CANNABIS CRIME WAVES RETURN FOR 2024

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.

PSYCHMD ROLLS OUT KETAMINE NETWORK IN 44 STATES

The nation’s largest telehealth network, PsychMD, is starting ketamine treatments this week.

We sat down with PsychMD founder Bryan Henry to talk about his transition into the burgeoning psychedelic therapy space after watching the telehealth network he built to support hormone therapy explode into the biggest telehealth network in the U.S. Henry will use that same network of family doctors to provide referrals for the new ketamine therapy services he’ll be offering in 44 states. Henry is also the Founder and President of Peter Holdings

After finishing up in the military, Henry obtained his family nurse practitioner license from the University of Oklahoma before securing a Ph.D. in Endocrinology and Reproductive Physiology from the University of Wisconsin. After securing his degrees, he would spend the first half of the 2010s working in hospitals.

“I don’t know, I got pretty burned out of being in the hospital setting, a lot of non-doctors administration telling you how to do your job, which is quite frustrating for providers clinicians, so I decided to start my own practice. I started my own practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma 2015,” Henry told L.A. Weekly. 

While things were going great for the business, his health began to suffer.

Dr. Bryan Henry

“So around 2019, I started getting severe depression. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, so it became really bad for me and I chalked it up PTSD,” Henry said noting he questioned going on disability. “My patient outcomes are suffering, my family is suffering. I’m trying to run this massive company and I just couldn’t even get out of bed, and I was leading to a pretty toxic environment for myself and my family.”

Henry’s sister, a psychiatrist with the Department of Veterans Affairs, informed him about the success stories she’d been hearing about using ketamine to treat PTSD. Henry’s PTSD had proven treatment-resistant up to that point. It ended up being an extremely effective tool in treating his PTSD. He remains a patient to this day. 

“It really was the turning point for me to change my life, as well to get out of bed, get back to work, and really grow this as big as we could. And obviously, we’ve grown it to be the largest in the U.S. now,” Henry said, “That’s why I’m damn thankful that ketamine was introduced to me.”

The appeal of helping his fellow veterans is massive for Henry. But Ketamine is a big jump for those people that have never used drugs like Henry. We asked Henry, how does he convince his peers that might not even be willing to try a joint to help with their PTSD to experiment with ketamine?

He replied he was that guy. But as he went through the research on both safety and efficacy, he was willing to cross the bridge. He believed with a little fact-finding others would come to similar conclusions. 

Some of PsychMD’s big competition has gone under or doesn’t look prepared for a forthcoming tightening of regulations that were originally loosened to simplify life for people during the pandemic. Once that hits, PsychMD will be the only company legally able to provide telehealth ketamine services. 

We asked Henry if PsychMD was now the most accessible ketamine therapy for vets with PTSD.

“100%,” Henry replied. He continued it wasn’t just the most accessible for vets, but everybody. 

Henry went on to describe the development of the program they’ll be launching. That group was about 60 patients. 

“When Ketamine Wellness Center shut down, we went in to buy the company because obviously with our board being highly composed of military veterans. We saw all the articles, all the publications of these veterans getting left behind and that’s why we wanted to buy the company,” Henry said noting due to some issues on the other side they were unable to get the deal done. “But what we did get out of it was all the patients that they have left behind, just closed the door on them. So we’re working with those patients right now, making sure that they’re getting back on therapy and the majority of those patients are better. And so, that’s kind of what we’ve been focused on, was our veterans right now at this point starting next week, we’re really gonna push it through the public, but roughly about 60 patients in terms of treatments roughly, probably 300 treatments.”

Despite the massive void left by Ketamine Wellness Center, PsychMD doesn’t plan to rush scaling up and risk jeopardizing the quality of the treatment they are providing. 

Photo courtesy of Attorney General’s Office.

AG BONTA ANNOUNCES NEW CANNABIS ENFORCEMENT PROGRAM

Attorney General Rob Bonta announces new CAPP program to help municipalities deal with illegal commercial cannabis activities. 

Fresno will be the first city to take part in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Cannabis Administrative Prosecutor Program (CAPP). 

When announcing the program on Tuesday, the DOJ noted CAPP will provide partner cities and counties DOJ legal support to address illegal cannabis activity through administrative enforcement and nuisance abatement. Essentially, the city or county signs on to ramp up local enforcement and then the DOJ provides extra resources. The DOJ will provide educational materials for locals to build out their programs and provide mechanisms for evidence collection in future statewide enforcement operations that have been umbrellaed under the new Effort to Prevent Illicit Cannabis. 

As for enforcement actions, CAPP will provide attorneys to act as administrative prosecutors before local hearing bodies when necessary. CAPP also will provide bodies in general to those smaller municipalities that are just too strapped for cash to do anything. This will include assisting in facilitating administrative procedures and assisting with logistical issues through the use of private process servers, contract code compliance officers, and abatement contractors. 

