Tag: Marijuana

Coronavirus Personal Update and Coverage Roundup

Posted on by JimiDevine

I hope everyone is following the instructions of healthcare professionals when it comes to Coronavirus, it’s really important we do our best to save as many lives as possible.

I’ve obviously had this impact the projects I’d been working on scheduled for the months ahead. Most notably the second edition of the Coachella Desert Smoke-Off with L.A. Weekly and the San Francisco Cup Crawl I had planned for 4/20 with the great folks over at Emerald Farm Tours. As much as I would have loved to see these things go down on time, nothing is more important to me than the health and safety of the participants. I look forward to seeing both happen in the not too distant future.

That being said, I’ve tried to make the best of the pandemic lockdown.

Since cannabis businesses were declared essential in California, I’m one of the lucky folks still able to go to work. It’s been very cool to help people this week with all the stress flying around. Also watching one of the biggest runs on cannabis ever at CBCB firsthand right before the lockdown started was nuts. It was way bigger than 4/20 for a lot of places since people were scared they wouldn’t be able to buy pot once shelter in place orders started.

Check out my sweet black gloves and America’s longest tenured budtender.

As an employee for more than a decade at one of the oldest pot clubs in the world, I had a lot of faith the medical ethos the Berkeley cannabis scene was built on would persevere. While it got a bit crazy, there was never a gap in access for the community. I was very glad to see it only took San Francisco a day to catch up to us and get its shops back open.

I’ve also covered the Coronavirus pretty extensively in my writing. Last Tuesday on the lost Saint Patrick’s Day, I wrote about just how much pot had sold on the eve of the Bay Area lockdown for Cannabis Now. Most of the businesses I talked to said it was their record day or close to it.

Later on I took a look back at the whole week in sales for L.A. Weekly. The data for showed that while things never got quite as big as Monday again, sales were still awesome. While sales dipped at the end of the week, one thing that maintained all week were the above average size orders. People were buying more pot for sure.

I also wrote a piece for L.A. Weekly about how Coronavirus is impacting the supply chains around weed, food, beer, and toilet paper. I had a great time working on it and was able to get in touch with Charmin, Scott’s Paper Co., and The National Beer Wholesalers Association to get their take on the stability of their respective supply chains.

  • LRP’s Emerald Cup Entries.
    Red Congo Won Third.
  • Moongrown Gelato 41
  • Kalya Garlic Juice.
    3rd Place Emerald Cup 2019
  • Kush Mints
  • Fig Farms White Nectarine
  • Red Congolese
  • Watermelon Gelato
  • Zkittelz from Terp Hogz
    BHO Emerald Cup Winner
  • Connected and Alien Labs Ego Clash Entries.
Some recent flame I enjoyed.

As for more chipper recent things I’ve worked on.

I talked to KindPeoples in Santa Cruz about helping WAMM restart their compassion program on March 1st, the first day they legally could after a two plus year hiatus.

Also I just dropped a garden prep guide in L.A. Weekly with great input from Vital Garden Supply and Dark Heart Nursery. It came out great and should really get you in the mood to have some dirt under your nails this summer.

And finally, my patreon is blowing up. A huge thanks and shoutouts to everyone who has signed up! All the money from that goes directly into journalism and Backwoods. \

Keep Crushing!

New Podcast Episode: The Strains of The Decade

Posted on by JimiDevine

Hey All!

I just dropped a new episode of my podcast today and wanted to share it. I go a little bit into a few stories I’ve been working on in recent months, and also talk about how I put together The Strains of the Decade for Cannabis Now Magazine.

Be sure to let me know your thoughts and thanks for listening!

A New Year of Cannabis Hype!

Posted on by JimiDevine

Greetings Champion!

I’m very excited to start a new decade of adventure in California’s legal cannabis market!

I got to California in early December of 2009 after fours years of activism on the East Coast. It has been quite the spectacle watching everything that’s happened over the last decade in pot first hand. From the lows of losing Prop 19 by a few points on election night 2010, or the Oaksterdam raid, to the highs of winning in 2016. To be able to see and understand these things through my own eyes so I might tell the tale now and in the future accurately is immensely important to me and I’ll be forever grateful I was here to take part.

