MEDICAL CANNABIS PRISONER LUKE SCARMAZZO FREE

Luke Scarmazzo was California’s most prominent medical cannabis operator serving federal time and he did so for nearly 15 years until his release on Feb. 3. 

For those many years, Scarmazzo served as the face of the worst-case scenario for state’s medical cannabis operators. He was walking proof that even if you were operating in full compliance with state law, the feds could come to rip you away from your family at any moment. 

There is a fair argument to be made that of the cannabis offenders released in recent years to much-deserved excitement, Scarmazzo was the most connected to the modern industry. Modesto, the home of the nonprofit California Healthcare Collective (CHC) for its year in operation, is now riding its own cannabis wave that hit the shore a bit later than coastal California. We even covered cannabis sales at the Modesto Reservoir during Dirtybird Campout.  

After giving him some room to catch up with family and friends, we caught up with Scarmazzo last weekend. 

The conversation would start with the fact he’d been the main face of California medical cannabis prisoners since the release of Eddy Lepp in 2016. But the two were on very different boats. Scarmazzo operated a nonprofit collective while Eddy grew some legendary “smell it from the highway” big crops. Eddy pushed the limits and many of his peers up north weren’t as surprised when he caught a case even though he was compliant with state law. Scarmazzo on the other hand represented a lot more people doing exactly what he was doing that didn’t want to end up in similar circumstances. As such, he’s had a lot of different people and organizations advocating for his release throughout his whole incarceration. With Eddy it was more of a cult hero support, but I can’t imagine most of those supporting Lepp thought they’d ever go as big as he did. 

So with all that, when did Scarmazzo know this time it was real? The day he was released. 

“I woke up, kind of just did the normal prison routine,” Scarmazzo told L.A. Weekly. “I gotta make coffee, getting ready to work out. And I just kind of go jump on the email to check the day’s emails.”

When he logged in there were significantly more emails in there than usual.

“So I knew something was up,” Scarmazzo said. “So I was like, OK, so I open it up. And the first email I see is from my attorney, and the subject line says, ‘you’re a free man.’ So I just stared at the computer for a few minutes.”

Things got a bit more obvious in 2017 that Scarmazzo was getting targeted for more time over his music career where he’d taken some shots at the feds in his lyrics. In January of that year, Scarmazzo’s co-defendant, Ricardo Montes, had his sentence commuted by President Obama on his way out the door. Scarmazzo, who also applied, wasn’t as lucky. And given the nature of how clemency works he never found out why, but to onlookers, it seemed pretty obvious. 

The pair had worked on their clemency petitions in an informal clemency clinic in the prison library where Scarmazzo and Mission Green founder Weldon Angelos would help guys file their petitions and legal documents for free. Scarmazzo had wrapped his head around legal forms and paperwork over the first five years of his sentence on the hunt to find a way out. He was essentially offering up the skill set he’d built in that time to other prisoners free of charge. 

“So we did this kind of clemency clinic, and then we, when it came to our turn to file, Weldon and I worked on both mine and Ricardo’s clemency petition,” Scarmazzo said. “They’re basically identical petitions. I mean, we were sitting together, and we were charged the same. We were both co-founders of CHC. So it was like, our conduct and all the circumstances of our case were pretty much the same.”

Scarmazzo noted the petitions were identical to the point all he had to do was swap out his name and personal information. 

Scarmazzo would see Montes’ name among those granted clemency, but not his own. That was seemingly the point it felt the most personal. 

“I knew something like this has to be something personal, I mean, this has to be an issue that’s directed directly at me, rather than us because the president obviously granted his and then called his sentence outdated and unjust. And I’m like, well, hello, my sentence is the same. So if you think this is outdated, adjust my findings, too.”

Scarmazzo reiterated he was happy to see Montes walk. The pair had been friends for many years before their ordeal. But he remembers one of the low points of the moment is having to explain the situation to his daughter. 

