What Utah has built is not a cautious medical system. It is not conservative. It is not therapeutic. It is a workaround that combines illegality, stigma, and excess into a single strange marketplace that encourages exactly the kind of behavior lawmakers claim to oppose.

I have been to Utah dispensaries a few times. They do not resemble pharmacies or medical clinics. They feel more like retail environments filled with people who have learned how to navigate a permissive system that offers few limits and little follow-up.

Patients are not being treated. They are shopping.

They browse strains, strengths, delivery methods, and quantities that far exceed what most casual or even heavy cannabis users would ever need. The atmosphere is not calm or clinical. It is flat and disengaged. People are not there to manage a specific condition. They are there to stock up.

This is what happens when a state pretends something is medicine while refusing to treat it like medicine.

Utah’s medical marijuana system has almost no meaningful guardrails. Once you have a card, you effectively have permission to consume a psychoactive drug as often and in as many forms as you want. There is little follow-up, little accountability, and little sense that anyone is monitoring outcomes. It is carte blanche disguised as caution.

If this were truly about health, dosage would matter. Indications would be narrow. Quantities would be limited. Outcomes would be tracked. Instead, the system quietly rewards drug-seeking behavior while maintaining the moral posture of prohibition.

It is the worst of both worlds.

The state gets to say cannabis is illegal. Patients get to behave like recreational users. Doctors get paid to certify rather than treat. Dispensaries get a captive customer base. Everyone gets plausible deniability.

And the people most affected are not carefree recreational users. They are often anxious, depressed, isolated, or struggling. The very people who need structure and support are funneled into a retail drug environment that encourages avoidance rather than engagement.

If Utah is concerned about addiction, this system makes no sense. If it is concerned about public health, this system makes no sense. If it is concerned about responsibility and moderation, this system makes no sense.

The barrier is not health. It is wealth and willingness to play along.

People with money can navigate the card process easily. People on Medicaid can too. The requirement is not medical need. It is paperwork, patience, and compliance with a bureaucratic script.

What results is not careful access. It is selective permission.

If Utah believes cannabis is dangerous, it should say so honestly and enforce that position consistently. If Utah believes cannabis is benign enough for widespread use, it should legalize it openly and regulate it like an adult society.

What it should not do is continue pretending this strange limbo is medicine.

Medical marijuana here does not reduce drug-seeking behavior. It institutionalizes it. It teaches people that the goal is not treatment, recovery, or moderation, but access. Get the card. Get through the door. Buy as much as you can.

That is not conservative. It is not compassionate. It is not medical.

It is a bureaucratic workaround designed to preserve appearances while quietly encouraging the very behavior the state claims to oppose.

If Utah wants fewer people numbing themselves into passivity, it should stop designing systems that reward exactly that outcome.

Jay Werther is a resident of Park City.