Marty's Travels

My house has wheels

Pot in the western states

Here are my observations as I traveled though legal states. I didn’t study the situation too closely, these are just general observations.

Yakima County and the City of Yakima spend way too much time and money fighting the inevitable and they’ve ended up with basically what they should have done 6 years ago. What I saw was that stores there were lax on ID checking, making them an ideal sting target by the Cannabis Board.

Bend, Oregon is an island of cannabis in a sea of prohibition, especially in growing. They have a lot of pot shops, but they serve a wide area.

There are no marijuana operations in NE Nevada; NV shops are in Reno and Vegas, seldom elsewhere. It’s best to leave NV alone as they seem to know what they are doing.

Who would’ve thought that Utahns would be voting on a medical marijuana bill this fall? And polling suggests it will pass, despite opposition from government, law enforcement, and the church. The bill itself is state-of-the-art medical marijuana laws reflecting a lot of experience. As you’d expect, it’s strict, but workable. It’s odd to listen and read the debate going on in Utah, especially how the church gets involved.

Colorado invented “local control” which allows other jurisdictions to prohibit any marijuana activity. It’s state-legal to use and possess, but not grow or sell in prohibition areas. Grand Junction where I am now does not allow anything. Most legal states will open some stores next to the border of a prohibition state, which is always a lucrative move. But I believed the closest pot shop to Utah on I-70 was in Parachute, a ways up the mountains from here.

Without ever hearing of Palisade until I parked here, I found that there is a shop in Palisade. In fact, another one is setting up shop next to the rv park where I am. I’ll be checking this out tomorrow.