Diary of a Drug Dealer? California legalises! no responses
PART 1
Greetings from San Diego, the southernmost city of the newly cannabised Republic of California where I sit on a balcony overlooking a sea which, until yesterday, lurked beneath dirty cottonwool skies, grubby with unshed rain. There is still an unfriendly chilly wind which keeps me from the beach. Well, for now. I did try it yesterday, but frankly we didn’t see eye-to-eye. For me, sun goes with beach. Not grey puffy interventions between me and melanomas.
Wot no plastic?
As you probably know if you’ve been following my blogs, I have friends and relatives in San Diego. This is mostly because my family emigrated to the US almost exactly 30 years ago, and I have visited frequently since. Being a smart kiddo I established myself in London. I must have known one day America would get its comeuppance in the shape of a fat demagogue with zero dress sense. Of course being 13 hours away from Mother who has Alzheimer’s is sad and that makes each visit more harrowing. So much so that I have considered (if briefly) whether a spot of marijuana would make things a bit better. For both of us.
Pot and Me
Last night nephew Isaac took me to the Ocean Beach Street Fair & Chilli Cook Off, a sprawl of stalls selling food and fancies, with of course several stages of live music. Including a Beetles cover band, a Grateful Dead cover band, a Rolling Stones cover band a Fleetwood Mac soundalike and who knows what else these clever locals can cover. Admittedly most of the covers can best be described as approximations, which did not deter legions of ex-hippies from strutting dancing gyrating and body-popping all over the place.
The Bank Manager has a groove
I had a strong feeling that one of them was my bank manager (retired). The others looked like retired Obstetricians or Gynaecologists or Professors of Oriental Logistics or perhaps even the local Vegetarian Butcher. Both male and female of course. The women seemed to have eschewed the expected stereotype of Mother Earth meets the bag lady and opted instead for middle-class granny in jeans.
And here’s the strange thing: in a state which has just legalised cannabis for recreational use, I neither smelled nor saw a single spliff, or joint, or reefer, or doobie, or even a vape. (That’s a lie. I saw one of each but if I told you it would destroy the impact of the point I am about to make). I mean come ON you guys! And girls! (Sensitivity Reader note: I avoided the trap.) Forty years ago you were dreaming that one day you would be standing in a street in Ocean Beach listening to the Dead (or soundalike) or the Stones (or soundalike) or any damned screeching guitar-soloing drum-maddened raw-singing combo stoned out of your heads in a country free of anti-pot laws – ? Eh? I certainly was!
And yet here we stand, we ex-hippies pretending like mad to be stoned out of our heads bopping away with no trace whatsoever of what was once our favourite drug. IN a place where the passing cops are more likely to be stoned than we are.
WTF, as the kiddies say.
There’s only one thing to do at a time like this: Research. Right! So here’s the plan: in the next week I am going to find a drug dealer and somebody who actually smokes the stuff. Not to buy anything, but just to research this: what has been the effect of legalisation so far in this state? And why?
See the next exciting episode right here in a few day’s time!