First a Cannabis Café in Oregon, now a Ganja Gourmet Restaurant in Colorado… but are they “medical”?

DENVER (CBS4) ? A medical marijuana dispensary in Denver has decided to get creative and make the business into a full-service restaurant that caters to those who need to use medicinal marijuana to ease physical ailments.

The owner of Ganja Gourmet located at 1810 South Broadway Avenue said the restaurant will “aim to help distribute medicinal marijuana to those licensed to have it and provide an atmosphere where patients can visit with one another in a safe environment.”

Ganja Gourmet plans to offer lasagna, gourmet pizza, jambalaya, paella, chocolate mousse and flavored cheesecakes, among other gourmet dishes.

The restaurant will be decorated in a 1960s retro feel, including tie-dye attire for the employees.

Steve Horowitz, an owner of Ganja Gourmet, said the restaurant will offer courtesy rides home for customers who feel they can’t drive.

Some neighboring businesses it’s just the latest proof several blocks of South Broadway are going to pot.

“I don’t think it’s good for the neighborhood,” an area business owner said. “I think it’s a joke that they’re using the guise that it’s medicinal. It just shows it’s not medicinal.”

I’m not going to launch into a defense of the medicinal properties of marijuana or the value in ingesting cannabis in an edible form.  That’s an argument that’s long been settled and really isn’t at the crux of this anonymous business owner’s comment.

What this comment reveals is a theme that we’ve heard in Oregon with the Cannabis Café as well.  “It’s just a joke, it’s just around as an excuse for people to get high and socialize, obviously it is not medical,” I’ve heard and read, “it’s not like a bunch of diabetics get together to use insulin socially!”

Yes they do.  Diabetics get together to use insulin socially all the time.  So do pain patients get together to use opioid pain killers socially.  And asthma patients get together to use their inhalers socially.  You just don’t see it that way because you don’t notice those people using those drugs in social situations.  You don’t notice the diabetic taking a break away from the restaurant table to go to the rest room for a blood sugar check and some self-administered insulin.  You don’t notice the pain patient at the football stadium popping a Vicodin at halftime so he can sit through the 2nd half.  You don’t notice the asthma patient using the inhaler during the rock concert.  And you don’t find them gathered and segregated in groups by use of medicine because they are allowed to use their medicine publicly.

But the medical marijuana patient can’t spark up a joint at the restaurant, football game, or rock concert (well, maybe the rock concert… but you’d notice!)  Imagine if the only place diabetics were allowed to take insulin was in their homes.  Imagine that if anyone sees them doing blood sugar checks and taking insulin in public they could lose their right to take insulin without being arrested.

You can bet that these diabetics wouldn’t have very many social outlets.  They’d become prisoners of their homes, the lucky ones maybe visiting some of their diabetic friends for companionship in their homes, where they can medicate without sanction.  Some without friends would become very lonely.  In either case, they’d be missing out on many of the social opportunities healthy people take for granted. Research shows that isolated people get depressed and depression can lead to other mental  and physical health complications.

Eventually, somebody would realize there is a need for a social outlet for diabetics and they’d create a “Diabetics Deli”, where there are free blood sugar measurement devices and patients may use their insulin on site.  There’d be a special menu catering to the dietary needs of diabetics.  Many of the diabetics would get healthier as they’d have access to blood meters and quality food they may not have access to at home.  They’d feel better, their mood would improve as they socialized and made new friends.  As they band together at the deli, they’d learn how to organize and fight for their rights to use insulin without sanction.

So yes, Cannabis Cafés and Ganja Gourmets are medical, in the sense that they provide some of the few social outlets for a subset of people using a certain medication.  We’d prefer that not just patients but every adult could order a joint with their java in certain public cafés or a little slice of cheeba cheesecake in some public restaurants, but for now at least patients can enjoy some manner of social outlet in a few states.