I'm Serious

According to the State of California, I have serious medical conditions...serious enough that medical marijuana is an approved therapy for what ails me. As I wandered through a handful of cannabis dispensaries this morning I observed several dozen other Californians who also suffer from serious medical conditions. I know, I now know, how the State of California's medical marijuana statues are about easing untold human suffering in this cold, cruel world.

I wonder about sarcasm and the law...so I maintain that this post contains none whatsoever. None! What you may infer to be sarcasm, even knowing that virtually every other post on my blog is dripping with it, is not in this case.

Firstly, I was neither impressed, at all, with the knowledge base that dispensary "associates" have over the products they were selling, nor with the doctor providing the recommendation. Does THC laden balm, sold at every dispensary, rubbed on those seriously painful locations, actually provide for levels of THC into the bloodstream? Would it be sufficient to induce a high? If so, how much balm are we talking about? And what sorta high, what strains are used in the balm? Ask ten associates and you'll get eight answers. To get an idea regarding the lack of consistency, navigate yourself to any on-line marijuana forum and try, just try, to decipher and understand the random, chaotic, non-punctuated, badly spelled threads. I enjoy reading such boards on myriad subjects ranging from thrash metal to the economy, yet there isn't a topic so horribly structured as that sponsored by the marijuana enthusiast community. That there are a number of posts whose authors readily admit to being stoned beyond stoned while authoring hints as to why this might be.

Secondly, you don't have to concern yourself about knowing what exactly you're taking when you purchase medical marijuana, because you can be assured the dispensaries have no idea what you're taking when you purchase medical marijuana, because they have no idea what they're selling. Well, I should say that they most certainly know it's ganja, but know this -- I can sell marijuana back to the dispensary as a member of the cooperative, and they have no idea what I used to grow the stash other than what I've told them. Pesticides? Neem oil? Nutes? Indoor? Outdoor? Strain? Cloned or from seed? Mostly indica, or sativa dominant? No idea. They won't ask. I won't tell.

Come on, none of this matters. When you go to Walgreen's for St. John's Wort or Vitamin E, did you stop to think how virtually all vitamins sold in the U.S. are manufactured in China? Do you really think you know what's in them?

I only point this out on my monologues because one really does not have to look hard to see the forest for the trees regarding the therapeutic benefits of medicinal pot. Notice that no word in that last sentence is surrounded by quotes! Tell me -- when was the last time you saw twenty five people line up outside a Rite-Aid pharmacy before it opened? That my fair city of Elk Grove refuses to allow dispensaries simply forces the demand elsewhere...and there is an awful lot of demand. I maintain an even stonger conviction that a growing number of Elk Grovians will be burning many more barrels of foreign oil to drive to Sacramento to buy their medicine. Sales taxes for the city. Wa-hey.