IN CALIF., MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS ARE MOVING POT INTO MAINSTREAM

LOS ANGELES -- With little notice and even less controversy,
marijuana is now available as a medical treatment in California to
almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked.

Pot is now retailed over the counter in hundreds of storefronts
across Los Angeles and is credited with reviving a section of
downtown Oakland, where an entrepreneur sells out classes offering
"quality training for the cannabis industry." The tabloid LA Journal
of Education for Medical Marijuana is fat with ads for Magic Purple,
Strawberry Cough and other offerings in more than 400 "dispensaries"
operating in the city.

Los Angeles officials say applications for retail outlets surged
after Feb. 26, when U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration will no longer
raid such stores. Those pressing for change in drug laws regard the
announcement as a watershed in a 40-year battle against marijuana's
official listing as a dangerous drug -- a legal fight that, in
California, is being waged on ground that has shifted dramatically
toward acceptance.

All told, 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, a trend
advocates credit in part to growing openness to alternative healing.
As a "Schedule 1" drug under the 1970 federal narcotics act,
marijuana officially has "no currently accepted medical use." But
doctors have found it effective in reducing nausea, easing glaucoma
and improving appetite and sleep in AIDS patients.

Marijuana use is widespread -- government surveys show that 100
million Americans have smoked pot or its resin, hashish, in their
lifetimes, and 25 million have done so in the past year. Yet polls
show that the public is still wary of legalization. As President
Obama recently chuckled when asked about legalizing marijuana, "I
don't think that's a good strategy to grow our economy."

But in California, pot is such a booming growth industry that
lawmakers are being asked to consider its potential as a salve to the
state's financial woes. Betty Yee, chair of the California State
Board of Equalization, endorsed a bill in February to regulate the
estimated $14 billion marijuana market, citing the state's budget
problems. California currently collects $18 million in sales taxes
from marijuana dispensaries, and Yee said a regulated pot trade would
bring in $1.3 billion.

"I think the tide is starting to turn in terms of marijuana being
part of the mainstream," she said. "The pieces seem to be falling into place."

In Los Angeles, Councilman Dennis Zine warned that half the city's
sales outlets might be forced to close, but only to control the
growth of what the city now regards as an accepted business. "We're
not getting complaints about people smoking marijuana," said the
retired motorcycle policeman. "We're seeing complaints about the
proliferation of facilities. They opened up right down the street
from my district office, in the same complex as a liquor store. Got
the big green leaf in front."

The new reality can be disorienting. In Mendocino County, the heart
of Northern California's "Emerald Triangle," marijuana farming has
been openly tolerated since the arrival of counterculture refugees in
the late 1960s. But elected officials say they are being forced to
crack down on growers who offended neighbors with aggressive farming
after medical marijuana laws hastened pot's shift from the black
market to a gray zone.

"Prop. 215 opened up a new world for people who had been
underground," said Scott Zeramby, referencing the 1996 ballot
proposition that legalized pot for medical users. By 2007, Zeramby's
garden supply business in Fort Bragg was doing $2.5 million in
business amid a land rush by new growers eager to cash in.

"Things were getting a little crazy, even out of hand," Zeramby said.
"What happened? A critical mass."

At the other end of the supply chain, some 200 dispensaries have
opened using a legal loophole in an L.A. moratorium on such outlets,
some making only the thinnest pretense of operating as "caregivers,"
the legal justification for providing cannabis directly.

"Medical marijuana, right here, right now," chants a barker on the
Venice Beach Boardwalk, outside the doorway of the Medical Kush Beach
Club. "Get legal, right now."

It really is that easy, the barker explains. Before being allowed to
enter the upstairs dispensary and "smoking lounge," new customers are
directed first to the physician's waiting room, presided over by two
young women in low-cut tops. After proving state residence and
minimum age (21), customers see a doctor in a white lab coat who for
$150 produces a "physician's recommendation."

Valid for one year, it is all that California law requires to
purchase and smoke eight ounces legally.

"I told him I had problems with my knee," said Joe Rizzo, 31,
emerging from an examination recently with a knowing grin and a renewed card.

Outside the Blue Sky Coffee Shop in Oakland, Ritz Gayo clutched an
eighth of Blue Dream ($44) and tried to remember the nature of his complaint.

"Um, my back," said Gayo, 20. He went on to recite a partial list of
symptoms suggested in newspaper ads: "Chronic back pain and the rest,
like everyone else," he said. "Non-sleeping. Can't eat very much.

"That, and I love pot."

Sean Manzanares, 41, a hardware store manager who had no previous
experience with weed, parsed the advantages of sativa strains for
night smoking and an indica for morning. "It got me off some really
intense painkillers that were screwing with my liver and all kinds of
stuff," he said.

Ben Core, 41, an HIV-positive commercial insurance agent, said, "The
usage effects are overtaking the political and cultural effects that
have suppressed it."

In the Venice branch of Farmacy, an upscale dispensary chain, clerks
wear hemp lab coats and direct customers to an array of products,
including herbal drops for teething pain. "We refer to it as a
gateway herb," said JoAnna LaForce, a trained pharmacist.

Oakland allows anyone with a medical card to cultivate 72 plants --
12 times the number the state legislature suggested in SB 420, which
passed in 2003. (Even the title of the bill could be taken for a
knowing wink, "420" being subculture code for enjoying marijuana).
The bill generously interpreted the ballot initiative, which allowed
pot to be dispensed for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief."

Entrepreneur Richard Lee said he took the hint, building an downtown
Oakland empire that includes two "coffee shops," a glass-blowing
school, a gift shop, a studio union and, last year, Oaksterdam
University. Hundreds of graduates now have diplomas certifying
passage of "credible examinations in politics, legal issues,
horticulture, cooking and budtending."

The neighborhood is cheerfully busy, with foot traffic heaviest
around the Blue Sky dispensary.

"They blend in quite well. It's not what you would expect," said
Gertha Hays, who owns a boutique next door. "You might think it's
going to be drug dealers, all this and that. It's not like that. And
there's no particular stereotype of who's a cannabis smoker. It's all types."

Some customers walk over from the Alameda County Public Health
Department. There, for $103 ($51.50 if on Medi-Cal), residents can
upgrade from a simple physician's recommendation to an official
medical marijuana identification card, widely regarded as stronger
protection against prosecution.

"The one thing that's really caused it to go from medical to pretty
much all-out legalization is the doctors," Lee said. "They have
realized you can't over-prescribe it. They've really taken the lead.
Alcohol -- frat boys drop dead by the hundred every year. You really
can't kill yourself with marijuana."

You can, however, disappear into yourself. In South Central L.A., two
dispensaries stand on the block between the mayor's constituent
services office and the Blessed Day Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center.

"They're stunting their growth. I'm not talking about height," said
Andrew Brown, 60, a drug treatment counselor. "They're in a Rip van
Winkle state. They don't even know it.

"Legal? Okay, but they still going to come to us. Alcohol is legal."