Sean Beckwith: Put that in you pipe and … vape it?
If you paid too much for weed in high school, you were considered a duck. Everyone knows that guy. Drug dealers hate getting his phone call because a duck is usually annoying — and lingers — but they have to field the request because Chris Gebert is a consistent, albeit maddening, source of revenue.
So when I bought my first (legal) eighth of weed in Colorado however many years ago and paid more than I paid in Omaha, I was perturbed to say the least.
The industry has corrected, though, and thankfully I don’t have to set up an appointment with the weed man anymore. No more awkward “appointments” where I’m not sure if you want me to go or if I should wait the minimum amount of time to make it not look like a drug deal or if we are courtesy smoking.
But there’s a burgeoning sect of the business that I find interesting. This notion of high-end weed is comical.
Flower more or less stays the same relative to the current industry standard. If I find a seed, I’m pissed. There used to be a time when you couldn’t use a grinder because you didn’t want to season your blunt with a smashed seed like an unwelcome peppercorn.
If you approach me with expensive booze, at least I can taste the difference. A $16 four-pack of hazy deliciousness is drastically better than a $7 six-pack of PBR tall boys.
You literally light weed on fire. I’ve had better cigars than others but I still need two brushings and 16 hours to get the taste out of my mouth. And similarly, the last rips of a bowl or joint will always taste awful.
I’m sure shitty weed still exists but no dispensary is slanging ditch weed. The quality of product varies store by store but if any dispensary is charging you more than $50 for an eighth — and you bought it — you’re a duck. Hell, I don’t even go above $25.
I don’t care if the weed came from Snoop Dogg’s personal garden and is wrapped in a gilded Zig Zag; if it’s more than $10 to $15 for a preroll, I’m out.
And maybe it’s because I generally stick to flower that I don’t understand the tincture, shatter, dab, wax or vape pen phenomenon.
Take caviar for example. It’s a nugget of flower dipped in hash oil and rolled in keef. It’s the weed industry version of KFC’s Double Down. I’m pretty sure caviar or a bacon sandwich with fried chicken patties instead of a bun violates like four of the seven deadly sins.
The whole process of dabs is an equal picture of gluttony. In my personal opinion, anything that takes a blowtorch to light shouldn’t be hitting my lungs. Have you ever done a dab? It ends your day. Like, if you can function after huffing a scorched glob of THC, you deserve weed’s 100-day pin equivalent.
Edibles make sense to me to an extent. Special brownies have been around for a long time, but an indica butter reduction over duck l’orange is a waste of weed. A professional marijuana chef is a person who wasn’t good enough to be a real chef. I want my lo mein laced with MSG, not THC or CBD.
I guess it’s the pretentiousness of it all that turns me off. It may be a slight that was ingrained in me since first encountering pot snobs in high school, but give me a joint or a blunt or a fun-sized bong. When you start filling balloons with vapor smoke like it’s a hit of helium, you’ve been led astray.
How many people have to die to from knock-off mango vape pens before you further question the chemicals in what I’m guessing is a less-regulated version of the tobacco industry? I imagine cancer tastes a lot like fruit punch vapor.
I used to, and still do, scoff at naming strands. If you’re like “I got strawberry banana bundt cake,” it better be an actual pastry, not something you bought at Best Day Ever.
Rich people are trying to gentrify marijuana, and I’m not here for it.
You should be able to tell how good the bud is by looking at it, not how it’s marketed to you. I’m not going to knock the entrepreneurship of it all. The more products you offer, the better than chance you have of landing that whale.
But if I ran a dispensary, I’d sell nickel, dime and dub sacks. All you have is $5 on you? No problem.
High-end marijuana products from overpriced peace pipes to designer paraphernalia to skin creams and pocket vapes are excessive.
At the end of the J, you’re still smoking weed. No need to take a simple pleasure and bedazzle it. Why mess with the golden goose — or is it goat? Or duck? Who cares; just spark it up.
Sean Becwkith is a copy editor at The Aspen Times. Email him at sbeckwith@aspentimes.com.
