CONGRESS PUSHES BACK AGAINST VA ON POT AND PTSD

THE CANNABIS TRENDS WE’RE BUYING IN 2023

This week we’re excited about what’s to come for the cannabis industry in 2023. 

Last week we covered the fact that life is less than perfect in cannabis while highlighting some of the things we believed caused a lot of our headaches in 2022. This week, the opposite. We’re highlighting the things we think are going to help everyone turn it around. 

Finally Fixing LA’s Equity Program 

Here in Los Angeles, one of the biggest calls to action from the cannabis industry for the new mayor’s office continues to be the repair of the L.A. Social Equity Program. It was awesome to see 100 Social Equity Individual Applicants were randomly selected to apply for retail cannabis licenses last month, but the couple hundred people who invested their lives into putting their ducks in a row for the program are going to demand more. And while the new mayor’s office is separate from the scandals of the fall, they may have to pay the bill if a class action lawsuit ends up developing from the then-racist city council having original control over the program that drained so many coffers. 

Standardized Testing?

It originally looked like we would have standardized lab testing this year. It seems a little hazy at the moment, but we wanted to put it on here to push the idea. Currently, cannabis labs have no fixed standard operating procedures. A lot of the time they’re just following the instructions for whatever hardware they bought. Then adjust the standard operating procedure to their liking. That’s where you see the variations in testing numbers from lab to lab. The idea of people shopping around their cannabis at labs to get the best numbers possible is a real thing. This is more so an issue with potency and terpene testing as opposed to heavy metals and pesticides.

Wider Access in America

It’s critical that California cultivators get access to more shelf space soon. While the state continues to drag a bit, the idea of stocking shelves all over the world with cannabis grown in California is appealing to people. The first shelves will probably be domestic, and step one is having as many states with legal access to cannabis as possible for when that day comes. And it’s not that far out. Some regulators figure it will be a few more years. Whenever it is, it’ll certainly make people’s lives a lot easier. We don’t think it will happen this year, but we’ll be talking about the mechanics of it by December a lot. 

The Pace of Change is Fast

I know it’s going to take some time for the other stuff I mentioned, but it’s easy to see how fast things are moving for cannabis all over the world. It’s like a snowball with a rocket sled behind it pushing it even faster as it grows and grows rolling down the mountain. Now is everyone hoping to get sucked up by the snowball a saint? Doubtful. But the bigger the snowball gets, the more opportunities there will be for nice people to take part. Plenty of people entering the cannabis space now aren’t haters, they were just scared to go to jail back in the day. 

AMERICAN CANNABIS INDUSTRY NEARS $30 BILLION VALUE

The latest forecast from the data crunchers at BDSA has the U.S. cannabis industry growing to just south of $30 billion by the end of the year. 

Globally, they project the industry to be worth $36.7 billion in 2023 with roughly 80%, or $29.6 billion, of sales coming from the U.S. state markets. BDSA is expecting the global marketplace to grow about 13% a year through 2027. The U.S. market is expected to be worth $45 billion by that time. 

“Over the next five years, the biggest drivers of cannabis industry growth in the U.S. will be the thriving Midwest and East Coast markets,” said Roy Bingham, co-founder and CEO of BDSA. “New markets, especially adult-use markets like Missouri, New Jersey and New York, will lead growth. Although mature Western markets such as Colorado and California have experienced sales stagnation or decline due to price compression, they will continue to account for a substantial portion of legal sales through 2027.”  

BDSA went on to cover some of the key numbers that will be playing into the growth. This includes the new Missouri market, which is expected to do $1.4 billion in sales this year. BDSA expects New York to do about $631 million this year but jump to $2.5 billion by 2027. New York sales are projected to see an annual compound growth rate of roughly 71%. 

Then there are the markets that haven’t come online yet, even hypothetical ones like Florida play into the number where BDSA is expecting sales to start in 2025 and have a value of $4.3 billion per year by 2027. Minnesota, which legalized adult-use cannabis last month, will begin sales next year and is expected to do $117 million in sales next year and grow to $875 million by 2027. 

The growth of midwestern cannabis markets is going well. Illinois is projected to do $2 billion in sales this year. Michigan has seen sales bump 19% in 2023 and the market is expected to be worth $3.5 Billion by 2027. 

