My assumption is that this is a gray area of the law, i.e. state vs. feds, and enforcement that pharmacists don’t want to touch.

I will admit, as someone who has worked in more than one dispensary, I was less than charmed by the hypocrisy of some — not all, but definitely quite a few — of the dispensary owners I worked for &/or met. Truth is, some of them are indeed nothing but street-corner drug dealers who merely saw a loophole to exploit, & their actual concern for the significant population of truly sick patients they serve is cosmetic at best –, the in-store marketing of premium strains at whatever price the market will bear that week is only one example. To be anecdotal about it: I was not happy when I had to serve, at one West Hollywood dispensary, not only a rich TV producer but his spoiled teenage daughter & her friend, both of whom had their scripts with Daddy’s blessing, & who cadged extra hundred-dollar bills on the spot from the one’s eye-rolling, Rolex-wearing Pop so they could pick up a selection of cannabis-infused lollipops along with their eighths of “Beverly Hills Kush.” Seriously.

But there are many dispensary owners who truly believe they’re fighting the good fight, who stay open late when cancer patients from 50 miles away drive down because their home counties have harassed their local caregivers out of existence, & who keep a generous supply of decent MM on hand gratis for seriously ill patients who can’t afford pain relief, & I truly admire their sort.

Of course, the whole matter gets a little hazy (no pun intended, sorry) when you ruminate on a question such as: Should medicinal marijuana be a legitimate substitute for Prozac? I think one of big Pharma’s most outright evil tactics is sedating the population with unnecessarily strong & often harmful prescription drugs for anxiety, mild to medium depression, etc. My own experience ten years ago with cavalierly prescribed Prozac was a literal nightmare. Things seem only worse now; the juxtaposition on tv of hysterical anti-marijuana “public service” spots with those genuinely creepy, propagandistic advertisements for an ever-evolving devil’s cabinet of oh-so “helpful” mind-numbing sedative compounds is indeed the kind of thing that sends one running for the bong …

Anyway, not to be sappy but despite my slightly challenging tone in the original post, I do love this site; it has become absolutely essential reading for me, especially in these sad days when the L.A. print media seems to be dismantled or dumbed-down a little bit more with each passing week. Keep up the outstanding work, please!

If a user of medical marijuana must have a prescription to purchase the herb, why isn’t it dispensed from a pharmacy, I ask?

The DEA are monsters for trying to stamp out access. This should be a states-rights issue. If Jerry can keep it on track against blatant abuse, good for him. Others should butt out.

Welcome.

About the marijuana issue, I recommend you click on some of the links to my three previous posts here, and my LA Weekly article on med marijuana.

If it was up to me, I’d legalize it yesterday. But since large scale weed dealing is not legal in this state, it’s not helpful to the medical marijuana cause to wink at the guys selling $18,000 worth of bud out the back door, and growing several million dollars worth in the spare bedroom.

One of my journalism students did an excellent piece about medical marijuana that centered around the case of a young guy who is now in law school who is suffering from a rare, painful and dangerous blood-related digestive disorder. For a long time, when things got really bad for the guy, there were only two things that would lessen the pain: steroids, or an opiate—specifically Oxycontin.

But the steroids caused the tall, skinny student not to be able to eat, and taking them for a weeks one end, caused depression, paranoia, and anxiety.

As for Oxycontin, well….as you know, it doesn’t get much more addictive than Oxycontin.

Then somebody told the guy that marijuana might work for this condition.

He tries not to smoke unless he has to because it interferes with his studying.

But on pot he can eat and he can function and he can have some kind of normal life. So do I think it’s a better idea than killer steroids or wildly addictive Oxycontin for people with his condition or Crohn’s disease or other digestive disorders or the myriad of other conditions that weed helps?

And do I think the whole pharmaceutical situation in this country is absurdly hypocritical? Of course.

But this story is about comparing one law enforcement approach with another. I didn’t attempt an overview.

But thanks for bringing up the subject. I’m tired of having our prisons full of nonviolent drug offenders.

I do have to say that Witness’s attitude is not thought out in this important regard: Why is it fine & dandy for pharmeceutical companies to be billion-dollar multinationals who create & ruthlessly market questionably necessary &/or effective drugs to the populace without very much oversight at all anymore, but if some MM dealers/growers in CA start thinking big it’s suddenly hypocritcal & immoral?

Just sayin’.

So, Santiago #1, can we please give it a rest? This nonsense has taken over several threads and it’s trying my patience.

PS: I followed the links from days ago to In the Hat and read the referenced comments. Okay? I get it.

But that is then and this is now. Bringing fights here that occurred on other blogs is getting on my last nerve. Seriously.

Fair warning.