My First Medical Marijuana Dispensary Visit

I selected The Green Door, my neighborhood dispensary, for my first medical marijuana 'access point' experience. In addition to their convenient location, they had over 40 reviews online and were voted best medical marijuana dispensary by the Seattle Weekly in 2011. They are discreetly tucked into a multi level strip mall at 12th and Jackson in the International District.  The exterior could be mistaken for a spa - I went past it twice before locating it.

The Green Door: discreetly tucked away in a strip mall in Seattle's International District

I rang the bell and was buzzed into the humid, skunky smelling waiting room. The walls were green with dark wood accents and a flat screen television playing a Bob Marley documentary. Mike, the gentleman working there, introduced himself through the glass window. He was an easy going 30ish guy with long dreadlocks tied up in a turban. He reviewed my medical authorization paperwork and my drivers license. I had to complete a single page of paperwork which included a reminder of the limits of how much marijuana I can legally posess in Washington State (24 ounces of dried cannabis) and a statement to the effect of designating the Green Door as one of my medical cannabis care providers through some sort of collective gardening agreement. After reviewing my paperwork, they took my photograph and ushered me back toward the bud room.

The legal marijuana experiences I've had in Europe were heavily slanted toward hashish - coffee shops in Amsterdam and the open air hash market in Christiana, Denmark have relatively little cannabis flower selection. But the Green Door is a legitimate enterprise with a wonderful selection of cannabis. There were over two dozen different varieties of dried cannabis available - not including concentrates.

Really?? Really... Collards with Cannabis! Fun new product from CannaHaute cuisine

The bud room was well organized, clean and inviting. One wall had all the dried cannabis arranged in jars from 100% Indica to 100% Sativa, with hybrids in between. Another Mike, a mid-twenties gentleman with short brown hair, served as my budtender. I followed Dr. Z's advice and described my condition to him and asked for recommendations. I wanted to try a range of different products, so I selected a full indica, a full sativa and a few hybrids. Information about the producers and analytical data on the strains were not available.

For the full Indica, I went with one of Mike's recommendations and selected the Grandaddy Purple.  The medium sized buds were indeed quite purple and had the classic floral sweet 'purple' aroma and a decent frosting of crystals. It gave a soft, pleasant smoke that conveyed a fragrant 'purple' taste with a bit of a kick to it.

Cannabis from the Green Door

I decided to go with the Sour Diesel for a Sativa dominant strain (90% Sativa, 10% Indica). The buds were small and compact with an aroma dominated by a waxy fuel-oil aromatic note which was disappointingly subdued. A slightly musty aromatic note came through during smoking that tasted a bit flat. This Sour Diesel was intensely psychoactive, but not a flavor I'd seek out again.

My favorite strains tend to be Indica dominant hybrids and I've been curious to try some of the 'cheese' strains I have heard about these past few years. The Blue Cheese (80% Indica, 20% Sativa) came as nice chunky nuggets, but they lacked the aroma intensity I would expect from a strain named after something as pungent as blue cheese.

Medibles from the Green Door

The best strain in the bunch was the Ace of Spades (70% Indica, 30% Sativa). I asked Mike the budtender about the provenance of the strain, and he told me was a hybrid of Jack the Ripper and Black Cherry Soda. The aroma intensity of the Ace of Spades was stronger than the other strains I obtained from the Green Door. The smoke was thick and strong, without being harsh or hot in the throat. Psychoactively speaking, this delivered a pleasant buzz that was relaxing without giving the partial lobotomy feeling. I did, however, get the Motorhead song 'Ace of Spades' stuck in my head for a few days which didn't make me feel like much of a genius either.

In general, prices ranged from $10/gram to $12/gram, some strains were on special for $8/gram. Volume discounts are available for all strains. For being a first time patient, I received one pre-rolled joint - I chose the sativa strain Cynex as my free gift.

There was a case of medibles which were all expensive ($10 for a brownie, $8 for a bon-bon, $10 for a soda) but I tried a few products anyway. I was a little disappointed in the chocolate caramel brownie from The Chocolate Cure. Its portion was generous and its potency was good (one brownie was at least two, and probably more safely four doses). Unfortunately, the cannabis butter flavor was a bit dirty - something that could be easily improved by incorporating an additional water washing step in their oil/butter extraction process to suck out some of the chlorophyll contributing to that grassy taste.

All of my medicine was labeled with my name and the name of the strain. While Mike was weighing and packing my order, I thumbed through a copy of 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' by Jack Herer. Thinking back to reading the book back in college about 20 years ago, I was saddened that hemp is still not legal in the US. But I was heartened when I realized that I was purchasing better quality marijuana, at a better price, from a better selection than ever before. Maybe the legalization of industrial hemp is next!

