"Kiss my a--!" That was the phrase directed towards me at a City Council meeting on Nov. 20 by a pro-marijuana grow supporter. Normally I would try to be like a duck and just let the water run off my back. But that sentiment and those expressed by the majority of pro-grow supporters has left me searching for answers.

I had always lived by the motto that I could be part of the problem and sit on the sidelines or I could attempt to be a part of the solution by being a part of the process. I thought that I knew what I was getting into when I first ran for election nearly seven years ago. Never did I think I would have the aforementioned phrase thrown at me as a volunteer, unpaid city councilor.

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I ONCE WROTE a column about how cannabis growers shifted their operations indoors during the eight-year tenure of a senile president who acted in movies with a chimpanzee ["Indica Nation," Cannabuzz, Oct 8, 2014]. Ronald Reagan's fervent, jelly bean-fueled belief that people would stop enjoying cannabis simply because someone said "no" was paired with a full-scale assault on cannabis producers. People who had grown outside for years suddenly found helicopters manned by officers of the peace wielding semi-automatic weapons circling their properties. That served as incentive enough for outdoor growers to trade in their greenhouses for grow lights, HVAC systems, and high power bills.

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I was shocked to read Medford councilor Daniel Bunn referring to medical marijuana users as drug users and that "People are afraid of these people, and they should be."

My 73-year-old father uses marijuana-infused tincture to treat his tremors, and can now pour my mom tea without fear of scalding her. My uncle uses a different tincture to keep him alive during his chemotherapy treatment for cancer. My little niece in California uses another form to stop her daily seizures that were literally killing her. They are not drug users to be feared.

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NOW THAT ADULT-USE SALES are going strong, many of you will venture into a cannabis dispensary for the first time. Good for you! We are lucky to have a ton of well-run shops filled with fantastic flowers and knowledgeable staff. It's pretty dope. (See what I did there?) But there are varying levels of quality in all things, and that holds true for dispensaries and the people who staff them, too. So do your research before you go, or risk ending up with an experience like this-a composite of experiences I've had at several cannabis establishments:

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THOSE SEEKING to participate in Oregon's recreational (AKA adult-use) cannabis industry are feverishly preparing license applications for January 4, 2016. Meanwhile, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) on October 22 released rules for those who wish to grow, process, and sell adult-use cannabis in 2016: 78 pages of government-crafted regulations, covering a wide range of details, and-surprise-very few people are happy. (Note: Barring a late start by Phish, I've never seen so many weed smokers so grumpy. Can't any of the world-class growers in this state create an "OLCC Kush" to deal with the effects of working with this agency?)

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Don't Quit Your Day Job Just Yet

AN INTERESTING THING about living in a state with legal pot is the frequency with which I'm asked if I know of any job openings. So do I? Yes and no.

We're only a few months along on the rollout of Oregon's adult-use (AKA recreational pot) laws. We won't have recreational dispensaries until (best guess) sometime in the third or fourth quarter of 2016. That's when anyone 21 and older can buy concentrates, edibles, topicals, vape pens, pain patches, sodas, and tinctures. As of now, you're still limited to a quarter-ounce of flowers, seeds, and clones.

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Indoor growing operations for legal marijuana businesses are causing problems for Oregon's electrical grid, according to officials from an electrical-utility company.

Pacific Power said Wednesday that grow operations have taken grids above capacity, blowing out seven transformers since July and causing outages and equipment damage, reported The Statesman Journal.

The problems are a remnant of pot's black-market past, when substandard electrical work powered the lights at growing sites.

Portland General Electric has had similar problems, according to spokesman Steve Corson. He said anecdotal reports from PGE crews show about 10 percent of their transformer blowouts are from growing operations, with about 400 blowouts each year.

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MILWAUKIE (AP) - Marijuana stores will be prohibited from selling both recreational and medical marijuana and pot cannot be used on site under preliminary regulations approved Thursday by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

The more than 70 pages of rules will govern Oregon's retail marijuana system once it's fully operational next year. While marijuana stores began selling to adults 21 and older earlier this month, they are operating under temporary authority from the medical marijuana program. By 2017, companies producing or selling marijuana to the general population will have to abide by the OLCC's regulations for health, safety and security.

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Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer addressed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday about the legalization of marijuana in Oregon.

Blumenauer spoke in support of Oregon's marijuana businesses. He criticized the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration for "harassing" medical marijuana facilities.

"It's the latest example of how far out of touch the federal government's agencies are with the reality on the ground with the will of the majority of the American people who think that marijuana should be legal, and with the policies of the president himself," he said.

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So, maybe the Albany City Council didn't intend to talk about marijuana at its meeting Wednesday night after all.

That's OK. But it's becoming clear how the council should talk about marijuana when it finally returns to the issue in a work session scheduled for Nov. 2.

You might have followed some of the council's gyrations on the issue, which date back to the good old days, when all we were worried about was the location of the dispensaries allowed by state law to serve medical marijuana patients.

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ALFALFA - Michael Hughes could grow pot in his Bend backyard if he wanted to.

