Big Weed

by Christian Hageseth

  It was time for another strain selection party. We were going for the big one.

  The number 420 holds a special significance for marijuana enthusiasts. The trouble is, no one has bothered to record precisely why the number is special. I’ve heard various theories. One legend says it’s the time—4:20 p.m.—when a group of weed-smoking teenagers would gather outside their high school in San Rafael, California, in the 1970s to light up. Others say that the 420 tradition originated in a 1939 short story by the science fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, in which an explorer to the planet Venus falls under the influence of a mysterious, hallucinogenic “mirage-plant” that sounds a lot like marijuana. When the explorer’s reverie ceases, the man looks at his watch and is “astonished to find the time was only 4:20.”

  Regardless of the origin, this number has inspired millions of people worldwide to designate April 20 as the day marijuana smokers raise a silent joint in honor of their blessed herb.

  Well, on that day in April 2012, Denver’s EXDO Center, a city block with outdoor space connecting four separate buildings, was packed to the gills with thirty thousand people. A sell-out crowd. For three days I had been hawking our wares out of a booth.

  The Cannabis Cup looked like every trade show you’ve ever attended—with one exception. Everything you saw was devoted to the glory of marijuana.

  You know those trade shows where people give you key chains and candy and other useless trinkets? Imagine instead walking down the aisle and being invited to take a hit from a bong or vaporizer.

  You can’t pull off a show like this easily. For one thing, since transporting marijuana across state lines is still a violation of federal law, the state of Colorado had officials on site to check that every ounce of marijuana was sourced from a Colorado grower. In that respect, it was a little like a dog or antiques show. Every ounce had its own papers, its own provenance.

  You had to be eighteen to get in the doors and have a valid red card to be able to enter the designated “medicating”—that is, smoking area, which you could easily spot as soon as you entered. It was where everyone was headed: the building in the EXDO Center that was filled with a thick, resinous cloud. Our booth was located there.

  I had taken our precious Colorado Cup off the shelf and transported it to a place of honor in the center of our booth. It was bolted down to the table with a high-tech cable, and our staffers took turns lighting it all weekend long.

  People were loving it.

  Every day I was on my feet for eight hours, passing out brochures, selling our Green Man T-shirts, and inviting people to try out our products.

  I was baked off my ass.

  Seriously, I’ve never been so high in my entire life. At one point I thought I was hallucinating.

  Forget what I just said about my legendary tolerance. Tolerance meets its match in a 20,000-square-foot hall packed with a steady stream of people and clouds of marijuana smoke. People came in, took their hits, exhaled, then walked out of our booth, only to be replaced by others who did exactly the same thing. Eventually the cloud of smoke inside this large exhibit hall was dense. Simply breathing in this space was like taking a little hit with every breath.

  My head was swimming. It was actually stimulating to be in the presence of so many people who no longer had to hide the fact that they enjoyed marijuana.

  The other buildings and the outdoor area of the EXDO Center were smoke-free. There the show featured a good number of educational sessions throughout the weekend. People were learning how to set up their own grows. Fitness instructors we giving classes on how to exercise and manage pain with marijuana. Activist attorneys were lecturing on various aspects of the legalization movement. There were panel discussions on how our society would be changed by the presence of legal marijuana.

  Most people were there to smoke and shop and enjoy the music. To take it all in, to be part of this moment of change. Images of the marijuana leaf were everywhere. The rediscovery of marijuana in modern America owes a lot to young hippies who embraced the drug in the 1960s. Remarkably, much of what I was seeing that weekend was merely an extension of the old 1960s imagery.

  It made me wonder: If marijuana was going to grow beyond the demographic of enthusiasts, would it need to adopt a new imagery or look?

  I wanted our business to grow. Everyone was talking about the possibility that marijuana would one day be legal for all adults in the state of Colorado, not just those with medical conditions. If adult recreational use was approved, we’d see a new clientele in our dispensaries. People who had always been curious about smoking marijuana but were not willing to break the law to try it. People who had sneaked a smoke as adolescents but who never smoked it again as adults.

  If you wanted those people to feel comfortable giving you their business, was the tie-dyed aesthetic of the 1960s still the way to go? Or did we need a new aesthetic?

  I knew I was on to something, but I was too busy to give it more than a fleeting thought. But that show was what got me thinking about the ways in which branding permeates our lives.

  I’d venture to say that anyone in the world who sees a distinctive red-and-white swirl on any product will immediately think “Coca-Cola,” even though those words or their abbreviation, “Coke,” is nowhere to be found on the object. Show anyone a swoosh design on sporting apparel and they will immediately know the brand even if the critical four letters—N-I-K-E—are not present. The same goes for that little transparent apple with the bite taken out of it; millions know what that symbol stands for.

  Admittedly, I’ve chosen three of the world’s biggest brands. But lesser brands are still highly recognizable by their logos, and that recognizability can have an enormous impact on those brands’ fortunes. Chances are good, for example, that you have at some point in your life seen someone wearing a T-shirt or sweatshirt with the image of a black dog on it. Those shirts are the brand of the Black Dog Tavern, which opened in 1971 on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Today the brand has grown to include numerous gift shops and general stores. When you see someone wearing one of those shirts, your recognition of that brand is reinforced. Should your travels take you to Massachusetts, you’re likely to make a point of visiting one of the company’s locations—if only to see what all the fuss is about.

