MEDICAL MARIJUANA, A CASUAL USER'S TALE

San Francisco -- I am not one of the "seriously ill Californians" that
Proposition 215, the state's medical marijuana law passed by voters in
1996, was designed to help. I'm a 31-year-old marathon runner who's
generally in peak health, unless I've had a few too many margaritas. But
two months ago, I decided to read Proposition 215 to find out just how sick
you had to be to obtain marijuana legally.

I made a startling discovery. The state health code listing the conditions
for which marijuana can be recommended by a doctor includes migraine right
after AIDS, cancer and glaucoma. Every month or so, I get a migraine
headache from dehydration or the stress of a deadline. Although I had a
hard time believing someone like me might qualify as a medical marijuana
patient, there it was in cold print.

In the previous few years, some three dozen Amsterdam-style marijuana
markets had opened up in San Francisco, their forbidden aromas spilling out
from behind closed doors in nearly every neighborhood. I had a perverse
desire to sample the wares of my local marijuana shop, the way I shop for a
wheel of Brie at my neighborhood fromagerie.

This was all before last Monday's ruling by the United States Supreme Court
that users of medical marijuana, in the 11 states that permit it, can be
prosecuted by the federal government. But neither the State of California
nor the City and County of San Francisco has yet announced any plans to
change their medical marijuana policies as a result of the decision.

Even though a doctor's note won't prevent medical marijuana patients from
being arrested by the federal authorities, such prosecutions have been
extremely rare. To judge by the laissez-faire attitudes that I encountered
- - from the health department, to sympathetic doctors, to the marijuana
emporiums - little seems likely to change for those seeking access to
medical marijuana in San Francisco. And gaining access was remarkably easy.

To get in the door of my local marijuana store, the Green Cross, you need a
city-issued identification card showing you have a doctor's recommendation
for marijuana use. The only person I knew who had ever had one of these
"cannabis club cards" was a dialysis patient. But after reading the letter
of the law, it looked possible that even I might be entitled to one. I
decided to try.

I had just switched health insurance providers to Kaiser Permanente, one of
the largest H.M.O.'s in the country. The doctor I made an appointment with
had never met me before.

"I have chronic migraines," I told her.

"Mmm hmmm," she said, typing on her computer.

I dropped the bomb. "Will you prescribe me pot?"

She stared at me with a surprised, slightly titillated expression.

"Nobody's ever asked me that before," she said. "I don't know what Kaiser's
policy is."

After checking with her colleagues, my doctor told me the unofficial policy
is to prescribe marijuana only for "end of life scenarios." My migraines
did not qualify.

I called Medicann, a clinic I'd seen advertised in one of the city's
alternative newspapers. I was told I needed to come in for a doctor's
evaluation, pay $120 and have a copy of the records describing my
migraines. I ordered them from Kaiser.

The clinic's anonymous looking storefront was at Sutter and Polk Streets:
an area mainly catering to homeless hustlers and their johns. The morning
of my appointment, there was a brawl outside, and the streets reeked of
urine. Inside, three patients - one with bloodshot eyes, another with long
straggly hair and the third wearing a glittering medallion - sat with me in
the waiting room. The doctor who called me in had a hoop earring in each ear.

In his windowless office, he asked me if I'd tried prescription migraine
drugs, and heartily agreed when I complained they felt "too chemical."

"Most of those drugs are garbage," he declared. He was once a traditional
doctor working in a hospital, he said, until he clashed with his supervisor
over recommending medical marijuana. He'd recommended medical marijuana to
his patients, he told me, after seeing them become dependent on
prescription opiates.

"I didn't want to be responsible for turning people into drug addicts," he
said passionately, handing me a written recommendation for marijuana. He
scoffed at the federal laws and never asked to see my records.

All I needed to do now, the Medicann receptionist told me, was to take my
doctor-signed marijuana recommendation to the city's Department of Public
Health, and they would issue me my cannabis club card.

I checked the health department Web site and learned that I could take
along three people to act as my "primary caregivers." They would get cards
entitling them to the same rights and privileges , even though they're not
sick. That way, in case I was too infirm to buy my medicine, they could
pick it up for me. My real-life primary caregiver, my husband, had failed
to grasp the point of my whole experiment, insisting that "pot is basically
legal anyway and isn't hard to get." So I took along two good friends instead.

The three of us stood in line inside the health department building for a
half hour. When we were eventually called into the back office, a city
worker photographed us with a camera festooned with a toy gray mouse
wearing a top hat, and said festively, "Look at Smokey!"

A few minutes later, our laminated cards were in our hands. Next to our
pictures, they simply read "Patient" and "Caregiver." Our names were left
off, to protect us from being identified by federal authorities, it was
explained to me at a city government hearing. Some weeks later one of my
caregivers and I visited our local club, the Green Cross. It is on a quiet
street lined with Victorian homes between the bohemian enclave of the
Mission District and the yuppyish Noe Valley neighborhood. We buzzed the
doorbell, and a young man with a long ponytail opened the door. We flashed
our cards, and he let us in.

Several young men were browsing at a long display case while ambient techno
music played. I felt as if I were in a hip clothing boutique.

We checked out the line of glass candy jars full of 50 varieties of
marijuana. A cheerful young man behind the counter in a T-shirt that read
"SF Ganja" asked,

"First time?"

We nodded, and he offered us a free sample of the baked goods containing
marijuana. I selected a vegan brownie.

We paid $40 for a few buds of a cannabis strain called "Thai Princess,"
which the employee said was the shop's top seller. That also got us a gram
of "Trainwreck," and for good measure, a gram of "Super Trainwreck."

Back on the street with a brown paper bag of drugs, I felt naughty, as if I
was walking around in only my underwear. I had to keep reminding myself
that everything I'd done was on the up-and-up, at least according to state
law. The entire process of legally buying marijuana had been shockingly
easy. Concerned that the excitement of our first medical cannabis
transaction might trigger one of my migraines, my caregiver suggested that
we practice some preventive medicine back at my apartment. "Thai Princess"
had excellent therapeutic qualities, and I was pain free for the rest of
the afternoon.

In fact, our behavior was just what some of the critics of medical
marijuana have warned against - that its easy availability opens the door
to recreational use and encourages an aura of tolerance, at a time when
marijuana abuse is a problem among young people. But I believed that the
causes of addiction were more complicated than that.

Now, the fact that I might lose the legal rights I'd only so recently
discovered I had was causing me some distress. In fact, I could feel a
headache coming on.