Medical Marijuana, California Style

I stopped the other day to talk with a young man who was tending a Green Doctors shop that fronts on the boardwalk at Venice Beach.

The Green Doctors provide "recommendations" (not medical prescriptions) that patients take to marijuana dispensaries to buy weed.  There are three Green Doctors clinics on the boardwalk.  Each is more likely to adjoin a tattoo parlor than, say, a dermatologist's office.

My new friend, Mikey, 24, told me that he had been working in the marijuana industry (his term) for four years.  He wore lime green medical scrubs that matched the color of the clinic's signs, and his job seemed to be to talk to, or perhaps recruit, potential patients.  Inside the clinic, he said were the doctor and a receptionist.

I was not seeking a marijuana recommendation.  I do not suffer from an eating disorder, glaucoma, cancer, nausea, insomnia, migraines or any other of the sundry complaints people take to marijuana doctors. (The stuff seems to be good for everything but housemaid's knee, and perhaps that as well.)

Mikey was a helpful and knowledgable source, fluent with changing marijuana laws in other states and well-versed in the varieties of marijuana available at California dispensaries.

He told me he smoked marijuana for the first time at the age of 14 and began smoking daily two years later.  He repeatedly referred to marijuana as "the medicine," not surprising given his job, and he told me it had eased his acid reflux, anxiety and back pain.

According to Mikey, the clinic's doctor was an older physician who worked mostly out of the goodness of his heart.  Patients were examined -- pulses and blood pressures taken -- and evaluated to learn whether they had suffered appropriate symptoms for at least six months; those who had (and Mikey said not all qualified) received marijuana recommendations. The cost, posted on the clinic door, is $40, payable in cash or by credit card.

Mikey said he urged those with marijuana recommendations to take them to a county office where, for another $150, they would be issued state ID cards affirming that their marijuana use was legal.  He had done so himself and said the card had come in handy on at least four occasions when he was confronted by police officers for smoking or carrying marijuana.

Although his manner was low-key -- okay, laid-back -- he said clinic workers were not allowed to be "under the influence" while on duty.

I lived in California in 1996 when the medical marijuana bill was approved by the state's voters.  My impression at the time was that it was a fig leaf to legalize marijuana use and to stop police from arresting young people for a practice that had been common for at least 25 years.

My last question for Mikey was whether most of the people seeking out marijuana doctors were young.

"No," he said, "most of them are older."

"Older?" I asked.

"I'd say 60 percent of them are at least 25," he answered.