Planning on a trip to Oregon over the Fourth of July weekend? Then, you might just have a high, old time! And that is speaking literally, if not figuratively.
Oregon began the outcome of Measure 91 today, a law allowing recreational marijuana with what casual stoners might even say is relatively generous. It allows use of weed at home, you can grow four plants, possess eight ounces of pot at home and an ounce in public. There are some caveats, of course.
You can’t fire one up in public. You can’t sell it. You can give it away. You can’t drive under the influence. And a bunch of other weird little regulations that were given by lawmakers to special interest groups.
Oregon becomes the fourth state to allow recreational pot. The other states are Washington, Colorado, Alaska. The District of Columbia also allows it. Marijuana is allowed with a prescription in some of the other states. Oregon has also had a medicinal marijuana. It is permissible for someone with a medicinal marijuana card to give away buds or seeds.
Oh and how about eating pot?
Oregon state officials are working out the details for shops that will allow edibles next year. But this new law let Oregonians possess a pound of “processed edibles.” These are items such as candies or cookies. A total of 72 ounces of marijuana-spiked drinks. Yeah! This bud is definitely for you.
When the “strength” of marijuana is discussed these days in the media — often this is talked about in the context of edibles — there is a big emphasis that is mostly emphasized by the pot haters about how potent is weed these days.
The way this potency is laid out by the talking heads — oh wow man, I remember them, ‘you might find yourself living in a shotgun shack’ — is that this “new” marijuana is like the “New Coke.” Now I can’t argue with that because … well just because. But the “experts” I know, like Turkey Neck Jackson, thinks that is all a lot of baloney.
“Yeh main, I took this big chubabaloney an’ put in fire lil bit bobbyq sauz and coooook! Yes sir. Man that ol roll just tuck my ol’ brain ‘way,” Neck, he goes by Neck, said.
Actually, I think he might’ve been a little bit stoned, ya think? He was talking about barbecuing a whole chub, or roll, of bologna. I mean, that’s not odd here in East Texas, but you don’t want to just throw it on an open fire with no grill.
But I just don’t know about those people who are getting higher than they were in the old days. And that’s all I got to say about that.
Something likewise positive coming from this law are rules that will help guide a budding (sorry) industrial hemp industry.
A law passed several years ago allowed growing hemp in Oregon but the hemp industry did not take off because of the existing federal laws against it. An agency no less than the Kentucky Department of Agriculture points out that it is illegal to grow industrial hemp without a DEA license. Oregon’s ag department is taking application for hemp growing. The requirements limit the active ingredient of marijuana, THC, at 0.03 percent. That is an amount that probably wouldn’t give Bambi a buzz.
I can’t say this for sure. But I hear people say deer like to eat pot. Mice do too. Like I say, I’ve never been a deer or a mouse, so this is just speculation.
