A California man is diving head deep into medical marijuana, and the goal is to get high profits: Longtime information technology professional John Lee says he has created PlainView Systems to help medical marijuana providers share pot in a legal manner. The company calls it the Compassionate Care Marketplace, and it claims that “transactions in full compliance of California state and local laws.”

The idea, Lee says, is to help dispensaries stay legit at a time when local governments, including the city of Los Angeles, are cracking down on the sources and alleged profits of what was supposed to be a nonprofit, collective system of getting pot to the seriously ill.

Lee's service, he says, will also help providers track sales, taxes and invoices — generally as an attempt to help professionalize an industry in its infancy. Of course, Lee gets a cut.

One grower says he uses PlainView to “invoice his buyers and order seeds and fertilizer for his crop,” according to CNNMoney. “Anytime I have extra,” the grower says, “I can sell it to [a dispensary] for $2,000 to $4,000.”

Sound shady? PlainView rolls pot in a nice spreadsheet inked with the skunky language of entrepreneurship.

The company states that it “provides both a dynamic, online business-to-business exchange for licensed providers of compassionate care medical marijuana products and services as well as a patient-to-licensed grower connection to procure medicine. With an extensive catalog of products and services, our unique CCM allows members to form collectives and build on-going relationships in a totally compliant, secure environment.”

Patient-to-licensed grower connection to procure medicine? Wow. Sounds like the guy you used to call on a Saturday night for delivery. Now that guy has a Blackberry, a Halliburton briefcase and a subscription to Fast Company, and you probably shouldn't call him after 6. Oh, and it's legal. Maybe.

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