“I was really happy to see him get out though,” Scarmazzo said. “He’s my brother. I’ve known Ricardo since we were kids. So, but you know, it was bittersweet. Like it was hard to kind of, I guess the hardest part was calling my family and my daughter and just telling them, hey it didn’t come through for us, but it came through for Ricardo. I want everybody to be happy for him.”

He knew regardless of his own circumstances, the moment had to be treated like it was a big win, because it was.

Most of the federal actions that followed what happened to Scarmazzo felt targeted. The last major federal action on a cannabis retailer operating in compliance with state law was 11 years ago during the Oaksterdam raids. Its founder, Richard Lee, bankrolled Proposition 19 in 2010 with legalization, only losing by a few points. The feds got their revenge on him a couple of years later. 

One of the things Scarmazzo is most thankful for is the 29-page opinion the judge wrote when granting a five-year supervised release for the rest of his sentence. The long document articulates the changing of the times and other people will be able to use it as case law in their own quests for freedom. 

The team at the nation’s oldest cannabis law reform group, The National Organization for The Reform of Marijuana Laws, was happy for what Scarmazzo’s freedom meant in the continued wave of cannabis prisoners getting out in recent years.

“I think it definitely sets a fantastic precedent that we’re starting to see federal judges reexamine the sentences that have been handed out by other judges, or sometimes even by themselves,” NORML Political Director Morgan Fox told L.A. Weekly. “When they start to look at changes of both state and federal policy and as well as the length of sentences that had been handed down for violations of federal infractions over the years since national attitudes have been changing.”

Fox noted there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have the connections and resources that might get lost in the shuffle here. 

“And at the same time, there’s also just the opinion of one judge in one particular case,” Fox said. “It’s really going to take a change in federal law in order to start providing relief on a massive scale for not only people at the federal level, but people at the state level.”

California NORML called Scarmazzo the last known federal medical marijuana prisoner, following his release. 

THE CANNABIS TRENDS WE’RE LEAVING IN 2023

As 2022 comes to a close, we again look back at one of the most brutal years ever on both sides of the cannabis marketplace in California. 

And I assure you, that is no exaggeration. On the recreational side, more and more farms went under or simply chose not to plant a crop this year. And those are the moms and pops feeling it — not those with cash reserves to burn while they wait for more shelf space to open up across the state and beyond its borders in the not-too-distant future. 

But those without a permit had plenty to gripe on as well. At one point during the harvest, you could get machine-trimmed pounds for $50 a pop. This stuff would have been worth $1,200 to $1,500 a decade ago. It’s not the heat by any means, but it’s still shocking. The underground market is also prepping the transition of enforcement next year from the CAMP program to rebranded EPIC program. The big difference? Private parcels will face much more scrutiny in 2023 compared to CAMP’s targeting of public lands much of the time. A lot of people really needed a good one this year because of this. Despite the perfect conditions, they faced a flooded bottom-dollar market come harvest. 

Things We’re Leaving Behind in 2022

Nepotism-Based Shelf Space 

As the cannabis industry continues to do circles around the eye of the storm with people falling off the ship left and right, now is not the time to play favorites for shitty reasons. The main determining factor that should go through your head before you stock an item is whether it’s the best you can do for whatever tax bracket you are trying to serve with the said item. That’s regardless of whether you’re talking discount eighths or the mountaintop, purchase from the same ethos. Screw the free doughnuts; never buy cannabis products because someone brought free doughnuts — you’re going to have a bad time. 

Getting Shot Over Big Piles of Money

As we exit 2022, the cannabis banking situation still hasn’t been figured out. It looked like it had a chance a couple of weeks back, but it fell short without the support or at least ambivalence of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The industry currently finds itself in two camps at the moment. The first is those that wanted bank accounts yesterday for their own personal safety and that of their staff. The second is those who want it as a bargaining chip to protect social equity in the national legalization debate to come. Both are great takes. Hopefully, it happens soon for the sake of nobody getting murdered over weed money. But given what happened in the Senate, we’re probably not all going to make it alive, so be careful. 

