Reefer Madness

"HANDS UP, AND BACK AWAY FROM THE BROWNIES"

Raids and Arrests Are Up, but So Are the Number of Dispensaries--and
More States Are Coming Aboard. Activists Say Regulation Could Help

When California voters approved the nation's first medical-marijuana
law in 1996, the idea was to help people like Jamie Green, a
73-year-old cancer patient who says he can't stand traditional
painkillers such as morphine and Vicodin. "One puff and my pain is
gone," he says. Alas, medicinal marijuana is producing nothing but
pain for California politicians and law enforcement officials.

The Golden State has seen an explosion of dispensaries where people
with written recommendations from a doctor can buy all kinds of pot
products, from multiple grades of herb sold by "cannabaristas" in
black aprons to marijuana-infused candy bars and baked goods with
names such as Reefer's Peanut Butter Cups and Munchy Way.

An estimated 600 dispensaries have sprouted up statewide in the past
three years, a $1 billion-a-year business by one estimate. Many use
coupons, newspaper advertising, and the Internet to attract customers
with come-ons that include free grams for first-time visitors,
discounts for people who have served in the armed forces, and $150
credits towards doctors' visits.

The relatively easy access to the drug has been lampooned on popular
TV shows such as HBO's Entourage and Showtime's Weeds, the star of
which--a pot-dealing suburban mom--has trouble competing with all the
new medical-marijuana establishments. It has even inspired related
businesses such as Potpartner.com, an online dating site for
marijuana smokers that launched in April and has been advertising on
Los Angeles radio stations. Richard Kapustin, one of the site's
founders, says he has been giving out promotional lighters with his
company's logo at the dispensaries. "The response has been very good," he says.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

There's one big problem with this, of course: Marijuana is still
illegal under federal law. In July federal agents raided a dozen
dispensaries across the state. Fourteen people were arrested,
including several dispensary owners, a doctor who made referrals, and
a handful of protestors. The Drug Enforcement Administration also has
sent letters to the landlords of 150 dispensaries warning them that
their property may be subject to forfeiture.

The feds say the dispensaries are just fronts for illegal
drug-dealing. In one indictment, Larry R. Kristich was charged with
running a chain of seven dispensaries from San Francisco to San Diego
that operated under the name Compassionate Caregivers. Although
California's law says medicinal ganja cannot be sold for a profit,
the indictment says the business generated more than $95 million in
sales, allowing Kristich to purchase a $70,000 Mercedes and real
estate in Costa Rica. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles says
Kristich is now a fugitive. Calls to the Compassionate Caregivers
branch in Reseda, Calif., were not returned.

Don Duncan, whose California Patients Group is a nonprofit, says the
feds are tarring all dispensaries with the same brush. Ironically, he
was arguing for more regulation of the industry at Los Angeles' City
Council when his dispensary was raided on July 25. "The DEA can't
tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys," he says.

The city council ended up initiating a moratorium on new
dispensaries. Councilman Dennis Zine says complaints about the
dispensaries' staying open too late and distributing promotional
fliers near schools has the city considering a number of regulations,
including making sure they are collecting sales taxes and prohibiting
consumption on the grounds, "just like liquor stores."

Never an Overdose

Meanwhile, the federal crackdown is prompting a lot of dispensaries
to close up shop. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood says there
were six dispensaries in Bakersfield when he took office in January.
But two federal raids, including one that led to arrests on July 17,
as well as his own warnings have prompted them all to shut down. "It
is a federal crime," he says. "And federal law trumps California law."

A dozen states now have medical marijuana laws, the latest being New
Mexico, whose law went into effect on July 1. Most of the laws list
specific ailments such as cancer, glaucoma, and AIDS, for which
doctors may recommend the drug. California left its law open to
interpretation by allowing physicians to suggest it for any illness
they believe marijuana may help. Dr. Alfonso Jimenez, who owns four
clinics in California that give patients recommendations but don't
sell pot, says he has treated 5,000 people over the past four years,
many for anxiety and depression. "I've got patients who come in and
say: "I don't want antidepressants that will cause suicide or hurt my
liver,"? he says. "It's a great treatment for chronic insomnia. I've
been an ER doctor for 10 years. I've never seen a patient come in
with an overdose of marijuana."

Los Angeles won't be the first California city to regulate the
dispensaries. In San Francisco at one point, the number of people
coming to downtown Oakland to buy medical marijuana grew so large
that the neighborhood earned the nickname Oak-sterdam. Even the
city's mayor at the time, the famously liberal Jerry Brown (he's now
California's Attorney General), sought to rein in the dispensaries,
closing some down and setting a limit of four in the city, according
to Dale Gieringer, a state coordinator for the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Many medical-marijuana proponents lament that aggressive growth and
marketing of California's pot dispensaries has set back the
medical-marijuana movement. Scott Imler, a Methodist minister who
helped write California's medical-marijuana proposition back in 1996,
says he would prefer to see the federal government control production
and distribution of the drug. Imler says he read that one of the
dispensaries in Los Angeles kept a sawed-off shotgun on the premises.
"Have a shoot-out over a bag of weed--that's exactly what we were
trying to avoid," he says. "We were trying to get patients off of the
black market, not institutionalize it."