LA WEEKLY’S CANNABIS GIFT GUIDE 2023 It’s time to buy some presents for the pot enthusiast in your life. It can be tricky. A lot of people have been gifted boof by well-intended people over the years. “Maybe Billy wants grass,” they reasonably thought. They just didn’t have a metric for quality in their heart. …
LA WEEKLY’S CANNABIS GIFT GUIDE 2023
It’s time to buy some presents for the pot enthusiast in your life.
It can be tricky. A lot of people have been gifted boof by well-intended people over the years.
“Maybe Billy wants grass,” they reasonably thought. They just didn’t have a metric for quality in their heart.
Fear not, this list has something for everyone. Be it a Christmas-themed chocolate bar for grandma or American-made glass for your baby wook you can’t get to move out of the basement. Here are some great options for Christmas 2022.
Kiva Tree Bark
Courtesy of Kiva
While its grave is the holiday champion, Kiva’s tree bark is nothing to scoff at. It’s a fantastic Christmas-themed edible the whole gang can enjoy. The chunks of peppermint also make it one of the least weedy tasting edibles since the peppermint is going to dominate your palate. And the regular strength is just what you need for the holiday cannabis newbies getting in the mix.
Courtesy of AFM Glass
Alien Flower Monkey Glass Quartz Bangers
We try our best to highlight great American-made affordable quartz when we get the opportunity. Only adding to the fun is the fact that Alien Money Glass is made in Los Angeles. We’re going to do a full write-up on them in the not-too-distant future but wanted to make sure quartz was on your radar, so you could scoop some for the dabber in your life.
Lonnwikk Hemp Yoyo
Hemp wicks are nothing new, but the idea of adding them to a yoyo certainly is. We were gifted a Lonnwikk at MJ Biz Con in Las Vegas. It was certainly one of the more unique products we saw during our week on the strip for the cannabis industry’s mega show. The purpose of the hemp wick is to prevent the butane in the lighter from impacting the flavor of the terpene profile.
Sacred Fruits Mystical Micros
As we noted in our coverage of the first Phase One trials around the benefits of LSD microdosing, microdosing psychedelics is all the rage these days. And it’s generally a lot more popular with psilocybin here in California given the level of access we have to quality mushrooms and the products made from them. The team at the very popular Sacred Fruits brand has blessed the world with a fantastic dosing format with their musical micros. One pill will give you a microdose that will promote a bit of extra mental clarity, three to five pills will have you feeling hyper connected to the galaxy, and once you get past five pills you’re starting to dabble in full sensory hallucinations. Pretty awesome.
Masonic Seed Co
The pride of Compton wants LA Weekly readers to get some steals and deals this holiday season on its popular seeds lines. If you enter “LAWeeky” into the discount code at checkout, you’ll get a whopping 50% off. The only deal this isn’t compatible with is Clutch’s 50,000 Acre Bundle.
Fidel’s x Carrots is proving to be the hottest cannabis industry clothing drop of Q1.
As we’ve covered many times here at L.A. Weekly, Shant “Fidel” Damirdjian is one of the local faces shining during these dark times in the cannabis industry. He had a wild 2022 with his victory over some of the best cultivators in the world at Transbay Challenge IV — the Hash Hole exploded to the most famed ‘preroll” in California if you’re even comfortable calling it that, and he opened up his own cultivation spot in the desert without the help of the corporate oppressor. A great year for anyone in cannabis.
Topping 2022
So how does he top it? He comes out of the gates early in 2023 with a fantastic collaboration with Anwar Carrots. Carrots got into the fashion game in 2007; in 2015, he’d launch the Carrots by Anwar line. Vibrant oranges among other colors with stylized carrots and rabbits are par for the course with the popular menswear line.
The collaboration with Fidel’s started just over a year and a half ago.
“Anwar blessed us with complete creative control the entire project,” Damirdjian told L.A. Weekly. “Dabber Dan and I, my right-hand man, designed every bit of the box. Even the bags the clothing was in. Even the cut and sew on the hoodies.”
They would eventually settle on a 50/50 cotton and bamboo blend made in Los Angeles and find that bright orange they were looking for, after some trial and error over the last 18 months.
