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…
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.
The nearly decade-long battle to get American veterans access to medical cannabis continued on Capitol Hill this week.
With the exception of seeing little kids with extreme forms of epilepsy like Dravet’s Syndrome, nothing went further in changing the national conversation around medical cannabis than supporting vets with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This movement was a direct result of first-hand experiences with medical cannabis safety and efficacy when it came to PTSD, as more veterans continue to take their own lives. In its own 2017 study on cannabis and PTSD, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) noted over one-third of patients seeking cannabis for medical purposes list PTSD as the primary reason for the request, and 15% of VA patients at outpatient clinics are using medical cannabis in the last six months.
Cannabis Caucus founder Rep. Earl Blumenauer picked the fight up this week, to get vets access to cannabis. He originally started pushing the effort in 2014. In 2016, things looked great, but the language ended up getting stripped in final negotiations by then-Illinois Senator Mark Kirk.
At the time, Blumenauer noted, “It’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing that despite broad bipartisan, bicameral support, a handful of out-of-touch lawmakers put politics over the well-being of America’s wounded warriors. Our veterans deserve better. We will continue to seek every opportunity to make sure they have fair and equal treatment and the ability to consult with, and seek a recommendation from, their personal VA physician about medical marijuana.”
But things are looking up. On Wednesday, Blumenauer passed an amendment to end the VA’s prohibition on providers assisting veterans in accessing state-legal medical cannabis. Not only did it pass, it passed unanimously in a voice vote. In this heavily divided Congress, surely that is a reasonable sign of how bipartisan supporting veterans is.
After the amendment passed on Wednesday, Blumenauer told L.A. Weekly,
“Veterans in Oregon and across the country have shared with me how medical cannabis has literally saved their lives. It is a gross injustice that the VA continues to prohibit its providers from helping veterans access medical cannabis. My amendment with Brian Mast would finally allow the VA to help veterans complete forms in compliance with state-legal cannabis programs, allowing them to access a far less addictive alternative to opioids in managing PTSD, anxiety, depression, and other chronic conditions.”
Blumenauer also came out against the VA’s move to strongly advocate against medical cannabis as a treatment for PTSD this week. This recommendation came despite the VA noting some participants from its own focus groups, “spoke about the benefits of newer pharmacologic treatments (e.g., ketamine) and were interested in exploring other newer treatments such as psilocybin, cannabis, LSD, and other psychedelics.”
The VA cited that same 2017 study we mentioned before when it came out strongly against using cannabis for PTSD. But that study’s own authors noted there are very few methodologically rigorous studies examining the effects of cannabis in patients with PTSD.
“We found only two observational studies, which suggest that cannabis is potentially associated with neutral effects on PTSD or depression symptom severity, and employment status, and negative effects in terms of violent behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation,” the authors noted in their findings. “However, the strength of evidence is rated as insufficient due to the potential for bias in the two included studies in this review and the small number of controlled studies reporting data on benefits and harms of cannabis for treating PTSD symptoms.”
So how can something that notes how limited the information being used is be the ethos for the VA’s prohibition on medical cannabis for PTSD? And with all the discussion around vets and cannabis, how is this still what they are citing in the debate all these years later? How has the VA not pushed this research further in that time period?
In a letter to the VA’s leadership, Blunenauer said, “The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense have a long history of claiming the best interest of our veterans and servicemembers only to deny the reality of medical marijuana as a key treatment option for those impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Blumenauer went on to note the updated June 2023 VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of PTSD perpetuates this misguided denial of services to our nation’s veterans.
“For decades, I have heard from veterans across the country that medical cannabis has been a life-saving treatment for PTSD,” Blumensauer told the VA and DOD leadership. “I urge you to reconsider the antiquated and insufficient recommendation against the use of cannabis or cannabis derivatives in treating patients with PTSD.”
Etienne Fontan of Berkeley Patients Group and Veterans Action Council was pleased with Blumenauer’s success.
“We want to thank Blumeneur and the Cannabis Caucus for keeping true to their words to help veterans gain cannabis access via the VA. Many politicians talk a lot of talk, but very few walk the line like they have for us. We are grateful for their continued support on this issue,” Fontan told L.A. Weekly, “This has been the work of many hands and organizations to get us to this point, and we are not across the line yet. This is a significant first step in the direction that many veterans want to see nationwide. It must still get through the House, and the President must sign it, and we will remain skeptical until the process plays out fully.”
Fontan closed by noting activists have been disappointed too many times in the past with promises that never see fruition.
SB-58 Controlled substances: decriminalization of certain hallucinogenic substances.
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2023–2024 REGULAR SESSION
SENATE BILL
NO. 58
Introduced by Senator Wiener (Principal coauthor: Assembly Member Kalra) (Coauthors: Senators Becker, Bradford, Newman, Skinner, and Smallwood-Cuevas) (Coauthors: Assembly Members Bryan, Haney, Jackson, Lee, Low, Lowenthal, Rendon, Wicks, and Wilson)
December 16, 2022
An act to amend Sections 11054, 11350, 11364, 11364.7, 11365, 11377, 11379, 11382, and 11550 of, to add Sections 11350.1 and 11377.1 to, to add and repeal Section 11214 of, and to repeal Section 11999 of, the Health and Safety Code, relating to controlled substances.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST
SB 58, Wiener. Controlled substances: decriminalization of certain hallucinogenic substances.
(1) Existing law categorizes certain drugs and other substances as controlled substances and prohibits various actions related to those substances, including their manufacture, transportation, sale, possession, and ingestion.
This bill would, on and after January 1, 2025, make lawful the possession, preparation, obtaining, or transportation of, specified quantities of psilocybin, psilocyn, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and mescaline, for personal use, as defined, by and with persons 21 years of age or older. The bill would provide penalties for possession of these substances on school grounds, or possession by, or transferring to, persons under 21 years of age.
The bill would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to convene a workgroup to study and make recommendations on the establishment of a framework governing the therapeutic use, including facilitated or supported use, of those substances. The bill would require that workgroup to send a report to the Legislature containing those recommendations on or before January 1, 2025.
(2) Existing law prohibits the cultivation, transfer, or transportation, as specified, of any spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other materials that contain psilocybin or psilocyn.
This bill would, on and after January 1, 2025, make lawful the cultivation or transportation of specified quantities of spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other materials that contain psilocybin or psilocyn for personal use, as defined, by and with persons 21 years of age or older.
(3) Existing law prohibits the possession of drug paraphernalia, as defined.
This bill would exempt from this prohibition, paraphernalia related, as specified, to these specific substances. The bill would also exempt from the prohibition items used for the testing and analysis of controlled substances.
(4) Existing law states the intent of the Legislature that the messages and information provided by various state drug and alcohol programs promote no unlawful use of any drugs or alcohol.
This bill would repeal those provisions.
(5) By eliminating and changing the elements of existing crimes and creating new offenses, and by requiring new duties of local prosecutors, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that with regard to certain mandates no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
With regard to any other mandates, this bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs so mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
(6) This bill would state that its provisions are severable.
DIGEST KEY
Vote: majority Appropriation: no Fiscal Committee: yes Local Program: yes
BILL TEXT
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) For over fifty years, the War on Drugs has caused overwhelming financial and societal costs. The current United States drug control scheme does not reflect a modern understanding of the incentives, economics, or impacts of substance use, nor does it accurately reflect the risks or potential therapeutic benefits of many presently illicit substances.
