Jamie Fister is probably the only marijuana dealer in California who doesn’t mind if you call his marijuana “daddy’s weed,” a term usually reserved for mild marijuana that California hasn’t seen since the 1990s. But for Fister, the founder of Country Cannabis in San Francisco, selling weak weeds is a top priority.
Decades of careful cultivation of marijuana has allowed marijuana to reach outer space. In 1995, the average cannabis concentration in the United States was 4% THC, the active compound used to measure potency. Fondues sold today in hot pot restaurants in California typically contain over 40% THC, which is 900% more than THC.
High weed pots dominate the legal weed industry and it is almost impossible to find low THC weeds that were common 30 years ago. Only 1 percent of flower products sold in California this year contain less than 14 percent THC, according to data provided to SFGATE by cannabis analytics firm Flowhub. And for the vast majority of pots sold this year, over 80 percent tested THC above 21 percent.
Imagine if the beer industry followed the same path and almost all the light beer in the country was replaced by a bottle of whiskey. This is basically what happened to the legal marijuana industry in the US.
“My dad grew up in Santa Cruz, smoked marijuana all the time, looked at the current product [available in California] and said, ‘I can’t smoke that,’” Fister told SFGATE. “Now he can rock our joints.”
There are currently several brands trying to target smokers, such as Fister’s father, who are looking for low-THC alternatives. Canning companies Garden Society and Pure Beauty sell beautifully designed pre-rolls that contain 5 to 10 percent THC. There is a brand of marijuana called Dad Grass that sells pre-rolled joints that are federally legal because they contain only negligible amounts of THC. Kiva even offers low-dose edible mints that contain just 2.5mg of THC, far less than the 10mg to 100mg edible mints commonly found in grocery stores.
But what about a marijuana brand that specializes in low-THC smoking weed? Fister’s company, Country Cannabis, is a category in its own right. Feist said this made it difficult for his brand to sell on retail shelves, and some drugstore managers laughed at him when he showed them how little THC was in his joints.
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Country Cannabis does not grow any pots; she buys cannabis flowers from farms in California, which is a problem in itself: Fister says it’s almost impossible to find farms that grow flowers that are low enough in THC. Feist said farmers told him they “would love to have this flower, but I stopped growing it a few years ago because no one was buying it.”
So instead of filling his joints with one low-THC tank, he mixed two types of cannabis together: a high-THC strain and a high-CBD strain. By mixing weed with CBD, he substantially reduces the amount of THC in each pre-roll until it’s no longer a high-THC joint.
This mixture of CBD flower with THC flower reduces the total amount of THC in each joint. CBD also gives his products a more balanced height, according to Fister. He sees his products being used by adults who want to be able to smoke weed and still hang out with friends, or even smoke weed and still be able to work.
Fister said he knows there are customers looking for this lighter marijuana, based on data he saw while he was vice president of marketing at Eaze, one of the country’s first marijuana delivery companies.
“One of the things we’re seeing is that a large group of consumers are looking not for high doses of THC, but for something to help them get out of control and get on with their day,” Feist said. “I call it productive cannabis.”
Can a pot really be produced? I decided to test Fister’s claim and ended the story by trying one of his joints. So, around 9:00 a.m. Monday, I signed up for one of the many delivery services in California and ordered a six-pack of Country’s Good Neighbors. Three hours later a very friendly courier approached me and I gave him some cash in exchange for a small rectangular box, thinner than an iPhone, with six pre-rolled connectors.
Good Neighbor is a blend of Jack Herer, a classic strain considered spicy, with AC/DC, a strain of CBD commonly used by medical marijuana patients. The packaging says that each joint contains 9.75% THC and 12.71% CBD, which is negligible compared to most legal cannabis products.
Post time: Nov-11-2022