And once you get past the challenges longtime providers faced, crazy taxes, and people who thought the bar would be low enough for for them to get a shot in the industry not making it, there is a lot of positive stuff.

There is a lot of great weed. I smelled thousands of jars of different phenos over the last decade personally. As I now walk through the aisles of events like The Emerald Cup or Hall of Flowers these days, I am regularly reminded the highest bar for quality cannabis gets pushed up annually. But there is still a lot of folks missing the mark, and the naysayers will say those boof jars are completely representative of the legal industry.

Fig Farms’ Kushmint Cookies

I don’t buy that train of thought. I look at the flower coming out of places like Alien Lab, Fig Farms, and Ember Valley and what I see is absolute flame. To try and paint the legal market as one giant Mids Fest is a lie, and maybe sometimes the people doing it are just being haters that couldn’t jump through the hoops required to do it again.

I think it’s going to get more and more wild. Some folks who kept their cards close to their chest are ready to play some big hands. There will be a few more survivors yet, and they’ll do it on the back of their awesome pot the market deserves to have access to.

I’m excited to continue hunting the flame. I got to judge The Cannabis Cup and Emerald Cup last year, in addition to putting on my own events with The Transbay Challenge and Desert Smoke-Off with L.A. Weekly. Keep me in loop if you are up to any wild genetics projects. I’m constantly on the lookout for awesome new strains or just amazing phenotypes of the ones we already love!

Also I started a Patreon. If you want to support my personal editorial projects in 2020, all of the resources from that will be going towards camera gear and travel.

I Picked Out My Favorite Pot in California Right Now

Posted on by JimiDevine

I hope all is well everyone!

It’s been a week since the Harvest Moon! Lots of amazing cannabis is currently being chopped down across the hills of Northern California. The state’s Central Valley, home to California’s titanic agricultural economy, will also produce more cannabis than ever this year.

With all this excitement on deck, I thought it would be a good time to rundown the strains I’ve been super hyped on lately. Over the past month, I’ve done a few different rundowns.  

In The Strains of Summer, I covered everything that has blown me away since May. This includes the amazing Ziablo pictured above from IC Collective. I’ve had the privilege of seeing the Ziablo a few times lately.

It was shown to me for the first time by the breeders at IC Collective in August. Then again at Hall of Flowers it was some of the best cannabis in the room. And finally, it won the inaugural edition of my new invite-only Transbay Challenge. A cannabis contest featuring some of the San Francisco’s Bay Area’s best cultivators. Expect Ziablo’s stock to continue to shoot up in the months ahead. 

Be sure to go check out my other picks for Summer you won’t be mad.

Next up was Hall of Flowers. The event provides a snapshot of the quality of legal marijuana at that given moment in time. Generally speaking, it was better than I expected for sure. There was definitely still some stuff I was surprised people would want to represent themselves with, but for the most part, there was less bad pot than I expected. 

There were even a few surprises when it came to quality. I searched every aisle for the best cannabis I could find. After locating over 40 things that got me interested, I narrowed the list down to about 20. You can read them all here:

So that’s a lot of the weed I’m excited about right now! I wanted to share before the harvest kicked into full gear. Have a great Fall everyone!

A Midsummer Hype’s Update

Posted on by JimiDevine

Greetings Champions!,

I hope all is well with you, I’ve had an action-packed couple months since my last update and wanted to go back and cover some of the stuff I was most excited about. This includes everything from stains, new political allies for the movement, and potential policy changes in places you might not have expected it.

The biggest thing to happen in a lot of people’s eyes was the passage of the Blumenauer-McClintock amendment in the House. The amendment is very similar to Blumenauer’s previous effort to prevent federal interference in state-legal medical marijuana programs, except this time around it’s for the recreational markets. Essentially the new amendment would block the feds from going after marijuana providers in full compliance with state law by preventing them from spending money on it.

