I understand we have a lot of real-world drug analogues in Shadowrun. Cocaine has it's equivalent Novacoke, we have Cram, which I assume would be a derivative of an amphetamine like Speed, Ice or Base. Bliss is an opiate like heroin, methadone or opium.

But as far as I can see, the drug that never seems to go out of style, Marijuana has only one analogue - and that's deepweed.

However this strikes me as strange. A lot of youths smoke marijuana as their first drug (hence the "gateway drug" title), as in comparison to the rest of the popular illicit drugs, it's pretty low risk, cheap, and available. However, I don't see smoking awakened seaweed that forces you to astrally perceive, opening you up to something as scary to a mundane as the astral plane and the spirit world being low risk, cheap, and available.

Also, I can't see it really going out of production. All you need is a few seeds and somewhere to plant them, and you're likely to have enough for at least personal use pretty quickly, because that plant is tenacious and requires relatively little maintenance (what other drugs can you grow in a cupboard with a sunlamp?).

So where has it gone? And what the hell are all the liberal studies students doing on campus lawns now?

It went the same place as bicycles?

Seriously. It's still there. It's just so... mundane, that the writers either overlooked it, or really didn't think it needed to be covered. Take today's prices, add in the common equipment multipliers, and there ya go.

I would compare it to cigarettes... but if I did, I'm sure someone would tell me that cigarette prices are in a sidebar somewhere (like the core rulebook's common expenses sidebar). With such low costs involved, it's almost more of a style thing.

for all we know its been legalized so as to give the wageslaves something to relax on

still, to much of it and your out of a job...

as for gateway drug, bah...

Marijuana as a gateway drug went out with the 80s. Nowadays kids get introduced to drugs by getting high off cough suppressants and skipping lunch to take caffeine pills.

"Just like Marijuana leads to heroin."

...

*Looks at Hippies and Jamacians*

Busted.

Why use drugs, when you can have NERPS?

I'm pretty sure that deepweed only forces awakened characters to astrally perceive, not everyone. Else it would be a hell of a lot more useful.

I'd go with marijuana just being too innocuous to merit inclusion. We all know what it does, or at least what it does in pop culture, even if you've never smoked it. Like cigarettes, it's just a style thing for your character, if you choose to have them use it.

Of course, although there is no reason for a character to smoke either tobacco or pot, there are plenty of reasons not to, principal among which are the cultures where it's a sacrament, and to abuse it merits a beating.

Yes, it causes you to go crazy and jump out of buildings, or to run over kids with your car while under its insidious influence, or take your father's shotgun and blow your brains out, or...


Man I love those crazy commercials

I learned it from watching you <sob>

No, seriously, the drugs in Arsenal are much more fun. It's like handing eight-year-olds packs of nicotine gum with corporate icons on them, promoted by an animated Captain Renraku tag!

Heh. We've not got those over here. Anti-drug messages focus more on the long term effects of marijuana ie. schizophrenia, paranoia. There's more problems with alcohol anyway.

I was thinking more the impression one gets of pot in movies and on TV, both comedy (Harold and Kumar, The Pick of Destiny) and drama (Weeds springs to mind).

im quite sure it got legalized too...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YtPi2QZSY

At work...no youtube till I get home. The best ones are from the '50s and '60s. Those are CLASSIC

I started smoking again and I have to say that marijuana has the least amount of bad side effects compared with good old fashioned nicotine. Nicotine for me is by far more addictive than marijuana can ever be.

I don't see marijuana use increasing in the magical mystical world of 2070, with better chemicals out here that are made in a vat with worse addiction problems.

What about Deepweed?

Deepweed as a 2070 analogue of marijuana? It has already been suggested, but deep weed is awakened, and very expensive, unrealistically so if it is meant to represent marijuana.

For my game it is a common seen drug on the streets. Though my PC's don't smoke, plenty of my NPC's light up both on mundane and weed. Hell I have one fixer that smokes way to much weed and has the occasional parinoid attack.

Smoker here too. It was interesting that my characters have started smoking since I've started smoking. We had a SOTA 65 thread going for a while, and I was considering writing some fluff on which brands the different Megas owned. And the incredibly strong brands marketed to Orks and Trolls.

