FOUNDERS DREAM OF HIGH DEMAND ON ITOKE NET SITE

Call it a cross between Webvan and a cannabis buyers' club.

Two budding entrepreneurs behind a firm descriptively named IToke LLC hope
to launch a Web-based marijuana delivery service in Amsterdam as soon as
tomorrow.

The unusual e-commerce company promises to deliver orders within 30
minutes, using fast, friendly ``iTokkerista'' couriers astride a fleet of
green-and-white bicycles.

For 10 Euros, or $8.94, per gram, customers will be able to place orders by
computer, phone, fax or WAP-enabled wireless phones. And they will be able
to pay for the pot with prepaid ``iToken'' smart credit cards that can be
refilled at Amsterdam kiosks.

Founders Tim Freccia and Mike Tucker, two Seattle natives, also plan to
open a chain of ``toke style'' clubs in London, New York and Tokyo that
will ``celebrate a pastime that is as American as Silicon Valley.''

``Our biggest mission is to change the perception (in America) of what
marijuana culture is,'' Tucker said during a telephone interview from Berlin.

Tucker, 33, said he has taken hits from critics who dismiss IToke as a
joke. Online portal Yahoo even lists the site, www.itoke.co.uk, under
``humor.''

But Tucker said he and Freccia, 35, aren't just blowing smoke. Tucker
insists IToke is a serious e-commerce enterprise that hopes to make
marijuana a respectable brand by ``repackaging it, by commercializing it,
by making it an actual product.''

The Web site, for example, was designed to look like a combination of Apple
Computer's online store and Starbucks Coffee's Web site.

``At the end of the day, who do you want to buy from? Some guy in an alley
in Barcelona, or from a company that not only delivers premium products,
but also shows an interest in the community and its employees,'' Tucker
said in an earlier press release.

Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws said IToke could run a legitimate business in Amsterdam, where the
laws and social mores regarding marijuana use are less strict than in the
United States.

``Sounds like all they need are the growers and the bike riders,'' said St.
Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, the nonprofit education
and research arm of the Washington, D.C., lobbying group that is trying to
make marijuana legal.

``If this service was available in an unfettered way in the District of
Columbia, they'd be zillionaires,'' St. Pierre said.

In the United States, though, Freccia and Tucker would be considered major
illegal drug dealers and tossed in jail, St. Pierre said. Pro- and
anti-marijuana forces are battling over the question of whether pot should
be legally distributed for medicinal purposes.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order baring the
Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative from distributing marijuana to
seriously ill patients.

But in the Netherlands, marijuana can be sold legally in small amounts from
licensed coffee shops, although it remains to be seen whether a fleet of
ganja couriers runs afoul of those laws, St. Pierre said.

``Many people who use marijuana (medicinally) are so physically
incapacitated that if they could call someone to have it delivered to them,
this would be a godsend,'' St. Pierre said.

For starters, though, the iTokkeristas will only make deliveries in
Amsterdam, and only a maximum of 2 grams per order. Tucker, who owns a DVD
post-production company in Berlin, said final details may not be nailed
down in time to launch the service tomorrow as scheduled.

The startup's biggest problem in Amsterdam has been the brick-and- mortar
coffee shop owners who are not pleased ``with what they see is the
Amazon-ization of something they feel is theirs,'' Tucker said.

But Tucker, who says he doesn't touch the stuff, said he can already smell
the interest in IToke, especially from the average 30,000 unique visitors
who already access the site daily.

``You can call us what you want, but I really think that we're on to
something,'' he said.