Farhad Manjoo: Check Out This Joint -- How WeedMaps turned marijuana reviews into big business.

Check Out This Joint: How WeedMaps turned marijuana reviews into big business.
By Farhad Manjoo
Slate

There are several theories for why voters in California rejected a measure to legalize marijuana this week. One argument is that proponents of Proposition 19 didn't spend enough money on the effort—thanks to Meg Whitman saturating every channel with $100 million in ads for her gubernatorial run, the $4 million spent on the Prop. 19 campaign was too piddling to register. Turnout was also a problem; exit polls show that young people generally supported the initiative, but, as in the rest of the country, they didn't show up at the polls. (Maybe they were lighting up to celebrate the Giants' World Series win?) Finally, there's the bureaucracy theory—as the Los Angeles Times editorialized, Prop. 19 was a terribly flawed initiative, allowing every city and county in the state to set up its own local entity for taxing and regulating marijuana. In an anti-government year, perhaps even potheads couldn't smoke that schwag.

All these theories have something in common—they suggest that Californians really do want to legalize marijuana, just not right now. Some day—when proponents of legalization craft a better measure and put on a better campaign, and when young people make up a greater share of the electorate—pot will become legal in California, advocates say.

I suspect, though, that there's another reason that the Golden State electorate didn't bother to legalize pot: Marijuana is essentially legal in California already. In 1996, voters passed Proposition 215, making California one of the first states to legalize marijuana for medical use. "Medical use" is defined with comical broadness. Virtually anybody who wants legal pot in California can visit a friendly doctor, complain of "chronic pain," and walk out with a marijuana card in about an hour. Indeed, not only is legal marijuana a big business, it's also becoming a pretty normal business, acquiring all the trappings of a mature industry. There are wholesalers, retailers, chains, brands, logos, coupons, and even TV ads. In September, the Fox affiliate in Sacramento began running the country's first spot for a marijuana dispensary; in an ad that resembles every late-night spot for acne cures and diet supplements, patients of CannaCare regale the healing powers of marijuana.

But the best way to witness the retailing of marijuana is to visit WeedMaps, a two-year-old Web site that has become the primary online portal for the legal pot business in California. WeedMaps is often described as the Yelp for marijuana, but that undersells it. It's more like Yelp, MenuPages, Craigslist, Groupon, Bloomberg, and the New York Times Dining section for pot. WeedMaps is the first place you'll visit after getting your marijuana card—type in your address to find the best local dispensaries—and the place you'll keep coming back to every time you're looking for a new high. As a result, it's become an amazingly profitable business. According to Justin Hartfield, WeedMaps' 26-year-old founder and CEO, the site makes $400,000 a month, and revenues are growing fast.

Like Yelp, WeedMaps offers loads of customer reviews. These write-ups cover everything you'd care to know about a marijuana shop: quality, price, selection, customer service, atmosphere, and the general safety and scamminess of the place. (Reviewers aren't sticklers for the rules of grammar and punctuation, but they're generally quite helpful.) There's also a frequently updated menu of what's available at each dispensary. For instance, I discovered that the top dispensary in my neighborhood, the Palliative Health Care Center, offers several dozen different cannabis strains and pot-infused products, including bath salt, soap (scented and unscented), soda, and a much better selection of cheesecakes than you'd find at your local chain restaurant. (I'm itching to try the Lemon Dank Cheesecake.) Plus, WeedMaps will text you discounts from places around town, features classifieds for a range of pot-related products, and offers many artfully produced video reviews of new strains. ("Wow, you don't need much of that to heavily medicate toward the end of the night!" raves one satisfied consumer.) And the site, which now employs more than 10 fulltime staffers, keeps adding more features. Soon, it will branch out into listings of headshops and cannabis paraphernalia.

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