The Box
Each box in the limited edition of 500 includes the hoodies and sweatpants set made, screen printed and packaged in LA. There also is a Fidel’s x Carrots T-shirt, headwear, four Croc Jibbets, a commemorative 3D printed carrot with a hash hole, and a half ounce of Fidel’s popular weed.
It’s very fair to argue the cannabis aspects of the box are easily worth more than half its $600 price tag.
Where Fashion Meets Weed
After the entertainment industry, many would argue cannabis and fashion is where Los Angeles has some of its biggest global influence. We asked Damirdjian his take on that sentiment.
“100% it’s something you don’t see done often; if it has, it didn’t catch my attention and I apologize,” Damirdjian replied. “But I feel like fashion and cannabis have so much to do with one another. They are different audiences within the same audience. It’s a great thing to work with another cannabis company and within our community, but to branch out of it to get the attention of people in the clothing industry, it’s amazing.
Damirdjian argues it triggers so much more love crossing his audience and Anwar’s audience he’s built over the years. He appreciates how wowed people from both sides of the fence have been after months of effort trying to get it right to their vision.
Damirdjian is excited about what’s next; don’t expect to see these boxes again.
“This is like one and done. I’m trying to touch as many people that follow my following, Anwar’s following with this,” Damirdjian said. “This cost $600 for the box; it’s not something that everyone can afford. But the true collector is getting so much in the box. I’m not just taking money from the consumer, I’m giving so much more.”
Again, a lot of it comes back to being a unique spirit in a crowded space for Damirdjian.
He knows everyone’s trying to do something different. He considers the Carrots collaboration a sought-after project for anyone, and when he got the chance, he was not letting it slip through his fingers.
“It took so much time, finances and we did it with so much cadence, but it opened up a lot of doors for me now. I can already see it this early on. I can’t wait till more people consume it,” Damirdjian said,
Advocates are celebrating federal cannabis arrests dropping 24% in 2022
After frequently noting all the cannabis progress happening around the country and the world in recent years, we were a bit caught off guard by the large jump in cannabis arrests during the first year of the Biden administration. That 2021 jump in arrests was the biggest in a decade, as we noted last year.
This was despite Biden’s promises to pursue decriminalization, now two and a half years ago. Nevertheless, 6,606 people will be arrested by the DEA and partner agencies in 2021. There were further resounding messages from the community that this was the opposite direction we had expected to see cannabis enforcement take in the Biden Administration.
The 5,061 people arrested on federal cannabis charges last year represent a 24% drop from the year before. It also nearly erases the jump from 2021 when the decade-highs in arrests represented a 25% jump from the year before.
NORML noted that while arrests were down, seizures trended in the opposite direction.
The DEA’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program Statistical Report noted agents and partner agencies confiscated approximately 5.7 million cultivated cannabis plants last year, 37,000 edibles, and 60,000 concentrates. NORML noted that as in the past, most of this enforcement is happening in California. Just over half of all federal cannabis arrests in 2022 took place in California and 88% of all product seized nationally was in The Golden State.
“California has always exported the majority of its marijuana crop out of state and the adoption of adult-use legalization in the Golden State has done little to change this fact,” acknowledged California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer. “Illegal marijuana cultivation will persist in California so long as there remains a substantial demand from other states and as long as interstate commerce remains prohibited by federal law.”
California had the most plants seized by a mile. Of the 5.7 million law enforcement scooped up around the county, 4.9 million were here. We had 16.6 times as many plants confiscated as runner-up Oklahoma. Kentucky and West Virginia rounded out the top four.
“The reasons we are still seeing relatively high levels of marijuana eradication and interdiction are simple,” said NORML’s Political Director Morgan Fox. “Despite considerable state-level progress, more than half of all U.S. states continue to ban regulated adult-use cannabis markets. Furthermore, the federal government overtaxes state-licensed cannabis businesses and makes it extremely difficult for them to access basic financial services so that they can better compete with unregulated operators.”
Morgan believes the expansion of state markets and fewer hurdles for operators will do a lot more damage to the underground cannabis economy than any enforcement could ever hope to.
“Spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars to enforce federal cannabis prohibition, putting law enforcement officers in unnecessary danger, and hampering the implementation and effectiveness of state-regulated markets are clearly not the answers to this issue,” Fox said. “Rather, the federal and state governments should work toward furthering sensible policies that facilitate regulated cannabis markets and work to repair the harms caused by nearly a century of prohibition.”
