Before the recent years of cannabis legalization in this state, I was deathly afraid of people finding out that I used weed.
There was still a heavy stigma associated with marijuana consumption, especially in places of employment.
I remember asking a friend of mine for some of his urine to pass a drug test in late 2014 when I accepted a job offer at a newspaper where I’d been employed as a contract employee for several years at that point. It was a daunting experience and I was scared to death that I was going to get caught with that extra vial of urine inside my pants. Thankfully nothing bad happened and I was able to get through with no incident. Things have changed so much in my state since we legalized cannabis for medical use back in 2016. I never noticed the smell of cannabis in parking lots anymore than I remember smelling it on peoples’ clothing inside actual stores. But now that it has been six years since we unveiled legal medical cannabis in this state, I’m smelling a strong aroma of marijuana on people in all sorts of settings. While it is usually while I’m grocery shopping at a local store, that’s not always the case. Someone at work walked in the other day smelling like they had smoked a blunt on their way to the office. I’m surprised they didn’t get outed by people around them and sent home for using unapproved drugs. As much as I love medical marijuana as much as the next person, I wouldn’t risk getting in trouble smoking weed on the way to work when I could smell like a hippy bus in the process.