Chicago Tribune reports on the popularity of medical marijuana delivery in San Francisco:

SAN JOSE, Calif. - -- David Goldman has a chronic headache, but help is on the way. A driver arrives at his apartment, checks Goldman's ID card, then hands over a small bag of marijuana.

"It's really nice to have the convenience of delivery," said Goldman, a retired teacher who orders medicinal marijuana about once a week from The Green Cross, a medical marijuana delivery service. "I trust their product, and their prices are competitive."

As Californians consider legalizing marijuana, The Green Cross in San Francisco is a signal of just how mainstream pot has become. In some ways, the medical marijuana dispensary is just like any other retail business: It takes credit cards, it's reviewed on Yelp and it promises delivery within an hour -- there's even a $10 discount if the pot is late.

The Green Cross switched over to a delivery-based model due to problems finding a suitable location when they were forced to move their dispensary. Even in San Francisco, you can run into a "not in my backyard" mentality from neighbors when it comes to dispensing marijuana from a storefront business.

As Americans grow increasingly skeptical of the war on marijuana, one of the biggest challenges facing reformers is to develop a plan that the public is comfortable with. As silly as it is that you can sell cigarettes and alcohol to adults over the counter, but not marijuana, we have to face the fact that getting people to vote for any legislation allowing "marijuana stores" is going to remain a challenge. Concerns about peripheral crime, underage access, etc. may be unrealistic, but our opposition can still leverage such anxieties against us at the voting booth.

Home delivery has a lot to offer as a means of providing convenient consumer access, while reducing the visibility of activity that makes some people uncomfortable. This is already the model on which New York City's underground marijuana industry thrives, and nobody seems to have a problem with it (the only complaints I've heard are from buyers who say the price is outrageous). The delivery approach reduces exposure for both buyer and seller, while also making it easy for everyone else to ignore them.

In the long term, a low-impact distribution model such as this could go a long way towards increasing public tolerance. It's not exactly what most of us have in mind when we envision legalization, but it's a compromise that could go a long way towards eliminating the harms of the current policy without opening up the floodgates and provoking a backlash.

What do you think?

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