A year of anything is more than enough time to develop trends, and medical cannabis in Oklahoma is no exception! I’ve had some interesting experiences involving marijuana in the last year, and I‘m positive I’m not alone.
Here’s a fun list of five things that have probably happened to you — good and bad — since 788 passed:
1. Going to a new shop…only to discover you’ve been there before.
This has happened to me way more times than I’d like to admit. Oklahoma has an absurd number of dispensaries and not enough creative people naming those dispensaries. More than once have I found myself driving to a location thinking I’m about to cash in on a sweet first-timer discount, only to walk in experiencing a suspicious sense of deja vu — right up to the moment the person at the check-in counter recognizes you from the last visit.
You better buy something while you’re there; as your lack of memory can attest, they probably have good stuff!
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2. Being accosted by strangers looking for weed in the dispensary parking lot.
This has been an unfortunate side-effect of medical cannabis in Oklahoma, and I can’t be the only person it’s happened to.
You’re leaving a dispensary — maybe it’s the one with the killer deals on the street you might be killed on — and on the way to your car, in your distracted post-cannabis acquisition glow, you hear someone whisper, “Hey man,” from the cracked window of a car that looks like it’s being held together with duct tape and bad intentions. Then they ask if you will go back into the dispensary you just left, to make an additional purchase for this complete stranger. The best part of this situation is always the proposed remuneration in the amount of a Hot-N-Ready pizza from Little Caesar’s.
Don’t do it. Keep walking. Pro tip: Leave the dispensary with a Boomer-sized pair of headphones, so you have a valid excuse not to engage.
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3. Getting surprised with free stuff!
I never thought anything in my adult life could possibly make me feel as giddy as a child on Christmas morning. However….going to a dispensary to stock up for the week and having the budtender slide you a free pre-roll with your purchase comes damn close! It’s just like Christmas, except this tree smells way different, and…oh, man…you ate all Santa’s cookies. You actually ate the dough; your high ass couldn’t wait. Oh no! That free joint was a sativa, and now you are paranoid that eating raw dough is gonna kill you! It probably won’t. Isn’t cannabis fun!
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4. Dealing with that goddamn mooch friend.
A lot of us, at this point, have had “the talk” with that friend, who instead of getting a medical marijuana card like everyone else just assumes all his friends will become his dealers.
I’ve seen people deal with this in several ways. Some just give in — accepting their roles as the world’s worst drug dealers (by gaining nothing and taking ALL the risk). Or you can do what I did, and just be okay with having less friends!
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5. Having a run-in with a cop that made you question what the hell you smoked.
This experience may be more rare than the others, so I saved it for last. But it needs to be shared! Surely I can’t be the only one! I recently had the opportunity to be a host at this year’s Linde Octoberfest here in Tulsa. I wasn’t sure about the event’s cannabis policies, and it was weirdly hard to find that information, so I decided to risk it all and light right up.
Almost immediately, I see a cop rapidly approaching me, with a gravely urgent look on his face. As a brown guy who was actively smoking cannabis at a public event, I immediately got ready to have a really bad night.
To my surprise, he said with rapid-fire urgency, “You’re wearing a volunteer shirt…can you tell me where the bathrooms are?!” As I stood there, joint in hand, jaw on floor and pungent trail of smoke floating above my head, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I also couldn’t tell him where the bathroom was — I was just there to yell at people in between bands and apparently smoke cannabis freely in public.
Can we just take a moment to let that sink in?
Viva Oklahoma!