Overproduction

There are few things that can devastate the market price of a commodity quite like overproduction. It’s a huge factor on both sides of the marketplace. On the recreational side, it has created a race to the bottom. The “top shelf” just under the true exotics is getting cheaper and cheaper, as people edged each other out 50 cents at a time to get us to this current bummer. On the illicit side, a ton of that oversupply on the recreational side finds its way to the streets. And it doesn’t have a home as it did in the past. That part is thanks to how many places have become less sketchy to grow. Why fly a box in from California when you can drive home from Maine or Oklahoma? Overproduction is the biggest factor in those $50 pounds we mentioned earlier, too. 

GLASS DEALS: ALIEN FLOWER MONKEY GLASS QUARTZ

Los Angeles’ Alien Flower Monkey Glass is crushing it with some of the best deals on American-made quartz deals on the market

We sat down to chat with AFM Glass’s general manager Dimitar Tantchev to hear the ups and downs of the glass game since its founding in 2014 after its owners had already spent years in the scene prior to opening. Over the years, they scaled up production internationally, but are still producing about 20% of their products domestically, most notably, their quartz banger line. 

Quartz bangers are the most time-tested delivery medium of the dab era. In 2008, Hash consumers saw the first skillets for smoking the new hydrocarbon-extracted hash that was a bit more refined than the honey oils that had been going around for years. Titanium nails quickly became the norm in the early 2010s. By 2015, the quartz bucket design of the banger from Quave glass would become the definitive style. Within a few years, different variations were being produced all over the world. 

Lots of other cool quartz smoking mechanisms would come out, the terp slurper among the most successful. But not everyone wants to deal with a marble set every time they want to smoke a little hash. Hell, many don’t even want to heat up a banger with a torch and have switched to electronic dabs with companies like Puffco, Carta, and Ispire, developing their own followings. But many purists still love a quartz banger.

AFM Glass Terp Slurper

Where AFM comes into play is how accessible it’s made domestic bangers. While the price has dipped a bit more in recent years, for most of the 2010s you could expect to pay north of $100 at the bare minimum for good American quartz bangers. AFM has been able to cut that price in half.

Tantchev noted when the AFM was originally founded, one of the goals was to spice up the scientific glass space with a bit more color without going all-in as headie art pieces. When things kicked off originally, the market was still dominated by clear tubes. They found a comfortable position in the business-to-business space hitting mega trade shows, like Champs, where they help retailers from all over America stock their shelves. 

“We kind of produce just really cool, fun, unique and colorful styles,” Tantchev told L.A. Weekly. “We tried to create color combos that kind of just are unique and just create some new styles.”

Between all of the different beakers, tubes, and rigs, Tantchev estimated they were offering just over 50 different styles right now. 

As for why their domestic quartz products come in so far below others? 

“It’s a good question. I think it’s really kind of a supply and demand, and a perceived value. Or maybe not so much both aspects. It depends on who you asked, what is more important? I think there’s definitely the art and like apprenticeship of glassblowing and going out to be far superior quality, not just by being a thicker glass or thinner,” Tantchev said. 

In the end, the deals they are offering come down to the inhouse tech. 

“​​I would say the way to answer your question in the long process of how we’re able to offer the price that we’re offering is, is just by you know, scaling our operation,” Tantchev said. “And we’ve just kind of figured out strategic operations, which were able to save a lot of money and pass that off to our consumers as opposed to taking it into our pockets.”

FIDEL’S: BARCELONA TO L.A.

L.A.’s own Shant “Fidel Hydro” Damirdjian was already a local legend before Fidel’s Hash Holes took it international. 

And while the “Hydro” may have been dropped in recent years as the Fidel’s brand took off, the third son to enter the game of one of Los Angeles’ favorite cannabis families continues to build his name. He’s now on the verge of opening a massive new facility expected to be competitive with the state’s finest later this summer. 

A hash hole under construction. Courtesy of Fidel’s.

In the months leading up to writing this, we chatted with Damirdjian a lot. We even joined him for his return to Barcelona for Spannabis this past March where he originally got the inspiration for the hash hole. The Hash Holes and Donuts party that closed up Spannabis for many was probably the second biggest ancillary affair of the week after the European edition of Ego Clash.

