Radical Thoughts on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

This weekend had a great impact on me regarding an issue of great contention in the cannabis law reform community, especially here in Oregon – medical marijuana dispensaries.

Sunday was dedicated to a panel from Oaksterdam University, and Saturday I had the chance to take the Oaksterdam limo out to the Bulldog Coffee Shop in the heart of the most pot-friendly place in the United States.  (Bonus: The limo had XM Satellite and my radio show was on!  A repeat, of course, but how cool!)  The main lobby was like any other coffee shop – a bulletin board tacked full of roommate searches, band fliers, items for sale – and a nice counterculture person working as barista.

Then as you venture into the back, you come upon a small room with wall benches, framed album covers on the wall, and a small end table with a Volcano vaporizer upon it.  Behind a split door with a counter sits the “budtender” and on the counter lies a thick photo-album-style binder.  I flip through the binder in which are stapled the baggies of medicine that are the menu – AK-47, Strawberry Cough, Sour Diesel – and the labeling of the prices for 1.7g (one 1/16th oz) and 3.5g (one 1/8th oz), which seemed to be $44/eighth, once you figure in the 8.25% sales tax.

I couldn’t help but think, “$44 an eighth?  I was getting it for $40 an eighth back in the day!”  I brought that up with some of my East Coast friends and they said, “Are you kidding?  We’re paying like $60-$75 an eighth!  What were you getting, a eighth of Mexican?”  No, I explained, I was a musician and I had good connections and great friend prices.  Not as huge a selection as the Bulldog, but I’m a White Widow sativa-guy; if I get it, I don’t care what else you have.

Sunday the panel from Oaksterdam was very informative.  These are the people making the real headway in reform, taking the huge risk of federal imprisonment just to sell medical marijuana to people who’ve jumped through a hoop to get it (not much of a hoop; I was able to get in and my state says I’m far too healthy for marijuana).  They are careful to follow the law and pay their taxes and be respectable business neighbors who contribute to their local economies and communities.

And yet, I couldn’t help feeling like the Red Cross observer who’s taken to the well-tended prisoners in the camp.  Certainly these are the cream of the crop and I’m not being presented the downsides.

During the panels from Oaksterdam, much was made of the idea that “Capitalism is good” and forcing non-profit status onto dispensaries was bad, but even in a non-profit you can make “a good living”.  A point was also made that the prices of the medicine couldn’t be lower than the street so as to avoid diversion to the black market.  Someone would buy their $20 eighth in the dispensary and sell it on the street for $45, so dispensary prices have to mirror the black market prices.

And therein lies the rub.  That’s not capitalism.  The medical marijuana market has an artificial price floor set by prohibition.

Why does the black market weed dealer get $45 ($60? $75) an eighth?  Because the original ton of marijuana got split and re-split and re-split again through a heirarchy of illegal networks, each hand along the way taking a profit for the incarceration risk involved.  Also because of the illegality, marijuana can’t be grown in huge multi-acre fields, harvested with the most efficient technology, and transported by rail or freight truck.  What would an eighth ounce of marijuana cost when it could be grown, shipped, and sold in the open like alfalfa?

The dispensary owner, however, gets those same black market prices and profit margins, with the sheen of medical legitimacy painted over it.  Prohibition keeps the farming clandestine and the transportation difficult.  Prohibition keeps the price high and prevents one dispensary owner from competing by lowering prices – that whole “invisible hand Adam Smith free market” thing that capitalism is based on.  Prohibition means that while you’re buying that $45 eighth in a dispensary, some college kid is losing his financial aid and spending a weekend in jail for his $45 eighth.

Ah, but the college kid can get a medical card and go to the dispensary!  Fair enough, but what if he’s exceptionally healthy?  He’s required to commit fraud with a doctor to avoid getting busted with weed?  And what of the extremely sick cancer patient who doesn’t have $45 to spend on medicine – does she get medicine comped or at lowered price?  If so, where do you set the line – cancer and AIDS get free meds, anxiety and depression, y’all can pay full price?  I’ve always disliked the notion of commoditization of health care – especially when we’re talking about what should be a freely-growing therapeutic herb.

These are concerns I’ve always had about the dispensary issue.  However, as I listened to the panels and as I toured the dispensary, I began to wonder – maybe this is the least shitty way out of prohibition?  Maybe the medicalization of marijuana and the institution of dispensaries is the best anyone is ever going to get in this country.

At first I didn’t anticipate that the people involved with dispensaries (and I may be wrong and I should have asked) would be too keen on a model of full legalization of marijuana.  Why would they want a model where the prohibition price floor is removed and full competition is realized?  Anyone could open a shop, anyone could grow weed, a lot of the risk/profit is removed from the equation.  How many marijuana growers and sellers would stay in the business if their profits were more like farming?  And why would doctors making an easy buck on marijuana recommendations want to get out of that business, either?

But then I started wondering if, really, anybody’s price would come down after prohibition ends.  People are used to and seem pretty accepting of buying $45 eighths.  Would the prohibition-free coffee shops be the Starbucks of weed?  I never would’ve believed people would pay $5 for a cup of coffee, either, and there’s all sorts of open, prohibition-free competition in coffee.  Maybe my perception is warped by the commerce-free Oregon program where I reimburse my patient’s grower for lights and soil and water at about $50 per ounce of medicine.

And when prohibition ends and that market is opened up to every cannabis consumer, sales volumes would increase and the profits may be better than under prohibition.  Maybe that’s more likely to happen if the neighborhoods have had smoothly-running pot shops for a few years and seen the sky hasn’t fallen with semi-legalized weed.

I also cannot deny that the profit motive is successfully getting more medicine to more people in California and that the well-run dispensaries are a net positive for the communities and the state.  For the truly medically needy, there is no way I can oppose any efforts to get them medicine, regardless of costs or my concerns with the merger of capitalism and health care.

So, perhaps, faking like I am sick, getting a doctor’s permission slip, and paying Starbucks prices for weed is the best “legalization” a healthy guy like me can ever hope for, unless Congress or the President does something unexpected like rescheduling or descheduling cannabis federally.  Hey, I’ve done worse things to avoid getting arrested…