Going Cali sober: why drink when you can smoke?
Is going Cali sober just a cannabis trend or is it the lifestyle change you’ve been waiting for?
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Source: lfy
Herbal Knowledge
Is going Cali sober just a cannabis trend or is it the lifestyle change you’ve been waiting for?
The post Going Cali sober: why drink when you can smoke? appeared first on Leafly.
Source: lfy
Striving for safety for our friends in the midst of a pandemic
The post The cannabis industry in a time of crisis appeared first on Leafly.
Source: lfy
Blunts have been synonymous with cannabis for at least 25 or so years, most popularized by rap and hip-hop artists from decades past. But these extra-large, tobacco wrapped versions of a joint have a hazy history.
One of the most shareable ways to smoke, a blunt is formed from a pre-made wrapper, a broken-down cigar or whole-leaf tobacco, also known as fronto. Fronto is hugely popular in New York City, via the Caribbean where it is cultivated and used to roll cannabis, tobacco and cigars. It’s also sometimes crumbled and smoked in a pipe or a joint.
It’s this Caribbean connection that likely bore the blunt — and there is a strong correlation between immigration from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico and the rise of this smoking method in New York City.
Since we don’t have a written or oral history of the first person to smoke a blunt, based on these cultural intersections it was likely imported from the Caribbean to New York City.
New York City’s love of blunts isn’t isn’t just an affinity for a particular brand of cigars like Backwoods and Swisher Sweets, the price hike has some cultural significance to the New York cannabis community.
As Desus Nice explained on his podcast the Bodega Boys on June 25, 2018 “Listen, I’m from the Bronx. You got to smoke a blunt.” And it’s not just because blunts provide the extra rush of tobacco from the cigar paper, or that the thicker composition of the paper burns weed at a slower rate, but has more to do with “the communal aspect of it.”
And much of that community comes from Caribbean descent. In the 1990s, the foreign-born population in New York City increased by 788,000, totalling 2.9 million. Data from the 2000 Census found that Caribbean foreign-born residents accounted for 20.8% of the city’s population. New York City’s community now included more Dominicans, Jamaicans, Haitians, and people of Trinidadian and Tobagonian descent than any other major city in the United States.
And the wave Caribbean immigrants brought pieces of their culture along with them, including their rich culture of cigar smoking.
Rap and hip hop culture were also on the rise in the 90s and early 2000s. New York rappers in particular were glamorizing the fine art of smoking a blunt the way aristocrats fetishized drinking a fine glass of wine:
“Growing up, we always heard rappers rapping about blunts, seeing them smoke them in music videos,” says Calvin Shepherd, a lifelong New Yorker. “It’s just a part of weed culture in the city.”
As the children of Caribbean immigrants came of age in the city, influenced by both their heritage and pop culture, blunts became not just the preferred method of cannabis consumption, but a communal aspect of staying in touch with your roots, identity, and community.
Every so often, an economic injustice brings a community together to protect a cultural way of life. This was one of those moments — as New York city found itself in the midst of a weed disaster — the price of Backwoods cigars had risen to $16.99 a pack.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio signed a series of aggressive anti-tobacco bills in August 2017, all with the intention of reducing the city’s tobacco use. The legislative proposals intended to reduce the number of smokers in NYC by 160,000 and generate revenue for public housing. One of those bills, 1544-B, called for a minimum pricing in cigar structure, raising the price of individual cigars to at least $8.00, and increased the taxes on little cigars, smokeless tobacco, suns, shisha and loose tobacco.
That included Backwoods cigars, a brand of flavored cigars readily available at most gas stations, liquor stores and bodegas. The local law went into effect in June 2018, raising the tax on all tobacco products other than cigarettes.
The weed smokers of New York City had a meltdown on Twitter.
Anyone who regularly smokes weed in the form of a blunt can tell you that the tried and true tradition of blunt rolling involves purchasing cigars, cutting them open, removing the tobacco — often referred to as the “guts” — filling with dried cannabis flower, resealing, and smoking.
This is the reason the blunt smokers of New York City collectively cried when the price of their beloved Backwoods spiked. Smoking weed had gotten three times more expensive.
Desus Nice of Viceland’s late night show “Desus & Mero” was among the first to take to the virtual mean streets of Twitter and lament about the price increase:
The tax hike had some New York weed smokers considering alternatives, but others felt daunted by the thought of giving up blunts by switching to rolling papers.
Others — incorrectly — blamed and lashed out at the manufacturer.
While some New Yorkers took the opportunity to show their true colors.
When asked how Shepherd, as a native New Yorker ingrained in the city’s weed culture, personally felt about the new tobacco policy, he called the bill “a bunch of bullshit” that was meant to make people uncomfortable as recreational and commercial cannabis legalization looms.
One of the first tales of the blunt in the current cultural lexicon comes from weed saint Snoop Dogg. In an interview with YouTuber Nardwuar he dished, “Bushwick Bill was the first person to smoke a blunt with me, we had never seen that before.”
Bushwick Bill hailed from Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn with a large Black and Latinx population, some from the Caribbean, others from all over Central and South America. Blunt culture is very prevalent in Brooklyn, there isn’t a bodega for all of Bushwick’s four and a half mile stretch that doesn’t have some type of blunt wrap, cigar or fronto on offer.
We can only hope that as cannabis completes its mainstream takeover that we can finally collect the stories of the past 40 years of culture, not just the past near-decade since Colorado legalized it for adult use.