But to understand how things have taken off, you have to start with Damirdjian returning to L.A. after moving to Beirut at age 12. 

Coming Back to L.A. 

“When I turned 18 I moved back to L.A. from Lebanon and when I moved back the first thing I did was start working at my brothers’ hydro shop,” Damirdjian told L.A. Weekly. 

He was at the bottom of the food chain with no knowledge of growing cannabis. He was in the perfect place to learn, but it wasn’t always easy being in the family business. 

“My brothers had two dispensaries. But within a month of me being here, the dispensaries got raided and the growers got raided,” Damirdjian said. “They lost everything and they had to sell the store. So when they sold the store, I stayed.” 

Damirdjian smokes a hash hole in Barcelona. Photo: Jimi Devine

His brothers Serge and Aram would recover and eventually help start Cookies Maywood and Gas No Brakes Fashion.

While Damirdjian may not have brought a lot of cannabis cultivation knowledge back from Beirut, retail operations were a different story. The whole time he was in Lebanon he was working at the family grocery store. By 18 he returned with the managerial skill set that wouldn’t be uncommon in an older teenager at a U.S. supermarket. Those skills translated directly to running a hydro shop even if he wasn’t exactly sure what he was selling out the gate. 

By the time he jumped up to the management team, he had his head wrapped around it from talking to customers all day to better understand their needs or what they were doing successfully. The store was only 1,000 square feet at the time. He’d help build it to 18 employees and three locations.

“I did that for nine years. That was my footwork in this industry,” Damirdjian said. “I talked to growers day in and day out for nine years and then I mastered that craft. I grew weed in the midst of that. It just led me to be consistently known for the quality of flowers I have.”

Madmen OG and LA Confidential were among the first strains he worked with when he started cultivating in 2010. As his skills grew, he refined his best practices and taught them to others over the years at the shop, eventually taking the nickname Fidel Hydro as a play on it. 

Damirdjian points to the first time he left the grow shop to focus on cultivation as one of the moments he knew he was heading in the right direction. Six months after leaving the hydro shop they asked him to come back for a percentage of the shop. He would put in two-and-a-half more years, but in the end, his vision was just too big for the shop. 

Fidel’s

A trip back home to Beirut to visit family and friends in 2019 would turn the nickname into the building block for one of the most hyped brands in California at the moment. 

“I had a childhood friend of mine who does branding packages for big hotels and restaurants. I was working with him. I wanted to start branding my flower. I want to be known for the flowers I grow,” Damirdjian said. 

The pair were talking about his nickname Fidel Hydro. They tossed stuff around but were sure in the end that it had to be one word. It had to be simple. They dropped the hydro and the name stuck.

“My homie drew like 200 different logos by hand. He drew one on a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and it just stood out to me,” Damirdjian said. “It looked really timeless. Either now or 20 years from now, I’ll still feel the same about it.”

Damirdjian explained that the logo gave him the identity but there was plenty of work to be done. He started doing everything in-house from growing to buying printers so he could package it all up. 

“I put all my energy in Fidel’s, everything, every ounce of my time, my finances, my physical being. I put it all in something that just kept growing and growing. It gave me the confidence I needed but it just hit me when I was in the hydro shop. I always knew Fidel’s was what it is supposed to be,” Damirdjian said in regards to that calling he believed was more significant than the shop. 

Creating New Flavors

2019 was also the year Damirdjian started breeding. It was the next step after nearly a decade of perfecting his skills. But looking around the game can create doubt. He refused to let it build in himself. The heat would speak for itself. He loves it. He hopes his dedication to those various cultivation practices will help remind folks he’s not just the guy that scaled up the hash hole, as admittedly cool as it is to have the most primo rec preroll in the state. 

One of the staples of the breeding is Runtz Mints. It’s an absolute heater. 

Hash Holes – Barcelona to L.A. 

How does one change the exotic-infused preroll game in California? The concept of a joint with hash in it was far from new in California. We basically started seeding distillate prerolls not long after Damirdjian started cultivating in the early 2010s. They were always boof, maybe even further stacking the chips against the idea of the hash hole.