BDSA went on to note that here in California, the numbers are being impacted by the price of the pound crashing and the fact the illicit market still dwarfs the legal one. BDSA argues these are the main reasons California’s legal market saw a decline in sales for the first time in 2022. The report notes that based on the sales in the first quarter of 2023, the California market is expected to decline by 9% this year. 

“California cannabis price compression emerged as a result of ongoing competition from the well-established illicit channel, and an oversupply of cannabis products as cultivation has ramped up in the legal channel since the start of adult-use sales in 2018,” Bingham told L.A. Weekly in an email. “This led to a decline in average retail prices beginning in Q3 2021. BDSA Retail Sales Tracking data show that equivalent average retail prices in California declined 21% between Q3 2021 and Q1 2023. Other mature markets, such as Michigan, have grown in total dollar sales despite price compression, but unit sales growth in California has not been strong enough to counteract price declines.” 

Bingham went on to cover some of the positives that came out of the storm of 2022. 

“While consumers benefited from more affordable cannabis, industry players had to adapt by optimizing operations and focusing on quality and brand reputation,” Bingham said. “The experience highlighted the need for strategic planning and a balanced regulatory framework in the evolving cannabis industry.”

Even with the decline in sales, California is still expected to represent a massive chunk of the U.S. cannabis industry for the foreseeable future. 

NEW YORK STARTS LEGAL CANNABIS SALES AT 4:20

We chatted with Housing Works Cannabis Co CEO Charles King as the NYC nonprofit prepares to kick off legal cannabis sales in the state of New York today. 

Most notably, the 10 cash registers and 4,400 square feet of retail space at 750 Broadway in Manhattan will be the only place in the state you’ll be able to get legal weed for months, as other retailers continue to navigate the permitting process. While the idea of this total monopolization may seem off in the era of social equity, given it’s a longtime nonprofit it seems a lot palatable for folks. 

That part is also a double-edged sword. Some fear the Housing Works permit will be pointed to as a sign of intent, when the wider equity program has hiccups like so many have in the past. The officials who screw it up will point to this license to show it was the plan all along to take care of equity and nonprofit permits. That being said, whatever happens next on the regulatory side isn’t Housing Works’ fault and it has as worthy a track record as any nonprofit who might have had the chance to open first. 

Housing Works has provided an array of services to 30,000 homeless and low-income New Yorkers since 1990. The organization identifies as a community of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS with the mission to end both homelessness and AIDS through advocacy and providing services. A big part of the way it has sustained the mission is creating businesses like the dispensary, a SoHo bookstore, and a network of high-end thrift shops to fund its advocacy. All proceeds from the dispensary go directly back to the nonprofit. 

The staff are excited to open their doors today. 

“”This is a once in a lifetime moment,” said Sasha Nutgent, store manager of Housing Works Cannabis Co. “That said, our nonprofit’s mission remains as urgent as ever. We are eager to take the lead as a social equity model for America’s cannabis industry, specifically with our hiring practices and continued support of individuals and communities disproportionately impacted by the unjust War on Drugs.”

We chatted with Charles King, CEO of Housing Works, late last week as they prepared for the big day. 

“So we actually approached Gov. Cuomo in his office three years ago about Housing Works being able to obtain a license for retail cannabis sales,” King told L.A. Weekly. “We’ve been pressing the agenda of nonprofits that serve people who have been criminalized by cannabis, due to cannabis related offenses, having the opportunity to enter in the market. That’s part of our reason for doing this.”

King argues one of the reasons it’s been such a long rollout for New York was establishing mechanisms different from any other state in terms of advancing equity interests.

“That said, I think there’s a big question about whether what New York is doing will actually go far enough to accomplish its equity agenda,” King argued. “Housing Works is a large organization where we’re well-capitalized, so we’re prepared to invest up to a million dollars, some to make our cannabis retail work and make it profitable.”

King knows the state is preparing to invest money to back social equity licenses, he’s just not sure it will be nearly enough to be competitive. This would lead to the worst-case scenario of equity license holders turning into figureheads as they attempt to raise the capital they need to stay open. 

“I think that’s going to be the big test,” King said. “We’ve seen it in other jurisdictions, where equity license holders have ended up simply essentially being front people for commercial cannabis. And we certainly don’t want that to happen here.”

Housing Works plans on taking a very hands-on approach on its quest to help the New York social equity movement. For starters, it’s hiring people who have criminal records for cannabis, but it goes so much deeper than that. 

