THE SMELL was musty and sour, enough to make your eyes water. “I think there might be a skunk in here,” I said, trying not to breathe.

“Not quite,” coughed the owner of the office building in which I was considering renting a cubicle. “We have the other kind of skunk here: marijuana. The medical stuff.” There was a long, pungent silence. Before I could ask for urgent clarification, my future landlord cut me off: “There’s a licensed dispensary on the floor below. Don’t worry: it’s completely legal. You might enjoy the odour after a while.” I took the cubicle.

And so, for a few relaxed, hungry, and generally unproductive months, my workspace was directly above one of LA’s hundred or so medical marijuana dispensaries, also known as clinics or “clubs”.

It has been exactly ten years since California made it legal for individuals to grow and use marijuana for medicinal purposes, thus creating the dubious legal no man’s land in which the dispensaries are tolerated. Owners of these outlets argue that growing pot plants (not to be confused with potted plants) is a difficult business, and that their 150,000 or so customers, many of them with terminal cancer, have little energy for horticulture.

Nevertheless, they’ve demonstrated considerable savvy in their marketing of the weed, such as marijuana-laced snacks and drinks with strangely familiar brand names: Pot Tarts, Munchy Way, Toka-Cola, Stoney Rancher. Not everyone believes they are in it entirely to help the infirm.

The problem, of course, is that while California might be all funky and liberal on this issue (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used to smoke marijuana openly before going to the gym) the Feds are not. This has created a tricky state-federal stand-off in which the Drug Enforcement Administration has raided five dispensaries in the past fortnight, bringing the total number of busts this year to more than thirty. In an uncanny parallel with the popular TV sitcom Weeds (the protagonist is a dazed suburban mum who sells pot to maintain her Land Rover lifestyle), one of these raids took place at a house in the posh San Francisco suburb of Elk Grove.

Outside, the house looked like any other suburban box. Inside, it had been gutted to make way for an indoor pot farm: the skunk odour was vented and filtered in the attic, while electricity for the grow-lights was tapped illegally from the grid. The latter strategy was necessary because the Feds are often made suspicious by humungous electricity bills (another growhouse was raided last week after a quarterly meter reading showed that $58,000 was due).

It’s tempting to see all this as a typical case of the Bush Administration versus the Left Coast. But predictions of a culture war are probably overdone. California’s pot clubs have resulted in virtually zero extra demand overall for the drug. According to the Government’s 2005 national survey on drug use and health, about 8 per cent of Americans aged 12 or older use illegal drugs, a figure that has remained unchanged over recent years. Meanwhile, the use of marijuana among kids between 12 and 17 is actually falling. Sociologists need only watch Weeds to see why: pot smokers are middle-aged; sometimes beyond middle-aged. Stoners are the new real ale bores. Marijuana is so inoffensive, you can find copies of High Times magazine in your dentist’s waiting room.

Here’s my theory: even conservatives now accept the theory that brain chemistry can be altered by just about anything, from a three-mile run to a slice of chocolate cake. And as the wealth, leisure time and age of the US population grows, so too does the desire to tinker with that chemistry, especially if it can make life more pleasant.

Aldous Huxley predicted all this in Brave New World, in which it was “soma” that kept everyone feeling hunky-dory. So why the raids by the Feds, or the lawsuits by certain counties to overturn California’s liberal policy? The former is a case of going after the most obnoxious profiteers (one dispensary was making $2 million a year). The latter is usually a simple case of Not In My Back Yard.

Which brings me back to that cubicle I rented. I’ve never found much appeal in marijuana, so the novelty of the stink wore off quickly. I didn’t stay long. Does that make me a Nimby? I like to think not. The People of California can get as baked as they want in my back yard.

But please, not under my desk.

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