The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! It’s 4/20, which is practically a stoner’s holiday. If you’re curious about the origins of this particular date being associated with weed, TIME magazine traced it back to a group of California high schoolers in the 1970s. Groovy! (Is that something the kids say these days?)

Looking for ways to indulge? Our EverOut events calendar has you covered, from Northwest Cannafest to a vegan crunchwrap supreme pop-up in St. Johns. 

Speaking of cannabis, the taxes paid at dispensaries in Portland go into city coffers to be spent on a handful of uses. Read more about that in today's NEWS.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• The Portland City Council voted down a proposal to divert funds from Black-led racial justice group, Reimagine Oregon. The plan was floated by Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who suggested $4.8 million in cannabis tax revenue should go toward other uses, like police and public safety. Mapps initially wanted to pull allocated funds because they have yet to be spent by Reimagine Oregon after more than two years. The hitch? The money is still sitting with the city, and was never transferred to Reimagine Oregon. Despite other commissioners, city employees, and the executive director of Reimagine Oregon explaining what led to the money not getting out the door, Mapps still wasn’t convinced. Black community leaders and BIPOC state lawmakers are (unsurprisingly) not happy.

• The owner of Pix Patisserie has been very public about a horrific attack she endured, when an off-leash dog mauled her arm while she was out for a run along Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. She’s been dragging the mayor on social media for Portland's homeless crisis, noting the dog’s owner was living in a tent in a vacant parking lot nearby. 

• Believe it or not, crime in Oregon trended down between 2021-2022, according to new data. 

• Portland is full of creative, funny people ready to indulge your sardonic self. Need proof? Join us on Thursday, May 4 at the Siren Theater as Arlo Weierhauser and Kate Murphy host the hilariously evil, interactive game show, Two Evils.  The duo will ask a series of questions, and audience members—along with special guest contestant Amy Miller—will decide which of the answers is the lesser of two evils. Expect comedy, prizes, and devilish fun! 

• What do you do when your spouse has a fetish you just can’t abide? Dan Savage will help you sort this out. 

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

• The west coast has too much pot, and it’s driving prices down. That’s nice for consumers, but the glut of cannabis supply, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, is threatening the livelihood of growers. Some are holding out hope that the Biden administration will legalize cannabis trade among the 21 states where it’s legalized.

• In a horrifying week of children and young people being shot for simple mistakes, authorities say a 6-year-old girl and her parents were shot in North Carolina Tuesday, after a basketball rolled into a man’s yard.

• New autopsy results have cast doubt on previous law enforcement claims that an environmental protester in Atlanta fired the first shot before being killed by police at the construction site of Cop City. Manuel Terán, AKA “Tortuguita,” the environmental activist shot and killed in January while occupying the construction site of a future police training center in Georgia, had their hands raised before being fired on. Examiners found no gunpowder residue on Terán’s hands, either. 

• And finally... it's time to really get into Thursday.