“We’re also developing training programs, not only to help people to advance in management, even with our competitors,” King said.

King hopes that program will help start people’s own journeys to go from cannabis conviction to dispensary owner. 

“We’re negotiating with the Office of Cannabis Management to help people, to allow people to go through a training program with us,” King said. “That would get them credentialed as having met the entrepreneurial requirements for obtaining their own license, and then we would help them with their license application, help them get up and running, so that they can genuinely have an opportunity to enter into business on their own without having to be proxy for some commercial investor.”

Given Housing Works’ wider history of community service, we asked if there was any push back on the team when the conversations about the dispensary started. The organization is no stranger to the subjects around drugs many Americans avoid. 

“We are a harm-reduction organization. We were, over 30 years ago, we were the first organization in the country to house people with substance use disorder without any restrictions on their personal use in the privacy of their home. We didn’t place any drug- and alcohol-free conditions on people moving into supportive housing,” King said. 

Additionally, Housing Works runs two of the largest syringe exchange programs in the state. 

“So, even though we’re a licensed drug treatment provider, our license is very explicit that we use a harm-reduction approach,” King said. “Our goal has never been abstinence, it’s always to help people manage their use in ways that give them effective control over their lives.”

King thinks it’s been more interesting to hear the response from the public who clearly don’t really understand who they are and what it is that they do.

Housing Works expects to be able to offer about 75 to 100 products from six different brands on opening day. As testing gets in order around the state, they expect to be up to about 24 brands to pick from in February. It’s a safe bet every cultivation site in the state will be hoping for shelf space. 

As with many dispensaries across America, they’re currently cash only. There was a recent sweep of offshore merchant services companies prodigy services to the industry, so it’s a little trickier than bouncing from one to the other at the moment. This is even the case for shops that have been open for decades. 

House of Puff is one of the brands on shelves today at Housing Works.

“For years, advocates and members of New York’s cannabis community have been working toward this momentous milestone; the first adult-use dispensary opening its doors, stocked with brands and products grown, processed, manufactured and owned right here in New York,” said Kristina Lopez Adduci, CEO and founder of House of Puff. “We are ecstatic that House of Puff will be one of those New York brands that will be available for purchase and thank Housing Works for supporting us and other local cannabis companies during this crucial moment.” 

Lopez Adduci was also excited as to what the dispensary meant to the broader goals for legalization. 

“The opening of their dispensary is just one embodiment of the vision set out by the MRTA and is a significant step towards establishing a fully operable and equitable legal cannabis industry built by and for New Yorkers and our communities most adversely affected by cannabis prohibition,” she said. 

The Cannabis Association of New York also weighed in on today’s first sales.

“Since the MRTA was signed, now nearly two years ago, we have all been envisioning the moment that legal adult-use sales would finally launch here in New York,” said Allan Gandelman, President of CANY. “The state’s first recreational dispensary opening its doors with shelves stocked full of New York-owned-and-operated brands, including products grown and processed by CANY members, is a culmination of all the hard work, dedication and advocacy of the cannabis community over the past several years. We applaud Housing Works for being mindful and supportive of this vision and congratulate them on their entrance into the industry.”

Gandelman went on to note that while the moment feels surreal, everyone hopes it’s just one of many upcoming milestones.  

PUTTING PURPLE ON THE MAP

Purple weed was already a thing when Ken Estes got his hands on Grand Daddy Purple in Mendocino County and brought it back to his grows in the bay area, but that journey south really put the winds in its sails. 

We ran into Estes during our recent travels to cover Spannabis and the wider Barcelona club scene. He noted he had spent much of the last decade dealing with his health — this is what originally forced him to take his foot off the gas back in the mid-2010s. But his impact to this day is undeniable. We’d catch back up in California to talk purple a few weeks later. 

While not as prominent in the era of 40 new exotic flavors a month, GDP, as Grand Daddy Purple would be known to many, still dots menus up and down California. Prior to the rise of dessert weeds following Cookies hitting the scene, GDP was where people went for a combination of flavor and impact. Even Cookies’ most famous sibling Cherry Pie was the Durban F1 used to make cookies paired to GDP. 

