Midwestern Parents Become Late-Life Pot Moguls
Pot is so much more valuable to this country as a legal item than an item to cage people for in the Drug War -- the war that jails this country's adult citizens for growing and selling to other consenting adult citizens and for voluntarily using plant or pharmaceutical matter in some form.

From New York Magazine, "Anonymous" tells the story of his or her midwestern parents' move to Oregon and their getting medical marijuana use cards -- and becoming boutique, high-end pot sellers in the process:

In order to become part of the OMMP system, a doctor must approve an application that states what one's ailments are and that medical marijuana actually can help. The card costs $200 and has to be renewed each year. Patients can have other people grow for them, and that's what the family is doing at the farm. Everyone has a legal card, and my sister and her boyfriend are registered growers. At any one time, a patient can possess up to 24 ounces of usable marijuana. But -- here's the key part -- a patient can also sell their excess to a dispensary. That's the loophole my parents use to sell their product.

It's not difficult for them to find buyers. My family's pot has tested off the charts with OMMP dispensaries. Part of the medical-marijuana testing process involves a detailed culture test that identifies mold colonies on the actual marijuana -- the lower the number, the purer the pot. Growers are allowed 10,000 colonies per gram. My parents' stuff clocks in at around 2,300. One batch came in at a mere 300. Through chromatography testing, the levels of THC (the compound that actually makes marijuana potent) are about as high as you can get for weed that's grown outside of a lab.

The quality means that, in three short years, my family's product has become a boutique item, highly sought after by discerning customers. It is also, unfortunately, sought after by less savory characters. Especially when starting out, the realities of Oregon marijuana culture practically compel some association with the black market. But that doesn't make it any less strange to hear my mom talk about a guy named Lil Jake running off to Vegas with a stash he was supposed to sell, or to listen to my dad tell me about the afternoon a bald man arrived for a pickup, refused to say a single word throughout the entire transaction, and instead just stared around menacingly before leaving. (An ex-Marine friend will now guard the property during the busy season -- another disconcerting detail I never thought I'd hear at the dinner table.)

But even with a guard, and people like Lil Jake, my parents' life bears a limited resemblance to Walter White's. My mom still goes to the grocery store each day, they're more or less on the right side of the law, and in a weird way it's nice to see my whole family working together. Trips to see them are also a lot more interesting than they would be if my parents had retired in Florida.