In a green box on the back page of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Dr. R. Stephen Ellis advertises medical marijuana physician evaluations for just about anyone. The ad contains no explicit offers or promises, just a list of symptoms that presumably qualify one for legal pot: "Anorexia ... chronic pain ... arthritis ... migraine, or ANY other condition for which marijuana provides relief." This is from California Health & Safety Code 11362.5, implemented after California passed Proposition 215, also known as the Medical Marijuana/Compassionate Use Act, in 1996.

In case his point is unclear, the ad goes on to interpret "ANY": asthma, neuropathy, HIV discomfort, constipation, old injury pains," etc. At the bottom, boldfaced, underlined, in caps, we're reassured: "It's THE LAW!"

My ear hurts, I tell the assistant over the phone. He tells me to bring $200 cash. No check or credit card? I ask. Cash, he says.

Ellis' office is at the end of a long, dark corridor in a tall building next to a fabric store. The $200 cash does not go toward interior decoration. A cardboard sign with Ellis' name is taped to the glass on the wood door, which appears to be a good 50 years old. This is medical marijuana noir. That Philip Marlowe isn't smoking a cigarette on the other side seems to be a miscalculation on the director's part.

Not that the other side isn't dark. In the grimy waiting room, which is just a little bigger than a glass of whiskey, six tired men in plastic chairs take their eyes off the linoleum only briefly.

"I have an appointment," I say to Ellis' assistant behind the window. He's young, wearing a sweat shirt.

"Have a seat," he says, handing me a clipboard.

There shouldn't be enough room for two camps in the tiny room, but the six patients manage to segregate themselves. To my left are the ill; three men between 35 and 50 sink into their chairs and stare at things in the floor that I can't see. Their eyes are glassy, and two of their heads are chemo-bald. To my right are three young men, none over 22 surely. They slump too, but with attitude, not sickness. They have baggy jeans and each has acne. The young camp looks at its shoes.

The man directly to my left says he has glaucoma. He's grumpy about waiting. The man to his left says he's new to medicinal marijuana and is shaking and giddy. The man to his left sells sports tickets for a living, and is doing so on a cellphone, apparently unfazed by his circumstances. The grump beside me is New Agey and shakes his head whenever the cellphone rings.

To my right are frauds. "I hurt my back playing football," the big one next to me says. He grins conspiratorially, as if he's never touched a football in his stoner life. Across from us a raver taps his toes. He grins, too, when I make eye contact. The surfer next to him grins too. "I better get this before my man Nate's party Friday," he says to no one in particular.

"How long does it take to get the prescription filled?" I ask.

"My other friend got some from a San Francisco dispensary two days after his evaluation," he says.

I wonder how many scammers it would take to undermine the medical marijuana cause. (This line of thinking is a vector from the anti-pot camp's faulty premise; penicillin would never be criminalized just because some people were smoking it on Friday nights.) And while it's entirely possible that none of these guys will leave today with a prescription, the quiet raver does eventually have his appointment and walk out with a thumbs up. He directs the thumbs up at me. It's assumed I'm in the fraud boat too.

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