The Feds finally hint that weed is not evil.

Michael Stusser’s column appears weekly on HigherGroundtv.com as well as the Seattle Weekly and other newspapers around the country.

Many of us seek an elevated state of mind. Our jobs stress us out, our relationships are challenging, world news is depressing, and we just want something to take the edge off. A glass of wine. A Valium. Or, in my case, a few hits of this funny weed called cannabis. I’m not apologizing; I’m overjoyed. Shockingly, the citizens of my fair state voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use, and, in addition to the massive tax revenue it’s generating for our political pinheads to spend wildly, it’s giving the rest of us yet another way to ease the pain—and occasionally burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

The prohibition on marijuana will come to an end. That’s a fact. While Washington is ahead of the curve, nationally a majority of our citizens support legalization of both recreational (54 percent) and medicinal (78 percent) marijuana. The real question will be what side you were on when the pot leaves came tumbling down. As with civil rights, gay marriage, and gun control, there are resistant, plodding, dimwitted late adopters who will oppose legalization just as the Temperance Movement (know as “drys” in their time) did while propping up the 18th Amendment. I try and be nice to these modern teetotaling crusaders. Maybe they just need a hug. Or a push. Or a puff.

Wonderful things are happening in the world of legal kush. Cartels are losing money and splitting town, domestic violence and teen drug rates are plummeting in legal states, and in places like New York that have decriminalized cannabis, arrests are down 75 percent. Best of all, as I write this, I am stoned to the bejesus on legal herb.

And while it’s great that Washington got the ball rolling with Initiative 502, our weed laws have serious deficiencies. Unlike the other four jurisdictions that legalized ganja—Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia—our stupid-ass statute doesn’t allow citizens to grow their own. While you and I may not want to devote our entire basements to grow lights and stinky Mary Jane plants, if we’re going to legalize an herb, we might as well allow citizens to be poticulturists. (DIY home brews got nuthin’ on the ganja-thumbs!)

Initiative 502 also did not address the medical-marijuana system that has been in place since passage of the Medical Use of Marijuana initiative in 1998. The resulting unregulated collection of dispensaries and collective gardens not only helped thousands of citizens cope with a wide variety of ailments, but opened the door to fly-by-night operators who don’t card, don’t pay taxes, and don’t look any different than the black market we’re attempting to snuff out.

Hearings intended clean up this Wild Weedy West are underway in our dysfunctional state legislature, with proposals ranging from the ridiculous (Sen. Ann Rivers originally wanted to eliminate smokeable pot) to the moderate (Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells envisions a single tax structure, home grows for all, and allowing well-established, rule-abiding dispensaries to get licenses). It’s looking as though the medical market will be folded into the recreational system (read: screwed), and patients may not only have to join a mandatory registry (I can see the NSA drooling now), but pay taxes on their meds.

In addition to addressing these ongoing issues, this column will ponder what it means to be high. It will explore the ways people are getting high (Weed-of-the-Month Club!), making money on people getting high (Marley Natural), and using cannabis for medicinal purposes, as well as an occasional rant about how hundreds of thousands of (mostly African-) American citizens are still being arrested every year for marijuana-related offenses. In short, I hope to elevate the dialogue on the legalization movement.

Let’s start with the latest on the weed watch.

• Last week the new Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said that for certain medical conditions, marijuana may be helpful. The reason this is noteworthy is that marijuana’s therapeutic properties are news to the federal government, which still believes cannabis has zero medicinal value, listing it as a Schedule 1 narcotic along with meth and LSD.

• Washington got its first pot vending machine! Located in the Seattle Caregivers medical dispensary, the ZaZZZ machine contains edibles as well as bags of weed (but no Doritos). The high-tech contraption scans not only your medical-marijuana card (the automats are not yet in recreational stores), but also your driver’s license, then cross-checks the data with the biometrics from the machine’s camera. According to ZaZZZ’s maker, American Green, they’ll soon add security that will require customers to provide fingerprints or retinal scans, and track all purchases. Intrusive databases and speedy, anonymous, machine-distributed weed? Yeah, that’s not gonna set off any pothead paranoia alarms.

But what does the ZaZZZ portend? I worry that as we move from bud-tenders selling organic flowers to machines spitting out disposable vape pens, THC-infused energy drinks, and GummyBear edibles, the more this new era will look like fast food, Big Pharma, and cigarette machines of old.

The judicial branch weighs in on employee marijuana rights, drug doggies, and more.