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM LIVES UP TO THE MASSIVE HYPE
Link’s latest adventures in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom (TOTK) are everything we were waiting for.
The game has proven a roaring international hit. One common phrase often seen across social media in the past two weeks since the launch is the idea that Breath of The Wild, Zelda’s previous foray on Nintendo’s Switch when the system launched, almost feels like a beta version of what we ended up with in TOTK. How wild is it to call a game that went on to sell 30 million copies since and win a ton of awards a beta test? But it honestly feels kind of accurate with how much TOTK built on the last version of Hyrule we visited six years ago.
The Legacy of Zelda Enthusiasm
There are few dates on the video game calendar that get circled with more enthusiasm than a new Zelda game. Since the first one dropped in 1987, its raving fan base has always wondered what would be next for the franchise that often served with Super Mario Brothers as a flagship game that showed off the capabilities of Nintendo’s hardware from generation to generation. Zelda’s creators Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka were a part of both famous franchises. While it doesn’t quite serve that role in the same fashion given Nintendo has now allowed many more developers to publish games for their hardware in the Switch era, Zelda still very much serves as the benchmark for how much fun you can have on the Switch.
Zelda has turned down the cartoon style from 20 years ago. But the current look and feel still have a very anime feel that looks a lot cleaner than Wind Walker released in 2002. But 2006’s Twilight Princess feels much more similar to what the game looks like today. The modern version feels a lot brighter and more fun, like the way the lava pops with bright red and orange bubbles.
Miyamoto explained some of the thought processes they had as Zelda continued to transition into the 3D format in the 2000s. He noted part of the reason they went for the cartoon look was it made it easier to show expression in the characters. He also wanted it to feel like you were playing a cartoon in 3D, they definitely aced that test.
Breath of The Wild provided a lot of the building blocks for this new sequel on the same generation of hardware six years later. In an interview with Game Informer, Miyamoto noted one of the big jumps as Zelda made the move to the Switch was the nature engine. Exploration has always been a significant backbone of the fun in the play-it-at-your-pace game where you can toss around chickens or make a speed run for the master sword.
“Adventuring and exploring nature is what makes the game,” Miyamoto told Game Informer when the game launched. “I had to relook at what dungeons look like for us and kind of take it out of the dungeon. We spent five years kind of working on that.”
Miyamoto admitted he himself likes the open-world aspect of players creating their own adventures across the storyline over the years but understands there are folks out there that like those deep storylines with a lot of backstories. He thinks this modern generation of Zelda games has done a good job balancing the two.
The Tears of The Kingdom Launch
Over the past few weeks, the world has now had a moment to dive into Hyrule. But the months and years leading up to this moment had a bit of mystery to them. Regardless, once the game hit shelves, it was on.
In just three days, it became the fastest-selling Zelda game of all time. Ten million units moved globally in that first 72 hours, 4 million of them here in North America. That makes it the fastest-selling Nintendo game ever on any system in North America according to Nintendo. A major achievement for the game’s creators.
“Many players are returning to Hyrule with all its new mysteries and possibilities, and with the record-breaking launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch, we can’t wait to see what they’ll create in the game and the stories they’ll share next,” said Devon Pritchard, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales, marketing and communications. “We’re grateful for all of our fans who’ve shown their passion for The Legend of Zelda over the years, and these sales numbers for the latest installment continue to show the strong momentum for both the franchise and Nintendo Switch this year.”
Reviews and Livestreams Pumped The Hype
One of the things that helped the massive launch was just how positive all the reviews were. It’s currently sitting at a 95 on Metacritic, the most noted aggregator of video game reviews by a mile. That score puts it as the 49th greatest game of all time per their review system. While 22 other games in history have scored a 95 on the site, TOTK ranks No. 1 one among those games that have scored a 95 since the website was founded over 20 years ago.