-------------(c) 2013 Stoner Living Blog

Cannabinoids and Medical Marijuana - what all those hard to pronounce components in Cannabis do for you

Some of our readers will remember when Cannabis was called grass, you could buy it by the lid, and Thai stick and Panamanian Red were the stuff of connoisseurs. The intervening years have seen a revolution in potency and overall quality as well as consumer awareness of the product itself. The first legitimate forays into contemporary marketing of marijuana have been under the medical model, so it should be no surprise that a plethora of information about the active ingredients in marijuana is available to consumers from medical marijuana dispensaries and seed companies alike. So what do all those difficult to pronounce components do for you?

A plant's cannabinoid profile refers to the specific mixture of the quantity and type of cannabinoids produced by a given plant. Think of it as a window on a strain’s effect and potency.

Table: Cannibinanoids and Their Effects

Over 475 compounds have been identified within the Cannabis sativa plant; of these 66 are classified as ‘cannabinoids’ unique to the Cannabis plant. RaphaelMechoulam (discussed in a previous article) dedicated much of his career to understanding the natural product chemistry of the marijuana plant. The most famous cannabinoid, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), is the substance responsible for the majority of the psychoactive effects of marijuana. Other cannabinoids, including cannabidiol and cannabinol, alter the subjective experience of the ‘high’ by interacting with the way THC impacts the brain.

Much of the cannabis breeding of the past 30 years has focused on increasing the potency (ie. – the % THC) in strains, with considerations such as yield, pest resistance and other qualities getting some secondary attention. Furthermore, for years many in the breeding community held a belief that strains high in CBD had more of a ‘downer’ high and were seen as undesirable. Modern medical research has shown cannabidiol (CBD) to have tremendous potential as an anti-inflammatory compound with pain mitigating and possible anti-cancer effects.

Q. Why would anybody want a low/no THC strain of marijuana?

A. Medical marijuana users may desire a strain high in medically important anti-inflammatory CBD compounds without the psychoactive effects of a high THC strain.

The advent of the medical marijuana movement has seen the development of some high CBD strains, but it remains difficult for consumers to obtain high CBD/low THC strains even in medical contexts. One example of such a strain is The Remedy, available to qualified medical marijuana patients from the Dockside Coop in Seattle, WA.

Commercial interests have invested time in such ventures; GW Pharmaceuticals, the company behind Sativex, has done extensive research on cannabis breeding. Their website is clear they rely on traditional plant breeding techniques and do not use GMO technology. According to GW Pharma, four genetic loci control the cannibinoid profile of cannabis. They have a nifty explanation of their breeding strategy on their website here. They have numerous patents with specific genetic profiles – including high THC strains and 0 % THC strains.

There are a variety of techniques available for obtaining a cannabinoid profile, including specialized labs offering testing services such as Analytical 360. Other firms offer extremely portable thin-layer chromatography techniques, such as the one produced by Cannatest. Cannatest is a Seattle area business that offers home testing kits as well as testing services. The power to bring analytical testing in-house to cannabis breeding operations is critical at a time when shipping samples via USPS is in violation of federal law. The people at Cannatest also offer a mobile testing service in the greater Seattle area.

HPLC Plate of Cannabis Analysis Performed Using Cannatest Kit

The advent of legalization will see technologies for analytical testing of marijuana becoming commonplace – possibly even required – for the benefit of cannabis consumers. Opportunities for research abound and cannabis with a wide range of cannabinoid profiles (especially the hard to find high CBN/low THC strains) will soon be readily available to the public.



----© 2013 – Stoner Living Blog

Genetic Sequence of Cannabis Sativa

The full genome for Cannabis sativa is downloadable here (the cultivar used was 'Chemdawg'). Available to the public since 2011, only time will tell what will be done with this information. The Cannabis plant has been bred to produce a wide array of phenotypes (and chemotypes) with the use of traditional plant breeding techniques alone.

Chemdog - photo from Green House Seeds

Ignoring the issues of ethics for now, an easy to anticipate and creepy use of this information involves splicing the genes responsible for production of say, THC, into another plant. The easiest target would probably be the hop vine - Humulus lupulus - as it is the only other member of the plant family Cannabaceae. Other obvious targets included members of the mint family. The idea of smoking the  fruit of such plants - 'Frankenbuds' - is a little off-putting, but such technology would free the industrial hemp industry: if any plant can be engineered to produce THC, the argument about cannabis/hemp being confusable becomes moot.

About the Strain:
Chemdawg is a rather potent strain of marijuana, with the Green House Seeds version placing 2nd in the IC420 Growers Cup in 2008. 

A website with information on how to download and assemble the data is HERE. The data is provided by Medicinal Genomics with the help of Nimbus Informatics. Academic use is free of charge. For commercial use,  contact Medicinalgenomics@gmail.com for information on obtaining a license.

---------(c) 2012 Stoner Living


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