(b) Drug prohibition has failed to deter drug use, and it has increased its danger. Criminalization of drug use has created an underground market in which difficult-to-verify dosages and the presence of adulterants increase the risks of illicit drugs.
(c) Lack of honest, evidence-based drug education has paved the way for decades of stigma and misinformation, which have contributed to increasing the dangers of drug use.
(d) Encouraging access to harm reduction tools like fentanyl test strips, drug-checking kits, gas chromatography mass spectrometry machines, and milligram scales increases public health and safety by allowing users to make more accurate decisions about their personal use.
(e) Clinical research demonstrates the potential use of some psychedelic compounds, in conjunction with therapy, for the treatment of mental health, such as end-of-life anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and substance use disorders. Observational evidence and traditional uses of psychedelic plants and fungi demonstrate how ceremony and community are utilized to enhance the outcomes and increase the safety of spiritual practice, emotional healing, and responsible personal growth.
(f) Proposition 122 in Colorado, which passed in November 2022, with a 53 percent vote of the state population, will decriminalize the noncommercial, personal possession of psychedelic plants and fungi and establish a regulated therapy system to provide people with therapeutic access to psychedelic plants and fungi.
(g) Measure 109 in Oregon, which passed in November 2020, with a 56 percent vote of the state population, will establish a regulated psilocybin therapy system in Oregon to provide people therapeutic access to psilocybin.
(h) Measure 110 in Oregon, which passed in November 2020, with a 58 percent vote of the state population, decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs, and almost 20 countries around the world including Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Spain, have expressly or effectively decriminalized the personal use of illicit substances.
(i) The City Councils of the City of Oakland and the City of Santa Cruz and the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco have all passed resolutions deprioritizing the enforcement of the possession, use, and propagation of psychedelic plants and fungi, effectively decriminalizing in those cities. Since June 2019, the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Cities of Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts have all decriminalized the possession, use, and propagation of psychedelic plants and fungi at the local level. In 2020, Washington, D.C., passed Initiative 81 to decriminalize and deprioritize the possession and use of psychedelic plants and fungi with 76 percent voter approval.
(j) This act will decriminalize the noncommercial, personal use of specified controlled substances. This provision would take effect on January 1, 2025. This act further decriminalizes the use of specified controlled substances for the purpose of group community-based healing, including facilitated and supported use, risk reduction, and other related services, but delays implementation of this provision until a framework for the therapeutic use, which would include community-based healing, facilitated and supported use, risk reduction, and other related services, of the specified controlled substances is developed and adopted. This bill lays the groundwork for California to develop a therapeutic access program for psychedelic plants and fungi.
(k) These changes in law will not affect any restrictions on the driving or operation of a vehicle while impaired, or an employer’s ability to restrict the use of controlled substances by its employees, or affect the legal standard for negligence.
(l) Peyote is specifically excluded from the list of substances to be decriminalized, and any cultivation, harvest, extraction, tincture or other product manufactured or derived therefrom, because of the nearly endangered status of the peyote plant and the special significance peyote holds in Native American spirituality. Section 11363 of the Health and Safety Code, which makes it a crime in California to cultivate, harvest, dry, or process any plant of the genus Lophophora, also known as Peyote, is not amended or repealed.
(m) The State of California fully respects and supports the continued Native American possession and use of peyote under federal law, Section 1996a of Title 42 of the United States Code, understanding that Native Americans in the United States were persecuted and prosecuted for their ceremonial practices and use of peyote for more than a century and had to fight numerous legal and political battles to achieve the current protected status, and the enactment of this legislation does not intend to undermine explicitly or implicitly that status.
SEC. 2.
Section 11054 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11054.
(a) The controlled substances listed in this section are included in Schedule I.
(b) Opiates. Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any of the following opiates, including their isomers, esters, ethers, salts, and salts of isomers, esters, and ethers whenever the existence of those isomers, esters, ethers, and salts is possible within the specific chemical designation:
(1) Acetylmethadol.
(2) Allylprodine.
(3) Alphacetylmethadol (except levoalphacetylmethadol, also known as levo-alpha-acetylmethadol, levomethadyl acetate, or LAAM).
(4) Alphameprodine.
(5) Alphamethadol.
(6) Benzethidine.
(7) Betacetylmethadol.
(8) Betameprodine.
(9) Betamethadol.
(10) Betaprodine.
(11) Clonitazene.
(12) Dextromoramide.
(13) Diampromide.
(14) Diethylthiambutene.
(15) Difenoxin.
(16) Dimenoxadol.
(17) Dimepheptanol.
(18) Dimethylthiambutene.
(19) Dioxaphetyl butyrate.
(20) Dipipanone.
(21) Ethylmethylthiambutene.
(22) Etonitazene.
(23) Etoxeridine.
(24) Furethidine.
(25) Hydroxypethidine.
(26) Ketobemidone.
(27) Levomoramide.
(28) Levophenacylmorphan.
(29) Morpheridine.
(30) Noracymethadol.
(31) Norlevorphanol.
(32) Normethadone.
(33) Norpipanone.
(34) Phenadoxone.
(35) Phenampromide.
(36) Phenomorphan.
(37) Phenoperidine.
(38) Piritramide.
(39) Proheptazine.
(40) Properidine.
(41) Propiram.
(42) Racemoramide.
(43) Tilidine.
(44) Trimeperidine.
(45) Any substance that contains any quantity of acetylfentanyl (N-[1-phenethyl-4-piperidinyl] acetanilide) or a derivative thereof.
(46) Any substance that contains any quantity of the thiophene analog of acetylfentanyl (N-[1-[2-(2-thienyl)ethyl]-4-piperidinyl] acetanilide) or a derivative thereof.
(c) Opium derivatives. Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any of the following opium derivatives, its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of those salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation:
(1) Acetorphine.
(2) Acetyldihydrocodeine.
(3) Benzylmorphine.
(4) Codeine methylbromide.
(5) Codeine-N-Oxide.
(6) Cyprenorphine.
(7) Desomorphine.
(8) Dihydromorphine.
(9) Drotebanol.
(10) Etorphine (except hydrochloride salt).
(11) Heroin.
(12) Hydromorphinol.
(13) Methyldesorphine.
(14) Methyldihydromorphine.
(15) Morphine methylbromide.
(16) Morphine methylsulfonate.
(17) Morphine-N-Oxide.
(18) Myrophine.
(19) Nicocodeine.
(20) Nicomorphine.
(21) Normorphine.
(22) Pholcodine.
(23) Thebacon.
(d) Hallucinogenic substances. Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation that contains any quantity of the following hallucinogenic substances, or that contains any of its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of those salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation (for purposes of this subdivision only, the term “isomer” includes the optical, position, and geometric isomers):
(1) 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxy-amphetamine—Some trade or other names: 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxy-alpha-methylphenethylamine; 4-bromo-2,5-DMA.
(2) 2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine—Some trade or other names: 2,5-dimethoxy-alpha-methylphenethylamine; 2,5-DMA.
(3) 4-methoxyamphetamine—Some trade or other names: 4-methoxy-alpha-methylphenethylamine, paramethoxyamphetamine, PMA.
(4) 5-methoxy-3,4-methylenedioxy-amphetamine.
(5) 4-methyl-2,5-dimethoxy-amphetamine—Some trade or other names: 4-methyl-2,5-dimethoxy-alpha-methylphenethylamine; “DOM”; and “STP.”
(6) 3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine.
