Marijuana News Archives | The Grand Junction Greenery

What is HCC?

Posted on December 6, 2022 - 10:28 pm

Well, it’s gross, and in 10 years, nobody will remember it. But I should give some context:

Thanks to this year’s midterm elections, there are now 21 states with legal adult-use marijuana. That’s a glorious thing considering Colorado was the one and only legal state not too long ago, but it also means that 39 states are still stuck in the dark ages. And when you’re in a dark place, you try to find light by whatever means necessary, and that brings us back to HHC, or “hexahydrocannabinol,” which is so new that spellcheck doesn’t even think it’s a word.

This is the way it is: where something is illegal, people will try to find a loophole. In those 39 dark-age states, people want to get high just like they do in the 21 states that’ve woken up and legalized weed. And thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp on a federal level, hemp is legal everywhere in the US except Kansas and Washington D.C. (both of which have always been lost causes anyway). So, smart people in all the states that allow hemp but ban marijuana have found a few scientific loopholes vis-à-vis getting high off hemp.

These smarties have used a panoply of chemicals and scientific gadgets to make hemp-derived cannabinoids like THC-O and Delta 8 THC, as well as Delta 0 and 10, and they’re all nothing more than ersatz forms of pot that kind of get you high. That, and there haven’t been any long-term studies as to what these barely-natural substances do to humans, and sometimes, the lab equipment explodes, which never happens when you’re growing actual plants. The makers of these substances always bill them as the next legal “it” thing that’s hot on the market, but snake oil has always been snake oil. And as soon as one of these hemp-derived substances gets popular, local regulators round up the possie and pass new laws, forcing the smarties back to the drawing board.

That’s exactly what happened with HHC. Delta 8 was the big thing last year because if you vaped or ate ridiculous amounts of it, it gave you a buzz similar to that of real weed, and it was mostly legal in the US. But then the buzzkills found out and went after it, which forced the smarties to come up with something new, which lead to HHC (but it’s important to note that this stuff was first made in 1944 by Roger Adams). And you can see the next iteration on the horizon: since HHC is getting popular, regulators are starting to notice, and the smarties have already come up with a backup plan by formulating HHC-O, which is the acetate version and not yet on the market. It’ll be talked about excitedly for a bit, but then it’ll fade away just like all the fringe cannabinoids that came before (and it might be the worst one yet given all the hubbub that happened the last time an acetate made it into vape news).

But I digress, and I should get back to where we are now. Basically, HHC is made by taking CBD extracted from hemp (for a refresher on the difference between hemp and marijuana, click HERE) and distilling/isolating it into powder form via ethanol or a hydrocarbon. Then they pump in a ton of hydrogen (this is usually where the explosions occur) which makes a crude oil containing HHC, which is then distilled once more to isolate the HHC. See why I opened by saying this stuff is gross? For real weed, all you need to do is throw a seed in the dirt and then smoke the green stuff that grows, but again, I’m saying this from the comfort of a legal state, so I understand the motivation behind HHC.

This motivation is spurred by many things. Most obviously, HHC is a legal substance that can make you feel good. But besides that, since it isn’t a form of THC at all, it’s legal in the places where Delta 8 is not, and more importantly to most users, it’s purportedly undetectable by most modern drug tests (this is most likely false), which are required to a much higher extent in illegal states than they are in places like Colorado.

Get it? Things like Delta 8 and HHC aren’t popular because they’re good, they’re popular because they’re the next best thing to bona fide cannabis. This is something that’s easy to prove because as soon as a state legalizes recreational marijuana, all the fake stuff starts to disappear. I have a bevy of buddies in New Mexico who preached the purported benefits of hemp-derived cannabinoids a few years ago as they built businesses around it, but now that weed is legal down there, they’ve all moved on to the real stuff. They’ve plowed under their hemp crops and changed business models and focused on something natural and actually beneficial: genuine cannabis.

This is exactly why nobody will remember HHC in 10 years. Legal weed is spilling across the nation and large cannabis corporations are starting to form; they’re getting rich and influential just like other groups. So, pretty soon, I’d imagine that weed will be sold legally across the nation and the chemically synthesized cannabinoids I’ve been talking about will only exist in foreign countries still clinging to pot prohibition because there are smarties in those places, too.

Think about it this way… before reading this blog, had you ever heard of HHC? No? Well, that might be because you live and shop in Colorado given that you’re visiting a website associated with a standalone dispensary in itty-bitty Durango. You’ve never needed fake pot, so you’ve never heard of it. With a click of your mouse HERE, you can literally order for pickup at our dispensary actual marijuana and vapes and edibles, so why would you need something made in a lab with hydrogen to feel better? You don’t. You’ve got the real thing right down the street, and it’ll stay that way. We at The Greenery will keep doing our part by educating you about fake pot while we provide the best real pot in Durango, because We’re Your Best Buds!