Sooner or later, everything winds up in court. You spilled a scalding cup of java on your nads at the McDonald’s drive-through; the insurance company refuses to pay for “water damage”; you’re tired of arsenic in the drinking water; ya feel like suing Costco . . . just because. And now that cannabis is entering the mainstream, it’s time to lawyer up, in this week’s legal round-up.

Legal Weed, But Not if You Have a Job
Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled last week that, regardless of the state’s legalization of marijuana, an employer can fire a worker who uses cannabis, even for medical reasons. The case couldn’t have had a more sympathetic poster boy: Brandon Coats, a 34-year-old quadriplegic, was a model employee, but was fired by Dish Network in 2010 after failing a random company drug test. (As if we needed another reason to hate television service providers.) Medical pot has been legal in Colorado since 2000, and Coats had a doctor’s authorization. He never smoked weed at work—nor was he ever under the influence during the day; he used cannabis in the evenings to help with sleep, muscle spasms, and stiffness. Even Dish doesn’t dispute this assertion. Nevertheless, a failed drug test won’t fly in the Zero Tolerance zone, and so, even though his home use was legal and off-duty, the company used their drug policy to terminate Coats.

While both medical and recreational marijuana are legal in Colorado, the court agreed unanimously (6-0) with the satellite television company, stating that laws that protect employees from being fired for “lawful activities” hold water only when those activities are legal under bothstate and federal law. Dish officials said they were as pleased as (non-alcoholic) punch with the decision: “As a national employer, Dish remains committed to a drug-free workplace and compliance with federal law.” Obviously, this ruling may waft over to Washington, which, like Colorado, has legalized recreational cannabis and is one of the 23 medical-MJ states. There’s only one solution to all this nonsense: Legalize cannabis at the federal level.

Good Doggy!
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the police to hold suspects at traffic stops without probable cause. That’s good news for folks with trunkloads full of contraband; cops can’t keep you waiting until the drug-sniffing dogs show up. (In Washington, of course, you’re allowed to drive around with up to an ounce of weed in your vehicle, though it’s probably not a great idea.) In the 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that holding a vehicle for even a few minutes violates the Constitution’s unreasonable-seizure shield. Everyone’s favorite justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote in her opinion: “Police may not prolong detention of a car and driver beyond the time reasonably required to address the traffic violation.”

As noted in my cover story (“Fear & Loathing in Legal Territory,” Feb. 4, 2015), drug-sniffing canines here in Washington are being retrained for other tasks, as the smell of ganja is no longer a reason for suspicion.

Blazing on the Front Porch
While I am not a lawyer by training, I have seen several episodes of Boston Legal (big fan of Bill Shatner’s over-the-top performances), and thus can conjecture. That may not be the correct term. Point is, I can extrapolate. So when I read about the Iowa Supreme Court affirming the right of a gal to be shitfaced drunk on her own porch, I’m seeing a green light for cannabis. In 2013, Patience Paye called the cops on her boyfriend. When officers showed up to investigate for domestic violence, they determined she was the aggressor, asked if she’d been drinking (she had indeed, with over three times the legal limit in her blood), and charged her with public intoxication. Paye’s lawyers appealed her conviction, making a case that her front steps weren’t public at all, and that she should never have been arrested. Patience was patient, and the Supreme Court saw her point, ruling last week that the porch of a private home isn’t considered public, so long as the resident hasn’t invited the general public to be there. It just follows, then, that if ya don’t invite the masses to smoke a fatty on your stoop, ya can’t be charged with public stonification. That’s just logical, man.

Canna-Bar
To make sure that these legal lawsuits and challenges continue to advance the cause, we now have the National Cannabis Bar Association! The goal of the newly formed NCBA is to provide attorneys who are specializing in cannabis a place to get stoned and talk shop. Well, that, and to provide a networking platform to share ideas and strategies for a rapidly changing industry and complex political landscape.

“Attorneys have long been at the forefront of the fight for cannabis legalization,” said executive director Shabnam Malek. “Now that 23 states and Washington, D.C., have some form of legalized cannabis, there is a clear need for an organization focused on the business aspects of law and cannabis.”

The NCBA board comprises legal eagles from six states (including Seattle attorney Mitzi Vaughn of Greenbridge Corporate Counsel). The organization is open not only to practicing attorneys, but to paralegals, law students, and retired lawyers who just want to get their hands on some of the legal chronic. On the advice of legal counsel, we withdraw that last statement.

Calling out cannabis testing in sports.

