TV news this morning showed long lines of people in the rain as they waited for the
first legal recreational marijuana shops to open in Massachusetts, the latest state to make recreational pot legal. It's the first state east of the Mississippi that's gone legal, although several more are expected to follow in the coming years.
As a child of the '60s, I sometimes wonder why it's taken so long. Back in the day, it seemed like the majority of young people smoked pot. Many of us thought as our generation became adults and took the reigns of power in business and in politics, pot would eventually become legal. We knew it wouldn't be overnight, but nearly 50 years?
In grad school, I wrote a paper on how the big tobacco companies would market pot once it became legal, and I recall some research that showed Big Tobacco already had taken copyrights on brand names like Acapulco Gold. Back then, experts were saying pot would be legal in about ten years.
Two years ago, while in Seattle on business, I walked past a pot store. Curious, I went inside, expecting to walk into a dark and smoky den. Instead, it was brightly lit with beautiful displays and counter and after counter of cannabis products and related paraphernalia. The saleswoman, nicely dressed, could tell I was overwhelmed and asked what kind of high I was looking for.
What kind of high? Huh?
She explained there were products that would relax me, make me feel wide awake, give me the munchies and lots of other types of effects. I bought a chocolate bar that was supposed to make me feel mellow. I ate it and... nothing.
But that shopping experience was a far cry from the days when your retailer was a friend of a friend, and you never knew what to expect when you took a toke.
Adweek recently devoted an entire issue to what it called "Flower Power." The cannabis industry is expected to grow to some $200 billion. I'm not sure if R.J. Reynolds or whatever else remains of the big tobacco companies have any holdings in cannabis companies, but Constellation Brands, which has Corona and Modello among the beer brands it imports, recently offered $4 billion to buy Canopy Growth, a Canadian cannabis producer that is the world's largest, producing mainly medical marijuana at this point. Clearly, Constellation sees some real potential in the marketplace.
I did some publicity about two years ago for a guy who wrote a book called Pot Luck that explained and extolled the benefits of medical marijuana. It was a good read and did a good job explaining how herbal alternatives including cannabis often -- but not always -- offered relief or cures where traditional medicine didn't.
As someone who works in the traffic safety field, I am also seeing evidence of more crashes in states where pot has become legal. Unlike when you're drunk, you can be high and still manage -- or think you're managing -- to drive safely. But reaction time is slowed and if something happens quickly on the road, a high driver -- an impaired driver -- may have a problem.
So I think that, along with legalization, should come a public education campaign to make drivers aware of the dangers of driving while high. We've done it for alcohol over he years, so why not help people understand the risks of driving while high. It can help those who want to indulge do it safely, without putting everyone else on the road at risk.