Zelda’s 1998 edition Orcana of Time is the number one game of all time on Metacritic as the only game ever to score a 99. The last installment on Switch, Breath of The Wild, ranks No. 14 on the all-time list with the Wii U version coming in No. 26. Twilight Princess is No. 39, and The Wind Walker is No. 44. There are a few on the list after TOTK also. The Gamecube Collectors edition from 2003 came in at No. 54. The Game Boy Advance edition of A Link to The Past came in at No. 59 with Majora’s Mask right behind it at No. 60. Twilight Princess is two spots later at No. 62. A 3DS version also made it. With the TOTK’s reviews getting added to this all-time list, basically one in 10 of the top-reviewed video games of all time on Metacritic is a Zelda game, if you count the two versions of Breath of The Wild as one.
“The fandom behind the Zelda franchise is stronger than ever and to date, Tears of the Kingdom is the best reviewed game of 2023 on Metacritic,” Marc Doyle, Co-Founder of Metacritic told L.A. Weekly. “In fact, it currently ranks in the top 50 games of all time and the number four Zelda game to ever be released.”
We asked Polygon Senior Reporter Nicole Carpenter if she thought the game got scored tougher by critics as a direct sequel.
“I don’t necessarily think it got scored harder, but Breath of the Wild did have a major impact on the industry so there was an expectation for what Tears of the Kingdom would be. The bar was already set high and people expected Tears of the Kingdom to jump over that bar,” Carpenter told L.A. Weekly, “The game sold 10 million copies in a few days so it’s definitely up there for the biggest game of the year. Beyond that, Tears of the Kingdom will be one of most influential games of the year.”
Another thing the newer generation of Zelda games has had play to its favor is the rise of online streaming. The launch has been a hit. According to TwitchTracker.com, over the last week, people have spent 8 million hours watching other people play the game and the streams averaged about 50,000 people watching at any given time. Things peaked on May 11 when 351,714 users were simultaneously watching TOTK streams.
50 Hours In
What?! The Great Deku Tree has a stomachache again?! Sign me up. That’s not even a spoiler at this point, it’s presumable Hyrule’s bad guys at any given moment have had an impact on his acid reflux. Those kinds of expectations are one of the things that have made the series great. Each time we go back, the little things we love are done even better.
We are about 50 hours in. I’ve completed the Wind Temple but have predominantly spent most of my time exploring. I’ve hit about 35 Shrines so far in the process of building up hearts for the main storyline. One of the reasons I’ve hit so many shrines early is because of how fun the new gameplay mechanics make them. The massive refreshing of all the minigames makes each one feel very unique.
Those four new core gameplay mechanics are called Fuse, Ultrahand, Ascend and Recall. Fuse lets you attach objects from the world to each other or your hand after you use Ultrahand to move them around. You’ll use a combination of those powers and the world around you all the time to upgrade your weapons, solve puzzles and even build vehicles.
Ascend adds another vertical element of gameplay in addition to the massive sky map that covers the whole game from above. It allows you to climb through ceilings within reach of the ability and emerge through the floor on the other side.
Recall allows you to move objects and then recreate that object’s movement through time. Say a rock falls down a waterfall you want to go up, you hit the rock with recall and ride it up the waterfall. There are some wild uses for one when it comes to all the puzzles.
There also is a ton of wild physics mechanics attached to the main storyline. As you dive further and further in, you’ll get access to an even wider array of tools to combine with the Ultrahand and Fuse abilities.
With all that, and what feels like triple the game compared to Breath of The Wild, I think the only reason TOTK isn’t higher on the all-time list is that it’s a direct sequel. Regardless, it’s one of the best games ever.
Over the last few months, L.A. Weekly has spent more time in Bangkok, Thailand covering the developing cannabis scene than anyone.
Thailand took the international cannabis scene by storm last June when it announced it would be decriminalizing cannabis after having first made a move to legalize medical cannabis in 2018. Thais were initially suspect of decrim, but once they saw the government start letting people out of prison for cannabis offenses, they knew it was about to be on.
And boy was it. In the months since it’s now estimated that Bangkok has opened north of 700 to 800 dispensaries with another opening every few days. The first budtender that helped us on our second trip at the 24-hour Thai Terps lounge told us he was preparing to open up his own shop in the next few weeks.
