Rolling Stone has a good article called "The Great California Weed Rush" about the big money in medical marijuana. As Coop says: "This is the same kind of crazy cutting-edge quasi-hippy capitalism that started the PC revolution. If I were a big tobacco executive, I'd be trying to get in on this now, by bankrolling these guys and turning my massive DC lobbying machine over to legalizing pot at the federal level."
A doctor's note is the gateway to the wonderful world of pot clubs, which in the new lingo are called "dispensaries." In California — unlike the eleven other states with medical-cannabis laws — there's some vague legal protection for Amsterdam-style shops selling medical marijuana. Usually named something like "Compassionate Caregivers," "Earth Healers" or, less obscurely, "Kush Mart," these stores are like dying and going to stoner heaven. They look like old-timey apothecaries, with glass cases of prescription bottles with twenty to thirty different kinds of bud, nearly all of exceptionally high quality, ranging from $35 an eighth to $100 for OG Kush. Any self-respecting dispensary owner also sells hash, kief, jellies, infusions, cones, clones, pot lollipops ("Hydropops"), pot candy bars, pot peanut butter, pot ice cream and at least a half-dozen flavors of pot sodas — sometimes sold out of a vending machine. One store owner told me excitedly that when Nevada OKs dispensaries, he's opening a club on the Vegas Strip. We were talking in a parking lot, and when he drove away he forgot a can of soda on the roof of his car.
