Pot Smoking Lounges?

You gotta love Mason for trying...

Attention: You are now free to float about the cabin.

Well, not yet, but maybe someday — that is, if Mason Tvert has anything to say about.

Tvert, the voluble crusader for legalizing marijuana, has called for pot-smoking lounges in the nation's airports. His reason for doing goes beyond his cannabis liberation mission: He wants to help make flying safer.

"There's been this growing trend of alcohol-related air rage," he said Tuesday, alluding to episodes of drunken passengers creating in-flight disturbances.

Just last week, Christina E. Szele, 35, an inebriated New York woman, was accused of disrupting a JetBlue flight, punching a flight attendant and screaming curses and racial slurs after she she was prevented from smoking. A cigarette, that is.

Szele's outbursts wouldn't have happened if she'd been inhaling instead of imbibing, says Tvert, whose two pro-pot ballot measures have won voter approval in Denver.

"The studies I've seen say that alcohol ... contributes to violent and aggressive behavior," he says. Ergo, "The simple thing is to let people make the safer choice to use marijuana, which doesn't contribute to violent behavior."

Leaving that issue aside for the moment, there is still the sticky problem that marijuana is, sort of illegal — federally speaking, anyway. Chances are slim that Denver International Airport passengers will be high on the ground before they're high in the sky.

"I can safely say we have no plans to open any marijuana lounges at DIA," says airport spokesman Jeff Green. "We're not paying attention to this."

Would you support a pot lounge at DIA? Go to the Rocky and take the poll.

The Rocky Mountain News