Recreational weed won't be on sale in Washington for months, but you can already order up high-quality buds and have them delivered to your door in some parts of the state. The only problem is, it's not exactly legal.
One such company offering home delivery services in Seattle is the Winterlife Coop Cannabis Delivery Service, which shows off its newest strains of pot on Facebook and Twitter, in spite of the fact that the service is breaking federal and state laws by selling weed without a license.
Nevertheless, Winterlife publicly posts its phone number on its website, and its owner, Evan Cox, recently revealed his identity to The Seattle Times. He reportedly did so because he's confident that he will not be targeted by law enforcement, the Times reports.
Interestingly, Cox told The Stranger, an alternative Seattle paper, that Winterlife even pays taxes to the state. "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 said.
Winterlife isn't the only illegal delivery service operating in Washington. A service called Club Raccoons, which posts its phone number on its Twitter page, told The Huffington Post it's a "family-based" business that services Seattle's Capitol Hill area with bicycle couriers. A co-owner of Club Raccoons who identified himself as "Germ" told HuffPost that customers must be over 21 to place orders, but he added that they don't have to be medical marijuana patients in order to buy weed.
A preliminary search of Craiglist turned up similar services.
The way such companies are able to deliver weed with impunity seems incredible to some. "I'm amazed these services are allowed to operate, knowing what the law is," said Kevin Oliver, the executive director of the Washington chapter of the nonprofit National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "There's a big misconception that because we passed [Initiative] 502, which is highly regulated, that it's open season and you can do whatever you want with growing and selling pot. And thats just not the case."
Even when recreational marijuana goes on sale legally this summer, Oliver said, delivery will still be against the rules created by the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which is in charge of implementing the new law. "But they can amend those rules anytime," he noted.
(Hat tip, TIME)