But before all that came to be, GDP was the last stop for those looking for high-impact cannabis that wasn’t OG Kush. Some would also argue the purple was a bit more couchlock-heavy than the OG Kush of the time. And while Ken Estes certainly didn’t invent purple weed, he changed the demand level, all while living through the dark ages of cannabis. 

And he was loud. Few pushed the limits like Estes. During an event in 2010, he opened a dispensary 20 yards from the steps of Oakland city hall. When he wasn’t executing his business plans, he was hitting city council meetings, eventually opening one of America’s first chains of dispensaries with his Grand Daddy Purple Collective shops in NorCal. His being so “out there” during that era led to frustrations for both his peers and city officials, but folks certainly had a knack for following Ken into town. 

Estes’s path to cannabis would start after a motorcycle accident at age 18 in the 1970s paralyzed him from the neck down. Prior to the accident, Estes had been playing soccer at an elite level in California. Pele, in town with the New York Cosmos at the time, gave him a call of support from the hospital’s lobby so he wouldn’t have to fight the crowd there to support Estes in the days following his injury. 

Six months into his rehabilitation, he experienced cannabis for the first time with a group of Vietnam veterans who were in the same care facility. This began his lifelong connection to medical cannabis. 

“I was a young kid. I was 18. My first personal experience with weed was pretty strong. But I went back to my room and I slept all night. It was the first night in six months I slept all night,” Estes told L.A. Weekly. 

He recalls how common the idea of marijuana being medicine was. All the nurses and doctors knew. And he certainly knew it was medicine from his first experience. After that first joint, Estes would end up having eyes on the scene for the next 45 years.

“I’m shocked and surprised where this movement went,” Estes said. “I thought we were just in California getting it for patients. When I started, it was the gay world that came from fighting for gay rights to we have people dying in San Francisco of AIDS. Why can’t they use marijuana? And then Brownie Mary got arrested and that changed the game.”

Mary Jane Rathbun was a San Francisco General Hospital volunteer. She eventually became famous for baking hundreds of brownies a day as the AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco hard. Between 1981 and 1992, she was arrested three times for her famous brownies, but her activism helped push Prop 215 across the finish line. Now, Brownie Mary Day is Aug. 25, in San Francisco. 

But we quickly turned back to that first rotation in Vallejo. Since he was still fully paralyzed, the orderly had to hold the joint to his lips for him. But over the next few years, he would work to the point that allowed him to gain some independence. 

“It really took me years of intense exercise, but I was an athlete. It was three years, four years, before I really started being able to transfer onto my bed. I could transfer (to) the floor, put my knees together, leaned forward over my legs to transfer back to my chair,” Estes said of his rehabilitation. 

That moment he was able to transfer on his own signaled to him he would be capable of living on his own. Marijuana was already his lifestyle well before that day. He was still fully paralyzed the first time his friends took him up to Arcata in Humboldt County. 

“I found the Skunk. I found Thai Stick. I found people with Columbian Gold and Panama Red,” Estes said of that first trip at age 19. “I found marijuana so awesome that I wanted the good stuff.”

He’d run into brick weed. The compressed nugs were far from medicine and he knew it. It further motivated him to search for the best options. That first trip north arose from a friend telling him he knew a guy with sensimilla.    

“I said, what is sensimilla?” Estes noted with a laugh. “It’s a seedless weed? And it’s green, lime green? Let’s go there.”

The locals hooked him up, given his medical situation. He scored his first pounds of sensimilla for $100 bucks. That would be about $460 today. 

As for the traditionally tight community up north, especially during the early era of enforcement, “My disability broke me in. People were very compassionate and they understood medicine,” Estes said.

Estes noted his original host in Humboldt understood the benefits of medical cannabis all too well having recently lost his father to cancer at the time. 

“He lost his dad. His dad had cancer. He got help from cannabis. They think it dragged his life another two years, but he swears he was happier. He saw other people who were on pharmaceuticals dying. They were miserable, moaning, and his dad (had) weed on the way out. He really is a compassionate man,” Estes said.

Estes pointed to the statement “all cannabis use is medical.” He said he gets it, to different degrees. But in his case, it wasn’t really up for debate, and the farmers of The Emerald Triangle showed him a lot of love. 

Part of it was because they knew in addition to it being for his own medical use, he was paying top dollar. Some of the brown frown was going for between $30-$50 a pound. Estes wanted nothing to do with it.

