It might surprise you to know that marijuana is somewhat legal here in California.

With a doctor’s recommendation, you can legally buy weed at shops known as collectives or dispensaries, and you can even grow a good number of plants in your home.

Controversially enough, it is not at all difficult to get your weed card, so long as you’re willing to be open and honest.

Physicians can recommend marijuana for any serious condition which they believe might be alleviated by getting high. This initially meant that patients of cancer, AIDS and other chronic illnesses could use marijuana medicinally. However, more and more doctors now agree that there are a number of patients with other conditions who might also benefit from smoking weed.

Patients who suffer from arthritis, migraines, insomnia, glaucoma, nausea and mood disorders also have the option of treating themselves, not with pills or pharmaceuticals, but with all natural, delicious marijuana.

The “ease” of getting a recommendation has understandably caused some concern among people who believe it might encourage others to take advantage of a law that was designed to help chronically ill patients. But it would be unfair and illogical to only recommend marijuana to a small group of people when many agree that it has the potential to help out so many more.

You most likely won’t be able to get a medical marijuana recommendation from your everyday physician at your regular clinic. Instead, you’ll have to stop by a specific medical marijuana consultation clinic.

These clinics look and run like regular clinics, and they are overseen by licensed, legitimate physicians and nurses.

While it might feel as if you’re walking into an underground, illegal business, going in for a medical marijuana consultation is not much different from a regular doctor’s appointment.

You’ll need proper identification, and you’ll need about $60.

After checking in, you are taken into a private exam room. A nurse usually attends to you first, and does all of the usual nurse stuff, like taking your blood pressure and medical history. The nurses also usually give you smoking advice, and can tell you about the differences between vaporizers, edibles and concentrates to help you figure out which method is right for you, given your condition.

Then the doctor comes in and discusses your condition to see if you might benefit from weed. Again, they’ll be asking some pretty typical things: How long have you been feeling this way? Are there any specific triggers? What other treatments have you tried?

Do not be surprised if the doctor does not consult with you in person. Because of the federal ban on marijuana, there are only a few doctors who are willing to give evaluations and recommendations. Thus, in order to extend their service, some doctors offer consultations over Skype.

After your consultation, you are usually then given a temporary (though fully functionable) recommendation. This short-term license is only good for about two months. During this time, the clinic verifies your medical history with your original health care provider. If your information checks out, you are then given a yearlong recommendation.

Renewing your recommendation after your year expires is just as easy, if not quicker and cheaper.

The key thing to remember if you want to get a recommendation is that your medical history will be checked. So before you go into a marijuana consultation clinic, make sure you’ve visited your usual doctor about your condition at least once. If they have prescribed you any sort of medication, it will show up during your verification and will make it more likely that you will be approved for the full year.

You can skip the verification process if you bring in legitimate paperwork and medical records detailing your condition. Otherwise, be prepared to give your doctor’s name and the clinic’s address.

An important thing to remember is that everything is kept confidential. If you’re over 18, you don’t need to worry about your parents or anyone else finding out.

As I mentioned, your doctor’s recommendation will allow you to buy and carry a certain amount of weed. This means you can legally smoke anywhere smoking is allowed. Conversely, you must always obey any “No Smoking” signs.

You should also keep in mind that certain places, like schools, businesses and federal parks specifically prohibit marijuana, and you can be fined or punished for possession, even with a doctor’s recommendation.

LEO OCAMPO can be reached at gocampo@ucdavis.edu.

Recently several senators, including prominent Republican Senator Marco Rubio, have been working to devise legislation concerning immigration. Included in their most recent plan is a $2,000 fine illegal immigrants must pay before they can even begin the arduous process of applying for citizenship, as well as greater “security” along the borders to restrict human movement.

I’m not really interested in the various reasons that these senators are giving for punishing innocent and often hard-working members of our society — although I think part of it is a vague concern that “people are paying illegal aliens less than American workers” (which, if true, is an expression of the freedom of employers).

Instead I want to raise questions about what the recent debates about immigration legislation imply. This shouldn’t be about whether we are granting “amnesty” to those who have broken the law; it should be about whether those laws are justified in the first place.

Immigration really just means the movement of people to a country for the purpose of residence (no, really, that’s all it means). Does anyone in this country have a right to tell people where they can and cannot move? Does the United States government own all the land in this country?

I don’t think so. But such restrictions imply affirmative answers to these questions. And these are exactly the sorts of arbitrary policies that one would expect from a government that doesn’t consistently protect or recognize rights to property, which only belong to individuals, not nations or governments. Nor does the United States belong to some collective of “native-born” citizens that have the right to enslave or subdue the rest.

Restrictions on immigration through fines and long waits for entry also unjustly punish those who might provide great value to those already living here through trade (and those who, despite coming here illegally, might have become productive members of society). Historically, many immigrants have done amazing things in this country, contributing to fields ranging from physics (e.g. Albert Einstein) to philosophy (e.g. Ayn Rand). Of course, not all immigrants are going to be productive and law-abiding, but this is precisely the point. One is not a criminal just by being an immigrant, and therefore the government is not justified in imposing any restrictions on the activities of immigrants as such.

