For the "recommend" vs. "prescribe" distinction that you seem to find so important, here's what St Louis University and the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics"Pain and the Law" has to say about California's medical marijuana statute: "The statute protects physician prescribers from prosecution for having recommended marijuana to a patient for medical purposes (§ 11362.5(c)). See generally our discussion of Medical Marijuana."
Assuming that your story isn't just an invention, this so-called doctor was so astoundingly ignorant that he didn't know what "prescription" means. That would make him a quack.
Prescription: A physician's order for the preparation and administration of a drug or device for a patient. A prescription has several parts. They include the superscription or heading with the symbol "R" or "Rx", which stands for the word recipe (meaning, in Latin, to take); the inscription, which contains the names and quantities of the ingredients; the subscription or directions for compounding the drug; and the signature which is often preceded by the sign "s" standing for signa (Latin for mark), giving the directions to be marked on the container.