***Official*** Cannabis Industry Thread

Was just in Denver last week doing a dispensary and cultivation facility tour. I am a big fan of Denver and the people that live there, and I applaud them for legalizing cannabis, but there's still a long way to go for this budding industry.

Some notes:

1) The vast majority of the weed sucks, but there is such a demand that it sells no matter the quality. It's also still loaded with hard chemistry pesticides/fungicides and heavy metals. Supposedly this has been addressed recently, but trust me when I tell you, it will be a problem for many years to come there. The testing regulations are a joke. Until that is fixed there will always be weed loaded with shit that may or may not be dangerous to consume.

2) The vape pens and edibles are completely inconsistent, some good, some shit. IMO Dixie Elixirs is a terrible product, do not want, same with O-pen Vape.

3) Athletes are going to dispensaries and purchasing product. Athletes are obv not the brightest people in the world, and while they send their assistant's most of the time to get product for them, sometimes they do it on their own, which I witnessed with my own eyes. I was in Euflora in Aurora and saw a very famous active Denver Bronco, who actually purchased some Sour Diesel right in front of me, and then signed an autograph for one of the budtenders. Not gonna blow up this dudes spot for numerous reasons (good thing they weren't playing the Eagles that weekend), but I was told by a very reliable source that runs a bunch of dispensaries that this is very common for local athletes as well as athletes in town for a game.

4) The cultivation facilities are for the most part a joke, as well as their "master growers". I wouldn't trust a lot of these guys to grow tomatoes let alone weed.

5) Fuck there's a lot of traffic in that town!

6) Concentrates... Ay caramba! I bought some live resin and did that up for two days. Christ all mighty that is some strong shit, and it took it's toll on me. Took me close to a week to get over that, kind of like a weekend bender would. Can't believe people are smoking that shit on the regular. While I believe there is a place for it, it's definitely on a whole other level than flower. Interested to see how that whole market plays out as it is very new to most.

7) Saw a sign on I 70 that said something like "This highway was funded by marijuana tax dollars", which is fucking awesome.


All in all, CO in my opinion is winning with legalized cannabis, but there definitely are a lot of issues to iron out over time. As more states adopt legal marijuana laws and politicians are educated on the industry this will happen.

BTW, the first two legal dispensaries are now up and running in Las Vegas. If you're visiting and are a patient in another state you can bring your card here and purchase up to an ounce at one of them. Eventually there will be a whole lot more, Las Vegas approved a total of 48 dispensaries this past year.

IMO, repost this in a new thread called Official Cannabis Industry thread because I have some real interesting notes taken regarding the west coast market movement in the last year.

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Originally Posted by sonatine

IMO, repost this in a new thread called Official Cannabis Industry thread because I have some real interesting notes taken regarding the west coast market movement in the last year.

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Druff, please change the title of the thread to Official Cannabis Industry Thread.


I will PM him the link as he might not open this due to lack of interest. In the meantime please treat this thread as such.

Should have thought of that before, you make a good point.

Noteworthy states of affair:

Oregon has basically embraced legal party weed full throttle. Weed is no longer a thing in Oregon legally.

Washington state, however, is proper fucked. They stacked up on a regulation-heavy industrial model where no one but commercial growers can legally grow weed realistically and failed to promote the dispensary side of things, resulting in something like a 50,000 lb crop surplus this year. And because Oregon is 3 hours from Seattle and basically is the wild west now, there is even less demand for that surplus. The word on the streets is that the next generation of wanna be weed barons are planning on waiting for the Washington market to implode completely then buy up all the dead farms for pennies on the dollar, and that a lot of early adopters are going to go superbroke2000; as it stands, the market dictated prices are so low that they generally accept that they cannot be profitable. The math is against them, badly. There is also little sympathy for them because these are literally people who expected to gouge the market with like $20/g wholesale prices, so fuck them.

Vegas,

Please explain what you mean about the O-pen vapes. I just went out to Denver for Phish, and about a dozen of the people I was with were praising theirs. They even gave me one of their extra pens with some oil, and they said there are essentially 3 types of the oil, with the kind they gave me not having that long of a shelf life, is a bit more expensive, but has less chemicals in it.

is there something I should be concerned with in regards to these?

