SAN FRANCISCO LETTER: Patients with marijuana prescriptions are facing the threat that their medicinal drug of choice may soon be no longer legally available
IN THE US, pharmacies are called drugstores and shops that sell marijuana are called dispensaries.
You could argue about which of these establishments deals in medicine and which in narcotics, but patients with prescriptions for medical marijuana are facing the real threat that their medicinal drug of choice may soon be unavailable to purchase legally.
Now growers and sellers of marijuana in California, which was the first US state to legalise the selling of weed in 1996, are at risk of being shut down and prosecuted in a broad federal offensive against the industry in recent months.
In San Francisco only five of the city’s 26 dispensaries have been shut since the crackdown began, but with some cities in the state now bereft of all their pot shops, dispensary employees are clearly nervous that their remaining hours of business may be numbered.
So nervous, in fact, that when I arranged to visit one of the city’s leading and most “open” dispensaries, the establishment’s outreach manager asked that neither he nor his place of employment be named. “We just really don’t want to draw attention to ourselves right now,” he said after seeming to evade my phone calls and emails for days.
The dispensary in question is housed in a wood and glass-fronted store that has won numerous design awards and looks more like the headquarters of a chic architect’s firm than a cannabis club. The same neighbourhood is home to several other, more traditional, seedy-looking dispensaries, surrounded by intimidating metal grilles and with tough-looking customers.
The store’s interior is bright and minimalist with pictures of verdant plants on the wall. The outreach manager has to show me around because, without a prescription, I’m not entitled to browse. All along one side of the store, people queue up to peruse a vast array of delicately curled and dried leaves displayed in shiny Petri dishes with prices clearly marked. Friendly, knowledgeable staff members flank the counters, only too happy to help. “Our employees are all experts on marijuana,” I’m told.
At the back of the store, another glass cabinet showcases an array of seeds for patients to purchase and grow at home. There is also a cabinet displaying “edibles”: marijuana-infused baked goods, truffles, lozenges, crisps and nuts that can be “discreetly consumed at work, for example, to avoid the stigma of using marijuana”, an employee explains.
Along the edge of the store, patients gather at low wooden tables to consume their purchases. They certainly don’t appear to be a stigmatised crowd. Just as at the pharmacy counter of any drugstore, some customers’ health problems are visible and others’ are not. Elderly patients and people with obvious physical disabilities sit alongside sharply dressed city workers and able-bodied young people clutching rucksacks and bicycle helmets.
Since there is a no smoking policy inside, the patients all avail of vaporisers: triangular, metal domes that boil the compounds of the weed, creating a thin mist that can be inhaled through plastic bags attached to the top. The company around the tables seems convivial, but nobody is giggling hysterically or slumped wide-eyed against the wall.
I’m not allowed to breach patient confidentiality by talking to the customers, and in any case, I begin to feel the effects of stray vapours, so I stay clear of the seated area.
All of the employees are also patients, though, and one tells me how he has used weed to overcome the severe pain of a broken rib. He also explains that many of the customers are cancer sufferers who use the plant either for pain relief or to restore their appetite, so that they can stay stronger for longer. Both he and the outreach manager see themselves as proudly contributing to pain relief for the community.
The dispensary also offers acupuncture services and meditation classes and other free “health services”.
These services are a way of keeping the collective within the strict non-profit rules set out by the 1996 Compassionate Use Act.
But Melinda Haag, US attorney for Northern California, does not believe that the industry is really as right-on as many of its operators profess.
“The law has been hijacked by profiteers who are motivated not by compassion but by money,” said Haag last October when US attorneys launched their indictment on the industry.
The whole marijuana industry here is steeped in indignant advocacy. Activists are dismayed at President Barack Obama’s apparent about-turn on his initial stance on compassionate use.
On his last campaign trail Obama said that he would not use justice department resources to circumvent state laws with regard to marijuana availability, but recent federal raids on dispensaries are bringing this administration’s attack on marijuana on a par with that of George Bush’s openly maintained war on drugs.
A lot of believers in marijuana who I have spoken to, both inside and outside the dispensary, all seem to use the righteousness of the word “medical” to advocate for something that they are really just big fans of.
But this could have a palpable political effect: if the feds don’t show more regard for “compassionate use”, Obama might find that many liberal voters in California will be more inclined to support Mary Jane than a democratic candidate in November’s elections.