Why Are All the L.A. Times Columnists Using Medical Marijuana?

Posted by Sara Libby, True/Slant at 4:00 AM on October 29, 2009.

L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, one of the paper’s premier writers (Robert Downey Jr. played him in this year’s movie “The Soloist”) is the latest writer there to devote a column to obtaining medical marijuana. He describes the panic process he went through before he met with a doctor in Glendale to obtain pot to treat his back pain.

“My back problem wasn’t as obvious. Should I limp when it was my turn? … I was in a panic. I’d had a headache or two. Why hadn’t I gone with migraines, and was it too late to switch?”

Unsurprisingly, Lopez’s doctor (who turned out to be a gynecologist who admitted he knew nothing about back problems) was given a recommendation for marijuana use.

Sound familiar?

It should. Lopez is at least the third L.A. Times columnist to write about his experience obtaining marijuana from a California doctor.

Back in 2008, Joel Stein did the same exact thing, saying that the whole process “took about four minutes” and ultimately concluding that, “I always wondered what would happen if marijuana were legalized for anyone over 18. It seems it already has been, and nothing happened.”

And before that, Times columnist Sandy Banks wrote about her experience buying pot to treat arthritis.

So what gives? Is the Times really this hard up for story ideas that they need multiple columnists writing about their adventures getting pot? If so, they might be better off hiring a group of randomly picked teenagers from my hometown – I’m sure they’d charge much less. Or perhaps it’s the editors who are doing most of the smoking, and simply can’t remember that they’ve run the same piece over and over again.

Tagged as: marijuana, pot, medical marijuana