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Originally Posted by vegas1369

Was just in Denver last week doing a dispensary and cultivation facility tour. I am a big fan of Denver and the people that live there, and I applaud them for legalizing cannabis, but there's still a long way to go for this budding industry.

Some notes:

1) The vast majority of the weed sucks, but there is such a demand that it sells no matter the quality. It's also still loaded with hard chemistry pesticides/fungicides and heavy metals. Supposedly this has been addressed recently, but trust me when I tell you, it will be a problem for many years to come there. The testing regulations are a joke. Until that is fixed there will always be weed loaded with shit that may or may not be dangerous to consume.

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Can't be worse than the "spice" I used to smoke when I played high school basketball. I was paranoid for a long time about smoking real weed because of some stupid random drug test rumor that was going around, and so we used to roll these K2 spliffs (half k2 and half bugler tobacco). Nothing, I repeat, nothing ever fucked me up as hard in the head than these joints of death. The only tangible saving grace was the fact that the high wore off quicker than actual bud.

Part of the reason I quit smoking entirely was the likely (in my mind) contamination of the weed due to pesticides, preservatives, etc.

seriously, I have never smoked anything worse than K2. Tried it at a Dead show in Indianapolis maybe 15 years ago. My buddy bought it at a head shop (packaged as incense). Fuck that noise. Dont EVER do this shit. Smelled weird, tasted weird, fucked with my head for like 30 min. Heroin is probably better for you.


TL/DR - Dont smoke K2 EVER

I smoked some dirty stuff like that called Black Mamba iirc. It was the worst thing ever, and I stupidly took a few hits of it when I was on the break of a live tournament when we were down to the last three; I was so messed up and couldn't see straight that the dealer had to stack my chips for me and put the chips in the pot when I declared an action. I thought it was gonna be like weed and chill me out, but soon found that it was nothing like the sunshine euphoria you get from what - just utter darkness.

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Originally Posted by sonatine

Noteworthy states of affair:

Oregon has basically embraced legal party weed full throttle. Weed is no longer a thing in Oregon legally.

Washington state, however, is proper fucked. They stacked up on a regulation-heavy industrial model where no one but commercial growers can legally grow weed realistically and failed to promote the dispensary side of things, resulting in something like a 50,000 lb crop surplus this year. And because Oregon is 3 hours from Seattle and basically is the wild west now, there is even less demand for that surplus. The word on the streets is that the next generation of wanna be weed barons are planning on waiting for the Washington market to implode completely then buy up all the dead farms for pennies on the dollar, and that a lot of early adopters are going to go superbroke2000; as it stands, the market dictated prices are so low that they generally accept that they cannot be profitable. The math is against them, badly. There is also little sympathy for them because these are literally people who expected to gouge the market with like $20/g wholesale prices, so fuck them.

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I've actually been following this debacle very closely. Here is my take as to why Washington was/is such a massive fail.

Since CA passed prop 215 in 1996 you've kind of seen a rinse and repeat scenario in other states as well as far as the industry is concerned.

Here is what happens:

1) MMJ laws pass.

2) State lawmakers drag their feet and don't come up with regulations.

3) Dispensaries start popping up operating under grey areas of the law.

4) Local jurisdictions come up with regulations that they have a difficult time enforcing.

5) Feds and local cops have a field day and shut a lot of these technically legal facilities down for numerous reasons.

Number 2, 3 and 4 are very important here and the main reason why this industry is such a mess in places like CA, WA and MI.

What happened in WA is exactly what I described in 2, 3 and 4. You had hundreds of "medical" dispensaries operating by the time recreational marijuana was voted in. Politicians hands were forced into coming up with STATE regulations, which were never in place before 2014, when rec was approved.

So here is the scope:

1) Hundreds of medical dispensaries already in operation in WA.

2) State comes up with regulations for RECREATIONAL marijuana and comes up with an application process (which was a joke) for wannabe ganjapreneurs. Over 7,000 application were received. To put that in perspective, Nevada, who came up with the strongest application process to date only had 519 applications.

