Medical marijuana dispensaries continue to be fodder for network crime shows. Previously, Bones and The Mentalist used retail pot businesses in storylines. The latest is the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode, "Buzz Kill."
It opens in a Las Vegas dispensary (there aren't any actually open yet in Sin City) with a display case of cakes, donuts, popcorn, wrapped brownies, gum balls and pacifiers. "I bake them all myself," owner/budtender Lloyd tells a wide-eyed customer: "They're pretty damn tasty, pretty potent too."
The camera pans to large square glass jars filled with fake buds named Zeppelin Squeeze, Astro Zoom, Cotton Candy, Chronic Climb, Candy Bud, Mighty Jones and Shadow Stout. "Of course, edibles are not for everybody," Lloyd explains. "I would say about 80% of our patients still prefer cannabis in the traditional form. If anxiety's your main ailment, I say you go with Purple Diesel - it's got the perfect balance of alertness and relaxation. It keeps you functional, you know?" He hands the customer the jar to smell. He grabs it with both hands and takes a deep whiff, then smiles. In the background, there's an image of a large resinated bud. "It smokes a little sweet and sour with the hint of pine on the exhale," Lloyd offers.
"That's nice," he says. "I'll go with that."
"Great. Your best deal: full ounce for $320."
"I don't suppose you take a card?"
"Cash only."
Lloyd fills up a smaller jar with buds and gives it to him.
"There you go. Enjoy!"
The customer/patient pays cash and leaves as a woman enters after being buzzed in by the security guard.
"No need to be shy, we're all legal now," Lloyd says like a good salesman. "I just need to see your medical card and I will set you up with the right strain for whatever ails you."
The women is nervous and tells him to check his phone. There's a video of his wife and two kids being held hostage. She wants money. He fills up a satchel with $300,000 cash and hands it over to her.
"When am I going to see my family?"
"I don't know."
He reaches for her and a glass container filled with buds falls off the counter and shatters on the floor, alerting the guard who thinks she has a gun, fires and kills her.
Enter the CSI forensics investigators. Nick wonders: "What's the deal with all this cash? These people never heard of banks?"
Det. Crawford explains: "Banks, credit card companies don't want to had anything to do with the marijuana businesses. They're afraid the funds can be seized as drug money."
"But this is a legal dispensary."
"Legal according to the state. The Feds, they have different ideas."
"So these places are cash only," Sara says. "It's no wonder this place was targeted. Between the money and all this product, there's got to be a million dollars here."
Back a the shop, Crawford asks Lloyd: "Did you have any problems with anyone opening up the shop? Do you owe money? Do you deal with anybody who could be trouble?"
"Are you kidding me?" Lloyd asks, incredulously. "I'm in the drug business. I may be legal but it's a grey area at best. My growers are technically outlaws, my main competition are street dealers and delivery services think I'm stealing their business. It's the Wild West all over again… It could be anyone who has any idea of how much cash is involved."
At the lab, Dave Hodges scissors a bud into a Steep Hill grinder and places it into the spectometry machine. "Is it really that big of a difference one from the another?" Sara wonders.
"Absolutely," Dave says.
'Each strain has its own unique level of countless cannabinoids and terpenoids which gives pot its medicinal value. Believe it or not there is a legit medical basis for medical marijuana use. Granted the names don't really help with the credibility.
"I'm using near IR spectrometry to analyze Lloyd's inventory. Because of the varying cannabinoid levels of each strain it produces its own unique waveform or spectrum - a fingerprint of sort."
"Which waveform is from our dead teacher's pot?"
"That's this one here. Unfortunately, it's not a match to any of Lloyd's stuff… There might be a way to find out (where she was getting it). There's a database being assembled in Connecticut with help from the Feds. They're cataloguing marijuana that has actual DNA. If Henry can isolate a DNA for Alison Ball's marijuana we might get lucky and run it against the Feds' database."
Dave is able to track the strain to Us-2-U Wellness - an online marijuana delivery service. He tells D.B (Ted Danson), who's the boss: "The Feds recently raided Us-2-U and the pot that they seized was entered into their burgeoning marijuana database where they found a match - the pot that you found in Alison's apartment. The guy behind Us-2-U is Calvin Reynolds."
Crawford picks up Reynolds, who snarls: "Medical marijuana use is legal in Nevada. Pretty soon recreational use will be too. You've got a problem with that that's too bad."
It turns out the kidnapping was a hoax perpetrated by Lloyd's wife and Alison's brother to scam money from Lloyd. The moral of this story: retail marijuana businesses deal in too much cash and are sitting ducks for criminals. Even though the storyline is pretty cheesy, at least CSI is now on record saying medical marijuana is "legit" and the Feds needs to something about the banking problem, as explained by Crawford.