Damirdjian returned to Barcelona in 2022. Photo: Jimi Devine

Sure, the idea of rolling some heat hash and flowers with friends was cool. But was it commercially viable? Regardless, Damirdjian would find his inspiration on a trip to Barcelona in 2018 with his brother for his first adventure to Spannabis.

At the time, his brother had launched Cookies Maywood a few months prior. Damirdjian started helping with some of Cookies’ first seed drops and in the process heard about Spannabis. 

“I felt the need to be there,” Damirdjian emphasized. “I felt the need to go see what the culture is like over there. So I tagged along.”

Damirdjian working to get his seed line into Europe at Spannabis 2022. Photo: Jimi Devine

Damirdjian was a young man there to learn more about the game. There was plenty to take in. He got to help Cookies and 3rd Gen Family with the El Toro in Spain. He helped them package that up and got a first-person view of people entering the world of bulk seed sales with people in Europe. He always felt like the youngest person in the room and just remembered to keep his ears open and to try and learn as much as he could from the international hitters that converge on Barcelona. 

During the seed drop, a number of noteworthy characters from the European game come through to see a number of Americans. The American delegation had fire hash. The Spanish culture at the time was more influenced by the California flower market and there were a ton of California-grown flowers. 

As Damirdjian watched most Europeans sprinkle their crumbly water hash into joints, he decided to work up some of the American rosin and drop it in the center. Not long after, he would run into Lorenzo from Terps Army in Barcelona and Amsterdam. Lorenzo was doing the same thing. 

“I hadn’t met him yet. We met in person over there as this culture was being instilled at that particular time,” Damirdjian said. “I got to give it to my boy Lorenzo. He kept the habit up. He calls them the Terps Donuts.”

Final quality control before packaging. Photo courtesy of Fidel’s

He flew back to America and started rolling more joints loaded with hash. People on Instagram would ask what it was and inquire about the hole in the middle. He would politely emphasize what they were looking at wasn’t a donut, it was a hash hole. 

“The word hash hole didn’t even exist. I just didn’t want to call it a donut because I wanted it to be different,” Damirdjian said. “I could call it that. But just to me, it’s the hash in the middle.”

He was also a firm believer that hash holes just sounded cooler than donuts. Some of the early hash hole advertising has joked donuts are for cops. 

“Once you started explaining to people what it is, now people call it that. I love it. It’s creating its own culture,” Damirdjian said. “It just wasn’t out there like that. It went from being a smoking habit when I came back from Barcelona to what it is now.”

Damirdjian believes we all have ideas we never really follow through on. But what if he did this? What if he took this thing he started posting as a habit and took it to scale? What if he started hand rolling joints and not packing a cone? All the while using elite flower and hash. 

He believed people would mess with it. So far he’s been proven very right. But at first, it was tough to convince people it was feasible to hand roll. 

“It didn’t click with people,” Damirdjian said. “And I wanted to sell them for $100.”

Out the gate, Damirdjian’s right-hand man Dabber Dan was the most supportive of the idea. He saw the vision. Dan was amongst the early members of the team when Damirdjian started solidifying it in 2018. Head roller Gio and his cultivation lead Kevin were also onboard early.

Courtesy of Fidel’s

Damirdjian even has his parents helping out. He has so many printers now he’s run out of space and put a printer in their house. He’ll order 50,000 containers and have them label the jars and do QC.

Now there is a flurry of imitation hash holes hitting the market. 

“Everyone is doing it their way, you know, and it’s not really about who was first, who did it best, I guess,” Damirdjian said. “To me, it’s about who’s paving the way for the category because that’s what it is. It’s a category now.”

Fidel’s Grown

Damirdjian expects the number of staff to surge to 60 by year’s end as his cultivation operation comes fully online. He’s thankful he didn’t take any of the cultivation deals that came his way over the years as he waited for his moment to enter the legal market on his own terms.

Separately, it’s wild to see someone in his age bracket bootstrap an Adelanto facility solo. It’s the land of corporate dawgs but there is certainly cheap square footage and power for those with the resources. 

