POT EXPRESS

NEW YORK - In a city where you can get just about anything delivered
to your door - groceries, dry cleaning, Chinese food - pot smokers are
increasingly ordering takeout marijuana. Drug rings are meeting the
smokers' needs.

An untold number of otherwise law-abiding professionals in New York
are having their pot delivered to their homes instead of visiting drug
dens or hanging out on street corners.

Among the legions of home-delivery customers is Chris, 37, a salesman
in Manhattan. He dials a pager number and gets a return call from a
cheery dispatcher who takes his order for potent strains of marijuana.

Within a couple of hours, a well-groomed delivery man - sometimes a
moonlighting actor or chef - arrives at his Manhattan apartment
carrying weed neatly packaged in small plastic containers.

"These are very nice, discreet people," said Chris, who spoke on
condition that only his first name be used. "There's an unspoken
trust. It's better than going to some street corner and getting ripped
off or killed."

Smarter dealers

The phenomenon isn't new. Those with enough money and the right
connections could always get cocaine or other drugs discreetly
delivered to their homes or places of business.

But experts say home delivery has been growing in popularity, thanks
to a shrewder, corporate style of dealing designed to put customers at
ease and avoid the turf wars associated with other drugs.

"It's certainly been the trend in the past 10 years in urban areas
that are becoming gentrified," said Ric Curtis, an anthropology
professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who
specializes in the drug culture.

The corporate model and its profit potential were demonstrated late
last year when the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that it
had taken down a highly sophisticated organization dubbed the Cartoon
Network. DEA agents arrested 12 people after using wiretaps and
surveillance and making undercover buys.

Authorities estimated that since 1999, the ring made a fortune by
delivering more than a ton of marijuana, some of it grown in the
basement of a home on 10 acres in Vermont.

The dealers, working out of a roving call center, processed 600 orders
a day - from doctors, lawyers, Wall Street traders - even on
Christmas, investigators said.

For $60, two grams

One former customer named Lucia, 30, who works at an entertainment
cable network, said executives and employees alike would pool their
orders as if they were buying lunch together, then await the arrival
of a courier.

The cost was $60 for one plastic case holding two grams of marijuana -
a steep markup, but worth it because of convenience and quality, she
said.

"It was kind, kind bud," she said. "Yummy stuff."

The emphasis on customer service and satisfaction was evident at one
stash house, where agents found more than 30 pounds of marijuana in
plain view, already packaged for holiday delivery, court papers said.
The packages featured the drug ring's cartoon-character logo and the
greeting, "Happy Holidays From Your Friends at Cartoon!"

John Nebel, accused of being the operation's mastermind, is awaiting
trial and could face a minimum of 10 years in federal prison if
convicted. Prosecutors also are demanding the forfeiture of $22
million in cash, homes, cars, motorcycles and a boat owned by him and
his cohorts.

Investigators seized customers' names and addresses from the
operation's computer logs. But those people face little risk of
prosecution, authorities said.

Under New York state law, most marijuana offenses "are not treated as
very significant crimes," said Bridget G. Brennen, the city's special
narcotic prosecutor. "That is why you see the marijuana delivery
services proliferating. Their exposure is slight."