I have smoked marijuana illegally from the time I was in college in the 1960s. It was a medicine of sorts. We did not have the behavioral and mood prescription drugs available today, and alcohol and cigarettes were no good in the long run. Including marijuana in the “war on drugs” was a farce and an abomination, especially for the millions of Americans arrested and imprisoned for marijuana offenses. The voters of Massachusetts recognized the therapeutic value of marijuana in 2012, legalizing its medical use, but the state has been slow setting up the apparatus of care.
For most of us, possession of one ounce or less of cannabis is punishable as a civil offense with a fine of $100. Offenders under the age of 18 must attend a drug awareness program.
The first retail marijuana stores opened in Colorado on Jan. 1, 2014. Today there are more than 400 stores. Marijuana sales neared one billion dollars in 2015 with state and local governments receiving an estimated $125 million in tax revenues. Denver’s economy is booming — 6.5 percent growth in 2014 — and new schools, financed by pot taxes, are being built across the state.
Marijuana sales no longer take place in the shadows, enriching “El Chapo” and other evil men and women creating a pantheon of criminality.
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The retail shop I visited in Denver was a modest storefront on a block with a coffee shop and art gallery. I showed my driver’s license to a man sitting behind a plastic window with a pistol in his belt. This is an all-cash business — the federal government bars banks from dealing in “drug-tainted” dollars. Proprietors face the hazard of armed highwaymen when driving bags of money from place to place, including the state revenue office.
I was given a number and buzzed in, but the store had only a few customers.
A young female “budtender” took me into a private room stocked with more than thirty varieties of primo product in large glass jars with names like Blue Dream, Candy Kush, Critical Mass, Lamb’s Bread, New York Diesel. The selection was almost overwhelming. Under the expert guidance of the budtender, I chose Golden Goat with its tangy citrus and piney scent.
“The effects are strong, cerebral and very pleasant,” she said. “This strain is a great mood enhancer and is perfect for a day of physical activity as it will not leave you lethargic or unfocused.” The strain was listed at 24.8 percent THC and was 20 percent indica and 80 percent sativa. The price was right, only ten dollars a gram, $280 an ounce, about half the street price in Massachusetts.
The experience was similar to shopping in a fine wine store. There were pipes, vaporizers, and other paraphernalia for sale, also cannabis concentrates, extracts, edibles, balms and sprays. I bought a four-dollar “mildly medicated cinnamon cookie” — 10 milligrams — which I ate the next morning to no effect.
It was surprising to me how little impact legalization seemed to have on Denver and the society at large. The sky had not fallen. This new input in the life of the burgeoning city was easily absorbed. Amendment 64 does not permit the consumption of marijuana “openly and publicly” — akin to the laws against public drinking. Discretion rules — except for the annual April rally and smoke-out staged in front of the State Capitol.
Marijuana-related arrests have dropped more than 80 percent since legalization, saving thousands of Coloradans from the indignity of being flushed through the criminal justice system.
Legalization — this pipe dream of my generation — is no longer radical or revolutionary or particularly symbolic, but medically indispensable and simple common sense.
The weekend in the Mile High City provided a fine respite from my full-time job assuring that my old mother wakes up in the morning and gets to bed at night in the old family house in Cambridge on the edge of the Harvard campus. At age 103, frail but aware, she drives me crazy sometimes with her questions and demands, but she put up with mine for the first five, 10, and 20 years of my life. Using marijuana helps me carry out my filial duties, relieving my anxieties, discharging my boredom, improving my focus on the work to be done.
I’m old-fashioned. I do not smoke in front of my mother or my son. I smoke in the shadows. The habits of a lifetime cannot change overnight, no matter what happens in November.
Andrew Schlesinger is author of “Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience’’ and co-editor with his brother of “Journals: 1952–2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’’
Resource : https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/24/smoking-pot-comes-out-shadows/pr8epprnjUEjJV8FrSvkLJ/story.html
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