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How I bought legal weed in Washington, D.C.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Shouldn't be difficult, right?

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I wanted to see how easy it was to buy legal recreational marijuana.

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D.C. is lit

Because these days, who doesn’t need to blaze a little bit in the nation’s capital, right? But it turns out that scoring weed wasn’t as straightforward as I thought.

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Washington Post photo by Sarah L. Voisin

Legalize it!

In 2014, D.C. residents voted to legalize the recreational use of weed by a vote of 67 percent. Medicinal weed had previously been approved.

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Washington Post photo by Charles Ommanney

Smokable and edible too

Possession of up to two ounces is legal. So you can smoke it. Or eat it baked into cookies, brownies or other edibles. You can grow it yourself. Yay, right?

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Boo-hiss!

But you can’t buy or sell it. Congressional lawmakers opposed to legalization put a rider in a 2014 budget bill that prevents recreational marijuana from being commercially sold in the district. So that means you can’t just walk into a store and buy marijuana products, like you can in Colorado, Oregon and other places. It also can’t be smoked out in public.

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'Ganjapreneurs'

So D.C. potheads and so-called “ganjapreneurs” have had to be crafty in order to come up with alternate ways to distribute and acquire marijuana. Not “buy” and “sell,” mind you. That’s against the law.

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Field research

So I did a little research on the way to the district to see how a tourist would get a hold of marijuana in Washington. How do you buy weed if it's not legal to sell it?

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Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson

"Puff, pass and paint"

I found you can go to a dance or arts-and-crafts parties where smokables and edibles are sold by vendors. The Washington Post likens these events to marijuana farmer's markets. There are also other events, like "Puff, Pass and Paint" parties, where folks paint and blaze. You have to bring your own weed, though.

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Washington Post photo by Sarah L. Voisin

For medicinal purposes too

D.C. also has relatively loose medical marijuana regulations, meaning that doctors can very easily prescribe it for just about any ailment or condition. So more people can take advantage of it.

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Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken

It's a gift

But among the most popular ways to get weed is to acquire it when you buy other items, such as artwork, juice or apparel. Just buy the item, and they’ll throw in a couple of buds or edibles as a “thank you” or “bonus” for purchasing their product. Remember, gifting weed to someone above the age of 21 is perfectly legal in D.C.

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A little pricey

But some of the stuff I saw for purchase online was expensive. The site District of C sells artwork and jewelry (with pot thrown in) for between $60 and $95. Another site called Red Eye offers six freshly baked chocolate chip cookies that contain no cannabis but offers a free gift on the side.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Pink Fox

One of the best websites I found was called Pink Fox. They had an array of apparel you could buy, much of it in the $25 to $35 range. And they had a really good FAQ that answered a lot of my questions about the ins and outs of making the deal.

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The Washington Post photo by Evelyn Hockstein

Making the connection

I sent an email and got a call from a guy named Mark (not pictured) shortly afterward. He told me that the delivery fee for anything was $100, which was out of my range. When I asked about coming by their store, he told me that Pink Fox doesn't have storefronts. He said the service uses one of three Metro stations in town to meet customers: L’Enfant Plaza, Waterfront station and Federal Center SW.

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Here's the deal

Mark told me that the price for items was anywhere from $15 to $500, depending on how much weed would be included as a gift. He said I could get a drawstring backpack with some edibles in it for $20. I opted for the edibles because I couldn’t smoke in the hotel and didn’t feel comfortable slinking out alone to smoke a joint in an unfamiliar city. We agreed to arrange a meet-up the next day.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Gertting the call

I was outside Ford’s Theatre the next day, doing a little walking in the city, when I got a text from Dan from Pink Fox. We decided on the Waterfront Metro station to make the purchase. A courier would meet me with my backpack and “a good assortment of edible gifts.” For purposes of identification, I told Dan that I’d be wearing a Mets hat.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

The deal goes down

The meeting was set for 2:30 p.m., and the courier was right on time. He had two backpacks with him, actually, so it turned out he was making another drop at the station at the same time. When I came time to pay, I simply handed over the $20. Just like an old-fashioned street deal! Perfectly legal, I knew, but there was still something vaguely seedy about it all.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

The haul

Here’s what I got in my backpack: A pot brownie and a bag of what’s called “fox rocks,” which are crunchy chocolate candies.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

And this

Useful information about how to get in touch with Pink Fox. Just in case you're ever in town.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

The menu

What you can get for your money.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Watch your dosage

This tells you how many milligrams of THC, the cannabis ingredient that gives you the high, is in each of the Pink Fox products.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

How do I know how much to take?

I had to do more research. How much weed should I imbibe if no longer used to the effects of weed? Most websites recommended that anywhere from a 10- to 20-milligram dose of THC should be enough to get things off the ground. They also recommend dosing on a full stomach, so I grabbed a sandwich at Au Bon Pain across the street.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Kicking back

So I settled into my hotel room, flipped channels on the TV (hey, is that a “Blue Bloods” marathon?), and ate my way through about half the bag of fox rocks. Each piece had 2 mg of THC. After a while, my ears started to get that warm feeling, but I didn’t really feel overly “stoned.” Still, there was a bit of a buzz. But there’s only so much candy you can eat.

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Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com

Taking no chances

I thought the 100 mg brownie would have been a bit much, so I just tossed that the next day. I didn’t want to bring it back home with me because, you know, that’s illegal. Plus, I was afraid there would be security dogs in the Amtrak station, and I wasn’t sure if bomb-sniffing dogs could also sniff out weed. And didn’t want to find out the hard way.

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Mission accomplished

So, once I figured out how to go about it, scoring legal weed in D.C. was pretty easy, despite the arcane rules. So if you’re planning a trip, let me know and I can hook you up. And next time I’m a tourist, maybe something smokable…

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