The first time I saw one with my own eyes, I had no idea what I was looking at. It is a one-foot tall stainless steel cone with a dial and three buttons (red, yellow, green) and what appears to be a Jiffy Pop bag attached to the top. Volcano is printed in cursive between the mystery dial and the row of stoplight-colored buttons. It seems like some kind of home appliance you might see in a 1950’s vision of what life in the twenty-first century might look like. The future is now, I thought.

The Volcano is an herbal vaporization system and according to the box and the manufacturer’s website, it puts health first. The Volcano is an alternative to smoking. You can vaporize whatever herb you want in it, but most people use marijuana. Essentially, what the device does is heat up like a hair dryer to a temperature just hot enough to extract a vapor from the herb of your choice by forcing hot air through without actually burning it, then propelling the vapor into the plastic bag at the top. The plastic bag is affixed with a retractable mouthpiece that releases the vapor when you press it to your lips. A downside to the Volcano, made by a German company called Storz & Bickel, is that it costs about as much as a refrigerator or a used car, retailing between $539 and $669 online (though can be found cheaper on eBay or Amazon). “It’s an investment, but it’s worth it,” my friend, let’s call her Katrina, tells me.

Just what kind of person spends that kind of money on a machine primarily designed to enhance a substance that isn’t even legal in this country? Lazy, burned out hippies? Dangerous dope fiends? Athletes, actually, as it turns out. “A friend of mine back in Los Angeles who’s prescribed to medical marijuana for attention deficit disorder. He uses a Volcano because he plays soccer and can’t smoke because he doesn’t want to ruin his lungs.” She brings the vapor-filled balloon to her lips and takes a draw. “His doctor actually recommended it to him,” she adds, handing the balloon to me.

My friend Katrina is from California, a state whose governor can be seen on video smoking a joint in the 1977 weightlifting documentary Pumping Iron and once said “marijuana isn’t a drug, it’s a leaf”. In California, medical marijuana is legal and available to basically anyone who wants a prescription. You find a marijuana-friendly doctor, explain your condition (“emphasize that it is a chronic condition”, says eHow.com) pay about $100 – $200 for the visit (which is not covered by insurance), and that’s it. Once you’ve obtained your prescription, you can go to any of the hundreds of marijuana dispensaries, or “cannabis clubs”, as Katrina called them, and choose from an enormous selection of some of the finest strains in the world. You can even get baked goods in some places. And it’s all within the margins of the law. Mention all this to any marijuana enthusiast who does not happen to live in California and you’ll notice a certain glow in their eyes, a twinkle, almost, like they’re being told about the Promised Land, which is always followed by a look of extreme longing, a look that says I need to move to California as soon as possible.

I’ve seen this pained look many a time and know it well, having worn it myself a few times. There may be hope, however, that it is one that might never be seen again, at least if current trends continue. Last year during the November elections, the voters of Michigan voted overwhelmingly (a two-thirds majority) in approval of its own statewide medical marijuana program, making it the thirteenth state in the U.S. and first in the Midwest to do so. Many are hoping that Wisconsin will take a cue from Michigan and follow suit with a similar measure. Given Wisconsin’s progressive history, not to mention a state government that is now controlled almost entirely by Democrats, it’s not entirely unlikely. In Madison, it’s already legal to possess up to 28 grams of marijuana in your home.

Could marijuana prohibition be coming to an end in America? If it does, it doesn’t look like anything is likely to be done by the federal government, at least not at this point. Vice President Joe Biden was one of the chief architects of the Drug War and remains staunchly in its favor. The Obama administration continues to oppose legalization, though they have ended DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California and other states that were frequent under George W. Bush. If any legislation is to be passed in favor of marijuana in the United States, it’s likely to be on the state level. Which is a shame, really. In 2005, a Harvard economist estimated that if marijuana were made legal and taxed by the federal government, the savings would total somewhere between $10 – 14 billion a year. 350 other economists have endorsed this figure. At a time when the country’s budget deficit is around a trillion dollars, money like that could definitely aid the economy and relieve high unemployment.

Alas, there is a saying that goes “shit in one hand, wish in the other and see which one fills up first”. But what can be done? I think about this as I exhale a sweet plume of vapor and pass the Jiffy Pop bag back to Katrina, with a huge grin on my face and a certain glow, almost. What can be done? Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but as for myself, I’m considering spending my next tax refund on a one-foot tall stainless steel cone.

So it goes to show – smoking weed does not automatically make someone a drug addict or a burnout. You could even grow up to be president! …or a daytime talk show host.