“There’s no one else, that’s solely me, and I intend on giving out percentages to my team members that are down with me right now. But it’s just me. I just haven’t sold out. I haven’t sold any of it. And people have given me tempting offers. I’ve been guilt-tripped by people that are worth half a billion dollars for not making deals,” Damirdjian laughed.

He always trusted the voice inside and knew where he was heading. That was all he needed. His next vision is a storefront to put all the flower in but right now there is work to be done getting it to the market. 

As the flower comes online he also looks forward to further building out his distribution network. He’s already in every Cookies and Stizzy store. The flower is expected to be in high demand when it drops later this summer. One thing that points to this fact is that the value of his products hasn’t changed with the times as many have seen price dips. 

“Something has changed. There’s always an adjustment,” Damirdjian said. “That’s what you gotta do. You gotta adjust. I think different, you know? I’m trying to be at the forefront of it.”

Damirdjian’s hash holes are available all over California. Keep an eye out for the flower line later this year. 

NORTHERN NIGHTS BRINGS BEATS AND HEAT TO REDWOODS

We headed north to the redwoods for the latest installment of the original cannabis-friendly music festival, Northern Nights.

The festival’s geography plays a significant role in its place in the history of cannabis progress. The venue, Cook’s Campground, sits in the heart of the Emerald Triangle stretching across the county line separating Mendocino and Humboldt. In addition to all the fine local cannabis, attendees spend their weekend enjoying up-and-coming EDM acts across numerous stages, and floating on the river.   

This past weekend we got the chance to sit down with many of Northern Nights’ co-founders as they celebrated the festival’s 10th anniversary, including Andrew Blap, Peter Huson, Matty “Worldfamous” Roberts and Emily Wilson. 

The festival has long been associated with legal cannabis sales after hosting the state’s first at music festival in the wake of Prop 64’s implementation. Following Northern Nights’ lead, major festivals around the country jumped on board with the idea, including EDC Las Vegas and Dirtybird Campout. In past years, those sales were confined to specific areas — last year even featuring two stageside dispensaries and a main cannabis activation area. This year the entire cannabis footprint was integrated into the heart of the festival, a short walk from the mainstage under the shade of the region’s massive trees.

We asked the Northern Nights team what it was like pushing that further integration this year.

“I think the big thing in working in two counties is first and foremost the context of where you are putting things,” Huson told L.A. Weekly. “When it comes to the history of cannabis events here, it’s the local jurisdiction, you have to start there. Mendocino passed their ordinance and we could bring a couple of dispensaries into Mendo.”

Courtesy of @y.s.a

But there was a lot of separation between those dispensaries. 

“And ultimately, I think the premise of boundaries, aka fencing, has been a big thing in terms of limiting the number of sales,” Huson said of the caged-in areas. “I think the different places that we were putting the dispensaries if you wanted to get them, for example, all the way out to the river, it’s a lot of overhead.” 

A big part for the team was making sure those local sponsors from the cannabis industry felt right. Huson notes there have been a few folks in the space doing these events for a while, but the brands taking part fund the progress to prove what can be done.

Courtesy of @anthonysvendsen

Matty Roberts added pushing boundaries is in line with the general ethos of the festival over the years. 

“We’re booking cutting-edge shit, which makes our lineups very eclectic. We pick all this cool music because we’re kind of in a sweet spot. We’re not a big event. We don’t have a ton of money behind us, so we have to get scrappy and find a lot of new stuff.”

Roberts laughed, noting people look at the old posters from over the decade and act like the performers back in the day were bigger, but they didn’t actually know who a lot of those now big-name acts were when Northern Nights booked them. 

“Now you look back, our lineup from eight years ago looks like a $2 million lineup,” Roberts said. 

Roberts spoke of coming from the Midwest where a stem on your shirt would land you in jail. He’s thrilled to help facilitate a good time for a younger generation that never has to know those horrors. 

Emily Wilson went on to speak that filling the void that Reggae on The River left in the hills is an honor.

