Smoking "Weed" in Oregon

Oregon is in the news again. 

A star athlete smoked marijuana in Oregon, then tested positive for it. Olympic rules call it a performance enhancer and she is ineligible to compete.

Performance enhancer? What a joke.

The laws in Oregon are inconsistent with federal law, with the laws in most other states, and with Olympic rules. It creates a mess. Sha'Carri Richardson is the current victim.

Note to the Olympics: Marijuana is not a performance enhancer for anything except snacking, sitting on a sofa watching TV, dreamy sex, or coming to the realization that the entire universe exists in a freckle on the back of one's finger. I have never run a timed 100 meter race, but I have in the past smoked marijuana, so I speak from authority: Marijuana isn't a performance enhancer for a sprinter. 

Oregon has essentially legalized for adults the purchase and use of cannabis, including cannabis with THC, the ingredient that makes one "high." Some other states have not, including Idaho. This means that people shipping cannabis with CBD--the state and federally legal medical product that does not provide a "high"--gets stopped if it travels east out of Oregon through Idaho. Idaho seizes the crop and the truck, and charges the driver with a felony. Can they do that? They do it. 

Cannabis is legal in Oregon, but is a Schedule One drug under federal law. Banks are afraid of running afoul federal regulators, so land with cannabis in its various forms cannot be financed. Insurance companies exclude cannabis from claims involving accidents, loss, or liability. Title companies won't serve as escrow agents for land growing it. The industry copes by using cash, which encourages under-reporting of employee wages and transactions. Oregon and the federal government want their taxes paid--that part is "on the books." The situation is inconsistent and hypocritical.

Two years ago I tried to register myself as a medical grower of six plants for my own use. I filed the paperwork on the first day of eligibility, November 1, 2018, with the window for filing paperwork ending May 1, 2019. In my filing paperwork I attached a note in large font to my $100 check, requesting the Oregon authorities to tell me promptly if there was any problem or deficiency in my filing. I gave the street address, the legal description of tax lot, section, and township, plus the GPS coordinates, all as required. On April 29 at 4:00 p.m. I received an email and phone call from the Oregon regulatory authority telling me my filing was incomplete because my detailed address shared a driveway with other growers, the rural lots distinguished by a tax lot number and GPS, plus physical distance of 2,000 feet, but not street address. This is rural property and most rural lots are identified by tax lot, not street number, unless there is a separate house and separate houses are prohibited by zoning. Not OK, the state regulators told me. I would need to get a separate street address from the county, a process that takes six weeks to six months.

I said, "Now you tell me? You had five months to tell me there was a problem, and you waited until it was impossible for me to fix this."

"Yeah, well, sorry," they said. I withdrew my application.

Last fall thieves raided a neighbor's property in the middle of the night and stole a substantial portion of his crop. They entered without headlights and one vehicle in the group ran off the farm road into a ditch. I posted this memorable photo of the abandoned stuck vehicle. 

As I reported in that earlier blog post, the local sheriff department said that the vehicle's owner lived six miles away and that the stolen property might be readily available and identifiable, but they do not investigate cannabis crimes. But this is a legal grow-site, the plants numbered and monitored, taxes paid at every step, operating under the burdens of the law. Don't we then get the law's protection?

"No. Sorry," they said.

Cannabis operates under laws and rules that are inconsistent, poorly administered, and based an inaccurate understanding of marijuana's effects. Some people are serving long prison sentences for the same acts that other people are openly earning money and paying taxes for doing. It is unfair and unjust. Inconsistent administration undermines the legitimacy of laws generally. If the regulators don't do their work so that people can comply, and if the sheriff doesn't consider theft of an agricultural crop worthy of investigation, why should citizens care more about legality than do the people administering and enforcing the laws? Bad enforcement sends a bad message.

The legitimacy of government rests on a foundation of laws seeming reasonable to people living under them, and to people seeing that laws are consistently enforced. Then social norms are in sync with the law. Currently, they are not.

[Note: I don't use marijuana, nor alcohol. I like a clear head. I have enough experience with both alcohol and marijuana to see the attraction each have, and to compare them. Alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, in my experience.]