Many have referred to the passage of the amendment in the House as the biggest day ever for cannabis on Capitol Hill, but Congress still has a ton of cannabis reform bills that have been filed this year.

Most exciting? Well, that would have to be House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler’s MORE Act, that he introduced in the House. “Top-tier” Presidential candidate Kamala Harris introduced the bill in the Senate. With the plan to deschedule marijuana being backed by the highest-ranking Democrat in the House on criminal justice issues, it really has the wind in its sails.

It’s currently under review by the House Judiciary, Energy and Commerce, Agriculture, Education and Labor, Ways and Means, Small Business, Natural Resources, and Oversight and Reform committees.

Even the co-chairs of the Cannabis Caucus are saying the bill is awesome, Rep. Barbara Lee said Nadler’s staff was diligent in reaching out the caucus for input. His staff also had the benefit of cherry-picking the best language from all the different marijuana bills that have been filed in recent years. Blumenauer even called it better than the SAFE Banking Act.

But even if it is, the discussions that have been happening around the SAFE Banking Act have been critical. Getting access to proper banking services is obviously a big deal for everybody, but it’s even more important for the mom and pop operations out there struggling to stay afloat in the transitioning industry. The size of their businesses makes them more susceptible to dealing with bad actors offering financial services.

Just hearing Congress talking like this has seen banks begin to soften their stance. Interestingly, one expert told me the credit unions working with the industry right now will likely still be the best after the regulations change. So stick with the people that were there for you when it mattered.

Sadly not everything was all groovy since my last check-in. The Emerald Triangle has been devastated by raids in recent weeks. Most of the raids happened on private parcels, so it’s a tough sell they were meant to go after cartels in national forests.

But there was plenty of positive progress all over the country. In Florida looks like legalization might make the ballot their next year! And one of the main dudes that helped pass medical just joined the team. They’ve already collected enough signatures to trigger a review of the language by Florida’s Supreme Court.

Finally, a positive note discovered IC Collective’s Ziablo. It’s my favorite strain of Summer along with Alien Labs’ Area 41. Enjoy the rest of Summer! Next time you hear from me the harvest should be in full swing!

Happy Planting Season!

Posted on by JimiDevine

Hey all!

Long time, no talk! I hope all is well with you as we get into one of my favorite times of the year, planting season!

For most great farmers, be it indoor or outdoor, the process of growing marijuana starts well before any plants are in the ground. Getting your soil ready, stress testing new phenotypes for potential in the greenhouse, there is plenty to do this time of year.

One of the things I enjoy the most is hearing friends whittle down their lists of potential strains they’ll grow out in the summer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying your plants from a nursery, especially when you know the length they are going to provide you with clean genetics. Nevertheless, hearing someone run down the traits they’re hoping to see maximized from a genetic lineage they’ve been working with for years is a whole other level of fun.

Some of the cuts I’m most excited to see this year are the various Kush Mints crosses from Seed Junky, and Cherry Punch, which I presume there will be a lot of. I think the first Cherry Punch drop from Symbiotic Genetics was a bit late in the spring in 2018, so I’m really excited to see what people are able to do with it this year with a bit more time to get ready. I’ve seen a few legit all-star phenos of Cherry Punch for sure. One of my buddies has like three different versions he is looking forward to growing, and I’m looking forward to smoking!

One of the reasons I don’t post too much on here is because I’m writing a ton in general. You can keep up to date will all my stuff in Cannabis Now, L.A. Weekly, and everywhere else on my Muckrack page. And if you want the convenience of having that content in your Facebook feed just like my page!

Keep crushing and keep an eye out for a bunch of 4/20 stuff I’m working on!

My Picks for The Best Weed of 2018

Posted on by JimiDevine

The champions over at Cannabis Now recently dropped my picks for the best pot of 2018.

Over the last few years, certain stories have fallen in my lap every year that are always such a pleasure to write. One I’m always the most excited to put together is my strain list for the year.

