Seattle

IT was January of 1998 when a friend and I drove to a basement in South Seattle to set up a pot garden. We were terrified. If a police officer pulled us over, how would we explain these bags of rapid-bloom fertilizer — in winter?

Still, we had to go. A friend was suffering from the late stages of a degenerative muscular disease. He spent all day strapped into something that looked like a hospital bed crossed with an easel. Smoking pot helped ease his pain; after his wife held joints to his lips, he would eat soup. He would watch TV. He’d laugh.

Growing pot was illegal at the time, but stories like ours, and a strong public campaign, persuaded 59 percent of Washington State voters to legalize medical marijuana that fall. In the 14 years since, an entire industry has emerged to serve incapacitated patients like my friend, who couldn’t grow pot himself. Doctors write authorizations, dispensaries sell the stuff, trade magazines flourish.

In the eyes of most opponents and many supporters of easing pot laws, medical marijuana is supposed to be a slippery slope to full legalization. But in Washington, the opposite is happening: a momentous initiative to legalize marijuana for all adults, which will be on the ballot this fall, is being opposed by the medical marijuana industry that the previous initiative created.