Legal weed comes to Ohio

Photo by Ndispensable on Unsplash

I live in Ohio, where Robert Anton Wilson also once lived. I live in the Cleveland area; RAW lived in or near Yellow Springs, a community near Dayton. His former Ohio home is mentioned in Illuminatus!; the character Simon Moon, for example, is a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs. 

Wilson died in 2007,  and so he has missed the ongoing revolution in legalizing cannabis in the U.S., which began in 2012. (I mean legalization for any adult who wanted to legally buy it,  not just medical marijuana users.) The first two states to approve legalization were Colorado and Washington,  in 2012, and other states have followed, including, as far as I can tell, all of the states where Wilson once lived. While there are still holdouts, particularly in the south and midwest, 24 states have legalized marijuana and most of the population now lives in a legal marijuana state. Unless you live in the Deep South,  i.e. the former Confederacy, most people can at least drive to a legal state. (Many states in the South where marijuana sales are illegal, such as Texas, allow Delta 8 THC sales). 

Legalization finally came to Ohio last year; it was blocked by Ohio's Republican controlled legislature, but approved by voters in fall 2023. Recreational sales in dispensaries began Tuesday, August 6, 2024. I linked to one of my articles about it yesterday.

Of course, I could not help thinking about Wilson, and all that he had to say about the "war on some drugs" and I wished I could know what he thought about recent developments.

There are no dispensaries within a few minutes of where I live, but yesterday I drove to a dispensary in Elyria and made my first Ohio purchase. I brought a small package of flower home. I was curious where in Ohio it was grown. (Because weed remains illegal nationally, in spite of the fact that Democrats who control the White House and Senate supposedly favor legalization, at least until they have to actually do something about it,  marijuana must be grown in the same state where it is sold.) 

I could not find a location on my flower package, but it said it was from Cresco Labs. So I looked on the Cresco Labs website, and what do you know? The Cresco Labs facility for cultivation and processing is in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It's a synchronicity that amuses me.