THC-O

Posted on February 8, 2020 - 9:00 am

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The indigenous people of Bolivia have chewed coca leaves since time immortal, and frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that. The coca plant simply got a bad rap because with a little chemical purification, it makes cocaine, and with more still, it makes crack. But chewing the leaf like the Bolivians do simply provides a mild stimulant, much like a cup of coffee, and it doesn’t hurt you. The tribes of Bolivia are just as healthy as their neighbors despite their love for the coca leaf (they even give it to their teething babies), and there’s no data proving that chewing coca leaves is “bad.” Actually, if you talk to a Bolivian, they’d say it’s “good.”

But, do you know what’s wrong with our species? Whenever we find something that’s “good,” we try to make it better. We found the coca leaf, which was good, so we tried to purify it to make it better, and then we ended up with cocaine. Then we tried to make it even better with more chemicals, and we ended up with crack, which almost destroyed New York in the 80s. And do you know what the funny part is? As crack was ruining large swathes of our culture, we decided it was crack’s fault and that the coca plant was “bad,” even though in reality, it was the people who adulterated the coca plant to make crack who were bad. We should’ve just left it alone. And worse still, the world decided to tell Bolivians that chewing their coca leaf was illegal even though they’d been doing it harmlessly for thousands of years, and to this day, they’re still fighting for the right to grow it and consume it however they want just like past generations were able to do harmlessly.

So, what’s this have to do with Cannabis? Well, if we took the coca plant and ruined it with our greed for the next best thing, might we do the same with marijuana? Think about it. Back in the day, we had pot that contained about 7% THC. Today, since we wanted to make it “better,” we have pot that tests close to 40% THC; we have hash oils and distillates; we have fast-acting water-soluble edibles; we have chemically purified THC crystals that test at 99% purity. Sound familiar? If I’m being honest, I’m okay with where we’re at presently because I’ve done the research, but collectively, we need to make sure we don’t ruin another good thing by taking it to the next level, because our proclivity to do so is why we can’t have nice things. And oddly enough, we might be on the precipice.

For one, we’ve already created something called Dronabinol, which is stupid, plain and simple. It’s a synthetic form of marijuana created by the prescription drug industry, and if that doesn’t sound evil to you, you haven’t been reading the news. Anyway, since marijuana is still widely illegal, the proverbial “they” decided to come up with a manmade form of THC, but after they made it, they discovered that unlike the drug they tried to copy, Dronabinol comes complete with all the side effects you’d expect from prescription medication. Isn’t that just America in a nutshell? Instead of legalizing a plant that isn’t scary, we let the pharmaceutical companies make a fake version that is. So, so ridiculous.

But even in the legal states like Colorado, human nature is bubbling up, and we’re doing things to cannabis simply because we can—because we want to make something better when it’s already good enough. For instance, have you heard of THC-O? It’s the newest cannabis innovation, and it’s a bit scary, because instead of simply concentrating the THC in cannabis like we’ve done up to this point, scientists have figured out a way to change the THC itself to make it absurdly more intoxicating; they’ve figured out how to make it “better.”

Alright… if you’re a weed nerd, prepare to geek out. THC-O is the shorthand term for THC acetate ester: an “acetate” is a salt formed via a combination of an acetic acid and an alkaline base, and an “ester” is a chemical compound made from an acid wherein a hydroxyl group is replaced by an alkoxy group (this is all just basic chemistry you can look up on Wikipedia if you’d like to check my math). And when you make an acetate ester out of THC, you turn it into a “prodrug,” which is a biologically inactive compound that needs to be metabolized in your system to turn into a regular drug that’s intoxicating. It’s crazy stuff. And the weird part is that THC-O passes all the street tests used by police, so if you get caught with it, the authorities have no way of figuring out what you have (but smoking/eating THC-O will still make you fail a drug test because your body turns it into regular THC). And stranger still is the fact that users have called THC-O “weed on steroids” because the high is said to be 10x stronger than even the most potent conventional THC. If you’re interested, there are two other articles on THC-O you can read HERE and HERE that discuss a company bringing this stuff to market right here in Colorado.

I’m a member of a few cannabis discussion forums like you’d expect, so I reached out to a few colleagues who’ve tried THC-O, and they used words like “mindboggling,” “insane,” and “way too much.” According to the two individuals with whom I spoke (one who’d taken a THC-O dab and one who’d taken an edible), a THC-O high is nothing like a regular cannabis high in that it’s considerably more intense, and it lasts considerably longer. One said a THC-O dab was like being unbearably drunk for an entire afternoon, which isn’t what I look for when it comes to cannabis.

Granted, it’s possible that I’m casting THC-O in a negative light because I’m ignorant; maybe I have my own form of “Reefer Madness” suspicion about this new form of THC. It’s possible that there’s nothing wrong with this stuff despite how intoxicating it may be, and it’s possible the users I spoke with were exaggerating their experiences because they’d tried something I hadn’t. But what’s important is that I’m being cautious, just like everyone in this industry needs to be. I’m not saying that THC-O is like crack, but if we ever do figure out a way to make something crack-like out of marijuana, it’s possible that we could end up right back in the prohibition boat, so we need to be cautious, responsible.

That’s what we do right here in Durango’s best dispensary. Honestly, if you walked into any other shop in town and asked about THC-O, I guarantee they’d have no clue what you’re talking about. But here, we’re stewards of the legal cannabis industry, and we vet thoroughly any new product that comes on the market before introducing it to you, our loyal customers. We want to keep things safe and legal, and we want to make sure we know everything there is to know about cannabis so we can share that knowledge with you, because We’re Your Best Buds!

What’s Next for Marijuana?

Posted on January 25, 2020 - 9:00 am

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!

Marijuana Recall

Posted on October 19, 2019 - 9:00 am

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I bought my daughter a cheap and used Ford Taurus for her first car because I didn’t want to spoil my teenager, and because I know her. She’s the type of child who doesn’t value things unless she has to work for them (which, I suppose, is like all teenagers), so I figured it’d only be a month or two before her free car exploded due to neglect. But then one day, she called me while driving on the highway with panic in her voice because that Ford Taurus wouldn’t stop. I got her to put the car in neutral and pull over, so this story has a happy ending, but I ended up sitting with that car in a shop for at least an hour while they fixed a recall that should’ve been taken care of by the previous owner. That’s why it was so frustrating—the “recall” Ford sent out didn’t do anything to keep my daughter safe, because we found out about it after it almost killed her.

Would it blow your mind if I told you the same thing just happened across Colorado with marijuana? Well, it did, but I should back up a bit before I get to that. The best part of a legal recreational marijuana market is the fact that it’s all regulated: every grower in the state must submit samples of their marijuana to a state-certified lab so it can be tested for pesticides, heavy metals, and microbials (or mold). Now, I’m not saying this is what happened with the company I’ll tell you about in a moment, but there have always been nasty rumors out there about grows that microwave their test samples (or soak them in chemicals) to kill the mold before it’s sent off to testing. As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, that’ll make it so the test sample passes, but that small sample came from a very large crop, so it’s still possible to put moldy pot on the market. Before we go any further, I want to swear up and down to you that The Greenery has never done something like this, nor would we, because we’re a steward of legal cannabis, and we follow the regulations as if there were commandments from above. We also work exclusively with Aurum Labs, a Durango based state-certified lab, who shares our profound respect and loyalty to the state’s safety regulated testing.

But, moving on, what would happen if the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment went around to dispensaries, purchased small amounts of marijuana that had already “passed,” and then retested the retail samples? Well, that’s exactly what happened, and on October 14^th, they released a bulletin stating that they had found tons of moldy pot. Uh oh… As it turns out, there was a largescale grow called Bonsai Cultivation that distributed moldy pot with yeast in it (so, so disgusting) to 144 dispensaries across Colorado, and all of it had to be recalled even though a good deal of it was already sold to the public and consumed.

Do you see how this is exactly like my daughter’s first car? That marijuana recall didn’t do anything for all the people who already put moldy pot into their lungs, but I guess it’s better late than never. Anyway, the important thing here is that there were multiple dispensaries right here in Durango that were affected, but THE GREENERY WAS NOT ONE OF THEM. Most of our pot is grown right here in Durango at our own Greenery Grow, and we don’t cut corners. Ever. And I’m not going to tell you which of the shops in town were affected because I don’t want you to think that all of their products suck, but I will tell you how to figure out if you’ve been affected personally. One of the other regulations in this state is that every container of retail marijuana (recreational or medicinal) must be labeled with the license number for the grow from which the flower came. So, bust out your stash, and then look at the labels on your pot for the license number 403R-00228. If you find that number, don’t smoke the pot. Simply call the dispensary from which you bought it (again, it won’t be ours), and then tell them you have marijuana affected by the state-wide recall. Easy cheesy.

Just to let you know how big of a deal this is, I heard recently from a Bonsai employee that the company has closed permanently, and that they laid off every single one of their employees this week. See what happens when you cut corners? And frankly, that’s the real reason I wanted to write this blog: I want you to know that you can trust us because we follow every regulation rigidly in our Durango dispensary, because we want you to smoke our boutique flower. We don’t want you to smoke mold, because, you guessed it, We’re Your Best Buds!

Buying Marijuana Stocks

Posted on August 10, 2019 - 9:00 am

I hope you’re ready for a few disclaimers, because here they come… the opinions per the flowing cannabis stocks are mine and mine alone, not those of The Greenery. Secondly, there is risk involved with all investments and it’s possible to lose money on any speculation, so please don’t think you’re going to get rich quick off cannabis stocks. Trading of this nature isn’t for all investors, and all investments are made at the investor’s own risk (that’s you). And lastly, I am not a financial adviser.

There. I’m glad we got that out of the way because legalese is language abuse in my opinion, but that stuff was important because realistic expectations are always best when it comes to investing. And frankly, it’s all worth it because this blog has been a long time coming. At least once a day, someone will ask me if I know anything about pot stocks right after they shop in our Durango dispensary, and I’ve always wanted to write something longer than the five-minute rundown I regurgitate in our busy shop for these people to read at home. So, here it is…

Money talks. We all know it. Marijuana was kept illegal for a century because privatized prisons made billions from incarcerating nonviolent pot smokers; rich pharmaceutical companies lobbied against legalization because they didn’t want the competition; alcohol companies didn’t want to compete against a safer intoxicant and police unions wanted to keep their fat budgets so they could chase down people who like growing and smoking plants—you can read all about it HERE, HERE, and HERE. There were a lot of bad guys against us in the beginning, and honestly, they’re still around, but they’re getting their butts kicked because now, we have money of our own: we’ve already surpassed 1 billion (that’s nine zeros) in tax revenue from marijuana in Colorado alone, and it keeps stacking up daily. With that kind of financial backing, the government has become addicted to our industry, so there’s no end in sight, and believe it or not, a lot of the bad guys are starting to invest in cannabis stocks thanks to that whole “if you can’t beat them, join them” paradigm, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

And that’s where investing in marijuana stocks comes in. I buy a pot stock here and there whenever I can, and yes, I do it with the hopes that I’m buying in on the ground floor which will make me rich someday, but really, I do it to support national cannabis legalization. Every dollar I throw behind marijuana in the stock market makes us a little stronger and the bad guys a little weaker, so I don’t plan on stopping. Ever. You know why? The hypocrisy is galling. The national government takes a ludicrous amount of money from our dispensary in the form of taxes even though they say the drug we sell is illegal, and you better believe that I pay income tax to work here. I mean honestly, how do they get away with saying it’s illegal while at the same time making me fill out a W2?

Anyway, I’ve talked about the why, but here comes the how. It’s simple. Just open a stock trading account through someone like Charles Schwab, transfer money through your bank account, find a pot stock you like, buy it, and then brag to your friends about how you’re beating down illegal pot with America’s most potent weapon, capitalism. Fun, right? But, and here comes another disclaimer, most pot stocks are volatile as all get out, and there’s a chance your “I just bought a pot stock” smile will fade right along with your dividends, so I’m going to outline a few of the big players that I think represent safer investments than others, because I’d imagine that’s why you’re really reading this. Here they are:

Tilray (TLRY) In a way, this is the pot stock that got everyone excited about the possibility of investing in legal cannabis on the ground floor. Most cannabis stocks are traded on the Canadian market before the NYSE (because Canada is arguably cooler than we are), and that’s how Tilray started. But then they become one of the first stocks to move from the Canadian market to the one here in the states, and when that happened, their share price rocketed from around $2 to $200 almost instantly, and despite my disclaimer, quite a few people got rich quickly from a pot stock. However, that drastic increase was overvalued, and today, Tilray is trading in the $40 range, and it’s slowly climbing back up because the overvaluation has been mitigated by the market. This company focuses on the possible medicinal aspects of marijuana by conducting studies and fueling wholistic pharmaceutical companies, so if that’s the side of cannabis that interests you, buying Tilray will put your money where your values are.

Aurora Cannabis (ACB) This is another Canadian stock that experienced an uptick when it landed on the NYSE, but it only jumped from around $2 to $8 because the market learned its lesson thanks to Tilray. Today, it’s sitting in the $6 range, so this stock is everyone’s darling (especially amongst millennials because the recreational side of this company is trendy). But don’t let the “Canadian” designation fool you because this company has designs on world domination—they’re already operating in 24 countries, and there have been rumors of an impending investment by a well-known beverage company to make CBD drinks, so I’d expect some added value in the coming months. Again, this is my personal opinion, but I’d recommend Aurora for serious long-term investors and it’s the second largest cannabis company in the world right behind this next one.