The common number tossed around on how much it costs to start a full retail storefront at the moment is about 500,000 Thai Baht. That’s the equivalent of just over $15,000 USD. This has led to a surge of cannabis access in Thailand that is more reminiscent of Oklahoma than California. It was a lot easier to get a permit out the gate in Oklahoma before they started to tighten things up than it ever was in California. Remember the METRC protests!! Thai influencers are now protesting the fact shops are writing ID numbers down, imagine what they would think of full track and trace.
On our first trip to Thailand just before The Emerald Cup, our biggest mistake was not visiting Sokhumweed. While we were there in November, JJ-NYC of Top Dawg Seeds invited me to come to rage with him and Arjan from Green House Seed Co. That originally put it on my radar.
When we arrived at the shop unannounced, its founder Beer spotted us quickly. The dude just loves weed. He took us over to view a spread of portraits from the Cookies opening a week prior that he’d got printed fast enough to have Berner sign one before leaving after the big launch in Bangkok. That’s how much Beer loves weed.
“I opened a day early in June,” Beer told L.A. Weekly with a laugh. “What were they going to do? Throw me in prison for 12 hours?”
Beer was part of the legislative effort to push cannabis reform in Thailand, so with his eye on the ball, he got things rolling on Sokhumweed a couple of months prior to opening.
“So after witnessing this policy develop over the last seven years, I got the keys to the shop about three days before we opened,” Beer said before noting the shop is working with about 15 farms at the moment, many run by Beer’s longtime friends he’s excited to support.
Sukhomweed’s founder Beer.
Another thing Thailand has in common with Oklahoma is the fact most of the best weed ever seen there is from California. Not all of it, but the vast majority.
This had led to this weird situation where people don’t believe the heat is grown in Thailand. I was carrying around some absolutely gas Double Dawg, some of the best fuel/petrol aromas I’ve ever seen outside the U.S. When I showed it to Thais, they tried to convince me it was the fresh stuff from California. So to an extent, the weed in Thailand got good so fast that they don’t even believe it.
But it’s also fair for folks to question things a bit. Sure, the best stuff coming from California is absolutely balls-to-the-wall heat, but it’s few and far between. Most of the California stuff is product from mid-2022 that people had trouble moving in the flooded U.S. market. And a lot of that year-old stuff is in fact better than some of the Thai product being grown without any real standard operating procedures known for producing heat here in the U.S.
But regardless, the demand is there for the local product. Most coming into Sokhumweed are looking for Thai-grown cannabis. For those wondering what local strains to keep an eye out for, Beer argues the Freaky Buddha is one the best hybridizations of a Thai landrace at the moment.
Beer made the Freaky Buddha from a Thai landrace and Freakshow. Freakshow is famous for its unique look. While the nine seeds of Freaky Buddah he popped had a lot of males, he’s thankful he found a winner.
Another similarity between the United States and Thailand? The government weed sucks. On our second visit, we stopped by a facility growing medical cannabis for the government. It was probably a pinch nicer than the things that have come out of the University of Mississippi, but it could not compare to the other indoor operations we saw in Bangkok.
Here is the documentary on our first trip to Bangkok in November.
This week we’re excited about what’s to come for the cannabis industry in 2024.
Last week we covered the fact that life is less than perfect in cannabis while highlighting some of the things we believed caused a lot of our headaches in 2023. This week, the opposite. We’re highlighting the things we think are going to help everyone turn it around.
Finally Fixing LA’s Equity Program
Here in Los Angeles, one of the biggest calls to action from the cannabis industry for the new mayor’s office continues to be the repair of the L.A. Social Equity Program. It was awesome to see 100 Social Equity Individual Applicants were randomly selected to apply for retail cannabis licenses last month, but the couple hundred people who invested their lives into putting their ducks in a row for the program are going to demand more. And while the new mayor’s office is separate from the scandals of the fall, they may have to pay the bill if a class action lawsuit ends up developing from the then-racist city council having original control over the program that drained so many coffers.
Standardized Testing?
It originally looked like we would have standardized lab testing this year. It seems a little hazy at the moment, but we wanted to put it on here to push the idea. Currently, cannabis labs have no fixed standard operating procedures. A lot of the time they’re just following the instructions for whatever hardware they bought. Then adjust the standard operating procedure to their liking. That’s where you see the variations in testing numbers from lab to lab. The idea of people shopping around their cannabis at labs to get the best numbers possible is a real thing. This is more so an issue with potency and terpene testing as opposed to heavy metals and pesticides.
