"Oooh, there's a pinch in my lower back. My head hurts too."

"And my vision is blurred from going through long lists of Southern California physicians who specialize in herbal medicine.... The open secret is that it's a cinch to get a marijuana 'recommendation' in California. A 'recommendation' isn't a prescription, but it would allow me to visit a dispensary and buy my buds. In Los Angeles, locating such a place would be no harder than locating a palm tree. The little green crosses are everywhere, with 186 dispensaries operating with city permits and an estimated 600 more that found a loophole."

So, basically, in California, anybody who wants to use marijuana and is willing to be mildly deceitful to do it, can now do it legally... almost. You have to be — if not actually sick — willing to go through the medical dance and to accept the not-quite-completely legal aspect of it.

Does that state of affairs make marijuana all but completely legal in your way of thinking or all but completely illegal? I would find myself in the second category, and I think there's something really unfair about that.

Well, maybe people who are super-straight enough to fall in the second category wouldn't be the type to use marijuana anyway, even if it were 100% legal. But it's at least unfair to the people in the first category, who do get their marijuana the medical way, because they have to bear the burden of feeling that what they are doing is sleazy and bogus. (Perhaps a little marijuana will help you with that feeling.)

But actually it is still unfair to the super-straight folks who wouldn't even use marijuana if it were 100% legal. It's telling us we are not allowed to do something that other people can do. I don't like that inequality. Equal access is important — even to places you don't want to go.