19Nov/090
Does America really need ‘marijuana cafés’?

Café Cannabis — America's first marijuana lounge — has opened in Portland, Ore., just weeks after President Obama announced he would defer to local laws in states that permit medicinal use of the drug. The club (located in the former home of an adult erotic speakeasy called Rumpspankers) is only open to members of the marijuana-legalization advocacy group, NORML, who are cleared to get medicinally high. But are Amsterdam-style pot cafés (with "budtenders" behind the bar) really what Obama had in mind?