Wider Access in America
It’s critical that California cultivators get access to more shelf space soon. While the state continues to drag a bit, the idea of stocking shelves all over the world with cannabis grown in California is appealing to people. The first shelves will probably be domestic, and step one is having as many states with legal access to cannabis as possible for when that day comes. And it’s not that far out. Some regulators figure it will be a few more years. Whenever it is, it’ll certainly make people’s lives a lot easier. We don’t think it will happen this year, but we’ll be talking about the mechanics of it by December a lot.
The Pace of Change is Fast
I know it’s going to take some time for the other stuff I mentioned, but it’s easy to see how fast things are moving for cannabis all over the world. It’s like a snowball with a rocket sled behind it pushing it even faster as it grows and grows rolling down the mountain. Now is everyone hoping to get sucked up by the snowball a saint? Doubtful. But the bigger the snowball gets, the more opportunities there will be for nice people to take part. Plenty of people entering the cannabis space now aren’t haters, they were just scared to go to jail back in the day.
Fidel’s x Carrots is proving to be the hottest cannabis industry clothing drop of Q1.
As we’ve covered many times here at L.A. Weekly, Shant “Fidel” Damirdjian is one of the local faces shining during these dark times in the cannabis industry. He had a wild 2022 with his victory over some of the best cultivators in the world at Transbay Challenge IV — the Hash Hole exploded to the most famed ‘preroll” in California if you’re even comfortable calling it that, and he opened up his own cultivation spot in the desert without the help of the corporate oppressor. A great year for anyone in cannabis.
Topping 2022
So how does he top it? He comes out of the gates early in 2023 with a fantastic collaboration with Anwar Carrots. Carrots got into the fashion game in 2007; in 2015, he’d launch the Carrots by Anwar line. Vibrant oranges among other colors with stylized carrots and rabbits are par for the course with the popular menswear line.
The collaboration with Fidel’s started just over a year and a half ago.
“Anwar blessed us with complete creative control the entire project,” Damirdjian told L.A. Weekly. “Dabber Dan and I, my right-hand man, designed every bit of the box. Even the bags the clothing was in. Even the cut and sew on the hoodies.”
They would eventually settle on a 50/50 cotton and bamboo blend made in Los Angeles and find that bright orange they were looking for, after some trial and error over the last 18 months.
The Box
Each box in the limited edition of 500 includes the hoodies and sweatpants set made, screen printed and packaged in LA. There also is a Fidel’s x Carrots T-shirt, headwear, four Croc Jibbets, a commemorative 3D printed carrot with a hash hole, and a half ounce of Fidel’s popular weed.
It’s very fair to argue the cannabis aspects of the box are easily worth more than half its $600 price tag.
Where Fashion Meets Weed
After the entertainment industry, many would argue cannabis and fashion is where Los Angeles has some of its biggest global influence. We asked Damirdjian his take on that sentiment.
“100% it’s something you don’t see done often; if it has, it didn’t catch my attention and I apologize,” Damirdjian replied. “But I feel like fashion and cannabis have so much to do with one another. They are different audiences within the same audience. It’s a great thing to work with another cannabis company and within our community, but to branch out of it to get the attention of people in the clothing industry, it’s amazing.
Damirdjian argues it triggers so much more love crossing his audience and Anwar’s audience he’s built over the years. He appreciates how wowed people from both sides of the fence have been after months of effort trying to get it right to their vision.
Damirdjian is excited about what’s next; don’t expect to see these boxes again.
“This is like one and done. I’m trying to touch as many people that follow my following, Anwar’s following with this,” Damirdjian said. “This cost $600 for the box; it’s not something that everyone can afford. But the true collector is getting so much in the box. I’m not just taking money from the consumer, I’m giving so much more.”
Again, a lot of it comes back to being a unique spirit in a crowded space for Damirdjian.
He knows everyone’s trying to do something different. He considers the Carrots collaboration a sought-after project for anyone, and when he got the chance, he was not letting it slip through his fingers.
“It took so much time, finances and we did it with so much cadence, but it opened up a lot of doors for me now. I can already see it this early on. I can’t wait till more people consume it,” Damirdjian said,