Heart of Dankness

by Mark Haskell Smith

  It’s unclear just how big the market is because the majority of transactions are quasi-legal and exact numbers are difficult to pin down. The 2006 U.N. World Drug Report suggested that an estimated 164 million people worldwide use cannabis regularly and that the global market for cannabis and cannabis-based products ranged from $10 billion to $60 billion annually. I think that’s actually a conservative estimate. In 2011, a study done by an independent financial and information firm called See Change Strategy estimated the “national market for medical marijuana was worth $1.7 billion in 2011 and could reach $8.9 billion in five years.” Another study, this one by Jon Gettman, who holds a Ph.D. in public policy and is a former national director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), includes illegal sales and estimates that the U.S. market alone is worth $113 billion a year.

  How much of that money trickles back to the seed companies? $100 million? $200 million? More? The seed companies themselves aren’t saying.

  I stopped into DNA Genetics and found Aaron in good spirits.

  “We’ve had a good month, bro. We fuckin’ crushed it.”

  They had received new seeds from six of their most popular strains, seeds that had been “out of stock” for almost a year. Now that they had fresh stock, customers weren’t waiting to see how long the supplies would last.

  Aaron beamed. “We probably outsold Arjan.”

  He pulled a bobblehead doll of Arjan, the “king of cannabis,” out from behind his counter. I had to laugh. I always thought bobbleheaddom was reserved for athletes and politicians.

  “They made a bobblehead to look like Arjan?”

  “Yeah, bro. They got everything over there. Arjan’s a celebrity.”

  “Where’s your bobblehead? You guys are celebrities, too.”

  Aaron shook his head.

  “We don’t look at it like that. My friends are like ‘Dude, you’re a celebrity, homie.’ But I don’t feel like that. I’m just Aaron of DNA.” He shrugged. “We do what we love.”

  Aaron whacked the doll and the head vibrated. He laughed.

  “I tried to drown Arjan. We put it in the aquarium and it started to swell and get all deformed, but the paint that he’s made with is toxic or something and we lost a few fish.”

  Aaron shot a guilty glance at the fish tank.

  “Then Don tried to blow him up with fireworks, but, look.” He shook the bobblehead again. The king of cannabis’s head spun around and waggled violently before settling into an agreeable nod. “He’s fucking indestructible.”

  “You really should make Don and Aaron bobbleheads.”

  Aaron looked at me and made a face like he’d just tasted something bad. “Then what? Should we call ourselves the kings of cannabis? The princes of pot? Should I name a strain Fuckin’ Aaron’s #1? I don’t want to do that.”

  Arjan has a tendency to name strains after himself: Arjan’s #1 or Arjan’s Ultimate Haze.

  Aaron pointed to the bobblehead. “Look, I like Arjan. Arjan is a good guy. The world might think he’s some egotistical guy, but they don’t know him. He’s a good guy. He’s the king of marketing. I just look at him and watch and learn.”

  As Arjan’s bobblehead bobbled I asked Aaron why they ran out of seeds. He looked at me like I was a moron.

  “The plants, bro. We’re one of these companies that are sold out of our most popular strains. You look at some of these other companies and they’re never sold out. I don’t know how the fuck they don’t run out of seeds. Maybe they’re filling in the packages with other seeds.”

  Since most growers won’t know what they’ve got until it’s grown, it’s easy for some dishonest labeling to occur.

  “You got Spanish companies that all sell the same fuckin’ shit now. They’re all selling the same seeds made by three different companies.”

  Aaron shook his head, disgusted.

  “I don’t want to be that guy. If we’re sold out of a strain …” His voice trailed off as he considered what he was saying. “We haven’t had Martian Mean Green in over two years. I haven’t had Cannalope Haze in a year.”

  These are huge sellers when available.

  “I’d rather be sold out than sell bullshit. But a lot of these companies … they do that. It’s scandalous.”

  He whacked the Arjan doll again. The king of cannabis’s head rocked back and forth, agreeing with Aaron.

  “It’s a seedy business, bro, no pun intended.”

  Almost all the big seed companies, and many smaller ones, sell their seeds by advertising in magazines like Skunk, High Times, Weed World, and Treating Yourself—a magazine that focuses on the medical side of cannabis use. Because it’s illegal to send marijuana seeds to the United States, all of them have disclaimers stating that they don’t take orders from the States and that they don’t sell seeds to customers in America.

  And yet the seeds somehow find their way to the American market. L.A. Confidential, Trainwreck, Chocolope, and other strains from Dutch seed companies are sold at several dispensaries in Los Angeles. Those seeds are either purchased in England or in Holland and then carried into the country, or the sales are handled by third-party websites and smaller seed dealers who don’t mind taking a calculated risk. As David Bienenstock, the senior editor at High Times, told me, “It’s a business totally based on trust and reputation. You stick some cash in an envelope and send it off to Europe hoping you’ll get something in return.”

  But for quality-control freaks Don and Aaron, turning your seeds over to another retailer is not always a great idea.

  “The danger is you can send your seeds to some guy who has a little website and he doesn’t send you a fucking dime. Then he says, ‘Oh, some shit happened,’ and then you’re fucked because it’s not a legal transaction.”

