Taking the High Road With One of OC's Burgeoning Medical-Marijuana Delivery Services

The Marijuana Machine
Taking the high road with one of OCNs burgeoning medical-marijuana delivery services

The young couple look like theyNve just woken up from a nap—or perhaps a more amorous bedroom activity. The girl, slender and pale with a cute upturned nose, has long curly hair swept over her shoulder. She wears a pair of tight-fitting, yoga-style gray sweat pants and an indigo-colored top. Her boyfriend, who is shirtless with black slacks, is a handsome, tanned kid with a slicked-back blond mane and an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio. Yoga Girl is a college student from Los Angeles who grew up in Newport Beach and has just moved back home for the summer, renting an apartment a few blocks from the beach. SheNs counting out $20 bills on a coffee table while her boyfriend stretches out on a futon.

“Here you go,” Yoga Girl says. “ThatNs my ID card. Do you have change for $200?”

Standing next to the coffee table is someone who prefers, for the purposes of this story, to be identified only as “Racer X.” HeNs a short, wiry surfer with a crew cut, tattoos on his arms and a briefcase full of manila envelopes, each of which contains from one to six airtight, plastic containers full of medical marijuana. The girl has just shown him her State of California Medical Marijuana Identification Card (sheNd read her ID number to Racer XNs boss over the phone an hour or so earlier), and Racer X has just handed her an envelope containing a quarter-ounce of pot, half of which is Lavender KusH N Mdash;at $75 per eighth, one of the luxury strains available to medical marijuana smokers—and half of which is Northern Kush, which is also $75 per one-eighth ounce.

Racer X is a part-time driver for one of some two dozen cannabis clubs in Orange County that offer members door-to-door marijuana-delivery services. His day job involves stocking groceries at a local supermarket chain. He has been a recreational marijuana smoker for years, typically toking up early in the morning on his days off before hitting the waves or in the evenings after work. He bought his pot from a dealer and fellow surfer, whom weNll call “the Big Kahuna.” For years, the Big Kahuna had made a decent living selling pot to customers such as Racer X. But as his client base aged, got married, had kids and smoked less weed, he began to worry about finding a real job. It didnNt help that hundreds of marijuana dispensaries had opened their doors in Los Angeles, offering high-quality marijuana to anyone with a doctorNs note.

After the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted in July 2007 to allow county residents to apply for state medical-marijuana ID cards, the Big Kahuna decided to form a legitimate, nonprofit cooperative that would supply medical marijuana to members of the club. He attended classes held by the California branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (better known by its acronym, NORML) and learned how to operate within the somewhat-fuzzy boundaries established in state law for the operation of such collectives. The Big Kahuna created a website for his club—the name of which he asked not to be revealed—and advertised in both OC Weekly and on various marijuana websites, such as www.weedmaps.com and www.weedtracker.com; Yoga Girl found the club through one of the latter two sites.

“I think it was weedmaps,” Yoga Girl says.

“We just looked for the closest one in our ZIP code,” adds Leo.

“Yeah, thatNs how we found you,” Yoga Girl tells Racer X. She says she learned from a couple of her sorority sisters in Los Angeles how easy it is to obtain legal marijuana. There was a cannabis dispensary conveniently located down the street from her dormitory. “Now that INm down here for the summer, I didnNt want to drive up to LA,” she says. “For safety reasons, too. If you have enough money for a card, having it delivered to you is definitely the way to go. You know, why not?”

I ask her what symptom she has that allows her to smoke marijuana. Yoga Girl pauses for a moment. “Uh, migraines?” she finally suggests. “I use it as a, um, sleep aid. Yeah.”

“Does it work?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah; yeah, it does,” she says, giggling.

Racer X laughs with delight as he zips up his briefcase and nods at the door. HeNs in a rush to make it to his next delivery on schedule.

“Oh, yeah,” Racer X exclaims, waving goodbye to Yoga Girl. “Weed works, baby!”

*     *     *

An hour earlier, INm sitting with Racer X and the Big Kahuna in a small room inside a two-bedroom house in Newport Beach. ItNs the Big KahunaNs home office, headquarters of his 6-year-old cannabis club, which he opened up to new members last November. An American flag hangs on the wall, and stacks of large, airtight plastic bins fill one of the roomNs corners, all of them stuffed with 19 strains of marijuana with gloriously hyperbolic handles and descriptions such as Skywalker (a “tractor beam to Super Spacey!”) and Sour Diesel (“Good luck shutting up; Ramble alert!”). Two computers take up a wraparound desk in another corner of the room. Several open containers of marijuana lie on the few available flat surfaces.

