Selling Grass Grows Greener - Pass the Dutchie…

WedNEWSday - July 22nd, 2009

More stoners equals more dependent on government. 

Any word on whether medical ‘dutchie’ will be part of Obamacare?  As if there weren’t enough ‘layabouts’ already on the dole courtesy of ‘we the federal income taxpayers.’

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After years in the shadows, medical marijuana in California is aspiring to crack the commercial mainstream…

Mr. Werner and his partner recently decided to expand. They signed leases for two new outlets.

They also have lost their wariness of advertising. The proliferation of dealers makes promotion essential. The two now pay several hundred dollars a month for ads on Web sites like Weedmaps.com, which helps people find medical pot.

Justin Hartfield, who started Weedmaps, says it has grown quickly to about $20,000 in monthly revenue, half from ads.

The rest comes from referring people to doctors who recommend pot. Mr. Hartfield bills the doctors $20 for each patient he sends them. The American Medical Association ethics code says payment for referrals is unethical. Mr. Hartfield says the doctors are keenly aware of the ethics issue and consider their payments not to be fees for referral but “advertising fees that change every month.”

Shane Stuart, 23, says he used to buy weed from street dealers but in February saw an online ad for a pot-friendly doctor. He realized then, he says, that medical marijuana was becoming more mainstream and having a pot ID card wouldn’t hurt him with employers. He came away from a $200 doctor visit with a note recommending pot for pain from a hyperextended knee.

Mr. Hartfield, the Weedmaps impresario, has a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana “to ease my anxiety and help with my insomnia.” Mr. Hartfield says the med-pot system is really just a way of legalizing marijuana for anyone who wants to smoke. He says his anxiety/insomnia isn’t really serious enough to require treatment. “I’m fine. I don’t really have it,” he says. “The medical system is a total farce. I’m an example of that. It just needs to be legal.”

Med-pot advocates say marijuana can ease chronic pain, spur appetite in anorexics or chemotherapy patients, and relieve eyeball pressure in glaucoma patients. The law voters approved in 1996 listed several conditions that might be helped but said so long as a doctor recommended pot, all “seriously ill Californians” had a right to it for “any…illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

David Allen, a former Mississippi heart surgeon, last month opened a general practice in Sacramento and listed himself on a Web site as a pot-friendly doctor. Marijuana, says Dr. Allen, 57, “helps the common conditions that affect every human being — for instance, anxiety, depression, insomnia and anorexia” — and can relieve certain arthritis symptoms and muscle-spasm conditions.

Still, he says, many of his patients are people who already used pot but just wanted a doctor’s recommendation to avoid legal trouble. “If I was to deny them, I would put them at more risk, and I’d be hurting society by doing this as well,” he says. “Cannabis is safer than aspirin.”

Dr. Allen smokes pot for insomnia, anxiety and stress. He says he quit heart surgery because what he does now is more lucrative. He says he doesn’t pay for referrals, a practice he considers unethical.

This from The Wall Street Journal - July 23rd, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124829403893673335.html

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