Pubdate: Fri, 07 Dec 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Anemona Hartocollis

FIRST OUNCES OF MARIJUANA LEAVE A NEW JERSEY DISPENSARY

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - They skulked in and out like criminals, shoulders
hunched, heads down, declining to comment.

It was the opening of New Jersey's first and so far only medical
marijuana dispensary, in downtown Montclair, on Thursday, nearly three
years after the law allowing such enterprises was passed. The opening
had been delayed by political battles over whether it would lead to
the de facto legalization of marijuana.

Patronizing the dispensary was perfectly legal, provided a doctor's
prescription for a list of specified medical conditions was presented,
yet the pioneering visitors - it was not clear if they were patients -
seemed none too eager to declare themselves, perhaps taken aback by
the horde of news reporters there to greet them. One visitor, who
would give only a first name, Ed, said he had been in pain since being
shocked on the job for an electric company in 2003.

Not for them the whimsicality of the Magical Mystery Tour and other
happy drug allusions of the '60s. The opening was all business, down
to the pious name, the Greenleaf Compassion Center. Visits were by
appointment only, and a uniformed security guard stood outside the
front door at 395 Bloomfield Avenue, checking identifications before
letting anyone into the store, which had black glass windows, making
it all but impossible to see inside.

The operators of the dispensary did step out for a cigarette break,
strictly tobacco.

The chief executive, Joseph Stevens, 40, said he had been a funeral
director for 12 years in Nutley, where he was inspired to go into his
current business by seeing firsthand the suffering of families whose
relatives had died of painful diseases.

"It's a comforting experience," Mr. Stevens said, describing how
patients had reacted to the dispensary. "They've lived in the shadows
for so many years." He said this was a place where they could get the
therapy they needed yet "feel safe, have no fear of prosecution, and
go home."

His business partner, Julio Valentin Jr., 43, the chief operating
officer, is a former Newark police officer who had run a Montclair
establishment, the Cafe Eclectic, known for its funky ambience, up the
street for 15 years.

Mr. Valentin said the town had been very welcoming, and stressed that
the dispensary was "not going to be your typical head shop or
mom-and-pop shop. This is a professional program." He had designed the
interior decor, which he described as "beautiful," with "earth tones,
a soothing atmosphere, leather couches, like an upscale doctor's office."

The partners said they had been friends for 32 years, and Mr. Stevens
said they were growing the marijuana in a "very clean, very secure"
warehouse. Asked if they had ever personally smoked their product, Mr.
Stevens said, "No, I don't. I just don't like it," but quickly added
that if he were sick, that would be a different story.

Mr. Valentin gave a theatrical shrug and a sheepish
smile.

They said they received several patients Thursday and dispensed
between a half ounce and two ounces of marijuana to each of them. Two
inspectors from the State Health Department also paid a monitoring
visit.

Montclair is known as a suburban version of Park Slope, Brooklyn, a
town with an haute bohemian feel, home to many writers and
journalists. But the dispensary is in a down-at-the-heels section of
the commercial strip reserved for offbeat and pariah businesses: a
string of ethnic restaurants; a cigar lounge; a head shop with an
adults-only section in back; and right next door, an abortion clinic
with a forbidding concrete facade.

Passers-by reacted mostly enthusiastically to the dispensary on its
first day.

Looking on in fascination, Francis David Robinson, or F.D.R., as he
likes to be called, a debonair 74-year-old who runs errands for tips,
said, "Could I get a freebie?"

Told that his glaucoma was one of the conditions that could qualify,
along with diseases like terminal cancer and muscular dystrophy, he
said dismissively, "I hate doctors."

One person unabashedly rejoiced in the arrival of the dispensary.
Surrounded by colorful glass bongs, Candi Cooper, the manager of the
combination head shop and adult shop, called the Montclair Video
Boutique, with peace signs in every "O" in its name on the sign out
front, said she looked forward to a fruitful relationship.

"It's kind of like a hospital," she said, of the dispensary. "You get
morphine and Dilaudid at the hospital. Does that make the place that
sells medical equipment to put the morphine in a bad thing? No."
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MAP posted-by: Matt