A pseudoscientific analysis of why Rec Weed sucks

I’m not here to talk about any particular brand or strain, but in my capacity as a journalist I’ve been tasked with telling the truth and I’ll tell you the truth: I was extremely disappointed by the lack of quality in the California rec cannabis market lately.

We’ve all heard the news and the insufferable nagging from cannabis CEOs that the legal market just can’t compete with the traditional market, but beyond the press releases and money-sharing, everyone in the cannabis space should be asking themselves: Exactly what is really standing good weed getting on legal shelves?

To find the answer to this question, I enlisted the help of a few Californian and Emerald Triangle cannabis staples who have been around long enough to know what good weed is and/or have nailed everyone who does Setting fire to pharmacy shelves. Sourwaves is a longtime grower and meme maker who has lived in disgrace for years for not being willing to take the foot off the industry’s neck when it comes to growing practices and quality.

John Casali of Huckleberry Hill Farms has lived and grown in the same valley of the Emerald Triangle all his life and has multiple awards under his belt, including a 1st place finish in the Ego Clash for Riddlez rosin processed by Heritage Hash Co. Finally, Robert Gale of the Humboldt Terp Council produces some of the best concentrates I’ve ever had the privilege of dabbing and is a vocal member of the Humboldt County community on the state of the industry and cannabis in general.

After extensive discussions with the above, I have reduced the most likely causes of mass outbreaks to the following three explanations:

• Excessive government bureaucracy/taxes

• Corporate margin reduction/market manipulation

• General lack of cultivation experience

Uncle Boof-Tuxedo Sam

Almost every state has objectively botched the way it sets its cannabis laws, either in the sense of a “pay-to-play” market or a lack of foresight when it comes to issues of license caps or a lack of canopy space caps or both is possible .

“Basically, overproduction and overtaxation have created a race to the bottom, and everyone is losing,” Gale said. “The other issues are, especially with flowers, there’s only a specific window in which it’s good and it takes so long to process, package and test that the weed is already getting old by the time it’s on a meets if you are not vertically integrated shelf.”

Testing is a pack animal of its own. Every constitutional state requires some form of THC testing, but with little to no guidance on exactly how to go about this process, it has opened the door to consumer manipulation and confusion when purchasing an eighth of 31% THC that doesn’t make you high at all.

“There is no set calibration to test, one. Second, you can buy test results,” Sourwaves said, referring to the lack of regulations on the methodology California labs use to conduct testing. “You pay more than the nearest lab, but that’s what makes the lab so popular. “Oh my god, THC is over 30%”, this makes things fly off the shelf. There are little tricks people do to make a test hot, like drying it super, super dry and things like that.”

In addition to overproduction and over-taxation, many cannabis industry business owners have complained that excessive regulation of the way cannabis companies operate has resulted in an industry shutdown and a lot of needless cash jams.

“One of our biggest hurdles is having to give in [our cannabis] to a dealer who takes 17% who doesn’t prepay us. Then they give it to a retailer who doesn’t pay this retailer who doesn’t pay us. And if the customer doesn’t buy that product or it takes them a year to pay the retailer, it takes them a year to pay the retailer, which in turn takes a year to pay the farmer,” Casali said. “More [often] than not, most of us farmers often don’t get paid.”

Just a few mids for reference. Photo by Patrick Maravelias

Revenge of Chad in Rec Markets

The jury is unanimous: big bucks are growing too much weed for their own good. Of all the people I’ve talked to about cannabis my entire life, Libra is the most commonly cited culprit of boof production. However, extreme scaling is also an extremely effective tool if you’re a really rich guy who wants to get into cannabis but would prefer all traditional market cultivators to be conveniently arrested or torched.

This mentality has led to market manipulation and crowding out of incumbent operators by massive growth companies, some of which have been accused (if not informally) of berating and influencing politicians over economically unsound favors such as removing a one-hectare cap on cultivation licenses or getting on board in general into the industry and weed out those with less capital.

