Medical marijuana for an L.A. Times columnist

For a lot of people, the details about medical marijuana can be hazy. Hundreds of dispensaries have grown like weeds around Los Angeles, some of which are open as late as fast-food restaurants (a blessed coincidence). But how does one get a prescription to use this medicine?

Thankfully, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez broke down part of the process in his column today about his visit to the medical marijuana doctor.

In his account, Lopez educates us about obtaining a marijuana “recommendation” from an obstetrician who had advertised as being someone who could write a script for the controversial bud. 

So the question is: Is Lopez’s account of visiting the doctor an accurate depiction of the experience?

Do you agree with him that we’re better off legalizing the plant? Or do the recreational users who abuse the system need to be, excuse the pun, weeded out?

Our interactive map of L.A. marijuana dispensaries shows which are licensed and which have been denied applications -- it also marks their proximity to schools, parks and libraries. What do you think about the location of these dispensaries? Does it matter that they are so close to schools and public spaces? Or do you consider this much ado about nothing?

-- Kelsey Ramos

Photo: Various strains of medical marijuana sit on a shelf inside Green Oasis, a medical mariujuana dispensary in Los Angeles. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Warren]

Legalize it. Tax it. Regulate it. Allow it to be sold in dispensaries and coffee shops

[brettstrodamus]

"It's My opinion that Mr. Lopez violated the law see SB420 for penalties regarding obtain a fraudulent Medical Marijuana Recommendation."

Everybody out there who agrees needs to do what I did. Call the police and or the DEA and turn Steve Lopez in for willfully violating state law in order to write a slanted propaganda piece for profit. Cite the article as evidence of the crime. Maybe Steve Lopez's arrest prosecution and conviction with jail time will serve as a deterrent to keep other so-called journalists from flagrantly violating the law in order to turn a quick profit.

[concerned parent]

my high-school aged daughter volunteered the info that most of the pot that kids are smoking these days is coming from medical marijuana dispensaries. Kids get some through a bogus prescription (hey, maybe the parents are doctors!) and then sell it to their friends at school.

[Big Jim Slade]

While we all know the Times editorial staff has reduced itself to a bunch of pothead cheerleaders the last few years, consider a few salient facts:

1. Legalizing marijuana will not make California a better place to live. It will just add more useless potheads leeching off society. As if we don't have enough already.

2. If you really think they'll be any more tax revenue or less crime, you must be toking right now. You're living in a city with a 50% illiteracy rate and a 56% high school dropout rate. Yet the Times thinks we should all get high.

3. Making comparisions to alcohol is probably a fair comment. It's the following statements about alcohol being harmless that are absurd.

California's State Board of Health wrote in 1871,"In the full knowledge of the fact of the pecuniary loss to the State and to his family by the idleness of the
inebriate and the cost to the public treasury for his ultimate care and support in the induced impaired health and
in the last stage of destitution, to say nothing of the expense of measures of repression and punishment called for
by breaches of the peace and crimes committed by the intemperate.

4. Nothing's changed in the last 138 years to improve the situation. Adding more fuel to the fire will only make it worse.

Now it's time for Lopez and the boys to toke up and head back on to Stupidville. If you ever wondered why The Times has become such a weak newspaper lately, one may assume they've taken care of their medicinal needs before taking care of business. They've turned into a bunch of dopers.

Harry Chandler would have fired them in five minutes.

[MikePost]

Why exactly is 186 or even 600 marijuana stores in LA a problem? LA city has over 4 million people and the county over 10 million. How many liquer stores are there? How many stores where beer and wine are sold? How many drug stores or places where legal drugs are sold? And what exactly is wrong with selling pot near churches or homes? Get real, pot is used by ordinary folks both for medical and recreational purposes every day. The market of supply and demand should govern the number of pot stores and the government should regulate for purity and tax pot just like any other product consumed. This should be a no brainer for any intelligent person.
The columnist might write a column about how winos get their wine and cancer vitims get their cigerattes and how many outlets there are for obtaining liquor and tobacco.
Instead he writes like a snide sob sister trying for humor. He's really better than that. Someday we'll all look back at this pot hysteria and just another American episode like prohibition. Enough already!

[Ray Torres]

If you need a prescription, then why not have pharmacies distribute it? Because advocates want it to be a gray area to allow recreational users to have access. 20 years from now we'll be looking back on "medical maijuana" the same way we look back on the 1960's cigarette commercials using doctors. Smoking anything is a health hazard. And most marijuana users are tobacco users. In Amsterdam it's hilarious to see folks have to walk outside of pot/coffee shops if they want to smoke tobacco, (since there is no smoking tobacco in places that serve food), even though they've just engaged in inhaling quite a large dose of apparently beneficial marijuana tar.

[Native Los Angeleno]

It would seem that the time has come for our culture to distance itself from alcohol as its primary social intoxicant and instead embrace cannabis. Naturally, the question is how to regulate its use. The most obvious answer is "just like alcohol." Of course, given its proven inherently benign nature and its unrefutable therapeutic benefits, that might be overkill. It would still, however, provide a basic system of rules and regulations that could be easily set in place.

[hoyleysox]

Solution in search of a problem. Who cares if someone else smokes pot. This article reminds me of David Lazarus' expose on the lax standards of online traffic schools. Lets make traffic school a bigger waste of time than it already is. Lets make it harder for pot smokers to get criminally indemnified and protect their jobs from prosecution.