“When I got the first Skunk, which was fluffy, I had 24 bags. I sold it for $100 a bag and I would buy that. Next time I bought the Skunk it was $200, the next time it was $400 a pound and after that it was $500 a pound,” Estes said. 

We asked Estes as he watched the pound price creep up, when did he know it was time to become his own supplier and get in on the cultivation side? He laughed and said it was right around the time he saw that first $500 pound. He’s already been collecting seeds in film containers and noting what they were.

In 1977, he would purchase his first hydroponic system. He said it took him about a decade to get to the point where he is comfortable looking back and saying he was dialed in. To help put that into perspective, the biggest movie of the year in 1987 when Estes started growing heat was Beverly Hills Cop 2. 

The first grow went well, but he missed the part about changing the plants’ light cycle to get them to flower. By the time he did, they had been vegging for a couple of months. The plants exploded and he started selling grams for $5 after the harvest. 

“I actually started catching a BART to the 51 bus on Market Street. The 51 bus took me over to Haight Street and Stanyan McDonald’s right there. I’d set up with little tiny bags in there. And I could sell down the street over there for 20 bucks,” Estes said. This was around 1984 and 1985. 

Estes would move his garden outside. That wasn’t a bad thing — in that era, the best outdoor was widely regarded as the best cannabis available, period. He said it took another decade for the best indoor to start beating out the sungrown.

He saw cannabis grown under High-Pressure Sodium lights for the first time when one of his buddies took a light from a baseball field. Eventually, the HPS lights got a bit more normalized, but there was only one place you could buy them at first. Going in and grabbing more than one light was a red flag to anyone casing the store. Estes and others would send friends and family to grab a light each, until they eventually had enough for whatever size room they were trying to put together. 

“If they saw you putting 10 lights in your car, they followed you home. You had a search warrant on your house a week later. So we were all nervous about that,” Estes said.

In the late ‘80s, he moves back indoors and starts building out grow houses. The product would eventually end up in Dennis Peron’s San Francisco dispensary. He would go from a 10-light house to a 100-light operation in Oakland in 1992. 

While it was a big jump doing 10 times as many lights, he was confident in his standard operating procedures. He also had a lot of faith in his nutrients and pest management ability, too.  

When Peron shut down, Estes went on to work a stint at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club. Eventually, Estes decided to open up his first dispensary in Concord in 1997. As Estes went from city council to city council attempting to open more shops in places with no ordinances around medical cannabis, he faced a lot of opposition. Some of the very cities that he went to battle with are now booming cannabis commerce hubs. 

But back then, he was attacked by 1990’s and 2000’s NIMBYs, terrified of the thought of cannabis in their town. They would call him things like a street dealer. 

“I said you have never spent one time in my house and at my table having dinner with me. You don’t know who I am at all sir, or ma’am. But I was attacked all the time. That was the way they did it back in those days for sure,” Estes recalled. 

He said San Mateo was the most vicious municipality of all back then. He estimates he probably opened 20 clubs over the years in different cities. 

Estes credits his activism to meeting disabled activist Dan O’Hara. O’Hara rolled his wheelchair across America and the length of the Mississippi River. He was a vocal advocate in Sacramento and Washington D.C., for the disabled. He was even honored by President Jimmy Carter for his efforts, and the Vatican. Estes and O’Hara became friends. 

“So I became very, very active, much more of an open activist. It was not a secret. I wasn’t behind the scenes.”

Estes has witnessed every level of cannabis regulation in California. We asked what it was like seeing things go from Prop 215 to the legal era. He thought it was all going to move a lot faster, given how fast he opened a shop in the wake of Prop 215 passing. 

“Even though I wasn’t granted a license to have my facility, and I’ve always lasted about one year in these towns, it was enough to start the dialogue, to start the process where other people came behind me pushing, getting attorneys. And next thing you know, there are ordinances,” Estes said. 

The conversation would turn toward the purple weed Estes helped turn iconic. Back when he was exposed to purple on his earliest trips to The Emerald Triangle, it didn’t denote some special quality. He’d see the haze Jimi Hendrix made famous in the late 1970s. He said it was good, but it wasn’t great. 

But in the early 2000s, he started to notice some purple strains were bomb. The Purple Erkel was high on the list for quality, but it was a very finicky plant to deal with. Estes argues the Erkel is really just Lavender and everyone changed the name.