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As usual, the Big Kahuna is sitting shirtless in his chair, flexing his large forearms around a giant glass bong. He takes a deep hit from the device and exhales powerfully into a 1-inch-thick plastic tube that he has rigged to a spot in the wall near an air-conditioning unit. “That stuff can go outside,” he explains, nodding at the smoke. “I donNt care. ItNs legal.”

Just then, his cell phone rings. The Big Kahuna spends the next 20 minutes explaining the various benefits of different strains of marijuana to a repeat customer who agrees to buy a quarter ounce of a sativa strain. “There are two major groups of cannabis: indica and sativa,” he tells me after hanging up. “Most of the weed coming into California and being grown in California in the past 20 years was all indica because people wanted to get stoned and sit on the couch. But if you give that indica to patients who are in pain, in misery, already in a bad place, it takes them down and makes them depressed and suicidal. Sativa is an upper, like coffee. It kills the pain and leaves the patient awake and aware and motivated instead of mellow.”

The person who just called has ordered a few eighths of a sativa strain, the Big Kahuna explains. “This guy has a metal rod inserted in his back, and itNs fused to his spine,N” he says. “HeNs been on painkillers for 10 years and is trying to get off them. HeNs a regular customer; this is his third or fourth time. He orders from us every couple of weeks.”

A former pot dealer who spent time in jail after being set up by a customer, the Big Kahuna is an expert in what is legal and what is not-so-legal when it comes to medical marijuana. HeNs determined to stay on the legal side of things—unlike, he asserts, the hundreds of LA cannabis dispensaries that have opened in the past several years, many of which have been subjected to raids by both state and federal law-enforcement authorities. “These dispensaries offer everything,” he explains. “Food, drink, tinctures, concentrates like hashish, and all that stuff isnNt outlined in the law.”

The law in question, State Bill 420, which was enacted last year to regulate medical marijuana, only allows dispensaries and clubs to grow and provide to their members dried cannabis. For that reason, the Big Kahuna can only obtain marijuana from members of his club, all of whom must live in Orange County. He canNt buy pot from growers, say, in Los Angeles or Northern California. He can deliver the locally grown pot to as many members of the club who live in Orange County as he wishes, so long as he has each member sign a form designating him as their primary caregiver. According to California NORMLNs website (www.canorml.com), there are nearly 150 delivery services throughout the state, most of them in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Orange County is home to 24 delivery services, as well as about a dozen walk-in dispensaries, according to NORML.

The Big Kahuna complains that the big LA dispensaries are also delivering marijuana to customers in Orange County, despite SB420 stating that designated caregivers canNt cross county lines. “ItNs the Wild West up in LA,” the Big Kahuna says. “They are getting busted because they are bringing 5 pounds of weed in the back door and selling it out the front door, whereas we donNt do more than an ounce, which is what a person could truly consume.” While the Big Kahuna acknowledges that half of his clubNs members “just want to get high,” he says the other half are legitimate patients.

*     *     *

Racer X drives a beat-up truck with a satellite-powered global-positioning device mounted on his dashboard. The GPS beeps every few seconds and provides a constant stream of directions. “Turn right, then turn left,” it might say, or “Now arriving at destination.” When Racer X misses a turn, usually because heNs too busy talking, the machine alerts him to his error with the word “Recalculating.” “ThatNs the last word I want to hear,” he says. That word means heNs getting lost and losing time, and time is money.

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He delivers weed for the Big Kahuna three days a week, in shifts that last from 3 to 8 p.m. His busiest days are Fridays, when he can make as many as eight deliveries and earn up to $200. For each eighth of an ounce he delivers, Racer X earns a $10 commission. Sometimes, people tip him $20. Once, a pretty girl ran after him with a $20 bill that heNd mistakenly given her when counting out her change. “This is yours,” she said. “I was going to keep it, but youNre the last person I want to piss off.”

Today, Racer X is eager to stay on schedule because a few days earlier, he missed an entire shift—seven deliveries, a lot for a Wednesday—because the springs in his garage door broke. HeNs grateful that we reach the dayNs first customer—the man with the metal rod in his back—in just a few minutes.

Unlike Yoga Girl and Leo (who will be Racer XNs next customers), this customer isnNt willing to be interviewed on tape. He happily takes off his Hawaiian shirt to reveal a back brace, which he also removes. A nasty scar stretches from the nape of his neck to his tailbone; another traces a curve along the left side of his ribcage. He broke his back on the job several years ago and is trying to kick an OxyContin addiction. He smokes marijuana to relieve the constant pain in his back. It relaxes him enough that he can play his guitar. HeNs clearly lonely; for someone who doesnNt want to be interviewed, he has a lot to say. He follows Racer X all the way to his truck in the parking lot of the condominium complex and reluctantly waves goodbye.

