This is an opinion column.

When I was in college four decades ago I bought weed in dime bags from a guy at a Shell station in Tuscaloosa.

Looking over my shoulder, of course.

I never thought about where he got the stuff, or what was in it. If there was quality control at all, it came from the assurances of the dealer:

“This is some good $#@%, man.”

Oh, how things change. And how they never do.

We now live in a world in which tens of thousands of Alabamians regularly walk into corner gas stations to buy weed. They can shop by color or flavor or means of delivery. It comes in gummy bears or candy bars, as vapes or god knows what.

And it’s somehow legal, it seems. Even in a state that has refused to legalize marijuana.

You can buy it if you’re 21, paying the sales tax you’d pay on a pack of gum. And there’s still no quality control.

I guess you have to trust the clerk at the quick stop – the dealer, the pharmacist, the dude – to describe what it might do for you, or to you.

“This is some good $#@%, man.”

Or not.

I ended up deciding marijuana was not for me, and I moved on with life. I frankly have mixed feelings about legalization.

But one thing is clear. Alabama’s refusal to deal with marijuana policy in any meaningful way – except for punishing those in possession – does not prevent drug use. It does not discourage children from using drugs, or make a stand against them. It does not protect the health of Alabamians or put money spent on drugs into the state’s coffers.

As my colleague Amy Yurkanin wrote last week, as part of a partnership with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Examination, a hemp clause in a federal farm bill essentially paved the way for the sale of seemingly legal variations of weed in Alabama and elsewhere. Variants delta-8 – I thought that was a Buick – and delta-9 are derived from hemp and have rapidly become ubiquitous in Alabama cities. They are a $3 billion business nationwide.

But the products are not regulated in the way they would be in states that have legalized marijuana, where dosage and strength are clear.

They are not studied by the FDA, and there’s no guarantee what’s in them. In states like New York, legal marijuana products must carry a certificate of analysis showing it has been tested for heavy metals and pesticides

But that’s not true of delta-8 and the other federally legal knockoffs found in Alabama. Potency varies. Safety varies. Batches vary. And results, experiences and side effects vary, too.

“It’s a big human guinea pig experiment with a lot of these substances,” a guy from the FDA said in that story.

Which means Alabama’s refusal to legalize recreational weed, and its failure to implement its medical marijuana procedures, may well make Alabama users less safe.

Let’s face it, Alabama does not like to give its stamp of approval to anything that might be considered a vice. See the lottery. We have a way of saying no until the world forces us.

Alabama blue laws and dry counties gave rise to bootleggers and to bathtub gin – the delta-8 of the prohibition age – and it wasn’t until 2011 that Cullman’s Oktoberfest could actually serve beer. Breweries have boosted economies all over Alabama, but brewing strong beer was illegal until 2009. Taprooms were barred until after that.

Alabama has steadfastly refused to pass meaningful gambling legislation, to create a lottery for education or otherwise. It has refused casinos and beat back strip mall bingo parlors like a game of whac-a-mole. When it comes to sports betting, Alabama’s second most popular sport, it simply looks away.

Now – even with the genie out of the bong – Alabama seems to be doing the same thing with marijuana. And our inaction is a failure.

Nearly half the states have legalized pot. And in those states it is generally safer, more controlled, better labeled and regulated and taxed.

In fact, in Colorado and Oregon – the poster children for pot states – delta-8 is illegal.

Maybe it’s time for Alabama to legalize the good $#@%.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer prize winner who has sworn off the pot.