Washington music festivals going to pot with legalized marijuana?

It’s little surprise there was plenty of pot smoking over the weekend at the Sasquatch and Folklife Festivals. But with our state’s legalization of marijuana, it seems like a lot more people are feeling free to light up in public.

“People were literally walking past cops blowing smoke in their direction,” said longtime Seattle DJ Marty Reimer on the John Curley Show with Andrew Walsh about the lack of enforcement at Folklife.

Seattle Police and many other law enforcement agencies made marijuana their lowest priority even before voters approved legalized pot last November. And even though the law prohibits smoking in public, it was pretty clear through the haze that cops and security weren’t very concerned at the two big Memorial Day weekend festivals.

“It was just everywhere and definitely more so than in years past,” said Seattle Sounds co-host Shawn Stewart about all the pot smoking she saw over the weekend at Sasquatch. “It was everywhere and unavoidable.”

While hardly shocked or offended, Stewart said she was troubled to see so many under-aged festival goers getting high at Sasquatch with nary a word from police or security. That, even while officials kept a tight reign on alcohol sales and underage drinking.

“There aren’t those limits on smoking pot, so you did see a lot more stoned younger kids this year than in years past,” she said.

“I think because no one is 100 percent certain they understand the rules themselves, they are not going to go out on a ledge,” Reimer speculated about the lack of enforcement.

It will be interesting to see if officials try and clamp down as more people feel free to light up in public, but given how many already smoked pot at concerts, it isn’t likely they’d be very successful snuffing it out.

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