If you’ve ever been on the gentle ride at Epcot called Living with the Land, you have seen hydroponic and aeroponic gardening. Leave it to Disney to find innovative ways to grow their own food and turn it into a fascinating attraction.
We recently visited a local aeroponic farm to look at tower gardens (pictured.) These are vertically stacked pods that can grow twenty or more plants without soil, with much greater yields and lower water use.
“Can you grow marijuana in these?” I asked.
It seemed like an obvious question, and judging by the laughter around me and the look of delight on our guide’s face, a good one.
“Yes! In fact, the plants grow quickly and to a very large size.”
I’ll circle back to this thought in a bit.
Why my fascination with marijuana? I’ve written previously about my use of a marijuana-infused cream on my arthritic knees, and the challenge I face in Florida legally acquiring the product. Well, it turns out that my quest was much easier than I thought it would be.
I stopped by a local cannabis dispensary and was directed to one of a number of clinics in the area where “cannabis doctors” meet with you. Not unlike the Wizard of Oz, they speak a few impressive-sounding words and send you on a quest to become a registered medical user in the state of Florida.
I’m sure you recall that in Oz, the Wizard was a humbug. Several of the creatures in Oz were clueless allegorical characters searching for brains, a heart, or courage. Under the influence of drugs, these things can be obtained, if not imagined.
Much like Dorothy, I stepped out of a monochromatic gray concrete parking lot through the cannabis clinic door into a technicolor office space with the vibe of the Emerald City. And much to my surprise, the first character I met was a little dog. About the size of Toto, he had a pronounced underbite, a wrinkly bulldog face, and was immensely curious, sniffing my ankles and demanding to be scratched. I swore he was going to start talking, like many of the animals in Oz. Perhaps after my visit with the cannabis doctor, he might.
Seated in the waiting room were two downtrodden customers, perhaps Uncle Henry and his wife. Auntie Em seemed confused and quite rattled by Toto.
“Calm down, it’s just a dog,” said Henry. Then he turned to me and added, “She has dementia.” Maybe they were hoping cannabis would help with that.
I stepped up to a window where the receptionist asked how I planned to pay for my visit and fumbled with a credit card reader. It seemed to be just beyond her capabilities, but with a painted-on smile, she generated a receipt and pointed the wrong way down the hallway to a room I needed to visit.
There I met a nice young man with hair like a lion’s mane. More of an Afro really. I hear they’re coming back, having been popular in the days when The Wiz was all the rage. He handed me a product list, instructions for micro-dosing, and a chart that turned out to be a prescription. I guess everyone gets the same prescription.
That’s where my metaphor takes a break. There was no wicked witch or Tin Man. Only a Wizard.
“Hi, I’m Doctor Mike!”
Doctor Mike goes out of his way to be relatable, in a far too engaging sort of way. Short of saying, “Heyyyyyyy,” like the Fonz, he’s all about making the patient comfortable and tries hard to generate a cool vibe. He wears a flowered shirt unbuttoned too far, several gold necklaces, has dyed hair, and several rings on each hand. This all left me wondering just what kind of doctor this guy was in a previous life.
“Interesting gig you have working here,” I couldn’t help but say.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had!”
Rodney Dangerfield used to talk about his quack doctor named Vinnie Boombotz. Those jokes immediately came to mind. The more Vinnie, er, Mike, talked, the larger his memorized vocabulary became. He proudly spoke words like tetrahydrocannabinol. He was a veritable fountain of syllables, which might impress uneducated customers, but made it clear to me that he was deflecting my questions with canned comments.
“If you don’t like to smoke flowers, you can vape.”
“I just want to get some cream for my arthritic knees.”
“A chocolate edible right before bed will help you sleep,” he continued.
“I sleep fine. I’m here for the pain in my knees.”
“Well, you can see by the prescription I gave you that there are limits assigned to each category of product.”
“I see. So it says I get a maximum of 1400 milligrams for topical applications. How many jars of cream will that buy?”
“Our dispensary folks are like gurus when it comes to that stuff,” he dodged.
If we back up a moment, let’s revisit the notion that the Cowardly Lion moments earlier gave me a printout of a “prescription” before I ever met with the doctor.
Let’s say that again. I was given a “prescription” before meeting with the doctor. He didn’t know anything about me, my symptoms, or my hoped-for outcome. For this, I paid $154. And I am required to have a follow-up appointment in seven months. The state charges $75 annually to maintain my profile in the Medical Marijuana User Registry. This all happens before I visit a dispensary to make a purchase.
So, back to Epcot and aeroponics. It occurs to me that with a tower garden, I can quite successfully grow a large, constantly regenerating crop of cannabis far cheaper than the $65 per ounce I’ll pay for some cream at the dispensary. I would just need a recipe to make my arthritis cream. Unfortunately, that is still illegal, but a group is attempting to amend the Florida state constitution to allow medical users to grow their own drugs. Cheech and Chong would be so proud!
I left the Land of Oz, prescription in hand, and returned to my black and white trek across the parking lot. I said goodbye to the characters I’d just met; the scarecrow, the lion, and their little dog too. I’ll miss him most of all.
😎
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