Serious topic, this.

If you are card-carrying (literally) medical marijuana patient, abiding by your state laws, you can carry up to 8 ounces of pot without being questioned, held, whatever — in San Francisco and presumably in most/all California airports.

This directive came down from the Justice Dept. this week.

One possible problem: where is the medical marijuana patient going to fly to? Laws in 30 states ban medical marijuana.

A patient on board an Air Canada flight from Montreal to Park became ill. Dr. Henry Coopersmith offered to help, but was told another doctor had the matter in hand. Coopersmith goes to sleep.

Then a flight attendant wakes him up, saying she didn’t trust the other doctor, and wants Dr. Coopersmith to take over. He does, and gets the passenger settled down. Coopersmith goes to sleep again.

The flight attendant wakes him up again, saying he has to fill out this form and that form, and with a sigh, he begins this chore. Coopersmith cannot get back to sleep.

Since nap time was a total loss, Dr. C decides to ask Air Canada two free transatlantic tickets in executive class. I don’t know if Air Canada laughed in his face, but they countered with frequent flier miles – 10,000 of them. So he took the matter to small claims court – and won a $1,000 judgment (less than a third of what he asked for). The judge noted that another doctor was already working on the patient, and hadn’t asked for Coopersmith’s help – so he deserved something.

The incident, by the way, happened in 2006. The good doctor was not about to let this one go, was he?

Postscript: The doctor says he’s going to donate the grand to charity.