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Details hazy on marijuana dispensaries
A bud tender at a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary displays various types of marijuana available to patients in Los Angeles, Calif.
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Kai Ryssdal: According to the Associated Press, 14 states now permit some kind of access to medical marijuana. Five of them -- that'd be California, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico and Rhode Island -- allow retail dispensaries. But even those places are still wrestling with the specifics of what amounts to marketing marijuana.
The Los Angeles City Council took up the issue today, amid growing political pressure to shut down most of its thriving pot business. Marketplace's Bob Moon reports, when voters approve the idea of medical marijuana, they often leave the details kind of fuzzy.
BOB MOON: With marijuana dispensaries sprouting up across L.A. like you-know-what, could one be coming soon to a neighborhood near you?
KRIS HERMES: I think we've developed a fairly effective model in California.
Kris Hermes speaks for the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access.
HERMES: We have been helping patients and advocates work with their local governments over the last few years to adopt sensible regulations for these facilities.
It's been 13 years since California voters became the first to legalize medical marijuana. But what's legal and what's not remains in doubt, and largely unregulated.
In San Diego, Will Johnson told our affiliate KPBS that his Kind Gardeners Collective grows its plants -- wherever.
WILL JOHNSON: We have somebody's patio. Somebody's spare bedroom. We have an area in a commercial office. This next month we'll have the basement of a residential home.
Some city officials here contend many of L.A.'s roughly 1,000 outlets are just illegal drug dens reaping big profits. San Francisco has tighter rules and only about 30 such outlets.
Patient advocate Kris Hermes says that's because L.A.'s a much bigger city. And he insists most have a legitimate reason to be open.
HERMES: These facilities are indeed providing medical marijuana to qualified patients and their primary caregivers. That is not in question.
But KPCC reporter Frank Stoltze found out the definition of qualified is itself an open question. He spoke to Antonio Gracia, a 19-year-old patient with a prescription outside one L.A. dispensary.
ANTONIO GRACIA: My prescription is for stress.
FRANK STOLTZE: What's stressing you out?
GRACIA: Probably 'cause I've been smoking medical marijuana all my life. So when I don't use it, I stress.
In Los Angeles, I'm Bob Moon for Marketplace.
It really disappointed me when you ended this story with the quote from Mr. Gracia. Ha ha ha, let's poke fun of the stoner. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also promoting a derogatory stereotype of marijuana users.
Your program should take the legalization of marijuana seriously. It is unfairly listed as a controlled substance. nicotine and alcohol, both legal, are far more of a danger to public safety. How many potheads have you heard of killing someone with their car? How many drunk drivers? How many people get lung cancer from smoking joints? More relevant to your program, however, is the fact that it is already a huge industry that has both a financial and political effect on our own and the global economies. there are many professional, tax paying adults that partake in using, who also favor regulation. Legalize pot, tax it, regulate it and you've got a regular income stream that can be used for services other than ineffectual law enforcement, like, say, health care. Also the legalization would take an already existing industry and make it legitimate, reducing corruption and crime. Cultivating the plant, transporting and merchandising it would create jobs, which would also contribute to the tax base and general consumption. Legalizing pot would also reduce prison populations and put nonviolent offenders back into society to work and pay taxes and consume. It would reduce the need for such prisons. Those are just a few highlights of the benefits of legalization.
I love you, Marketplace. I listen to the Morning Report and the main show. I know there have got to be people on your staff that smoke pot. When you end a story making pot smokers look like stupid, slothy slackers, you're doing all of us, and the economy a disservice. Why don't you report on some of the successful business owners who contribute to NORMAL and also support legalization. It's not just trustafarians at Hampshire college. It's George Soros. It's the guy from The Men's Warehouse. It's many doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs and other professionals, who would likely be more vocal about their support for legalization if they felt their status as a pot user weren't mocked on mainstream media, let alone their beloved public radio.
Marijuana users are a significant but silent population in this country. Provide a fair environment for them and I believe you will find great change can be effected that can help salve some big wounds. And offer some opportunities for great stories. I look forward to hearing it.
A little more research should be put into articles on medical marijuana. I stopped reading this article when it listed New Mexico as a state that allows dispensaries. This is simply untrue. New Mexico's medical marijuana program is different than most other states in the fact that it goes straight from either a state approved producer or a licensed caregiver to the patient. The state really got it right in putting together a plan to get medicine to the patients and out of the hands of people abusing the system like has happened in other states.
I heard the comment from Antonio Garcia while driving home and really had a good laugh. Talk about a poster child for why this might be a program that is being taken advantage of by what we used to call burnouts in my day. While not opposed to medical marijauna for legitimate reasons (e.g. to offset the effects of chemotherapy), I would have to say using it to reduce stress is a stretch.
