Tips from Tribes & Neon Trends
Tips from Tribes & Neon Trends
Plus: A weed glitter dildo.
The Broccoli Report
Monday, April 17, 2023
Time to read: About 5 minutes. Contains 1,035 words.
Good morning!
Happy 4/20 week, friends! How are we all feeling? I’m feeling unseasonably distant from the holiday as I put the finishing touches on my weed book manuscript, but you know I’ll be making time to celebrate this plant on Thursday. I’ve been on a bit of an unintentional THC break the past few weeks getting this project wrapped up—a habit shift that hasn’t brought about as significant a productivity gain as I’d hoped. I suppose it’s reassuring to know that weed was never to blame for my Monday morning procrastination.
I’m thinking of everyone in cultivation, retail, and event planning working overtime, and I sincerely hope that all of you get time to connect intentionally with this plant and nature on Thursday. Wishing you the happiest of holidays. 💚
My gift to you: an extra long, extra terp-y group of One-Hitters. Let’s get it.
One-Hitters: Cannabis News at a Glance
You know what’s likely to happen before federal legalization or interstate commerce between legalized states? Interstate commerce between tribal lands that have legalized cannabis. NuWu Cannabis Marketplace in Nevada, Wo Povi in New Mexico, and Joint Rivers in Washington state are all popular stores opened through tribal legislature outside of the state programs. Who’s to say an intertribal agreement couldn’t happen on its own? For my book research, I spoke to many business owners who are starting to reach out to other tribes to test these potentially game-changing waters.
I spilled a few more telling takeaways unearthed during book research in last Friday’s newsletter. It’s on the theme of weed-based experiences and includes observations on what’s working for cannabis businesses state-to-state and what consumers are willing to leave the house for in a post-pandemic world.
Another amusing tidbit I learned: Martha’s Vineyard is an island only accessible by boat or plane, so Massachusetts sort of treats it like a separate state. As in: No cannabis product can be brought in, but it can be grown locally and sold through one of the island’s licensed dispensaries.
One piece of advice ahead of cannabis conference season: Don’t trust Google reviews or taxi drivers for dispensary recs in Las Vegas. In my Reddit research for local favorites, I found a lot of chatter about suspicious, potentially inflated five-star Google ratings and kickbacks for taxi/Uber/Lyft drivers who bring unknowing tourists to specific shops.
Neon-bright glow-in-the-dark smoking accessories are having a moment. Session Goods x Weedfeed’s green-tinted pieces with glowy details have transfixed me, and Budwell—the maker of an unbreakable aluminum one-hitter—dropped neon mouthpieces and a uranium-glass ashtray with an otherworldly UV glow.
Delaware’s bill to legalize cannabis is sitting on Governor John Carney’s desk—again. It remains to be seen whether a second time will be a charm.
Neighboring Maryland’s adult-use program is off to the races, though. State legislators finalized the fine print this session, including approving a new process giving medical establishments first dibs on recreational licenses, but only if they pay the state 8% of their 2022 gross revenues. Big Tony Soprano energy, imo. 👀
In addition to pixelated hoodies, luxury brand LOEWE recently released its entrant to the growing cannabis candle scene. The ‘Scent of Marihuana’ candle has an “herbal scent” with woody and weed-y notes.
I couldn’t find updates about the latest lawsuit attempting to invalidate New York’s application requirements—has anyone heard anything on the ground? ICYMI: Last month, the New York State Cannabis Control Board struck down a lawsuit holding up the issuance of licenses (except for the Finger Lakes region) and approved 99 new cannabis dispensaries. But a new suit was filed, essentially for the same reasons as the original suit. The plaintiff is the Coalition For Access To Regulated & Safe Cannabis, a group that includes big dogs like Acreage Holdings, PharmaCann, Green Thumb Industries, and Curaleaf. They aren’t happy with how hard it is to get their hands on a license or three in NY.
Were Connecticut legislators high when they wrote the state’s medical strain-naming rules? I’m just trying to understand why they decided to rename all familiar strain names with more pharmaceutical-sounding names that no one knows, requiring name translation databases for people to have any idea what they’re actually smoking.
A waking weed nightmare unfolds in Oakland, California: More than 200 industrial cannabis cultivators have set up operations in a 10-mile swath called the Green Zone. In summer 2020, 18 cannabis businesses operating in two historic neighborhood buildings, the Cannery and Tinnery, overloaded the power grid. They began running unpermitted generators to support expanded cultivation on site, growing an additional five-acre canopy of plants covering an area “about the same size as the neighboring Amazon warehouse.” The generators burned an estimated 12,000 gallons of toxic diesel fuel per day—enough to power 9,000 homes, and emitted four times more carbon than if the growers had used the local utility’s cleaner power. The scariest takeaway is that this is likely not an isolated incident—in California or across the country. This is not what “building a better industry” looks like, and we have to do better.
For more blatant weed biz drama, I highly recommend this juicy read uncovering the fragile financial realities of a pot power couple in Portland, Oregon, who’ve contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to elections and benefitted from “serious lapses of oversight” from the state’s regulatory agencies.
One 4/20 drop that really stood out in my inbox: A weed-themed glow-in-the-dark dildo.
I also spotted these makeup brushes that seemingly use the same weed-leaf glitter.
At Hemp Lab NYC’s 4/20 party, they’ll be giving away free seeds—not weed or hemp seeds, just good ol’ vegetable and flower seeds to encourage community gardening and greener living.
The warmest, fuzziest takeaway from my weed book research: Cannabis enthusiasts nationwide are still united by a love of nature and nerd-dom. Every state has a primary cannabis-centric Reddit thread for enthusiasts to share gossip, recommendations, and resources, and every single one of these threads either uses the word “trees” or “Ents” in the name—the latter in reference to J.R.R. Tolkien’s tree beings in Lord of the Rings.
To come in peace, with a freshly-cleaned piece 👽,
Lauren Yoshiko