“It was finicky, but when you smoked it, it was fire. It had that taste,” Estes noted. 

In 2003, his relationship with purple would change forever. He was showing his friends Charlie and Sarah, they were Blackfoot and Pomo Indians. The Pomo have a deep history in Mendocino. 

The Pomo traditionally lived in what is now the area around Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and the Russian River watershed. The Pomo spoke seven different dialects while living in small independent communities that relied on hunting, fishing and gathering to meet their needs. 

Estes showed the pair some Big Bud x Erkele from Bodhi. A lot of people thought that was the GDP, but it wasn’t. It did do well though, taking home top honors at an early cup in L.A. at one point. This put the purple, and the affection Estes had for it, on Charlie and Sarah’s radar. 

During a later trip to visit their home on the Eel River, Estes saw some suits as he was pulling up. He provided the pair with cash from a score he had made that day to keep their home. Charlie would go on to tell some other folks in the tribe about what Estes had done. 

Eventually one of the members of the tribe showed Estes what they called Purple Medicine. It was phenomenal. 

“He brought it to me. And I had a bright light shined on them. I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. The color was amazing, purple everywhere. But you could have rolled that pound out of the bag like a bowling ball. It all stuck together,” Estes said. “They had it for 18 years. You could peel buds off the pound like velcro.”

A GDP outdoor crop.

Estes wanted to buy as much as he could, but after a few rounds, the tribe didn’t want to do business with him. They gave him the cut of Purple Medicine so he could run it himself. It became what we know today as Grand Daddy Purple. Estes went all in on his new cut and changed all of his operations to GDP. When he couldn’t produce enough in his 200-light operation, he brought it north for his friends to grow, too. Since he was paying $4,000 a pound, they were more than happy to run it for him. 

“I know what I got. I’ve got this. This is it. This is to me just like the Grand Poobah. It’s like the grand something, Grand Daddy Purple, and then I high-five Charlie,” Estes said, remembering how he came up with the name. 

As he started making the trip more regularly, farmers would wait for him south of Garberville to try and catch him before he spent all his money on someone else’s weed. One time a utility truck flagged him down at night, the pounds were inside the bucket you would use to do maintenance on a telephone pole. 

Estes said the best GDP came from all over. It wasn’t a particularly challenging plant to grow, so a lot of different people in various conditions were able to make the most of it. 

On his way back from up north he would call his friends’ answering machines and just say Grand Daddy Purple and code word that it was on its way south. Eventually, he would open his shop in Oakland’s former Oaksterdam neighborhood. Oakland loved purple. 

“People back then thought purple meant it was overdried or always moist or something. And then there was no purple on any menu,” Estes said. 

In the earliest days of trying to convert Oakland to purple, Estes would hand out nugs to the people in line at his competitor and offer refunds to people who bought eighths if they didn’t like it. 

“Pretty soon, within six months, we got E40 and Keak Da Sneak are smoking it. It was on Weeds. It was in Pineapple Express. Snoop Dogg said on Howard Stern it was his favorite strain. It was just this crazy blow-up thing. I did kind of have the idea it could happen, but I didn’t know it would happen as fast as it did,” Estes said. 

Estes began collecting seeds from the 200 lights. Every run there would be a dozen or so. When he decided it was time to hunt for a male, he had about 60. 

“I backcrossed it to stabilize the genetics. I tried to focus on the traits that I like, the rock-hard buds, the nose, the nice branching, the dark green waxy leaves, so that we came up with Ken’s GDP,” Estes explained. He argued some people liked Ken’s GDP better than the original. In the most technical terms, Ken’s GDP was essentially Grand Daddy Purple Bx1. 

He also took that male and put it in a room with seven of the bomb strains out at the time. Estes said a lot of people won cups with the seeds that came out of the room. He believes a big chunk of what’s commercially viable in the market dates back to that breeding project. 

Estes ended up dealing with a federal case for six years. Nobody wanted to touch him at the time. 

“You have to almost like, stop doing what you’re doing to get them to leave you alone,” Estes said. “I remember being in their office in San Francisco and asking, why do I have this target on my back?” 

One of the things that caused Estes some headaches was his choice to start declaring his cannabis income on his taxes early. He figured if he was paying his taxes, how could they say it was illegal? Well, they certainly took the money no problem. 