3) State approves applicants and then tells all the medical dispensaries they are not state approved and have to shut down.

4) Medical dispensaries for the most part tell the state to fuck off and continue to do business.

5) Meanwhile, all the approved cultivators that were approved to sell RECREATIONAL marijuana are only allowed to sell to RECREATIONAL dispensaries and not to the medical dispensaries still operating under grey areas of the law. There are far less recreational marijuana dispensaries than medical.

6) Due to all the taxes and licensing fees the recreational prices were MUCH higher than the medical prices as well as black market prices, so the recreational dispensaries were unable to compete.

7) In the span of half a year the recreational dispensaries were on pace to sell about 12,000 lbs of product, while the medical dispensaries were most likely in the 150k range (there is no data on this considering they are not state regulated). To put the 12k number in perspective, CO sold 286,000 lbs of legal cannabis in 2014, and WA approved more cultivation than what CO already has.

8) Inevitable surplus.

9) WA is now trying to rectify this issue by telling the medical dispensaries they can continue to operate as long as they are approved by the state. Once this happens the state approved cultivators will be able to sell to ALL dispensaries in WA.

Big mess.

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Originally Posted by DRK Star

Vegas,

Please explain what you mean about the O-pen vapes. I just went out to Denver for Phish, and about a dozen of the people I was with were praising theirs. They even gave me one of their extra pens with some oil, and they said there are essentially 3 types of the oil, with the kind they gave me not having that long of a shelf life, is a bit more expensive, but has less chemicals in it.

is there something I should be concerned with in regards to these?

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Once your friends get a hold of some very good oil they will change their tune. The fact of the matter is that O-Pen Vape is really the only company out in CO able to produce on a large scale. In this case it's all about supply. In order to produce oil you need product (trim), and O-pen Vape is gobbling up the most trim in that state. They were very early to the game and locked up a lot of contracts to obtain trim from cultivators, and they spent the money on extraction equipment to produce on a larger scale than most. The cost of that equipment is insanely high. A decent CO2 extractor is about $150k, and that's a fairly small sized machine. I'm guessing that O-Pen Vape has easily spent in the $2 million range just on extraction equipment alone.

Anyway, smart businessmen, but not necessarily the best at extraction. The simple fact is they sell an inferior product to a lot of what's out there. It's kind of like Budweiser vs craft beers. Yes, they are selling a shitload, but it's by far not the best product. Two reasons in my opinion.

1) The trim they are buying is garbage. The quality of product makes a big difference when extracting oil. O-Pen Vape is buying mass produced greenhouse trim for the most part, which is crap.

2) They are cutting it with cheap glycol, which effects the product in a big way.

The simple fact is that this is so new most people don't know what's good and what's not, they just know it's convenient and it gets them high. Once you taste pure high quality oil your perception on this changes fast.

This, BTW, is where the industry is headed. Oil will be the big seller over time. Flower will be used mostly by us older folks.

For me, the madness of Washington State is best summarized in this quote directly from http://liq.wa.gov/:


"Home grown marijuana for recreational use, as well as sale, remains illegal. Recreational use marijuana must be purchased from a state-licensed retailer."


Given how powerful marijuana is now, and given how totally, spectacularly ruthless and deceptive growers are with their strain identifications, this is tantamount to walking into a bar with nothing but identical opaque bottles, and being told yes they will serve you, but all the bottles have random spirits mixed with random industrial effluent.

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Originally Posted by Krypt

Part of the reason I quit smoking entirely was the likely (in my mind) contamination of the weed due to pesticides, preservatives, etc.

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And you would be correct in thinking that, at least on the pesticide side of things. Preservatives in weed are nothing to worry about as there really isn't anything used to preserve it other than nitrogen injected vacuum sealed bags, which ain't happening on the black market and is nothing to worry about anyway.

Pesticides, fungicides and heavy metals on the other hand are definitely an issue, as well as pests, molds and fungus.

