal. However, it can be fatal to both those who use it and those who stop using it. My class were the last to rush out and get the special prescription pads for purchasing alcohol in Texas on Sundays (which we knew were immediately to became obsolete) because some drinkers will die if they stop abruptly and most alcoholics aren't great at planning their supply or rationing their intake.

Over 3 decades of doing this has convinced me of several things. One is that substance laws make little sense. Another is that addiction is an illness about which people moralize endlessly while being blind to the suffering it causes. Finally, I long ago became convinced that in our culture there is a deep-rooted fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun and that any means must be used to prevent that.

 

[Subcooled]

Do you realize how fortunate we are?
People are sitting, and we then wonder what kind of risk that poses to us.

 

[mstevens]

The dope smokers that I have happened past in life would get up in the morning pull a pipe and put crap on me for having a drink

Arguably, there's more reason for concern about someone who needs a drink first thing in the morning.

Every last one of them

You have a highly-skewed sample, or some sort of weird selection bias.

and all of them say Jim Bean unable to enunciate Beam

Try "Xtabentún", "Cynar", "Hoegaarden", "Glenfiddich" "Moët & Chandon" or "Maraschino" correctly, especially if you're not interested in them. I'll practically guarantee you get at least 2 wrong.

 

[mstevens]

People are sitting, and we then wonder what kind of risk that poses to us.

My impression is that what caught OP's attention was the bit about jumping over the wall and back repeatedly and that this is a round-the-clock activity. I suspect it's visible out OP's window, so difficult to ignore. When I lived on Main Street in a town of ~800 in NH we called it "curtain-twitching". It's hard not to be curious about what people are up to, especially when they're up to it right where you can see.

It's kind of like needing to know why that one fish insists on being vertical when all the others are horizontal, or what that eagle ray is digging for. They know, we don't, and it bugs us.

 

[mstevens]

Ugh. Duplicate I can't seem to remove.