LA Times columnist reports on buying medical marijuana

The Los Angeles Times recently ran a pretty fascinating column by someone who thought to go check out just how "easy" it was to purchase medical marijuana. Turns out: it's pretty easy. Not "easy" as in "any jackass walking in off the streets can get me some;" actually, it seems exactly (and refreshingly) the point of the law that the columnist herself actually voted for:

Fifteen minutes later, I was greeted by the doctor, a silver-haired man in a white lab coat, his name embroidered across the front. Diplomas lined the wall behind him. On his desk was a collection of family photos.

He looked over my medical forms and asked about the arthritis I'd noted. I told him the truth. Some days my fingers are so stiff it hurts to grip a doorknob or a steering wheel. I'd tried prescription drugs in the past, but stopped because of the side effects.

The doctor inspected my swollen fingers, gently squeezing the tender joints. He checked my pulse and blood pressure, then took a stethoscope and listened to my lungs.

His 10-minute exam was about as thorough as the one I'd received last year from the hand specialist at the orthopedic center, who sent me home with Celebrex.

This new doctor told me marijuana could help. He recommended I not smoke it. Bad for the lungs. Better to use it with a vaporizer. Or ingest it, infused in tea or baked in brownies.

Then he handed me a prescription for marijuana. Good for one year; no refill limits.

Apparently, people were up in arms, because the next column by Sandy Banks made it clear that dissent was in the air. But the fact is, medical marijuana is the law in the state of California, period. And even though abuse is possible, that doesn't mean the program should be abandoned, any more than we should completely abandon certain types of pharm prescriptions simply because abuse is a potential outcome.

The problem is unscrupulous providers who aim their marketing at healthy young people, and physicians who hand out prescriptions (legally considered "recommendations") without examining patients or inspecting their IDs.

Ultimately, the medical marijuana delivery process relies on patient and physician integrity. Some folks are going to game the system for a legal high. And some will credit it with making their lives worth living.

Beverly Hills physician Craig Cohen has turned down enough "24-year-olds with insomnia who haven't seen a doctor" to make him wonder about his role in recommending marijuana: "Am I just the candy man? That's in the back of my mind," he said in an interview last week.

But his other patients keep him going. "People with strokes, muscle spasticity, peripheral neuropathy. . . . The people I see are amazingly sick," he said.

"The state has provided a way for them to get relief. What's needed now is tolerance. And recognition that these people and their pain are real."