By Joshua Cubillo
Staff Writer
Recreational marijuana is now allowed in California, the fifth state to legalize non-medical use of the drug since Colorado.
Anyone above the age of 21 will soon be able to smoke marijuana recreationally or grow a marijuana plant at their home without being arrested.
This is great news for those who smoke regularly. Now they don’t have to worry about smelling like weed when they walk around the police. However, they do still have to worry about smelling like weed around their parents, but that’s a smaller risk to take now.
Most of my friends will be coming to my house high and smoking everywhere they go, in celebration I guess. So, good for them. I just hope they stop talking to me about making weed legal.
Even though I voted to legalize marijuana, it isn’t really going to be a change for my life. For someone like me, who has never smoked, nor cares to, it really isn’t that much news for me. Other than the fact that I don’t have to worry about my relatives or friends getting arrested for smoking.
So, in that sense, I am happy that Proposition 64 passed. Besides that, marijuana becoming legal doesn’t really affect me. But, hey, if you smoke, then kudos to you.
This doesn’t mean I condone it, I still have the same negative view toward marijuana that I did before it became legal. I still think it is a disgusting drug and hope fewer people do it.
But I do not believe that someone smoking it should result in them going to jail over it. We already have the world’s largest prison rate on the planet. We don’t need to continue to increase it.
There is some bad news, however. According to an article posted by Time Magazine, there will not be any stores selling marijuana until 2018 due to various regulations that the state requires.
So wherever you are getting it now, is where you’re going to keep getting it for the time being. Paces with already-booming medical marijuana dispensaries will most likely be able to do it sooner rather than later.
Besides California, two other states were voting for the legalization of marijuana on Nov. 8: Massachusetts and Nevada. Those two states also passed their measures.
Now that weed is legal, it will certainly help with the prison population. People will no longer go to jail for smoking, which helps prisons are already overcrowded and become a burden for us, the taxpayers.
So if you’re happy about weed being legal, congratulations to you. Hopefully you can now enjoy it without being worried about the police. Just don’t go too crazy, I don’t really want to be smelling it everywhere I go. But don’t worry about me or my cynicism. Just enjoy your weed.
