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Photo: Maria Oswalt

CURE ACT WOULD OPEN FED JOBS TO FORMER POT SMOKERS

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee moved forward with a bill that would expand federal employment opportunities for people who used cannabis at some point in their lives.

The Cannabis Users’ Restoration of Eligibility Act passed the committee in a 30-14 vote. It would allow federal agencies to consider applicants with a prior history of cannabis use when they are making employment and security clearance decisions. 

NORML, the nation’s oldest cannabis reform organization, praised the move by Congress. 

“Applicants for federal employment and security clearances should not be unfairly disqualified solely for their past cannabis use,” NORML’s Political Director Morgan Fox said. “While it is disappointing that the committee did not see fit to stop federal agencies from discriminating against those responsible adults and patients who are current consumers of cannabis, this legislation will nonetheless open up new opportunities to millions of Americans, increase the talent pool available to federal employers, and ultimately make our country safer.”

Fox went on to note many agencies are already reducing the impact cannabis use has on their hiring processes. 

“The Office of Personnel Management has similarly recommended that all federal agencies limit the window of time during which one’s past cannabis use is considered for denial of employment,” Fox said. “And a growing number of states are taking steps to protect the employment rights of responsible cannabis consumers and increase the opportunities available to them. Congress should do the same, and this overwhelming bipartisan vote today shows that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are moving in the right direction.”

After the FBI loosened its policy on marijuana smokers in the summer of 2021, it famously said that smoking marijuana more than 24 times would disqualify potential candidates. As Marijuana Moment noted at the time, there was no explanation of how the FBI got to that number. Use prior to someone’s 18th birthday would not disqualify them, so you had to have broken the law 24 times as an adult. 

The concept of opening the door for more people with a history of cannabis use is nothing new, but a decade ago in the months after Colorado and Washington kicked off our grand legalization experiment, it was a little “too soon” for some lawmakers. Then FBI Director James Comey joked to Congress that the amount of people who smoke weed these days is making the hiring process a bit trickier for the nation’s chief law enforcement agency, 

“I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Comey said at the time according to The Wall Street Journal. 

While still a senator, Jeff Sessions got mad at Comey claiming his words could be construed as something supportive of cannabis use. Comey clapped back that was certainly not the case, but his hiring reality, and he was determined to not lose his sense of humor regardless of how serious a job it is to run the FBI. 

Gallup noted in 2021 nearly half of all Americans have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives. It seems like preventing half the population from getting a government job is absolutely madness. As more and more states move forward with legalization, it will become even more unsustainable to prevent our best and brightest from serving their country in some capacity because they smoked a little bit of cannabis. 

Hopefully, the CURE Act will continue on its path through Congress and onto the president’s desk, to give these people a shot at doing whatever they see fit in service to the rest of us. 

MAVEN GENETICS ONE OF LA’S TOP DOGS AT EMERALD CUP

L.A.’s Maven Genetics became one of the state’s premier cannabis companies two weekends ago at The Emerald Cup with a top-five finish for French Laundry. 

While Maven’s rise around the state in recent years has been quick, this is the biggest accolade yet for the longtime OG cultivators (Kush and metaphorically) that transitioned to the recreational side of things at the dawn of the legal era. Even before the big win, the company found itself in roughly 400 shops at any given time.

XXX, Maven’s favorite OG these days.

We sat down with Maven’s cofounder and president Mike Corvington to talk about the win and their experiences transitioning to a fully vertically integrated company locally that still grows in some of its legacy gardens, distributes its own product and sells its cannabis through two storefronts on top of its hundreds-long client list. 

“Los Angeles is a beast man,” Corvington told L.A. Weekly. “From the regulatory compliance things to L.A. in general, it’s good for us because it’s home. This is where we’re from, we’re very comfortable with the situation as a whole. The industry is going through a lot of bullshit, as it has for a long time. I don’t think that’s just related to Los Angeles. I think that’s probably California as a whole. But, you know, all in all, L.A. is our home man,  our backyard. This is where we’ve been rocking for a long time.”

Corvington isn’t kidding. He admits up until a few years ago, they barely had to leave the L.A. bubble at all, as they pumped out awesome OGs for 15 years straight without a thought to creating what is now one of the widest lineups in the state. We asked Corvington if it was fair to call most of their cultivation and wider cannabis careers L.A.-centric?

“Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we’ve really started pushing up in the NorCal territories and distributing up there probably two years ago,” Corvington said. “We went pretty heavy on that first group, first few years in transition from medical to rec market. We get out and just kind of grew up grassroots. Everything we’ve done has been grassroots where we’re self-funded, we haven’t taken on any capital even to this day. I’m not trying to push into the market more than what is being asked of us. So we’re just kind of doing our thing and it’s been working successfully. We’re still here.”

