A report from Canada about legalization in Colorado

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/how-colorado-is-dealing-with-legalized-marijuana/article24457303/?fb_action_ids=10152917753972756&fb_action_types=og.shares

What a great place to get stoned. Which I intend to do, as soon as possible. In Colorado, recreational marijuana was legalized on Jan. 1, 2014. Denver now has more pot stores than it has Starbucks. Anyone over the age of 21 can walk into a store and choose from hundreds of varieties of flowers, nibbles, marijuana-infused drinks, oils, ointments and pain patches, as well as a growing array of wax and other supercharged hard-core products. There’s even a sex lube for women, which promises to deliver the most mind-blowing experience of your life…

Meanwhile, in Canada, prohibition is a bust. Pot is available everywhere, and we are among the biggest consumers in the world: According to Health Canada’s 2012 Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey, 41.5 per cent of Canadians 15 years and older have used marijuana at some point during their lifetime…

I know nothing about modern cannabis. My personal experiences with weed are around 40 years out of date. I need a quick lesson to get me au courant. So the first thing I do is drop in on Jake Browne, the amiable pot critic for The Cannabist, an online newspaper that’s owned by The Denver Post…

On the way out, he introduces me to his mother, who’s visiting for a while from Iowa. His line of work doesn’t bother her at all. She’s thrilled that he’s a writer…

In Canada, the gap between the law and reality is getting wider every day. In Vancouver, anyone can get a medical licence on the spot, which allows them to shop in dozens of unregulated dispensaries to their heart’s content. You can even buy weed from vending machines. Law enforcement across the country has become so uneven that whether you’re arrested for smoking on the street pretty much depends on where you live. It also depends on your socio-economic status. Middle-class citizens tend to get a pass, while those in bad neighbourhoods do not.

Around 60,000 people are arrested every year in Canada for possession, according to a report from Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). First-time offenders can get a maximum sentence of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. At least half a million Canadians have a criminal record for possession. Enforcing the cannabis laws costs more than a billion dollars a year. Yet there’s no evidence that these penalties act as a deterrent…

My budtender is Halley, a cheery young woman with a braid. All the budtenders are cheery. Halley says she pretty much uses pot all day long. She moved to Colorado from Illinois, where, she says, “I was constantly being prosecuted.” She loves living here. She has turned her dad on to marijuana cookies.

Halley takes me through the indicas and sativas, and I settle on an eighth of Master Kush ($30, plus 29 per cent tax)…

My normal mood state is somewhere between wound up and tightly wound up. (Ask anyone.) But after a little weed, I feel benign good will toward the entire world. My encrusted layers of inhibition and anxiety are gently dissolving. I am serene, yet focused. It strikes me that this is the state one hopes to achieve through meditation.

“I feel like a much nicer person,” I blurt. “Thank you so, so much.” It’s probably the most intimate confession I have ever made to a total stranger…