“But there is a lot of responsibility as well. That means, we have to do the due diligence in finding new and up-and-coming music, working with local cannabis businesses and producers who have been working in the community a long time and supporting it through these transitions.”

@y.s.a

Wilson argued sometimes that means bringing in both the little guys and the big guys. She said that is a responsibility you can see they take seriously across the festival with not just cannabis but local wineries and breweries, too. 

“Every single facet that we can, and where we’re able, we want to support local and present the best that Northern California has to offer. We’ve got Humboldt Bay Oysters fresh from the docks,” Wilson said. 

One of the things Wilson said she enjoys the most is those people that have stuck with them since year one. Through all the trials and tribulations of being a small independent festival and the learning curve that came with it, they kept coming back, and that meant a lot to her.  

The actual cannabis section itself was really well done. As in years past, it provided a shady reprieve from the Northern California sun that hit 94 degrees Saturday in what felt like 1,000% humidity. One of my favorite parts of the festival was the morning sound bath in the cannabis zone. You would see people tiptoeing around all the people laid out, to get to the ATM for their weed money. Everyone was really respectful, but even then, the visual was hilarious. 

This year’s switch to delivery was a good move. While it took five minutes longer, it allowed for the entire Northern Nights cannabis experience to be more streamlined than had there been fences everywhere to facilitate a temporary retail site. 

The actual weed people were buying was no slouch. Some cannabis activations over the past couple of years have gotten a bit midsy. Sometimes you’d see these brands that can’t even get dispensary shelf space taking a lead at festivals — gross. Thankfully, Northern Nights did not have this problem. I would argue that The Lantz from Ridgeline Farms is the nicest weed for the price I’ve ever seen at any festival. Eighths were only $35! I bought seven over the weekend. 

Hopefully, other festivals trying to get into the cannabis game will take note of how well Northern Nights did it. 

DECEMBER IS A GREAT MONTH FOR CANNABIS

Many argue that November is one of the best months to buy pot given the deals and steals of Black Friday and Green Wednesday, but don’t sleep on the quality available and prices when purchasing your weed in December. 

One of the main feathers in the hype for December is the fact it’s just a little bit further out from the Croptober harvest. In the first half of November, you might still be waiting for the girls that finished late to cure up to perfection. That’s not a problem in December, in fact, the whole month much of the year’s harvest will be in the golden zone for quality. 

And we’ll be the first to note there are a lot of variables on how long that golden zone lasts. The best hope is the pot never leaves an awesome environment before it ends up in the hands of a consumer, but that’s few and far between. That’s why the date is so important. 

The accountability of shelf time says a lot in the current market. Dispensaries don’t want flowers that don’t move. They want you to get the heat, apart from a charlatan or three trying to make a quick buck. But even then, that harvest date can transcend shady retail practices that make you think you’re getting a deal when, in reality, the consumer is doing them a favor by taking it off their hands for anything.  

This has led to the best cultivators in the world living by their packaging dates — that’s the moment the clock really starts ticking. Especially given in how many cases the weed was already finished for a bit before it made it to bags or jars. 

One brand that’s based a lot of its business model around the heat and keeping to a short shelf life is California Artisanal Medicine. 

“We put our harvest date and our package date, because after 90 days from the package date, your product is aging and will not hold all the attributes we look for in top-shelf cannabis,” CAM founder Anna Willey told L.A. Weekly. 

Willey went on to note the biggest things impacted are the smell, how the buds break up and moisture content. 

As for the biggest factors Willey sees outside not hitting the gold standards in temperature and humidity?

“The way it was dried and the evenness of your environment in the dry room,” Willey answered. “Also the health of the plant at the end of the cycle and the trim time.”

While Willey is an indoor cultivator, this all rings true for the outdoor that dropped a couple of months ago.

Another point proving the quality of cannabis in December is the Emerald Cup’s old format before the move to Los Angeles for the award show. Back in the day, we knew who the world champs were a couple of weeks into December. It was all wild and fresh heat. The new extended format creates a bit more hype over many months but adds the additional factor of which weed actually holds up through that time until it gets into the hands of the judges.