(7) 3,4,5-trimethoxy amphetamine.
(8) Bufotenine—Some trade or other names: 3-(beta-dimethylaminoethyl)-5-hydroxyindole; 3-(2-dimethylaminoethyl)-5 indolol; N,N-dimethylserolonin, 5-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine; mappine.
(9) Diethyltryptamine—Some trade or other names: N,N-Diethyltryptamine; DET.
(10) Dimethyltryptamine—Some trade or other names: DMT.
(11) Ibogaine—Some trade or other names: 7-Ethyl-6,6beta, 7,8,9,10,12,13-octahydro-2-methoxy-6,9-methano-5H-pyrido [1’,2’:1,2] azepino [5,4-b] indole; Tabernantheiboga.
(12) Lysergic acid diethylamide.
(13) Cannabis.
(14) Mescaline, derived from plants presently classified botanically in the Echinopsis or Trichocereus genus of cacti, including, without limitation, the Bolivian Torch Cactus, San Pedro Cactus, or Peruvian Torch Cactus, but not including mescaline derived from any plant described in paragraph (15).
(15) Peyote—Meaning all parts of the plant presently classified botanically as Lophophora williamsii Lemaire, whether growing or not, the seeds thereof, any extract from any part of the plant, and every compound, manufacture, salts, derivative, mixture, or preparation of the plant, its seeds or extracts (interprets 21 U.S.C. Sec. 812(c), Schedule 1(c)(12)).
(16) N-ethyl-3-piperidyl benzilate.
(17) N-methyl-3-piperidyl benzilate.
(18) Psilocybin.
(19) Psilocyn.
(20) Tetrahydrocannabinols. Synthetic equivalents of the substances contained in the plant, or in the resinous extractives of Cannabis, sp. and/or synthetic substances, derivatives, and their isomers with similar chemical structure and pharmacological activity such as the following: delta 1 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and their optical isomers; delta 6 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and their optical isomers; delta 3,4 cis or trans tetrahydrocannabinol, and its optical isomers.
Because nomenclature of these substances is not internationally standardized, compounds of these structures, regardless of numerical designation of atomic positions covered.
(21) Ethylamine analog of phencyclidine—Some trade or other names: N-ethyl-1-phenylcyclohexylamine, (1-phenylcyclohexyl) ethylamine, N-(1-phenylcyclohexyl) ethylamine, cyclohexamine, PCE.
(22) Pyrrolidine analog of phencyclidine—Some trade or other names: 1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)-pyrrolidine, PCP, PHP.
(23) Thiophene analog of phencyclidine—Some trade or other names: 1-[1-(2 thienyl)-cyclohexyl]-piperidine, 2-thienyl analog of phencyclidine, TPCP, TCP.
(e) Depressants. Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation that contains any quantity of the following substances having a depressant effect on the central nervous system, including its salts, isomers, and salts of isomers whenever the existence of those salts, isomers, and salts of isomers is possible within the specific chemical designation:
(1) Mecloqualone.
(2) Methaqualone.
(3) Gamma hydroxybutyric acid (also known by other names such as GHB; gamma hydroxy butyrate; 4-hydroxybutyrate; 4-hydroxybutanoic acid; sodium oxybate; sodium oxybutyrate), including its immediate precursors, isomers, esters, ethers, salts, and salts of isomers, esters, and ethers, including, but not limited to, gammabutyrolactone, for which an application has not been approved under Section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. Sec. 355).
(f) Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation that contains any quantity of the following substances having a stimulant effect on the central nervous system, including its isomers:
(1) Cocaine base.
(2) Fenethylline, including its salts.
(3) N-Ethylamphetamine, including its salts.
SEC. 3.
Section 11214 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
11214.
(a) The California Health and Human Services Agency shall convene a workgroup to study and make recommendations on the establishment of a framework governing the therapeutic use, including facilitated or supported use, as defined in paragraph (2) of subdivision (g) of Section 11350.1 and paragraph (2) of subdivision (g) of Section 11377.1, of mescaline, ibogaine, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and psilocyn or psilocybin.
(b) The Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency or their designee shall be the chairperson of the workgroup.
(c) The workgroup shall include, but not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) Persons with expertise in psychedelic therapy, medicine and public health, drug policy, harm reduction, and youth drug education.
(2) Law enforcement and emergency medical services or fire service first responders.
(3) People with experience with the traditional indigenous use of psychedelic substances, including representatives from the National Council of the Native American Church and Indian tribes in California.
(4) Veterans groups.
(5) University researchers with expertise in psychedelics.
(6) Research scientists with expertise in clinical studies and drug approval process under the federal Food and Drug Administration.
(7) Individuals from other states that have decriminalized psychedelics and established regulatory frameworks for the lawful use of psychedelics.
(d) The workgroup shall study subjects, including, but not limited to, all of the following:
(1) Research on the safety and efficacy of using each of the controlled substances specified in subdivision (a) in a therapeutic setting for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health conditions.
(2) Long-term impact of supervised psychedelic or dissociative drug use with seeking and misusing other substances, including alcohol, cannabis, illicit substances, and unregulated psychedelic or dissociative drugs.
(3) Perceptions of harm of psychedelic or dissociative drugs following enactment of decriminalization both on a personal use and therapeutic use level.
(4) Impact of different regulatory frameworks on different health outcomes among vulnerable populations, including youth, people with substance use disorders, and minority or disenfranchised groups.
(5) Regulated use models for the controlled substances specified in subdivision (a) from other jurisdictions.
(6) Content and scope of educational campaigns that have proven effective in accurate public health approaches regarding use, effect, and risk reduction for the substances specified in subdivision (a), including, but not limited to, public service announcements, educational curricula, appropriate crisis response, and appropriate training for first responders and multiresponders, including law enforcement, emergency medical services, fire service, and unarmed coresponder units.
(7) Policies for minimizing use-related risks, including information related to appropriate use and impacts of detrimental substance use.
(8) Appropriate frameworks to govern the therapeutic use of controlled substances, including qualifications and training for therapists or facilitators.
(e) The workgroup shall develop policy recommendations regarding, but not limited to, all of the following:
(1) Development of a statewide program or programs for the training of individuals providing therapeutic psychedelic services in therapeutic settings, including facilitated and supported use settings.
(2) Development of a statewide credentialing process for individuals providing therapeutic psychedelic services in therapeutic settings, including facilitated or supported use settings.
(3) The content and scope of educational campaigns and accurate public health approaches regarding use, effect, risk reduction, and safety for the substances specified in subdivision (a).
(4) Policies for minimizing use-related risks, including information related to appropriate use and impacts of detrimental substance use.
(5) Policies for the regulation of controlled substances specified in subdivision (a), including responsible marketing, product safety, and cultural responsibility.
(6) Policies for the safe and equitable production, access, use, and delivery of the controlled substances specified in subdivision (a).
(f) Subsequent to the Legislature’s adoption of a framework governing therapeutic use of the substances described in subdivision (a), it is the intent of the Legislature that the transfer of a substance described in subdivision (a), without financial gain, in the context of therapeutic use, which includes facilitated or supported use, be decriminalized.
(g) As used in this section, “facilitated or supported use” means the supervised or assisted personal use of a substance described in subdivision (a) by an individual or group of persons 21 years of age or older, or the assisting or supervising of such persons in such use, within the context of spiritual guidance, community-based healing, or related services.
(h) (1) On or before January 1, 2025, the workgroup shall submit a report to the Legislature detailing its findings and recommendations.
