[caption id="attachment_5846" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Marijuana and pipe - wikimedia commons"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - While medical marijuana laws are expanding across the country, what about the tools for serving up pot and the issues involved in regulation of them?
10 states have pending legislation to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, however these states will likely face the same quandary that the states of the West have found, and some of those issues are related to the making of devices for ingesting the drug.
While some folks put marijuana in cookies, others use pipes for the purpose of using the drug. Some of these are of the ornamental types, as are sold on the streets in some cities like Portland. Here the police might check what is happening in the sales of paraphernalia in some areas of the town, but the fine line of control is reflected in how drug tool dispensers congregate and how police interact with the peddlers of pipes when they see them selling their wares in public places.
Portland has so liberalized its pot displays and its leadership role in the movement towards legalizing pot for private recreation use, that it has cafes where people congregate and eat their little cakes laced with the good stuff or smoke a joint or two and commiserate. That’s one type of public place that people seem to promote, although authorities are clamping down on them as more of them spring up, as they have recently along the Oregon Coast. But out on the streets the questions arise about what one can sell and how one deals with peripheral tools and activities similarly that can cause significant debate.
If marijuana is legal for medical uses, than proponents of pipes and other paraphernalia declare the tools for using it should not be questioned. But the fine lines are drawn frequently enough for the makers of these tools to be circumspect, as some of these advocates and creative folks have mentioned to this reporter when the topic of pot in Portland is discussed.
The concerns about drug paraphernalia has led to some jurisdictions actually outlawing it, such as Spokane, Washington did in 2008.
So as the states move to legalize marijuana, questions still remain. Where can people smoke the stuff, grow it legally and what are the parameters of selling paraphernalia in a world where change has come to taking pot as medicine but where questions continue over whether the tools used for it actually promote recreational use, which is against the law.
