Medical marijuana on a California high
The Los Angeles City Council has been working to close a loop-hole that has produced a medical marijuana boom. Lack of regulation and lots of demand has created a runaway reefer industry in the Golden State. Jeff Tyler reports.
Cannabis in a pill bottle (Continental/AFP/Getty Images)
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Kai Ryssdal: There are now three states in the Union in which it's legal to buy marijuana for medicinal purposes. Last week Rhode Island joined California and New Mexico as places where pot can be dispensed with a doctors' prescription. The Rhode Island Department of Health will be able to license three medicinal marijuana dispensaries in total. In some places in California, like, in California in Los Angeles, you can find that many pot clubs in a single block. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler has more now on an industry with not much regulation and plenty of demand.
JEFF TYLER: In some Los Angeles neighborhoods, there are more medical marijuana dispensaries than there are Starbucks or McDonald's. Most sell more varieties of weed than Baskin-Robbins has ice cream flavors.
City councilman Dennis Zine says calling it a boom is an understatement.
DENNIS Zine: It's bigger than a boom. It's a major explosion with these facilities opening up, and they're opening up every single day in the city of Los Angeles.
At last count, there were 600 medical pot clinics in Los Angeles. That's right -- 600.
For many of them, the medical angle is nothing more than a pretext for selling dope. There's a cottage industry for doctors who prescribe pot for conditions as ubiquitous as insomnia or stress. Zine says the city council is working on new regulations to crack down on these free-wheeling pot pharmacies. Many will be closed.
Zine: Oakland, for example, has four medicinal marijuana facilities. That's easy to regulate and control. When you have 600, you can't regulate and control. We will bring this down to a reasonable number.
While the city tries to curb the growth of pot clinics, the marijuana economy in California seemingly can't be stopped. Nobody really knows what it's worth. But some estimate that marijuana is a $14-billion industry in the state.
The THC Expo -- the first pot industry trade show in the nation -- was held recently at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Hundreds of exhibitors showcased everything, from bongs to pot-laced fruit drinks and cannabis candy bars.
STEVE DeAngelo: It's a great growth industry. Anybody whose interested in a career, there's a great future in cannabis.
That's Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center, a dispensary in Oakland. In the midst of the recession, he's hiring workers.
DeAngelo: The number of new patients coming into my facility climbed 84 percent in the first four months of this year. And what's driving that growth is that we're seeing the very beginnings of the conversion of the huge illegal market for cannabis into a legal market for cannabis.
To be clear, pot has not been legalized. But the Obama administration has taken a hands-off approach to medical marijuana. DeAngelo says gross sales at just his clinic run around $20 million a year. Though he quickly reminds me that, by law, medicinal pot clinics are not-for-profit.
To really cash in, DeAngelo recommends starting an ancillary business. He charges up to $400 an hour as a consultant to budding pot entrepreneurs.
DeAngelo: How do you develop a competitive edge so that people come to your shop instead of going to other shops.
To help dispensaries boost business, Steep Hill Medical Collective provides pot quality control. It tests for pathogens, like molds and mildews, and quantifies the level of THC -- the active ingredient in pot.
Co-founder Addison DeMoura says the lab tests help consumers be better informed.
Addison DeMoura: What we're actually doing is allowing patients to pinpoint the cannabis that's more specific for some of their ailments. It kinda gives them more of a value for the dollar they're spending at a collective.
He says varieties like "bubba kush" and "granddaddy purple indica" are good for severe pain. While "sour diesel" and "super-silver haze" sativas may reduce anxiety. Cash-strapped cities may also see value in weed.
In Oakland, pot clinics are behind a ballot measure that would impose a new tax on everything related to medical marijuana. Again, dispensary owner Steve DeAngelo.
DeAngelo: We really want to demonstrate that we are good corporate citizens and that our communities can actually benefit in a tangible way from having medical cannabis dispensaries located in them.
In July, voters will decide on the tax. If approved, Oakland could collect around $300,000 in pot taxes to help the city's budget.
