Synthetic Herbs and Japan
Recently, in Tokyo, a man drove into pedestrians under the effect of so-called 'synthetic-marijuana'. The result was surprising: 6 injured and 1 DEAD. What? Marijuana kills? I feel very sorry for those 7 and others whom must have shocked present at the site of the incident.
src: 'Dappo(legal)' drugs skirt clampdown | The Japan Times
That being said, aside from the main saddening fact, my sub-concern was like, man, it's going to be a real long fucking way before Japan approves of legalization of marijuana.
Before the news then, I was kind of feeling hopeful about it because of this, this and then this. American finally found the way to please not only potheads, but also citizens, police and government in nice long term all over the country!
Shite.
Let me be clear about my opinion about Marijuana: I haven't smoked since I'm in Japan, for a couple of years or more, however I still think it'll be great if we could at least get medical prescription of it. It'll be great if it's there but I'm just not very hungry nor eager to get one.
Smoking pot to me is like getting myself a fatty-tuna Sushi: I want it if I have enough $ or time, but otherwise I don't need it. Especially when it's illegal and it screws up citizenships and even my friendships.
(In Asia, or at least in Japan, the situation is very much unlike Western countries where weekend pot consumption under unlawful situation is quite casually done. Nobody in my family/cousin have experience, even ones who followed the happy hippy movement in 60's -well what have they done instead? Camping?
Anyways, literally, I only know a few experienced ones, 1% others interested and the rest 99% others sees no difference between pot and cocaine. Therefore I'm sure that I can lose the most of my friend in Japan because they'll think flat out that all pot smoker as radioactive scum piece of shit. No talking nor calling.)
When I was worked as a Sushi-shef in Los Angeles, I saw a gentlemen in his 60s talking to a teen-aged lady, maybe his daughter, about what kind of effect the pot has. He didn't look like trashy nor gang like at all. He seemed very established, nice and clean, and the lady also.
On the other hand, in Japan, when I speak about pot in public, my friends' face gets awkwardly tense and asks me to tone the fuck down. Come on, man. Can't we even.. yeah, right, it's illegal substance. But it's harmless! -I wish I could say that, however I knew the consequence so I just simple shut my self up. My bet is that it's going to falsly indicate that I'm biased toward it.
Let's get back to the issue: Synthetic Marijuana. Supposedly it's a misnomer. Real leafs and roots of whatever plants with magical product of concoction on top of it.
I see people on internet or some of my pothead friends who are strongly biased saying "Marijuana is natural so it's harmless but synthetic pot is 'chemical' so it's bad" can suck on poisonous snake's dick. Well that's another story.
What I really wanted to mention is that the synthetic pots are chemically not identical hence the effect to human is different: and it might produce different outcome. -and I think that's what made the man crazed on truck to run over pedestrians to death, which is strongly unconceivable. Heck, if I were sky high on pot, I will still be 'cautious enough' and manage to drive it 100% under control. In the worst (or the best?) case possible, I might drive as slow as pedestrian so no one gets hurt, and I'm not even joking. Run the fuck over the people? No way.
-and that's easily get absorbed to Westerners, that gent in Sushi-bar, but never really anyone in Japan. I used to hear that every goodies that happening in America gets imported to Japan in a decade. Pharmaceutical drug was not an exception even though Japan is among medical giant among American and Germany: it just takes so long to pass through clinical trials and so forth.
But do we get to have.. even a medical marijuana? It's already been past a decade since the State of California got one. hmmm. Seriously, this can take a century and gets nowhere close. Ugh this sucks.
