Jimi DevineWith New Year’s Eve right around the corner, it’s time to take a look at the trends we’re buying into and hoping to say farewell to in 2022.
Cannabis is an ever-changing beast, as the predicted brutality of the 2021 market came to teach us. There is always room for more nuanced discussions on what we can do to fix the situation as opposed to perpetual moping, but we can understand that if you put your life’s work into it, the current status quo can be disheartening. We aren’t making light of that. It’s rough out there.
But then you get to the subject of trying to smooth out where the idea of legalization and its actual execution meet, the fundamental policies and ideas that will build our Zamboni. So here are some topics we’d like to see come up more in 2022 for the sake of saving the game, along with a few we’re hoping to be rid of.
What We’re Buying:
LEDs Are Almost There
Over the years, it may have seemed like we were not believers in LED grow tech, but more so it was about the idea of artificially regulating the top quality products of the legal market. Yes, double-ended high pressure sodium bulbs and supporting infrastructure take their toll on the grid, but is it awesome pot’s fault we don’t produce power more effectively as a society? Despite the fact that if I had to fill a warehouse with lights, I’d totally go HPS at this moment, I fully admit LEDs are on the cusp of greatness. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of full spectrum boof coming out of the desert. But the people starting to figure it out are hyper-competitive. We’re excited to see the results as the industry continues to put resources in this crucial R&D space.
California Needs An Overhaul
6 a.m. Sunday morning marks the 4 year anniversary of the first legal cannabis sale in the state of California. Its location is disputed by a number of dispensaries and public relations teams. What we’re sure about is the time since has not gone to plan. While many of the criminal justice aspects of Prop. 64 have come true, the idea of bringing the market into the light has not. Many growers who voted yes in hopes of putting their best foot forward to the legal market still can not access it due to a number of hurdles. While there are a thousand paths the conversation on fixing California weed could take, finding a way to further incentivize communities to take part in the marketplace is a must. Part of the scale of the intrastate underground cannabis economy is a direct result of people being hours from dispensaries, in addition to packs moving around the state so someone can eventually send it to Billy in Cincinnati so he can smoke Ice Cream Cake.
The Testing Overhaul is a Good Thing
I’m no Jimi Neutron, but I’m fully confident the current status of cannabis lab testing falls somewhere between batshit and experimental much of the time. Sure, we’ve seen the general controversies and lab closures in recent years, but it’s seemingly an ethos thing. We’re excited to see some standard operating procedures come down from the state in 2022 for debate before being implemented next year. We’re very hopeful it will be one of the building blocks of starting to fix everything as opposed to a cat and mouse game of chasing the highest numbers. There will always be bullshitters, but a standardized and mandated SOP will help, just like it does for testing in other industries.
What We’re Selling:
Overextending The Industry’s Voice
If you’re upset that nobody thinks you’re a stakeholder or thought leader in 2022, please do not start another cannabis trade group with your bros. The bus is full and we have little room for your “fresh” insights or questionable experiences in actually doing the damn thing. Even better, maybe we should try and consolidate the industry’s voice. There are so many logos now at the bottom of the letters Congress receives from the industry it looks like something signed by all the NFL teams. Even worse, they may have received 32 different envelopes claiming to be the voice of cannabis.
Buying Your Pot Because of The THC Percentage
We’ve tried to sell this one for years, but like a cursed family heirloom, it keeps coming back to ruin our lives. Despite a lot of the best pot of the last decade that was loaded with terpenes ranging from 17% to 25% THC, the market has convinced itself at this moment that sub 20% THC cuts are garbage. As many have noted, this is going to prove traumatic to the cannabis genome in the years to come. What we should really be hunting down is the most unique cannabis terpene profiles in search of new experiences.
Putting Off Small Victories for Big Ones
In the process of achieving small victories for the little guy, some of the worst people in the space will see relief too. There is no way around it. Is it better to allow the worst of us to create things like their own banking and merchant services mechanisms offshore while the smallest operations maintain with nothing? For example, it’s fair to say you support the cannabis social equity movement and banking access for everyone at this moment. In fact, one might argue it would give those equity operators that already exist the best chance to cut the biggest piece of pie possible for themselves as opposed to using that banking access as a bargaining chip to support potential entrepreneurs from other communities devastated by the war on drugs.
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