As for the second paragraph, that's dystopian.

heh, i dont see trogs smoking anything other then very fat sigars

Bah not only Cigars but Free Hand Briar Pipes and Meerschaum Calabash Pipes loaded with Dark Balkan blend with Latikia and Perique tobaccos.

WMS

For the trog with taste?

For the Trog Smoking yes, those around such smoke they would say no.

WMS

Well that nails it. I have to go to my balcony to roll a cigarette.

Just take zen, lower its effects (eg to -1 reaction) and there you go.
I think it's not in the book because it would be hard to get anything positive (in game mechanics terms) out of it.

Well... it's the problem that drugs are bad for you mmmkay? line of thinking.

I am not saying drugs are good for you, just that some are less addicting that people would think. Let's face it I would rather have an opium addict living next door than a violent alcoholic.

I said game mechanics wise
Most players simply don't think being laid back and wanting a pizza would help their runner character much. Many simply use drugs to get an extra edge out of it, if you want to take them just for roleplaying reasons then you don't need stats tbh.

indeed, cheap performance enhancers with bad side effects are a classic

The first time I played Shadowrun, one of the Players complained about being a Troll.

Player: "Damnit! I'm three metres tall with horns. I'm not going to fit in anywhere!"
GM: "Dude, you're a Troll. There's three Trolls on the corner over there, your fine!"
Me: "They're smoking a Doobie the size of an Elf's Forearm."
*Laughter around the table*

If it hasn't been supplanted by something else and it's still around I've no doubt by the the 2070s it'll have been genetically modified to hell and back to help make that much more potent and smooth. A few years back there were rumours that because of US led spraying flights targeting the cocoa plant fields the cartels had hired outside scientists to genetically modify certain strains of cocoa plants so that they'd be more resistant to herbicides and another that said that Colombian government officials had discovered a new 'super cocoa plant' that apparently grew much larger and was more potent, both of which got confused and lumped together in a lot of the western media. Now in the end the 'super cocoa plant' rumour turned out to be rubbish and the other plants hadn't been genetically modified, the cocoa farmers had simply used the age old method of taking the cocoa plant that seemed to be somewhat naturally resistant to the herbicides and cross-bred them with other plants that also had a resistance to the herbicides used to help promote the trait the natural way.

So if you consider how widespread genetic modification is by the 2070s using it to help develop new drugs or enhance existing natural ones should be much more common. That's why I have such high hopes for Ghost Cartels since they've always been one of my favourite organised crime groups and who've been criminally neglected. But then in my games I always played up the fact that 'natural' and chemical drugs were still much more common than BTLs. Throw in Amazonia and the Amazon right next door for a source of weird new plants and possible narcotics and you've got great possibilities.

Kind of like genetically crossing a Habanero Pepper with a Peyote Cactus....

WMS

Who says it has to be a drug any more? In 2070, hemp could be a cheap crop for feedstock to other products. After all, it grows like a weed in marginal conditions that most other plants can't hack it. Remember, if you think crude oil is expensive today, just image what it'll cost in 2070.

Hemp seed oil for biodiesel, plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals
Hemp fiber for paper, cloth, rope, etc.
Hemp cellulose waste for ethanol and biodiesel.

Hemp was a big cash crop before WWII for day to day use. Other than cotton lobbies and politics over the "War on Drugs", there's no reason why it couldn't be a big cash crop again.

The levels of THC are next to nothing in the kind of hemp used for rope, paper, cloth and other textile products. You'd have better chances trying to get high from smoking regular paper then hemp paper.


One reason they may leave out marijuana is you simply can't overdose on it, The ratio between enough THC to make one high to the amount necessary to be fatal is 1 to 40,000. So if a single joint makes you high you'd need to smoke 40,000 in order to die from and overdose. Smoking pot can probably lead to cancer just like cigarettes as they contain many similar cancer causing compounds but ingesting it does not. And cancer from smoking aside, there actually isn't certain conclusive evidence as to the long term effects or marijuana use. Many of the tests performed on animals used levels of THC beyond that which a normal human could intake before passing out. It hasn't actually been proven to be truly addictive often being rated below caffeine which makes an addictive quality for marijuana not to sensible.

So rather then open a can of worms of it doesn't really do that, they simply invent drugs so they can say it does this and this and this those are the rules.

Just consider it legal as no private police force, (Lonestar, Knight Errant) could make money. Lets face it if we locked up everyone for five years for smoking marijuana(as Texas would have us do it). We'd have to let everyone else out of jail just to make room.