As long as they were out of view, he could grow the plants, cut and dry the flowers, smoke them and get high. But he can't grow hemp there. He bought a license to grow hemp, but a variety of factors has made it more difficult to grow hemp than marijuana and other crops in Oregon.

Hemp, a cannabis plant with virtually no psychoactive ingredients that traditionally was grown for its strong fibers and edible seeds and oils, has been legal in Oregon for six years.

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LAST WEEK, there was some surprising but welcome news: 6,000 non-violent "drug offenders" will be released from federal prison starting October 30. (Of those, one-third are not US citizens; their deportation hearings will begin immediately.) And that's just a drop in the prison mop bucket, as more than 2.3 million people are currently incarcerated in the US. An additional 40,000 prisoners could be eligible for release over the next five years.

I could write 10,000 words on how our drug sentencing system is wrong, racist, and a national disgrace. And, yes, that would be both a ton of fun to read and assuredly change things for the better-because I'm certain that officials from the US Justice Department read this column faithfully.

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States With Legal Marijuana Sales Have Seen Voters Make That Decision. .. and It's Certainly Starting to Feel Like Really Not That Big of a Deal.

PORTLAND, ORE. - What if we legalized marijuana and no one really cared?

That's the overwhelming feeling I get standing inside Zion Cannabis in downtown Portland as customers buy marijuana from the friendly staff five days after legalized marijuana legislation went into effect Oct. 1. No muss, no fuss. Oregon is the third American state to legalize recreational marijuana sales, following neighboring Washington, where legal pot debuted in the summer of 2014, and Colorado, where cannabis has been legal since Jan. 1, 2014. Hardly anyone is paying attention.

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The next development in Oregon's fascinating journey to legalized recreational marijuana likely will be dictated by the cold hard laws of business: The dispensaries which were set up to allow easier access to medical marijuana increasingly are under economic pressure.

By the time the Oregon Liquor Control Commission steps in to regulate recreational marijuana sales at the start of 2016, many dispensaries around the state may well be shuttered or in the midst of hard times. And the market for medical marijuana may well eventually be largely absorbed by the recreational market.

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The Oregon Health Authority, which manages the state's medical pot program, probably does not have data on numbers of plants at grow sites at the end of 2014. This surprised lawmakers, who passed a bill earlier this year allowing those grow sites to be grandfathered in with more plants than otherwise allowed.

SALEM - Oregon public health officials are running into difficulty implementing a law that legislators passed earlier this year to gain control over the largely unregulated medical marijuana supply chain and prevent drug traffickers from diverting pot into the black market in other states.

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The City of Chiloquin hosted two marijuana workshops. Neither work shop was opened to public comment.

The city has not recently conducted public hearings or taken public input. The question is how the Mayor or City Council can determine if city residents actually want marijuana sold in the city if the council refuses to listen to the pulse of the city? Klamath County and city of Klamath Falls rejected marijuana medical dispensaries or recreational pot use; this means that Chiloquin would be the "mecca" for pot consumption in Central Southern Oregon.

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I guess I will never understand the county commissioners decision to ban Klamath County from the legal cannabis industry.

I will never accept or forgive them for trying to single-handedly ruin and bankrupt my family.

For banning my store after we had been approved by the state and had been granted a license.

Why would any business want to suffer so hard trying to stay here?

Why would you want to take honest, hard-working citizens, who right now have legal protection given by the state, and knowingly turn them into criminals?

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When recreational sales of marijuana began this month, I was thinking about my dad. He's a major reason I became a state lawmaker and have been helping implement Oregon's new marijuana law.

During the 1980s recession, Oregon's natural resources sector tanked. My dad stopped taking a salary at our family's rock crushing business to help keep the company afloat. Mom warned that if the business closed, we might have to leave the Rogue Valley, where our family has lived for generations. As kids, my cousins and I rode down Main Street in Ashland's Fourth of July parade, perched on the edge of a truck from M.C. Lininger and Sons, tossing out packets of candy that looked like gravel. Our business was a source of income and pride for the whole family.

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Just read about NASA learning of running water on Mars. After reading the two letters (Mailbag, Sept. 29) by Keta Tom and John Collet about how good pot is for you, I realize who told them. Just one more name of an illegal alien and Trump's outer space wall will be a fact.

Just think, smoke pot and no more domestic violence. Get our judges to believe that and Linn County could shut down jail beds. Just sentence violators to smoke three dubies a day and no more problems. Murderers, five dubies a day and we are all safe. And then we also learned that soft drinks, alcohol, cigarettes and legal drugs kill more people than pot ever will. We spend billions of dollars to get rid of cigarette smoking and we have people who know nothing about the dangers of marijuana.

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Oregon's budding recreational marijuana industry estimated strong sales during the state's first week of legal retail sales.

In the first five days, it's estimated Oregon cannabis retailers sold more than $11 million of marijuana, according to Casey Houlihan, executive director of the Oregon Retailers of Cannabis Association.

Houlihan said the first day alone pulled in $3.5 million in sales.

Oregon sales easily outpaced the first week of sales in Colorado and Washington. Colorado's first week of sales reached $5 million. In Washinton state, sales during the first month hit $2 million.

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