I didn’t vote to legalize marijuana in Colorado, mostly because a cop I know explained why the seeming benefits (more taxes for schools, less business for cartels, less weight on the criminal justice system) were not going to work the way everyone expected. I don’t have a problem with people smoking pot if they do it responsibly, and I know it can work well to control certain medical conditions, and it doesn’t bother me that voters did legalize it. Because I don’t use it, I didn’t expect the outcome of the vote to affect me at all.

But then we started hearing stories about police in other states targeting vehicles with Colorado plates, suspecting anyone from here of muling drugs. And it happened to me in Illinois. And I had a conversation with someone who asked: “If you get stoned in Colorado and then drive to Kansas and get pulled over, can they arrest you? Because you were actually in Colorado when you took the drugs, so you weren’t breaking the law.” The ensuing discussion made me realize how much misinformation is out there, and how people who don’t live here might not know what’s actually legal and what isn’t. So, in a nutshell:

1. The laws for pot are pretty similar to the laws for alcohol. You can use it, but you mayn’t get behind the wheel of a car afterward. That’s still DUI. You mayn’t smoke it in public, at least in most places.

2. Showing up for work stoned is no more acceptable than showing up for work drunk. Employers can require that their employees not smoke pot, can do random drug tests, and can fire employees who violate no-drug policies. I know several nurses whose hospitals put zero-tolerance rules on the books as soon as legalization took effect.

3. You can’t buy pot everywhere in Colorado. Individual cities and towns can, and do, vote not to allow sales.

This isn’t a statewide Grateful Dead concert. You don’t get a contact buzz from going about your daily routines.

I’ve been trying to get the heck out of Colorado since well before this law passed, and now I’ve started to be concerned that it hurts my chances more. If police make snap judgments based on license plates — and they obviously do — then are employers doing the same thing? Will they see Colorado on my resume and decide they don’t want to deal with the possibility that I might keep a bong at my desk and take regular “smoke” breaks?  I don’t know the answer. Looking for jobs in other parts of the county is challenging enough without an added strike because of where I live. There’s no good solution, though; adding a P.S. at the end of a cover letter — “Even though I live in Colorado, I don’t do or sell drugs” — would be far more suspicious than saying nothing.

So, if you’re a potential employer reading this: The catnip really is just catnip (as a burglar once discovered, undoubtedly to his chagrin). The only “Mary Jane” in my closet is a pair of shoes. I can’t even grow hydroponic bamboo. In Savannah, there were occasional roaches in my house, but they all had six legs…at least until the cats got hold of them.