I smoked weed for the first time long before I’d had a sip of alcohol, at age 16. I was in Bulgaria with my parents for a wedding; the son of my parents’ friends had a joint, and what the hell, I tried it. Another time a friend in Southern California got some pot and we smoked it one afternoon after school.
Now, as I say this, I cannot emphasize enough what a giant nerd I was. I was not one of those cool kids that slugged cheap beer in the woods or whatever. On the same Bulgaria trip, when some other young people took me out dancing, I primly told them it was illegal for me to drink. Even my parents made fun of me about that. “Maybe you should start going to parties?” my mom gently prodded my last year of High school.
Anyway, the New York Times is freaking out because some enterprising teenagers figured out you can buy weed products at many bodegas and smoke shops, even as the (three) legal pot businesses prohibit selling to people under 21.
Not long ago, a mother in Westchester learned from her teenage son that he and his friends had gone to a nearby bodega and bought weed. She understood — they were kids, stifled and robbed by the pandemic of so many opportunities for indulging the secretive rituals of adolescence. Their parents only got through it all on Barolo and “The White Lotus.”
But it was deeply troubling to her that a store was selling weed to kids — New York State’s decriminalization statute makes it illegal to sell to anyone under 21 — so she embarked on an investigation. Predictably, when she confronted the bodega owners, they denied that they were distributing to anyone underage, so her next stop was a visit to the local police precinct, where she did not encounter the sense of urgency she had hoped for.
Lady, if they weren’t getting it from the bodegas, they’d be getting it from drug dealers. An added bonus here is one stop shopping when the munchies hit.
The article goes on the paint police indifference to the woman’s report as a kind of reverse Karen-ical comeuppance.
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