Canopy Growth (CGC) When it comes to big business, these guys are at the top just like their name would suggest; their canopy covers everything. And this is a perfect example of that shift I talked about wherein the bad guys are buying in, because the makers of Corona beer invested billions into Canopy Growth even though their parent company had lobbied against legal marijuana in the past. Hypocrites. But hey, it’s better late than never, and if one of the world’s largest beer makers is buying into this stock, that should tell you something about its future. In my opinion, no long-term cannabis investment portfolio is complete without at least a few shares of CGC.

Acreage Holdings (ACRGF) If you like hypocrites, you’ll absolutely love this company. Their entire board is made up from proverbial fat cats, and their lead lobbyist is none other than John Boehner, who was the 53^rd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. This guy spent 24 years in congress doing his dandiest to keep marijuana illegal because his constituents in Ohio were barely out of the stone age, but now that marijuana pays better than congress, John’s values seem to have changed. Go figure.

Cronos Group (CRON) This company has its fingers in everything pot-related, and their reach covers five continents. However, companies like this represent a moral conundrum for investors such as myself, because when I bought this stock, I wanted to support cannabis and nothing else. But then a few months later, Altria, the company that makes Marlboro cigarettes, bought way more stocks than I did ($1.8 billion more), and now, it looks like I’m about to own part of a tobacco company, which isn’t what I wanted. But hey, like I said, money talks.

Alright… those are the “big five” and the stocks that represent the safest bets, but there’s no fun in that, so here are a few up-and-comers that could get big (or fade away into obscurity) for all you gamblers out there:

Harvest Health (HRVSF). This company was born and raised right here on our own Left Coast, and they’re making waves in California. In fact, they own Evo Lab, which makes vape oils that we sell right here in our Durango dispensary. So, if you buy some stock and then come into our shop and buy some vapes, you’ll be supporting your own investment, which is pretty cool when you think about it. Hexo Corp (HEXO) is another Canadian stock, but it landed on the NYSE eight days ago, so expect an uptick soon. Medicine Man Technologies (MDCL) is a consulting firm with low overhead and their stock is in the $2 per-share range. Kushco Holdings (KSHB) is another low priced option because these guys make the auxiliary products used in the cannabis industry (fun fact: they make the child-resistant containers we use in our dispensary). And lastly, take a look at Medmen Enterprises (MMNFF). These guys copied the Mad Men branding from that AMC show, which was an interesting choice, but they run a chain of dispensaries in California, and they plan on becoming the Starbucks of dispensaries, so there’s room for growth with this stock.

There! Those fifteen-hundred words were definitely more definitive than the short spiel I give to people when they ask about stocks after waiting online to buy a joint, and if you’re one of the new people who I referred to this blog, thanks for reading! It means quite a bit to me. But please, if you’d like to talk about this in person, just come down to 208 Parker Avenue and ask for Jesse. We’ll chat as much as you’d like, because if you’re interested in furthering legalized marijuana through buying cannabis stocks, We’re Your Best Buds!

Cannabis Science Update

Posted on May 25, 2019 - 9:00 am

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I can’t tell you how often I hear one of my older customers say something like, “man, marijuana sure has changed since my day,” but the funny thing is that most of these people don’t know how right they are.

In past posts, I’ve told you about how CO2 is used in cultivations to increase photosynthesis; I’ve told you about how super-critical hydrocarbons are used to extract cannabinoids from plant matter; I’ve told you about how cannabinoids can be micro-encapsulated to make transdermal products and about how some distillates are now water-soluble. But today, I have something truly mind-blowing to tell you about: yeast-synthesized cannabinoids.

As I’m sure you know, a “cannabinoid” is a compound like THC that’s found in cannabis. That’s the simple part. And I’m sure you also know that cannabis produces multiple cannabinoids, over 100 of them by some counts, but we don’t know what all of them do. The reason for this is that the cannabis plant is pretty good at producing the famous cannabinoids like THC and CBD, but all the others exist only in trace amounts in the plant—it’s exceedingly difficult to test a rare cannabinoid like CBC or THCV if you can’t isolate enough of the compound for testing purposes.

However, scientists have now figured out a way to genetically modify yeast to make it produce THC instead of alcohol. See what I mean by “mind-blowing”? Usually, yeast like this is used only to make booze. Those crazy little organisms are thrown in with a sugar-rich mash like grape juice, the yeast eats all the sugar, and then it poops out alcohol. It’s kinda gross when you think about it that way, but that’s the way it works. But now, thanks to genetic modifications, a new kind of yeast can be fed a soup of nutrients, including galactose (the sugar in brewer’s yeast), and it’ll pump out whichever cannabinoid the yeast had been modified to make. So now, if a scientist wants to create and isolate a bunch of CBC to see what its medicinal effects might be, they don’t need to grow tons of cannabis to extract a minimal amount of the cannabinoid. All they need to do is reprogram some yeast, feed it sugar, collect the CBC, and then start running tests. You can read more about it HERE if you’d like.