(2) A report to be submitted pursuant to this subdivision shall be submitted in compliance with Section 9795 of the Government Code.
(i) This section shall remain in effect until January 1, 2026, and as of that date is repealed.
SEC. 4.
Section 11350 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11350.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this division, every person who possesses (1) any controlled substance specified in subdivision (b), (c), (e), or paragraph (1) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, specified in paragraph (15) or (20) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, or specified in subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 11055, or specified in subdivision (h) of Section 11056, or (2) any controlled substance classified in Schedule III, IV, or V that is a narcotic drug, unless upon the written prescription of a physician, dentist, podiatrist, or veterinarian licensed to practice in this state, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, except that such person shall instead be punished pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code if that person has one or more prior convictions for an offense specified in clause (iv) of subparagraph (C) of paragraph (2) of subdivision (e) of Section 667 of the Penal Code or for an offense requiring registration pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 290 of the Penal Code.
(b) Except as otherwise provided in this division, whenever a person who possesses any of the controlled substances specified in subdivision (a), the judge may, in addition to any punishment provided for pursuant to subdivision (a), assess against that person a fine not to exceed seventy dollars ($70) with proceeds of this fine to be used in accordance with Section 1463.23 of the Penal Code. The court shall, however, take into consideration the defendant’s ability to pay, and no defendant shall be denied probation because of their inability to pay the fine permitted under this subdivision.
(c) Except in unusual cases in which it would not serve the interest of justice to do so, whenever a court grants probation pursuant to a felony conviction under this section, in addition to any other conditions of probation that may be imposed, the following conditions of probation shall be ordered:
(1) For a first offense under this section, a fine of at least one thousand dollars ($1,000) or community service.
(2) For a second or subsequent offense under this section, a fine of at least two thousand dollars ($2,000) or community service.
(3) If a defendant does not have the ability to pay the minimum fines specified in paragraphs (1) and (2), community service shall be ordered in lieu of the fine.
(d) It is not unlawful for a person other than the prescription holder to possess a controlled substance described in subdivision (a) if both of the following apply:
(1) The possession of the controlled substance is at the direction or with the express authorization of the prescription holder.
(2) The sole intent of the possessor is to deliver the prescription to the prescription holder for its prescribed use or to discard the substance in a lawful manner.
(e) This section does not permit the use of a controlled substance by a person other than the prescription holder or permit the distribution or sale of a controlled substance that is otherwise inconsistent with the prescription.
SEC. 5.
Section 11350.1 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
11350.1.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in subdivisions (b), (c), (d), and (e) of this section and notwithstanding any other law, all of the following shall be lawful for a natural person 21 years of age or older and shall not be a violation of state or local law:
(1) The possession, preparation, obtaining, or transportation, of no more than the allowable amount of mescaline, as described in paragraph (14) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, for personal use.
(2) The ingesting of mescaline.
(3) The possession, planting, cultivating, harvesting, or preparation of plants capable of producing mescaline, except for the plant presently classified botanically as Lophophora williamsii Lemaire, on property owned or controlled by a person, for the purposes described in this subdivision by that person, and possession of any product produced by those plants.
(b) Possession of mescaline by a person 21 years of age or over on the grounds of any public or private elementary, vocational, junior high, or high school, during hours that the school is open for classes or school-related programs, or at any time when minors are using the facility is punishable as a misdemeanor.
(c) (1) A person who knowingly gives away or administers mescaline to a person who is under 18 years of age in violation of law shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period of not more than six months or by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars ($500), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code.
(2) Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a person 18 years of age or over who knowingly gives away or administers mescaline to a minor under 14 years of age in violation of law shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of three, five, or seven years.
(3) A person who knowingly gives away or administers mescaline to a person who is at least 18 years of age, but under 21 years of age is guilty of an infraction.
(d) Except as otherwise provided, possession of mescaline by a person under 18 years of age is punishable as an infraction and shall require:
(1) Upon a finding that a first offense has been committed, four hours of drug education or counseling and up to 10 hours of community service over a period not to exceed 60 days, commencing when the drug education or counseling services are made available to them.
(2) Upon a finding that a second offense or subsequent offense has been committed, six hours of drug education or counseling and up to 20 hours of community service over a period not to exceed 90 days, commencing when the drug education or counseling services are made available to them.
(e) Except as otherwise provided, possession of mescaline by a person at least 18 years of age but less than 21 years of age is punishable as an infraction.
(f) Mescaline or related products involved in any way with conduct deemed lawful by this section are not contraband nor subject to seizure, and no conduct deemed lawful by this section shall constitute the basis for detention, search, or arrest, or the basis for the seizure or forfeiture of assets.
(g) As used in this section, the following terms are defined as follows:
(1) “Allowable amount” means four grams per person. “Allowable amount” does not include the weight of any material of which the substance is a part or to which the substance is added, dissolved, held in solution, or suspended, or any ingredient or material combined with the substance as part of a preparation.
(2) “Financial gain” means the receipt of money or other valuable consideration in exchange for the item being transferred.
(3) “Mescaline” does not include synthetic analogs of mescaline, including derivatives of mescaline that are produced using chemical synthesis, chemical modification, or chemical conversion.
(4) “Personal use” means for the personal ingestion or other personal and noncommercial use by the person in possession.
(5) “Preparation” means processing or otherwise preparing for use.
(h) This section shall take effect on January 1, 2025.
SEC. 6.
Section 11364 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11364.
(a) It is unlawful to possess an opium pipe or any device, contrivance, instrument, or paraphernalia used for unlawfully injecting or smoking (1) a controlled substance specified in subdivision (b), (c), or (e) or paragraph (1) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, specified in paragraph (15) or (20) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, specified in subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 11055, or specified in paragraph (2) of subdivision (d) of Section 11055, or (2) a controlled substance that is a narcotic drug classified in Schedule III, IV, or V.
(b) This section shall not apply to hypodermic needles or syringes that have been containerized for safe disposal in a container that meets state and federal standards for disposal of sharps waste.
(c) Until January 1, 2026, as a public health measure intended to prevent the transmission of HIV, viral hepatitis, and other bloodborne diseases among persons who use syringes and hypodermic needles, and to prevent subsequent infection of sexual partners, newborn children, or other persons, this section shall not apply to the possession solely for personal use of hypodermic needles or syringes.
SEC. 7.
Section 11364.7 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11364.7.
(a) (1) Except as authorized by law, any person who delivers, furnishes, or transfers, possesses with intent to deliver, furnish, or transfer, or manufactures with the intent to deliver, furnish, or transfer, drug paraphernalia, knowing, or under circumstances where one reasonably should know, that it will be used to plant, propagate, cultivate, grow, harvest, compound, convert, produce, process, prepare, pack, repack, store, contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce into the human body a controlled substance, except as provided in subdivision (b), in violation of this division, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(2) A public entity, its agents, or employees shall not be subject to criminal prosecution for distribution of hypodermic needles or syringes or any materials deemed by a local or state health department to be necessary to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, or to prevent drug overdose, injury, or disability to participants in clean needle and syringe exchange projects authorized by the public entity pursuant to Chapter 18 (commencing with Section 121349) of Part 4 of Division 105.
(3) This subdivision does not apply to any paraphernalia that is intended to be used to plant, propagate, cultivate, grow, harvest, compound, convert, produce, process, prepare, pack, repack, store, contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce into the human body, any of the following substances:
(A) Dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
(B) Mescaline.