In Los Angeles, I'm Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Columbia, MO, 07/01/2009
The online postings seem to overwhelmingly approve of the dispensaries in theory, if not in the reality they now exist. But there are also, we now hear, more comments from other folks who also hit a "comment" button, but they hit the one at the top of the page and not at the bottom at the end of the story so their comments didn't get posted? Okay, seems a bit puzzling, but okay. And there was such a big difference in opinion between these two avenues to have ones' say. Maybe those commentators who hit the button at the top prejudged the dispensaries without bothering to read the story. Yet, statistics have consistently shown the American public to favor the availability of cannabis for medicinal purposes by a far wider margin than that between candidates in most elections. This has been true for a long time. Perhaps Marketplace's listeners are different.
If we value the market and what it tells us, then someone will want to cash in by providing supply for the great demand that cannabis enjoys. We could try to tax it and regulate it. There's no toxic level for it. Alcohol, tobacco, and fatty fast foods are far worse when consumed regularly. We tried making alcohol illegal and rethought that.
The ones who currently profit from pot are the large scale dealers and the law enforcement entities who receive tax dollars and assets from seizures. Politicians get political capital by being "tough on crime." Prohibition makes contraband lucrative. To continue the corruption and violence for a harmless plant is stupid policy. Prohibition for the last seven decades has not found success. The original reasoning for the prohibition was racist and deceptive in the 1930s. Times have changed.
Regarding the dispensaries and the strong demand we know exists: the question is, if cannabis is to be made available to patients, how shall we accomplish this? If the dispensaries are not the way, then what is the way? Or is opposition to the dispensaries part of a knee-jerk response thanks to "Reefer Madness" conditioning of the prohibitionist element of our society?
From Los Angeles, CA, 07/01/2009
Liz,
Listener comments aren't limited to what you see posted here. Many listeners send us their opinions through the "Contact" link at the top of the page.
From Columbia, MO, 06/30/2009
I heard on Marketplace today that this story elicited a lot of comments and that most "expressed outrage" at the idea of the growth of pot dispensaries. What a load of horse-hockey!
I just went back through all the comments here. Tim Sand and I both commented 3 times in apparent opposition to each other. Besides his prohibitionist stance, there was Marty who, as a student, did a research paper that seems to have convinced him there is little if any benefit from cannabis. Jay Hart seemed to have the least interest either way, and the 13 others who commented seemed to advocate medical marijuana completely, and most seemed to support leaving recreational users alone. Boba Yep did think that California's program as a scam, or promoting scams, but BY also called for legalization in the same comment.
How did Marketplace come to its conclusions about the response to this story? Can no one count at Marketplace? Is Tim Sand Marketplace's editor? Or maybe Nancy Reagan?
For those who accuse NPR of "Leftist Bias," here's evidence that puts that tired, old chestnut to rest. A show about money that should be able to count to ten or so couldn't manage to figure out that anti-Prohibitionists dominated the Comments Page.
From Seattle, WA, 06/30/2009
Hallelujah, Sisters!! See how THC now became the miracle plant/pill that cure everything in the universe(even in BlackHole)!! I feel like I am in the realm of Outer limits that it can do anything. Remember now, it controls the vertical, horizontal, even skew-zontal!! Don't attempt to adjust anything: Resistant is futile!! I don't have Sixth Senses, only common sense; but I see Stoned people all the time!!
"Give me a break!" JS. TS
From santamonica, CA, 06/28/2009
Jeff Tyler gets all the good stories....
From Los Angeles, CA, 06/28/2009
Gosh! what a mish-mosh of information. First of all. There are 13 yes thats THIRTEEN states that now have approved medical maryJ.
hey Martin- You can only list 2 things that pot is good for???where did u get this research? The FDA can supply the drugs we need?
f@#4 the FDA and the crap they approve. Like ASSEFX. AND ALL THE tv commercial drugs that have side effects that are so many that they have to be read off at auction speed just to fit in the 1 minute commercial.
The facts are...pot has more uses than any other drug or herb on the planet yet can be grown indoors or outdoors by novice gardeners.
We dont need clinics by the hundreds. One just opened today on my block where hundreds of young school kids walk by everyday. I think this is wrong.
I believe in less clinics and more home gardens. Just like veges. Homegrown will assure healthy organic medicine free of pesticides,molds and other unnatural elements present in alot of the commercial weed out there.
GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY! THATS MY ADVICE.
STOP SELLING CRACK,STAY HOME GROW A GARDEN AND LIVE A LONG BEAUTIFUL LIFE.
