I’m a little like a kid in a candy store these days: So much to choose from.

But I’m not talking about candy. I’m talking about cannabis.

Pot was legalized by the federal government in Canada on Oct. 17, 2018, a day many of the flower power generation had longed for. I first tried pot as a teen in the late 1960s, and from that point on I simply could not understand why it was illegal while drugs like tobacco and alcohol were legal.

Of course, like so many other people, I used it anyway over the ensuing decades, keeping a watchful eye for the police. But in 2008, I stopped smoking cannabis along with cigarettes because I didn’t want to pollute my lungs any longer.

When it was finally legalized in Canada by the Trudeau government (God bless Justin, our greatest prime minister ever), I simply had to sample some of the legal products being sold through government outlets.

The problem was, I had vowed never to smoke anything again.

But I was not to be deterred. I learned how to decarb cannabis and, essentially, eat it (usually in a caramel). That created its own problems, however. You really don’t need to ingest much if you are going the edible route, so what might have lasted me a week back in the toking days now might last months.

Thing is, I want to try EVERYTHING that is available on the legal market now. We’re talking close to 200 products available in Quebec from various growers across Canada. . . and counting. There aren’t enough years left in my lifetime to sample them all, edibly speaking.

We’ve come a long way since the old days when you bought whatever the local dealer had, and you didn’t ask him or her if it was a sativa, indica or hybrid.

Needless to say, I’ve sampled several products (about 10 to 15) since that wonderful day in 2018, and I can already say that there is some pretty good weed being sold — and some not-so-fine weed as well. It’s expensive, but when you bake it and use a smidgen with, say, a caramel, the price seems pretty low when you realize how long a standard 3.5-gram purchase will last. I’ve actually thrown some out because I wanted to move on to something else.

Throw weed out!!? I can’t say I ever did that in pre-legalization days.

That’s not to say that I haven’t found some keepers that I would buy again. But I have yet to find a product that is as good as some I had back in the 1960s and ’70s. Like the California grass I had when I was about 15 while visiting some family in San Diego. It made me giggle and laugh and feel so happy.

Then later, back in Quebec, I tried some delightful weed from Trinidad as well as Thai sticks and Colombian grass that was then — and would still be now, if available — the ultimate in cannabis buzzland.

For some reason, those strains disappeared as new ones started to emerge and growing methods changed. Weed became heavier, more like a beer buzz in some ways, and seemed to stay that way until legalization.

There is hope now, though. Growers are putting emphasis on strain varieties, and consumers really can notice the difference between a good sativa and a good indica — the latter producing a sleepy effect while the sativa actually lifts energy levels.

But no giggle effect.

Maybe there is a great, giggly cannabis amongst the 185 or so products I have yet to sample.

Sadly, the one strain that might do it for me is not available in Quebec — and we can only buy it legally through our provincial government-run retailers. (Yes, the government that formerly prosecuted people for possessing cannabis is now selling it to us.)

I’m talking about Acapulco Gold — and I strongly suspect that was the California grass of my youth. As Wikipedia explains: “Acapulco Gold is a strain of Cannabis sativa that was popular during the 1960s counterculture movement for its potency and unique color.”

I even consulted a black market online retailer last year about it, and he told me that no one he knows of grows it.

Sigh . . .

Still, I am so happy that pot has finally been legalized after all these years, when we all knew deep down in our hearts and souls that it was a gross injustice to be locking people up for indulging in a green herb given to us by Mother Earth — or as some might point out, by God in the Bible when “he” gave unto man all green herbs bearing seed.

It burned me up that the courts made people swear on the Bible, then prosecuted them for consuming something that God in the Bible said they could have. Such hypocrisy. Such blasphemy.

I’m digressing . . . back to the ’60s. lol. But that’s how I felt then, and how I felt all those years.

So, I’m a kid in a candy shop now.

Any suggestions for giggly pot are welcome.

Peace and love . . . and, god, wouldn’t a love-in San Francisco-style be nice right about now?

Smiles . . .

— Jillian