  Our industry was still small, so small that a Black Dog, a Sam Adams, an Apple, or a Starbucks had yet to emerge. But in time, one certainly would.

  For now, our T-shirts featured the face of the Green Man—a spirit of nature from ancient pagan lore. High as I was, as I stood there in the hall watching cannabis fans get higher still around me, I thought it was a question worth pondering: Was it possible to make my brand as recognizable as that black dog or that swoosh or that smiling Boston patriot brandishing a tankard of beer?

  I didn’t know it then, but I was about to be handed one tool to hasten that brand recognition. Our first order of business, even before setting up our booth, was to drop off our 40-gram samples for the cannabis competition. Over the course of ten days, the judges would be smoking the entrants’ weed, and the winners would be announced on the last night of the show.

  We didn’t overthink our entry that year. We were justifiably proud of our SkunkBerry strain because we were the first company to produce it commercially. Brandon, my second grower, introduced us to it, and the strain was flourishing in Corey’s care.

  It’s an interesting little bud. SkunkBerry has a very potent odor of skunk, which is mellowed by a very real fragrance of blueberry pie. The two flavors temper each other. The skunk never gets angry; it’s just tangy. The blueberry is sweet, not cloying. And in the background, if you wait for it, you’ll detect a pleasing sharp, astringent odor that also comes through in the taste of the smoke. It is very distinctive.

  This strain does well in our shops, but we didn’t really know how the judges would take to it. When you’re smo
king SkunkBerry, you know it. There’s nothing subtle about it. The flavors are so clearly different from what you just smoked or are about to smoke. Would the judges enjoy that palate shift, or not?

  Come Sunday, the exhibitors closed up shop and cleared the floor. Attendees packed in to hear the announcements. Typically, the smaller awards are read off first, but today, for some reason, the judges started at the top and worked their way down.

  Corey had convinced me that his “lucky spot” was standing in the back of the room. So we had all congregated together far from the stage. Just as things got started, I heard the judges say, “Green Man Cannabis!”

  “Hey, they called out our name!” I said to one of my employees. “What was that for?”

  “I think it was for the Cannabis Cup for Hybrid!”

  This is the highest award in the industry, given for general excellence. The Best Picture Oscar for Marijuana, you might say. Because our industry is small, those who win the Cannabis Cup are roundly accorded bragging rights for the rest of their lives.

  I didn’t think it was probable.

  “No,” I told the employee. “It can’t be. They must be starting from the third prize and working their way up.”

  “No, you won!” someone said. “Go! Go get your prize!”

  I felt the shove of a half dozen hands, pushing me toward the stage.

  We were so far in the back of the room that the judges had assumed we were no longer present. Someone else had leaped forward to accept the prize on my behalf. But then, just as he was walking away, I popped up on stage followed by my partners and employees.

  “Oh, wait,” someone said. “Green Man is here.”

  I was stunned. My hands were trembling, I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I’d started this business three years ago, and now our company and its employees had taken an award known throughout the world for cannabis excellence.

  Tell me: In what other industry in corporate America could a young company achieve such an award in so short a time?

  I was so grateful. I could not have done it without our team, especially our grower Corey. He now had three Cannabis Cup wins under his belt.

  The actual cup is an underwhelming trophy. An acquaintance of mine once showed me the trophy he had won for mixed doubles at Wimbledon, and I was surprised how small it was. I suppose I had expected something along the lines of the 25-pound Heisman Trophy. The Cannabis Cup was nothing like that: it was only 7 inches tall from its base to the top of the cup, and the caduceus—the snakes-and-staff symbol that signifies the medical field—served as the stem, morphing into two iconic-looking marijuana leaves that held up a golden bowl.

  I took the cup and waved it over my head.

  The audience went wild.

  11

  Marijuana’s Mecca

  In the world of cannabis, there is one name that stands out when you begin talking about growing marijuana: Ed Rosenthal. The New York Times once described him as “the pothead’s answer to Ann Landers, Judge Judy, Martha Stewart and the Burpee Garden Wizard all in one.” The latest edition of Ed’s book is dedicated to Pete Seeger. The foreword is written by Tommy Chong, the activist and actor of Cheech and Chong fame.

  Though he’s not formally trained as a horticulturist, Ed traveled the world studying marijuana cultivation, back when it was still illegal and unpopular to do so in the United States. He churned out a number of books that patiently taught two generations of underground growers how it’s done. If you ask professional growers today what reference book they recommend you read before setting up a grow, they will all recommend Ed Rosenthal’s Marijuana Grower’s Handbook.

  In October 2011, the autumn before our 2012 Cannabis Cup win, I got a call one afternoon from Dr. Paul Bregman, a former radiologist in Denver who is now a major figure in the cannabis movement and has testified as an expert witness before the state legislature on medical marijuana issues. Paul said that Ed Rosenthal was visiting Colorado. He was in Denver that night. Did I have time to join a group of them for dinner with Ed?