“Complex problems require creative and collaborative solutions,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “This innovative new program allows my office to better support local governments in our collective efforts to tackle illegal cannabis activities, and we are confident that this new cost-effective program will have dramatic and measurable effects. I thank the City of Fresno for their partnership and look forward to working together through this new approach to hold participants in the illegal cannabis market accountable.” 

Bonta’s office noted the cooperative effort with local jurisdictions leverages the administrative enforcement powers of cities and counties. The DOJ also noted this work being done at the local level will supplement the work of the Department of Cannabis Control and the Governor’s Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force. The task force is led by the Department of Cannabis Control and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Fresno’s city attorney is excited to be the test case. 

“Our partnership is aimed at assisting the local legitimate cannabis industry and help grow Fresno’s tax base,” said Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz. “It is my hope that this, first-of-a-kind joint venture between the Fresno City Attorney’s and the Office of the Attorney General will be a model for other large cities. For far too long, these underground operations have targeted children and minors without fear of retribution. This inventive new approach will seek to put an end to that.”

The state seems to be revving up for a higher level of enforcement. You could see the numbers start to bump in Q1 when the Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce announced the amount of product they seized jumped from $32 million to $52 million in just a few months. It’s a safe bet the highest numbers will likely be attached to harvest season this year. 

In addition to the jump in the amount of product seized, the plant eradication count went way up. Through the first three months of the year, the task force destroyed 43% more plants than the quarter before. The DCC noted that was despite serving 30% fewer search warrants. The bump was a direct result of targeting large-scale operations with the resources they had available. 

Every year there is even cooler stuff available for cannabis consumers on 4/20. 

It will be no different in 2023. There is a wide array of new products and strains sure to take our breath away in the coming months. Here are our must-have products for 4/20/23 next week: 

Puffco Wizard

Courtesy of Puffco

While the Gandalf-style pipe is nothing new, Starfish Designs was famous for pumping them out back in the day, in the past, glass versions have generally been designed for flower. With Puffco’s new Wizard attachment to complement the Proxy, you’ll now be able to smoke hash Gandalf, too. While it looks cool, some people find that little bit of extra space compared to the stock Proxy attachment rips a little bit smoother. The Wizard is $99.99,

Talking Terps Clothing

Courtesy of Talking Terps

Few artists have been able to get the cannabis scene as excited at the concept of high-end art as Talking Terps. Their knack for limited editions and luxury now sees their products gracing the offices and homes of some of the coolest folks in the cannabis space. Some recent hits include the Terp Fetti sweatpants. They look like one of those delicious vanilla confetti cakes but are super comfy to match. We haven’t tried them out yet, but the new footholders they’re about to drop look pretty sick, too.  

Globmops Slurper Cleaner

Globmops are nothing new, the company has long been one of the two main titans of cleaning your quartz after a dab with a lab-grade cotton swab that’s spun a lot tighter than a Q-tip, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking up and leaving behind anything on your quartz banger. But now, Glopmops has a Slurper Cleaner design perfect for Terp Slurpers. They’re kind of a hassle to clean with the standard Globmops so a lot of people would dunk them in iso after every dab; this will make it a bit quicker. 

Wizard Trees Seeds

Courtesy of Wizard Trees

Wizard Trees is one of the most celebrated cannabis farms in California in recent years. While they had traditionally been known for making excellent selections in pheno hunts and then producing great flower, they’re now making an even deeper jump into genetics with their first seed drop ever. It was initially timed with the Spannabis festivities. The drop is available at WizardTreesGenetics.com and there are a lot of RS-11 crosses on the list that are easy to get hyped about. 

Free Seed Day

With the timing of this year’s 4/20 issue, we’re thrilled to be able to let you know you can get out to Free Seed Day this Saturday, May 15, at Masonic’s on Fairfax. The day is a celebration of all things Los Angeles cannabis genetics. We dove into its three-year evolution with Masonic Smoker last week. As the name entails, there will be plenty of free seeds to go around with bags ready for the first 1,000 people that come out. But even if they run out of the official bags, you can expect to not leave empty-handed if you really love seeds. 

Oni Flowers

Courtesy of One

The long-awaited first drop of flowers from the legendary Oni Seed Co hit California dispensary shelves in recent months. So far the flower is holding up, as more people around the state get access. The phenos were selected from a big pheno hunt, when you pop a lot of seeds, of Oni’s storied genetics collection. Two of our favorites so far have been the Zahiti Rainbow and Purple Something, the latter helping fill a bit of the purple void in the marketplace at the moment. 

Brothers Broadleaf

Florida-based Brothers Broadleaf has exploded onto the blunt scene over the past couple of years. We were originally put on to them by Adam Ill at Kushstock a few years ago. In the time since it was like watching a snowball roll down the hill with all of their varieties becoming a massive hit. Even the discount Dudz line made up of imperfect leaves is considered among the top of the game. You can use discount code “JimiD15” to get 15% off on Dudz. 

