something that makes me wonder about smokers from the usa

i originally came to these forums looking for some advice on stealthiness, and in the like ten different threads i read where someone else had a similar question, inevitably there would be a handful of people going "just stop caring." tbh it's probably just trolling and i shouldn't worry about it. i mean, someone going "hey i could lose my scholarship if i get caught, any help" and a reply like "lol dude nobody cares" is clearly either peak troll or peak privilege.

but it got interesting when i started reading forums in the local language where i live in europe - on weed forums, absolutely nobody talks of smoking outside, for one thing. one thread mentioned a person smoking joints outside, and everyone in the thread agreed that "always when someone appears on the horizon, it really kills the buzz." on the other hand, when you go to google something like "i can smell my neighbours smoking," i found just as many people saying to tip off the police. and when op asks why would anyone go that far? "because it's illegal in this country." that's all they need to bust their neighbours for a tiny whiff.

similarly, the time i was with a much more seasoned smoker, having a joint on a streetcorner, and i noticed someone look towards us from an apartment window and disappear. the seasoned guy said we ought to move along, because "some people have nothing better to do, it's just as likely that they'd call the cops."

some places are like this!! surely americans understand that colorado doesn't cover the whole world, and that some people have serious reasons to not get caught, like immigration status, school status, abusive households that might punish more than any cop, financial reasons, custody reasons, job requires a clean background, some places you can lose your disability and welfare payments (no, most places don't have mmj like the usa does, you can't use that as an excuse)...in light of all that, why do americans still insist on saying "nothing bad will ever happen and even if it did, i've already clairvoyantly seen all the answers to all possible outcomes"? you are not garnet.

and what is it like for you personally? without giving away dangerous details, obviously, what is your region like? can you chill or not?

 

europe! i suggested people leave out details that they don't feel safe mentioning, since that's the topic i meant to start discussing here.

it's interesting you mentioned a restaurant in pennsylvania. i used to work at a restaurant in the usa, and found that only a very particular subset of my colleagues (the white ones) ever spoke about toking, much less did it on premises. that was ten years ago, i don't know if more people have been able to open up since then.

 

Don't see why this is an American thing. Ten threads on a massive forum like this isn't a good sample size to make generalizations, and this forum hosts people from all over the world. Plus many places are just as, if not more, liberal when it comes to cannabis usage. Uruguay, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands? It would be unwise to suggest the people in those threads were all Americans unless they specifically stated as such in their responses to the threads you read, which I don't really believe without seeing examples.

I looked at the thread you made asking for advice. You're asking for the impossible. You want to set plant matter on fire and not have an odor. That's just not going to be feasible. Options were suggested to you, which you rejected. It appears from your replies that you don't want to spend any money, and that its incredibly risky for you to smoke marijuana under any circumstances, and obtaining a vape is too difficult. If I were in your situation I would just not smoke weed. That's my honest and best advice after seeing your situation and your responses.


For me personally, the most that would happen is I would get fined for possession or public use. But I have been to outdoor events where marijuana is openly smoked in police presence and no one gets in trouble. That's how it should be.

 

that's exactly what i'm talking about! a lot of people don't realise that a fine isn't just a fine for a lot of people. it will bar you from entire fields of work in my country - yes, a possession fine will keep you from any job where you might have to be responsible for a child. so that's not just childcare, that also winds up being some service industry jobs. it could even include places like gyms if they have a childcare area. and it's largely up to the employer anyway. (she is my pronoun btw)

here actually we have a term for it, that you live in a hempbubble.

lenny i think lives in a hempbubble, because even within those countries, there are plenty of problems you can have with cannabis. even in NL people are very discreet, it's only tourists who you notice smoking, and they do get in trouble for smoking on the street lol. (also, this is totally not the topic of this thread lenny, but i doubt you actually read the other thread, because nobody managed to address my points directly, in fact saying things like "make a sploof" after i said a sploof wasn't doable, and i did also mention that it seemed there wasn't an easy answer and asked about winds and breezes after. your horse went right past high onto too stoned to read, i guess)

quick edit: the uk is a lot like the usa, i'm told. i don't know how true this is, or if te person telling me lived in a hempbubble. they're from london, so it could well be a bubble.

 

that sounds so stressful! so there's no like regulated way to KNOW what will happen or should happen if you get caught? that's the one kind of ok thing where i live, is that you can be a bit more sure that what's in the law is what's going to happen to you. of course, as you said, the doucheyness of the officer might depend, so for example they can try to trick you into a search when they actually don't have the right to. but in that case they're often too afraid to take you to the station, and it's possible you'll just have it confiscated.

one thing i forgot to mention is, they sure like to try to make people snitch here. it's a small enough country that they assume everyone knows everyone, but it's a big enough country that in reality you won't catch anyone that way.

 

so i think the theme i'm trying to get across here is that "paranoia that everyone's out to get you" isn't really applicable everywhere. the aforementioned "hemp bubble" is what makes some people think that others are wearing tinfoil hats, is what i'm trying to say. i can tell you that even the worst u.s. state for weed can be better than other countries (if this indeed an international forum), so that's what i'm talking about here.

interestingly, i myself have never had a problem, never been caught at all, whereas every "network" i've known in my city has had at least a couple people busted. and funnily enough, it's usually been stuff like neighbours called the cops for a noise complaint (which, again, is different where i live, the social rules deem calling the cops for a noise complaint to be just as reasonable as knocking on your neighbour's door for the same thing), then they smell or see something.

i hate to say this being a new member and all, but if you don't see the point of this subject, you can just as well leave it for the few of us who did have something to say here, too! it's great that many people live in such calm places, but it's quite silly to think your place has any effect on other places.

edit: i also would like to triple dog dare everyone going "lol just don't smoke or pick up your entire life and base it around where you can smoke, moving house and country should be fine lol" to kindly do the same, especially considering that i wasn't asking for advice in this thread. i'm literally just asking for perspectives of people who don't have that kind of choice.

 

yes. and while i'm not trying to start a discussion on classism and racism in the usa, you've got to be pretty willfully ignorant if you say nobody ever gets jailed for small possession or being unable to pay fines and bail.

 

there have been several efforts for various kinds of legislation in the last few years, but it's very slow going. this will probably reveal the country, but whatever - we only recently (or very shortly? idk if it passed yet) approved gender-neutral marriage laws. with weed they say "not here in this country" (speakers of the language know now where i'm talking about).

that said marriage equality is still slowly arriving at some point, and we don't have talking ginger merkins running for office here.

 

i didn't mean that in the sense that i was arguing with you, the "you" i meant was passive, so i should have said "one would be totally lying if they really thought nobody ever gets treated unfairly even where it's decriminalised." because that is what i mean.