Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jan 2014
Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)
Copyright: 2014 The Stranger
Contact:  http://www.thestranger.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2241
Author: Dominic Holden

YOUR WEED, SIR

Just Call the Number and a Delivery Service Will Bring a Sack of Weed 
to Your Door - Seriously!

I'm not drinking this month. My friend and I have a challenge, and I 
don't intend to lose. But before agreeing, I checked the rules: Was I 
allowed to smoke pot? Yes, my friend said, smoke all the pot you want.

I don't smoke much these days. I don't even have a dealer anymore. 
But since pot would be my sole vice for a month, and considering I 
had tickets for The Hobbit, I needed to score some weed by Saturday.

Meanwhile, on the news, giddy stoners were streaming out of Denver's 
first pot stores on New Year's Day parading bags of weed before 
television cameras-gleefully making history with the first legal 
marijuana transactions in the United States since the 1930s. 
Washington State was two years ahead of Colorado in passing medical 
marijuana, and four years ahead in making pot busts the lowest 
priority in the largest city in the state, and both states legalized 
recreational marijuana simultaneously. But Colorado stole Washington 
State's thunder on retail pot stores. Out here, our stores won't open 
until spring or summer. So even though it's legal for all adults to 
buy and possess up to an ounce of pot, there are still no legal 
businesses selling it to people who don't have medical marijuana 
authorizations. We're stuck scoring pot from dealers who are friends 
of friends, on their schedule.

But The Hobbit wasn't going to watch itself.

And then someone messaged me on Twitter about Winterlife Co-op. Their 
Twitter page  and website (winterlifecoop.com) make 
no bones about what they're doing: Winterlife will deliver pot to 
your door "in around 45 minutes." You don't have to be a medical 
marijuana patient, just 21 or older with a photo ID. You call a 
hotline at 888-490-3666 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, and they'll 
hook you up, they say.

So I called.

"Thank you for calling Winterlife Cooperative. For delivery, press 
1," a recording chirped. Like a civilized person who wasn't calling a 
pot dealer, I pressed 1. "Connecting call."

A man who called himself Bear answered the phone. Everyone who works 
at Winterlife has a "critter" name, he explained. Some of the 
proceeds go to South Sound Critter Care, a nonprofit in Kent that 
saves injured and orphaned wildlife, from opossums to deer to geese. 
(Winterlife gave the group $1,300 at the end of last year, plus $500 
to a kitten rescue in Mason County.) I asked Bear about the menu 
that's updated daily on their website: Blueberry, Purple Kush, Dutch 
Treat, Perma Frost, and White Russian were $90 for a quarter ounce; 
less expensive strains included Bubblicious and Funky Skunk for $70 a 
quarter ounce. Dutch Treat is a hybrid of sativa and indica cannabis, 
Bear explained, and added, "It's really good."

"I'm not a medical marijuana patient," I warned up front.

"You don't have to be," Bear assured.

Approximately one minute later, I got a text: "Hi, this is Otter with 
Winterlife. I was told you're interested in delivery." I gave Otter 
my address, and he texted: "No problem, man. I'll be there in about 
30 minutes."

REALLY? AN OTTER WAS COMING TO DELIVER ME LEGAL WEED THAT I ORDERED 
FROM A BEAR!?!!

Otter arrived in a jacket and tie. He checked my ID and handed me a 
$90 bag of pungent Dutch Treat; I handed him $90 and a tip. And that was that.

Suck it, Colorado.

I know what you are thinking: Is this allowed? The more I looked into 
it, the more evidence I found that Winterlife is not alone. I found 
at least one other cannabis courier service, Club Raccoons, which 
also has a Twitter account  club) and a hotline (251-3352). 
How are services like these possible?

The answer is simple: "There is no crime defined for purchasing or 
obtaining marijuana," says Alison Holcomb, the primary author of 
Initiative 502 that legalized marijuana. State law prohibits growing 
and selling pot without a license, but having pot is not prohibited, 
and how a person obtains that ounce "is irrelevant," Holcomb says. 
"There is absolutely no penalty for purchase."

On the other hand, Holcomb believes, "The person delivering that 
marijuana is guilty of a felony." Still, there doesn't appear to be 
any way to crack down on someone using the service, because there is 
no crime under state law to charge them with, and delivery services 
themselves don't appear to be in any jeopardy. "As we have not 
licensed anyone yet, we do not have authority over anyone providing a 
marijuana home delivery service," says Washington State Liquor 
Control Board spokesman Brian Smith, who makes it clear that delivery 
services are rogue operations. "The Seattle Police Department may 
take criminal action."

But will they?

"Probably not," says Seattle Police Department spokesman Sergeant 
Sean Whitcomb. Pot delivery service is not a priority, he says, 
particularly because Washington is in a window between passing the 
legalization law and implementing a system to sell the product. "It 
is too early to say where a companion delivery service merits any 
further review," he says.

Which is why companies like Winterlife make sense: They provide a 
practical stopgap service, a bridge between prohibition and 
legalization. Voters legalized pot to decimate the black market, and 
until the world catches up with them, Winterlife fills an aboveboard 
niche that the law doesn't. That fits within a local tradition of 
drug-related stopgaps: deprioritizing pot enforcement, medical 
marijuana dispensaries, needle exchanges for hard-drug users, and 
ecstasy pill testing at raves are all in a legal gray area but hold 
public support because they satisfy an unmet need.

That's essentially the argument raised by Evan, a founder of 
Winterlife, who asked that The Stranger not publish his last name. 
People want to buy pot safely and conveniently, and authorities seem 
to tacitly recognize his service is within the broad spirit of 
legalization, he says.

Evan says Winterlife runs a tight ship that includes paying taxes and 
possessing a state business license (although not a cannabis 
license). "Being that we are high profile, if we were to have 
nefarious goals or be a less-than-upright business, it would quickly 
come back to us in the form of complaints to city and police," he 
says. "Given that we are in this position, it behooves us to provide 
the best, safest service possible."

Does Evan have a critter name, too? I can't resist asking.

"I am the opossum," he says.

Winterlife makes customers sign a brief form that says, in essence, 
that everyone derives some medical benefit from cannabis (an attempt 
to put Winterlife under the umbrella of the state's medical cannabis 
rules, and the right to an affirmative defense in court). "It doesn't 
make it technically legal, but it does make it defensible," Evan 
says. The possibility of federal prosecution "is always in the back 
of my mind," he says, but Winterlife doesn't sell to minors, sell in 
quantity, or sell across state lines-activities that would provoke 
attention from the Feds.

Even so, when licenses are issued to pot businesses later this year, 
the state still won't officially allow for delivery, which is one 
aspect of the law that someone needs to change. As the legislature 
convenes this week, they should expand the law to allow delivery 
because retail stores will still be insufficient when they open. A 
byzantine combination of state and local rules dictates where stores 
may be located, and as a result, the outlets will be largely 
clustered in lower-income neighborhoods and absent in many other 
areas, contravening the goal of battling the black market. And it's 
not what voters wanted. Representative Christopher Hurst and Senator 
Jeanne Kohl-Welles, both experts on state marijuana laws, should 
consider a bill that legalizes practical delivery services like the 
one Winterlife provides.

At least, it sure was practical for me.

Now I have a quarter ounce of stinky pot at home-well, nearly a 
quarter ounce. Two hits made The Hobbit fly by in the blink of an Eye 
of Sauron. And normally, a quarter ounce would last me about a year. 
But who knows how much I'll smoke in January. I'm not drinking this month.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom