Big Weed

by Christian Hageseth

  Should they be able to possess or give as a gift to some other adult up to 1 ounce of marijuana without penalty—yes or no?

  Should dispensaries like mine be allowed to sell up to 1 ounce at a time to any adult age twenty-one or older—yes or no?

  How the voters decided would have a huge impact on the way we did business. Such a law, if approved, could theoretically propel our sales into the stratosphere. It would transform the way citizens of the United States and the world viewed Colorado. In the same way that college kids dreamed of going to Amsterdam to drink in that city’s marijuana-friendly lifestyle, they would now dream of vacations to Colorado for reasons well beyond the state’s legendary ski slopes and mountain peaks.

  We in the business were excited about the possibilities. In the past few years, I’d come to know so many different types of people who I saw as potential customers. There were high-functioning, otherwise law-abiding people who nevertheless smoked weed on a daily basis. Some continued to obtain their product the way they always had—illegally on the street. They didn’t like doing so, but they had made their peace with this compromise a long time ago.

  Others had been emboldened enough to apply for red cards. They had legitimate reasons for doing so, but they didn’t want this part of their lives to become public knowledge. There was still too much of a stigma attached to marijuana. They didn’t want their friends and neighbors to think they had exploited a loophole in the law just to get high.

  And there were still others I met regularly who were curious about the herb but had never indulged for a very good reason: They feared breaking the law.

  Until marijuana came out of the closet and was regarded by our culture as similar to a glass of wine at the end of day, each of these different classes of people would not rest easy.

  The ballot initiative had been approved back in February 2012, and since then, a spirited debate had flourished in the media. Surprisingly, quite a few of my colleagues in the industry thought that all-out legalization was the wrong way to go. They professed a fear of Amendment 64, and their objections seemed to be tainted with the old paranoia. They worried that if the amendment passed, the feds would grow impatient with Colorado’s newfound permissiveness and crack down in the form of new legislation and enforcement. “Don’t you see?” these people reasoned. “We have a good thing going with medical marijuana. If you really want it, you can apply for it and get it. Why do we have to rock the boat?”

  I had a unique perspective on the battle for legalization. One of our attorneys, Christian Sederberg, and his partner Brian Vicente were instrumental in writing various state initiatives over the years, not just for Colorado but for other states, calling for more humane, realistic, and mature drug policies. They and activists from advocacy groups such as the Marijuana Policy Project, SAFER (Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation), and the Colorado chapter of NORML had lobbied for years to make marijuana legal in our state, but their message had never clicked with the mainstream public. Interestingly, all these groups recently moved into the same building near the state capital building in Denver. Those of us in the business call it the Marijuana Mansion. It is the epicenter of thought leadership for the growing national marijuana industry.

  Leading up to this Election Day, these groups tried a new approach. In their polling, they realized that many voters were still laboring under the delusion that marijuana was just another vice that was likely to be abused like alcohol. In the absence of solid information on the matter, the average citizen was assuming that marijuana was more harmful than booze. So why would they vote to add yet another way for people to destroy the lives of themselves and others?

  That was the sticking point. These citizens had marijuana all wrong.

  In 2012, the activists worked hard to get one important message across to voters: Marijuana was safer than alcohol.

  Period.

  The evidence for their claim was statistically and evidentially valid. Every year, alcohol caused the deaths of 35,000 people in the United States. Alcohol was an addictive substance. Even those who were not alcoholics stood a chance of overdosing on alcohol. When drunk, citizens often abused their loved ones and others. A drunk behind the wheel of a car was a disaster in the making. You didn’t have to persuade people of these facts. All Americans know this in their bones.

  In contrast, it was virtually impossible to overdose on marijuana. As far back as 1937, when the federal government made the substance illegal, experts had found it to be nonaddictive. And the statistics just weren’t there to support the notion that people who were high on marijuana abused or killed others. Hell, you could get high on Sunday night and not even suffer a hangover come Monday. There was a good argument to be made that if the substance was legal, more people would avail themselves of the safer alternative; they’d get high, chill out, laugh a lot, scarf down a pizza, and stay safe indoors instead of getting drunk and risk hurting themselves or others.

  All year long, ad campaigns had driven home this one simple message. Polling indicated that more and more people in the state were receptive to this thinking. The numbers were in favor of legalization, but they were still close enough to make those of us in the industry nervous. A few conservative counties in the state presented a significant hurdle to passage. I knew a lot of people who thought the same way as these county residents did. After a lifetime of hearing negative press on marijuana, would they really be willing to change their opinions? Would they buy the argument or assume it was a lie?

  As a father, I was not unsympathetic to the notion that legal marijuana would present some challenges to all of us, but I thought the good outweighed the bad. If marijuana was legal, my children would someday be likely to try it. Perhaps they would even procure fake IDs the way young people did to buy alcohol. But at least there would be a budtender on the other side of the counter inspecting their IDs. Last time I checked, drug dealers don’t card. Drug dealers also don’t offer a legitimate, clean, seed-to-sale provenance for their product. There literally is no telling where the weed you bought off the street came from, or what it was adulterated with. In some instances, drug dealers are also selling cocaine, meth, and other illegal drugs right alongside their illegal marijuana.

  Legal marijuana would open a can of worms for the state’s police officers. When someone’s been drinking, you can test their blood alcohol content with a Breathalyzer test. The level of THC in one’s blood can be determined only by a blood draw or urine sample. (At this writing, Colorado and Washington both use a 5-nanogram-per-milliliter driving-under-the-influence-of-drugs standard.) That means that a suspected driver would need to be taken into custody and escorted to a police station or hospital so the test can be administered. That test would need to be conducted soon after the road stop, and the suspect would need to be accompanied by a police officer the whole time to ensure the chain of evidence. That is a problem. One suspected stoner driving under the influence could effectively put one police officer out of rotation for an entire shift. That manpower sacrifice could be problematic for most police departments. To make matters worse, law enforcement agencies, marijuana activists, and researchers are still debating whether the 5-nanogram standard is reasonable. Some think it’s too low; others insist it’s too high.

  I am not arguing that these issues don’t present significant challenges. But if marijuana was legal, police officers would no longer be charged with busting people for possession. The entire judicial system would see a radical decrease in drug cases. This seems like a more than worthwhile trade-off.

  I also saw a benefit for my medical marijuana clientele. Many of the people I saw in our dispensaries truly were sick. Their daily schedules consisted of going from one doctor’s appointment to another. Under the current system, medical marijuana red cards had to be renewed each year. If marijuana was legal for all adults, these sick patients wouldn’t have to jump through hoops every year to get cer
tified. They could just walk into a dispensary anytime they wanted, no questions asked.

  The day of the vote, Ed Rosenthal was in town, and we spent some time together, talking about the significance of the referendum. Later in the afternoon I was tied up with a few administrative issues and took some phone calls. I didn’t know what had happened until I heard some employees cheering.

  I went out of my office and saw a group of people gathered around a computer. It was still early in the afternoon. The polls had not yet closed. We were still a long way from knowing who had won the presidency, but the votes were in on marijuana. The three critical counties had swung in favor of yes to Amendment 64.

  Later that night, the story got even better. Obama had taken all nine of Colorado’s electoral votes. But the number of Coloradans who had voted for him (51 percent) was still fewer than the number of people (53 percent) who voted for marijuana.

  Weed was more popular than the president.

  Up in Washington state, voters had passed Initiative Measure 502, legalizing marijuana in their state, by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent.

  It was a fascinating election night. Voters in two U.S. states had said yes to marijuana. Our governor took to the airwaves that night, announcing that the state would live up to the letter of the law. “But don’t break out the Cheetos and Goldfish too quickly,” he quipped.

  On that Tuesday evening in November, all of our facilities were fully staffed. We didn’t exactly follow the governor’s advice. In our elation, we rolled some joints and walked proudly outside each building. On the chilly streets of Denver, we lit up and puffed away to celebrate the birth of a new market and the turning of the tide.

  What was the result of that momentous night?

  The law didn’t go into effect until New Year’s Day 2014, a Wednesday. In Denver, people started lining up outside their nearest dispensaries on New Year’s Eve, braving the chilly Colorado weather in their sweaters, parkas, and scarves to be first in line to buy the next morning.

  The law was clear. Locals could buy up to 1 ounce at a time, visitors a quarter of an ounce. You couldn’t smoke in public, and you could not hoard your stash by buying, say, 1 ounce a day until you had enough marijuana in your mattress to choke Tommy Chong. Anyone found with more than 8 ounces in their possession would be looking at felony charges. The most prudent course of action was to buy and smoke, buy and smoke again. When I heard that, I couldn’t help thinking what an odd business this was. You sold people something that they took home and burned, then immediately sold them more.

  For a few days the media descended on Colorado, beaming back salacious stories of our new favorite vice. A lot of people who were buying were quarter-ounce tourists, some of whom had flown in specifically to participate in what many considered a historic event. At about $300 an ounce, some shops were raking in close to $100,000 a day. Demand was so high that many dispensaries were hanging out of stock signs in their windows before the weekend was over.

  At our dispensaries, we were seeing a similar influx of newcomers, but all of them were turned away empty-handed. That’s because I had made the decision early on that we were not going to rush into the recreational market just yet. We had the proper licenses to grow and sell recreationally, but I didn’t think it was prudent to do so until the market had worked out some of the kinks.

  To run a business that sells consumable products to the public, you must be ready to meet or exceed expectations and be able to maintain what you start. You cannot showcase the best weed in the world one week and then abysmal product the next week—or, worse, be out of stock. I see entering the consumer market like running a marathon. Before you do it, you want to make sure you have trained well, that your mind and your body are both ready for the challenge that lies before you, that you’ve outfitted yourself with the correct equipment, and that you are set up to succeed.

  When you sell to medical marijuana customers, you’re selling to a deliberately small market and can easily field newbie questions. Once a medical user is up and running on a marijuana regimen that works for him or her, it’s easy to tweak what the person buys over time.

  When you’re selling to newbies off the street, you have one chance to win them over. You need to make sure your packaging is correct and that your customer service is flawless.

  Those who rushed into the adult-use market were destined to make mistakes—and many did. Dispensaries sold buds and edibles to newbie marijuana consumers who went home and proceeded to have alarmingly uncomfortable experiences. At the time of this writing, I know of one company that has been hit with a class action suit because of this very issue. Because the company lacks product liability insurance, it probably will go under—all because of an easily avoidable mistake.

  Because of this and a host of other ramp-up issues, I didn’t think it was worth being the first to sell to this new market. As a result, a lot of people who walked into our shops in 2014 left disappointed. But I know it was the right decision to make.

  Before the night of the election, I had worked through different scenarios and variables with the Green Man team in an attempt to know a little more about the great unknown that was facing us. I predicted that in order to meet the adult-use market, we would need more than four times our current production levels.

  On that New Year’s Day in 2014, legal marijuana was a novelty. The market was so new that it was impossible to judge just how many people ultimately would become regular buyers. At this point, an accurate number was unknowable. To meet the expected demand, the state was allowing growers to make a one-time-only transfer of their medical inventory to recreational inventory. If you wanted to grow fresh plants for the recreational market, you needed to apply for a new set of licenses.

  That was fine, but still: Four times the plants? That meant more lights. More facilities. More grows. More employees to service all those new customers.

  We weren’t there yet and wouldn’t be for a while, but I didn’t mind running in the pack early in the race. I had a game plan, a vision, for how to win the weed game in Colorado. I knew if I stuck to my plan, we would be in front when we came to the finish line. Now, finally, it was time to build the Cannabis Ranch.

  13

  Looking for the Win-Win

  The business was thriving and growing, and we were looking forward to the 2014 Cannabis Cup in Denver. In the office, we buckled down and clarified the details of our booth at that year’s event, which had moved to a larger location at the Denver Mart. That was followed up with our usual strain-selection party at my place. The next morning, Barb, Corey, and I made the final six picks.

  There isn’t a company on the planet that doesn’t think twice about whether they should participate in their industry’s next trade show. That’s because it’s always so hard to determine the immediate benefit to spending lavishly to attend a particular event. When times are great, companies tend to be freer with the budgets. When times are tough, they retrench. But if we didn’t make an appearance at the first Cannabis Cup in the year marijuana went legal in our state, it would be as if we didn’t exist. So we went all out, booking a 20-by-20-foot booth and erecting a custom-made Green Man tent nearest the entrance to the event’s smoking area. I had twenty-two people working two shifts a day, lighting the company bong, selling a ton of T-shirts, and getting happily baked outdoors with a lot of friendly faces.

  We thought it would be smart to hand out munchies in that crowd. So anyone who came by the booth got a paper cup with our logo on it, stuffed with a (marijuana-free) serving of green-and-white-colored popcorn. By the end of the weekend, we had distributed twenty thousand servings of popcorn. If you looked out at the crowd, it seemed as if every person on the floor was walking around with a Green Man cup. I like to think we made an impression.

  The third day of the 37,000-person event happened to land on Easter Sunday, and the trade show weekend
coincided with a 420 event, a massive outdoor rally celebrating marijuana legalization that took place in the city’s Civic Center Park, not far from the state capitol. The park was packed with 80,000 people. The marijuana-leaf bandanas and hemp clothing and marijuana edible kiosks were doing a brisk business.

  So were the cops.

  Remember: It was still illegal in Colorado to smoke marijuana in public. But despite the fact that police had posted signs to this effect throughout the park, ecstatic event goers largely ignored the ban. The cloud of marijuana smoke that hovered in front of the state capital was a taunt. The cops reacted well, I thought. If they saw you breaking the law right in front of their faces, they issued you a $150 fine. But by the end of the day, only twenty-two people had been arrested.

  Across town at the Denver Mart, I was not nearly as clueless about the award program as I had been the first year we attended. I was in the room, listening, when the judges called our name.

  Our Ghost Train Haze strain took the U.S. Cannabis Cup for best sativa. To look at it, it’s not a terribly distinctive bud, but it gives off a rich, sharp, almost metallic smell. When you smoke it, you can taste that same metallic flavor. Its high is not incapacitating. Instead, you’re overcome with a gentle, light euphoria that makes it a fine choice for newcomers.

  A bunch of us in the back erupted with cheers. We ran up and took the stage. The presenters handed me the small cup, which was the highest award of that year’s event. I waved it over my head and screamed, “Oh my God! We did it! We did it again!”

  Scott Reach, the founder of a seed company called Rare Dankness and the breeder of Ghost Train Haze, was in the audience when our win was announced. He joined us on stage and joined in our celebration. We had won by growing his creation. It was good to have him on stage with us. Kim Sidwell, the de facto official photographer of the cannabis movement, snapped a picture of the Green Man team on stage together, accepting the award. That picture would end up in High Times magazine and today graces our conference room. It was one of my proudest moments because we’d won as a team.