Phoenix officers accused of forcing man to eat marijuana

Why? Honest question.

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Because given a choice the vast majority of potheads would much rather eat a $20 sack of weed than get a ticket or go to jail. Now instead of some minor fratboy behavior on the part of the cops your chance of avoiding jail has now been reduced to zero.

Maybe he’s stupid, but I wouldn’t call him a dickhead.

What if the situation were just slightly different? Say I parked illegally, and I come jogging up to the cop writing me a ticket, and he says “if you eat a chunk of my beard, I won’t have your car towed.” That’s reasonable to complain about right? Even if I were actually guilty of the misdemeanor.

Coercion like that is wrong. The cop could have had him grind his weed into the dirt or something. I have friends where that ended up happening before it was legalized.

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No, it’s not reasonable to complain when you’re given the option between having to comply with the law and some stupid request because you can just say “No, I’ll take jail”. This guy took that option away from everyone else.

That was the threat here if he didn’t eat the weed, the threat was the law not “we will beat your ass.” it was you get the law or you get to choose the other thing if you like that better.

Also you’re comparing a civil penalty with a criminal one.

Long before I’d heard the word “decarboxylation” I’d bought an old copy of “A child’s garden of grass” in the second hand book shop where my future missus worked. While there’s much to mock in retrospect (yes, the sex of the plant does matter), their advice about eating (“cook it”) has always worked for me, although TBH I’ve never done the control.

We used to put a gram (usually minus a couple of preliminary cones) through the herb grinder and gently dry fry it until one or two bits started to smoke, then dumped it into a mortar. Grind into a powder and add a tablespoon of warm honey and split between two. Awesome.

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The plants make THCa. That’s THC with a carboxylic acid group (Also, CBDa, likewise.)

THCa is not psychoactive, so to get high you have to decarboxylate it to produce THC.

You can do that with heat — smoke, vape, bake brownies — and time. Higher the heat, shorter the time. It will decarboxylate somewhat in storage and curing.

Many people quote THC numbers for fresh herb, when what they really mean is “Total THCa+THC” (and generally the same for CBDa+CBD). Fresh herb generally has very little THC, but it increases somewhat with drying and age.

Cannabutter is just a simple oil extraction. You can decarb beforehand and eat the butter cold, or use it in baking, which will decarb it when you bake…

(Some medical users use THCa without decarboxylation in topicals and tinctures, for non-psychoactive pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects. )

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Littering and …

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What you and @ActionAbe are saying makes perfect sense of what I’m (somewhat peripherally) seeing and hearing, thanks!

I also recently ran into the phenomenon of “dabbing” (which I probably also have misconceptions of). It seems to involve extracting THC resins from hemp with carbon dioxide, and then smoking the extraction with an elaborate apparatus that is pre-heated with a blowtorch. Way too much work for a buzz, in my opinion, but apparently some people want to minimize their smoking, yet find that edibles don’t give them the intensity of effect they are looking for.

You’ve got a pretty fucked up idea of how police should behave.

No, I’m an adult who lives in the adult world and I’m not engaged in a discussion over a hypothetical utopia where cops are just going to be good people.

You get busted and you have a choice of doing something dumb and ultimately harmless or taking the full legally determined course of actions.

Three things could happen:

  1. Cop is super nice and lets you go. Hey, that’s great. Does not happen often to anyone, almost never to someone who is not white.

  2. Cop follows the law in the state where you just did a felony. Have fun possibly never getting a school loan. Cop is behaving completely appropriately under the law.

  3. Cop lets you pick from 1 or 2. Not as great as “1” but at worst it’s no worse than “2” and does it matter to you if the cop goes home and masturbates about what a cool bully he is? You have the choice here and no right to complain about having a choice.

Is the cop breaking the law with #3? Yeah, he was also breaking it with #1, bet you’re not going to whine about that. Is the cop being a bully fratboy with #3? Probably. So what? Who cares what is going on between the ears of a cop if they are giving you the chance to get out of going to jail in exchange for a prank that would be too tame for any season of Jackass.

And then “you” eliminate that choice from every other pothead that cope encounters. Yeah, that’s a dickhead move.

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Resorting to “that’s the real world” to excuse misconduct is what I mean by saying you’ve got a fucked up idea of how police should behave. If you accept police misconduct as inevitable you’re never going to support any real attempt to change it.

I’m in favor of marijuana decriminalization and legalization but that doesn’t mean I think the police have the right to decree extrajudicial on-the-spot punishments, no matter how mild they might seem. That is the role of the courts. They could also have simply confiscated and destroyed the marijuana rather than making him eat it. That’s an unnecessary attempt at humiliation that ultimately worsens police/community relations and makes the job of law enforcement that much more difficult.

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Do you want to look up the definition of the word “decree” and then edit your post?

Because what they handed down was a choice. The literal antithesis of a decree. The only misconduct was offering the man a choice. Not Sophie’s damn choice, either.

Just be an honest human being for one moment: You are going to jail and getting a felony record and losing a lot of money or you can eat a dimebag of whatever passes for weed in that shitstate.

You’d chose jail? Hell is full of people who chose to be martyrs.

This is the world. Jesus, are you a Bernie or Bust person as well?

… I edited my post for some minor formatting thing I don’t even remember. Are you always like this?

Giving a person a choice between informal ritual humiliation or the legal process is not some merciful bargain at all. It’s the act of a police force that’s overstepping its boundaries. The merits of the deal don’t matter - they have no right to offer that deal. That is a matter for the courts.

And no, I supported Bernie Sanders in the primary and I now support Hillary Clinton in the general because I understand how the Electoral College works. Seriously - chill out.

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I actually formatted a pretty reasoned and detailed response, then I noticed you didn’t answer my question regarding what choice you would make.

So I deleted it all. Moral cowardice turns me off as much as hypocrisy.

/protip: some people feel strongly about their opinions and are willing to passionately defend them. If the prospect of that bothers you, don’t engage people you don’t know in debate.

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Can’t speak for the Logrus, but this is not a true statement when applied to me.

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