I am one of the 7,000 plus people in the 95336 and 95337 ZIP codes that Manteca City Councilman Charlie Halford often referred to in the months leading up to the “decision”.

The “decision” was whether Manteca should allow retail storefront cannabis stores.

I have made about a dozen trips in the past few years to six different cannabis stores in Modesto.

Two were in and out affairs. They were too pricey.

I also declined to go into one on Kansas Avenue due to its questionable setting complete with cyclone fence and barbed wire surrounding the store.

I am entered in a state data base.

It is because to gain entrance to a cannabis store, you must have your driver’s license scanned.

That said, I have never bought a single cannabis item.

I know one should never say never as an absolute given as you can’t predict the future, but I never will.

It probably goes more so for using any cannabis.

I go to the stores because someone I care deeply for uses it occasionally to ease pain associated with an extremely serious condition.

I essentially provide the ride.

It was really an uneasy feeling the first time I stepped into a cannabis store — the Authentic 209 on McHenry Avenue, which we never returned to because of price.

I still feel somewhat awkward when I enter one, including the “go to” dispensary which is People’s Remedy on Palm Avenue in a nondescript Butler steel type of building tucked away in a small business park a stone’s throw or two away from Highway 99.

It has nothing to do with the “lack” of security because there is plenty.

Besides the security guard, systems and protocols in place are redundant.

It’s probably a thousand times safer, if not more, than stepping into a liquor store in a section of Oakland that has serious crime issues.

And almost every cannabis retailer has an interior that makes cosmetic departments in the trendier Macy’s stores seem more like the Galt Flea Market.

My aversion to marijuana is highly personal.

The very smell of it — just like cigarette smoke — makes me nauseous.

I have never tried either.

I can also say I have never tried alcohol if I don’t include an unfortunate incident where someone became a former friend when I was 30 and put vodka in a Pepsi she gave me.

She didn’t appreciate my reaction, calling me “uptight”.

I replied that she crossed a line and crossed her off my list of “friends.”

Growing up, I was around my share — while not a constant presence nor a large number — of relatives or friends of one of my brothers who, putting it politely, abused substances.

All drunks are not happy drunks.

That brother, thinking he was cool, at one point “held” some marijuana for a friend who was a dealer at my mom’s house.

My sister and I were still in school, he was supposedly an adult.

Long story short, he got caught.

It was back in the 1970s when California law allowed the seizure of property where marijuana was found by authorities to be seized.

The house was my mother’s only asset.

It was a house she worked six, sometimes seven, days a week to keep over our heads after my father died of a heart attack.

That left her with four kids, ages 3 to 17 to raise.

Thanks to a relative that basically offered to loan my mom what was almost her entire life’s savings of $10,000 that my mom paid back every last cent, she was able to hire a lawyer and not rely on a public defender.

My brother avoided jail. My mother’s house was not seized.

I bring this up to re-enforce my “credentials” as someone who has no use for marijuana.

That said, I also have other values.

One of them is embracing the concept of free will, conditioned with the caveat that there are responsibilities that come with it and that it must be exercised in a manner that our interactions are deeply rooted in a respect for others in order for us to be part of a civilized civilization.

In a nutshell, as written in a book that has weathered the ages, “Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.”

As such, I am not one to judge what someone else needs to do to either address pain and what  “vices” — or more aptly things they do that I wouldn’t do — they have as long as the laws of society that are crucial to make civilization work are followed.

Manteca, in a matter of months, will be joining the 44 percent of California’s 482 cities as of May 2022 that allow legal storefront cannabis sales.

Some say Manteca has taken its sweet time.

Others are aghast that they are still proceeding.

Personally, I’m ambivalent.

I can see both sides.

And the points both sides make have merit.

It is why I expect the City of Manteca to leave no stone unturned to make sure they do it right from the start and going forward.

Each pause the city has imposed during the process of moving toward legal marijuana sales when they learn of another potential pitfall so they can steer clear of replicating similar problems in Manteca underscores their commitment to doing it right.

I have no illusions.

Legal marijuana is big business even if it is dwarfed by the black market.

And just like the voters decision in 1985 to legalize state-run lotteries, I do not believe for a second that it will be a panacea for the city’s financial needs.

It will help, just like the lottery helped schools somewhat, but that’s it.

Based on the clientele in the Modesto cannabis stores, you will likely not see what might be called “riff-raff” patronizing the three Manteca locations that will open.

They will be surprisingly older than you think, middle class for the most part, and even well groomed.

They are also law-abiding people based on how they are obtaining marijuana.

In a way, they are basically shopping at BevMo as opposed to driving down an isolated country road to buy from a moonshiner.

Yes, the prices are higher at BevMo et al than the black market, but what is on the shelf is highly regulated and passes rigid quality tests.

That is no different than California marijuana dispensaries.

Those who partake of cannabis from a highly regulated storefront have an extremely high certainty of personal safety when purchasing marijuana and an equally high confidence it isn’t laced with pesticides and similar toxic items.

It is what those that go to a legal cannabis dispensary in Manteca should and will expect.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com