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Category Archives: Featured Cannabis Articles

Pre-Roll Packs in Durango

Posted on November 10, 2021 - 10:04 pm

Way back in the day, tobacco shops were called “tobacconists,” and for the most part, they sold loose-leaf tobacco. It would be displayed in large glass jars on the counter, usually decorated with parchment paper labels outlining the leaf’s origin and price. Tobacconists were hallowed establishments, places people would go to socialize and shop simultaneously, and I imagine they smelled wonderful, like a mix of dark wood and earthy tobacco.

But then in 1764, when the first rolling paper was invented in Alcoy, Spain, things started to change. The convenience of a quick cigarette trumped the nostalgia of an ornamental pipe, so pre-rolled tobacco started to take over here in America in the early 1800s. Exactly 100 years after the advent of rolling papers, the US government slapped a federal tax on cigarettes for the first time in 1864, and the rest is history. R.J. Reynolds introduced the 20-cigarette pack in 1913, it quickly became the industry standard, and then all the tobacconists that had once been neighborhood fixtures started disappearing because you could buy quick and easy cigarette packs in every corner store.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Yesteryear, when it came to smokable flower, large glass jars filled with pot were just about all you’d find in a dispensary. They were usually decorated with stylized paper labels listing the loose bud’s strain name, potency, and price. You’d choose the pot you wanted, and then slide into a social situation while the budtender weighed it out (but of course, we’ve always done that ahead of time here at The Greenery because we know you have better things to do than wait for weed).

But now, things are changing. The pre-roll is becoming king, just as the cigarette did, and in our industry, we’re seeing a 60% increase in pre-roll popularity year after year. Joints are quick and easy; they’re portable and convenient—they’re everything their tobacco counterpart once was, so it’s easy to see the future of commercial cannabis: it’s the pre-roll pack.

And that, my friends, is why The Greenery just introduced the Pinner Pack. The Pinner Pack is a little black box that fits perfectly in your pocket or purse, and it contains ten, half-gram joints for a total of 5g flower, but the best part is the price: it’s $39 after tax. Seriously, that’s $39 for 10 joints, which is not something I thought I’d see in my lifetime.

For real, the Pinner Pack is perfect. Full-gram joints can be a bit much if you smoke them by yourself, and they taste gross if you put them out and smoke them later. But with half-gram joints, you don’t have to worry about that. Just pull the Pinner Pack out of your pocket and light one up; it’s the perfect size for dog walks or quick breaks. And frankly, given how much waste the cannabis industry creates, the Pinner Pack gets even better once you realize the child-resistant box is made out of food-grade, biodegradable plastic. We thought of everything.

So, who knows? Maybe someday in the distant future, after dispensaries have disappeared because cannabis is sold everywhere, it’s possible that you’ll be able to find the Pinner Pack at every corner store. Maybe there will be a federal tax on it, and maybe this is just the beginning of something huge. Maybe. But until then, when it comes to the best, most affordable pre-roll pack in Durango, the only place you’ll find The Pinner Pack is at The Greenery, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Why is pot called pot?

Posted on October 8, 2021 - 8:39 pm

No… it’s not because you grow pot in a pot. That would be way too obvious. Nowadays, when the younger generation drinks alcohol and smokes pot at the same time, they call it “getting cross-faded,” but the combination of alcohol and marijuana is nothing new. In fact, the Spaniards started preserving marijuana (and other herbs) with alcohol a couple thousand years ago. It wasn’t long before they discovered that alcohol infused with marijuana gets you “cross-faded” when you drink it, so they named it “Potacion de Guaya,” which was later shortened to “potiguaya,” and then finally shortened all the way to “pot.” Interesting tidbit: “Potacion de Guaya” means “drink of grief” because sipping it turns your frown upside-down.

Wasn’t that fun? Etymology is probably my favorite ology, so with this blog, I’ve decided to dig into the roots of some of today’s biggest cannabis slang words and tell you where they come from, because learning something new is always good.

That leads us to “weed,” which isn’t nearly as interesting as “pot.” Here’s the big reveal: weed is called “weed” because it’s a weed, plain and simple. In fact, some marijuana species, such as Cannabis ruderalis, are “ruderals,” which is a scientific term used for hearty plants that can grow anywhere, even where they’re not wanted, ergo “weed.” But nowadays, you won’t see the word “weed” anywhere on social media because the tech giants like Facebook and Twitter have special algorithms that hunt for weed posts just to delete them. So instead, you’ll see “ouid” used everywhere because it’s a play on the French word “oui” (which means “yes”) that’s pronounced “wee.” If you put a “d” on the end of “oui,” it sounds like “weed,” but more importantly, it circumvents those algorithms and allows stoners say “weed” all they want on social media. Next time you’re on Instagram, search for “#ouid” if you don’t believe me; you’ll find al the cannabis posts you’ve been missing.

Honestly, there are over 200 documented slang terms for marijuana (you can find the complete list HERE thanks to Wikipedia), and most of them are hilarious, such as “jazz cabbage” or “pakalolo,” which is Hawaiian for “crazy tobacco.” There’s also “dro,” which is one of the syllables in “hydroponic,” (which is a popular way of growing cannabis without soil), and “indo,” which many people think refers to Indonesian cannabis, but in reality, it’s just short for pot that’s grown “indoors.” Actually, many cannabis slang terms are misunderstood, but none more so than “sinsemilla.”

I have no clue how many times an elderly smoker has come in and asked if we have any “sinsemilla” because he’s been looking for it ever since that “one time in the sixties” he got to try some. But unfortunately, this is nothing more than a case of “the good ol’ days” syndrome. You see, the definition of “sinsemilla” is “seedless, feminized marijuana.” And guess what? Just about 100% of what we sell is seedless, feminized marijuana. Just like with all green leafy plants, cannabis comes in male or female—the males create pollen, and the females create seeds. Way back in the sixties before they had fancy things like legal indoor grows, cannabis was grown in clandestine outdoor fields where the bud-producing females couldn’t always be isolated from the pollen-producing males, and when a female plant gets pollinated, it starts creating seeds instead of buds, which diminishes the THC percentage. That’s why old-school pot was always full of seeds and didn’t get you that high.

But now, “sinsemilla” is all that exists in modern dispensaries, and thanks to breeding and newer growing techniques, it’s way better than anything anyone tried that “one time in the sixties.” I hate to tell you this, Mr. elderly smoker, but you’ve been smoking sinsemilla every time you’ve smoked the pot you bought legally at a modern dispensary, it’s way better than the pot you remember from the sixties, and the only reason you won’t stop talking about “sinsemilla” is that you yearn for the “good ol’ days” of your youth.

But then again, I might be in the same boat because I cannot stand the fact that dealers are now called “plugs.” The word “plug” is a simple gerund (a verb that’s used as a noun) used to describe a drug dealer because that’s who you go see to get “plugged in” or “hooked up,” and I cannot stand the term because it makes buying pot sound salacious and secretive. In fact, Plug Brand is a highly popular clothing company that makes sweatshirts emblazoned with the word “Plug” just so a bunch of not-plugs can walk around looking cool. Just stop. All this does is strengthen the stereotype that marijuana is an illicit thing, and that’s something our entire industry has been working tirelessly to erode. When you go to a bar, you’re talking to a bartender, not an “alcohol plug,” much in the same way that marijuana is purchased properly from a budtender, not a plug. Pot is mainstream and legal; it’s time to start using words that reflect this truth.

Alright… I’m down off my soapbox. Let’s wrap this up with an examination of “chronic” and “dutchie,” because they’re both misunderstood. Per the former, no, Dr. Dre didn’t coin the term “chronic” via his seminal 1992 album, “The Chronic.” And no, Snoop Dog isn’t correct in his assertion that he came up with the term by shortening another word he invented, “hydrochronic.” The term “chronic” was first used in conjunction with drugs in the late 1940s to describe a “chronic user,” which is someone who uses this or that substance habitually and long-term. The word “chronic” was then applied to the drug itself if it was abnormally strong with long-term affects; Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre simply made it famous fifty years later.

Lastly, not all joints or pre-rolls can be called “dutchies,” even if you pass them on the left-hand side like we learned from that Musical Youth song from 1983. In fact, “Dutchie” is a name-brand thing, because in order for a blunt to be called a Dutchie, it needs to be rolled with a Dutch Masters cigar—they’ve been sold in the US since 1912, and since they’ve always been so affordable compared to other brands, they were the cheapest to buy, hollow out, and fill with pot. This perfect storm led the term “dutchie” to become nearly synonymous with joint or blunt, even though it’s not entirely accurate.

Thank you for reading all of that! I’m a straight-up pot and word nerd, so when the two things come together, I can ramble on forever; I just appreciate the fact that you took the time to slog through my diatribe. But if you too are a pot/word nerd, I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope you come by to visit our Durango dispensary at 208 Parker Avenue right here in Bodo Park, because no matter what you call “pot,” We’re Your Best Buds!

Cannabis Terms

Posted on January 9, 2021 - 4:51 pm

I love writing about words, and hopefully, you love reading about them because that’s what you’re about to do. But before that, you need to know that there are two paradigms when it comes to words: “prescriptivist” and “descriptivist”—people in the former camp believe that words shouldn’t change because we should “prescribe” to existing grammatical rules; people with the latter paradigm believe we should let language evolve and simply “describe” the changes that occur.

Frankly, people in the descriptivist camp usually win because language is a fluid thing, always evolving, and there’s no way to stop it, so we might as well embrace and describe the changes. But that’s annoying. For instance, did you know that the word “irregardless” was added to the dictionary not too long ago? It’s not a real word, but people used it often enough to make it one in the descriptivist eyes of the Oxford English Dictionary (but they threw some shade at it because the listed definition is “regardless”).

Anyway, my point in all of this is that the exact same thing is happening in the cannabis industry; there are a few words we’ve been using erroneously for so long that they’ve become “real” words we use every day. But in an odd twist, I’ve noticed that the cannabis industry is full of purists, so instead of simply adopting these not-so-real words, there’s a push out there to correct things. And that’s what I wanted to talk about this week just so you could get your lingo dialed if you’re a pot prescriptivist.

For instance, let’s take a look at the word “strain.” Speaking from a botanical point of view, a strain is any plant that’s a descendant from a genetically modified organism. And since the different “strains” of cannabis that you can find on our shelves were produced by crossbreeding non-modified plants, they’re not really “strains” at all, but rather, they’re “varietals” or “cultivars.” Both of those words are a bit more cumbersome than “strain,” but they’re both more accurate, so I’ve noticed that our industry is abandoning “strain” (but please feel free to say whatever you want when you walk into our Durango dispensary, because we’re not sticklers).

Another example would be the word “edible.” If you think about it, we call the infused drinks we sell “edibles” even though they’re really “drinkables,” and other edibles are even trickier, such as tinctures or submucosal strips. So, true to form, our purist industry is starting to call edibles “ingestibles” (even though it’s not a word, technically), and this is something I heard directly from the editor of High Times Magazine. So, if you want to come across as a true connoisseur the next time you walk into a dispensary, ask for an ingestible instead of an edible, but be prepared for eye rolls.

Actually, just so you know, not even the word “marijuana” is safe, even though it’s important, and people are starting to say “cannabis” instead, because unlike marijuana, it’s not rooted in racism (click HERE for an explanation). However, presently, the word “marijuana” is used to describe cannabis with more than 0.3% THC by dry weight, and the term “hemp” is used to describe cannabis with a lower percentage, so we don’t currently have a word besides marijuana that fits, ergo, we’re sticking with it for now (for a much deeper explanation, click HERE).

And then there’re the nebulous words “Indica” and “Sativa,” which, as it turns out, don’t mean much of anything. I’ve written about this time and time again, but not all Indica varietals are relaxing and not all Sativa cultivars are stimulating. The plants just look a bit different, which doesn’t always translate into the smoke, so now, we’re coming close to abandoning the two words entirely and focusing on terpene profiles. So, the pros that come into our shop usually ask for a “relaxing terpene profile” as opposed to an “Indica strain,” given that the term is doubly inaccurate, but again, we won’t judge you either way.

But the weirdest one of all is “flower,” which is the term you’ll hear everyone use nowadays to describe good ol’ ganja. If you’re as old as I am, you referred to smokable marijuana as “bud” or “weed” or “pot” for all your life, but if you think about it, the “buds” we sell are in fact flower buds (in my opinion), so switching to calling it all “flower” like we do today isn’t much of a stretch. However, of course, that has given way to a whole new argument as to whether or not cannabis is a fruit or a vegetable, and now, some people are calling it “fruit,” which is something I simply cannot get behind. For real, if you walked into a dispensary and asked to buy some “fruit,” you’d end up with blank stares as opposed to actually getting weed (click HERE if you’d like to jump into the vegetable/fruit debacle).

Wasn’t that fun? If you’re into extra credit and you want to learn more about the terms associated with cannabis that we use in our industry, click HERE. Or, if you don’t care about semantics and you just want to get high, come see us at 208 Parker Avenue and use whatever word you’d like when you get here, because no matter what you call a “strain” of “marijuana,” We’re Your Best Buds!

How Much Edible Should I Eat?

Posted on September 26, 2020 - 9:00 am
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Well, you shouldn’t eat all of them. Every single stoner I know has a “this one time” story wherein they ate way too much, and most of those stories end up in a tree, on in the fetal position under a blanket. And that’s because it’s possible to get infinitely higher from edibles than from smokables. I’m not going to delve too deeply into the “why” of that because an in-depth explanation would take a blog of its own, but it has to do with the way ingested cannabinoids are absorbed in your system: compared to smoking, edibles deliver a much larger fraction of THC to the liver wherein it’s converted to 11-hydroxy-THC, which is much more potent than the lung-absorbed delta-9 THC you get from smoking (click HERE if you want to learn more). That, and due to your metabolism, eaten cannabinoids will affect you much longer than the smoked ones, so if you eat too much edible, the mistake can stay with you for more than six hours, which is a crazy ride if you’re not ready for it.

So, getting back to the question that started all this, how can you figure out the proper amount to consume if you’ve never had an edible? It can be super tricky because most edibles are infused with lipid-soluble THC, meaning it first has to bind with fats and then be processed in your liver, so it takes about an hour and a half for the full effect to kick in—this means that during your first experience, you won’t know if you took too much or too little until long after you eat that edible. But there are a couple tricks you can use to figure it out.

First, start low and go slow. Rhyming advice is always the best because you’ll remember it. In Colorado, recreational edibles are capped at 10mg THC with a maximum of 100mg THC per package. Most producers jumped straight to the maximum to be competitive, so most edibles have a 10mg recommended serving size, but that can be way, way too much for most first-time users. So, here’s the trick: cut one of those 10mg servings in half so you take only 5mg. But here’s the difficult part: you must wait a solid hour-and-a-half before you even consider eating that other half. I can’t tell you how many people have heard me give that advice here in our Durango dispensary just to come back the next day to tell me they wish they had listened. When it comes to edibles, once you eat it, you cannot un-eat it, so start low, and go slow. Having a pleasurable experience is way better than going extreme, so please, take my advice.

However, there are two things to consider when halving an edible. One, not all edibles in Colorado are homogenous—some of them are surface-applicated, meaning the THC oil was placed somewhere on the surface of the edible. So, with these edibles, if you cut them in half, you might get lucky and split the drop of oil in half as well, but more often than not, one of the halves will have all the pot and the other half will just be food. So, it’s important to ask your budtenders the right questions (but in our shop, which is the best dispensary in Durango, we’ll tell you ahead of time, so no worries).

Secondly, once that edible starts to kick in, so will the time dysmorphia; you’ll start to think it’s been longer than it really has since you ate that first half. And you’ll be feeling good, so you’ll consider that other half sooner than I recommended a couple paragraphs ago. And then, boom: you’re up in a tree or under a blanket.

If all that sounds too high maintenance for you, I’ve got another trick: for your first time, try a fast-acting edible (maybe I should’ve just started with this). You see, besides the lipid-soluble edibles I’ve been talking about, in Colorado, we also have water-soluble edibles. With these, the cannabinoids are nano-encapsulated with a surfactant. This isolates single THC molecules and makes them water-soluble, so instead of having to wait for them to bind with fats and be processed in your liver, you get a quick high because the THC permeates the semi-permeable cell walls in your body, thereby getting the intoxicant into your system quickly. That way, once you ingest the 5mg I recommend for first-time users, you’ll know where you’re at per the effect within 30-45 minutes, which is half as long, and perfect for experiments such as these. But your body also processes water-soluble cannabinoids much more quickly than the other kind, so your high won’t last as long. If you want your high to last longer, you’ll need the lipid-soluble type of edible, but at least with this second trick, you’ll learn how many milligrams are perfect for you before going the long-lasting route.

Alright… once you have your serving size figured out, I have a pro tip for you: mix water-soluble and lipid-soluble edibles. It’s wonderful, so hear me out. Let’s say your perfect serving size is 10mg THC—if you take 5mg of a water-soluble edible and 5mg of a lipid-soluble edible, the water-soluble kind will kick in quickly, and then the lipid-soluble edible will start to kick in down the road and last longer. That way, you get the best of both worlds. You’re welcome.

Even the most devout edible consumers get wide-eyed when I tell them this trick, because it’s not something known by most marijuana professionals, and honestly, it’s why you should keep checking back in and reading this blog; we have pro tips galore! But more importantly, our store carries every type of edible you can think of (and some you cannot), and our educated, professional, friendly dispensary budtenders will take the time to explain all of this to you if you still have questions, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Let’s Talk About Cannabis

Posted on May 9, 2020 - 9:00 am
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Let’s Talk About Cannabis

Now that 4/20 is behind us, and now that I’ve written blog after blog about Covid-19 and the ways it’s changing how to buy marijuana in Colorado, I can finally get back to writing about that which I love the most: cannabis. Honestly, it’s the best job in the world, but it’s also a necessary one because they don’t teach you about marijuana in school (such a drag), so most shoppers out there don’t know what to look for. So usually, I sit here week after week trying to educate the masses per all the vagaries associated with legal weed, but I haven’t been able to do that lately because I’ve had to spend my time writing about how this global pandemic is affecting our Durango dispensary. And given that I’ve been off track lately, the stuff I’ve been wanting to talk about has stacked up, and as such, I’m going to write about all of it at once in this catchall post, so let’s dive into it.

New Strains

First, I need to tell you about all the new and wonderful strains that are coming out of our marijuana cultivation, because this new pot is some of the best we’ve ever grown or sold. Seriously. So, let’s simply start with my favorite new cultivar, Borealis, which is a deeply purple strain created via a cross of two pure indica varietals, Northern Lights and Skunk #1. This strain will be fruity and sweet on the pallet, but there’s a heavy serving of hash on the exhale with a touch of skunk. Borealis brings with it a dreamy, sedative high, but it’s subtle enough to avoid couch-lock. This stuff is extremely terpene-rich with Limonene, ß-Caryophyllene, Pinene, Linalool, and Ocimene. Honestly, our Borealis is the best indica strain available in Durango right now, so I wouldn’t be mad if you stopped reading now and came to get some before it sells out. And while we’re talking about new Indica strains, we also need to discuss Afgooey because this strain is in any indica-lover’s wheelhouse—it’s an indica-leaning hybrid bred from a cross between Maui Haze and Afghani. The earth and pine-rich nose would suggest a deeply relaxing high, but this strain can also bring with it plenty of creative giddiness, so Afgooey is well suited for just about any occasion.

And I don’t want you Sativa lovers to think we’ve left you out because we’ve also just debuted Bazookies #10, which is a strain made famous by the Front Range right here in Colorado. It’s a cross between Bubblegum and Girl Scout Cookies, but the nose you’d expect is replaced by hops and grass, and the plant itself is a lovely dark green covered with so many crystals it looks like a saltshaker was used. Rich in the calming terpenes ß-Caryophyllene and ß -Myrcene, plus the euphoric terpenes Humulene and Limonene, this is the type of marijuana for which connoisseurs live. We also have brand-new cuts of Truth Serum, Super White, Fuel Biscuits, and a few others popping off, so if you’re sick of the same old weed, come see us.

CRC Concentrates

Alright… I’m going to switch gears without a segue and talk about CRC concentrates, so bear with me:

When you look at a gram of BHO (“butane hash oil”) wax or shatter, the two things you can use to gauge its quality would be the nose and the appearance. For the nose, you want to smell cannabis terpenes without a chemically after-scent, and for the appearance, you want something light in color that looks homogeneous. The reason for the “light in color” marker is that trichomes start to darken if the flower is old or if the cure was off, so, dark in, dark out. If the wax or shatter is dark, it most likely means that the source flower wasn’t that good, which will definitely affect the quality of the final product. That brings us to CRC, which stands for “color remediation column.”

You see, stoners are oddly ingenious, and we keep coming up with new and improved ways to get stoned, because that’s what we do. So, a “CRC” is actually a large, stainless steel column filled with either T5 Clay or Silica Mesh. All they do is pump the finished BHO through the CRC, and it filters out all of the impurities such as lipids and chlorophyll to make the end product much lighter in color—sometimes, it’ll filter the BHO so well that it removes all the color, which will make the shatter look like glass. CRC BHO still retains the terpenes, so the nose is still there, but now, the color is so light that you’ll have no idea what the source material was like.

So, do you see the issue? The CRC process takes away one of the indicators we use to judge quality before smoking a product, and it makes CRC concentrates look better than anything else out there, even though they may not be. And the same can be said for cartridges: you can run FSE oil through a CRC, and it makes the finalized oil look like water. It’s a pretty cool process despite the subterfuge, but we aren’t selling it yet in our Durango dispensary because the process is still in its infancy, and it has issues. For example, sometimes, microscopic bits of the silica gel they use for the filtration process can make it into the final product, and smoking silica probably isn’t good for you (and it definitely doesn’t taste good). So, we’re going to wait until this process is dialed before putting CRC concentrates on our shelves. All you really need to know is that now, lighter isn’t always better when it comes to concentrates thanks to CRC, so please keep that in mind. See what I mean about educating the masses? Now you know to ask if that suspiciously light-colored shatter is CRC (but unless you come here where we also educate our staff, your budtender won’t know what you’re talking about).

PGRs

Lastly, I want to talk about another three-letter acronym that you need to know, “PGR.” It stands for “plant growth regulator,” and in short, it’s a steroid for weed. Using PGRs allows growers to cultivate quick-growing cannabis plants, and it causes the buds to be really dense, which is something that usually indicates well-grown marijuana, but again, it’s a trick, and it’s one that comes with consequences. You can read THIS article if you want more information, but basically, the three most common PGRs that are used in shady grows are paclobutrazol, daminozide, and chlormequat chloride. All three will cause cannabis plants to grow very quickly and produce pretty, dense buds that most novice smokers would love to buy, but all three PGRs have also been linked to some very, very serious health risks, so it simply isn’t worth it.

What makes this super frustrating is that in most shops, if you ask if their marijuana was grown with PGRs, most budtenders will look at you and ask, “what’s a ‘PGR’?” So, you’ll need to look for a few telltale signs. First, PGRs cause buds to grow very densely, so that’s the first sign, however, well-grown flower (like ours) will also be dense. So, look at the price: if the eighth is in the $25 range but the buds are dense and pretty, I’d recommend getting suspicious. Remember, you get what you pay for in life, especially when it comes to marijuana, so if the deal looks too good to be true, it is.

Secondly, smell the cannabis. If it looks good but doesn’t give off much scent, that suspicion I mentioned should go into overdrive. And lastly, if the hairs on the bud are an unattractive brown as opposed to a pretty red or orange, I’d recommend turning around and leaving that shop so you can come to our Durango dispensary instead. After all, we smoke what we grow, so you can trust us. So yeah… if the buds are dense, cheap, odorless, and covered with brown hairs, I’d recommend running away.

And that’s that! I apologize for the length of this blog, but again, this stuff has been stacking up in my head, and I felt like this was all stuff you need to know given the fact that marijuana is well on its way to being commercialized, and as such, “they” are coming up with all sorts of tricks to cut corners at your peril. But do you know the easiest way to avoid the risks? Shop at a locally-owned store where the educated employees smoke what they sell (you have no clue how many budtenders from other shops in town stop by here when they get off so they can buy good, trustworthy weed). We’ll keep doing our best to stay abreast of all the new things to watch out for, and we’ll keep you educated about them, because We’re Your Best Buds!

What’s Next for Marijuana?

Posted on January 25, 2020 - 9:00 am
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What’s Next for Marijuana?

The new year is still young, so my brain is still stuck on the “new” motif when it comes to writing these pot blogs—this week, I’ve decided to write about what’s on the horizon for the legal marijuana market here in Colorado. But before I get to that, I wanted to remind you that our work to legalize marijuana is far from over. There are now 11 states that sell recreational marijuana, but that’s only 22% of our nation, and it’s not like cannabis is 100% legal even in legal states. For instance, did you know that marijuana is illegal on federal land even here in Colorado? If you buy something legally here in our Durango dispensary, but then take it into a National Park, you’re breaking the law, which proves that cannabis is taxed, but not legal (which is why the hashtag #taxednotlegal is so popular on social media). So, if you’re still looking for a meaningful new year’s resolution, I’d suggest, “try my hardest to normalize cannabis so it becomes legal everywhere.” Anyway, let’s move on to what’s coming up in the cannabis industry.

Colorado Dispensary Regulations

I’ll start with the regulations. For one, sometime in 2020, Colorado is going to allow “hospitality licenses,” which means that there will now be venues in which you can legally consume marijuana (think “bar,” but for weed, not alcohol). And I cannot tell you how wonderful this is, because before, there really wasn’t a way for tourists to consume marijuana legally. Before, marijuana had to be consumed on private property with the property owner’s permission, which meant that unless a tourist brought their house with them when they came to Colorado, they could buy pot, but they didn’t have a legal place to smoke it. It was a horrid Catch 22 that’s going away because soon, you’ll be able to walk into someplace with a hospitality license and smoke your pot after buying it (so you’ll be able to have your cake and eat it too).

And then sometime in 2021, the state is going to allow mobile hospitality licenses as well. Yes, this means we’ll have special limousines and party buses driving around Colorado in which you can legally consume cannabis. Part of the regulations will require that the driver be separated from the passengers by a barrier so he or she doesn’t get high from the party going on behind them (we think of everything here in Colorado). But that’s not all! Along with the limos and party buses, we’re also going to have legal home delivery in Colorado. Seriously. You’ll be able to order online or call a dispensary, and then some dude will show up at your door with pot instead of a pizza; these are exciting times.

New Marijuana Research

Now, regulations are all fine and dandy, but what about pot itself? Well, there’s plenty of “new” there as well. Last year, the proverbial “they” figured out a way to genetically modify yeast so it produces THC instead of alcohol (read about it HERE), and I thought that’d be the pinnacle, but I was wrong. You can read the whole study HERE if you’re a pot nerd, but basically, they’ve discovered two new cannabinoids (THCP and CDBP) that bind ten times more effectively to the receptors in our endocannabinoid system than do THC or CBD.

To sum this all up, they’ve found more than 150 cannabinoids in cannabis, but we really don’t know what they all do because it’s been illegal to study them until recently, and because the cannabis plant produces only trace amounts of the minor cannabinoids such as THCP, so they’re difficult to isolate. But now, “they” can genetically modify yeast to produce whatever cannabinoid they want, and then they can study its effects. And with these two new cannabinoids specifically, the reason everyone is so excited is that because THCP and CBDP bind to our receptors ten times more effectively, which means that they’re ten times more potent and effective than other already-famous cannabinoids like THC. Again, all of this research is in its nascent stage, so we don’t yet know what these “ten times more powerful” cannabinoids do, but we’ll know soon because everything is changing (personally, I hope THCP makes you taller because I’m sick of being short).

Isn’t all of that just freakishly exciting? If you just said “no,” that’s okay (it just means you’re not a cannabis geek), but really, it’s difficult to not be excited by this stuff. The horizon is bringing us new cannabinoids that are ten times more powerful than last year’s, and soon, you’ll be able to get them delivered to your door, which is simply insane given that it was all illegal just a few years ago. And frankly, there’s no better place to stay up-to-date on these changes than the blog you’re reading right now because we’ll always do our best to keep our eyes on the horizon and let you know what we see coming, because We’re Your Best Buds!

How long is marijuana good for?

Posted on January 11, 2020 - 9:00 am
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How long is marijuana good for?

Just like many of our past blogs, this one was inspired by the questions that come from you, our clientele, because those are the questions that matter. And more than one of you have asked how long marijuana can be stored, so it’s time to answer that question as well, but it’s not as easy as you might think because the way marijuana is stored determines how long it’ll last. So, we’ll get into that, but we’ll also talk about edibles and hashes and vape oil, because it’s all different, and it’s all important; let’s get started.

Storing your flower

Marijuana is a plant, plain and simple, and people seem to forget this fact because most plants don’t get you high. If you treat marijuana like a plant, and think of it that way, you’ll be able to figure most of this out on your own. For instance, would you put lettuce in the freezer to keep it fresh? No? Well, you shouldn’t do so with cannabis either. For one, freezing plant mater makes any amount of moisture within expand, and that causes the plant cells to burst, which is no good. And secondly, even if you use the refrigerator instead of the freezer, the fluctuating temperatures and moisture levels in your fridge will screw things up as well, so don’t do it. Ever. Instead, store your flower in a cool, dry, dark place.

As to the “cool” part, most plant-destroying molds love warm temperatures, so unless you like smoking fungus, I’d recommend keeping your pot someplace in the sixty-degree range. As to the “dry” part, it’s self-explanatory: wet places are moldy places, so it wouldn’t make much sense to go through the effort of finding a cool place to avoid mold just to encounter the same problem thanks to moisture. So, store your flower in an air-tight container. Glass is always best because plastic can make your pot taste funky, and it creates a static charge that can attract trichome heads. If the trichome heads get stuck in a plastic container, it’ll make your pot less potent, and nobody wants that. Now, if you’re a pot pro and you’re looking for the perfect amount of relative humidity, I’ve found that the zone between 58% and 64% RH is perfect. To achieve this, you can either buy a hydrometer to measure the humidity within your glass jar (which is superfluous), or you can simply buy a two-way humidity control pack. All these control packs are designed to produce a specific RH level within a small space, so all you need to do is find a pack that’s within the 58%-64% RH range, and then drop it into the glass jar with your flower. If it gets too humid, the pack will absorb moisture, and if it gets too dry, it’ll humidify your jar; that’s why they’re called “two-way” packs. We sell these packs in our Durango dispensary, or you can buy them online HERE.

Alright… if you’ve been paying attention, we’ve discovered that your pot needs to be stored someplace cool and dry, preferably in a glass jar. That just leaves us with the “dark” part, and since most glass jars are transparent, you’ll need to put said jar in a dark place, because believe it or not, light (UV rays specifically) is the biggest thing that leads to cannabinoid degradation. In cannabis, it’s the THC that gets you high, as I’m sure you already know, but UV rays can and will degrade THC into CBN, which will make you super sleepy if you smoke it, and that’s thoroughly disappointing when you’re trying to get high. And yes, everything I’m saying is backed by science—there’s even a peer-reviewed study that you can read HERE proving that light is the enemy of cannabinoids.

How long will it last?

However, all this being said, the answer to the question “how long is my cannabis good for?” hasn’t been answered, and that’s because there’s not really a good answer. Theoretically, if you store your pot per my instructions, it could be good for quite some time; maybe even more than a year or so. But time itself also degrades cannabinoids, so your guess is as good as mine (unless you’re a chemist, in which case your guess is better). Worst case scenario, if you smoke old, well-preserved flower, it could be harsh and it might not get you that high, but your head won’t explode, so a least there’s that.

What about oils?

Let’s move on to vape oils. The state of Colorado requires a listed expiration date for most non-flower cannabis products, but this isn’t the case for vape oils because they have an awesome shelf-life. If you follow for vape oils the same storage guidelines for flower, you’ll be off to a good start, but there’s something else you need to worry about: oxygen. For instance, if you have an old distillate cartridge laying around the house, take a close look a it. You’ll most likely see a dark brown layer of oil sitting on top of the lighter yellow distillate. That dark-brown oil has simply oxidized because it was at the top where the oxygen within your cartridge touches the distillate; the cannabinoids within have degraded just like they do in plant material. If you let it get too far, the THC will turn into sleepy CBN, and you’ll be disappointed. So, if you plan on storing vape oil long-term, do so in an anerobic environment such as a vacuum sealed bag, and then keep the bag in a cool, dry, dark place. Problem solved.

Now, unlike vape oils or flower, Colorado requires that all edibles be marked with a regulated expiration or “best by” date (or sometimes, it’ll say “use of freeze by”). Please pay attention to these dates—just like you would when shopping for milk, check the date on any container you’re about to buy. Our dispensary in Durango is one of the most compliant in the state, and it’s noncompliant to sell an expired edible so you’ll never find one here, but I’m not delusional enough to think that you’ll only shop at The Greenery for the rest of your life, so when you’re in a lesser shop, check the expiration dates so you don’t get unlucky.

All that being said, fresh pot is always better than well-stored old pot, so if you’d like to avoid the hassle completely, simply buy only what you need for short periods of time as opposed to buying in bulk. That’s how I roll, and it’s always served me well. And since we grow our cannabis in small crops, and since we order our edibles and vape cartridges in small batches, literally everything in our dispensary is fresh and new. And that’s how we roll, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Vaping Marijuana Flower

Posted on December 21, 2019 - 9:00 am
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Vaping Marijuana Flower

So… I owe you an apology. I’ve been writing these blogs for two years, and I thought I’d covered all the basics, but I’ve never written a thing about vaporizing dry marijuana flower, which means I’ve failed you. Oops. But hey, there’s no time like the present for reconciliation, so let’s do this…

I loved that book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury when I was a kid, and I’ll admit that I read it twice before my dad told me what the title meant: burning books was a central theme to Bradbury’s novel, and paper ignites at exactly 451 degrees Fahrenheit, so the title was clever. And if you think about it, paper is made from plant material, just like marijuana, so the two share relatively similar ignition points.

Now, the reason this is important is that when you burn marijuana, what you’re inhaling is smoke, but when you vaporize it at a temperature lower than 451 degrees, you’re actually boiling the oil within the plant and then inhaling the “steam” instead of smoke because the plant matter never ignites. It’s a much smoother experience, and the flavor that comes from the gently vaporized terpenes within the cannabis plant is simply superb. For real, it’s an entirely different experience that highlights each strain’s different taste in a way that you’d never achieve with flame. So, if you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend doing so immediately.

As I type this, we don’t have any “dry herb vaporizers” in stock here at our Durango dispensary, but we’re looking for one to offer. That being said, we don’t like to compete with the head shops in town because we work so closely together, so you’ll always be able to find a better selection of vaporizers elsewhere, and even if we did, the prices online for vaporizers will always be lower than you’ll find in a mountain town like Durango. See how honest I am? But regardless of where you get it, the first thing you’ll need to vaporize marijuana is a marijuana vaporizer (duh), and I’d recommend getting something nice because quality matters when it comes to something like this.

So, to help you in your shopping, I’ll show you a few of my favorites. For one, you’ll need to decide if you want a portable vaporizer or a larger “at-home” device. The portable ones are nice for obvious reasons (they fit in your pocket), but the larger ones that sit on coffee tables are much better because they vaporize the flower more fully, and you can get much larger vapor clouds; it’s exactly like the difference between a vape pen and a full-blown dab rig. In that vein, there’s really only one at-home vaporizer I’d recommend, and it was the first on the market, so it’s well vetted. All you need to do is google “volcano vaporizer” to find one because they’re sold everywhere, but you should expect to pay north of $600 for a complete setup (remember, quality matters). What you do with one of these devices, basically, is put a little flower on top of the volcano. The device vaporizes the flower right in front of you, and then it fills a large bag with all the good stuff. You then remove the bag and breathe in and out of it—doing so lets you take the same hit over and over, and then when you’re done, you blow the vapor out. It’s wonderful.

