Medical marijuana gets a social outlet
PORTLAND – At the Cannabis Cafe, people sit around taking tokes from a “vaporizer” – a contraption with a big plastic bag that captures the potent vapors of heated marijuana. Glass jars hold donations of dried weed, and the cafe serves up meals and snacks.
It’s all perfectly legal and, for cancer patient Albert Santistevan, 56, it’s about time.
“It’s a very positive atmosphere. We could use more places like that,” said the former jewelry shop owner.
A few weeks ago, Santistevan would have had no place to go. But with the Obama administration’s decision last month to soften the federal stance on medical marijuana, the Cannabis Cafe and a lounge across town popped up.
The idea could catch on in the roughly dozen other states with medical marijuana laws. Allen St. Pierre, spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, said the organization has already gotten inquiries from Washington state, Michigan, Montana and Maine.
Portland police have not received any complaints about the cafe and it is not under any special scrutiny, officials said.
“It’s better than having a sex club, a strip joint or a bar full of drunks open down the street,” neighbor Claudia Nix said.
Even though they have a card, medical marijuana patients have had to confine their smoking to their homes for fear of getting busted.
“We have no place of our own. So this is the place,” said Madeline Martinez, executive director of the Oregon chapter of NORML, which operates and monitors the cafe.
Patients bring marijuana grown by themselves or by their designated caregivers. They also donate marijuana for other patrons to use. People who want to use marijuana at the cafe can’t get inside until someone checks their IDs to make sure they are patients registered with the state. The patients also have to be a member of Oregon NORML to use the cafe and pay a $20 a month fee and a $5 cover charge.
In another part of the city is Highway 420, a small lounge in the back room of Steve Geiger’s pipe shop. Rules for using the lounge are similar to those at the Cannabis Cafe. Geiger opened it in late October. “The truth is that nobody that takes medication every day would be told you have to take that at home,” he said.
Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance President Kevin Mannix said he wishes there had been more public discussion about the cafe before it opened. He worries Oregon’s law could be stretched beyond the original purpose of personal use for relief from disease or chronic pain.
“I’m not going to cast judgment on whether or not there should be a cafe,” Mannix said. “But I do think legislative policy makers need to take a good hard look at where we are headed.”