Powdered Alcohol

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Kizmet, Mar 14, 2015.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I stopped drinking several years ago, a religious decision, and so I don't pay much attention to this sort of story but someone brought it to my attention earlier today and I thought I'd throw it out there. Powdered alcohol? Why bother? Has anyone tried it? Is the controversy really a controversy?

    Regulators say powdered alcohol is illegal in Massachusetts | Boston Herald
     
  2. RAM PhD

    RAM PhD Member

    Good for you, Kizmet, I commend you for your decision. I did the same thing for the same reason and have never regretted the decision.
     
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Happy drinker with no regrets here. But powdered alcohol? Is that for when Night Train would be too upscale? I don't know, I'm imagining the worst Irish coffee ever, made from instant coffee, Coffee Mate, and this stuff.
     
  4. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  5. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    That's fine - I see nothing wrong with that thinking at all. But I was an unhappy one for 40 years. So I quit - 10 years ago. I never qualified as a big drinker - more of a steady, consistent one - the kind liquor companies like. :smile:

    I quit because:

    (a) Drinking costs a lot in Canada (mostly tax) and
    (b) A number of big drinkers I knew had died suddenly, or were wheelchair-bound from strokes.

    I have been careful to put all the money I saved away. I wish I'd also held on to the $75,000 or so I saved by quitting smoking 37 years ago. Even so, the drinking money I've saved is a substantial sum. A hidden benefit of high liquor prices. :smile:

    As far as "powdered alcohol" goes, it looks to me like an attempted end-run around regulations. Haven't seen it here - I'll have to ask some teenagers. Same as those danged E-cigarettes. In Canada, I see the sale and use of them as a ruse to defy tobacco restrictions. I've seen people try to smoke them on buses and even in a college library, under the pretense that "it's not smoking." It is. They were stopped.

    They call that kind of smoking "vaping" around here. I've even seen "Vape Clubs" with blatant marijuana leaf-signs out front. Yes - I firmly believe someone in authority will tell them this ain't Colorado. :smile:

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2015
  6. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Well, Kiz, I too gave up the sauce, and my reasons were part religious and part secular. If you look to the Good Book (or whatever book is the bible for your religion of choice), you will probably find your good book says something about alcohol. The Judeo-Christian Bible on the one hand approves of the fruit of the vine but also is quite judgemental towards drunkards. My secular reason for quitting alcohol was this: I grew upo having epilepsy siezures and I also remember my parents reminding me and admonishing me not to mix drugs and alcohol. Who remem,bers Karen Ann Quinlan? Besides all that i also knew thart i wanted to become either a history teacher or a history professor so it made sense that i didn't want to go kill a few brain cells, as they call it in college, too often. Besides all that, drinking cost me a second chance at a master's in history
    (and I have had five chances so far, and might be takjing up my sixth chance this fall). You see I used to, while in Boulderco, go to the Sundown Saaloon on the Pearl Street Mall and imbibe in a bit of Drambuie on the rocks, which was the personal liquer recipe of Bonnie Prince Charlie who gave it unto the MacKinnon clan of the Isle of Skye whoi had baioled his ar$$e out of trouble after losuing the Battle of Cullodden Moor in the Jacobite Rising of 1746. I could even have given you the entire genealogy of how the House of Stuart got from King James I to King James III (so called) and Bonnie Prince Charlie. And so on ...
     
  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    If Bonnie Prince Charlie had MADE the stuff and sold it, instead of giving the recipe away, he'd probably have been able to finance a new army for a comeback! (Too sweet for my liking, in former years.)

    J.
     
  8. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Or, as the Most Germanic Herr Doktor Professor Mr. Clarence Dempsey von Beck (BA, MA, PHD IN HISTORY, University of New Mexico, 1972) who was Professor of History at Western State Collegev of Colorado, now known as Western State Colorado University, from 1968 to 1988, once said, "Scotch dregs. Too sweet, positively awful s-h-i-t "
     
  9. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Of course there is always the MBA in Brewing at Edinburg Business Sxchiil.
     
  10. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    They call it vaping everywhere. And no, it's not smoking any more than chewing nicotine gum is. The justification for prohibiting public smoking is the negative effects of second-hand smoke on bystanders. With e-cigs, that drawback doesn't apply, and the only reason to restrict it is to satisfy the unwholesome urge to tell other adults what they can and can't do with their lives.

    Since I don't think there are e-cig charges that have THC in them, the marijuana leaf is misleading at best.
     
  11. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Don't want to start a war here, Steve - but I think it IS smoking. Reason: I've SEEN smoke from the devices or the "vaper," lots of times. Honest. Some authorities tend to agree with me - e.g. the people who run public transport in this town -- and the college where I'm sitting. You get the same ticket for vaping or smoking where not permitted, here.

    And for the record, my personal objection is - second-hand smoke. About 3,000 Canadians die from it each year. I don't intend to be one. E-cigs are the latest ploy from tobacco companies to stay in business, as I see it. And I don't know whether there are commercial e-cig charges with THC (not interested) but I wouldn't doubt some enterprising souls have found a way to make 'em in basements, right beside the grow-op.

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 24, 2015
  12. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Some stories are appearing about kids vaping. Kids who never "smoked" cigarettes. They are becoming addicted to the nicotene. They get into it to be cool and because it's supposed to be safe. Personally I think the addiction piece is a bad thing regardless of whether you call it smoking or vaping.
     