For the record, I know that “GMO” is an evil acronym to most cannabis enthusiasts because we prefer natural things, but it’s important to realize that the THC created by this new yeast is chemically identical to the THC created by cannabis—the yeast is genetically modified, not the THC that comes out. And the implications from this new scientific breakthrough don’t stop with testing. Yeast can produce good ol’ THC or CBD much more quickly than the marijuana plant, so, you guessed it, this will make isolated THC much more affordable, and manufacturers will be able to add it to edibles much more easily because the THC won’t need to be extracted from plant matter. This might make it so retail edible prices drop significantly, the consistency per potency will become much more uniform, and the range of cannabinoids available will grow exponentially. Despite the GMO aspect of it all, I think yeast-synthesized cannabinoids are exciting, and their place in our market is inevitable.

But, that’s all in the future. Today, all the cannabinoids we sell in our Durango dispensary come from the marijuana plant, but the future is fun to talk about. So, if you’d like to chat about what’s on the horizon, or if you’d simply like some good, old-fashioned pot to put in your pipe, bring your valid I.D. proving that you’re 21 or over and come see us at 208 Parker Avenue. Either way, we’ve got you covered, because We’re your Best Buds!

Marijuana Myths

Posted on November 24, 2018 - 3:11 pm

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I want to say this outright: CBD does not cancel the high that comes from THC. At least once a day, one of my customers will tell me that they don’t want anything with CBD in it because it “takes away the high,” and at this point, I’m thinking about making a sign that says “no it doesn’t” so I can hold it up for emphasis.

Frankly, the marijuana myth that “CBD cancels THC” is Denver’s fault. It’s part of my job to travel this state and sell products from The Greenery Hash Factory to the other 549 dispensaries in Colorado, and in Denver, just about every shop has a cooler up front that’s filled with CBD water. The budtenders there try to upsell CBD water to customers by saying that “if you have too many edibles and you want to come down, just drink some CBD water,” and doing so has perpetuated this myth to the point wherein the rest of us who know what we’re talking about have to tell people the truth on a daily basis.

Let me give you some proof: we sell a 1:1 single-serving honey packet, meaning that if you eat all the honey, you get 10mg THC and 10mg CBD. If the cancellation myth were true, the 10mg CBD would cancel out the 10mg THC, and this honey would be pointless. But last Father’s Day, I put one of these honey packets in my morning coffee and I got high enough to watch “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” with my daughter, which should tell you something about the honey’s effect…

Next myth: “marijuana is a gateway drug.” Frankly, this is the most asinine myth out there and I start twitching whenever I hear someone say it. Did you know that alcohol is a drug? And did you know that I’ve never met anyone who tried pot before trying alcohol? Do you see what I’m getting at? Alcohol is the gateway drug. Yes, people who smoke cannabis are statistically more likely to try hard drugs later in life, but just about every single one of these people tried alcohol first, ergo, marijuana was tried after they’d already gone through the “gateway.” Get it? And alcohol is dangerous as where pot is not. If you don’t believe me, do some external research: google “number of alcohol-related deaths in America,” and then google “number of marijuana-deaths in America,” and then draw your own conclusions.

Myth number three: “marijuana prohibition protects children.” Seriously, there are people out there who still believe this, even though legal dispensaries are putting street-corner drug dealers out of business, and we check driver’s licenses to make sure our customers are over twenty-one, as where the illegal guys do not. But this myth is by far the easiest to disprove thanks to math: it has been proven statistically that teens who live in legal states like Colorado don’t smoke more than teens who live in states with prohibition (click HERE for proof). And it’s been proven that the number of teens who smoke cannabis in Colorado has actually decreased since we legalized marijuana (click HERE if you don’t believe me). Myths lie, numbers do not.

Lastly, I know it might sound like I wrote this because marijuana myths are personally annoying, but I didn’t—I wrote this because giving accurate information is one of the cornerstones upon which our Durango dispensary is founded. To us, truth and facts matter, and we strive to be honest with all our customers because it’s part of our brand. So, if you have questions about anything cannabis-related of if you’ve heard a few myths you’d like to fact check, give us a call at (970) 403-3710 and we’ll set you straight. Or better yet, if you’re over twenty-one with a valid I.D. proving as much, come see us at 208 Parker Avenue right here in Bodo Park. We’ll take our time to dispel any of the myths you might’ve heard, because We’re Your best Buds, and that’s what we do!

