World War Z

I was in the Bay Area in March, and took the time to visit a marijuana speakeasy I'd joined years ago in Oakland.

A local friend and member originally took me there, apparently a boarded-up construction site on a decrepit side street. But a mail slot was hidden in plain view amid a dayglo tangle of graffiti. We tossed our IDs through, smiled for the barely visible camera, and were buzzed in by the friendly proprietor, an affable Filipino. In the blacklit showroom he plied us with bubblehash (an effective sales strategy, I assure you) and quietly explained Oakland's Measure Z, passed with over 65% of the vote, that permitted him--and many others--to operate.

Pretty simple, really.  Measure Z mandates that crimes involving private adult use, sale, distribution and cultivation of marijuana are the absolute lowest priority for law enforcement, below even jaywalking and parking tickets.

Last month--eleven years after Measure Z passed--I returned to the speakeasy. They now operate from a group of rooms hidden within a bookstore, just another storefront among many.

Did you get that?  For eleven years, Oakland has come the closest of anywhere in the nation to full-on, it-might-as-well-be-dandelions legalization--

And the Sky Has Not Fallen.

I could still see it up there.

Oregon legislators, in the meantime, perpetuate the war on marijuana smokers.  They were scheduled to vote yesterday on SB 844 which would have effectively destroyed* both the medical marijuana program passed by voters in 1998, and Measure 91 legalizing marijuana, passed--again, by the voters-- last year.  A flurry of calls and emails delayed that vote, for now.

The so-called supporters of Measure 91 asked us to plead our legislature to preserve isolated bits as though it is some ideal we are trying to attain.

It is not.

Measure 91 was deeply flawed from the outset, but at least, we thought, locked in a reasonable starting point for reform.

We do not bargain away** what little Measure 91 achieves.

Instead--and, I promise, just for starters--we pass Measure Z here, forcing it down the legislative throat, if necessary--

Peace.

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*The press has done an abysmal job reporting on the most damaging provisions of the bill.  For example, it limits the number of patients for whom a doctor may prescribe marijuana.  Federal prohibition effectively scares most physicians away from even putting in writing that marijuana might help their condition.  Most of the roughly 80,000 medical marijuana patients in Oregon will then be cut off, and forced into the heavily taxed recreational stores where prices will be prohibitive, or back to the black market.

**I am sure Alex Rogers has done some good work, but for my tastes, his plea for action yesterday amounts to this.