I guess we should all hope it doesn’t become legal in New Orleans. They might have to hose off the sidewalks every morning.

quote:

greasy guido

*cough cough*

We're everywhere, us greasy Guidos....

Over the last 5 years in my annual trips to Las Vegas, NV, my nose has noted an increase in the 'aroma' of weed - I noticed it strongly last February of this year on the strip.

I can't stand the smell of the stuff, smoked or un-smoked. It starts to make me physically ill.

Taking the MAX in Portland Metro area to work, I noticed a major up-tick in the aroma on the trains. I had to switch cars several times, or move to the other end of the car. I guess one good thing at being unemployed - I no longer need to put up with having to deal with other people's rights to smoke the shit over my right in not having to smell the shit.

It's bad enough when women at work bathed in perfume and I could follow the trail of it to their cube minutes after the passed the area. But weed smell is worse, at least to my sense of smell.

And I've never smoked the stuff - although peer pressure was severe back in the '70 as a pre-teen and teen.

quote:

The aggressive begging has gotten a lot worse (along with the reek of weed) since legalization.

The bums passed out and trash, it's been steadily growing since 2000.

I think the panhandling issue has taken off with the federal judges ruling the solicitation is protected free speech. All of the solicitation codes have been tossed out and now the homeless are free to do their worst. That is the problem we now have here in Salt Lake anyway. Not sure it has anything to do with legal stink weed.

I think those rulings are decades old now.

quote:

Originally posted by gw3971:

quote:

The aggressive begging has gotten a lot worse (along with the reek of weed) since legalization.

The bums passed out and trash, it's been steadily growing since 2000.

I think the panhandling issue has taken off with the federal judges ruling the solicitation is protected free speech. All of the solicitation codes have been tossed out and now the homeless are free to do their worst. That is the problem we now have here in Salt Lake anyway. Not sure it has anything to do with legal stink weed.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I think you made a huge leap between legal weed and what you observed. Your last visit was 14 years ago. I don't think weed is the only change.

The population of the Las Vegas area is up. The number of visitors is up from 37 million annually to 42 million over that period of time.

It is really easy to confuse correlation with causation. Weed may contribute, and it may not. Your data is too thin to allow any conclusion to be drawn.

This. A lot has changed in 14 years. I haven’t been in a few years, but I saw changes for the worse prior to legalization.

I've been going there multiple times a year for 16 years now. We did a very large job there in 2003-04 that caused me to spend more time in Las Vegas those two years than I did my own home city.

The town has changed but not because of weed and not in the past few years. Legalizing marijuana maybe didn't help the situation but it damn sure didn't cause it. I was just there a few weeks ago and actually felt like the number of people hassling me on the strip was down. Back 10 and 15 years ago you couldn't go twenty feet without some dude pushing one of those escort cards in your face. I walked from the Venetian to Flamingo without collecting one. I don't ever recall the strip being spotless and the first time I was there was in 97.

My biggest observation is that the cost of being in vegas went waaaaaay up in the past 15 years. It isn't a town for gamblers anymore. It is a club town now. Where the night club used to be something you did after you gambled now gambling seems to be something kids do after they get out of the club. I used to play video poker because you could get free drinks if you sat at the bar and played. My goal was just to break even on the poker so that I drank for free. Now not only do not all the casinos do that but they also charge outrageous prices for drinks. Me and a coworker hit one casino bar a couple years ago and got charged 25 bucks for a vodka tonic and a jack and coke. Gone are the cheap buffets and cigarettes.

My totally uneducated and outsider guess is that the city just got too expensive too fast for a lot of people. It damn sure got too expensive for me even on an expense account. I basically hide out in my room now.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Vegas has a problem you guys aren't thinking about.

Under significant pressure from the feds, California was forced to draw down the population it vastly overcrowded prison system. So they've been disgorging felons onto the street. At the same time the cost of housing in Cali, especially the LA area is skyrocketing. So a lot of these ex-cons are looking for someplace cheaper to go. A good percentage of those are ending up in Vegas. This had been causing a crime spike out there.

I have a strong feeling this is a bigger cause of the problems Vegas may be having than the Pot legalization, because, really no one ever smoked pot in Vegas before.

You're referring to CA Proposition-47 CA proposition. This has resulted in those newly released prisoners originally in metro areas (LA, SF, SD, Sac) have instead paid outlaying counties per person to take them off their streets, resulting in marked increases in vagrants and petty crimes in medium-sized cities like Redding, Chico, Barstow, Victorville, Ventura, Santa Ana River-areas of OC and Santa Barbara.

A friend of mine who is a casino executive explained it simply. The Mob does not run the show anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Vegas has a problem you guys aren't thinking about.

Under significant pressure from the feds, California was forced to draw down the population it vastly overcrowded prison system. So they've been disgorging felons onto the street. At the same time the cost of housing in Cali, especially the LA area is skyrocketing. So a lot of these ex-cons are looking for someplace cheaper to go. A good percentage of those are ending up in Vegas. This had been causing a crime spike out there.

I have a strong feeling this is a bigger cause of the problems Vegas may be having than the Pot legalization, because, really no one ever smoked pot in Vegas before.