Seniors and Cannabis

Posted on November 3, 2018 - 9:00 am

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Let me tell you a story…

We have to check everyone’s I.D. when they walk into our Durango dispensary—it doesn’t matter if we know them of if they’re obviously old enough to be our grandparents, because rules are rules. But I always feel a bit odd when I ask someone from the Greatest Generation for their driver’s license, and they always look at me like I’m a bit odd for asking. And the other day, a gentleman walked in, I asked to see his I.D., he looked at me like I was daft before he fished it out, and then my mind exploded when I saw his birthday: he was born in 1927.

I’m sure you already did the math, but that gentleman was 91 years old. It was easy to see that he was still all there mentally speaking: he had a quick wit, his eyes were bright, he walked around as easily as the rest of us, and he just wanted to get high.

Does that seem strange to you? Is it easier to picture an old man cupping a glass of whiskey than it is to imagine an old man smoking a joint? If we’re being honest, the answer is “yes” because the collective paradigm per marijuana was quite a bit different a few decades ago, and growing up around all the misinformation usually makes it so the elderly think about cannabis in a negative light. Think about it: that ninety-one-years-old man was nine-years-old when “Reefer Madness” made its horrific debut in theaters. If you’re not familiar with the movie, it was a piece of glorified propaganda. It depicted young men and women smoking the reefer and then going into crazed states of sexual abandon and going on crime sprees (you know, kinda like what alcohol does in reality). Believe it or not, the original title of the movie was going to be “Tell Your Children,” and the film was backed by a few people who waned to keep marijuana illegal for monetary reasons (you can read about that HERE).

Anyway, I talked for a while with that old man about his views on cannabis, and he told me that he was too old to care what other people thought. He told me that he used to be against marijuana because “that’s just the way it was” back in his day, and he told me that he wanted to see for himself what all the hubbub was about. So, I sold him a joint, shook his hand, and then checked his I.D. two days later when he came back for more. Isn’t that great?

And that man isn’t alone. One of our regular customers is a sweet lady who always wears floral dresses, and her I.D. shows a birthday from the thirties; she comes in once every week for cannabis salve. I’ve sold pot to wheelchair-bound men in their eighties, I’ve sold it to whole knitting circles of elderly women who want to make their book clubs more fun, and if I’m being honest, I sell to seniors just as often as I sell to millennials—believe it or not, our average customer is in their forties.

Do you know why? Well, it’s because The Greenery is the local shop for grownups. Customer service is just as important to us as the products we sell, so all our budtenders are trained thoroughly. You won’t find the archetypical stoned budtender in our shop, and none of us is the dazed and confused burnout you might’ve encountered in the tourist traps downtown. We care about your experience, not just your high, and if you’re looking for respect as well as the best marijuana in Durango, this is the place for you.

So, if you’re over twenty-one (or ninety-one) with a valid I.D. that proves it, come see us at 208 Parker Avenue right here in Durango, or call us at (970) 403-3710 if you’d like to talk with us before coming in, because no matter how old you are, We’re Your Best Buds!

The History of Cannabis

Posted on September 22, 2018 - 9:00 am

I lied to you.

I promised that this week, I’d write something light after that post about the history of cannabis prohibition which was followed by that piece about the endocannabinoid system, and yet here I sit, about to write something about the history of cannabis. So, I apologize. However, in my never-ending fight to normalize legal marijuana and smash the unfortunate stigma that comes along with it, I figured that this week, I should prove to you that people have been smoking pot throughout recorded history, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with it. But I promise to keep this brief, so let’s get started…

We’ve all thought about it, but seriously, who was the first guy to eat an oyster? Was he simply hungry when he did it, driven to do something disgusting because of starvation? Don’t get me wrong, I love oysters, but only because I know they’re safe—if I’d never seen an oyster before, I’d imagine it’d come across as a weird rock full of slimy meat. That’s probably what the first guy thought right before slurping it down, but I’m glad he took the risk because we’ve all benefited from it. And pot is the same way: who was the first guy to light it on fire and breathe in the smoke?

Don’t know. But the first guy to write about the stuff was Emperor Fu Hsi from China. This guy was the East’s version of Leonardo da Vinci: Fu Hsi lived almost five thousand yeas ago, but he pretty much invented martial arts, he domesticated animals, he standardized Chinese writing, and he wrote about cannabis as a medicine. He probably didn’t smoke it—it was most likely mixed into a tea, just like ginseng—but he wrote about “Ma” (the Chinese word for cannabis) all the time, and he believed it to be a powerful medicine (just like last week, if you’d like to read more of the information I used to write this, click HERE).

The first bona fide stoners were the Scythians; a nomadic tribe credited with bringing marijuana to Europe about two-thousand years ago. And these guys didn’t mess around. They’d fill a bowl full of pot, light it on fire, bring it into a tent, close the flap, and breathe deeply until the fire burned out; the Scythians invented the hotbox long before you did it in college.

