THE MARIJUANA
DELIVERY NETWORK
panies currently operating in
New York City. There are bigger
ones like Safeway, whose voicemails sound like an actual Safeway supermarket, and Sour Kush
Cafe, which sends its customers
alerts via text message when a
courier is nearby. There are also
smaller, boutique services like
Fresh Direct, Jackpot, Exotic 420,
Brooklyn Organics, Reliable and
Speedy’s Dogwalkers.
Such companies have existed
since at least the late 1980s. Despite the dramatic rise in street
arrests for marijuana possession
in the mid 1990s, spearheaded
by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and zealously continued by Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, the services have proliferated, offering residents a safe
and private way to buy pot.
Many of the services, if not all
of them, avoid police infiltration
with a simple but apparently effective system in which new customers must be personally referred by existing clients.
Some services have code words:
Customers of one company must
ask if a “rep” is available when they
call and specify that they need help
with their “cookies programming”
if they want to buy edibles.
Communication between dis-
HUFFINGTON
01.12.14
patchers and couriers is often
done using mobile messaging apps
that are said to be more difficult
for the police to access.
Many services employ marketing techniques to increase their
customer base, like offering incentives for frequent customers,
“I met people from all walks
of life connected by their love
of weed. I’d deliver to fancy
buildings with doormen in the
West Village and to artists
living in brownstones.”
customers who buy large quantities or customers who refer their
friends to the service.
Most of New York’s cannabis
couriers are knowledgeable about
their product in a way that suggests they cater to buyers who
take their pot seriously. Runners
typically arrive with at least three
or four different strains of neatly
packaged and labeled bud, and
they will explain its qualities like
a waiter reciting the specials at a
fancy restaurant.
The weed itself — usually ultra-potent buds grown hydroponically or occasionally in outdoor
gardens — comes from Pennsylvania and New England but also
from the West Coast, British Co-