(C) Psilocybin.
(D) Psilocyn.
(b) Except as authorized by law, any person who manufactures with intent to deliver, furnish, or transfer drug paraphernalia knowing, or under circumstances where one reasonably should know, that it will be used to plant, propagate, cultivate, grow, harvest, manufacture, compound, convert, produce, process, prepare, test, analyze, pack, repack, store, contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce into the human body cocaine, cocaine base, heroin, phencyclidine, or methamphetamine in violation of this division shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, or in the state prison.
(c) Except as authorized by law, any person, 18 years of age or over, who violates subdivision (a) by delivering, furnishing, or transferring drug paraphernalia to a person under 18 years of age who is at least three years younger, or who, upon the grounds of a public or private elementary, vocational, junior high, or high school, possesses a hypodermic needle, as defined in paragraph (7) of subdivision (a) of Section 11014.5, with the intent to deliver, furnish, or transfer the hypodermic needle, knowing, or under circumstances where one reasonably should know, that it will be used by a person under 18 years of age to inject into the human body a controlled substance, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that imprisonment and fine.
(d) The violation, or the causing or the permitting of a violation, of subdivision (a), (b), or (c) by a holder of a business or liquor license issued by a city, county, or city and county, or by the State of California, and in the course of the licensee’s business shall be grounds for the revocation of that license.
(e) All drug paraphernalia defined in Section 11014.5 is subject to forfeiture and may be seized by any peace officer pursuant to Section 11471 unless its distribution has been authorized pursuant to subdivision (a).
(f) If any provision of this section or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, it is the intent of the Legislature that the invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of this section that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application and to this end the provisions of this section are severable.
SEC. 8.
Section 11365 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11365.
(a) It is unlawful to visit or to be in any room or place where any controlled substances that are specified in subdivision (b), (c), or (e), or paragraph (1) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, specified in paragraph (15) or (20) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, or specified in subdivision (b) or (c) or paragraph (2) of subdivision (d) of Section 11055, or that are narcotic drugs classified in Schedule III, IV, or V, are being unlawfully smoked or used with knowledge that such activity is occurring.
(b) This section shall apply only where the defendant aids, assists, or abets the perpetration of the unlawful smoking or use of a controlled substance specified in subdivision (a). This subdivision is declaratory of existing law as expressed in People v. Cressey (1970) 2 Cal. 3d 836.
SEC. 9.
Section 11377 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11377.
(a) Except as authorized by law and as otherwise provided in subdivision (b) or Section 11375, or in Article 7 (commencing with Section 4211) of Chapter 9 of Division 2 of the Business and Professions Code, every person who possesses any controlled substance that is (1) classified in Schedule III, IV, or V, and that is not a narcotic drug, (2) specified in subdivision (d) of Section 11054, except paragraphs (10), (11), (13), (14), (15), (18), (19), and (20) of subdivision (d), (3) specified in paragraph (11) of subdivision (c) of Section 11056, (4) specified in paragraph (2) or (3) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, or (5) specified in subdivision (d), (e), or (f) of Section 11055, unless upon the prescription of a physician, dentist, podiatrist, or veterinarian, licensed to practice in this state, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period of not more than one year, except that such person may instead be punished pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code if that person has one or more prior convictions for an offense specified in clause (iv) of subparagraph (C) of paragraph (2) of subdivision (e) of Section 667 of the Penal Code or for an offense requiring registration pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 290 of the Penal Code.
(b) The judge may assess a fine not to exceed seventy dollars ($70) against any person who violates subdivision (a), with the proceeds of this fine to be used in accordance with Section 1463.23 of the Penal Code. The court shall, however, take into consideration the defendant’s ability to pay, and no defendant shall be denied probation because of their inability to pay the fine permitted under this subdivision.
(c) It is not unlawful for a person other than the prescription holder to possess a controlled substance described in subdivision (a) if both of the following apply:
(1) The possession of the controlled substance is at the direction or with the express authorization of the prescription holder.
(2) The sole intent of the possessor is to deliver the prescription to the prescription holder for its prescribed use or to discard the substance in a lawful manner.
(d) This section does not permit the use of a controlled substance by a person other than the prescription holder or permit the distribution or sale of a controlled substance that is otherwise inconsistent with the prescription.
SEC. 10.
Section 11377.1 is added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
11377.1.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in subdivisions (b), (c), (d), and (e) of this section, and notwithstanding any other law, all of the following shall be lawful for a natural person 21 years of age or older and shall not be a violation of state or local law:
(1) The possession, preparation, obtaining, or transportation, of no more than the allowable amount of any of the following substances for personal use:
(A) The controlled substance specified in paragraph (10) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054.
(B) The controlled substance specified in paragraph (18) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054.
(C) The controlled substance specified in paragraph (19) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054.
(D) Spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other material which contains the controlled substance specified in paragraph (18) or (19) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054.
(2) The ingesting of a substance described in paragraph (1).
(3) The possession, planting, cultivating, harvesting, or preparation of plants capable of producing a substance described in paragraph (1), on property owned or controlled by a person, for the uses described in this subdivision by that person, and possession of any product produced by those plants including spores or mycelium capable of producing mushrooms or other materials that contain a controlled substance specified in paragraph (18) or (19) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, for that purpose.
(b) Possession of a controlled substance specified in paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) by a person 21 years of age or over, on the grounds of any public or private elementary, vocational, junior high, or high school, during hours that the school is open for classes or school-related programs, or at any time when minors are using the facility is punishable as a misdemeanor.
(c) (1) A person who knowingly gives away or administers a controlled substance specified in paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) to a person who is under 18 years of age in violation of law shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period of not more than six months or by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars ($500), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code.
(2) Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a person 18 years of age or over who knowingly gives away or administers a substance described in paragraph (1) to a minor under 14 years of age in violation of law shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of three, five, or seven years.
(3) A person who knowingly gives away or administers a substance described in paragraph (1) to a person who is at least 18 years of age, but under 21 years of age is guilty of an infraction.
(d) Except as otherwise provided, possession of a controlled substance specified in paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) by a person under 18 years of age is punishable as an infraction and shall require:
(1) Upon a finding that a first offense has been committed, four hours of drug education or counseling and up to 10 hours of community service over a period not to exceed 60 days, commencing when the drug education or counseling services are made available to them.
(2) Upon a finding that a second offense or subsequent offense has been committed, six hours of drug education or counseling and up to 20 hours of community service over a period not to exceed 90 days, commencing when the drug education or counseling services are made available to them.
(e) Except as otherwise provided, possession of a controlled substance specified in paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) by a person at least 18 years of age but less than 21 years of age is punishable as an infraction.
(f) A controlled substance described in this section or any related product involved in any way with conduct deemed lawful by this section are not contraband nor subject to seizure, and no conduct deemed lawful by this section shall constitute the basis for detention, search, or arrest, or the basis for the seizure or forfeiture of assets.
(g) As used in this section, the following terms are defined as follows:
(1) “Allowable amount” means the following quantities of a substance per person. “Allowable amount” does not include the weight of any material of which the substance is a part or to which the substance is added, dissolved, held in solution, or suspended, or any ingredient or material combined with the substance specified in this subdivision as part of a preparation:
(A) One gram of dimethyltryptamine, otherwise known as DMT.
(B) One gram of psilocybin or one ounce of a plant or fungi containing psilocybin.