  13. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member


    E cigarettes do no expel smoke. They expel vapor. Think of it like a fog machine. It works in the same principal. Here is an article about the mechanics of it all:

    E-Cigarettes: Health and Safety Issues

    It isn't smoking. I get it. But the thing I hate about vaping is that these users tend to get in everyone's face about vaping where smoking is prohibited. Just last week o had an employee stubbornly refuse to stop vaping at his work station. Now he has a time to vape as much as he wants. Though it seems vaping is not as dangerous as smoking (I refuse to use the word "healthier" to describe any nicotine consumption) we don't know the effects of second hand vapor. Plus. Vape or smoke, we don't want nicotine residue on our equipment.

    Last week I was unfortunately seated next to someone vaping at a restaurant (smoking is prohibited in all New York restaurants, but it seems individual businesses are divided on vaping). Aside from the appearance of smoking, he was also puffing away on some artificial cherry smelling concoction that was really grossing me out.

    Flip side, I'm glad my smoking friends have switched to vaping. If they are going to insist on tobacco I'd prefer they at least cut the smoke out. I suck an eulogies.
     
  14. airtorn

    airtorn Moderator

    Agreed on the addiction piece being a bad thing.
     
  15. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    About those marijuana leaf signs on the vape-clubs around here:

    I looked on this thing they call the Internet and here in Canada, there are vape-products claiming legality that say they don't contain THC - just other cannabinoids (unspecified) derived from hemp. They claim "they'll relax you but won't make you high" - yeah, sure. Also, lots of articles about how to get real pot into a vape-able slurry.

    So - if there's no smoke (?) and the police come to a vape-club, how are they gonna know who's vaping what? That's the attraction, I guess... I'm sure some people have figured out the vaping of opioids -- and maybe crack as well. I'm told reliably (I think) even the pot is 10X stronger nowadays. And I'm sure vaping is safe - remember "smokeless (chewing) tobacco?" :sad:

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 25, 2015
  16. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yep - you name it, they vape it. Hash oil, cocaine, heroin, codeine, oxy -- If you're curious, the Internet has plenty of info, plus DIY techniques for all the above and more. Seems that a really concentrated THC high is available. And the innocuous appearance of the e-cig enables, umm... your dog to get high where traditional types of drug use would be noticed. First time I'd heard of kratom (plant-based drug from Thailand).

    Holy cow! And I was objecting to e-cig tobacco use? What was I smoking ... I mean thinking?

    "An E-cig full of the diggety dank
    Hold on tight, it'll hit you like a tank!"
    :smile:

    Apologies to David Allan Coe (Devil Went to Jamaica)

    J
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 25, 2015
  17. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If the argument is that the state shouldn't let people vape because what if they're vaping (crappy) marijuana, then to me that's just one more bullet point about why the war on drugs is a hopeless mess.
     
  18. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I'm not really sure why you included the question mark. It isn't smoke. It's vapor. When you go to a concert or a Halloween party and stand near a fog machine, have you been under the impression that it was blowing out smoke? Are you confused about the difference between combustion and evaporation? You know that the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant aren't expelling smoke, right? I'm asking seriously. Please, help me to help you.

    I used to smoke a pipe. Regular pipe tobacco in a fancy briar pipe (a gift from my grandfather, a lifelong pipe devotee). And it happened once that, while sitting on my front porch in Avoca, Pennsylvania smoking said pipe with a few friends who were smoking their pipes, that a local police officer came up and rather rudely demanded to know what we were smoking and to present identification. It was quite an argument. He evidently didn't know what marijuana smelled like and had incorrectly assumed that the spiced blend I was burning must be some sort of illegal substance, perhaps something so illegal and unknown that he was the first to uncover it.

    Thing is, smoking pipes isn't illegal. It's true that I could smoke marijuana (or any number of other substances) in a pipe. However, the most obvious conclusion when seeing someone smoking a pipe is that they are, in fact, smoking pipe tobacco.

    But finally, let me ask you this, why do you care? Let's say I am smoking marijuana on my front porch. How does that, in any way, impact you or your life?

    So I assume that you would like to ban anything that might serve as a delivery vehicle for illegal drugs. I look forward to your proposed ban on all pipes, cigarettes, paper, soda cans, hookahs and, perhaps, brownies?
     
  19. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmlXU4uK5rA[/video]
     
  20. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I don't really care what you smoke on your front porch - you're an adult. Go ahead. It's your decision.

    In recent years, your country had what the government called a "zero-tolerance policy," whereby Canadians couldn't legally bring their prescription meds of any type or diabetic needles across the US border. There's enough Government anti-drug hysteria without my adding to it.

    Yes - a ban on all devices would be silly. But if you're downtown and some guy near you has just figured out how to vape angel dust -- I'm sure you'd rather he hadn't. If he has to use a glass pipe or a pop-can, at least he's not gonna experience the unpredictable effects anywhere near you.

    As I said, smoke what you want on your front porch - and I, too, smoked a pipe 50-odd years ago. But why the anecdote about the untrained policeman? I'm NOT that cop. Thing with vape products is - they come in kid-magnet colors and tastes - ready made to induce nicotine addiction near a schoolyard in your 'hood. Where I live, there's a $4,000 fine for giving /selling tobacco products to those under 19. I'd support a similar rule for vape-products, for that reason.

    We have NO DATA on the effects of second-hand vape. Until we do and it's proven harmless (and I don't think it is) I don't want it near me. Therefore, I support similar rules for smoking and vaping.

    BTW - I learned today my Province has a hookah-ban in the works. Just saying. No matter to me - at my age, I don't have much to do with hookahs. :smile:

    Johann over and out.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 26, 2015

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