Black market growers don't give a fuck about their consumers. They only care about having a successful harvest and making a buck. Unfortunately this mentality transferred over to the legal side of things considering the vast majority of "experts" were people who were growing illegally for years. Policy makers aren't scientists and know nothing about what it takes to produce cannabis on a massive scale, so they were and still are for the most part, unaware of these issues. Nevada is actually the first state to address it, and they are doing a great job. They actually have the Nevada Dept of Agriculture overseeing the use of pesticides on cannabis and educating all of the cultivators, and have insanely stringent testing before the products reach the shelves.

Sadly, if you've been smoking black market weed for years you have without question been exposed to hard chemistry pesticides, as well as shit like powdery mildew, molds, and shitloads of mites (which don't effect humans, but still nasty to think about) as well as a whole other assortment of pests and fucked up shit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sonatine

For me, the madness of Washington State is best summarized in this quote directly from http://liq.wa.gov/:


"Home grown marijuana for recreational use, as well as sale, remains illegal. Recreational use marijuana must be purchased from a state-licensed retailer."


Given how powerful marijuana is now, and given how totally, spectacularly ruthless and deceptive growers are with their strain identifications, this is tantamount to walking into a bar with nothing but identical opaque bottles, and being told yes they will serve you, but all the bottles have random spirits mixed with random industrial effluent.

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Never a good idea to allow the alcohol control board to oversee something that is mainly agriculture...lol

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Originally Posted by vegas1369

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Originally Posted by Krypt

Part of the reason I quit smoking entirely was the likely (in my mind) contamination of the weed due to pesticides, preservatives, etc.

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And you would be correct in thinking that, at least on the pesticide side of things. Preservatives in weed are nothing to worry about as there really isn't anything used to preserve it other than nitrogen injected vacuum sealed bags, which ain't happening on the black market and is nothing to worry about anyway.

Pesticides, fungicides and heavy metals on the other hand are definitely an issue, as well as pests, molds and fungus.

Black market growers don't give a fuck about their consumers. They only care about having a successful harvest and making a buck. Unfortunately this mentality transferred over to the legal side of things considering the vast majority of "experts" were people who were growing illegally for years. Policy makers aren't scientists and know nothing about what it takes to produce cannabis on a massive scale, so they were and still are for the most part, unaware of these issues. Nevada is actually the first state to address it, and they are doing a great job. They actually have the Nevada Dept of Agriculture overseeing the use of pesticides on cannabis and educating all of the cultivators, and have insanely stringent testing before the products reach the shelves.



Sadly, if you've been smoking black market weed for years you have without question been exposed to hard chemistry pesticides, as well as shit like powdery mildew, molds, and shitloads of mites (which don't effect humans, but still nasty to think about) as well as a whole other assortment of pests and fucked up shit.

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I've also definitely seen cat/dog hair on some ganj before.

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Originally Posted by Krypt

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Originally Posted by vegas1369

And you would be correct in thinking that, at least on the pesticide side of things. Preservatives in weed are nothing to worry about as there really isn't anything used to preserve it other than nitrogen injected vacuum sealed bags, which ain't happening on the black market and is nothing to worry about anyway.

Pesticides, fungicides and heavy metals on the other hand are definitely an issue, as well as pests, molds and fungus.

Black market growers don't give a fuck about their consumers. They only care about having a successful harvest and making a buck. Unfortunately this mentality transferred over to the legal side of things considering the vast majority of "experts" were people who were growing illegally for years. Policy makers aren't scientists and know nothing about what it takes to produce cannabis on a massive scale, so they were and still are for the most part, unaware of these issues. Nevada is actually the first state to address it, and they are doing a great job. They actually have the Nevada Dept of Agriculture overseeing the use of pesticides on cannabis and educating all of the cultivators, and have insanely stringent testing before the products reach the shelves.



Sadly, if you've been smoking black market weed for years you have without question been exposed to hard chemistry pesticides, as well as shit like powdery mildew, molds, and shitloads of mites (which don't effect humans, but still nasty to think about) as well as a whole other assortment of pests and fucked up shit.

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I've also definitely seen cat/dog hair on some ganj before.

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LOL... I've seen plenty of long black hairs from the migrant workers in brick weed back in the day.