As to the Americas, the Jonestown settlers brought hemp to the New World in the early sixteen-hundreds. George Washington grew it on Mount Vernon, everybody used it to make rope and textiles, and as to cannabis, it was smoked recreationally and considered to be a medicine all the way up until the early nineteen-forties when the false propaganda I told you about two weeks ago started to spread.

And that brings us to where we’re at today: living and playing happily in Colorado where weed is legal once again, just as it should be, just as it was for Fu Hsi, the Scythians, and the founders of this country. Wonderful, right? But if you’d rather smoke pot that read a history lesson about it, come into our Durango dispensary that’s located at 208 Parker Avenue right here in Bodo Park, and we’ll sell you some without a lecture like the one you just read, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Why is Marijuana Illegal?

Posted on September 1, 2018 - 9:00 am

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Well, it isn’t in Colorado, but we’re much smarter than those federal people who can’t seem to figure out that pot is just a plant. However, it’s not really their fault when you think about it because ignorance is an insidious thing when it gets intrenched, and that’s what Washington has been dealing with for decades. But truth is the best remedy for ignorance, so that’s what I’m gunna give you in this week’s post.

For the record, I made it all the way through my writing program in college without writing a single paper on the absurdity of criminalized cannabis because that’s the type of paper every student writes at least once, and I wanted to avoid the cliché. But as it turns out, this choice was an ironic one because now that I have my writing degree, I spend my days writing only about marijuana… whatever, I’m going to embrace it. So, this week, I figured I’d write for you the paper I avoided for all those years, because after all, there are some things about cannabis prohibition that everyone needs to know. Here we go:

A Brief History of Cannabis Prohibition

In the beginning, it was the snake oil salesmen who ruined it for everybody. They’d travel through towns and make all sorts of nonsensical claims, like “cannabis cures erectile disfunction!” So, in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed which made it illegal to make medicinal claims about any substance without proof, and it limited the sale of narcotics and cannabis to pharmacies. This was the first time cannabis was mentioned in any sort of legislation.

As an aside, it’s infuriating when people refer to legalized cannabis as a “social experiment” because when you think about it, weed has only been illegal for about 100 years. Throughout the rest of our history, cannabis was legal, so criminalizing a plant was the real social experiment, and it didn’t work. Anyway, moving on…

Then came the first of three butt-heads you need to meet: William Randolph Hearst. This guy was your archetypical fat-cat—he owned the world’s largest newspaper chain and a bunch of forests that he used to feed his paper mills. And do you know what’s a threat to people who make their living making paper out of trees? Hemp. It grows faster and makes better paper, so Hurst hated it. And it didn’t help that Pancho Villa invaded one of Hurst’s forests because Pancho was from Mexico which is where all the pot came from back then. So, Mr. Hurst used his newspapers and political clout to spread all sorts of misinformation about “evil marijuana.”

The second butt-head we need to talk about is Harry Anslinger. This guy rose to prominence as the head of the Treasury Department during the alcohol prohibition years, but when alcohol was legalized (because making drugs illegal doesn’t do anything), Anslinger found himself twiddling his thumbs. He was about to be unemployed, just like all the jerks under his command who used to make their livings busting alcohol smugglers, so he used his influence to spread false propaganda about pot. People believed him because people are dumb, and then Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937.

1935 Anti-marijuana poster

You see, nothing in the constitution allowed the federal government to ban a plant like cannabis, so they decided to “tax” marijuana, but then they intentionally forgot to create the system to generate licenses or collect the taxes. Ergo, since nobody could get a license or pay tax, it became illegal to grow or sell cannabis.

Everyone has heard of the third and final butt-head: Richard Nixon. He championed the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. Under this act, marijuana was classified as a Schedule 1 drug (right alongside others like crack) because it was a “harmful substance with no medical benefits.”

This brings us to where we’re at today. A handful of states have pulled their heads out of their butts and legalized pot because it sure as hell isn’t a harmful substance with no medical benefits, but most places still believe all the “reefer madness” lies and propaganda that got us into this mess, even though papers like this one are written every year by college students who are smart enough to look in the history books. And lobbyists from privatized prison systems and big pharmaceutical companies spend millions each year to keep pot illegal because there’s a ton of money to be made by locking up pot smokers and making pills that don’t work nearly as well as a plant.

There… that’s why marijuana is illegal in most places. Isn’t it irritating? But hey, Colorado isn’t one of “those places,” so if you’re like us and you prefer fact over propaganda, come into our Durango dispensary at 208 Parker Avenue and we’ll set things straight with some of the highest-quality cannabis on earth. We’re Your Best Buds!

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