Pot shops ring in 2018, ring up first legal sales

OAKLAND, CALIF. » Customers lined up early to purchase recreational marijuana legally for the first time in California as the new year brought broad legalization some two decades after the state was the first to allow pot for medical use.

Jeff Deakin, 66, his wife Mary and their dog waited all night and were first in a line of 100 people when Harborside dispensary, a longtime medical pot shop in Oakland, opened at 6 a.m. and offered early customers joints for a penny and free T-shirts that read “Flower to the People — Cannabis for All.”

“It’s been so long since others and myself could walk into a place where you could feel safe and secure and be able to get something that was good without having to go to the back alley,” Deakin said. “This is kind of a big deal for everybody.”

The nation’s most populous state joins a growing list of other states, and the nation’s capital, where so-called recreational marijuana is permitted even though the federal government continues to classify pot as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.

California voters in 2016 made it legal for adults 21 and older to grow, possess and use limited quantities of marijuana, but it wasn’t legal to sell it for recreational purposes until Monday.

Finding a retail outlet to buy non-medical pot in California won’t be easy — at least initially. Only about 90 businesses

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Margot Simpson, right, and Diana Gladden wait in line to purchase marijuana at Harborside marijuana dispensary Monday in Oakland, Calif. Starting New Year’s Day, recreational marijuana can be sold legally in California.