Preferred Gardens

As we highlighted in our explanation about what makes mixed-light cannabis awesome earlier this year, Preferred Gardens is among the most respected names in all of cannabis cultivation. This can be said for both indoor and mixed-light greenhouse operations. They’ve now taken the act on to Florida with more states on deck, but fear not, the weed here at home is still heat. It feels like it’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen something competitive with Preferred in that $35 an-eighth price bracket. 

L.A. Family Farms

L.A. Family Farms winning The Transbay Challenge

Known for both the quality of their flowers and concentrates, L.A. Family Farms continues to shine locally. The Rainbow Belts rosin the farm won Transbay with was some of our favorite hash of 2022 for sure. In addition to all the great product, L.A. Family Farms’ logo is a common sight at cool events around town, its team in attendance, or sponsoring stuff based in the more authentic wing of the Los Angeles cannabis industry. 

Doja Pak Coffin Candy

Doja Pak continues to revolutionize the way Los Angeles looks at Thursday night, as the strain premiers continue to be a massive hit with L.A.’s headiest. Their latest big new strain is a doozie. Coffin Candy is technically (Runtz x (Z x (Gelato 33 x 18 Coffins)). With Doja going all in on supporting the new flavor, we have high school expectations, given their epic run of curating hitters over the last few years. 

Runtz Wraps

Already Runtz up your life? No worries gang, now you can Runtz up your blunts, too. Runts’ new line of Dominican leaves for rolling blunts is awesome. First off, you get six in a pack. For most five packs of blunts, I end up tossing one. Since you never have to toss out the loose leaves, it basically works out to two free blunts in every pack. They are also very stretchy compared to most blunts and forgiving. 

EMERALD CUP SOLVENTLESS JUDGING 2023

The Emerald Cup is deep into its judging cycle for 2023 as organizers prepare for May’s Award ceremony and we’re back on the solventless team.

We’ve had great access to the contest since 2018. This is my fifth year judging one of the hash categories. While the state has seen some upstart contests making waves in recent years, the two decades of consistently bringing the heat still had The Emerald Cup firmly cemented as the top dog.  

Currently, the judges are meeting once a week to go over the various categories. Edible and flower judges have to stick to the most vigorous schedule. You can smoke all the hash in a day if you party hard enough, but between the hundreds of flower entries and the pace of your metabolism on edibles, it’s easy to understand why some of the categories are referred to as a full-time job. 

High Time’s Jon Cappetta noted on Twitter this past Sunday, it took him three weeks to finish all the flower samples. He also said it was a gauntlet that he was glad was over. 

For better or worse, the cup tends to prove as a launching point for a lot of ideas within the game. That goes from everything from new flavors to hardware. The ideology there is if you can pull it off out of the gate at the cup, the wind will be in your sails as you enter the market. 

But if you go all in for the cup without consistency in the product that hits the market after, the win isn’t worth much. There are plenty of brands that took the top prize in various categories that were never to be heard from again after the win. Maybe they just couldn’t scale up, maybe they entered white label they couldn’t grow themselves. 

L.A. Weekly is back on the solventless team to help judge some of the best concentrates, or hash, on the planet. The reason The Emerald Cup’s hash categories are home to some of the best terps from around the globe is the quality of material California extractors have access to, this goes for both the solventless and hydrocarbon categories.

Hash is one of the places we see the new ideas we mentioned before. Every year there are experimental consistencies, especially in the personal use category. This is one of the places where the most important lesson of all is terps over tech. If the material you are using to make the hash isn’t that good, you’ll never be able to compete with the top of the food chain, regardless of how pretty you’re able to make it look.

The kit I’m using to judge this year is essentially the same as last year with a few upgrades and additions. Most notable is the new hitman rig, it hits a bit smoother than the mini beaker I was using last year. Also, all the quartz I’m using to judge this year was made in Los Angeles by Alien Flower Monkey Glass. Puffco also released the Proxy since last year. It’s great for water hash, so that will help speed the process up for judging water hashes this year. 

I’ve focused on the rosin and personal use categories so far. I’m currently in The Canary Islands judging flowers at The Canary Islands Champions Cup and couldn’t bring the entries with me, so I wanted to make sure I had solid notes for the meeting I’ll do with the other judges while I’m here. When I get back to America, I’ll bust through the water hash entries in a day or two, since it’s the smallest category with about a dozen entries. On the other hand, Rosin has 42 entries and personal use has 13.

Most of the entries are either fresh-pressed or a cold-cured batter. The fresh-pressed is glorious looking and tastes bomb, but the market is moving more toward the shelf stability of cold-cured rosin. This could definitely be seen this year with the number of fresh-pressed entries way down, but a couple of them are still bangers. 

We’ll share all the winners with you next month when they are announced.