After dropping off the eighth of Lavender Kush and eighth of Northern Kush to Yoga Girl and Leo, Racer X delivers half an ounce of weed to a weathered, middle-aged Latino man who is cooking chicken in his Costa Mesa apartment and watching a Lakers game. “You guys want some food?” he asks, but Racer X is eager to move on. HeNs got one more delivery to make back in Newport Beach. Then his cell phone rings. ItNs the Big Kahuna, telling Racer X that the last customer of the night is about to leave for dinner. Racer X canNt make it to the house in time, so the Big Kahuna agrees to make this delivery himself, since heNs closer. “Next time, drop off at the houses that are close by first,” the Big Kahuna says. When Racer X tries to protest, the Big Kahuna cuts him short. “INm the chief, and youNre the Indian,” he says. “Got it?”

*     *     *

A week later, on another Friday afternoon, I join Racer X again. After meeting at the Big KahunaNs house to pick up several manila envelopes for the first few deliveries of the shift, we drive to an apartment complex just five minutes away in Newport Beach. The only problem: The apartment is on a street that Racer XNs talking GPS device doesnNt recognize. It keeps telling him how to reach a street with a similar name. Ten confusing minutes and a few dozen screamed epithets later, Racer X finally finds the complex. He calls the customerNs telephone number three times, but nobody answers. Finally, Racer X realizes he was calling the wrong number.

After being buzzed in, we walk into the dimly lit apartment of a fat man watching Fox News. A diploma on the wall identifies him as a doctor of philosophy. He buys a quarter ounce of weed. The next delivery is to someone who lives in Huntington Beach. Because Interstate 405 is jammed with traffic, we take surface streets, which turn out to be just as congested. (Racer X will later realize that with me in the car, we could have taken the carpool lane.) At just after 5 p.m. on a Friday night—the worst time for rush-hour traffic in coastal Orange County—Racer X starts to lose his patience. Despite having medicated himself with marijuana earlier in the day, heNs exhibiting clear symptoms of road rage.

“Come on, dude!” he yells at a driver who fails to notice the traffic light change from red to green. “You donNt have to go home, but you canNt stay here!” Finally, the driver begins to roll forward, and Racer X breathes a deep sigh of relief. “Sometimes, I feel like a taxi driver,” he says. “INve learned how to dodge around in traffic and avoid the really bad intersections so I donNt lose too much time. But INve also learned how to calm myself down while driving. I need to be able to do that because INm driving around in a car full of something that is still considered a banned substance under federal law, and I donNt want to draw any more attention to myself than I need to.”

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As we reach the Huntington Beach neighborhood where the next customer lives, Racer X is busy explaining how heNs learned to identify prostitutes. “You can tell thatNs what they are because theyNre always sitting at the bus stop, but they never get on a bus,” he says.

“Sometimes, it really pisses me off,” he continues. “Once I saw this Mexican lady with a kid sitting on the bench waiting for the bus, and four hours later, she was still there. I just donNt get it.”

Suddenly, Racer XNs GPS device interrupts his rant. “Recalculating,” it says. “Recalculating. . . . Recalculating.”

Racer X has missed his left turn. “You have got to be kidding me,” he says. “How the fuck do I make a U-turn?”

*     *     *

At first glance, the Serial Killer looks like any other young Orange County skate punk, except heNs wearing mirrored sunglasses inside his tiny, cramped apartment. The glasses, combined with his wool hat and leering smile, make him look like Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker. The only thing scarier than him is his dog, which is about twice his size. The animal looks like the kind of Belgian attack dog the South African police might have used to terrify anti-apartheid protesters at the height of the township rebellions; itNs trying to push down a sliding patio door and eat Racer X.

This is Racer XNs second delivery to the Serial Killer in just two weeks—thatNs when the Serial Killer moved to this unit—and heNs already buying another five-eighths of an ounce of weed. TodayNs transaction takes less than a minute. “Thanks,” the Serial Killer says. “I wonNt be here next time, just so you know. INm moving.” A few minutes later, Racer X gets a call from the Big Kahuna, who tells him that several more orders have just come in. “WeNre going to head back and do a pick-up-and-fly-by,” Racer X tells me.

We drive back to the Big KahunaNs house. He walks out to the truck and hands over several manila envelopes.