(C) One gram of psilocyn or one ounce of a plant or fungi containing psilocyn.
(D) The amount of spores or mycelium capable of producing an allowable amount of a plant or fungi which contain a controlled substance specified in paragraph (18) or (19) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054.
(2) “Controlled substances” in this section does not include synthetic analogs of these substances, including derivatives of these substances that are produced using chemical synthesis, chemical modification, or chemical conversion.
(3) “Financial gain” means the receipt of money or other valuable consideration in exchange for the item being transferred.
(4) “Personal use” means for the personal ingestion or other personal and noncommercial use by the person in possession.
(5) “Preparation” means processing or otherwise preparing for use.
(h) This section shall take effect on January 1, 2025.
SEC. 11.
Section 11379 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11379.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in subdivision (b), in Section 11377.1, and in Article 7 (commencing with Section 4211) of Chapter 9 of Division 2 of the Business and Professions Code, every person who transports, imports into this state, sells, furnishes, administers, or gives away, or offers to transport, import into this state, sell, furnish, administer, or give away, or attempts to import into this state or transport any controlled substance that is (1) classified in Schedule III, IV, or V and that is not a narcotic drug, except subdivision (g) of Section 11056, (2) specified in subdivision (d) of Section 11054, except paragraphs (13), (14), (15), (20), (21), (22), and (23) of subdivision (d), (3) specified in paragraph (11) of subdivision (c) of Section 11056, (4) specified in paragraph (2) or (3) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, or (5) specified in subdivision (d) or (e), except paragraph (3) of subdivision (e), or specified in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (1) of subdivision (f), of Section 11055, unless upon the prescription of a physician, dentist, podiatrist, or veterinarian, licensed to practice in this state, shall be punished by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for a period of two, three, or four years.
(b) Notwithstanding the penalty provisions of subdivision (a), any person who transports any controlled substances specified in subdivision (a) within this state from one county to another noncontiguous county shall be punished by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for three, six, or nine years.
(c) For purposes of this section, “transports” means to transport for sale.
(d) Nothing in this section is intended to preclude or limit prosecution under an aiding and abetting theory, accessory theory, or a conspiracy theory.
SEC. 12.
Section 11382 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11382.
Except as otherwise provided in Section 11377.1, every person who agrees, consents, or in any manner offers to unlawfully sell, furnish, transport, administer, or give any controlled substance that is (a) classified in Schedule III, IV, or V and that is not a narcotic drug, or (b) specified in subdivision (d) of Section 11054, except paragraphs (13), (14), (15), and (20) of subdivision (d), specified in paragraph (11) of subdivision (c) of Section 11056, or specified in subdivision (d), (e), or (f) of Section 11055, to any person, or offers, arranges, or negotiates to have that controlled substance unlawfully sold, delivered, transported, furnished, administered, or given to any person and then sells, delivers, furnishes, transports, administers, or gives, or offers, or arranges, or negotiates to have sold, delivered, transported, furnished, administered, or given to any person any other liquid, substance, or material in lieu of that controlled substance shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than one year, or pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code.
SEC. 13.
Section 11550 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:
11550.
(a) A person shall not use, or be under the influence of any controlled substance that is (1) specified in subdivision (b), (c), or (e), or paragraph (1) of subdivision (f) of Section 11054, specified in paragraph (15), (21), (22), or (23) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054, specified in subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 11055, or specified in paragraph (1) or (2) of subdivision (d) or in paragraph (3) of subdivision (e) of Section 11055, or (2) a narcotic drug classified in Schedule III, IV, or V, except when administered by or under the direction of a person licensed by the state to dispense, prescribe, or administer controlled substances. It shall be the burden of the defense to show that it comes within the exception. A person convicted of violating this subdivision is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be sentenced to serve a term of not more than one year in a county jail. The court may also place a person convicted under this subdivision on probation for a period not to exceed five years.
(b) (1) A person who is convicted of violating subdivision (a) when the offense occurred within seven years of that person being convicted of two or more separate violations of that subdivision, and refuses to complete a licensed drug rehabilitation program offered by the court pursuant to subdivision (c), shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for not less than 180 days nor more than one year. In no event does the court have the power to absolve a person convicted of a violation of subdivision (a) who is punishable under this subdivision from the obligation of spending at least 180 days in confinement in a county jail unless there are no licensed drug rehabilitation programs reasonably available.
(2) For the purpose of this section, a drug rehabilitation program is not reasonably available unless the person is not required to pay more than the court determines that they are reasonably able to pay in order to participate in the program.
(c) (1) The court may, when it would be in the interest of justice, permit a person convicted of a violation of subdivision (a) punishable under subdivision (a) or (b) to complete a licensed drug rehabilitation program in lieu of part or all of the imprisonment in a county jail. As a condition of sentencing, the court may require the offender to pay all or a portion of the drug rehabilitation program.
(2) In order to alleviate jail overcrowding and to provide recidivist offenders with a reasonable opportunity to seek rehabilitation pursuant to this subdivision, counties are encouraged to include provisions to augment licensed drug rehabilitation programs in their substance abuse proposals and applications submitted to the state for federal and state drug abuse funds.
(d) In addition to any fine assessed under this section, the judge may assess a fine not to exceed seventy dollars ($70) against a person who violates this section, with the proceeds of this fine to be used in accordance with Section 1463.23 of the Penal Code. The court shall, however, take into consideration the defendant’s ability to pay, and a defendant shall not be denied probation because of their inability to pay the fine permitted under this subdivision.
(e) (1) Notwithstanding subdivisions (a) and (b) or any other law, a person who is unlawfully under the influence of cocaine, cocaine base, heroin, methamphetamine, or phencyclidine while in the immediate personal possession of a loaded, operable firearm is guilty of a public offense punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for not exceeding one year or in state prison.
(2) As used in this subdivision “immediate personal possession” includes, but is not limited to, the interior passenger compartment of a motor vehicle.
(f) Every person who violates subdivision (e) is punishable upon the second and each subsequent conviction by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.
(g) This section does not prevent deferred entry of judgment or a defendant’s participation in a preguilty plea drug court program under Chapter 2.5 (commencing with Section 1000) of Title 6 of Part 2 of the Penal Code unless the person is charged with violating subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 243 of the Penal Code. A person charged with violating this section by being under the influence of any controlled substance that is specified in paragraph (21), (22), or (23) of subdivision (d) of Section 11054 or in paragraph (3) of subdivision (e) of Section 11055 and with violating either subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 243 of the Penal Code or with a violation of subdivision (e) shall be ineligible for deferred entry of judgment or a preguilty plea drug court program.
SEC. 14.
Section 11999 of the Health and Safety Code is repealed.
SEC. 15.
The provisions of this act are severable. If any provision of this act or its application is held invalid, that invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application.
SEC. 16.
No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution for certain costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district because, in that regard, this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.
However, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains other costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.
THE FREAK BROTHERS TEAM UP WITH WEEDMAPS FOR SEASON 2
Former LA Weekly cover boys, The Freak Brothers, are teaming up with Weedmaps for in-episode integrations for cannabis enthusiasts, starting with the launch of Season 2 today.
The Freak Brothers have been getting laughs out of cannabis enthusiasts the world over for 55 years. Thanks to WTG Enterprises, the producer of The Freak Brothers and Fox’s streaming platform Tubi, more people than ever have access to the trio’s cannabis-fueled adventures alongside their talking cat.
