In Part One, I explained the way legal weed can be exploited by government to its own benefit… be it legal or illegal. In this part I’ll look at the unintended social consequences of legalization.
Many among my boomer generation have a nostalgic view of smoking weed. They recall sitting around the college dorm having deep philosophical discussions interrupted by bouts of giggling and the occasional “Oh wow!” from someone discovering the back of their own hand.
Or passing joints while reading Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics (I still have some BTW). In one of them, a character postulates that “Marijuana will never be legal — because no one remembers where they left the petitions!”
As we boomers grew older, it was toking on the back porch after the kids had gone to bed — or being a ‘weekend warrior’. But as the Bard of our generation — Bob Dylan — says, “… things have changed”!
Now there are 14-year-olds using automatic weapons to kill each other for an ounce of weed. Adult stoners who can’t function above adolescence. And a segment of boomers who have never outgrown the 1960s… because they’ve been stoned ever since.
I recently watched a documentary about the 1960s San Francisco music scene that gave us much of the soundtrack of my generation. It was a magical time-place-vortex that vanished beginning with the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967. That’s when the ‘Haight-Ashbury’, where the musicians had aggregated, got publicized by the media causing to its being overrun by ‘hippies’ (a name invented by the media). Things changed — for the worse.
As one of that music-scene veterans interviewed for the documentary put it, the newcomers had no idea what it took “to keep [the spirit of the place] together”.
San Francsico has now degenerated. I’m not saying weed caused it; but it obviously didn’t inhibit it.
The facade of the weed-fueled myth of the ‘60s peace, love, and music counterculture was terminally stripped away in 1969. In August that year a group of weed-smoking hippies living in a California desert commune slaughtered several people – including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Then in December the “music died” in violence at the Altamont speedway ‘free concert’ as the smell of weed wafted thru the crowd.
Those tragedies illustrated the lie of the statement by one of the participants at Woodstock that was captured in the film of that event. He held up a joint and said, “Marijuana – makes you behave!” Uhh… obviously not!
The last time Mrs Beatty and I were in Colorado, we spent some time hiking around Glenwood Springs. We stayed at a motel there that had been recommended to us. When we stayed there it had new owners who were striving to maintain its good reputation.
The new owners were a couple in their 30’s who had walked away from corporate jobs in a big city, and bought it from the retiring mom-and-pop owners who had established its reputation. The new owners, and their kids, lived in an apartment above the office. They were following a dream.
One evening we had a conversation with the husband about how that dream was working out. What he said caught us by surprise, “This was a nice little business, and safe place for our kids, until the state legalized pot!”
He explained that when marijuana was legalized they started getting a lot of people renting for weeks at a time who just wanted to sit out in front of their rooms and smoke weed. All you could smell was weed.
There were older guests who had been coming there for decades, and kept coming back after the previous owners retired. “The pot smokers were ruining that…” he said. Some of the regulars told him they wouldn’t be coming back because of the pervasive smell of weed. “Our kids were exposed to it every day.”
When I mentioned we hadn’t noticed any of that during our stay up to that point, he said he was working to discourage most of the “pot tourists” from staying there. He did so by refusing to rent for cash. He would only accept credit cards “which stoners don’t have.”
We had a similar experience in Pagosa during that same Colorado visit. We usually stay east of Pagosa at the Bruce Spruce Ranch because we like the individual cabins — and the place has a good vibe.
A few times we’ve stayed in Pagosa to be closer to our property, and the springs. When we stayed in town, it was at what used to be the First Inn on the east side of town. That’s where we stayed on that trip.
But it had gotten a new owner who advertised it as “420 friendly” — which we didn’t know until we arrived. He was decent guy (I liked him), and the facility was well-maintained — but the smell of weed was overwhelming. I’m also certain there was a “grow operation” going on in one of the rooms adjacent to ours.
Like those former regulars at the motel in Glenwood Springs, we decided we wouldn’t be staying at the First Inn again.
They came from everywhere, to the great divide
Looking for a place to stand, or a place to hide
Down in the crowded bars, out for a good time
Can’t wait to tell them all, what it’s like up there
And they called it paradise, I don’t know why
Somebody laid the mountains low …. while the town got high…
— from ‘The Last Resort’ by the Eagles
The First Inn is now the Riverwalk Inn, so I’m guessing it’s changed owners again. I also notice “420 friendly” doesn’t appear on the sign out front any more.
My point is that there is a downside to legalization that never occurred to me as a long-time de-criminalization advocate. I forgot the law of unintended consequences.
Having been in dispensaries in Colorado, and while visiting in-laws in Washington state, I’ve drawn some conclusions about them.
First, as Bill Hudson pointed out in his editorial series, considering that anyone can “grow their own” the prices are exorbitant. I can understand the lament of the owner Bill interviewed about the thin profit margins.
Second — and this was also obvious — are the attitudes of many of the sales people who work in dispensaries. As I noted above, I was smoking the best weed on the planet before most of them were born, so I know a bit about the subject. To hear them (no pun intended) blowing smoke up my ass about this strain and that strain was comical. They sounded like pretentious wine connoisseurs.
While I still strongly support legal medicinal use, having now seen recreational use — both illegal and legal — for over a half century I’m no longer sure legalization is preferable. I know I don’t want to be smelling it everywhere…
“I used to care… but things have changed.”
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.