It wasn’t so long ago that marijuana was illegal in Massachusetts. But even though cannabis sales and use have the green light in the Bay State, illicit deals haven’t disappeared — they’ve just been refined.
In Massachusetts, marijuana retailers are prohibited from knowingly selling more than one ounce of pot or its dry-weight equivalence to a customer within a single day. Illicit dealers get around that by visiting a licensed cannabis store several times in one day, buying the maximum allowed on each visit, aka “looping.” They also visit several shops to make buys on the same day, known as “smurfing.”
Armed with fresh supplies, they either sell across state lines, or to local customers.