[sss]

Mr. Lopez shame on you for creating an invasion of privacy in this doctor's office. Can't you go find another topic you can create biase?

[John]

Since the greatest profits in drug trafficking come from marijuana, just legalize it and tax it and you'll be taking about 80% of the profits away from the Mexican cartels. The police seized a truck with over 26,000 pounds of the stuff in Temecula in the last couple of weeks and the driver said it was smaller than the load he had driven two days earlier. That's around 30 tons and God knows how much more is getting through that they don't catch.

[Richard Hode]

Once again California is in the forefront of social change, in this case the legalization of cannabis. When we manage to do away with the vicious and counterproductive prohibition, which will be soon, California horticulture will do what it does best - our world-class cannabis will be as reputed and esteemed as our fine wines. A bright future is in store for California. I support cannabis legalization 100 percent.

[hal9000]

doctors these days will do anything for money. thank goodness. in a short time the oppression will lift a little more. i will be able to drive to the more poor cities in socal and finally obtain a true remedy for my high blood pressure. not be arrested and locked into the"system". police and politicians will do anything for money.

[Have seen the effects through a family member and with my profession.]

A regular user is a zombie. No ambition, the person becomes a vegetable.

My profession caused me to be in regular contact with users.

The damage to lungs is worse than tobacco.

A talented ambitious fifteen year old becomes a loser at fifty and says that the one substance ruined his life.

Tobacco and alcohol are no champs either, but not as insidious as the weed.

Medical use provided by real doctors and enforcement of reasonable rules is the only answer for me.

[hal9000]

i already said what i said. criminal justice is a for profit system. nothing is easier than busting pot heads. karma says legalize it and save lives. doctors say we can also win. it would stop a few winos too. dare print truth/

[hal9000]

comments are the only thing to remind you that 40% of every tax dollar goes to defense... at a time of no war

[frances gallman]

people who have such problems as emphysema, asthma & other lung disorders DO NOT HAVE TO SMOKE in order to benefit from this amazing plant. There are brownies, cookies, candies, ice cream, drinks, salads & many others uses that can help those in need. God knew what he was doing on the 3rd day. Give it up.

[MikeP]

I see the anti-pot mentality as part of the pre-modern mentality that dominates so much of politics today.
Abstinence is best, but everybody knows that moderate toking (like moderate drinking) is not fatal. There is just too much of an experience base to think otherwise.

[Patrick O'Neill]

In one hundred years of testing, there is no credible scientific evidence that marijuana is any way harmful to human beings. There just isn't.

If one believes that something is harmful, even though there is no fact to support that allegation, they are supporting fantasy, not fact. For the media to continue to call and regard marijuana as some kind of harmful drug is a perpetuation of non-reality, which I consider to be a crass violation of journalistic ethics.

[peter]

for all you cry babies about the closing of dispenceries, it is still not legal. Should I post my videos of dispecneries who operate an illegal operation? Stuff out the back door, kids with no scripts or recommendations, I mean kids. I own a private collective. I have 50 clients.
If you want it legal, get it on the ballot, then make sure the Feds are on board. Some of you stoners fail to realize, if we get a new President or a very conservative Congress, they could shut all of us down. The Feds consider it illegal. Wake up....focus. Grass roots....I am putting my energy in the right place, so stop your crying.

[Mike]

Hey LA Times,
Why don't you post an "interactive" map of all the places in LA County that sell alcohol and cigarettes! It'll make this dispensary map look like a joke!
How many people do we all know that have died from DUI or tobacco related death?

[Citizen]

Let's end the prohibition on marijuana. It didn't work with alcohol and it doesn't work with pot. Having marijuana legalized will take the criminal element out of it overnight. Then our police can start chasing real criminals instead of stoners. The prohibition of marijuana seems like another case of the moral "majority" trying to dictate what people do with their personal lives. Mind your own business. As long as alcohol is legal, there is really no reasonable argument for the prohibition of marijuana.

[Too many herbal stores!]

There are TOO MANY dispensaries in Los Angeles. We are a joke to the rest of the country in more ways than one. Whether pot is legal or not - all you pot heads - there are too many dispensaries, what do you say to that? Legalize your pot but don't have 1,000 places in one greater city area to sell the stuff!

[KangarooLipstick]

Dude.. The Jar in the photo is called Kushzilla!!! LOL.. You have to admit that stoners come up with some great names.!!

[Marc "Head On Straight" Twane]

This is scary:

"Trutanich's ordinance includes a tough set of regulations, including banning the sale and manufacture of edible marijuana products. The ordinance would also force dispensaries to install a quality web based closed-circuit security system where tapes must be handed over to police at their request, even without a search warrant, court order or subpoena. Collectives must also turn over all records, such as members' (who most call customers) information and activity, to police without a search warrant, court order or subpoena."

[Arturo LA]

I have to laugh when I read some of these comments - from people who have no idea what's really going on at these "medical clinics." I live near several of them, and they are basically just drug dealers with their own stores. But I guess if you live in a gated compound in the hills like most LA limousine liberals, then you really dont' care if other people's neighborhoods get run down, as long as you get your weed in a hurry. Listen, if you really want to know what's going on, then set yourself up outside of one of these shops for an hour or two, and watch the teenagers going in, the street characters who are going to re-sell the pot right away, the gangbangers with suspicious looking bags..... So much for helping people with cancer, right!