You wouldn’t pick a model as a weed
dealer – and that’s how the Green
Angels, New York’s hottest way to get
high, have kept their multimillion-
dollar operation under wraps. Suketu
Mehta heads out for deliveries
H
oney* is 27 and several
months pregnant. Her
belly is showing a little,
under her black top.
Her face is as fresh as
hay, the idea the world has about the
American West, where she was born –
she’s an excommunicated Mormon from
the Rocky Mountains. Honey is more
than 183cm tall, blonde and blue-eyed.
Patrick Demarchelier took photos of her
when she was a teenager. She still does
some modelling, but she won’t be doing
any now she’s pregnant.
“Why would I do that when I can
make $8000 a day just watching TV?”
she asks. After all, Honey heads up the
Green Angels, a collective of about 30
model types-turned-high-end weed
dealers that she set up in 2009.
When she began dealing, she would
get an ounce from a guy in Union
Square, take it to her apartment and
divide it into smaller quantities for sale.
Part of her research was watching CNN
specials on the drug war to find out how
dealers got busted. Today, she makes
a profit of $35,000 a week. “I like seeing a
pile of cash in my living room,” she says.
The Green Angels, she says, are
selling a fantasy of an attractive, well-
educated, presentable young woman
who wants to get you high – a risqué
Avon lady. Not all of the Angels are
working models, but they are all young
and attractive. In eight years, they
have never been busted by the cops. The
explanation is simple: good-looking
girls don’t get searched.
While states such as Washington
and Colorado have legalised marijuana
for recreational use, in New York it’s
still a felony to sell more than 25 grams
of pot – the equivalent of about 40 joints.
A few years ago, Honey says, she began
delivering weed for free to Rihanna.
Justin Bieber occasionally calls the
Green Angels when he’s in town,
she says, but he pays. So do Jimmy
Fallon and various actors and hip-hop
artists. She says the musicians Peaches
and FK A Twigs are also clients.marieclaire.com.au 61PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN FINKE/GALLERY STOCK/SNAPPER MEDIA. *NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED
SOCIETY