Amsterdam website to sell marijuana

Now even drug dealers are going dot.com. A new company called iToke, based in Amsterdam, plan to let customers order marijuana through the website, or via new "WAP"internet-enabled phones, from next month.

Now even drug dealers are going dot.com. A new company called iToke, based in Amsterdam, plan to let customers order marijuana through the website, or via new "WAP"internet-enabled phones, from next month.

Although they have yet to get any finance, Mike Tucker and Tim Freccia, two American expatriates, think they are on to a winner. They came up with the idea while sitting in one of Amsterdam's coffee houses, where marijuana consumption is legal.

"Our contemporaries are basically the biggest wealth-generating generation of all time and they're all tokers," said Mr Freccia, 35. "These are not slackers yet they're all forced to toke in their basements," he said.

"iToke is not about the legalisation of pot, it's about the commercialisation of pot culture. It's about giving pot culture a facelift."

But the facelift might put the authorities' noses out of joint. While it is legal to consume marijuana in cigarettes or food inside suitably licensed cafés in Amsterdam, selling it outside them is against the law. Even though Holland has some of the most laidback laws on drugs in Europe, it does enforce the ones which apply.

iToke will let customers order up to two grams of marijuana through WAP mobile phones. To pay for their orders, they will be able to buy prepaid and rechargeable cards, called iTokens, at kiosks throughout Amsterdam. With a handheld device, bicycle couriers can read the unique ID of each card to ensure that they deliver the goods to the right person.

"We want to make the multibillion-dollar marijuana business safe, secure and socially responsible," said Mr Tucker.