NEW YORK CITY POT USERS GETTING THEIR MARIJUANA DELIVERED

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 from drug rings that operate with
remarkable corporate-style attention to customer satisfaction.

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."

The phenomenon isn't new. It has long been the case around the country that
those with enough money and the right connections could get cocaine or other
drugs discreetyly delivered to their homes and 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 messy turf wards assoiciated 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 hydroponically -
without soil - in the basement of a home on 10 acres in Vermont, where an
informant reported the smell of the crop was overpowering.

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. Authorities refused to give names, but in one
conversation overheard last October, a courier boasted about the ring's
upscale clientele, according to court papers.

"We know comedians. We know celebrities," the courier said. "So you might
meet a rapper, a singer. We go to a lot of people."

One former customer named Lucia, a 30-year-old employee at an entertainment
cable network, recalled blatant deals done at th ecompany's Manhattan
headquarters. Executives and employees alike would pool their orders as if
they were buying lunch together, then await the arrival of a courier, Lucia
said.

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

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

The emphasis on customer service as satisfaction was eveident 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!"