“I want all my cases, but it took me six years. I had three federal cases. I got raided in 2005, 2008, and 2009,” Estes noted. 

One of his shops was caught up in the massive San Diego sweep of 2009 that saw 13 stores shut down. People would tell Estes they weren’t growing the Purple anymore because he was too hot and he shouldn’t come around.

But the more cultivation in urban settings got normalized, the less he needed people up north to help, as GDP would prove to be an indoor strain. When you run it outside, it’s 80% leaves and 20% buds; thankfully it’s the exact opposite indoors. While it wouldn’t quench the thirsts of the eventual three-pound-a-light crowd on the hunt for maximum dollars, it was always heat. 

These days Estes is doing his best to keep GDP alive. He recently had it tissue-cultured. While a popular long-term storage method, tissue culture is also a way to clean a plant of diseases. The freshest piece of the meristem is cut before it has a chance to be infected like the rest of the donor plant. Two people are currently running the clean version of GDP. 

“I just want to be the brand ambassador,” Estes closed laughing. 

ZUSHI CONTINUES TO DOMINATE

In a market where truly exceptional cannabis is a rarity, The Ten Co.’s combination of premium quality, remarkable branding and Zushi remains unrivaled.

Our last conversation with The Ten Co. came on the heels of their monumental success in 2021, when they claimed top honors at the inaugural Zalympix event. The competition scene reached new heights after Greenwolf, Los Angeles’ premier heat retailer, stormed out the gates with their top-shelf box contest.

Now, two years later, Zushi has once again emerged victorious. During its initial triumph, some skeptics attributed the win to mere hype. Yet, the myth and allure surrounding Zushi were proven to be well-deserved, evident in the four-hour-long queue that formed at their booth during the recent Zalympix ceremony. However, the mystique surrounding Zushi was even more pronounced two years ago, causing people to fall into various camps of belief. Some staunchly reaffirmed their faith in Zushi after the W, while others criticized the influence of hype. There were also those who may not have personally favored Zushi but acknowledged why it emerged as the winner.

This time, subjectivity was eliminated through blind entries. Zushi had to withstand the scrutiny of over 120 entries just to secure a place in the finals. Once there, it faced fierce competition within the most challenging Zalympix box to date, alongside a plethora of exceptional Z terpenes, as we previously highlighted when reviewing the entries. Undoubtedly, this victory was well-deserved.

We reached out to Staks, the founder of The Ten Co., to inquire if he ever felt concerned about the abundance of exceptional Zkittelz flavors in this year’s competition.

“Absolutely. Z has held the championship title for quite some time now. There were numerous entries that were just as impressive as mine, which was fantastic to witness. It’s about time the industry started emphasizing light green cannabis again,” Staks candidly shared with L.A. Weekly.

Staks acknowledged that the game has significantly evolved since the first Zalympix. He believes that people are actively searching for new and unique offerings that can compete, hence the outstanding quality of this year’s entries. However, until proven otherwise, Zushi remains the reigning king. Staks appreciates the competitive environment within which The Ten Co. operates, considering it beneficial for their business.

Now, the focus is on delivering the hype directly to consumers.

“We are currently directing more attention towards the direct-to-consumer approach,” Staks revealed. “We previously launched but decided to take a step back and now we’re in the process of building up our online delivery capabilities.”

The direct-to-consumer format will enable Zushi to reach consumers as quickly as possible. Given the premium price that people are willing to pay for this product, Staks wants to ensure that the experience is preserved for every individual fortunate enough to acquire one of their bags.

“We have a specified timeframe during which our products can remain on the shelves. If it exceeds this four-week period, or even three weeks, it is promptly removed, making room for a fresh batch. This way, we can maintain stringent quality control,” Staks explained.

While Zushi continues to steal the spotlight, The Ten Co. currently boasts around ten strains in rotation. Additionally, Staks recently cultivated a variety of seeds he acquired from Europe, embarking on a search for the exceptional flavors of his youth, such as Cheese and Sour Diesel. In the coming month, he will undertake a meticulous selection process to identify standout winners worthy of joining their award-winning catalog.

We asked Staks if, when participating in a contest like Zalympix, he meticulously examines every batch or simply puts all his chips down on Zushi.