Actually, they'd make more money. That's the entire reason for the war on drugs in the first place. The prison industry is making a killing, Every incarcerated body is making some corporation money, usually several corporations. And those who are fit can be used as slave labor. And, of course, lets not forget asset forfeiture laws which technically allow the government to take everything you own if you're caught with a single joint. They rarely use them on your average stoned teenagers, but modern police departments get millions of dollars worth of cash and merchandise using this method. And, of course, it is also a cheap way to get your arrest stats up.
Arresting real criminals for real crimes take time, effort, and money. You need to, at the very least, manufacture forensic evidence and track down witnesses. An investigation into a robbery or a murder can take months even years and costs a huge sum of money for lab work alone. But a drug collar, that's easy. All you have to do is walk up to a random guy on the street, ask "dude, you want a joint?", give him the joint, and arrest him for possessing that joint. If he says no, that isn't a problem. You just grab him by the arm, shove the joint into his pocket, and then arrest him for possessing it. That's 60 seconds worth of police work and at a conservative rate of 10K per year per head and a 5 year minimum sentence it earns Lone Star a smooth 50,000 . And, of course, they seize his house, and his car, and his bank accounts adding to that substantially. That's a hell of a lot better profit margin than spending a couple of years hunting for a serial killer.
Its a hell of a lot safer, too, since killers tend to kill people. It ultimately saves on death benefits.

i don't see lone star bothering to frame anyone. it's not like it's that hard to find someone who actually does use marijuana for real, and the equivalent drug is probably the same way in 2070.

I guess what they say is true - it really does make you paranoid...

Careful, THEY might hear you.

Too late, they have heard you. They heard you before you even spoke, thanks to that computer chip they have implanted in your brain.

I'm sure that hallucinogens got replaced by BTL, being, you know, "Better Than Life."

Hallucinogenics that are purposefully taken, maybe. But they're still great gas weapons!

Gas Grenades, is there nothing they can't do?

The can't kill the DAMN roaches crawling under my skin!!!!!

Yeah. Read A Scanner Darkly if you haven't already. Aphids, man.

Talk to this guy, he might be able to help with that.

No one wants to touch it any more. Everyone in the sixth world now knows of REEFER MADNESS.

Dude that must be the heaviest one hit shit i've ever seen... where can I get some?

You know there has only been one reported death by marijuana in the world?

He was killed when a palet of marijuana dropped on him while off-loading a ship.

Surgeon General's Warning: Caution, excessive amounts of marijuana may crush the shit out of you.

it may have dropped out for 2 reasons- these don't have to be real BUT it will make sense for this world.
1) land to grow food, with food at a premium people could get more value from growing maze or soy than 'weed'

2) no tell tell tales scent for use. you can get a high from a BTL but don't have to worry about the reek on your cloths and fewer paraphanaleia needed.

land to grow? this thing can grow in a pot in the windows if it has to

hell, here in norway recently there was a series of raids done at places rented out. it was found that in each foreign nationals had converted the buildings into basically a greenhouse for growing these plants...

An abandoned Molson Brewery was turned into a ginormous Grow-Op here in Canada!

1) It wouldn't completely explain it, but it's an interesting theory that a radical increase of urban density creates a premium on space too high for anyone to grow their own recreational soft drugs, hence increasing the market for convential sixth world drugs, like BTL. There's always more virtual space.

2) But then again, your parents might still notice the random twitching, drooling, and new brand loyalties.

It is called "Weed" for more than one reason.

A maybe myth from my younger days of using that substance, is that the US Government during the WWII days conducted experiements/tests on how to increase the fiber content of MJ in producing hemp. Side results was also discovered many ways to increase the THC content. Such findings/results are now classified.

As for using land to grow it, several years ago a Chicken Farm was "Busted" for growing MJ in an underground facility beneath the chicken barns/houses. They used the chicken manure to feed the plants, and the unused seeds to feed the chickens. It was only busted due one of the partners wanted more money, did not get it, and turned the operation in.

A good friend and fellow RP gamer of many years, once worked in a "Life Style Accessory" store aka Head Shop. The volume of hydroponic setups/chemicals and grow lights that were sold from there was astounding. I used his knowledge of helping things grow to increase my habanero pepper plants potency and yield.

WMS