Rapid-Release Edibles

Edibles are growing in popularity, but typically less popular compared to smoking as a delivery method because of the long onset of effects and unpredictability. Today many companies employ nanoemulsion technology in the development of their products to speed up the effects. Cannabinoids are broken into tiny particles around 100 nanometers in size, making them more easily absorbed by the body, as they can pass through the blood-brain barrier faster. Dosing is much easier in the regulated adult-use era, and you can calculate and predict your high within 5 mg dose increments of THC. There’s no smell and they kick in fast.

Vape Pens

You won’t always have a suitable place to grind up herb and pack a bowl or a bong, so travel sometimes calls for the use of vape pens. On the smell scale, most vape pens produce quite a bit less odor than smoking joints, pipes, or blunts. The weak vapor odors tend to dissipate quickly, in say, a hotel room, especially when the concentrate is encased in a cart. Dry flower vaporizer smells are even harder to detect after a few moments. The exceptions to this include sticky live resin, rosin, and various solventless pens and devices that are loud, pungent, and can also blow your cover, but you won’t have the smoky smell from combustion.

Toke On-The-Go

This is pretty much the only feasible way to smoke dry flower if you’re say, backpacking through Europe or hiking in the mountains. Dugouts, batters, the Original Sneak A Toke, knockoffs, and other travel devices are great when you have to stick a pipe in your pocket. A dugout is a compact storage device designed to hold a small amount of pot and a one-hitter pipe. They have a compartment to store a small, bowl-sized amount of weed. A batter is a small metal one-hitter pipe that is often included with a dugout. Dozens of similar products can be found today.

Capsules

This delivery method is not quite as rock ‘n’ roll as smoking a doobie, but is the most low-key way to get high when you’re out and about. Nowadays you can buy tablets with THC, CBD, and so on in microdoses or full doses. Capsules provide effects that last hours longer than smoking or vaping. THC concentrate is often mixed with a vegetable oil, because THC is not water soluble. Different THC potencies usually range from 2 mg microdoses to 100 mg capsules. And yes, CBD capsules are clearly over-marketed but are also helpful for people with specific needs. Try Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) capsules instead of a cheap distillate capsule for full-spectrum effects and likely more health benefits.

Smoking Hygiene

Or you could just smoke and lay low. If you live in a legal state and have a place to sesh, you still don’t want to be judged for smoking. Simple hygiene can rid yourself of the telltale odors and red eyes that can blow your cover. Fix those red eyes with some Visine or Clear Eyes. Smoking weed decreases blood pressure in places including your eyes, dilating the blood vessels and making them appear slightly red. Reduce the smell, too. The skunky pot odor might linger on your skin, so wash thoroughly, and add distilled vinegar or baking soda to your detergent to get rid of terpene scents that can linger on your clothes as well.

This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.

The look in the eyes of new Ganjier students says it all, a mix of astonishment, reverence, and joy. They come from all over the world: Germany, Thailand, the U.K., and from all over the United States, from Southern California to Maine. They come from places where cannabis is still heavily criminalized, where consumers must still navigate the illicit market with little to no choice in what cultivars or cannabis products they can access. They are all ages, from all walks of life. And yet, they have something in common: their love and respect for the cannabis plant. And as they make the pilgrimage to Humboldt County, California, many taking multiple planes, buses, and rental cars to reach the towering redwoods, they know they are coming to a very special place. They are arriving in the premiere cannabis cultivation region of the country, and likely the world: The Emerald Triangle.

The Ganjier is a cannabis sommelier certification program that brings students from across the globe to both be educated and become a part of a community that sees the immense potential of the cannabis industry.

As a proud member of the Ganjier Council, I have been present for many of these arrivals. Weary from the trip, yet full of excitement, these Ganjier students take the time and effort to wind their way north because they want to experience cannabis in the context of authenticity and legacy. They know that becoming a “sommelier” for cannabis means that they must connect with the source, and traveling to Humboldt County gives them the opportunity to do just that.

Part of the in-person training for the Ganjier program involves visiting a local farm. There is an array of sungrown legacy farmers in this region, and just like visiting the famous wine regions of France, there is no substitute for what they are about to experience.

A visit to farms such as Huckleberry Hill Farms, home of the famous Whitethorn Rose cultivar, provides an opportunity to not only see a beautifully designed and sustainable sungrown cannabis farm, but to hear from Johnny Casali, a farmer who has spent his entire life in Humboldt growing cannabis with his family. He recounts the days of prohibition and having to hide in the woods to escape the helicopters and law enforcement, discusses his time in prison for cultivating, and how the community welcomed him back with open arms upon his release. His experience is emotional, and the students feel the magnitude of the place in which they stand. Many students are forever changed by this experience, ready to carry the message of craft cannabis and sungrown plants back to their homes.

One of the goals of the Ganjier program is to educate and train those with reverence for the plant on the history, science, and culture that envelopes the plant and her role in humanity. The idea is that providing this experience will spread awareness about what quality cannabis is, and where it comes from. As cannabis continues to move in the direction of an agricultural commodity, we run the risk of seeing its fate go the way of industrialized agriculture, something that has been a scourge on the environment and on the public health of society.

