“What do you need to do to be able to be legalized? — see a doctor — that’s it? — yeah”

For all intents and purposes, marijuana is already legal here in California. Take the famous Venice Beach Boardwalk where we sit now, customers wander past sandwich-board signs with cannabis leaves painted prominently and college-aged kids encourage any and all to come on it and “see the cannabis doctor.”

According to one kid holding a sign on the street who offered me to enter, “It’s basically already legal. It’s very easy to go through the process and we are out here, picking people off the street to go into the doctor’s office. It’s not like they really have to look very hard to find to get it.”

Former LAPD Chief and current LA City Councilman Bernard Parks says, “If you go back and look at the rules, it’s very clear that there are standards that need to be met, unfortunately many people that are in the medical marijuana business have not met those standards.”

The truth is, as long as you don’t admit you just want to smoke pot, you can walk into many of the thousands of medical marijuana dispensaries across the Golden State, get a prescription from a doctor on site without a physical examination and walk out with perfectly legal weed. Heck, there are even mobile pot dispensaries that now show up at your home or business and sell you weed in cookies, brownies and you can even choose the kind you like.

“In the state of CA if you have a recommendation from your doctor you may legally purchase cannabis and possess cannabis,” says Steve DeAngelo who runs one of the state’s largest dispensaries. “California law is pretty liberal in allowing doctors to recommend it, so in California law if a doctor and a patient agree that cannabis is appropriate the doctor is authorized to write that recommendation.”

During my numerous trips to this area while gathering info, interviews and information for this report, I have been hit up multiple times every time. Normally for $150 you can get a recommendation, but I was told recently by one guy that the doctor can be lobbied down to around $90 on the right day. He also told me, “just don’t tell em you want to just smoke and you’ll get it no problem.”

To the ease of this process Parks says, “On the issue of medical marijuana the standards are much lower, the examinations may be non-existent and you have people who have these cards or these recommendations that do not appear that they have any connection with their ailment.”

Deangelo has a different take, “It’s not really our responsibility to determine the validity of a recommendation, that’s the responsibility of the medical board of California.”

So with a vote coming this November to legalize pot entirely here in California, not just for medicinal purposes, what do you think? This time next year you may be able to walk into the corner store grab a pack of twinkies and a pack of pot on your way home from work.