Blue Agape

But the “still here” part hasn’t always been easy. As for many cultivators, one of Maven’s main jobs is to get the cash for the flower they pump into the marketplace. As with many of their peers on the cultivation side of things, that’s often proven easier said than done.

Over the last few years Maven’s been able to hone in on the problem accounts and who is actually going to pay them. Making sure the latter always has flower flowing their way is critical. 

“You, unfortunately, have to weed out people that just don’t handle their shit professionally,” Corvington noted. “And there’s a lot of people who just kind of are trapped in old ways and are having a difficult time evolving with things as they moved forward. But paying your bills is just kind of number one.”

One of the things Maven has done during these times is try to be as accommodating as possible to the folks they’re working with. They’d rather constantly restock you with the freshest flower possible rather than have something sit there that is going to degrade the consumer experience and the shop isn’t going to be able to make the payment terms in the original time frame. 

“We tell people we’ll come to deliver to you every day,” Corvington emphasized. “We don’t want to sell you anything that even has a potential opportunity to get old. We will happily, no charge, come to drop you fresh packs all the time. So we kind of scaled-down people’s orders a lot of times because sometimes these buyers don’t understand their own market or demographic.”

Kiwi Sorbet

Maven Genetics is available all over California. 

WINTER MIXED-LIGHT CANNABIS HARVESTS ARE SPECIAL

California’s winter-grown mixed-light cannabis is among the best flowers of the year, period. 

The crop falls into two categories. The light-assisted and light-deprivation grown. The first is self-explanatory. The second is the term for farmers controlling the natural light cycle by mechanical means. Most of the stuff growing right now is light-assisted, but there are still a few people without power producing some really flavorful weed up north this time of year. 

The light-deprivation stuff is shortened to deps for simplicity. A lot of dep farmers take the heart of the winter off and still get in three runs a year. But those perpetual light-assisted grows that use the power of the sun year-round are able to just perpetually pump out whatever number of tables on their fixed 52-week schedule. Barring the perils of mother nature, there are farmers using the sun and a little extra light to help through the rainy days and shorter ones are producing crazy high-end cannabis. 

One of the most respected owner-operators in the light-assisted space is David Polley of Preferred Gardens — a lot of people have him with a seat at the table when discussing not only who is growing the best mixed-light cannabis in California, but also in Florida. 

Polley explained that you can run some nice deps in the winter with enough natural light, but the production isn’t there. 

“An expert with Winter Deps would usually only grow cannabis for hash in the winter,” Polley told L.A. Weekly. “Flower production is very limited, but the cannabinoid, terpenes and flavonoids are actually at an all-time high. So fresh frozen (material frozen immediately at harvest for processing) will put out some A1 rosin.” 

Polley explained the basics of his process that’s a bit more commercially viable this time of year. Specifically, light-assisted greenhouses that have climate control and you utilize artificial lighting to increase the daily light integral to increase production during the shorter winter months.

Polley in the garden.

“In Cali, that usually starts in September and ends in March or April,” Polley said, “In my biased opinion, the artificial light mixed with the natural kiss from the sun creates the best medicinal cannabis on the planet. Lab tests show cannabinoids and terpenes much higher under these practices. I love the effects from good light-assisted cannabis.”

Polley further explained that the harness of the California sun during the summer is just too much for all the best stuff in the resins that have developed on the plant. 

“Like it’s extreme during the summer in California and the light levels are through the roof,” Polley said, “so I tried to shade my greenhouses more in the summer than I would anytime to get less light and that’s how you get more of like an exotic flavor.”

He argues what’s going on in the industry right now is people are just trying to pump these plants with so much light intensity via LEDs and whatever else the hottest new tech is.

“They’re just slamming them so they could get four pounds a light, just production, production,” Polley said in distaste. “But, that’s why the quality of more than half of the cultivators is just not it. It’s not what we want because they’re just focused on production.”

Photo courtesy of Preferred Gardens

Polley pointed to great genetics as a key to the flame as he prepares to enter the Arizona market, already having crushed it in two other states. 

“I’m pheno hunting 50 seeds every week. I’ve been doing that for eight-plus years,” Polley said. “What’s crazy is that’s 200 seeds a month and we only come out with three to five winners a year.”

Mendoja Farms is another of the state’s top light-assisted producers. After going hard with four big runs in 2022, owner Justin Wilson is taking a month off from flowering and just maintaining his nursery stock before he revs back up next month. 

