MEDICAL MARIJUANA DELIVERY BOOMING

A flourishing and unregulated industry of pot delivery services is
circumventing bans on storefront dispensaries and bringing medical
marijuana directly to people's homes, offices and more unconventional
locations across the state, records and interviews show.

The unfettered delivery of marijuana through hundreds of these
services highlights how quickly California's fabled pot industry is
moving from the shadows and into uncharted legal territory. These new
couriers include enterprising farmers, business entrepreneurs and
even a former Los Angeles pot dealer methodically switching her
former clients to legal patients.

In newspapers and on the Internet, hundreds of "mobile dispensaries"
advertise a wide range of strains and other products, such as
brownies and cookies laced with THC, the active ingredient in
marijuana. One service delivers organic vegetables along with medical
marijuana, as part of a "farm-direct" service.

Some operate in multiple counties, including jurisdictions where
storefront dispensaries are banned, or make local deliveries to
drop-off points, such as Starbucks parking lots and gas stations. At
least three ship to clients around the state using private
prescription-drug couriers.

Although delivery of medical marijuana is not a new phenomenon,
advocates say the growth of these services could be a game-changer in
the state's pot war, which pits law enforcement, elected officials
and community groups in some localities against dispensary owners
and patients.

And these businesses could increase in popularity if voters approve
an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize pot possession.

"They're delivering the product better, cheaper, more discretely and
probably at a higher profit rate than dispensaries," said Allen St.
Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization. "These delivery
services are starting to grab more and more market share."

A question remains on whether these services are legal. Some local
and federal officials say delivery services violate the 1996
Compassionate Use Act that legalized medical marijuana in California
for qualified patients, as well as other laws. The services are
viewed as a way to get around local regulations clearly banning
dispensaries.

"They're transporting drugs," said Tommy LaNeir, director of the
National Marijuana Initiative, which is funded through the White
House's drug policy office. "It's a trans-shipment operation that's
trying to bypass the ordinances that have been set up by cities and
counties. It's as simple as that."

The exact number of delivery services operating in California is
unclear, since the state does not keep a registry of medical
marijuana distributors or outlets. In April, 758 services advertised
direct delivery of marijuana to patients on Weedmaps.com, a
commercial listing service.

Those numbers have nearly tripled in the past 18 months and grown by
39 percent since February, as more counties and cities began
regulating storefront dispensaries or banning them outright,
according to Justin Hartfield, owner of Weedmaps.com.

More than half the couriers who advertised in April said they were
located in the Los Angeles region. Other services clustered around
metropolitan regions, such as San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento
- - with most regions experiencing steady growth. The number of
couriers advertising within L.A. has jumped from 110 to 161 since
February. San Diego saw an increase from 68 to 101 over the same period.

For the state, the trend has caught officials flat-footed and unable
to pinpoint any legal guidelines that directly address the delivery
of medical marijuana by courier or mail. It's clear that sending
drugs through the postal service and cultivating pot for sale
violates U.S. law, but most marijuana growers know federal
prosecutions are rare these days.

"Delivery services are a relatively new creature, one that has not
been directly addressed by the courts or in legislation," said Peter
Krause, a California deputy attorney general who helped write the
state's landmark guidelines on medical marijuana in 2008.

The state's 1996 initiative and a companion law approved by the
Legislature in 2003 granted cities and counties most of the authority
over implementing the Compassionate Use Act. But no city council or
board of supervisors has explicitly outlawed or legalized delivery
services, according to Americans for Safe Access.

Senate Bill 420 - signed into law by former Gov. Gray Davis during
his final weeks in office - appears to protect individual patients
from prosecution for "possession, transportation, delivery, or
cultivation of medical marijuana" under legal limits. The law also
allows patients and their primary caregivers to "associate" with each
other to "collectively or cooperatively" cultivate pot for medical
purposes.

To some law enforcement officials, the law is unambiguous.

"I don't see anything that suggests that when voters passed the
Compassionate Use Act, they envisioned (marijuana) delivery
services," said Joseph Esposito, head of narcotics for the Los
Angeles district attorney's office.

Nowhere is the boom in pot delivery more evident than in Southern
California. Until recently, Los Angeles was ground zero in the rapid
growth of medical pot outlets, with dispensaries outnumbering
Starbucks locations along some commercial strips.

That era may be ending. In January, the Los Angeles City Council
approved an ordinance that led city attorneys to order the closing of
439 dispensaries. An estimated 135 will be allowed to remain if they
follow new regulations, but action could come as soon as Monday on
the others.

In the face of the crackdown, some dispensaries have already
shuttered their storefronts and rebranded themselves as delivery
services. "They tell us, 'we still want to be listed on your website.
We're just turning into a delivery service,' " said Hartfield of
Weedmaps.com.

Dann Halem, a former freelance journalist, founded the Artists
Collective delivery service 18 months ago after he started using
marijuana to treat a rare hormone condition. He quickly saw the
benefits of distributing marijuana directly to customers rather than
running an expensive storefront.

"You don't have to rent property," he said. "You don't have to deal
with security cameras. You don't have to have a security guard... You
could spend money left and right to start a store."

Together with a business partner, Halem logs hundreds of miles each
week to fill phone and Internet orders for 500 or so clients. He said
he doesn't charge extra for delivery, but sets a minimum amount of
marijuana a patient must buy, depending on the distance. If the
customer is within 10 miles, the minimum is one-eighth of an ounce;
within 20 miles, one-quarter of an ounce; within 30 miles,
three-eighths of an ounce.

Just days after Los Angeles ordered a crackdown on the city's teeming
medical marijuana dispensaries, Halem drove to a downtown residential
hotel to deliver half an ounce of high-grade pot. At the hotel, Halem
met up with Leonard Lombardo, a 50-year-old Gulf War veteran
undergoing treatment for throat cancer. The two men spoke casually
and then Lombardo paid for the marijuana.

"These are people who don't have cars. They can barely walk," said
Halem, who nevertheless acknowledges that most of his clients are not
severely ill. "So it's absolutely critical for there to be delivery
services in some way."

Another new online dispensary, C420, says it will ship pot overnight
to qualified medical marijuana users at "almost any legal address in
California" and has signed up 1,000 qualified medical marijuana users
across the state since its launch in April.

Elsewhere, some operations are modeling themselves on organic farms
that deliver distinctive boxes of fruits and vegetables directly to
customers' homes. Matthew Cohen, owner of Northstone Organics,
pioneered what he calls "farm-direct medical marijuana." The
Ukiah-based cooperative grows and delivers marijuana to a network of
some 500 qualified patients in the nine Bay Area counties.

One former pot dealer who runs a delivery service in Los Angeles
agreed to talk about her business under the condition that her name
and specific area of operations within Los Angeles County not be
revealed. To transform her former customers into legal patients, the
woman holds unusual gatherings: Sunday brunches at her home where a
doctor evaluates the invited guests at a discount rate.

She and her small, all-female staff are on call noon to 8 p.m. every
day and deliver anywhere in Los Angeles County. She says she employs
female drivers because they are less threatening to customers. On an
average week, the service delivers one to two pounds of marijuana
packaged into colored packets usually weighing an eighth of an ounce
and costing between $50 and $70.

"I have doctors. I have lawyers. I have (school) principals," she
said on a recent delivery run, which included a Starbucks parking lot
and a film production studio. "I have teachers. I have nurses,
doctors, who don't want to be seen going into a dispensary."

This story was reported in collaboration with KQED public radio, with
assistance from the USC Annenberg School for Communication &
Journalism. California Watch