IS POT RIGHT FOR NAPA?

As City Considers Medical Marijuana; Sebastopol Shows How It Is Done

These are tough times in Sebastopol. Two auto dealers have closed.
Plants that once processed Gravenstein apples sit empty.

Amid this economic wreckage, Peace in Medicine is a roaring success.
Opening in 2007, Peace in Medicine will reach 10,000 customers and
generate $5 million in revenues this year, requiring the opening of a
second storefront. What is Peace in Medicine selling that the public
is clamoring to buy? Medical marijuana.

With the Obama administration ending the threat of federal raids,
medical cannabis clinics have exploded in California. As part of that
trend, the city of Napa is drafting rules that would allow marijuana
dispensaries. In the popular imagination, a pot clinic is a funky
place with over-stuffed couches and hippie beads hanging in the
doorway. A sweet-smelling haze fills the air.

In testimony before the Napa City Council this summer, local
residents touted Peace in Medicine as the kind of pot dispensary that
Napa could be proud of. Instead of seediness, a clinical atmosphere
worthy of mainstream medicine.

Instead of furtiveness, a desire to be a full participant in community life.

With a population of 7,800, Sebastopol is a city in western Sonoma
County one-tenth Napa's size. If Napa is blue collar with growing
wine country sophistication, Sebastopol is decidedly counter-cultural.

Peace in Medicine hides in plain sight on a busy roadway at the front
of a small commercial center. The clinic rents a building last
occupied by a failed Ford dealership.

Outside the front door, a "safety host" monitors the parking lot.
Patients must show a California photo ID before being buzzed through
a locked door.

The waiting room is as antiseptic and clinical as Queen of the Valley
Medical Center, but with a sound system cranking out a techno beat.
The man in charge is Robert Jacob, a bearded 32-year-old with a
zealous belief in the benefits of medical cannabis.

"It's safer and more effective than just about all pharmaceuticals,"
Jacob said. "I believe in natural medicine rather than Western
medicine whenever possible."

Jacob signaled the opening of another locked door, admitting his
visitor to a sales room where a cornucopia of cannabis products were
on display in glass cases.

Marijuana buds called "Moonstone," recommended for "spacey sedation,
evening appropriate," were on sale, $54 for an eighth of an ounce.
For the same price, "Lemon Skunk" offered "lifted euphoria, daytime
appropriate."

For those who want to eat, not smoke, their medicinal relief, Peace
in Medicine offered cannabis in cookies, lozenges and bars of both
dark and milk chocolate.

To promote sales on slow Mondays, customers who spend $50 or more
spin a wheel to win prizes, including free massages, a $5 joint or a
cannabis chocolate bar.

Jacob, who has used medical marijuana since he was a teenager, said
he wanted Peace in Medicine to be the poster child for successful
cannabis clinics. He envisioned a clinic that would be friendly,
secure, with a level of accountability and transparency that would
put patients and the community at ease. "When I was a patient at
dispensaries, I never felt good about it," he said of clinics in other cities.

Peace in Medicine, representing a coalition of local residents, beat
out two other applicants for Sebastopol's first medical cannabis
permit. Peace in Medicine promised to do everything the city wanted
and more, Jacob said.

Profits from medicinal marijuana subsidize an adjacent "healing
center," which offers a daily lineup of inexpensive yoga, acupuncture
and massage.

At the city's annual Apple Blossom parade, Peace in Medicine sponsors
a float. Peace in Medicine staffers attend chamber of commerce
mixers. Last year the clinic's community donations totaled $100,000,
Jacob said.

Upside-Down Town?

When the Sebastopol City Council decided to allow cannabis clinics,
viewing medical marijuana as a "social justice issue and a health
issue," Police Chief Jeffrey Weaver remembers receiving a warning
from a friend in Mendocino County. "It will turn your town upside
down," the friend said.

That hasn't happened, Weaver said. Peace in Freedom runs a tight
operation. "There's been no vandalism. There's been no theft. There's
no loitering. There are no stoned outbursts from patients," he said.

On Monday, 30 steps from Peace in Medicine's front door, Paula
Downing was watching her 4-year-old grandson play on a toy locomotive.

Asked her opinion of Peace in Medicine, Downing said it must be
operating OK since the local newspaper never carries negative news about it.

Asked where Peace in Medicine was located, Downing said she had no
idea. Told it was just behind her, she let out a hearty laugh.

Sebastopol Councilman Larry Robinson said he was the "most skeptical"
member of the council when the dispensary opened. He feared what
could go wrong that city officials hadn't anticipated.

"We've had none of the kinds of complaints that some people
imagined," Robinson said. "I've done a major shift in my thinking."