The production value of the first season was way beyond most cartoons. In addition to great animation, the voice cast featured Woody Harrelson, John Goodman, Pete Davidson, Tiffany Haddish, Adam Devine, Blake Anderson, Andrea Savage, La La Anthony and ScHoolboy Q. All of those big names are returning and they’ll be adding Joe Sikora to the mix for a special guest appearance.
Weedmaps, one of the most recognizable names in cannabis, is obviously hyped to be in this effort to help further cannabis into the mainstream. The announcement noted the actual partnership itself will consist of in-episode integrations in the new season, as well as exclusive “Smoke & Screen” events throughout the U.S., bringing together industry influencers and tastemakers at the intersection of cannabis and entertainment.
“We know comedy has the power to influence culture, and we are excited to partner with The Freak Brothers to amplify our message that weed is something to be celebrated,” said Randa McMinn, chief marketing officer at Weedmaps. “Since our company’s founding, Weedmaps has been committed to elevating stoner culture everywhere, challenging outdated stereotypes and bringing the plant to the forefront of mainstream conversations. Now, 15 years later, to see the Freak Brothers’ characters themselves embrace Weedmaps as their ‘go to’ for weed in the series is indicative of society’s broader acceptance of the plant and the industry at large.”
The team that brought Gilbert Shelton’s creation to the small screen has no qualms about the brothers using Weedmaps to get their hands on their next score.
“Embracing the essence of stoner culture before it was mainstream, Freak Brothers and Weedmaps are united in blazing the trail toward a more inclusive and enlightened cannabis landscape” said Greg Goldner, chief brand & strategy officer of The Freak Brothers. “We’re excited about this partnership as it’s a convergence of the psychedelic past and the digital present, where entertainment meets connection through a shared love for cannabis, while helping shape a future where cannabis culture thrives unapologetically.”
The antics for Season 2 look to be right on par with The Freak Brothers’ previous adventures in adapting to the modern era following a 50-year nap in San Francisco. The creators noted when announcing the deal that this season will include The Freak Brothers hitting their high school reunion, a match of wits with Mark Zuckerberg, settling old scores with Mitch McConnell, and battling Seth Rogen in a Pot Brownie Bake-Off contest.
WTG develops media across multiple platforms from its Beverly Hills office. WTG was founded by studio executives and Hollywood producers Courtney Solomon and Mark Canton and led alongside veteran entertainment executive Greg Goldner.
Back before the rights were secured, Solomon spent months trying to find Gilbert Shelton. After six months of searching for Shelton, Solomon was able to track down Shelton to the outskirts of Paris thanks to his lawyer of 47 years. “Super nice guy named Manfred, and he set up the meeting and I flew out to Paris and spent a couple of days with Gilbert,” Solomon told L.A. Weekly in 2020.
The Freak Brothers Season 2 is free to watch on Tubi. And be sure to keep an eye out for special offers from WeedMaps during the episode.
As is tradition, with this list we present a holiday-size helping of the heat we’ve found in the past couple of months following the harvest and trips to scope out the marketplaces in Vegas, abroad in the Canary Islands and Thailand.
The 12 Strains of Christmas also is our most extensive flower list of the year. It’s always a pleasure to highlight some killers so they have one more thing to share with their families during whatever holiday they might enjoy together.
Here are the strains you should leave out for Santa in 2023.
Red Pop S1 #37 (Riddles) – Royal Key Organics
As with many strains from breeders that offer as extensive a catalog as Exotic Genetix, it can take a couple of years to get the full wind in their sales. Red Pop has had a fantastic 2022. Its offspring, Red Runtz, is entering its own hype wave, but the Red Pop is still elite and 2022 was the first year many had the chance to try it. One of our favorite phenos of anything Red Pop belongs to Royal Key Organics in Humboldt County. In particular, their Red Pop S1 #37 they named Riddles. It smells like buttery popcorn with cherry Kool-Aid sprinkled on top.
Zkittelz – Alien Labs
The Alien Labs rendition of Zkittlez is tied with IC Collective for the best Z terps we’ve ever seen grown outside of Mendocino County. We got our first peek at it during Las Vegas Heat Quest on MJ Biz Con Eve. As people approached us with their versions of Z throughout the week, nothing else came close. Back home here in California, few can produce Z terps at this level commercially.
Flowers of Zion – Fidels
Courtesy of Fidels
On the heels of his self-made docuseries and summer win at the Transbay Challenge I threw in L.A. for his KMZ, Flowers of Zion is the next one to keep an eye on from Fidel. The Flowers of Zion brings together Garlic Cocktail with Symbiotic Genetics’s timeless classic Mimosa. With his cultivation site operational, expect to see even more of Fidels Flower throughout the state.
Seed Junky and Fidel Buds took top honors at Ego Clash a couple of weeks ago on the eve of The Emerald Cup’s Harvest Ball, thanks to some ultra-elite hash from Simply Adam that topped the uber-competitive contest where many of the world’s best hash makers score each other. The Banana God is a pairing of Wilson and Banana OG. The version that won Ego Clash was a Banana God F2 that was done by @ibean_poppin2much and then grown by Simpleeadam.
Cap Junky – Capulator x Seed Junky
Courtesy of Capulator
A collaboration between two Los Angeles heavyweights, Capulator and Seed Junkie’s CapJunky was certainly a favorite for us in 2022. It’s among the gassiest offerings from both breeders and is an absolute ripper. It has limited availability in town, but you can score some at Peace of Green at 1155 East Pico Blvd., in DTLA.
Stardawg x Gelato 41 – Doja Pak
Ever since we first covered the original RS11 drop in LA a couple of years back, it feels like you’d need one of those NASA cameras that tracks the rockets after launch to keep pace with what they’ve been up to. While strains named after art supplies and animals are dope, we think the Stardawg x Gelato 41 was a pinch underrated during the hype storm this year and wanted to give it some extra love.
Blackberry Gary – Serge Cannabis x Powerzzzup
Courtesy of Serge Cannabis
Arguably the biggest strain to drop in California this fall, Blackberry Gary has lived up to the hype. The rare collaboration from Powerzzzup is an absolute killer. Most of the Cereal Milk and Gary Crosses out there are from reversals, but Serge was able to work with the real gear and get the Powerzzzup team’s blessings on the final product. It carries on the flavor and impact tradition of the Gary Payton line.
DEO – 580
Courtesy of DEO
580 is the most underrated strain from Deep East Oakland Farms. Everyone is tripping balls. I’m not saying it’s RS or Zoap, but saying it’s not special is batshit crazy to me. It tastes so much different from the rest of their pack. Now I love me some dessert weed, but the smell of nail polish is one of my favorite things. The freshest batches of 580 have it in abundance. It smashes into your sinuses when you open a bag.
Red Bullz x Fishscale – High Rhythm Farm
The Santa Cruz-hunted version of the Compound Genetics heater was certainly on the podium for us at The Emerald Cup Harvest Ball. Few things came close in the quality of the terpene or look. The impact was great, too, when we got the chance to try it. We highly recommend keeping an eye out for this one.
Prism OZ – Cipher Genetics
Courtesy of Cipher Genetics
An offering from the newest company on The 12 Strains of Christmas, Cipher Genetics is the latest project from Compound Genetics founder Chris Lynch. Our favorite offering from the launch drop is looking to be the Prism OZ. While we haven’t seen the finished product yet, we’re very excited for the recipe of SFV OG x ( Zkittelz x (Zkittelz x Gelato 41)). We’re convinced it’ll be a heater, much like a lot of Lynch’s past classics.
