WeedPhone: Medical marijuana technology whose time has come... and gone?

Even as the Colorado dispensary scene matures out of its heady boom days, ganjapreneurs still hope to strike it rich with one MMJ-themed enterprise or another -- although like a lot of the product moving around dispensaries these days, not all of it passes the smell test. Take, for example,...

By Joel Warner

January 25, 2011

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Even as the Colorado dispensary scene matures out of its heady boom days, ganjapreneurs still hope to strike it rich with one MMJ-themed enterprise or another -- although like a lot of the product moving around dispensaries these days, not all of it passes the smell test. Take, for example, a press release that came in to Westword's office last week announcing the launch of a new service called WeedPhone.

As the release put it, "Think of it like MovieFone except when you dial our number you get all the local dispensaries, doctors, and grow equipment warehouses. You might also think of it like Kramer on Seinfeld when he did his version of MovieFone!"

The idea of the MovieFone guy -- or better yet, Kramer in his MovieFone-guy voice -- telling us where to score pot does sound pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, phone-based information services such as this lost their usefulness right around the time Seinfeld went off the air, thanks to the power of the Interwebs. Don't believe us? This is how we expect a typical attempt to use WeedPhone might go down:

Guy 1: Hey man, I'm all out of medical marijuana. Know where I can score some more?

Guy 2: Nah, man. But I have an idea! Let's call WeedPhone!

Guy 1: Great idea! Got the number?

Guy 2: Uh, no. But I can look it up on the Internet...

Guy 1: I have a better idea. Let's use the Internet to find out where to score some weed.

And there you have it. Still, to give the company a fair shake, we tried to call WeedPhone at their number, 855-303-WEED (a number we just happened to get off the Internet). Unfortunately, there was no Kramer at the other end, or even the MovieFone guy -- since the number wasn't in service.

Maybe the folks involved are already on to their next forward-thinking enterprise: the WeedPager.

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Joel Warner is a former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times. He's also written for WIRED, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, Slate, Grantland and many other publications. He's co-author of the 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, published by Simon & Schuster.

Contact: Joel Warner