Don’t say you support this community if you haven’t bought weed at a dispensary.
It’s getting tough to be respectful toward the potheads who proudly tell me how they don’t participate in retail cannabis.
If you aren’t supporting the knowledgeable budtenders at ethical shops, buying intentional products then you are missing out on the honor of helping to shape the industry during a historical time. I get it, you’re “connected”. You don’t need specialty products, hate taxes, fear government tracking, miss 215. Today’s market? It’s bleak, expensive, and peaced out man.
That is exactly why you need to go spend $10 at your closest shop.
Even if you don’t believe in karma, the law of attraction, or the general rule that what you choose to support matters, it shouldn’t be difficult to find logical reasons to shop legal in California.
Do you understand what it takes to bring a cannabis product to market? To find flower without powdery mildew? A gummy without junk ingredients? Papers that don’t taste terrible or joints that burn all the way?
Right, you didn’t consider production, regulations, marketing, gatekeepers and all that other “corporate BS”. For you it’s about getting high, or the fact that you aren’t considering the big picture.
This is an interconnected industry, that many fought hard to bring into being. The legal market comes lockstep with decriminalization and is essential for medical users. In order to keep it going, a lot of different people have to stress over minute details you can’t even imagine.
Have you considered what Budtenders are dealing with from customers every day on the front lines of retail cannabis? Those heroes are mostly underpaid and undertrained, facing people coming directly from cancer diagnoses, during heroin withdrawal, or after not being able to eat for days. They ask the Budtenders for advice, and many of them are first time consumers. That’s a lot of pressure to be the face of cannabis, know your science and have the selection to recommend the right thing.
Of course, there is corporate weed, and legacy entities that I don’t urge anyone to support. But as the Director of a vertically integrated start-up, rooted in the Humboldt community, those aren’t the people on the front lines that I come across in my day to day.
Most of my colleagues – production workers, farmers, Budtenders, investors, other business & brand leaders – they’re all in it because they desperately want to make this work. They fight daily for the right to keep their community & purpose while earning a legal living and to keep the beauty and connection of the plant alive, against all odds.
These days, the most impactful vote we have is our dollar. You can’t fix everything that is broken; but you can use your purchasing power to support the community that’s lifted you through the worst and the best times.
Every Joint Counts.
