Rec'd The Grass Agency

It didn’t have to end like this, but here we are. Our journey through the labyrinth of legalization is over, and today we’re taking a look back at what’s become of California’s pioneering weed industry. In the final episode of our first season of Rec’d, our hosts take stock of Prop 64’s aftermath, and consider what might have been. It’s like that movie Sliding Doors if Gwyneth Paltrow was the world’s biggest marijuana market and that train was some other voter initiative.

If you need any evidence that Silicon Valley has wiggled its way into weed, you need look no further than the nickname for Prop 64: The Sean Parker Initiative. The founder of Napster and first president of Facebook isn’t just the quintessential tech bro, he was also the single largest donor to the initiative that made adult use legal in California. With the promise of billions on the horizon, there’s been an influx of tech money and minds into the cannabis industry, but Silicon Valley’s influence doesn’t stop at the bottom line. Can tech disrupt weed and does it need to?

In this episode we talk to two women taking two very different approaches to working in weed. Cyo Nystrom, a former software sales director, is cutting her own path in cannabis with her startup, Quim, “A self-care line for humans with vaginas and humans without vaginas who love vaginas™.” Meanwhile, Emily Paxhia, founder of Poseidon Asset Management, is bringing Silicon Valley-style investment to the legal weed industry.

Join our very high hosts as we seek out cannabis in the unlikeliest of places and attempt to answer the question: Do you really need to put your weed in there?

California opened the floodgates with legalization. Post-prohibition, pot is popping up everywhere: Yoga studios? Check. Nail salons? Yup. Japanese bathhouses? Mhmm. Your grandma’s nightstand? Look, that’s between you and Nana.

Join our very high hosts as we seek out cannabis in the unlikeliest of places and attempt to answer the question: Do you really need to put your weed in there?

The Emerald Triangle: 10,000 square miles of mountainous terrain stretching over three counties, where it’s estimated 60 percent of all of the country’s weed is grown. Keeping track is nearly impossible, but there are reportedly as many as 32,000 separate cannabis grows in the Emerald Triangle, and maybe ten percent of them are licensed. This is the home of Murder Mountain, where drug cartels hide beneath the forest’s canopy. It’s also home to a long tradition of family growers and (if all goes according to plan) the next big thing in California tourism.

Mike Strupp is something of an anomaly in Mendocino, one of the three counties that make up the Emerald Triangle. Mike is a licensed, indoor cultivator, but, like the unlicensed farmers that make up the majority here, he’s seen the effects of legalization on his community. Multi-generation family businesses are dying, big money is plotting its course, and crime is on the rise. Still, some believe The Emerald Triangle is poised to become the Napa Valley of weed. People like Chris Vardijan of The Mendocino Experience, a cannabis bus tour, are introducing curious onlookers to this traditionally guarded community.

Weed people love to talk about the Gold Rush. As was the case with the Gold Rush, the Green Rush has seen an obscene amount of money poured into a volatile industry, and as was the case in the mid-1800s, the people profiting from the potential boom today aren’t the ones you might expect. There may be a lot of cash changing hands in this business but it isn’t the growers or manufacturers making bank. Weed people like to joke that the only people making money in the Green Rush are the lawyers. If you ask James Anthony, an Oakland-based cannabis lawyer and activist, he’ll tell you there’s some truth to that statement. Sharmi Shah, another cannabis lawyer operating out of San Jose, sees it differently, but they can both agree that legalization has been an uphill battle for industry pioneers. A complex web of regulation and taxation has made lawyers, accountants, and other ancillary service providers the real winners in this modern day dash for the almighty dollar.

On January 31st, 2018 Oakland, California made history with a bunch of bingo balls and a crowd full of hopeful dispensary owners. The city had invited 36 equity applicants from over-policed communities to come and watch their fates unfold in a televised “lottery.” As the hour-long spectacle unfolded, city clerk LaTonda Simmons drew numbered balls from a gilded cage at random, slowly chipping away at the dreams of hopeful business owners one by one. When the last number was called, four applicants were awarded licenses to operate adult-use dispensaries in the city of Oakland. One of them was Alphonso Blunt, aka Tucky, founder of Blunts and Moore, the first and only equity dispensary open for business nearly two years later.

In the lead-up to legalization, activists like Amber Senter of Supernova Women, worked closely with the city of Oakland to create a program that would reincorporate people of color into the industry they shaped. Supernova Women would go on to help San Francisco and the state of California build equity programs that would influence state and city cannabis policies across the US. But back at home, Oakland’s pioneering program was facing a harsh reality: out of four licenses granted over two years, only one dispensary was up and operational. Lack of funding, resources, and training have crippled this grand experiment in bringing justice to those most affected by The War on Drugs. In Oakland, social justice in the legal weed industry is a game of chance and some believe the cards are stacked against the very people the city’s equity program was built to serve.