As for the quality of the winter products, Wilson argues a lot of it is temperature and how physically far we are from the sun. 

Photo Courtesy of Mendoja Farms

“The winter run seems to have twice the amount of trichomes on them,” Wilson told L.A. Weekly. “I feel that it has to do with just the distance of the sun, how far it is from us, and having to warm the rooms up with propane heat.“

Wilson believes the stress on the plants from too much heat is far more stressful on the plants than on some chilly nights. 

“They just seem to like the cold a little bit better. I wouldn’t say cold. I would say that the colder temperatures where I’m at in Covelo and not dealing with strenuous heat that we do have here during the summer,” Wilson said. 

We asked Wilson if it’s easier to get away from market trends this time of year since the more exotic flavors have a good shot at being so full-flavored.

“Yes, it is for sure,” Wilson replied. “I think you can play around more in the winter because you’re gonna have the flavors coming out more in everything. So you don’t have to stick to those saying name-brand stuff and what everybody else wants. That’s when I kind of do like my trial runs.”

Wilson pointed to the fact that a lot of people do their pheno hunt closer to the middle of the year. It’s a double-edged sword. Those mid-year hunts may not get the same terpene levels as the winter, but they’re being stress-tested by the summer heat through the hunt. Wilson has found stuff that was awesome in the winter, but not able to deal with the heat of summer.

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.”

CANARY CHAMPIONS CUP DELIVERS THE HEAT

The Canary Islands continue to make their mark on the cannabis industry with the volcanic island chain now home to hundreds of dispensaries.

One of the fastest-growing cannabis contests on the planet also calls the islands home. 

Tenerife, where we spent our adventure, popped a lot more than our last visit. It seemed like the social clubs were starting to permeate more into the tourist-heavy parts of the area. Weed Island was the best view we’ve ever seen somewhere you can buy weed. As you sit down to rollup on the balcony at the shop, you are greeted by a stunning seascape.

Canary Champions Cup Flower Entries

Canary Social Club Culture

All the clubs come in various formats. They range from nightclub-style venues that can hold hundreds of people to more traditional Dutch-style coffee shops. These facilities continue to get nicer and nicer. This is because of how safe people feel spending cash to make their shop look nice. One club owner told me they spent six figures over the last few months ahead of its Grand Opening on 4/20.

California shops are currently facing some of their darkest days ever, Tenerife is another story. One club owner told us he’d never heard of a social club closing down because sales were bad. You’d think Tenerife might be hitting capacity for how many clubs the ecosystem can support, but each one we walked into was packed. Part of the reason for everyone’s success is the fact these tourists need somewhere to burn.    

A rosin pressing demo at one of the after parties.

Why do they need somewhere to smoke? Because the rules on the island are so strict about cannabis possession and consumption. It’s technically against the law to bring it with you outside of the club and the police are hardcore. I was out raging with some locals last week and walking behind a bar on the boardwalk on one of the island’s popular beaches last week when five cops rolled on me. It was the most intense search I’ve experienced since I came back from Canada in ‘08 and declared my bong at the Vermont border. They went through my pockets and backpack, asking me questions. As they talked to me, they opened every bag I had in my backpack and asked me why I had a bunch of empties. I told them souvenirs. Eventually, they pulled out one of the TrapLoc bags I had with Grove Bags; once they saw my picture on the bag, there was a shocking attitude change from the cops. They thanked me for smoking all my cannabis inside clubs and not taking it outside.

And boy, did I. I smoked a ton of cannabis as I celebrated my first 4/20 there. The whole thing is an extra joke since the date starts with days in Europe and reads 20/4/2023. But everyone was certainly willing to pretend that 4/20 was a thing there. 

Judging Flower at The Canary Champions Cup

One of my main responsibilities for the week was judging flowers at the sophomore installment of The Canary Islands Champions Cup. There ended up being over 50 samples of flower across the indoor and outdoor categories. The top flower in the contest mostly stood well above the competition. Big Bang Creations took third prize in indoor with Monkey Berries. RTZ was the first runner-up with Zowah. Fresh Farm’s topped the podium with their White Gold.

The Hash is Awesome

Finally, it’s really important to note how advanced the hash culture on the island,. There is a solid argument to be made that the quality of the concentrates there are better than what you’ll see in most U.S.  states for sure. Hash culture has always been a thing there given it’s proximity to Morrocco, but the latest tech has made its way to the island with avengance. Hanami Gardens, who won the cup, could hold his own against any hash makers in the world without a doubt. His rosin was explosive terps when you open the jar and he even chopped up some piatella, U.S. headie boys favorite new solventless trend!

We’ll have more coverage from my travels in the weeks ahead.

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.