Medical marijuana finds social outlet in Oregon cafe

PORTLAND, Ore. — At the newly opened 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, milky-green weed, and the cafe serves up meals and snacks for the hungry.

It's all perfectly legal and, for cancer patient Albert Santistevan, it's about time.

"It's a very positive atmosphere. We could use more places like that," the 56-year-old former jewelry shop owner said.

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, bringing a little bit of pot-friendly Amsterdam to this working class corner of Portland.

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.

Jan Clutter lives about a block from the cafe and knows the owners well. She said many neighbors would probably prefer it was somewhere else, but there has been no push to have it moved. For some, things could be worse than having a pot cafe.

"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.

Oregon became the second state to pass a marijuana law in 1998, following California. There are nearly 24,000 patients with medical marijuana cards in Oregon. Only state residents can obtain the card after registering as a patient in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program with a qualifying debilitating medical condition diagnosed by a doctor.

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.

Volunteers gave a reporter and a photographer a tour of the cafe. No marijuana is sold in the cafe. Patients bring marijuana grown by themselves or by their designated caregivers. They also donate marijuana for other patrons to use. The cafe has a pool table and comfy couches.

Martinez demonstrated the "Volcano," a vaporizer that collects marijuana fumes into a clear plastic pouch with a valve that releases the fumes for patients to inhale.