Earlier this month, sheriff's deputies were called to a West Longview apartment where people were smoking marijuana. A woman presented a deputy with a medical marijuana card, according to a report, and the deputy left. No citations. No arrests.

The deputy later explained to the person who called in the complaint that "there was nothing to be done."

Marijuana, once reviled as a dangerous narcotic, lumped with heroin and cocaine, has become more widely accepted in recent years than many thought possible.

A clinic opened in Castle Rock this spring to provide medical marijuana certificates and advice about the drug. Castle Rock also is debating whether to allow residents to collectively cultivate their own marijuana gardens for medical use. A marijuana dispensary has opened in Rainier.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen states, including Washington, have passed medical marijuana laws. A bill legalizing and licensing marijuana dispensaries was approved by the Washington Legislature, but Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed that part of the bill, citing federal laws against marijuana use.

But Melissa Robinson, the owner of Castle Rock's Healing Hand of God marijuana clinic, said it's only a matter of time before marijuana is legal for any adult to grow and consume.

"There's no stopping it," Robinson said. "The force behind it is so grand. If we are not legalized in the next five years I will be blown away."

Marijuana advocates say the public is starting to realize that pot can provide more benefits to patients with fewer side effects than highly addictive and legally available opiate pain killers. The drug has also become destigmatized, they said, because many American voters have smoked pot and suffered few if any ill effects.

"You're starting to see a generation or two of folks who may have at one point in their lives experimented with marijuana and so they have direct experience with it," said 19th District Rep. Brian Blake, D-Raymond, who voted for the Legislature's medical marijuana dispensary bill. "It's almost become mainstream."