THIS BUD'S FOR YOU, AND YOU, AND YOU TOO

How I Got My Hands on Some Marijuana -- the Legal (and Easy) Way.

Sometimes I can't believe how Californian California is. Women walk
around half-naked, waiters call patrons "dude," and medical marijuana
is legal. But I wondered just how legal. Could anyone buy it? Even
me, who doesn't have cancer, AIDS, arthritis, glaucoma or even any
previous pot-smoking experience?

Medical marijuana isn't really legal -- in 2005, the Supreme Court
said federal anti-drug laws trump state laws -- but California and 11
other hippie states have been flipping off Washington for years.

Finding a medical marijuana distributor is shockingly easy, as Times
columnist Sandy Banks noted in her recent columns on getting pot to
treat arthritis. Sprinkled innocuously around L.A. County are more
than 200 dispensaries that look like health food stores or pharmacies
- -- including three just at the intersection of Fairfax and Santa
Monica. To shop at these places, though, you need a doctor's
recommendation on an official form. Once you have that, no California
cop can arrest you for holding up to eight ounces. That amount, I'm
guessing, was based on conservative medical estimates of how much
Snoop Dogg would need if he came down with glaucoma at the same time
Animal Planet aired a "Meerkat Manor" marathon.

I made an appointment at a medical office recommended by Shirley
Halperin, the coauthor of the new book, "Pot Culture: The A-Z to
Stoner Language & Life." Halperin chose our particular clinic less
for its medical expertise than the fact that it shared a parking lot
with a pot dispensary. Stoners are very clearheaded when it comes to
avoiding extra effort.

As I sat in the tiny waiting room, filling out my medical history and
getting nervous, Halperin assured me that no one she knows had been
rejected, which seemed convincing because the only people sitting
near me were two healthy looking guys in their 20s. When I got called
in, I entered a doctor's office different from any I'd ever been in.
It contained only a tiny desk, two chairs, a small TV and two cans of
Glade. Also, the doctor wore a Hawaiian shirt.

He took my blood pressure and asked what I was suffering from.
"Anxiety," I said. And then "occasional insomnia." And even though he
seemed to be moving on, I blurted something about headaches. The only
malady that would have made me more similar to every human being
throughout history would have been "these painful little pieces of
skin that peel up next to my fingernails."

The doctor followed up on my insomnia, however, and asked if I was
having work problems or relationship issues as he handed me a
photocopy of a handwritten list of psychiatrists. He'd give me a
recommendation for medical marijuana for six months, he said, and
would extend it to one year if I saw a therapist. The whole thing
took about four minutes.

I paid the receptionist $80 -- cash only -- and she gave me a
filled-out form that states I am under medical care and supervision
for the treatment of a "medical problem." I felt touched that the
doctor hadn't just written I was suffering from "stuff."

At the dispensary, a Harley-riding bouncer checked my newly minted
medical forms and driver's license and let us inside. The dispensary
was like a really nice coffee shop, with paintings on the wall for
sale, couches and a drum kit upstairs for live jazz.

A pretty woman behind the counter -- kind of a pot sommelier --
brought out a huge menu, divided into sativa (uppers) and indica (the
downers all dealers sell) varieties, with names such as Bluedot
Popcorn, Hindu Skunk and Purple Urkel. Like a high-end tea shop, she
used chopsticks to procure the buds from glass jars -- all organic
and grown in California -- which she had me smell and look at under a
microscope. I settled on a gram of Sugar Kush, which sounded
appealing until I wondered what kind of breakfast cereal would cure
Sugar Kush munchies. Honey Bunches of Fudge? Frosted Mini Frosted
Minis? Count Plaqula?

Next, I took the advice of a fellow patient and went to buy some
"edibles" at the Farmacy. This is the most famous of the L.A.
dispensaries, with three locations, only two of which are right next
to a Whole Foods. The Westwood branch is a sleek health food store
that also sells vitamins and lots of Goji berries, and, unlike at the
doctor's office, all the salespeople wear white lab coats. As a
first-timer, I got to spin a wheel to determine my free gift
medicine, which was a pot-infused lollipop. I also bought a vegan
chocolate-chip cookie medicine and a chocolate bar medicine, and
deeply considered the gelato medicine.

Wondering if I had an unusually easy time, I called High Times
magazine's 2006 Stoner of the Year, Doug Benson, a comedian who just
released "Super High Me," a documentary in which he stops smoking pot
for 30 days and then, for his next month, is high every waking
minute. As part of the documentary, he got his medical marijuana
certificate. "I told my doctor I had a weak back. And when he said,
'How long?' I said, 'About a week back.' " He did not get rejected.
As a patient or a comedian.

In fact, Benson buys all his pot from a dispensary now. Even with the
sales tax, he pays the same price and, he said, gets more consistent
quality than he did from a dealer. "I had a dealer who came by my
house, but this is more convenient," he said. When I asked him how
that could be, he explained: "I used to have to sit there and listen
to his stories. Because dealers like to hang out."

I always wondered what would happen if marijuana were legalized for
anyone over 18. It seems it already has been, and nothing happened.