While Weaver considers Peace in Medicine one of the best-run clinics
in the state, he has a lawman's reservations about the "murky"
California laws that allow them.

"I do believe in medical marijuana, but with many more restrictions
than now," Weaver said. "I know the vast majority of people using
medical marijuana could be better served by other medicines or don't
need it at all."

A substantial number of Peace in Medicine patients are obtaining
marijuana for recreational toking, not for medical needs, Weaver
suspects. In candid conversations, some clinic customers have
admitted this, he said.

This loophole isn't with Peace in Medicine's operation, but with
state law, Weaver said. A medical doctor is allowed to write a
marijuana recommendation for any illness for which the physician
thinks marijuana can provide relief.

When state voters passed Prop. 215 in 1996, they believed they were
authorizing marijuana relief for seriously ill patients who were
wasting away, the chief said.

Nowadays, anyone asserting headaches, menstrual cramps or anxiety can
get a physician's authorization, Weaver said. Writing marijuana
authorizations has become the core of some doctors' practices.
Physicians advertise their services on the Internet, he said.

Councilman Robinson doesn't doubt that some patients are obtaining
pot just to get high, "but they're only damaging themselves," he
said. "I'm convinced that most of the patients there are really using
it for medical purposes."

Amanda Leary, who teaches yoga at Peace in Medicine's healing center,
said she had used medical marijuana for menstrual discomfort.

"You know you're buying from a reputable source," said Leary, who
described other cannabis clinics as "average at best," without Peace
in Medicine's emphasis on patient education and holistic healing.

By learning to use acupuncture and other herbal products, she no
longer needs marijuana, Leary said.

James Ketchum, a retired 77-year-old psychiatrist, said he gets
medical marijuana from Peace in Medicine to cope with severe
insomnia. "Just a few puffs on a marijuana cigarette allows me to
sleep through the night," he said.

Marijuana works better than other sleep products, without side
effects, Ketchum said. Unfortunately, the expense isn't covered
byMedicare, he said.

Jim, a 52-year-old salesman who declined to give his full name,
smokes marijuana before bed for insomnia.

He once got medical pot from a clinic in Los Angeles that was "dark
and dingy and more like going back in the alley."

Jim said he liked the fact that Peace in Medicine certifies its
product as organic. "If you're using it as a medicine, you don't want
anything with sprays and toxic stuff," he said.

A Growing Business

The biggest challenge in opening Peace in Medicine was finding a
landlord willing to rent to a cannabis operation, Jacob said. Some 50
landlords turned him down, often at the urging of their lenders and
insurers, before a Ford dealership folded and an owner had a change
of heart, he said.

Sebastopol's ordinance restricts clinics to commercial areas, at
least 500 feet from schools and parks, which reduced the pool of
potential sites, he said.

The city recently allowed Peace in Medicine to open a second
dispensary. Finding a place to rent was much easier this time, Jacob
said. Because of the economy, there are more vacancies. Peace in
Medicine has a track record. The new clinic will be next to a Starbucks.

In nearly two years of operation, Peace in Medicine has had only one
criminal event -- a night break-in last May. "Thankfully, there was
nobody there," said Weaver, noting that one burglar, according to the
video recording, carried a shotgun.

"I guess they thought there would be bales of pot. They brought lawn
and leaf bags," the chief said. Because the city requires all cash
and marijuana to be locked in a vault at night. The burglars got
nothing, he said.

To put the burglary at Peace in Medicine in perspective, Weaver noted
that so far this year his city has had robberies at gunpoint of both
a bank and an armored car.

Legal cannabis clinics are a way to take away profits from illegal
marijuana growers, Jacob said. His clinic obtains all of its medicine
from patients who are encouraged to grow plants at home and sell back, he said.

Because of Peace in Medicine's reputation, nine groups from Napa have
contacted him for advice and possible partnerships once the city
adopts rules for permitting cannabis clinics, Jacob said.

A Napa clinic should be run by Napans, Jacob said, but he might be
willing to act as a consultant.

Napa Councilman Mark van Gorder, whose mother lives in Sebastopol,
said he intends to tour Peace in Medicine and interview Chief Weaver
before the clinic issue comes back to the Napa council next spring.

Addressing the Napa Police Department's security concerns will be
essential before he would vote to allow a marijuana clinic in Napa,
van Gorder said.

As the California public becomes increasingly comfortable with
marijuana, Councilman Robinson predicts that cannabis will soon
become legal for both pleasure and pain.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has invited Californians to debate this
issue, noting that taxing marijuana could raise billions of dollars
for the state treasury.

Sebastopol City Manager Jack Griffin said Peace in Medicine may pay
as much as $50,000 in sales tax this year, putting it among the
city's top 10 payers.

"In this economy, there aren't many businesses that are growing," he said.