Mixed-martial-arts superstar Ronda Rousey is obviously, pound for pound, the most kick-ass fighter in the world, and not to be messed with. She has also ignited a firestorm with her articulate and accurate attack on the idiocy of marijuana testing in her sport. “Rowdy” Rousey made her argument when her friend and training partner, Nick Diaz, was suspended for five years by the Nevada Athletic Association after testing positive for pot.

“I’m sorry, but it’s so not right for him to be suspended five years for marijuana,” Rousey said at a UFC press conference in Melbourne last week. “If one person tests for steroids, that could actually hurt a person, and the other person smokes a plant that makes him happy, and he gets suspended for five years. Whereas a guy who could hurt someone gets a slap on the wrist.”

To make matters worse, UFC fighter Diaz, a popular star in his prime, has a valid medical-marijuana card (from California) and stated he was using medical marijuana for ADHD as well as pain management (of which there is plenty in his brutal full-contact sport). In an absurd side note, Diaz was suspended after a match with the great Anderson Silva, who also failed a drug test—for steroid use. Silva’s punishment? One year. Diaz was suspended for five for having weed in his system—though to be fair, it was the third time in his career Diaz had tested positive for marijuana, making him perhaps not the sharpest tool in the UFC shed. For Diaz, 32, a five-year penalty is essentially a lifetime ban in a sport that takes its toll (and, in my opinion, should be outlawed, along with boxing, NASCAR, motocross, and tackle football).

The whole idea of drug-testing athletes is to see if they’re using substances that may give them a competitive advantage in their chosen sport. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that cannabis is hardly a performance-enhancing drug (at least until couch-surfing becomes an Olympic sport). Diaz has claimed to use cannabis to heal his body between matches. The World Anti-Doping Agency—one of the many institutions drug-testing MMA athletes—states in its rules that marijuana may not be used “during competition”—and thus it’s quite possible Diaz was not in violation, but still had THC in his system from previous use. (A small amount of marijuana is allowed in the urine samples WADA tests, but one of the three samples taken from Diaz the day of the fight had more THC than is considered acceptable.)

Plenty of athletes over the years have admitted to using marijuana, not as a PED but to relax and unwind—including the world’s greatest runner, Usain Bolt; NBA stars Chris Weber and Allen Iverson; beefcake Arnold Schwarzenegger; and swimming god Michael Phelps.

As in martial arts and boxing, NFL players do a lot of head-banging, and use ganja to manage pain, stress relief, depression, and even help repair neurological damage. And they also get suspended for it. In addition to the dozens of players who have been sent to substance-abuse programs for testing positive for pot, long suspensions were recently given to receivers Josh Gordon (Cleveland Browns) and Martavis Bryant (Pittsburgh Steelers) for firing up. Funny thing about the NFL: They have two separate drug policies—one for PEDs and another for recreational drugs.

Since Washington state legalized cannabis for recreational purposes, our Seattle Seahawks should be able to fire up for fun and not be fined (or suspended) for it, right? Sorry—the commish isn’t going for that. (Though a nonprofit called the Gridiron Cannabis Coalition is working to allow medical marijuana to treat ailments for NFL players.) Thing is, if ganja can give professional athletes relief—from joint pain, headaches and concussions, lack of sleep, soreness, and muscle inflammation—they should have it available. If nothing else, it will give these athletes much-needed liver relief after being prescribed a plethora of addictive and highly toxic painkillers and sleep aids by team doctors.

The only organization that seems to be getting it right on marijuana is the Olympics! The World Anti-Doping Agency (good Lord, does everyone use the same lab?) is responsible for drug-testing athletes who are training and participating in Olympic competitions all over the globe. While cannabis is on the agency’s list of prohibited substances (though not explicitly banned by the International Olympic Committee), they recently upped the allowable amount of THC in an athlete’s system from 15 ng/mL to 150—most likely because they didn’t like the idea of suspending 90 percent of their prime snowboarders and skiers.

The WADA lists various competitive advantages of each drug on their Prohibition List. For cannabis, these include “better focus” and “diminished stress.” Now that I think of it, this may be an advantage in synchronized swimming, dressage, canoe slalom, racewalking, trampoline, and whatever the hell a steeplechase is.

Rules on cannabis and sporting should obviously be changed, and, like full legalization, this will ultimately need to take place at the national level. Nick Diaz had a valid and legal (in California) use for medical marijuana, but ran into a state (and a Commission) that invalidated his legitimate needs. We’ll give the great Rowdy Ronda Rousey the last word on the subject: ”I’m against testing for weed at all. It’s not a performance enhancing drug. And it has nothing to do with competition. It’s only tested for political reasons,” said the champ. “I think we should free Nick Diaz.”