In the spirit of the holidays, I will be out and about this weekend trying to sell as many copies of Fresh Squeezed as I can to the unsuspecting public. I will be ensconced in the Winslow Mall on sunny – no, really – Bainbridge Island for the Art Walk on Friday evening, and then again Saturday and Sunday midday. Follow the signs for the Indie Banditas. And if you’re wondering why I, who would be more a bandito had I taken up that lifestyle, should be included in a group of banditas, well, get in line. I haven’t got a clue, but hopefully the experience will, at least, be blogworthy.

Yesterday, December 6, 2012, was a day of some note here in the Evergreen State because now, in the only state in the Union (until Colorado’s law kicks in), you can walk around with a baggy full of reefer and not get arrested. On November 6, the voters of those states, in a brief moment of clarity, decided that their tax dollars would be better spent having the government worry about potholes instead of potheads. Now, possession of up to an ounce of the noble weed is perfectly alright. It’s not decriminalized, that kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, with which law enforcement has treated people having a casual affair with Mary Jane since the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, but actually legal.

So the next time you’re approached by a Seattle police officer with: “Hey, what’s that in your pocket?”

You can reply: “It’s a Snickers bar.”

And when you get back: “Not that pocket.”

You can safely state: “It’s just a dime bag of Michoacán. Wanna burn one?”

“No, thanks.” The officer will inform you. “You have a nice day.”

However, while pot will be legal to possess, it will still be illegal to buyuntil two things happen. First, the state needs to put into effect a regulatory structure controlling wholesale and retail distribution. And, second, they’ve got to come to some kind of laissez faire understanding with the Feds, who will still toss your sorry ass into the slammer. Until that happens, you may want to avoid sparking your fatty out in front of the District Courthouse. But, given that the federal government is broke and spending what little remaining harassment resources it has trying to get the quasi medical-marijuana industry of California to at least pretend that it’s providing a serious pharmaceutical service, the hope in Colorado and Washington is that the feds will just throw up their hands and go “whatever.”

I was actually kind of surprised that the recreational use law was passed. I mean, it’s fine with me for you to ingest whatever psychoactive alkaloid you want, as long as I don’t have to breathe your second-hand stupid while you stumble down the street bouncing off of No Parking signs wondering why the same government that would legalize drugs would even think to put a stout, metal pole somewhere where you could bonk your head on it. I mean keep it at home people, would you? But these same pole-bonkers were the people to whom the recreational marijuana proponents turned when they needed some support.

For a while, like the almost-two years I’ve lived here, it was impossible to walk fifty feet in downtown Seattle without being accosted by a stoner carrying a poster and a sign-up sheet begging you to stop the madness. These were people who, by-and-large, obviously thought that Goodwill was way too upmarket a clothier for their sartorial needs, and were best come upon from upwind. For my part, I was honestly able to claim that I wasn’t a Washington resident (at the time), and could pass them by with a clear conscience.

Did the law-crafters get Retired Drug Czars to talk about the waste of the drug laws on the street corners? No. Did they get Upstanding Citizens to inform you that the War on Drugs was killing more people than would ever die from drug use? Nope. Did they even call upon Spiritual Leaders to sermonize on the reality that drugs were here to stay and let’s try not being insane about this for a change? Nah.

What they did was enlist freaking legions of the very people that every scrap of anti-drug propaganda since Reefer Madness warned us we’d all turn into if even one joint were smoked. Ever. And set them upon an unsuspecting public.

Makes you wonder where they all came from, huh?

And yet the law passed, and passed easily. Sure, it had the backing of most Chiefs of Police in the state. Passage was urged by a former top-cop at the DEA. And, I think that most people were so tired of being bugged by the druggies that they just said: “If I vote for this will you leave me alone?” But the main thing that got the law passed was money. Lots and lots of money.

Because legal pot is taxable pot. The passed tax structure is so heavy that if liquor were taxed as much, nobody would drink. Every step of the way, like a value added tax, a marijuana transaction will be taxed at twenty-five percent. Grower to distributor: 25%. Distributor to retailer: 25%. Retailer to you (well, not really you because you’d never do anything like that): 25%. When you figure in the cost increase at each step, the state coffers will rake in more money than anybody else in the ganja ecosystem. Well, except for maybe Hostess Bakers had they not gone belly-up.

It was not, however, all fun and games getting the law passed. There was some serious opposition and most of it came from…wait for it…

The Medical Marijuana Lobby.

Seems that the medicinal cooperatives were unanimously opposed to marijuana being legalized for recreational use. You might think that this was because they felt it would cut into their being able to supply a safe, quality product to sick people who benefit from the therapeutic effects of THC. But you’d be wrong. Or you might cynically think – as did I – that the increased competition would drive people by the bus load to cheaper recreational spliffs and the medicinal bottom line would suffer. Again, you’d be incorrect. Instead, their actual argument was that the law shouldn’t be passed because it stipulates that a blood-THC level be established so that it can be determined when people are too stoned to drive.

The reasoning sounded like something straight out of Reefer Madness: since THC hangs around in your blood for weeks, instead of hours as does alcohol, then it might be possible to have torched that medicinal blunt some weeks ago and even though you have convinced yourself that, by now, you are no longer high (as well as that you sing better stoned); in the eyes of the law, you are still too loaded to operate any machinery more complex than a small box of Legos.

Which may explain a lot about Seattle drivers.

Even with this opposition, the law passed and the experiment of legal dope in Washington State has begun.

Some of you may pensively consider that if you were trying to make a go of a micro-farm and looking for a pretty darn effective cash crop to sow out in the south forty (square yards), that a couple of rows of indica might be just the ticket to keep things going; at least until the chickens start taking the whole egg-laying thing seriously. But upon my own research, I discovered that Cannabisis no longer even a plant, but a high-tech photosynthetic mechanism which would collapse and implode upon exposure to the fresh air and sunshine – no, really – of the micro-farm. Nowadays, pot is cultivated indoors, with vast arrays of digitally controlled grow-lights, moisture and nutrition sensors, fans, hyperbaric CO2 environments, and other equipment more typically found on the International Space Station as opposed to in a garden shed. It turns out that modern dank no longer even produces seed, instead the plants are reproduced by cloning. It seemed a lot of work and investment for something that has become a mere commodity.

When medical marijuana became legal in California one of the first things that happened was that all the bootleg growers, because they were already set up, quickly became legal growers. The abhorrent vacuum thus created was quickly filled by other illegal growers creating a job boom of major proportions in a time when all other employment opportunities were falling to historically low levels. It was like a land rush. All across the Golden State, redundant, high-tech code-slingers converted their basements into high-output growing chambers and started producing pot in record amounts.

And, as with all commodities, pot prices dropped faster than a stoner bonking a sign post.

It has gotten so bad that there might even be a mini, pot-fueled recession taking hold in some parts of northern California. The curse of cheap chronic.

All in all, switching over to pot farming doesn’t seem like a good idea. At least until the smoke clears, so to speak.

It did get me thinking, however, about other small-time, high profit ventures that the micro-farm could support. And, as I was thinking, I heard a small bubbling noise; a bottle of cider was announcing its continuing fermentation.

Well, that’s a thought but it’s an awful lot of work to make cider.

Another bubble and the light went on. I got to work online.

Ahhhhh… I thought. There may not be much money in pot, or even cider, but look at what these Bainbridge Island guys are charging for wine.