  At first I thought it was one of these events where fifty people sat in an audience while Ed spoke. That type of thing didn’t interest me. But Paul insisted this would be different. He had scored Ed’s phone number and called him a few days ago. Ed had agreed to meet Paul for dinner one night while in Denver; he didn’t have other plans. It was to be only four or five people, plus Ed. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  “Hell, yeah,” I told Paul on the phone. “I’ll see you there.”

  We were all meeting at the Imperial Chinese restaurant on Broadway. I went—but not before visiting our dispensary and picking up some choice buds of a strain known as the Ed Rosenthal Super Bud. It’s a fascinating hybrid of both sativa and indica that results in freakishly huge buds. Some people say it has a flavor profile not unlike pineapple punch; others describe it as having a citrusy, earthy, minty flavor.

  The fact that we could even talk about these flavors was due to the man I was about to meet. Among other things, Ed had made a careful study of terpenes, the aromatic essential oils that were found in cannabis resin and that gave all plants—not just marijuana—their powerful scents. When I read Ed’s books, I was reminded again of Nature’s resourcefulness. When Nature found a scent that worked well—the smell of lemons, for example—she didn’t just put them in lemons. Nature injects that odor in the form of limonene in herbs such as lemon balm and marijuana plants. This antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer terpene protects those plants from predators. As Ed has pointed out in his books over the years, the reason Nature endowed cannabis with THC-secreting glands is to help the plant ward off animals that would be moved to eat it. But ingeniously, that very same defense mechanism helped the plant attract the only animals that could ensure the plant’s success throughout the world: human beings.

  I got to the restaurant. Everyone was still standing, shaking hands with this gnomelike fellow with outrageously unkempt hair. He was small, thin, and somewhere in his sixties.

  Out came the soup.

  As the waiters were doing their thing, I pulled the bag from my pocket and quietly announced that I had brought some Ed Rosenthal Super Bud for Ed to check out. I handed the bag to the guy on my right, who lovingly inspected it before passing it down the table to the next guy, and the next, until it finally reached Ed.

  The conversation at the table turned briefly to how Super Bud came to be named after Ed. The owner of Sensi Seed, a good friend of Ed’s, had named two strains in honor of two men who had done so much for marijuana—one strain after the late activist Jack Herer and another strain after Ed. I could tell Ed was not overly excited to be presented with his own bud, but he was pleased to be recognized and liked that our bud was really well grown.

  The night wore on. At the end of our dinner, Ed pulled me aside. He looked at the bag of Super Bud. “Thank you so much for showing these to me. They’re beautiful. So . . . do you want to go smoke them?”

  You can guess what my answer was. When you have the opportunity to smoke weed with one of the great figures of the industry—and that opportunity involves smoking a strain named after him—the answer is not yes but “Hell, yes!”

  Ed and I and all the others from dinner went out to where I’d parked my Chevy Tahoe and climbed inside. I packed a bowl in a glass pipe, which I had brought just in case, and offered it up to Ed. After one puff, Ed started talking about the qualities of the bud in that bowl with the discernment of a true connoisseur. His description of the look, smell, taste, and high was so specific, so on the nose, that I knew I was in the presence of a master and still had much to learn.

  I can’t believe this, I thought. I’m smoking Ed Rosenthal Super Bud in my car with Ed Rosenthal himself.

  We got to talking. Ed struck me as intensely knowledgeable. You couldn’t just ask him a question about marijuana a
nd expect to get a quick yes-or-no answer. “Yes,” he would say, “but there are four parts to that answer. Do you want to hear them all?”

  Before the night was over, I asked him if he’d like to come by and check out our grows. He said he’d be happy to. He just needed to check his schedule. Okay, I thought, that’s his way of letting me down. He’s busy seeing a lot of other people in Colorado while he’s here.

  But sure enough, the next day, Ed showed up, eager to check out what we’d been up to. All the growers who worked for me were astonished and perhaps a little bit nervous. “Oh, Mr. Rosenthal,” they would say as they came up to him, “I have your book!”

  After that, Ed and I became friends and started working on a business opportunity together. One that involved me going to Amsterdam with him at some point to meet some people who needed to find a business home in the United States.

  Well, the night we won the Cannabis Cup, Ed was there. And he was one of the first to throw his arms around me and give me a huge hug of congratulations.

  “It’s time we go to Amsterdam,” he said. “You ready for this?” Considering I’d spent two exhausting days exhibiting at the Cannabis Cup and was still high from winning the top award, it was a reasonable question.

  I had never been to Amsterdam. I’m pretty well traveled, but I somehow missed the college marijuana excursion to Amsterdam, where you got to pose as a world traveler when really all you did in Europe was get baked in a marijuana café. Ed and I had talked previously about what we would need to accomplish while there. I knew I would be meeting a lot of people who had worked in the Dutch marijuana industry for decades. I was going to Mount Olympus to meet the Gods of Weed.