Legalization Comes To Missouri

In 1996 when I was a sophomore at Washington U. in St. Louis, Missouri voters picked Bill Clinton over Bob Dole, US senator from neighboring Kansas, by more than six points.

That same semester, after I’d finished my chemistry lab homework, I’d huddle in my dorm’s boiler room with my resin-caked weed pipe, assembled from hardware store parts, furtively taking drags and blowing the smoke towards an exhaust vent. I was terrified the RA would discover me. This was only a couple months after I’d been arrested at the Pittsburgh airport, for bringing small amounts of weed and hash back into the country from Amsterdam. I’d spent the night in the Alleghany County jail, and my dad later paid a lawyer $1000 to get my possession charge reduced to “disturbing the peace,” a misdemeanor.

Fast forward to today: Missouri has gone completely red, voting for Trump by 15 points or more, but somehow just became 21st state to legalize weed for recreational use. What a world. In the runup to the election, the lefty marijuana advocates were actually campaigning against the amendment, arguing it would benefit the big, entrenched dispensaries and block out minority owners.

I have mixed feelings about legalization. I of course don’t think people should be arrested for using or selling marijuana, but that problem was on its way out as decriminalization spread throughout the state.

What I don’t think we need are dispensaries everywhere, which inevitably leads to higher levels of use, such as in Colorado. Remember, marijuana is not health food — it’s a treat — and just as I dislike the growing ubiquity of sports gambling, I don’t see how immediate access to weed everywhere benefits our society. Further, the legalization roll-out has been a huge mess in places like California, where the black market somehow still dominates.

Then again, legalization has gone a ways toward wrangling marijuana from control of the Mexican cartels. They were already transitioning away from smuggling bulky, low-profit, plant-based drugs across the border anyway, and have more than made up for any losses with fentanyl, but this is still a positive.

So where does this leave us? We’re going to become a nation of stoners. And, soon, a nation of mushroom nibblers. (Can you believe Colorado also legalized DMT? Unbelievable.) What will be the result? Who knows! This feels comparable to the end of prohibition in 1933, which remains almost-universally celebrated, except that alcohol kills more than 140,000 Americans per year, far more than drugs. We know weed doesn’t kill us, but the long term health effects of highly-potent THC products haven’t much been tested. We’re a nation of lab rats now!

One interesting wrinkle in all of this is CDB, the cannabinoid touted for its purported medicinal properties, but less intoxicating than THC. The drug has exploded in popularity in recent years, especially in places like Missouri where the hard stuff wasn’t quite legal. I expect its market will now start to dry up, but that’s a shame; as I learned on the excellent Psychoactive podcast, THC and CBD are best when used together. CBD, many believe, makes the THC high less chaotic, more fun, but in their efforts to breed more potent marijuana plants over the years, growers inadvertently bred out the naturally-occurring CBD strain. (The lack of CBD may be why old-timers freak out over today’s pot, along with the increased potency.)

Whatever my cynicism, I celebrated the passing of Amendment 3 this week just like everyone else around here, popping a CBD caramel (not vegan, don’t tell my wife) and then smoking a blunt in our backyard shed. A strange feeling washed over me — the absence of paranoia. The RA wasn’t coming for me, and neither were the cops. I smiled and exhaled a particularly profound plume before an even more disturbing thought set in: My school-age children were due back any minute.

The paranoia came rushing back, and it felt like old times. I stamped out my joint, went back into the house, and started acting like everything was perfectly normal and I wasn’t stoned at all.