'They're All Stoned on Marijuana'

Living in California and somehow can't get your hands on some weed? Why, just go on Twitter.

Some California pot sellers are living the high life this summer — because high-tech social-networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are allowing them to legally swap street corners for the Internet.

"Just in! Baby Crunch, Spy Diesel and Critical Mass! Buy a quarter, get a gram," read the "tweets" listing the strains of pot available from the Los Angeles-based non-profit medical-marijuana dispensary Artists Collective, which also promises "free delivery."

Artists Collective has the biggest online presence, with a snazzy Web site, Facebook and MySpace pages and the Twitter feed. San Francisco's more staid The Green Cross has a MySpace page, but like Artists Collective lists its latest arrivals on its own Web site.

"We've been open for six months, and I've been doing this project for 18 [months], and only in the last two weeks with a Twitter account has anybody started paying attention to us," says Dann Halem, director of Artists Collective. "That sends a message — an important one — and it really has been, strangely enough, the fact that we're using Twitter that has opened the door."

Not everyone thinks the open sale of marijuana is a good thing.

"The whole state [of California] seems to be saturated with marijuana farms, and it's a marijuana economy, so if they want to do it, it doesn't bother me," says New Jersey personal-injury lawyer Nicholas Kowalchyn. "It's probably out of control already. That's why the state is in the predicaments it's in. They're all stoned on marijuana."
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"I don't think medical marijuana serves any medical purpose," he says. "I think it's a scam. I don't think it has any therapeutic effects. I don't think it has much in the way of painkilling effects. I mean, it's just an excuse for people to smoke marijuana. If they want to smoke marijuana then they should just smoke marijuana and not go through a charade of passing some law that permits them to do it on some bogus therapeutic basis. That's just my opinion."