To be honest I can't stand the smell of cannabis, even walking past some random house with the yucky aroma... urgh.
Funny you should say that, one of my neighbours houses absolutely stinks of it all the time and he even passed me smoking a joint as I was out for a walk one day.
Most of the black-market cannabis in this country (over 95%) is "Skunk". This is very potent strain (which was only developed by plant breeders due to it being illegal), so that drug dealers could maximise their profits from it by growing high THC containing biomass.
As its name suggests it absolutely stinks! It also has an artificially high THC/low CBD ratio which means it is much more likely to cause temporary psychotic symptoms than naturally occurring cannabis strains. Hence, prohibition has actually caused the recreational cannabis available in this country to be much more dangerous than it would otherwise have been!
I ingested some after a bottle of wine, god knows what it was but entered another dimension, time loop thing , pretty scary,
Taking cannabis after drinking a lot of alcohol is a bad idea. Ingesting cannabis will cause a more trippy experience too which some people find unpleasant.
Also, you are much more likely to experience a "whitey" by smoking cannabis after drinking a lot of alcohol. A whitey is an acute hypotension episode (low blood pressure with a reading of less than 90/60 mmHg), it often causes people to panic and collapse and the best thing to do is lie them in the recovery position until their blood pressure recovers (in case they vomit).
However, drinking a large amount of alcohol when you are starting to come down from a cannabis high does not cause any unpleasant side-effects and it also makes the come-down more smooth.
I've nothing to base it on other than "trust me bro" but I, obviously, totally disagree with banning someone because they had a smoke almost a week ago. It's nonsensical.
I see quite a lot of cannabis driving bans being handed out around me, they usually say they'd smoked a few days prior to being pulled over, it does make me wonder if the tests are too sensitive... Either that or they're lying.
The cannabis driving limit level was set many years ago at 2 micrograms per litre of blood as part of the government's "zero tolerance" of illegal drug use policy. That level is far below what is required to intoxicate someone or impair their driving. It is true that a level like that will persist in someone's blood for several days after they last consumed any cannabis. You can even get a higher level than that by sharing a room for a while with someone who is smoking it or by using legal over-the-counter CBD oils (which have traces of THC).
Banning someone for having that tiny amount of cannabis in their system is ridiculous when people are legally driving around in the UK with higher levels of alcohol in their blood streams than in most other European countries.
It is also a serious issue for motorists who are legally using prescribed cannabis to treat medical conditions, since unlike other psychoactive prescribed drugs (opioid painkillers etc) the government has failed to put in a separate driving level limit for legal cannabis users based on the level at which it causes driving impairment.
You might get stopped, but the chances of them drug testing you are very slim. As you said in your own post above, you were stopped and they didn't bother to test you. They'll often only test you if there's something wrong with your driving, if there's a smell or if you're acting strangely.
If you are driving badly/appear to be impaired (and don't smell of alcohol), or the Police smell grass, see a grinder/rizzlas etc in your car then they will do a roadside drug test. If you test positive (they are very sensitive tests) then you will be arrested and taken back to the Police Station for the formal blood test which they use to make the prosecution decision.
There is a slim chance of getting caught up in one of the Police's occasional drag-nets though. Where they randomly stop drivers without any "reasonable suspicion" and breathalyse/drug test them as part of a daily test quota system for a PR campaign.
I think regulation is likely to be more effective than prohibition and that it's a more appropriate approach in the case of cannabis.
Yes, that has already been proven to be correct. Two weeks ago Professor David Nutt published:
Cannabis (seeing through the smoke): The New Science of Cannabis and Your Health.
This book is underpinned by his two-year research trial in partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, involving up to 20,000 patients, which will create Europe's largest body of evidence on the plant's medicinal qualities.
He also discusses at length the damage that cannabis prohibition has caused to our society/medical outcomes and puts forward a state-regulated legalisation system which would be far better (after considering the decriminalisation/legalisation models that are used in other countries).
