Trust is exactly the issue I am having. I can't trust someone that I cannot communicate honestly with. Why risk telling my manager any of my problems with the job when it is their job to potentially use that information against me? I wouldn't even know if they did. My brain starts overthinking the situation and I end up waiting until the only option is the worst one.
I've already got an offer by a startup and am currently weighing my options of staying vs leaving. The problem is that I'm not in California, so it's a bigger move than anything I've done before. But to answer your question, my boss is not preventing honesty. I don't have much experience with this but it appears to me that the corporate environment prevents it unless you are too valuable to lose or are respected there. The first time I made a mistake that annoyed our project manager we had a team meeting specifically to complain about my work, yet everyone was there and the statements were generalized. I was shocked that this is how it was handled instead of simply asking me why that had happened. I don't understand how to communicate without honesty because I've never attempted to do it before. I can't bring up issues like this without doing a private 1:1 and made the mistake of attempting that at the wrong time with depressing results.
I would really like to have another 1:1 with my boss, but I am an introverted contractor with little-to-no experience communicating in a corporate environment. I'm stuck for fear of how much control they have over my life at the moment. How can I be honest with someone like that?
That's the biggest difference between cali and most other medicinal states at this point. Most have semi-legal dispensaries and collective-scale grows, but public smoking is usually prohibited. It's one of those unnecessary clauses put in the laws because the writers think it won't pass without it. I will say that I enjoy Michigan's new no-smoking law, which makes it far less conspicuous to smoke weed outside. I can, however, use my vaporizer legally anywhere except schools and public parks.
I haven't been there because there's no point; I can literally do the same things here with no consequences. Stoners are far less annoying than drunks. There's a good chance they won't even make it out of the house, but many people smoke daily and go about their business no matter where you live. No one notices or cares. And if there are people stoned every day then there are people people driving around you are stoned every day. These people are a threat to no one because they are practically unimpaired. It's not even comparable to driving drunk unless you're on edibles or are very unexperienced, so they go unnoticed as well. It's just not a big deal anymore.
I hope people realize that what Portugal is doing only puts all drugs in a similar legal category to alcohol during its "prohibition" in the United States. This solves none of the supply side issues and their current laws are surely still contributing to a miserable and violent black market.
What we have instead here in the United States (and attempt to force onto other countries) is a view that all use is abuse, regardless of any reasoning, even medicinal use. We can't even grow it for research or non-drug uses because of federal agencies that want to continue this for as long as possible. Today I can buy marijuana at retail stores here in Michigan. There is no violence associated with buying it from people who just grew it in their house and brought it there to sell to me.