Oklahoma, it’s been a weird and beautiful ride — occasionally with a decided emphasis on the weird! Join me, your friendly neighborhood cannabis writer dude, as I reflect on the five strangest tales from our first year of medical marijuana.
Oklahoma’s very own Fyre Festival: 2019 Cannabis Cup
When I heard High Times Cannabis Cup was coming to Oklahoma in our first year having medical marijuana, I was immediately suspicious. Then codes for free tickets flooded the internet and all my dumb friends suddenly had 20 tickets each — convinced they would score a scalper’s profit! News flash: They didn’t.
Thankfully, a fellow Happy Ogle writer took the shot for us and dove headfirst into the dangerous, leaf-blower-produced, stale marijuana haze that was the shitshow of Oklahoma’s first Cannabis Cup. He did a masterful job recounting the paranoid sativa nightmare attendees faced during the three- to four-hour wait to get in:
“…countless hustlers in line, scamming people out of hundreds of dollars; ambulances rescuing multitudes of individuals who had succumb to heat exhaustion or worse; and more rebel flag tattoos than I would expect to see at the damn rodeo.”
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Our even more strange relationship with Texas
Oklahoma’s relationship with The Lone Star State has always been tenuous at best. While competitiveness and a certain level of shit-talk may not be uncommon between neighboring states, the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas can be particularly passionate. Remember that time a Sooner fan dubbed the ‘Scrotal Assassin’ ripped off the nuts of a Longhorn fan at Henry Hudson’s?
Texas loves to hate us back…like earlier this year, when a bat-shit crazy family values conservative took to the editorial pages of The Oklahoman with a hissy fit about medical marijuana billboard advertising. We suspect a deeply rooted fear that Oklahoma’s toe-dip into progressive policy might put Texans at risk of catching the gay, dancing with the devil or something equally offensive and absurd.
This public outcry was a hilarious contrast to the actual behavior of Texans, who have demonstrated just how much they love to come to Oklahoma and buy our weed.
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The health department’s scheming ‘pretty lady lawyer’
Once upon a time, there was Department of Health lawyer named Julie Ezell, who concocted a hair-brained scheme to thwart implementation of 788.
This self-proclaimed ‘pretty lady lawyer’ emailed herself anonymous threats — purportedly from extremist medical marijuana proponents — to sway the health board‘s judgment regarding the rules of 788.
There were also bribery allegations: Ezell was reportedly offered a big-bucks job with the Oklahoma Pharmacy Board in return for pressuring the state health board to pass a law requiring a pharmacist at every dispensary — which would have effectively changed medical marijuana as we know it. It’s precisely the kind of dirty politics and intrigue we have come to expect from public servants in Oklahoma.
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Four weird games of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey…except the tail is a car, the donkey is a dispensary storefront and the players are criminals
Oklahoma is now home to an absurd number of dispensaries — approximately 1,500. So really, the fact that only four of those 1,500ish dispensaries have been crashed into by morons with access to vehicles is really not too bad. Go us!
On at least three occasions in Tulsa, criminals thought the most efficient way to illegally gain entry to High-Class Cannabis, Lovelight Cannabis Co., and The Dankery dispensaries was to run an entire vehicle through the front of the buildings. I guess they weren’t wrong…
The third lady was just driving under the influence...she could have just as easily crashed that BMW into a Subway. There are so many places selling weed now that if you run your car into a storefront in Oklahoma, odds are it will be a dispensary.
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How we’re almost #1 in a national category that isn’t incarcerations or obesity
On November 1st the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority tweeted they have now approved a total of 209,730 medical marijuana patient applications! This means nearly 5% of Oklahomans have medical marijuana cards. That has essentially — overnight — made us the top medical marijuana market in the country.
Via Tulsa World:
“When Oklahomans voted one year ago in favor of State Question 788, officials thought about 80,000 patients, or about 2% of the state’s estimated population, would register in the first year of a legal medical marijuana program.”
Who says stoners aren’t overachievers!
