After two years of settling for mostly mediocre weed, plus a few occasions where mediocre was elevated to good, I finally bought what I consider to be truly excellent cannabis flower at a legal dispensary in the Northeast. I had to travel 30 or so minutes from Connecticut to Massachusetts to find it, and finding it was pure chance, a literal shot in the dark that I probably would not be able to replicate if I tried, but find it I did, and in my world that is cause for real celebration.
I do not mean to be glib, and I certainly do not mean to slight the general work of New England cultivators, most of whom I am sure toil in misery to provide quality flower for consumers and patients. I can only speak about my own experience since moving back east from California a few years ago, from a cannabis bazaar to a cannabis desert where weed mirages that look like normal flower turn out to be something very different and inferior. It is cannabis, but it has none of the markers of quality that I had become accustomed to smoking out west – the terps, the trichomes, the subtle indicators that determine look, smell, and effect.
Absent these values, I had no basis from which to discern quality for myself, and over time that lack of control became a source of resentment within me, as though a basic right had been taken away – the right to use my senses, sharpened over many years, to decide for myself which flower I wanted to buy. But I also became acutely aware for the first time that any situation where the buyer is cut off from informed decision-making is by definition a breeding ground for the abuse of that buyer. I had no idea how poor a cannabis market could get until I experienced it for myself, but that was only because I had so many West Coast years to compare it against.
All of this reinforced what I already knew – that all cannabis is not equal, that growing really good weed is not easy, that quality is in the eye and lungs of the beholder and smoker, and what works for me may not work for you, and vice-versa. But that has always been the case, so really nothing has changed except for the intrusion of a regulator that places themselves between the product and the consumer/patient, ostensibly to protect them. As the de facto drug dealer in this new structure, however, the regulator still serves the interest of the state, which means it is now a deeply conflicted actor, unable to set a course for quality because doing so would be at odds with the inherent law enforcement interest of the state. In such a conflicted scenario, average products are often sold at a premium, whereas traditional drug dealers, who have no such conflict, can offer higher quality products at a price that matches the quality.
So, imagine my utter joy when I opened the eighth expecting to find the usual, only to unbox the exceptional. Again, it was exceptional for me, and someone else may not like it, but what no one can refute is that it was not remediated, and the contents of the package contain all the elements of properly grown and cured cannabis. This was obvious the second I laid eyes on the flower, and every measurement thereafter reinforced my first impression. What I was not prepared for was how smoothly it would smoke compared with its potency. It hit with an edge, and so I was anticipating that an expectorating cough would follow, but it did not. Clean from hit to exhale.
I’ve been around long enough to know that anything that hits strong and smooth is pretty special, but it also tells me that whoever grew this plant was able to coax a true expression of its genetics, and if they can do it with this strain, they can do it with other strains. That dedication to quality is what I look for when it comes to flower, and it means I will be back to check out their other products. It’s like discovering a novelist, where you fall in love with one book and hopefully continue the love affair with the rest, but it is also especially welcome in this case because this level of quality in cannabis cultivation seems to be relatively rare in this neck of the woods. I might add that this particular flower was not priced in the upper tier, and may not even be the grower’s top-shelf flower, which tells me that dispensary price-points can be extremely deceiving.
As much as I want to, I will not name the strain or the brand, because it’s kind of irrelevant except to me, and also because I know there are a lot of quality growers in the region, so this is just a story of me being able to find one of them and my happiness in having done so. However, what I will say is that the company behind the brand is a multi-state operator, which admittedly surprised me but also delighted me. It is not one of the larger MSOs, to be sure, but it is an MSO, one that I have written about previously but never had the opportunity to experience. That stands as a reminder to me that as much as I love small-batch growers and the effort they invest in every single plant, quality cannabis always announces itself, and it is self-evident whoever the cultivator may be. I think the fact that it exists at all is a reason for celebration, but I also feel as though I epitomize the type of cannabis user who is knowledgeable, discriminating, and frequently on a budget. That means that for those who can discern what I want and are able and willing to expend the effort to curate products for me, I am basically yours for the taking.
Copyright
© Cannabis Business Executive
