Talking pot

There is marijuana in the land of Indiana.  

It is cultivated in the dark corners of closets and then hung upside down to dry. Growers trade it for currency in pounds, and middlemen buy it to redistribute in dime bags and eighths.

It may be an illegal activity, but that hasn’t stopped the young and old or the educated and the blue collar, who, in the privacy of their own homes, smoke pot and then continue on with their normal existence.  

This state may not yield the crop yard fields of California’s emerald triangle, but it does OK for an industry that no one talks about — which is a shame because it’s a discourse that the rest of the nation has begun.

But now there’s finally an Indiana state senator who is bringing the conversation to the Crossroads of America.

Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, is sponsoring a bill that would establish a study committee to examine Indiana’s marijuana laws. No one is betting that in a self-proclaimed conservative state like Indiana that immediate legislation will result, but at least it’s a start.

Tallian explains it as an avenue through which the state budget could be cut. She says that about 10,000 to 13,000 Hoosiers currently face legal action in relation to marijuana, of which 85 percent are cases of personal possession. The taxpayer money that the state spends processing these individuals could be better spent on infrastructure or education.

Perhaps what inspired someone in the Indiana state Congress to bring up discourse on pot was the state’s handling of the banning of synthetic forms of marijuana. K2, or Spice as it is known colloquially, was made illegal by inserting the name of the drug into the same language used to outlaw marijuana.

That is all fine and dandy until one considers the health consequences of Spice, which far outweigh those in users of marijuana. After all, Spice can result in a chemical dependency — a side effect not found in pot smokers.

So finally, maybe, the conversation of marijuana can enter the discourse of Indiana. It’s already on the dinner tables of a majority of Americans, who now support legalization, or at least decriminalization, of the drug that’s really not so bad to begin with.


E-mail: danfleis@indiana.edu