JAH RASTAFARI
06/26/2009
Marty: You are wrong about the research. Check NORML website page http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7002 for referral to reputable studies in many respected medical journals on cannabis treatment for many ailments. Rather ironically, cannabinoids are found to slow Alzheimer's; to slow and reverse tumor growth -- NOT JUST to relieve pain or the effects of chemo and radiation therapies; to be an effective anti-spasmodic; and to provide relief for debilitating digestive conditions like Crohn's Disease.
This page: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3390 at NORML lists the many medical associations who advocate liberalization of the current laws on cannabis use.
06/26/2009
People who think like fellow comment contributor Tim Sand are usually unaware of the many potheads around them. It's as if he saw homeless drunks as the only people who consumed alcohol, despite the many friends or family around him who might even be tipsy in his presence.
Lawyers, doctors, scientists (even Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman was a toker!) business owners, and even future presidents have been pot smokers. Many inhale fairly regularly and still function brilliantly in their fields. Prohibitionists are actually the delusional ones because they think that legislation making a harmless action illegal will make people stop doing whatever it is the prohibitionist wishes to make his fellow citizens stop doing.
From SoCal, CA, 06/26/2009
This was bound to happen...and I'm not surprised that LA has decided they needed to crack down. It's because they haven't provided any sort of guidelines whatsoever and pretty much anybody can open a dispensary. I heard that most of the dispensaries aren't even legal because they didn't get approval before they set up shop. But who can blame them? Medical marijuana is a vastly growing area, and the people in it are some of the only businesses making money still!
http://www.marijuanamedicine.com
From seattle, WA, 06/24/2009
Let's follow Larry Flynt's heoric action: going to DC for bail-out of the Drug-Cartel industry!! Cocaine, THC, heroin, Angel dust, etc. are GaBillion businesses!! They are too big to fail!! Let's go & save the "Smoke"!!! Burn, baby, Burn, Keep the "Smoke" alive!!! "Give me a break!!" quote from John Stossel. ts
From cleveland, OH, 06/24/2009
An industry with 600 retail locations in one city alone and provides work and wonderful products to the public is "too big to fail"
From Portland, OR, 06/24/2009
Oregon is another state that has legalized the use of medical marijuana.
From Trenton, NJ, 06/23/2009
Arresting patients is wrong, and it must stop now. Modern clinical research, centuries of experience and the impassioned personal accounts of thousands of real patients concur: Marijuana can alleviate symptoms of certain serious medical conditions, and it can do so when other drugs fail to help. Doctors should be free to recommend this medicine to promote health, and sick or injured patients should be free to use it responsibly.
The safety margin for therapeutic marijuana is as wide as it can be - there is no known lethal dose. For more info, see: www.cmmnj.org
From CA, 06/23/2009
I don't even understand why this is even a conversation. This is a transaction between two people that does not have an effect on anyone else. The only reason why this has the ability to attract danger is because the government makes it illegal. Remove the legal barriers, then you can regulate it and I can enjoy some weed when I go to the movie theater.
From Seattle, WA, 06/23/2009
Marijuana is a natural plant and the medical establishment has proven that its side effects are very mild compared to other mind altering pharmacuticals supported by our government.
It's funny to read and hear people who act like the world is going to end if the US lets up on its "war on drugs" approach to marijuana, but there is no sound reason or logic behind that position.
In fact, information about how many people use marijuana and its effects on people in general is obscured because of the illegal status of the plant. The research that's out there is biased because people have a disincentive to be honest about whether they use plant or not.
I hope that we, as a society, can reach a point soon where adults are allowed to make the decision to consume natural products, that don't harm others, for themselves. Legalizing marijuana would be good for people who can be helped by the plant, will reduce the black black market and its violence, and will boost the economy.
From denver, CO, 06/23/2009
Why is it that nobody sees a problem in prescribing/taking benzodiazapams like adivan for insomnia or anxiety, but marajuana is not o-k. If a doctor can prescribe a drug w/ serious addiction potential, like benzo's, how could you question prescribing marajuana? We prescribe drugs that profoundly alter people for all sorts of minor things....sleeping problems, anxiety problems, adhd, manic/bi-polar, etc. Anybody who questions this one drug, perhaps should look critically at other drugs and how they are used.
