Public toking

I read with great interest the letter in the January 3, issue (“Kids and pot,” SN&R The 420) about smoking pot in public. I don’t smoke anything.

We have a neighbor that smokes pot from time to time. When I arrive home from work at 11 p.m. and can smell pot out front, I know I am in trouble. The smell makes me sick. I have to close all the windows in my house and turn on the fan to remove the smell. This makes me a prisoner in my own home. Pot smoking in public (as the letter writer does) is rude and insensitive. If he wants to smoke in his house, apartment or wherever with the windows closed and stink up his space, I have no problem with that. If a business wants to allow pot smoking inside its space, go for it. Just make sure there is a sign out front indicating that pot smoking occurs inside, so I can avoid going in. If we want to establish outdoor spaces for pot smoking, go for it. Just make sure there is a sign some distance away to let people like me avoid the area. After all, if cigarette smoking can only occur in certain places, why not pot smoking?

—Becky

Thank you for your words. Your comments make a lot of sense. Perhaps you could mention to your neighbor that their pot smoke is hella loud, and ask if there was some way to minimize the smell. Maybe you could just hand him a cardboard tube (like the kind used to hold paper towels) filled with dryer sheets. He can exhale his smoke into the tube, and that should cut down on the smell. And, as an added bonus, the hallway will smell like fresh laundry.

I would love for there to be some sort of cannabis social club where people could sit around and use weed and socialize. A 420-friendly movie theater would be even cooler. As it stands now, it is virtually impossible to get a business license for a cannabis-friendly nightclub in California, although I have some friends in Washington looking into creating one right now.

Under Proposition 215, medical-cannabis patients are allowed to use cannabis anywhere that tobacco smoking is allowed, except for inside an operational motor vehicle. This means that patients are allowed to smoke while walking down the street, or even in the smoking section at bars and nightclubs, although many places that serve alcohol don’t allow cannabis use.

IMHO, the odor of cannabis is one of those “no big deal to me, huge deal to you” problems. While there are already some unofficial places where cannabis use is no big deal (the “weed ramp” at the Oakland Coliseum is one such spot. Any point in a 10-foot radius from where I am standing is another), should decisions about where people can use cannabis be left to lawmakers, or can we use our own common sense so as not to scare the squares?