But on an adjacent green, eye-catching wall is his new world. There’s an old propaganda poster, from the “reefer madness” era, that describes marijuana as “a vicious racket with its arms around your children” and portrays it as a green, devil-like figure wooing a woman with a joint dangling from her lips.
Jensen is in the middle of it all, trying to help the people from one half of his life realize the benefits of the other.
“How many guys who get on (fire) trucks have drinking problems or opioid disorders, who pop pills for back pain?,” he said. “If you’re off-duty and want to get the benefits from a plant, you should be allowed to.”
With cannabis becoming more normalized in New Jersey and the rest of the country — the Garden State currently has 36 dispensaries selling legal weed to any adult over 21 years old — first responders are tiptoeing along a line between using a new drug, even medicinally, and the potential legal maladies that could come with it.