The Changing, Prettier Face of Pot

At Folsom and Canyon is a marijuana store named Terrapin Station. It was, until very recently, a medical marijuana dispensary. That is, a deliverer of very serious medical care that also happened to be named after a Grateful Dead album.

When I got there, the vibe was far less hippie-esque than I expected.

The waiting room had a security guard, manning the door vigilantly. It struck me as strange that this man’s job was to make sure nothing funny happened while everybody in the store broke a federal law. And that, for once, a guy in uniform was committed to protecting marijuana smokers rather than busting them.

Into the waiting room strode a bright young woman named Lauren Cowley, 21. Her cheeks were blushed, her eyebrows outlined. She wore the tasteful necklace and stylish knee-high boots of an associate in an art gallery in SoHo. Like Marnie, in the early episodes of “Girls.”

She escorted me to the back room. There, White Goat and Agent Orange were displayed reverently, under glass, alongside edible chocolates that taste like cookies and cream, and candies called Fruit Chewz. The lighting made the buds look soft and radiant. I have seen less elaborate displays in Middle Eastern mosques that claim to demonstrate a tooth of the Prophet.

It’s this kind of change in atmosphere that makes marijuana partisans say that Western Civilization is ready for the widespread introduction of another kind of mind-altering drug—not one that dulls the brain like alcohol, nor speeds it up like caffeine, but that knocks it a bit sideways, and makes it see the world from unusual perspectives.

How powerfully pretty is this operation?

Cowley’s parents are Republicans—Arizona Republicans, which is an extra-strength, longer-lasting, more potent flavor of Republican. They never liked marijuana. They especially didn’t like it when their daughter told them she landed a $12-an-hour job peddling weed. “Lauren,” they scolded, “you’re a drug dealer!”

Then they came for a visit to Terrapin Station. Saw the blond hardwood, the security cameras, the deep couches in the waiting room. When they left, Lauren’s mother walked out with something called “chill pill mints.”

“Everyone always said, ‘you’re wasting your life, all you’re doing is smoking pot,’” Cowley told me. “And I’m like, ‘Look at me now, I’ve got a 401(k)!’”