“I felt compelled to carry on the Zushi legacy for as long as possible. Personally, I believe this strain has so much to offer, and it continues to exceed our expectations,” Staks explained. “We conduct numerous tests with Zushi, and she never fails to impress us. With each batch, we aim for better quality and more pronounced flavors. Our use of live-soil facilities contributes to preserving those unique characteristics. Our plan is to explore different mediums and light spectrums to ascertain what Zushi prefers to express.”

Naturally, we couldn’t overlook the recent Zushi rosin craze. Two-gram jars of their limited release in collaboration with West Coast Alchemy were fetching a staggering $1000 each. This price tag represents the highest ever seen for rosin, yet demand remained strong. The remarkable hype surrounding Zushi flowers seamlessly transferred to their terpene-rich products.

Regarding the price, Staks clarified, “The price point was determined by the market; it had nothing to do with us. The exclusivity and rarity of our collaboration with West Coast Alchemy played a significant role. We never produced these in large quantities; a few batches were exclusively reserved for family and friends.”

Keep a close eye on The Ten Co.’s website for upcoming flower releases and merchandise drops.

THE ROAD TO LA STARTS: THE EMERALD CUP HARVEST BALL

The rain could not stop the heat at the second annual Emerald Cup Harvest Ball in Santa Rosa. 

The event serves as the kickoff to cup season with the winners getting crowned in roughly six months in L.A. at the awards show. This weekend had traditionally served as the whole show for years, before the new format. The quests of farmers looking for next year’s hottest genetics, the chance to survey the harvest, and the awards show were all crammed into one action-packed weekend over 17 years that continued to get larger and larger. 

With the awards show still months out, the weekend now focuses on the cannabis of the moment and seeds. The seed and genetics part can’t be overstated. In more recent years we’re even seeing tissue cuttings available for farmers terrified of the dreaded Hop Latent Viroid, commonly known as HLVd. Cuttings with HLVd have been the downfall of mega nurseries people were convinced were here to stay. But regardless of the high-tech stuff, the regular seeds and cuttings called clones are a huge part of the show.

We were reminded of this when we walked in the gate on Day One. Emerald Cup Competition Director Victoria Shea grabbed me out of line just before gates opened so I’d make it to the judges’ meet-and-greet on time. The public hadn’t even been allowed in yet and there were already lines at the Compound Genetics and Purple City Genetics Booths as their peers participating in the Harvest Ball queued up to get the latest and greatest genetics from both. That wave of people on the hunt would increase tenfold once the gates opened up. 

And those who weren’t looking for cuts were looking for great cannabis or trying to convince people they had it; plenty did. 

Our Favorites

Higher Heights from Comptche, California, had a lovely spread. The two standouts for us were the Carambola and the Purple Candy Cane. The Purple Candy Cane was a bit more complex on the nose. 

Pacific Cultivation was another absolute banger spread for 2022. Everything came out awesome, but it would be criminal to not highlight the Hippie Crasher. The pairing of Kush Mints and Wedding Crasher was among the finest offerings at the whole harvest ball. The Caked Up Cherries was our second favorite from the Pacific Cultivation lineup.

Pacific Cultivation

Humboldt Seed Company had their new Jelly Donutz collaboration with Casa Flor on display. You could certainly smell the sugary goodness some people like to start their mornings with. 

Moon Valley Cannabis’s Wine Country-grown pot also was pretty awesome. The standout for us was the Grapes and Cream, but the Zlurpy was very competitive, too. We could see people leaning in that direction for sure. 

Moon Valley Cannabis

Bigfoot Cannabis Co’s rendition of Gelato 41 was stunning. It was one of our favorite versions we have ever seen that wasn’t indoor. The only one nicer won the Cannabis Cup in 2018. 

Fidel’s spread was as top-class as to be expected. It included the KMZ that won the Transbay Challenge I hosted in Los Angeles this past August. The blend of Kush Mints and zkittelz is a flavor profile in its own league. 

Fidels

One of the loudest jars of the day had to be the Garlotti from Good Good. Once you cracked it open, you were hit with an explosion of garlic terps so strong your eyes and sinuses might water up a bit. But don’t worry, that’s definitely a good thing. 

Garlotti

Sun Roots Farm’s Velvet Papaya won the contest for the thing I think we’ll have the best shot of smoking in a hash format. The terp-loaded strain was said to produce a decent amount of the resin you need to make hash, which essentially is collected plant resin.