I spend most of my year trying to break cannabis news, but in many cases, I’m finding new angles on things I was a little late on or being the first U.S. coverage on something interesting and worthwhile. Which is an absolutely beautiful life I’m so thankful for, but I don’t really get to cover strains too much.

Usually, when I get to dive in on genetics and quality it’s around event coverage. I hit every booth at every event I go to and really dive into the spread. Then when I come across true Triple AAA grade cannabis I try and get as much info as they’re willing to share. Where did they get the cut? How many seeds did they pop to find that world-class phenotype? Maybe, if I’m lucky, they bred it! Then I try and recapture the enthusiasm as I go back and reflect on that experience from event to event for articles.

The other times I get to cover post are profiles. I really love diving in with some of the great breeders of the generation. When people like DJ Short, Mr. Sherbinski, or 3rd Gen Family are willing to give you their time to learn about their new projects or thoughts on the moment it’s obviously awesome. Those are also just a handful a year, but I try and put a lot in on those, especially for print.

So that is why this recap is so fun. It really encapsulates something I wish I could do 24/7, hunt down the best cannabis on the planet.

I Covered Lots of Cannabis History This Month!

Posted on by JimiDevine

2017 ended with a bang!

For California cannabis professionals, it was likely their earliest New Years Eve since they were kids as the world’s largest legal pot market went online at 6 AM January 1st.

I enjoyed the occasion over at Berkeley Patients Group where I started my coverage of the day’s festivities for GreenState and Cannabis Now Magazine. BPG hosted what will be among those debated as the first legal sale in California. The purchase was made by longtime activists Mikki Norris and Chris Conrad. The compatriots of Jack Herer marked the occasion by buying three prerolled-joints named after the activist.

Jan1BPGSale
One of California’s first legal cannabis sales at Berkeley Patient’s Group.

From there I helped track the actual sales. First, we took a guess at GreenState at the total sales numbers from New Year’s Day. Later on in the month, we took a look at what people all over California are spending on pot given the array of new taxes being levied by both the state and municipalities.

The legal market has proven challenging for many. Not only those who denied the forthcoming realities of legalization but even those who thought they had their ducks in a row are struggling. And now, a yet to bloom distribution system is struggling to access the quality cannabis the California market demands.  Much of the time this is due to regulatory challenges and costs put on the producers that have provided the state’s cannabis for decades.

On a more positive note, I got to cover the Puffco Peak this month. Puffco has had a seat at the big kids’ table with their award-winning vape pens for years.  Their new tabletop edition is fantastic and made waves at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, even though they weren’t technically allowed into the show! Puffco’s founder Roger gave me the whole tale of the Peak and it was really something.

I also covered the first Mothership Drop at The Cave’s new second location in Walnut Creek California. The drop included the eight pieces of the Dragon Scale collection. I met a Game of Thrones fan who traveled from Texas to make sure he didn’t miss out!

 

This month I’ll be heading to Las Vegas to cover CHAMPS Glass Games final and the Secret Cup Final. I’m looking forward to both so hit me up if you’ll be in town!

 

 

Happy New Year Champions!

Posted on by JimiDevine

Hope everyone made the best of the tail-end of 2016!

I had a great time covering the cannabis industry for some amazing new publications this year including Cannabis Now Magazine, 7×7, Marijuana.com, and The San Francisco Chronicle. What a ride it was watching the battle for cannabis progress unfold over the year, eventually seeing major action at the polls and in state capital buildings.

Next year I’m excited to watch the largest marketplace in the world, and its greatest producers, develop into something special. It will be a rocky road for sure,  be it NorCal vs. Socal, wholesale prices on outdoor demanding less than a buck a gram, or the hill vs. the valley. These are only a few of the puzzle pieces of the tale of 2017 yet to be penned, I look very forward to seeing how it all comes together!

If you want to keep up to date with what I’m writing you can follow me on twitter @JimiDevine, or check out my author page on Cannabis Now where I’m currently a Staff Writer putting up a few things a week.

Have a great 2017!