"We've already got a medical marijuana collective for people with prescriptions from their doctors," says Lonnie Painter, 64, who has lived in Laguna Woods Village for 11 years. "Now we're trying to set up a medical marijuana club so people who are interested can learn more about the medicinal benefits of marijuana." Painter, a retired restaurant owner, smokes marijuana to ease the chronic pain of osteoarthritis. "I've been able to cut back on prescription painkillers by 50 to 60 percent," he says.

Another resident at the potluck, Margo Bouer, 75, a retired psychiatric nurse, uses marijuana to relieve nausea and vomiting from advanced multiple sclerosis, which has damaged her gastrointestinal tract. "I was sick, vomiting spontaneously. Nothing helped," she says. "It was so bad that I'd actually begun to think about suicide." A doctor suggested medicinal marijuana. It worked like a charm. "The nausea went away," says Bouer. "I started eating again. I got my energy and control back. It basically made life worth living again."

The residents of Laguna Woods Village first made headlines a year ago, when they opened their own medical marijuana dispensary. Since then, champions of pot both there and across the country have learned firsthand how contentious the issue can be.

Just saying no

Although California's Compassionate Use Act, passed in 1996, allows people with a prescription to use and cultivate medicinal marijuana, Laguna Woods Village is trying to bar marijuana plants from its community garden. The retirement community has a marijuana dispensary, but not in the form of a bricks-and-mortar storefront. Instead, residents get together in one another's homes to distribute prescribed amounts of the weed. Their source? They either grow it themselves or get it from out-of-town dispensaries or from friends.