This gap in knowledge lets people think that cannabis culture or history isn’t important, but if alcohol’s time under widespread bans is any clue, it will continue to ascend into the dominant exchange whether prohibitionists like it or not. We can’t pinpoint the first person who decided to use tobacco’s fragrant leaf to wrap ground up flowers of cannabis, but it was pretty brilliant nonetheless.
Written by Danielle Guercio and Nic Juarez
The post Who was the first person to smoke a blunt? appeared first on Weedmaps News.
Source: wm
The modern cannabis market is an exciting place of wild products, soaring THC percentages, and futuristic gadgets. However, lost in all this glitz and glam is the fact that weed is, after all, just a flower you can grow yourself.
While it’s simple to pop a seed in the ground and watch it sprout, growing high-quality cannabis can be difficult for a novice. Aside from factors like space to grow, access to sufficient light, and start-up costs, the plant itself is complex, finicky, and prone to pests like spider mites and powder mold.
Thankfully, there’s a slew of brands, boxes, systems and tents that take the need for a big yard and a botany degree out of cultivating one of nature’s most incredible gifts.
With most of the world stuck at home, trying their hand at everything from bread baking to Tik Tok dances, there’s never been a better (or financially relevant) time to learn how to grow your own weed.
Whether your thumb is green or yet to be determined, we’ve rounded up a handful of growing systems to suit any situation, budget, and skill level. If you have to stay home for the foreseeable future, you might as well grow some weed. Here’s a couple starter systems to get you on your way.
Discreet, classy, and reminiscent of its namesake, the Armoire is a perfect choice for the novice enthusiast looking for an easy and compact way to grow their own flower.
To say it’s low maintenance would be an understatement, as the Armoire needs little more than to be plugged in, planted, and watered. With a 90-day concierge service, you’ll be guided through any questions or concerns, leading to many of their customers reporting yields of over a quarter pound in as little as 60—90 days.
The Armoire comes with everything you need to grow except the water, soil, and seed — all dubbed “consumables” — that will need to be replaced each new grow cycle. Designed to pass in every way as furniture, the 2 foot square is roughly 4.5 feet tall, and quieter than an aquarium. Coming in at over $1,000, it will set you back a bit. However, payment plans are available.
Price: $1,395
Next up is the Topogrow LED Grow Tent Kit, which exists on the other end of the spectrum from high-priced, low-maintenance products like the Armoire.
This small, no-frills kit focuses on providing everything you need and nothing you don’t. The grow tent itself is about 2 feet X 2 feet X 4 feet, so you can fit a couple plants, and would be better off choosing short, stocky plants like indica, dwarf, or an autoflowering variety.
The kit comes with LED grow lights, mylar tent, fan/filter/duct combo, and is available in a wide range of sizes and added accoutrement. The size we reviewed here tops out at a mere $330 for it all — not bad for a full set-up. If you’re in the market to grow your own, have a free closet or an extra bathroom, and are more concerned with function than fashion, the Topogrow Kit is for you.
Price: $330
The SpinnerXP by Spinner Grow would be the high-tech Bentley of this bunch, extremely cool, extremely expensive, and yielding extreme results.
Basically how it works is each plant site features a basket that allows you to fill it with a growing medium of your choice: soil, soilless (like peat or moss), and hydroponic options like HEC and perlite. In the automated SpinnerXP, each plant pod spins slowly, ensuring that every part of every plant receives equal light distribution, allowing equal growth from top to bottom (no canopy effect) and total environmental control over each plant.
This product is for those who really want to grow some fucking weed. Each SpinnerXP model holds up to twelve different plants, and can fit easily in a room with 8-foot ceilings, so you’re going to need some space. Coming in at a whopping $2500 for the base setup, and $2750 for the recommended setup, you’d be looking at a 6-8 week harvest from clone to flower, and with up to 12 plants in a single harvest, one hell of a yield.
Price: $2,500—$2,750
While not initially conceived for growing weed, the Lettuce Grow Farmstand has gained a cult following with at-home growers trying their hand at cultivating a different type of consumable.
Geared toward sustainability and the idea that great food should be easy to grow, each unit is made from recycled ocean plastic from coastal communities, and with every unit sold, one is donated to a school around the US.
They’re available in models that house increments of 12 plants, 18 plants, or 24 plants, and cost between $350—$500, with payment plans available between $30—$50 a month. Due to its size and ability to yield high results with very little growing surface, the Lettuce Grow is perfect for balcony gardening outdoors. Lighting kits are available for additional purchase if you’re looking to grow inside.
The unit comes preloaded with plant pods of your choice and nutrients, so all you’d have to do is switch out a plant pod for a cannabis clone, fill the unit up with water, and watch as your weed flowers to fruition.
When asked of the Lettuce Grow’s application in cannabis farming, founder and CEO Jacob Pechenik said, “More and more, we are hearing about ‘Big Cannabis,’ large scale cultivation of cannabis by industrialized brands, where it is unclear where the product comes from, what is sprayed on it, and who is profiting. This is exactly what occurred within the food industry, which inspired us to launch Lettuce Grow.”
He continued, “We know that most of the food we see on grocery store shelves has been processed, sprayed with chemicals, and is far from fresh by the time it reaches the consumer. And the same issues exist in cannabis. Lettuce Grow gives you the confidence that when you grow with us it won’t contain added pesticides, herbicides or other unwanted chemicals.”
Price: $300—$500
Featured image by Armoire.
The post Here are 4 personal weed growing systems worth trying appeared first on Weedmaps News.
Source: wm