The use of marihuana for medical purposes has since many years ago been legalized in many states of the United States. And not just in the form of pills that have cannabis extract (like in many other countries), but just outright "weed" that you smoke. And, subsequently, a lot of marihuana dispenseries have appeared in those states (so many, in fact, that you can literally see two or even three of them from one single spot on certain streets).
These dispenseries have officially the same status as pharmacies, ie. they need the same licenses and they need to follow the same laws (such as HIPAA and others).
A lot of people have filmed the entrances of these dispenseries, and the amount of daily visitors is quite large. It's an almost constant stream of "medical patients". In fact, many have noted that these dispenseries seem to have more visitors than actual regular pharmacies.
Huge quotation marks around that "medical patients".
Indeed, it's one of the most open "secrets" in the country that quite likely less than 1% of the visitors have an actual medical need for the stuff (ie. chronic pain or other similar conditions for which marihuana helps). The 99+ % of the rest have just got a prescription because doctors just hand them out if you merely ask them. Indeed, you just have to get an appointment to some random doctor, ask for a prescription, and he will just give you one, no questions asked. (If there are any legal requirements for handing out such prescriptions, the doctors just make them up, like "patient complains of chronic back pain" or whatever.)
So yes, probably at least 99% of the visitors are just recreational users, and this is fully and completely known by everybody. It's probably one of the most open "secrets" in the entire world.
The funny thing is that the employees still call them "patients", probably because they legally have to. It's so ridiculous that in this context "patient" could just as well be taken as an euphemism.
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