Ettinger: Questions From a Soon To Be First-Time Marijuana User

The General Assembly didn’t quite answer everything when they legalized marijuana. Eve Ettinger has some questions.

BLACKSBURG-As of July 1, marijuana possession will be legal in Virginia, and all the stoners in my life are extremely excited to introduce me to weed. I and some fellow cannabis virgins are planning an elaborate day of education and consumption. I have no idea what I’m getting into here!

The law says that an individual will be able to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and up to four plants. This is confusing to me, because last I checked, a full grown herb plant (I’m thinking rosemary here, for example) is much heavier than one ounce, and I think weed plants can get fairly big? I don’t know. I’ve never seen one in my life. Whatever! I’m just pumped to try it for the first time. 

How Much Marijuana Do I Need?

Is one ounce enough weed to get high? I hear that sometimes your first time smoking (that’s how you do it, right?) doesn’t work, like you don’t get high right away? In that case, should I have several people over (vaccinated, obviously) with one ounce per person and just pool our resources so I can make sure I have a chance of getting high when I try it for the first time on July 1, 2021? Just to be safe?

Also, I hear marijuana can make you anxious. I’m already a pretty anxious person, so I need to try both a stevia and an indigo strain to figure out which kind works for me. I don’t want to spend a day thinking that the world is closing in on me–we just spent a whole year with me feeling like that every day! No more. I just want to relax, finally.

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Will The Deer Eat My Marijuana Plants?

If I want to grow my own marijuana, how do I find seeds? Do I just buy the really cheap weed and sort through it looking for seeds or is there a better way to get these started? It’s time to start prepping the garden beds for the year and I just want to be prepared. Will the deer eat my plants? Maybe I should grow them indoors. It’ll be mid-July by the time they sprout, anyway. How many joints can I make with the harvest from four cannabis plants? 500? How long do the plants have to grow before I can smoke them?

Another thought: Virginia has a long history of allowing smoking indoors at certain establishments. Is this going to include smoking cannabis? When I go to Salsa Night at the dive bar with a smoking section, I need to know if we’re hot boxing that place in both senses of the word or just the usual one. I might want to pregame, and don’t want to overdo it at Salsa Night. 

Do You Exhale on Pass?

When they say “puff puff pass” in the movies, I’m never sure if this is supposed to be how you smoke the actual joint or how you share it with the group. Are you supposed to exhale on “pass”? Also, what happens when you mix weed and alcohol? I just realized I don’t know how they might interact! I probably should not combine them on July 1, the inaugural day of my weed-consuming experiences in this life. 

Also, the kids these days are doing something called daps, I think, with cannabis concentrate. Should I try that on my first time? It sounds like it’s a little like smoking hookah, which I usually love after a couple drinks. Again, I really just don’t know what I’m getting into here and want to educate myself before I try weed for the very, very first time on July 1, 2021!