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People who want to use marijuana at the cafe can't get inside until Martinez or other NORML members check 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, pay a $20 a month fee, and a $5 coverage charge at the door. The money goes toward operating costs. In another part of the city is Highway 420 -- a number pot users have used as code for marijuana
-- 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. Eight to 10 people come in on a given day. People sit around, talk and watch TV while smoking marijuana. Geiger said it's only fair for medical marijuana users to have a place where they can socialize and use their medicine. "The truth is that nobody that takes medication every day would be told you have to take that at home," said Geiger, who spent about 30 years working with computers before opening the shop. One of the state's staunchest law-and-order figures -- 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, and said lawmakers need to weigh in before more cafes open.
"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." St. Pierre, the national NORML spokesman, argued that the Cannabis Cafe and the Highway 420 lounge show that medical marijuana can be part of neighborhood community life. "I can tell you had they done this three years ago, they'd be gone," he said. "If they'd done it 10 years ago, there would be yellow tape around them. If they'd done this 20 years ago, they might have gone in there with guns blazing."
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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