I have no problem with marijuana; I think they ought to legalize it everywhere and sell it in drug stores and anywhere alcohol is available. The fact that people — mostly young Black men — are still being jailed for selling pot is insane to me, and it amazes me that more people aren’t offended.
If I can buy a 1.5L of Scotch at the state liquor store, you ought to be able to buy a bag of primo indica there, too. And then go home and roll up a fatty as big as a telephone pole and blaze away and see if I care.
But man, the constant smell of it everywhere is starting to get to me.
On the bus, in the supermarket — today, I was waiting for my wife to finish with a doctor’s appointment at a large Pittsburgh hospital, and someone walked past me just reeking of skunkweed.
Two weeks ago, while my buddy and I were in Dayton for the radio convention, our hotel room was unusable one night for the smell of marijuana. Our strong suspicion was that the employees were smoking it; although the front desk told us it was coming from outside, we saw a large piece of PVC pipe sticking out of a window in the employees-only area, as well as tell-tale signs of masking tape around smoke detectors (as if they’d been covering them up).
I filed a complaint with the hotel chain’s corporate office; they told me “well, recreational marijuana is legal in Ohio now.” I said, yes, but your hotel is non-smoking, and it shouldn’t matter if it’s tobacco or pot. Firepits are legal in Ohio, too — could I bring one of those into my hotel room and start a camp fire?
It reminds me of when I was a kid and everyone smoked tobacco, and didn’t realize how badly they reeked of cigarette smoke. I don’t miss those days at all, when you’d open the door of a bar or restaurant and a cloud of smog would roll out.
I’m not sure if the dank stank is better or worse than stale cigarettes, but it’s just as pervasive as nicotine stains were 40 years ago.