A Very Different Tumble Into the Weeds…

Here I go again! Only this time, I’m eager to join the action…I think. As you may know, in two previous posts, I’ve written about my ambivalence concerning the legalization of marijuana. Each time, I got new subscribers among the happy pot community, who somehow overlooked my ambivalence (or seized on my description of my single, and singular, pot experience) and adopted me as a kindred spirit. That’s fine; I welcome anyone who’s interested in what I have to say—and I would be happy to have them join our dialogue, though so far they’ve merely silently “liked” my posts.... That’s not my purpose here, however. Today we’re talking CBD (cannabidiol), derived from the part of the marijuana/hemp plant that, unlike THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), doesn’t create a high.

Wherein I Tumble Into the Weeds Yet Again…

Well, I didn’t really think I’d be returning to this topic—certainly not so soon—but I’ve learned some things since the first post appeared that I feel are worth sharing. As I noted previously, despite my ambivalence concerning legalization, I’ve been assuming that it will eventually happen. I still do. A number of you have pointed out the analogy to Prohibition, and we all know how that effort to oppose the public will turned out. But a New York Times report on the collapse of an effort to legalize marijuana in New Jersey, which was a campaign promise made by the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, and had both his strong backing and statewide public support, points to some opposing arguments that legislators made. (I promise if you stay with me through this, you’ll see that not all my findings are negative.)

Getting Into the Weeds of the Marijuana Debate

First, sorry about that title; I couldn’t help myself. When I was in grad school, a sheltered 21-year-old living on her own in the Big City for the first time, I had a friend I’ll call Bo. An English major like me, Bo was a wildly creative character who scavenged through garbage cans and transformed odd stuff he’d found into some very interesting works of art. He was also eager to share some of the things he regarded as life’s gifts with his friends. And so one day he offered me—a non-smoker, rule-abider, and pretty fastidious sort—a dirty-looking piece of hemp. ....