But if you’re looking for a portable option (or looking to avoid spending more than $600 to try something new), there are plenty awesome hand-held options on the market, and I’ll tell you about two of them. The most affordable of the two is the Eden from Lynx (that you can see HERE). Frankly, this is the only flower vape under $100 that I’d trust because you start to sacrifice flavor if you go any lower. Now, on the other end of the spectrum is the Pax 3 (click HERE). We used to sell these in our shop, and we might do so again, because there’s simply no better hand-held option on the market. A new Pax 3 will run you a little over $250, but you can also use it to vape concentrates, which is convenient. To use hand-held devices, it’s important to grind finely your flower, and then you pack it into a small chamber. Then all you do with your device is turn it on, wait for the preheat to complete (this is when the chamber heats up to a temperature that’ll boil the oil within the cannabis), and then inhale. Easy cheesy.

All that being said, we haven’t even gotten to the part that most flower vapers consider to be the best: AVB, or “already vaped bud.” As I’m sure you’ve figured out, since vaporizing your flower doesn’t burn it, quite a bit of the plant material is left over after you’ve vaporized it because all you’ve done is remove most of the oil from the flower. So, if you remove all the ABV flower from your device, you can use it for other things.

For one, if you were paying attention, you’ll remember that I said you removed “most” of the oil from the flower while vaping it. There’s still a bit left, no matter how good your vaporizer is, so you can take that AVB and smoke it like regular flower. It won’t taste that great, and it won’t get you that high, but at times, it’s better than nothing. But what most people do with the AVB is cook with it. Again, whatever you cook won’t get you as high as cooking with fresh flower, but it still works, and cooking with pot is fun. I wrote an entire blog on the subject that you can read HERE back when I thought I’d covered all the basics. Lastly, you can always make a salve or lotion out of your AVB if you know how to do such things, or throw the AVB into your compost heap.

There! I’ve addressed my failure to tell you all about vaping dry cannabis flower, and it only took me two years to get it done; please except my apology. And just as one more tip, most flower vapes have temperature settings that go well above 450 degrees, so remember not to go north of that mark. Doing so will burn your bud just like smoking it, and if that’s what you want to do, use a pipe. They’re much cheaper. And lastly, the most important thing you’ll need besides the vaporizer is the cannabis flower to put inside it (again, duh). If you’ve read these blogs before or if you’ve come into our Durango dispensary, you already know that The Greenery has the best flower in town. So come see us at 208 Parker Avenue right here in Durango, because when it comes to all things cannabis, We’re Your Best Buds!

Lowest Ounce Price in Durango

Posted on October 12, 2019 - 9:00 am
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In a dispensary, the phone is always ringing, because as it turns out, marijuana is awesome. And given that I sit at my desk for most of the day, it’s usually I who answers the phone with a friendly, “thank you for calling The Greenery, this is Jesse, how can I help you?” I love this because it means I have a front-row seat when it comes to figuring out what customers want thanks to these phone calls, but lately, I’ve noticed something new.

A couple months ago, most calls were focused on simple questions: “Where are you located?” “How late are you open?” “Will you please ship marijuana to Texas?” Frankly, those calls are kind of boring because the answers are so simple (we’re at 208 Parker Avenue, we’re open until 9:30pm except for on Sunday, and for heaven’s sake, NO, we cannot ship pot to Texas). But lately, I’ve been getting call after call from people who are looking for affordable ounces of flower because they all seem to have disappeared. I’ll tell these callers the price for our most affordable ounce, and more often than not, they’ll start to complain. As an aside, I always think it’s a bit odd when I encounter these complaints because I’m pretty sure people don’t call into grocery stores to complain about prices, so it’s weird to do so at a Durango dispensary, but on the other hand, I get it. If I were a customer who bought ounces, the recent state-wide price increase would’ve caught me off guard as well. So, this week, I decided to write a lengthy explanation as to exactly why flower prices across Colorado are climbing higher than a Sativa buzz. Let’s get into it…

About a year ago, the cheapest ounce of quality flower you could find in Denver was in the $120 range, and life was pretty stable. But then, something changed (imagine ominous music playing in the background). A very large conglomerate purchased a 180,000 square-foot grow in the heart of Colorado, and they started pumping out flower like you wouldn’t believe (they can harvest more than 100 plants a day). Next, this conglomerate purchased a few dispensaries in downtown Denver, and then they started selling their own flower for around $60 an ounce before tax, which was half of what their competitors charged (just so you know, I’m not going to mention names because most of this is conjecture anyway). And, just like a rock dropped into a pond, the conglomerate’s price drop sent ripples throughout Denver, and everyone had to lower their prices just to keep up—this was the beginning of the “race to the bottom” that got us into this pickle, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Now, at the time, there were about 530 dispensaries in Colorado, but we also had more than 700 grows. As you can imagine, the grows that weren’t vertically integrated with a dispensary also had to lower their wholesale prices to meet the demand for cheaper ounces, and then slowly but surely, these standalone-grows started to fold because they weren’t profitable. The availability of flower across the state started to dwindle. And then came the spring of 2019 wherein we had a late freeze in the plains, and many outdoor cultivations lost their crops; I’m sure you can see the storm clouds gathering.

Next, the summer months brought waves of tourists and travelers, all of whom wanted Colorado dispensary flower, and then demand started to catch up with supply. To make things worse, the state enacted tougher and more costly testing standards for flower, and retail prices went even higher as a result. As another aside, I want you to know that at The Greenery, we agree with these tests wholeheartedly because the best part of a legal, regulated cannabis industry is the fact that everything we sell has to be tested for microbials and pesticides, and that’s a good thing. It means  flower isn’t tainted with chemicals or mold, and that means everybody wins. While the newly regulated tests didn’t affect The Greenery’s grow, the regulations did impact the grows cutting corners. Anyway, moving on…

All the cheap ounces around Denver started to disappear, the trend spread across the state, and then prices started to climb exponentially because availability wasn’t what it once was given all the shuttered grows. See what I’m getting at? In the end, the wholesale price of recreational flower more than doubled during a single tourist season, and even the shops purchased by that conglomerate have raised their retail flower prices by more than 60%, which is ironic, when you think about it. The “race to the bottom” brought us to a wholesale price point that wasn’t sustainable, and when demand started to climb, nothing existed to correct the market because we’d lost too many grows. That’s what happens when you race to the bottom: eventually, you get there, and there’s a price to pay. It sucks, but it is what it is.