With federal legalization potentially on the horizon and with it the potential of interstate commerce and international export, the incentives to produce a lot of product as cheaply as possible will be tough to counter. Small farms like Huckleberry Hill will not be able to easily compete with large-scale industrialized operations. Whether or not they survive and continue the legacy of craft cultivation under the sun will likely depend on you, dear reader. Who do you want to benefit from legalization? Who do you want growing your cannabis? What impact do you want your purchase to have on the environment and on the farmers who have given their lives to the plant?

There is still time to ensure the survival of farms like Casali’s, but their success will be up to people like you. People who value sustainability and craftsmanship over high THC. People who value the plant over industrialized commodities. This 4/20, let’s remember who took the risk during prohibition, and give them, and their harvests, the respect they deserve.

This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.

The regulated cannabis market has come a long way from its illicit roots, but the formula to succeed in this game never really changed for anyone paying close enough attention.

I say this with particular regard to two factors: financing and company focus. In my humble opinion as a man who has spent most of his life around the plant, the best weed has always been grown by people who are self-funded and focused on quality of the weed itself with little regard for marketing strategy, sales gimmicks, mylar art etc. All those things are still important, but they should not be the top priority.

Enter Parlay, a company cultivating in downtown Los Angeles with around 300 lights and a small team, who have been operating in the recreational space since May of 2020. I spoke to the owner of Parlay who respectfully asked to keep their name out of the public eye, about their perspective on the legal market. It was refreshing in that they are uber-focused on producing the best possible cannabis, for the best possible price, without breaking the unwritten rules passed down from the days of prohibition. 

“Parlay stands for sticking to the code. I don’t know how else to explain it. There’s an unspoken code of ethics in cannabis, and I feel as though we try to keep the standards high in all aspects,” the owner of Parlay said. “Whether it’s the quality, the way that we conduct ourselves, or how we treat our friends in the game… There’s just too much silliness that goes around nowadays, and we’re not into the gimmicks.”

In the cutthroat recreational market of California, a big chunk of the larger companies out there have gotten where they are by cutting corners, screwing over competitors and putting together complex marketing schemes that are ultimately used to get customers to purchase sub-par flower. I do not believe Parlay to be in that group. Their work has received accolades from plenty of certified connoisseurs whose opinion I trust (check out First Smoke of the Day’s review of their MochiLatti) and they command brand recognition across a huge swath of the world for such a small company.

Parlay also has some impressive collaborations under their belt with companies like BackpackBoyz and Runtz which is, in my opinion, a testament to the quality of their work, and an indicator that they’re doing good business. The big dogs have their ear to the ground, after all. They don’t tend to mingle with known rule breakers or mids pushers. Hell, most of them are in a group chat with each other. This is a tight knit community and bad behavior doesn’t tend to get very far without everybody hearing about it.

Quality of the weed aside, the word Parlay has become a bit of a trend lately. I think it probably has to do with the emerging popularity of online sports betting wherein people who have never gambled in their life have been throwing a few bucks into parlay bets on the off chance they strike it rich. 

When it comes to doing business in the cannabis space, however, staying financially solvent at this stage of the game is often synonymous to throwing your life savings into a sports bet with slim to none odds of paying out. Between the lack of tax breaks, obscene overhead costs and the ever-fluctuating consumer market even growers with decades of experience under their belts have been bankrupted by the modern day recreational market in California. It becomes a big shitty game of chicken to stay afloat. You have to enter yourself into the race and go drop off the money for next months electric bill at the betting booth time and time again. 

“We’re all in. I have no business partners. I have no investors. All money in. ALL money in. All risk taken because we knew that this was a greater cause,” the owner of Parlay said. “I knew that this was gonna be a part of my life. I saw cannabis as a space where I see myself in the future – being a tastemaker, creating good product, and being a person with integrity to give people good medication.”

Good medication in the recreational market has become increasingly more elusive as the California cannabis canopy expands and the market continues to mature, bringing tougher margins and higher costs with it every day. It has become a game of monocropping the money strains and expanding indefinitely until everyone’s weed ends up looking, smelling, tasting and smoking the exact same. It’s nothing sinister or complex. People have investors to report to, sales goals to hit and sky high electric bills to defend paying. That’s why the weed has to be special to stand out, and special weed doesn’t just fall out of the damn sky perfectly cured and ready to roll. It takes years of work, the scrutiny of an overbearing mother and a fair amount of luck to produce consistently.

“We don’t spray any weed. We don’t put in any fucking PGR’s. We try our best not to cut any corners. We don’t even care about the yield. We just want the weed to smoke good, and then we want to just share it with our friends. It ain’t much more complicated than that,” he told me.

Now while some of the CEO’s out there might attest that it is much more complicated than that, the mission statement doesn’t have to be. The proof is in the pudding. Keeping it simple and refusing to scale past a manageable point can work wonders if you’re dedicated to the craft. Refusing to take on investors and intentionally staying small until your work takes on a life of its own can lend itself to greater success later on. If you don’t believe me, just look at what happened to the big money multi-state operators that went too big too fast.