MEDICAL POT SALES BOOMING

Officials Struggle to Restrict Stores to Intent of Laws

LOS ANGELES - Almost 13 years after California became the first state
to allow the sale of marijuana for some medical conditions storefront
purveyors of the drug are nearly as easy to find as a taco stand.

Yet police and prosecutors say the law is vague on who can sell pot
and in what circumstances. They worry that the state unwittingly
created safe havens for drug pushers who are doping the population
with immunity.

"They appear to be run by drug dealers who see an opening in the
market and a way to make a fast buck," says San Diego district
attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who says every pot store her office has
looked at is operating illegally.

The tangle of regulations and alleged criminality that has followed
in the aftermath of California's first-in-the-nation law allowing
medical marijuana is hardly restricted to the Golden State.

Thirteen states, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, have
passed laws by ballot or legislative action permitting marijuana
possession for some medical reasons even though the drug is illegal
under federal law.

Some, like Rhode Island, where a medical-marijuana law passed in
2006, officials are still trying to figure out how to set up places
where people can buy the drug. In Colorado, which approved sales of
medical marijuana in 2000, cities are passing moratoriums to halt the
blossoming of marijuana stores. New Mexico's lone non-profit licensed
to distribute pot is overwhelmed by demand.

In Washington state, a legal dispute rages over whether the law
permits people to just grow their own pot or also buy it from dispensaries.

Stewart Richlin, lawyer for more than 150 medical-marijuana
collectives in Southern California, says states that legalize medical
marijuana must accept the commerce that follows.

"Once we acknowledge patients have a right to cannabis, they have to
get it somewhere," he says.

The medical-marijuana movement was begun by advocates who say pot can
provide relief for a wide range of illnesses, from AIDS to arthritis.
Why should people suffer when pot can help, they say?

"It's highly effective in certain circumstances," San Diego physician
Bob Blake says.

Critics say a law meant to benefit a relatively few number of
patients is being exploited by entrepreneurs who are making big money.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Paul Torrence says the department investigated
a clinic in the fashionable Venice area that was doing up to $140,000
in sales a month. In San Diego, where authorities this month shut
down 14 sellers of medical marijuana, Dumanis said at least one was
operating on that scale as well, over $700,000 in six months.

City Council members Janice Hahn and Dennis Zine, in proposing Los
Angeles tax sales of medical marijuana, point to Oakland, where they
say four licensed dispensaries had gross sales of $19.6 million in 2008.

"It's a very, very profitable business," says Torrence, of LAPD's
gang and narcotics division. "That's clearly outside the boundaries
of the voters' intention in passing Prop 215."

California voters approved that proposition in 1996. The law leaves
regulation up to local governments, and there's a vast difference in
how receptive each is to medicinal pot.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown issued guidelines that said
non-profit cooperatives and collectives are legal if certain
requirements are met.

In Los Angeles, the growth of storefronts selling marijuana has been explosive.

Torrence says there are more than 400 registered with the city. But
there may be many more - as many as 800 applications have been filed
and many operate without approval, says Jane Usher, special assistant
city attorney.

"The practical reality has proven to be these facilities have by and
large opened without any kind of registration, application, nothing,"
Usher said.

Colorado says it's beginning to see something similar. Its law
created a state registry to track patients authorized to use medical
marijuana but made no provision for sellers.

"They have kind of sprung up rather recently in numbers across the
state," says Mike Saccone, spokesman for Attorney General John
Suthers. "Law enforcement is concerned."

To qualify for medical marijuana in California, patients must have a
doctor's "recommendation." Prescriptions for pot are prohibited by
federal law. Advertisements abound from doctors who recommend medical
marijuana to qualifying patients.

Blake, 60, who went into a practice devoted to medical marijuana
after 28 years as an emergency room physician, says he doesn't use it
himself but sees pot as a safer alternative to morphine, OxyContin
and other conventional painkillers.

"I never saw a person die of a marijuana overdose. Narcotics
overdose? You bet," he said.

Police are skeptical about the medical need in most cases, Torrence said.

"I have yet to see a person enter the clinic that appears to have any
kind of medical problem," he said. "Most of the people I see going in
are young people that appear very healthy."

[sidebar]

13 STATES IN 13 YEARS

Thirteen states have laws that legalize medical marijuana:

State Year passed How passed

California 1996 Ballot measure

Alaska 1998 Ballot measure

Oregon 1998 Ballot measure

Washington 1998 Ballot measure

Maine 1999 Ballot measure

Colorado 2000 Ballot measure

Hawaii 2000 Legislature

Nevada 2000 Ballot measure

Montana 2004 Ballot measure

Vermont 2004 Legislature

Rhode Island 2006 Legislature

New Mexico 2007 Legislature

Michigan 2008 Ballot measure

Source: ProCon.org