But, for the love of everything that’s holy, I want you to know that none of this really matters to us, because here at The Greenery, quality has always mattered more than cheap weed. Our vertically-integrated grow is still alive and kicking, and we’re still churning out the best flower in Southwest Colorado. You can still walk into our dispensary and then walk out with an ounce of craft small-batch flower for roughly the same price you’ve always paid, because we grow the stuff ourselves. So please, come see us (and please feel free to call and ask where we are; I’m used to it). Please come look at the ounces we sell and then compare them to the ounces around town. You’ll see that our flower really is the best, and that our dispensary’s prices are fair. And, if quality matters to you more than quantity, you’ll also see that We’re Your Best Buds, just like we’ve always been.

The History of Hashish

Posted on October 5, 2019 - 9:00 am
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The elusive origins of hashish are steeped in mythology and shrouded in mystery, thus, arriving to a conclusion about just when humans began to craft concentrates from the Cannabis plant is extremely difficult. Archaeological evidence and reference to sieving cannabis resin or hashish seems to appear in 9th century Muslim texts, however, there are also depictions of the Cannabis plant that date back roughly 15,000 years ago to the Neolithic Jomon period, which leads one to ask: when did our ancestors begin to figure out cannabis concentrates? The best we can do is an educated guess: applied knowledge and logical reasoning seem to bring one to the conclusion that our ancient ancestors’ discovery of hashish coincided with evolution of agriculture.

Before moving forward, it may be helpful to clarify what is meant by “Hashish” or, you may have heard it simply referred to as, “hash.” As defined by Hashish Master, Frenchy Cannoli in a Weed World Magazine article, titled The Origins of Concentrate,  hashish is “a psychoactive drug made from sieving the resin glands of dried Cannabis flowers and pressing them with a source of heat.”

As mentioned earlier, there is strong evidence that shows humans have had a relationship with the cannabis plant for thousands of years. In fact, Cannabis was among the very first plants to be “domesticated by humanity” and so, it is reasonable to deduce that we had gained an intimate knowledge of the plant. Anyone with experience in Cannabis cultivation knows the inevitability of the sticky resin buildup on the hands and fingers. Our Neolithic ancestors would have experienced this also, and thus, this inevitable layer of resin on the hands of ancient cannabis cultivators, Frenchy concludes, would theoretically be the first concentrate made, albeit accidentally.

This method of live resin collection, would be rediscovered and named, ‘charas’ thousands of years later in the Himalayas. According to Frenchy, charas is the oldest form of concentrate, and remains the primary collection method employed today in the Himalayas.

Another method of resin collection from dry plants- which involves sieving to separate the resin glands from the plant material- would develop later. While evidence shows that humans have had the basketry technology necessary to sieve seeds from plants, and therefore, adapt that technology to collect dry cannabis resin since prehistoric times, no archaeological evidence exists to date hashish production that far back- although arriving to that conclusion is no great logical leap.

We know, from literary reference  in The Tale of Two Hashish-Eaters from the traditional Arabic text, 1001 Nights, that the use of  hashish was commonly known by the 11th & 12th centuries.  Though it is reasonable to believe it was practiced in 10th century at least from the earliest myth surrounding hashish, The Old Man of the Mountains, Hasan ibn al-Sabbah and his legendary assassins, who were fabled take hashish (it is likely that the word ‘assassin’ is thus derived from ‘hashishin’ as is referenced in the film John Wick III). Beyond these early stories, there is mention to eating hashish in 9th century Muslim texts by alchemists al-Razi and Ibn Wahshiyya. At the earliest, we can be comfortable in saying eating hashish was established sometime around the 9th century.

Early use of cannabis resin concentrate would have first been employed in incense, then the psychoactive properties certainly would have been discovered says master Frenchy Cannoli (perhaps by accidental ingestion of the resin layer on hands of ancient cultivators), and then ingested (as suggested in 1001 Nights), and lastly inhaled as smoke. Cannabis historian, Robert C Clarke, says in his book Cannabis Evolution and Ethnobotany, says that hashish’s use was probably “more widespread than previously recognized.”

Part of hashish’s cloudy origins is likely due to religious beliefs or trade advantages in keeping techniques secretive, explains Frenchy, as was the case with highly valued incense. Olfactory sensations have been used for “sacred or healing purposes” for millennia. Some incenses were valued so highly in the ancient world, that it was obviously advantageous to keep the ‘recipes’ and methods secret. The same would be the case of early hashish methods.

We likely ingested hashish long before we inhaled it, although we could never be certain, there has been three discoveries of pipes that possibly could have been used for cannabis (according to Clarke) that date prior to the Columbian era. What solid evidence that we have, however, seems to indicate that the rise of smoking hashish coincided with the advent of the rise of tobacco smoking from the New World: “Soon after tobacco was introduced to Eurasia, hashish was mixed with it and smoked.” says Robert Clarke. This happens in the early 16th century. Hashish “tagged along on the international success of tobacco, thus the hashish market blossomed anew within a few decades.”

It is impossible to determine exactly when humans began to use hashish or a form of concentrate, however, we do know that the practice had been established by ancient times and was likely discovered long before it was recorded with the methods shrouded in secrecy. Humanity’s relationship with cannabis concentrates has a long and colorful history.

That history is alive today at The Greenery Hash Factory, where we favor tradition in hand-crafting our hashes. The Greenery Hash Factory brings authentic hashish to Colorado in the form of Kief Brick Hash, Lebanese Hash, Moroccan Hash, and Hash Joints. All our hashes can be found at The Greenery, our Durango dispensary, and these dispensaries across the state of Colorado.

We’re your best buds!

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7 Days a Week:
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(970) 424-5888

762 Horizon Drive
Grand Junction, CO 81506

We’re conveniently located right off I-70 on Horizon Drive.

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