From Seattle, WA, 06/23/2009
This is the classic: tail wacking the head. Why? If enough propaganda, confusion, mis-knowledge are created, marijuana will become the next miracle cure for everything from the zits on the face to longivity in the lala land! Can one really think critically or even cross a busy street safely while high on THC? and now, they ration that THC is safe & good for everyone? I now truely realize what it mean to be "stoned"!
What's wrong with the picture? There are just too much problems with America nowaday!! First, it is impossible to reason with people on THC, partying is their life. Now, imagine these people to become the teachers, role models, jurors, leaders of the next generation;
when the majority of the population were convinced that smoking pot & partying all day long is just a way of American life!! Someday, a college student will proove the teachers wrong that 1+1=2, under the rule of THC imaginary mathematics, the answers will be a constant shifting variable!! Wow!! Newton & Einstein are just idiots in that realm!! That's scary thought, I wish I am stoned!! TS.
From Denver, CO, 06/23/2009
Legalize it. Treat it like alcohol plain and simple. End black market and violence.
Once it’s legal it will be exciting for the first 3 months. After that, the people who smoke now, will probably smoke the same amount. And the people who won’t, simply won’t. Not much will change.
I’m so sick of the Gateway Drug Argument. Alcohol is the ULTIMATE GATEWAY DRUG. It’s probably 90% of people’s first buzz. And if they like it, the want more. None of my successful friends that smoke got into heavy drugs like coke.
It's a shame that the people who get addicted and kill themselves with crack & cocaine get wrapped in the same category as an adult that want to smoke a joint on a Friday night..... What a weird world.
And if treated like alcohol. Kids will have as much access to it as a 6 pack of beer. In otherwords, if regulated, kids can’t get it.
So legalize it. And to the folks that say NO and that have never done it, what right do they have to judge it? Why would I care what my neighbors do if it were not hurting anyone?
From Oakland, CA, 06/23/2009
Medical marijuana is a scam in CA. You can get a recommendation to use pot for anything you can think of. MediCann Inc the largest group of doctors in CA is behind most of the bogus patients with ailments ranging from diahrea and cannabis dependency.... They even write recs to kids ages 6 and up and pregnant women. It was featured on ABC channel 7 and they admitted all of this. Pot should be for seriously ill people or just legalize it. There is really no medical value in it when you are just taking it for "headaches".... Everyone is just trying to get high plain and simple!
From Seattle, WA, 06/23/2009
I am a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner student and made a presentation on medical marijuana for a substance abuse class. There is little research to prove marijuana has much medical value beyond the antiemetic action for cancer treatment or appetite stimulation. Other actions of marijuana, though not researched, are probably better treated with FDA approved drugs. Marijuana can not be prescribed because the fda has ruled it is a schedule I drug. That means it has no medical use and has a high risk for abuse and/or addiction. In addition, the U.S. has signed an international treaty that states it will not legalize this drug. As a result, marijuana will not be able to become legal for quite a while. At best, a state can decriminalize it. There was a recent federal case in California where a patient was charged with possession of marijuana. The patient was not allowed to introduce into evidence that a physician had recommended the use of this drug because of it's schedule I status. Obama has directed the FDA to keep their hands off patients using medical marijuana in states where it is decriminalized. The status of patients in the other ~34 states where it is illegal is unclear.
Marty
From Santa Cruz, CA, 06/22/2009
I'll try to summarize the most important facts.
Cannabis Prohibition was based on racism and politics.
Cannabis is safer than substances lower on the Federal schedule.
Cannabis has therapeutic usefulness.
Prohibition is failed dysfunctional policy.
Whether cannabis is good or bad doesn't matter.
Prohibition is not regulation, it's deregulation.
Law Enforcement just creates winners, losers
and victims. It reduces competition and supports high prices.
The harms of prohibition far exceed the harms of abusive use by a minority of users.
The medical exception is not a solution, injustice will continue. "Recreational" use needs recognition.
Production, distribution and sales should be regulated but competitive and for profit like alcohol
tobacco caffeine and pharmaceuticals.
There remains vast ignorance about the facts.
Those with the power to change the laws know little or nothing about how to do it right.
Careful thought will have to be given to address
how to transition out of Prohibition.
Limited growing at home will have to be allowed.
Real reform will only be at the Federal level.
Minors will have less access to legal cannabis not more.
Cannabis does not impair as dramatically as alcohol
when driving. Legal cannabis will NOT mean any increase in Pot DUI.