In a way, our immigration policies amount to an attempt to create arbitrary distinctions between certain groups: granting a different legal status to people merely on the basis of their place of birth is in this respect as bad as judging people differently on the basis of their place of birth. No one decided to be born in Mexico, or China or the United States. Then by what right can any person or group impose legal disadvantages to certain others on that basis?

Laws ought to be both objective and universal; we have our rights to life, liberty and property because we are humans (i.e. because of our nature), and because pursuing our various endeavors, including improving our lives by moving to a different country, requires acting on our independent judgement. Our rights are not mere privileges that our government can give to some groups and deny to others by decree.

A free society is one that protects the individual rights of all its members in an equal and objective way, including the right to move freely. This is what must be stressed in the debates on immigration reform.

TRISTAN DE LIEGE has been stealing jobs from hard-working Americans since he arrived in 1996. He can be reached at tflenaerts@ucdavis.edu.

If you have internet, a photo of your genitals and a little bravery, you can be like some of the other UC Davis students who have found connections online.

The Davis “Down To Fuck” Facebook page (Davis DTF) receives approximately one risque post a day, including details about the student poster, a description of their perfect potential mate and their contact information.

For example, anonymous Italian DTF poster No. 1 loves to eat both pasta and pussy and is looking for a “little slap and tickle between classes,” while anonymous Latina DTF poster No. 2 is fun loving, but can kick ass when necessary. She wants a lover who can “take all [her] crazy” and still appreciate her.

If students aren’t DTF, but rather DTR (down to relationship), they might find it helpful to scan recent Davis Craigslist postings.

UC Davis students Juliet, a 21-year-old communication major, and Romeo, a 23-year-old computer science major, are a couple who regularly use Craigslist’s online classifieds to search for partners who enjoy threesomes.

Despite their occasional bad dates, Juliet believes that “threesomes are funsies! And [she doesn’t] feel like hitting on all [her] friends to do that,” and Romeo loves getting a “new mischievous unhindered self to explore with.”

Recent Davis Craigslist posters include a “generous muscle man” who’s seeking “dudes with smelly, sweaty feet & socks” and a “smooth mahogany woman seeking [a] bold man.”

But if these Davis desperados aren’t your type, Craigslist bachelor No. 3 might be more your style. He’s a self-described nice guy whose “mother taught good manners” and can tell “by your face if you are a chronic abuser.”

It’s sometimes hard to find a date who appreciates your sexuality. This was certainly the case for Lonely Hearts, a 20-year-old psychology student who moved to Davis from Sunol, Calif. last year.

Lonely Hearts downloaded the Grindr iPhone app, which many of his gay, bisexual and questioning friends recommended, because he wanted the security of being able to flirt with other men without the “potential of getting punched by some homophobe.”

Lonely Hearts didn’t find love online, but he did learn a useful lesson. The night before LH’s final paper on frog hearts was due, he met a person who claimed to be a herpetologist on Grindr. Lonely Hearts didn’t hook up with the frog expert, but did say, “the resources [the herpetologist] suggested ended up being incredibly useful … this random guy on a hook-up site essentially helped me to get an A.”

OKCupid should have been named Mediocre Cupid for 25-year-old physics student Lolita, who had the “weirdest coffee of [her] life” with a man whom she met on the free site last summer. She said that he was “good looking, but as [she] got to know him, he made it pretty clear that he endorsed plastic surgery, if not encouraged it.” He told Loltia that he “only dates at a certain level of physical attractiveness.”

Lolita doesn’t believe that OKCupid is best known for “their hoards of hot supermodel women” but endorses meeting online dates in coffee shops, preferably ones with familiar escape routes.

Cyber love isn’t for the faint of heart. Strangelove, a graduate student and self-described masochist, public sex enthusiast and voyeur, dumped his OKCupid account after realizing that it is “a lot harder to find people associated with kink” on typical dating sites.

Last year, Strangelove joined Fetlife.com, a BDSM (bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism) community similar to Facebook.com, through which he has made approximately 30 friends, many of whom he has met in real life.

Because Strangelove works for the University, his greatest fear is students getting hold of his nude images, to “manipulate, hurt or blackmail” him. But Strangelove leaves his profile up because he believes that his online life isn’t just about meeting people, but also about expressing “kink and polyamory as not part of a deviant subculture, but a legitimate part of [his] identity.”

May luck and love be with you. The internet is a vast place, full of lonely lovers. Your Queen of Hearts, Sadistic Hades or Lonely Hearts could be waiting.

KATELYN RINGROSE is 5’2”, with brown hair and green eyes. She would love to hear the story of your cyberspace romance; email her at knringrose@ucdavis.