A flourishing and unregulated industry of medical marijuana delivery services is circumventing bans on storefront dispensaries and bringing the drug directly to people’s homes, offices and more unconventional locations across the state, records and interviews show.
The unfettered delivery of marijuana through hundreds of these services highlights how quickly California’s fabled pot industry may be moving from the shadows into uncharted legal territory.
These new couriers include enterprising farmers, business entrepreneurs and even a former Los Angeles pot dealer methodically switching her former clients to legal patients.
“It seems like there are … delivery services popping up right and left,” said a 26-year-old man who runs a small collective that delivers medical marijuana to member patients throughout Southwest Riverside County.
Most of the people who run medical marijuana delivery services and who were interviewed for this article asked that their names not be used out of fear of prosecution.
Some of the local delivery services said they grow their own medicinal cannabis for patients who are members of their collective; others said they purchase the herb from outside sources.
In newspapers and on the Internet, hundreds of “mobile dispensaries” advertise a wide range of strains and other products, such as brownies and cookies laced with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
Some operate in multiple counties, including jurisdictions where storefront dispensaries are banned, or make local deliveries to drop-off points, such as Starbucks parking lots and gas stations. At least three ship to clients around the state using private prescription-drug couriers.
Although delivery of medical marijuana is not a new phenomenon, advocates say the growth of these services could be a game-changer in the state’s pot war, which pits law enforcement, elected officials and community groups in some localities against dispensary owners and patients.
Delivery businesses could increase in popularity if voters approve an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize pot possession.
“They’re delivering the product better, cheaper, more discretely and probably at a higher profit rate than dispensaries,” said Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization. “These delivery services are starting to grab more and more market share.”
Exact numbers unclear
A question remains on whether these services are legal. Some local and federal officials say delivery services violate the 1996 Compassionate Use Act that legalized medical marijuana in California for qualified patients, as well as other laws. The services are viewed as a way to circumvent local regulations clearly banning dispensaries.
“They’re transporting drugs,” said Tommy LaNeir, director of the National Marijuana Initiative, which is funded through the White House’s drug policy office. “It’s a trans-shipment operation that’s trying to bypass the ordinances that have been set up by cities and counties. It’s as simple as that.”
The exact number of delivery services operating in California is unclear, because the state does not keep a registry of medical marijuana distributors or outlets. In April, 758 services advertised direct delivery of marijuana to patients on Weedmaps.com, a commercial listing service.
Those numbers have nearly tripled in the last 18 months and grown by 39 percent since February, as more counties and cities began regulating storefront dispensaries or banning them outright, according to Justin Hartfield, owner of Weedmaps.com.
David, who runs a North County delivery service, said he wanted to open up a brick-and-mortar dispensary, but since a local moratorium removed that as an option, he said he went with the system he and his attorneys “felt was the best and the safest.”
“It’s a gamble opening up a dispensary,” said David, who asked that his last name not be used. “I consider myself a dispensary that delivers.”
David said the adversarial environment seen in counties throughout Southern California has created a guerilla war atmosphere.
“It’s a very gray area,” he said, “so basically you do the best you can to stay legal under the environment.”
Riverside, San Diego rank 3rd, 4th
More than half the couriers who advertised on Weedmaps.com in April said they were located in the Los Angeles region. Other services clustered around metropolitan regions, such as San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento, with most regions experiencing steady growth. The number of couriers advertising within L.A. has jumped from 110 to 161 since February. San Diego saw an increase from 68 to 101 over the same period.
A total of 129 cities and nine counties in California have banned medical marijuana dispensaries. An additional 96 cities and 13 counties have moratoriums, according to Americans for Safe Access. Yet, in many of these “dry” communities, pot delivery services appear to be flourishing. The number of couriers advertising in Riverside County, for instance, has increased from 76 to 105 since February.
The 26-year-old man who runs the small collective in Southwest Riverside County said he moved to the area to set up his delivery service after he found the rules in Riverside County more hospitable than those in Los Angeles County.
For the state, the trend has caught officials flat-footed and unable to pinpoint any legal guidelines that directly address the delivery of medical marijuana by courier or mail. It’s clear that sending drugs through the Postal Service and cultivating pot for sale violates U.S. law, but most marijuana growers know federal prosecutions are rare these days.
“Delivery services are a relatively new creature, one that has not been directly addressed by the courts or in legislation,” said Peter Krause, a California deputy attorney general who helped write the state’s landmark guidelines on medical marijuana in 2008.
And that gray area keeps the man who runs The Ministry of Cannabis “erring on the side of caution,” he said. The 37-year-old Temecula Valley man, who asked that his name not be used, runs a collective that delivers medical cannabis to patients from Carlsbad to Corona.
“The one thing about delivery service is there is still a lot of gray areas,” the Temecula-area man said. “I sat down with an attorney and designed the delivery service around the less gray areas.”
He said ambiguities led him to routinely run questions by his attorneys and scour Web sites by groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, which advocates for legalization of marijuana.
“You try and do the best you can with what you have,” the man said. “And as you learn, you make adjustments. I want to be able to operate knowing for a fact that this is legal.”
He said he often sees a peak in demand for delivery services after authorities raid or shut down a brick-and-mortar dispensary.
DAs: Law is unambiguous
The state’s 1996 initiative and a companion law approved by the Legislature in 2003 granted cities and counties most of the authority over implementing the Compassionate Use Act. But no city council or board of supervisors has explicitly outlawed or legalized delivery services, according to Americans for Safe Access.
Senate Bill 420 —- signed into law by former Gov. Gray Davis during his final weeks in office —- appears to protect individual patients from prosecution for “possession, transportation, delivery, or cultivation of medical marijuana” under legal limits. The law also allows patients and their primary caregivers to “associate” with each other to “collectively or cooperatively” cultivate pot for medical purposes.
To some law enforcement officials, the law is unambiguous. John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney’s office, said the county has banned storefront dispensaries and that delivery services are prohibited.
“It is the position of this office that based on current law, all mobile medical marijuana operations are illegal,” Hall said. “That would include those that may be based in Riverside County as well as any which may be based elsewhere and come into the county to attempt to do business.”
Paul Levikow, spokesman for San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, said prosecutors in her office have not found any medical marijuana dispensaries or delivery services operating legally.
“There is nothing in the attorney general’s guidelines or the law that provides for for-profit sales of marijuana either at a store location or by a delivery service,” Levikow said.
Others agreed that California law does not allow the distribution of medical marijuana to hundreds of people by a service or any single person.
“I don’t see anything that suggests that when voters passed the Compassionate Use Act, they envisioned (marijuana) delivery services,” said Joseph Esposito, head of narcotics for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.
This article was reported in collaboration with KQED public radio, with assistance from the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
North County Times staff writer Teri Figueroa contributed to this report.
California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting, with offices in the Bay Area and Sacramento.
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