Debate Cannabis on facts, not lies, myths, and unfounded conjecture.
From Udon Thani, FL, 06/22/2009
Let me try to understand this. There are over 600 stores that are in demand, "people use them," they are hiring people and putting them to work during this time of unemployment, bringing in much needed cash, giving them money to support their families, helping people in need. Now here comes our government and wants to put them out of business?? There are to many of them?? What about the law of supply and demand....or letting the market place decide who survives? WHY is our own government trying to put people out of work now? And over a beneficial HERB, not a drug that is helping so many people? It is time to put these people in government out of work, THEY are the ones who should be out looking for a way to suppoort their families. Marijuana is the biggest cash crop in California yet these bozos still try to hurt the very people who are paying them! OUT WITH THEM! )^_^)
From Columbia, MO, 06/22/2009
It seems easy for someone who hasn't benefited from cannabis to be skeptical about its benefits. Most people, even the staunchest prohibitionists, will probably concede that for cancer or AIDs patients there may be some real benefit for the side-effects of drug or radiation therapies. And even those who seem to try to be evenhanded, such as in this story, seem to put insomnia in a class of less-than-worthy ailments to warrant allowing the use of cannabis. The misconceptions about both cannabis and about what ailments it might be able to alleviate are equally numerous.
Many people don't realize how beneficial cannabis can be for a whole array of ailments or disorders.
Imagine needing 3 or 4 hours to fall asleep. Barely being able to keep ones eyes closed, finding patterns and faces in the shadows and wallpaper patterns, hitting the "snooze" button on the radio alarm clock for another hour's music so that it wouldn't just be total silence. (Barring traffic noise -- this was New Jersey, after all!) Hour after hour. And once asleep, having vivid, active dreams. Dreams where one is always moving, in scenario and in fact. Imagine falling out of bed at least weekly and often waking with head at the foot of the bed. Imagine waking up more tired than when you went to bed after only 4 or 5 hours. Or having trouble getting up in time the next morning. Imagine always getting into trouble as a child for staying up past bedtime, but hating to suffer the boredom of the many hours between lights-out and the magic late hour that might bring sleep, however fitful.
Imagine what it was like to have your first good night's sleep at the age of 15 years. Now I fall asleep in minutes, even moments, after my head hits the pillow. I sleep 6 or 7 straight, solid hours. I wake up refreshed, bounce up, and get lots of chores done in the morning. I'm sure the prohibitionists would rather I support Big Pharma's shareholders and risk a whole host of nasty potential side effects on Ambien or the like. The only side effect I suffer from now is being forced into the status of scofflaw. I would really rather pay taxes for something I should be able to buy with a bottle of wine or even to grow between my tomatoes and eggplant!
Mine is only one story. There's some serious science out there that finds that cannabinoids help Alzheimer's patients, reduce and reverse tumor growth, and helpf in fighting antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The only reason we are not availing of this cheap, organic, multi-purpose, ultra-renewable plant, that needs little if any fertilizers or pesticides, is because for some the earth is still flat. Or in order to line Big Pharma's pockets if their own product's popularity and price would plummet with legalization.
The Drug War has been a failure for civil liberties. Many people can benefit immensely from medical cannabis and there's really much less harm from the recreational use of cannabis compared to alcohol. The violence and corruption that has accompanied prohibition has become a recent headline, but don't forget the over three-quarter of a million arrested per year and the lives ruined by the so-called justice system!
It's time for the change that many of us want, at least when we talk to our doctors.
From IL, 06/22/2009
Could you please expound a little more on the financial benefits/risks of pot in Cali? I'm asking b/c a cnbc report listed 300k as taxes currently paid by one oakland dispensary, not all dispensaries under a new law; i think you might be short changing your estimate a little. Also, could you look at how the quasi-legal market is affecting the crime scene in los angeles (600 dispensaries in one county may be worth it if no one is dying anymore). thank you for your time.
LEGALIZE IT!
From San Francisco, CA, 06/22/2009
Marijuana should be legal not only for medical patients but for adults who prefer to relax with something less toxic than alcohol.
If you want marijuana to be legalized, taxed, and regulated for adults, YOU can make it happen. Tell your legislators to support California Assembly Bill 390. It's easy. Visit yes390.org
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