THE MARIJUANA
DELIVERY NETWORK
jeans, glasses, and had a high-top
haircut,” he said.
Part of the reason for the
NYPD’s apparent indifference to
busting weed couriers is because
of the small quantities being sold.
Runners use New York’s marijuana possession laws to their advantage by never carrying too much
weed at any given time. Being
caught with less than 25 grams is
a violation, not a criminal offense,
under New York state law.
“The people being prosecuted
as dealers in NYC are generally
not those selling an ounce or a
half-pound of weed, unless they’re
also selling harder drugs,” said
New York attorney Joseph Bondy, who specializes in defending
people who have been arrested for
marijuana offenses. “Unless you’re
doing a deal in broad daylight, and
you happen to get stopped by the
cops, the police are not going to
concern themselves.”
The services themselves are also
structured to prevent snitching.
“The system [used by weed delivery companies] is set up so that
they can’t roll anybody up the
chain. That’s why it’s so resilient,”
said National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws Executive Director Allen St. Pierre.
HUFFINGTON
01.12.14
“The delivery guys at the bottom
often have no idea who is providing the pot to them. They may
know the person, but they don’t
know their real name.”
The NYPD’s apparent apathy
toward busting weed couriers, St.
Pierre says, is simply that it has
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.
more important things to worry
about: “Gotham has so many
other things going on that should
rightly concern police than trying to get between two consenting adults who are having private
communications and doing their
business in private.”
Not only was Adam never arrested, he says his parents never
found out about his job. Eventually, however, he left the weed
service entirely to pursue a career
in hospitality. But the company he
helped found in 2007 has grown
and continues to prosper
in his absence.
Hunter Stuart is a trends reporter at
The Huffington Post.