You're referring to CA Proposition-47. This has resulted in those newly released prisoners originally in metro areas (LA, SF, SD, Sac) have instead paid outlaying counties per person to take them off their streets, resulting in marked increases in vagrants and petty crimes in medium-sized cities like Redding, Chico, Fresno, Barstow, Victorville, Ventura, Riverside, Santa Ana River-areas of OC and Santa Barbara. No doubt Vegas has gotten overflow, however I'd wager a large number of them are a result of the '09 recession crash that hammered Vegas hard and the constant flow of idiots dreaming of the good life in Vegas.

... Vegas. All the cliches.
"... city of sun, fun, sin and secrets .."

My former IT company yearly trade show was hosted there. Often meant being there for up to 4 weeks - setup, late nights with clients, smiling on the trade floor, then tear down.

"Oh wow, you've been here for 4 weeks? How fun is that!"

Not much actually. Lousy food at any time of the day/night. Queues. Horrible people. Miserable gamblers. Electric scooters. Incessant demands for "do you need company". One block either side of the main strip is just, just ... sigh.

A bright spot - watching the Marines and their +1's at the yearly ball. Yeah, no comment about what happens after!

IT used to be somewhat nice in the 90's; then trying to make it family friendly failed miserably per se.

Vegas is just ... weird now.

Problem is, Nicky is not there anymore....

my brother changed my opinion of vegas about 25 years ago.

he told me, "listen to all the wonderful winner's
stories for hours on end,
then step out side and look at the billions of dollars worth of real estate and buildings,

that real estate and those buildings were not built by people who lose money"

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I think you made a huge leap between legal weed and what you observed. Your last visit was 14 years ago. I don't think weed is the only change.

The population of the Las Vegas area is up. The number of visitors is up from 37 million annually to 42 million over that period of time.

It is really easy to confuse correlation with causation. Weed may contribute, and it may not. Your data is too thin to allow any conclusion to be drawn.

Not to mention there was this small disruption in the economy that hit in 2007. This led to a record number of foreclosures in the Las Veas area, resulting in thousand of unoccupied houses, and the rise of squatting in Las Vegas. Many of the squatters were not in Las Vegas prior to the 2007 economic disruption.

This is true in other areas, as well.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
A friend of mine who is a casino executive explained it simply. The Mob does not run the show anymore.

My father was the water resource manager in Las Vegas in 1964 and 1965. He knew and got along with the Mob because they knew he was incorruptible and treated everyone fairly.

Once, after a story about a kidnapping, rape, and murder of a child, he said "The problem in Las Vegas is the Mob no longer runs Las Vegas."

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I think you made a huge leap between legal weed and what you observed. Your last visit was 14 years ago. I don't think weed is the only change.

The population of the Las Vegas area is up. The number of visitors is up from 37 million annually to 42 million over that period of time.

It is really easy to confuse correlation with causation. Weed may contribute, and it may not. Your data is too thin to allow any conclusion to be drawn.

Completely agree. You can't draw such a conclusion from one data point. Especially with that much of a time spread.

Well it could be worse… I heard that San Francisco today now hired 10 people permanently to daily walk around and pick up used hypodermic syringes littering the streets. Instead of dealing with the problem, they’re just sweeping it under the rug.

In my lifetime,Vegas has always been a shit hole; covered by a thin veneer of flashing neon lights and the allure of the forbidden.

It’s a perfect example of how poorly Americans do with simple arithmetic/odds calculations. Despite the clear evidence of the massive building that they walked into of their own accord, right through the front doors.

In either case I don’t think you can blame the icky-sticky hydroponic chronic.

I was in Vegas in January, smokers are everywhere in this town. Tobacco or weed, smoke is everywhere. I guess smokers have that addictive personality that casinos love.

I had to air out my suitcases when we got home!

The timing doesn't really correlate so much to the recession. And the circulation of people looking to make it big gambling, or a blue collar nirvana driven by casino work, is a constant. And getting back to the OPs post, it really doesn't correlate to pot legalization.

The crime wave correlates pretty strongly to the proposition passage. Murders increased 100% between 2015 and 2016.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Vegas has a problem you guys aren't thinking about.

Under significant pressure from the feds, California was forced to draw down the population it vastly overcrowded prison system. So they've been disgorging felons onto the street. At the same time the cost of housing in Cali, especially the LA area is skyrocketing. So a lot of these ex-cons are looking for someplace cheaper to go. A good percentage of those are ending up in Vegas. This had been causing a crime spike out there.

I have a strong feeling this is a bigger cause of the problems Vegas may be having than the Pot legalization, because, really no one ever smoked pot in Vegas before.

You're referring to CA Proposition-47. This has resulted in those newly released prisoners originally in metro areas (LA, SF, SD, Sac) have instead paid outlaying counties per person to take them off their streets, resulting in marked increases in vagrants and petty crimes in medium-sized cities like Redding, Chico, Fresno, Barstow, Victorville, Ventura, Riverside, Santa Ana River-areas of OC and Santa Barbara. No doubt Vegas has gotten overflow, however I'd wager a large number of them are a result of the '09 recession crash that hammered Vegas hard and the constant flow of idiots dreaming of the good life in Vegas.

Y'know, weed has been decriminalized in the Netherlands for decades. Walking around Maastricht the other night: Smelled pot now and again.

City's clean as a whistle. Even the large square, where just a couple hours before it'd been full of flea market vendors.

I don't think it's the weed any more than our "gun crime" is the fault of the guns.

I haven't been to Las Vegas in a couple years, but I used to go for trade shows on average once every year or two. I think it has been getting worse every year.


I have zero interest in going there for a vacation.