OZ Kush BX1 – 3rd Gen Family
Courtesy of 3rd Gen Family
Numerous companies in the cannabis space got their start with a pack of 3rd Gen Family’s Dying Breed Seeds, and one of the strains that launched the most or helped take things to a new level was OZ Kush. It brought together the Eddy OG and Zkittelz and the first packs sold five years ago. As I look at their current lineup, if I’m a cannabis company desperate for an epic house flavor to help me stay afloat in the darkest times ever for the marketplace, I’m buying as many packs of OZ Kush Bx1 seeds as I can and finding myself a little bit of hope.
Double Dawg – Dr. Dope Bangkok
On our recent adventure to Thailand alongside High Times and High Rise TV, we went to a ton of spots and looked at a bunch of Thai weed. With the exception of the 100 Hands at Phandee in Japan Village in Bangkok, none of it could compare to what Dr. Dope was doing. I would say thanks to Dr. Dope’s Double Dawg, the best weed I’ve seen grown in Thailand is better than the best weed I saw grown in Las Vegas during MJ Bizcon last month.
Can tech-backed oversupply ruin clout? We’re about to find out with the new Jiko+ Donut Maker designed by a former NASA engineer.
The creators of the Jiko+ are looking to conquer one of the points in the cannabis supply chain people have not been able to automate up to this point. Sure there have been infused preroll machines, but they were never a true donut, or as we call them now, hash hole. The tech attached to those machines was mostly needles attached to a heating element that would shoot the concentrate into each joint evenly as it removed the needle. A lot of the time the material being used in these infused prerolls, both the flower and hash, was between garbage and subpar.
On many occasions, those infused prerolls were simply an attempt to bump the price of their contents by trying to make them sound nicer. These kinds of preroll entities have existed since the early 2010s because, for every more educated connoisseur that knew they were garbage, there were a few part-time puffers that knew they wanted to get “messed up.” Add to that the fact prerolls have continued to grow their market share as a whole in the years since legalization and it’s easy to see why there are some shady folks that remain commercially viable.
There is an argument to be made that darkness before the light partially helped rocket hash holes into the stratosphere. We were so used to how bad it had gotten with infused prerolls that when we finally started seeing small batch artisan hash holes after Fidel brought the premise back from Barcelona, it was like a hype lightning storm that came out of nowhere. Overnight, the most expensive prerolls in the state were hand-rolled small-batch prerolls filled with exotic rosins and equally high-end flowers.
Since hash holes came out the gate so strong, it was easy to see who was skimping on quality. To this point, they’ve remained a daily boutique thing.
When I asked Fidel what he thought of something like the Jiko+, he simply replied wondering why someone would need to roll 800 hash holes in an hour. What will the top-shelf preroll market turn into?
Or, will the hardware truly even be able to compare to Calirofnia’s best rollers? You could even say the hash hole hype helped breathe this new generation of famous rollers that took off after the pandemic. The Brunos, the CGOs, and others who have conquered the space, are turning into legit cannabis celebrities and influencers around the world. When I was at Hash Hole Island earlier this week up north outside Sacramento, I met people from Texas and New York that just flew in to smoke hash holes. The last time I was in Africa, I saw Bruno’s star power firsthand as some of the local hitters were simply giddy to see him. Can a machine recreate this kind of culture?
I don’t know. But once you get past the philosophical questions about maintaining the boutique aspect of hash holes, the Jiko+ is admittedly pretty dope. It accommodates various joint and blunt sizes that range from one to three grams. The amount of hash inside of each range from .2 to a full gram.
“Up until now, crafting these intricate, infused prerolls by hand required labor-intensive processes that lacked scalability, consistency and dependability. We’re proud to have developed the technology and equipment that both brands and consumers will appreciate and enjoy,” says Nohtal Partansky, co-founder and CEO of Sorting Robotics.
Partansky is a former engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. While there, he worked on the MOXIE project. That instrument is currently on the surface of Mars producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. That kind of hardware is obviously critical for any future exploration of the red planet.
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Fig Farms continued its 2023 run of excellence by winning two out of three flower categories at the High Times SoCal Cannabis Cup.
The victories came in the Indica and Hybrid categories. Animal Face won in the hybrid category after winning best indoor flower at the 2022 Emerald Cup. Blue Face won the Indica category a few months after winning both best indoor flower and best indoor at this year’s Emerald Cup. This is just further validation for the work Keith and Chloe Healy are doing with their team of monster growers in Oakland.
The Blue Face took home two top prizes this year and is absolute rockstar cannabis. Fig Farms describes the aroma as a combination of acetone, tree bark and pickled ginger. The Animal Face that took home the top hybrid is absolute gas and fuel terps. I judged the hybrid category it won. I saved the Animal Face for last to see if anything would top it. Nothing did, but the same could be said for the 20 Emerald Cup flower judges who didn’t see a strain or farm when they picked Blue Face, just the heat in the jar and a number. Regardless of mine being labeled, we came to the same conclusion on Fig’s different flavors.
Animal Face
Fig Farms finds itself among a small group of people who have been holding strong in certain contests for the last few years. It raises the question from others as to whether these contests are even worth it. Do they matter?
“They do for sure. We got offered space in Oakland the next day after we won the Cannabis Cup,” Keith Healy, Fig Farms founder and CEO, told L.A. Weekly.
They were negotiating on an Oakland location and one in Sacramento.
“The day after winning we got offered the Oakland space,” Healy said. “I wouldn’t have been as confident to perform. I wouldn’t have been as confident to pull it off.”
Fig has been selective in the contests it has entered in the years since that win. But after winning The Emerald Cup earlier this year, it returned to the Cannabis Cup for the first time since that 2017 victory that changed everything. Fig was certainly thrilled with the results of its comeback.
“To win two out of three was just mind-blowing and honestly confusing since, like you win the Emerald Cup and High Times, trying to explain to somebody like a stranger that these things aren’t easy,” Healy said emphasizing he doesn’t have the confidence of being some egomaniac.
The catch-22 of that lack of confidence Healy claims is that he only enters his absolute flame. By the time he’s convinced it’s fire, it probably is, as opposed to someone that needs that new hype strain to keep their thing going. So it’s easy to understand why everything they entered this year, in everything, did so well.
Blue Face
We asked Healy which of the accolades the farm has received in recent years meant the most to him.
“I think being on stage with Chloe while she was pregnant at the Emerald Cup win in 2022 was pretty incredible because that was the first time that I’ve been able to share a stage with her,” he replied.
Healy went on to note that another thing that has made each win special was the timing. Just like the 2017 win got him into that new space, these other wins have each meant something in the moment.
“Every single one has come at a time when I needed it,” Healy said. “That kind of time where it’s like the confidence to push forward on the next task, whether that’s building out more space or it’s just the confidence to keep doing what I’m doing.
The High Times win meant a lot to Fig because it was so different from the win at The Emerald Cup. High Times is essentially people’s choice compared to the expert panel The Emerald Cup brings in for judging. We joked with Healy about how many cup kits he bought, he laughed and noted just one to try the other flavors.
Despite their continued dominance, Animal Face and Blue Face need to keep an eye on their shoulders. Fig recently worked with Zeclair and their whole catalog. We got to check out the pheno hunt a few weeks before it was chopped down. Everything was absolute heat and you can expect some crazy Z terps from Fig Farms soon.
Art courtesy of The Freak Brothers
