“And you should look into a vaporizer. Some daily smokers can’t make the transition, but the advantage is that it delivers the THC without the harsh smoke. The best one is from Vape Brothers.” (Now there’s an idea.)
Thank you, doctor ma’am. She marched me back to the receptionist who’d taken my $110 and handed me a document certifying my prescription for twelve months. The secretary took a Polaroid photo and promised I’d get a laminated ID card in the mail within two weeks. The prescription was ready for immediate use, and the nearest dispensary was only a few blocks away.
Natural Health Collective, identified only as NHC on the door, was in an alley behind a commercial building, up an outdoor wooden staircase to the second floor. Even with the street address from its postcard advertisement, the place was clandestine, the door locked. A handmade sign advised me to Ring Buzzer for Admittance. I noticed a video camera mounted above me and a wave of paranoia washed over me. The door clicked and I entered a small waiting room with a cashier shielded behind what looked like bullet-proof glass.
“Your first time?” the guy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can I see your doctor’s rec and driver’s license or photo ID?”
I slid the documents through the narrow glass slot.
“Have a seat, this will just take a few minutes,” he said.
Voices murmured behind the wall and another locked door under video surveillance. Ten minutes passed while I wondered what was going on and felt vaguely insecure about the clerk having my driver’s license and doctor’s prescription, but he emerged smiling from his cage and returned my belongings to me.
“You’re clear.” A buzzer sounded and he waved me to the entrance of the inner sanctum. “One for the showroom,” he barked into a walkie-talkie contraption as the door swung open.
It was a pot smoker’s candy store. Glass display cases held rows of Mason jars crammed with gorgeous buds labeled with fanciful names. Purple Haze. Strawberry Cough. Blue Dream. Jedi OG. Super Sour Kush. Sensitive electronic scales and boxed displays of paraphernalia covered the glass countertops. One wall was dominated by a huge white board on which varieties and prices were posted in erasable felt tip. Prices were quoted by gram, eighth, or full ounce and got higher with perceived quality and more economical with greater volume, but my first impression was pure sticker shock. The cost was more or less double Charlie’s. As a first-time patient, I would get a twenty percent discount as well as some freebie—choice of a free gram or joint with minimum of purchase of an eighth, choice of a small pipe, pack of papers, or lighter.
All the clerks were scantily clad young women showing considerable décolletage, grinning broadly. They jabbered away, gaily advising me about the special deals, like extra-heavy eighths on Tuesdays, free eighths in exchange for referring a new patient, and a ten percent discount for seniors and the disabled. I qualified for the former, but you couldn’t combine it with a first-timer discount. Payment was by cash only, no plastic, checks, or receipts. The weed was bagged in the familiar mortar-and-pestle prescription sack used by regular pharmacies.
The product was outstanding, like the best Maui Wowee, and I was instantly too spoiled to get off on Charlie’s stuff anymore. Since every dispensary offered the twenty percent introductory discount plus “free gift,” I became a first-time patient in each.
With new dispensaries popping up all over town, they soon outnumbered Starbucks. My newbie status lasted a good two years before I had to visit the same one twice. Each had its unique properties, some larger than others, but all of them were fairly hard to see from the street, marked only by initials. The prices were remarkably competitive with one another, almost universal, as was the cash-only/no-receipt payment policy. The quality varied, but I was seldom disappointed. A few of these shops were evidently not playing by the rules. I saw a tall, golden Adonis in tank top and shorts buying three thousand dollars’ worth of bud—there was no specific dosage on the prescription, but the medicine was by law for personal use only—who remarked casually that he was “buying for my collective in Huntington Beach.” One sleazy outfit offered sample hits from a vaporizer on-site, not kosher, and one proprietor boasted of a full guarantee: “If you’re not satisfied, bring it back and I’ll replace it,” he crowed. One place actually had a bubble gum machine in its lobby and permitted children to wait there while their parents shopped the showroom. An elderly retired nurse from Orange County ran her own tiny shop, called the Green Nurse, and offered to weigh you and take your blood pressure. A young, bearded stoner guy in torn jeans took the money and put it in his pocket before handing you your purchase.
I finally settled on Quality Discount Caregivers (QDC), one of the busiest dispensaries in town, which had a huge selection of top-grade stuff. The prices weren’t any lower but they featured a kind of “frequent flyer” program. Save the empty plastic vials from twelve eighths, then redeem them for a free one, a baker’s dozen. Zig-Zag papers were gratis. On the fifteenth of the month, everything in the store was twenty-five percent off, and patients lined up on the sidewalk, but even on regular days you always had to wait your turn to get into the vault. The clerks were all mostly bosomy, half-naked chicks, the patients almost all male. I wondered how they got away with hiring only the youngest and most endowed female clerks—wasn’t that a violation of equal opportunity employment or something? The amount of money changing hands was staggering. Security precautions were practically military, with TV monitors everywhere and muscular, young, uniformed security guards with “badges” and guns.
By 2010, Long Beach had become a kushier town than Amsterdam, Bangkok, Maui, Bern, or Lugano. All those places had anti-marijuana laws they simply declined to enforce. Of course the brown cafés of Amsterdam were the most famous, the novelty of being able to walk into a storefront and score your stash over the counter almost unique in the world. But Switzerland, quietly and without controversy, has a similar system—in fact, growing and possessing marijuana has never been against Swiss law, but they cleverly get around it with a loophole; they call it hemp and prohibit its use “for narcotic purposes.” Hah hah hah.
The difference in California is that the storefront dispensaries are legal under state law. The state passed the first medical marijuana initiative in the nation, the famous Proposition 215, way back in ’96, and many attempts to repeal it have been soundly rejected by the electorate. Federal law adamantly forbids pot, but when Obama took office, he very early indicated that his attorney general would not pursue medical marijuana patients. Cities and towns in California adopted their own local ordinances, adding to the confusing miasma of different laws.
How groovy is that? But some upscale towns and better neighborhoods shunned the dispensaries. I found myself in places I wouldn’t frequent after dark. I raced past loitering bums eyeballing every customer who emerged from the store. I parked in conspicuous spots.
While few people would deny medicine to patients with serious illnesses, everyone knew you could get a prescription for nothing worse than a headache, and public objections to blatantly obvious pot stores grew into an uproar. Parents complained about cannabis storefronts located near schools and parks. Neighbors took offense at the late-night shenanigans and clusters of loitering stoners on the street. The Long Beach City Council dickered over the matter, divided into liberals and conservatives like the Supreme Court, and finally crafted a “compromise”—a bizarre lottery system intended to award a limited number of dispensary licenses and thus rein in the explosive growth of the industry. Some rogue dispensaries ignored it entirely and kept opening their doors and raking in cash until the city cops raided and smashed up their shops. A full-scale war was underway by 2011.
Uh-oh. Trouble in Paradise. But every time I asked one of the babes if the dispensary was going to be closed down, she said something like, “Oh, no, it’s all just politics, it’s all about money, we’re staying open, here you go honey, see you next time!”