Three Days Until Cannabis Is Legal In Oregon

Will there ever be a day where we make something legal and then NOT craft laws around it that can throw our asses in jail, lose our jobs, housing, etc. if we, you know, use it legally? Cannabis will be legal in Oregon on Wednesday, but apparently we can still be fired for consuming cannabis in our private lives, away from our jobs should our employer decided to randomly drug test us. We’re not high at work, but so what. What about people who show the presence of cannabis in their system but only consume cannabis in raw form? They’re not high, but the presence of cannabis in their blood is grounds to fire them. We can’t be fired for alcohol consumption while away from the job as long as we don’t come to work intoxicated. But someone can consume cannabis a week earlier, at home, out of public view, pop positive for THC in a blood test, and lose their job. Truth apparently doesn’t figure in to the equation. It’s legal now. Look that word up.

Cannabis is only legally grown by recreational users if the household has only four plants. Not four plants per person, not four plants in flower, just four plants. Some activists are insisting that in fact, because the law doesn’t specify, we can have any number as long as they aren’t mature. Mature plants are typically defined as plants in flower. So, theoretically, in their view, any plants that aren’t in flower don’t count toward the four plant restriction. Then I had to go and read an article in The Oregonian which spells out what legalization means and gives a different view on the plant count issue which blew any hope for a reasonable outcome right of the water.

On top of it all, questions are being raised about how the law deals with a situation where an OMMP patient resides in a household with other people. Lovely. That’s what every patient in Oregon needs to be worried about. Newsflash: it’s not uncommon for us to live with other people. Can a household with other residents still have four plants over and above what the patient has? Or are patients expected to share their medicine with others in the house? Many of us process our cannabis into concentrated forms, oil, tincture, capsules, etc. We need the flexibility OMMP amounts give us so that we can find what works for us. Medicine is medicine, whether or not it’s cannabis or a prescription from your doctor.

Leland Berger was quoted recommending patients clearly mark which plants belong to them, and which belong to the others in the house. But at the end of the day, the ridiculous way our legislature is choosing to move cannabis legalization forward really illustrates the disconnect people have about cannabis. Patients are patients because they need to heal. Sometimes that’s a temporary process. With chronic illness, however, it can be a forever process. Imbalances return when medication is removed, so a patient with a chronic illness may need daily cannabis for the rest of their lives. And frankly, after experiencing what cannabis did for me that no other drugs could seem to do, I think everyone would benefit from daily ingestion of cannabis. Our bodies are a mess. Cannabis heals us. We shouldn’t have to share our medicine with others in the house just to make the anti-legalization folks happy.

Is this really what legalization was supposed to look like? It sure looks like very few people in charge of this even understand what cannabis is all about. I really hoped that we’d actually have an honest conversation about what cannabis is, and how it was prohibited and then criminalized in the first place. People need to understand that we were lied to about the safety and efficacy of this plant. People need to understand the truth. We legalized cannabis because it was the right thing to do. But we should have legalized it and then left everyone alone about it. Don’t legalize and then restrict what we can do with it in the privacy of our own homes. Don’t define how many brownies we can make, or how much cannabis coffee we can have. I’ve never had cannabis coffee, but it seems to be a thing now.

Don’t legalize and then create a structure for arrest and incarceration of people who grow more than four plants. I read that we can grow it next to our tomatoes, but not if anyone can see it. Have any of these people seen a cannabis plant grown outside? If you don’t top the thing, maybe more than once..I don’t know because I’ve never grown outside before..it’ll grow like a freakin’ tree. Some of them, particularly sativa varieties, can stretch. It’s like, oh it’s legal, just don’t let anyone see it. And you can’t buy any clones, because there’s no retail outlets in existence to actually go buy cannabis legally. People have to depend on the kindness of patients, or their friendly neighborhood grower. The cannabis that medical growers grow actually belongs to the patients..all of it..but it’s always been a grey area, at least in the minds of the growers, so I’m sure there will be lots of clones available to anyone who wants them.

And now the legislature has decided to let counties who don’t like it, ban retail outlets from even opening. Didn’t we legalize last November? And apparently these same counties, who want to relitigate the vote, also will receive 3% sales tax on cannabis that is sold elsewhere in the state. All the benefit without having to actually follow through with legalization. Not that we have sales tax with anything else in Oregon. Oregonians take the notion of sales tax as an assault on our liberty. We never believe that other taxes will go away if we have a sales tax. But with cannabis, it’s a different story? Why? We don’t do this with alcohol. I just bought some 100 proof vodka at the liquor store to infuse some reishi to make extract and paid no sales tax on either bottle. But if I ever decide to enter a retail cannabis outlet, not only will my tax dollars go to counties that support legalization, it will also go to counties that don’t. I live in a county that supported it. I’m surrounded by counties that didn’t, none further than 20 miles away from me. Like I said, surrounded by people confused by the meaning of legalization.

Of course, when it’s all said and done, Measure 91 as implemented may look nothing like the description in the voter’s pamphlet. Bait and switch. Fuck the voter.

But we legalized cannabis, right?

Check out Noelle Crombie’s excellent article here:  http://www.oregonlive.com/marijuana/index.ssf/2015/06/qa_everything_you_need_to_know.html