“If a type is an acre, it’s just basic economics why the larger types cost less to produce a pound of weed,” Sourwaves said. “Well, those idiots over at Glass House probably have their costs somewhere between $30 and $60 a pound, so if they have to crash the market by selling packs at $150 to $250, because they know these smaller farms are running with cannot compete with these low prices.”

For someone like Casali, who only grows 5,000 square feet of canopy that he and his girlfriend/partner water by hand, it’s virtually impossible to compete on the margins set by some of the larger operators, even if the product is a far cry from it has better quality, It creates a situation where the consumer is faced with a dirt cheap option that is decent enough to defend that they are saving the extra $20 to $40 an eighth they would have spent on something worth smoking.

“Growing it in the Emerald Triangle it costs a lot more to produce a pound, and up in the hills country it costs us between $300 and $400 a pound to produce because it’s environmentally friendly,” Casali said.

“You have people who are just here to make money, and that’s America, I’m not against making money, it’s not. The problem is the weed sucks, right? So how do we make this better?” said Sourwaves.

While no one I’ve ever spoken to had a hard line for a plant or light count that considered “too big to be horny,” almost everyone could attest that once you cross a certain threshold, it basically impossible to produce high quality bud and at the scale some of the California producers are producing, it’s created a perfect storm of dog shit.

“There are a few people who do it, but they’re few and far between. I think a place like Fig Farms has managed to maintain its quality and slowly grow,” Gale said. “Man, it’s hard to scale quality. Most things that we consider quality don’t stand a chance against what people are still producing in the traditional market.”

No love for the plant, no knowledge of the plant

I’ve never met a single grower in my time as a weed nerd who didn’t love the plant and/or sacrificed an immense amount of time and hard work for the plant. Maybe this is some hippie mumbo-jumbo I picked up on LSD in Arcata Square, but if every good breeder on earth says the same thing, there’s a pretty good chance they know what they’re talking about, and they all emphasize that Learning how to grow may be easier than ever, but you still need to put in your 10,000 hours to consistently produce the best representation of the plant.

One thing Sourwaves stressed to me regarding growing techniques that he believes result in poor quality is high intensity, fully synthetic nutrient cycles for large indoor grows, which he believes are made possible by introducing organic nutrients in addition to the synthetic ones could be gradually improved.

“If you feed super high EC multiple times a day and force that plant to take in all those nutrients because you’re using sensors to measure your dry back and it’s telling you how and what to feed crap. Access to this information is so goofy, don’t get me wrong, but the way it’s manipulated to drive the harvest to a higher yield doesn’t result in a pleasurable smoking experience for the end user,” Sourwaves said.

The lack of experience and love for the plant seems to extend to every part of the industry, beyond the growers.

“Even in 2018-2019 you worked in a dispensary because you loved weed and wanted to be closer to it,” Gale said. “And now that we’re about five years after legalization, and the truth is you have a lot of employees in pharmacies that apply to 10 different locations, and the pharmacy happened to be calling them instead of Subway or the shoe store or Orange Julius .”

Could it be that Mother Nature just has a safeguard against being taken advantage of by people who don’t show her the love she deserves, or is this more mumbo jumbo and more mumbo-jumbo? Many breeders I’ve spoken to have a strong belief that if you put in the work, it will come back.

“Most of us, our parents, were part of the back-to-the-land movement. They taught us that caring for the environment and the land is just as important, and the more time and the more energy and the more love you put into any type of plant, whether fruit trees, whether grapes, or vegetables or Cannabis plants, the more time, the more energy and the more love you give them, the better they end up being,” said Casali.

So what do we do with all this, asked the obnoxious journalist, who was taught never to ask rhetorical questions. In short:

• We eliminate excise taxes and all the bureaucracy that stands between the grower and the consumer so small growers can make a living.

• We’ve set a reasonable cap on license size and/or number of active licenses so the chads can still play but don’t ruin it for everyone else.

• People who grow cannabis for a living need to learn how to grow.

• Show respect for the plant and the plant will respect you.