This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Green I Have Something Sincere to Say About 4/20, Guys.
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:44 PM
Someone called the Mercury this afternoon asking for a list of 4/20 parties. I don't know any. I also don't know where you can find the best grilled cheese sandwich in town or which video stores still have copies of Pineapple Express on the shelves.
But I do want to say that every morning, my commute takes me past a sad scene. First, at the bottom of a hill in Sunnyside, I unmistakably smell pot on the wind. Which is not so weird because it's Sunnyside, but is unusual for nine o'clock in the morning.
On the hill is a home for people with disabilities and on the street outside, every morning, is a man in a wheelchair sitting and smoking pot. Sometimes he's alone, sometimes he's with a friend, but it's always a strange scene to come across. He's a testament to a loophole in Oregon's medical marijuana law: while it is legal to grow and use medical marijuana in this state, many facilities don't allow their patients to smoke up inside. You're also not allowed to smoke pot in public. That leaves patients in limbo.
When I sat through perhaps the longest meeting of my life a few months ago at the Cannabis Cafe, listening to heavily-medicated individuals try to coordinate a volunteer schedule and payment system, a lot of the people in the room excited about the Cafe were veterans. They go to the Veterans Hospital for treatment and those who own cars can trudge outside to smoke in their vehicles. But patients without cars can smoke on the street and face arrest, but many wind up crouching in bushes or behind trees to light up.
More than ten years after legalizing medical marijuana, our state still has loopholes that punish users. Just this week, the state Supreme Court ruled that medical marijuana users can legally be fired for smoking pot. Look, Oregon, let's agree that pot is either valid medicine or it's not. Since we've been saying "yes" for 12 years, I think it's high time that no disabled person should have to shiver outside in the cold morning to take his meds.
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Obviously, a lot of medical pot users have jobs where it doesn't matter what sort of pain meds they're on. Those are the ones that will keep their jobs. It's the bus drivers, construction workers, and knife throwers that shouldn't be allowed to do their jobs under the influence of ANY pain medication. Those are the ones who might, rightly, be fired.
The article you linked to didn't indicate that the guy was fired for smoking pot at work. If anything, it implied that he couldn't be high while working as a "fabricator" (which sounds manual labory).
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There's also the stringent anti-smoking regulations passed in Oregon.
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Some people should use it to alleviate pain. It might be helpful for anger disorders, anxiety, depression and Post Tramatic Stress Disorders. Thankfully not everyone has recurring major depressive episodes, so the majority of people who smoke it like to have fun with it. This includes dumb ass hippie stoners.
I’m not sure if highly productive cannabis users are an anomaly. Maybe these types of smokers are all in the closet. They may be professionals who have a lot to lose, so they are not the visible people smoking out in the bushes. There is a responsible group of cannabis smokers out there who do not project any indications of being high. I have a friend who knows people who ingest cannabis every day multiple times a day and live an incredibly productive and healthy life. I suppose one’s values depend upon personal convictions and background.
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Better delete this thread. HURRY!
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Okay, now that you know I'm not someone to be trifled with, let's move on to my biting & insightful, if useless and pedantic, article.
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