Seconds later, weNre on our way to meet the next customer, a friendly but serious young man who lives in a surreal-looking neighborhood of Huntington Beach where all the houses resemble blown-up versions of structures youNd find at a miniature-golf course, minus the windmills. He says he works for a surgical-supply company and smokes medical marijuana to soothe his tension headaches, which heNd been diagnosed with as a teenager. He buys an eighth of an ounce of weed. “INve had these headaches since high school,” he says. “INve taken Tylenol and other over-the-counter drugs, but I really donNt like them. I smoke this a couple of times a month,” he adds, pointing at the just-purchased marijuana. “I mean, this will last me quite a long time, quite frankly.”

The following customer is Racer XNs favorite client. As we drive to meet her, he regales me with tales of her physical attributes. “SheNs, like, 6-3, 6-4, big-boned and beautiful, like a Nordic Amazon warrior,” he enthuses. “She says she has a boyfriend, but sheNs really friendly.”

We pull up to a luxury condominium complex where the Nordic Princess lives. A few minutes later, she bounds down the street. As it turns out, the Nordic Princess is more like 5-foot-6 and more endearingly curvaceous than statuesque. She marches up to the truck with a happy grin on her face and leans in the driverNs window. “Hiya!” she says.

Racer X is in love.

During a brief interview, the Nordic Princess freely acknowledges that her diagnosed medical condition—anxiety—is just a ruse to get high without breaking the law. She explains that she grew up on the East Coast and recounts horror stories about trying to find weed. “I remember the hunts we used to go on back home,” she says. “It would be hours and hours and 20 or 30 phone calls before youNd get lucky. Hmmm: yeah, anxiety,” she adds, laughing at the memories. “Not anymore!”

*     *     *

The final delivery of the day takes place in a parking lot near a PetCo. For some reason, this customer always insists on meeting at that lot, something that troubles Racer X. “This guy kind of freaks me out,” Racer X explains. “When I meet him, heNs always bobbing his head around and making it look like a drug deal.” A few moments after we pull into the lot, Racer X calls the customer, a tall middle-aged man in a tank top and shorts who is actually waiting just a few yards away. He walks up, putting his cell phone away.

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“I can give you 200 bucks if you donNt mind, or would you rather I give you what I owe you?” the man asks nervously.

“Your total is $140,” Racer X says. “I can give you a fiver. Here you go.”

The man laughs self-consciously as he puts the money in his wallet. He glances back and forth. “Ha, ha, ha,” he says. “INm getting used to this now.”

We drive back to the Big KahunaNs house with $520 in cash in Racer XNs briefcase. Today, he estimates that the Big Kahuna has made $1,000, and that, as a driver, he will receive $200. As we navigate the rush-hour traffic on Harbor Boulevard for the third or fourth time that evening, Racer X reflects on his volunteer work with the club. “This is a really cool job,” he says. “The first few times I went out, I was really nervous. You donNt know if youNre going to be meeting a cop or a cowboy who might decide he wants the weed for free and pulls a gat on you. But thatNs never happened yet.”

So far, his closest call happened at a parking lot where Racer X made the mistake of getting out of his car to hand an envelope to a customer in return for a wad of cash. An alert security guard saw the exchange and pulled up to ask what was going on. “I told him it was a medical-supply delivery,” Racer X says. “He couldnNt see what was in the envelopes and didnNt really know what was going on, so he didnNt call the cops.”

Even if the guard had done so, Racer X says heNs confident that heNd be protected. “Legally, weNre fine,” he says. “There is no problem with what we are doing. If a cop were to pull up in the middle of a delivery, I have a paper saying the patient has designated the club as his caregiver. I might run into a problem, but I would just keep my fucking mouth shut and not say a goddamn thing and see what happens in the courts.”

That anecdote reminds Racer X of a funny story heNd been meaning to tell me all day. “Remember that cute girl we delivered to last week?” he asks, referring to Yoga Girl. “Well, her mom got ahold of her cell phone.” According to Racer X, Yoga GirlNs mom began dialing all the unfamiliar numbers on her daughterNs phone, which eventually put her on the line with the Big Kahuna, who always answers the phone by stating the name of his cannabis club.

“What are you?” the anxious mother asked the Big Kahuna.

“WeNre a club,” he answered.

“Is my daughter in your club?” the woman asked, the alarm in her voice rising.

The Big Kahuna was about to hang up on her, but then thought better of it. After all, it wasnNt like he was a drug dealer. He was a legitimate, nonprofit organization.

“Yeah, you know what?” he responded, his voice still friendly and professional. “I donNt think INm going to answer any more of your questions. YouNre not part of the club.”

ns****@oc******.com