  Aaron shook his head. “Last year at the Cannabis Cup one of these small seed companies tried to jack us and I caught that fool. Dragged his ass outside and said, ‘Give me your shoes.’ ”

  Taking someone’s shoes and then throwing them over an electrical line is a uniquely Los Angeles way of settling a score. I decided not to remind Aaron that there aren’t any electrical lines crisscrossing the streets in Amsterdam.

  “He didn’t pay us, then he returned seeds that weren’t ours and said they were. And then he insulted my wife.” That was, obviously, a mistake. Aaron shook his head in dismay and I knew what he was thinking: It’s hard to believe people can be so dumb.

  He heaved a sigh. “I felt bad about it, in some sense, but if I didn’t do it, he’d have kept doing it to other people. He needed to learn his fucking lesson.”

  Aaron stroked his goatee, reflecting on the incident.

  “It was at the point where this motherfucker’s shoes were off and I was gonna take ’em and Don said …”

  Aaron paused, letting the drama build, and then did a perfect imitation of his partner. “Don said, ‘Let’s give him back his shoes.’ ”

  Don’s the softy of the two.

  “We used to be on all these little websites but you know what? I’m done. I have a legit business now.”

  In 1987, the then editor of High Times magazine, Steven Hager, came up with the idea of a harvest festival to celebrate the new cannabis varietals that were being developed. It’s not like there aren’t other annual competitions for various food and drink around the world. In addition to the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, the mega wine event with tastes of more than six thousand different wines, there’s the World Beer Cup, known as the “Olympics of Beer Competition”; the Superior Taste Award, which judges food and drink in 270 different categories; and my personal favorite, the World Cheese Award, “the biggest and most cosmopolitan cheese festival ever staged.” There are hundreds of local and regional competitions around the world for everything from hot sauce to apple pie. And those are just the contests that are judged using taste and smell; there are a multitude of other types of contests seeking excellence in human endeavors from precision origami to best
pointless steampunk invention. There must be some kind of genetic predisposition that humans share that makes us want to see who makes the best whatever. But Hager knew that there wasn’t an international competition for cannabis and that Amsterdam, with its tolerance and coffeeshops, was the natural place to hold the event.

  It wasn’t always the weeklong cannabis carnival that it’s become. In the early days there were only a few seed companies that entered—breeders like Neville and Sam the Skunkman—and the celebrity judges were High Times staffers and the artists who drew the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics.

  But Hager had obviously struck a chord, and the Cannabis Cup took off. A few years later the “Coffee Shop Crawl”—basically the same idea as a pub crawl where you go from coffeeshop to coffeeshop across the city sampling their entries—was added as more and more strain breeders and coffeeshops joined in.

  I don’t think the amazing growth in the seed business could’ve occurred without High Times magazine and the Cannabis Cup. Nowadays, of course, wannabe growers can get all kinds of information about seeds, genetics, and quality of the plants on the Internet, but in the halcyon days of the industry, winning the Cannabis Cup was the only surefire way of getting your strain and your company—your brand—out into the world. And if you were good enough or lucky enough to win? Your reputation—and the money that followed—was assured.

  With so much money and prestige at stake, how intense is the competition?

  Each year the big seed companies spend tens of thousands of dollars advertising in High Times and producing gift bags and parties and events for the competition attendees. Green House and Barney’s—coffeeshops that are also seed companies and so promote their own in-house brands—offer free grinders, T-shirts, tote bags, and, of course, free samples of their strains. DNA Genetics doesn’t have its own coffeeshop, but hosts an annual “Hot Boxxx” party that, in 2009, featured reggae superstar Barrington Levy. All of this is done to get the judges’ attention, show them a good time, and promote the brands. Anyone who comes to the Cup can purchase a “judge’s pass” that allows them to vote on the strains and hashish that the various coffeeshops have entered.

  Coffeeshops typically enter a strain of marijuana, a type of imported hash, and a Nederhash, hashish that’s made in Holland. If a coffeeshop doesn’t have an in-house seed company, they usually align themselves with a seed company that doesn’t have a coffeeshop. This is, basically, how everyone except Barney’s and Green House operates.

  In 2009, at the Twenty-second Annual Cannabis Cup competition in the Import Hash Cup category, first place went to Green House for Rif Cream, second place to Barney’s for Triple Zero, and a coffeeshop called Amnesia showed for third with Azila. In the Dutch Hash Cup the results were flipped: Barney’s placed first with Royal Jelly, Green House second with Green House Ice, and Jon Foster’s Grey Area came in third with Grey Area Crystal.

  The main event, the overall Cannabis Cup competition for best marijuana strain, revealed a similar domination by the big Coffeeshop–seed company conglomerates. Green House took first place with Super Lemon Haze, Barney’s was awarded runner-up status with Vanilla Kush, and a smaller coffeeshop called Green Place took the bronze with a DNA Genetics strain called Headband Kush.

  Twenty-nine coffeeshops had entries in that competition. What that means is that a truly dedicated judge, someone who wanted to sample all of the entries before making a decision, would have to smoke eighty-seven different types of hash and marijuana in the five days of the competition. That’s ingesting seventeen different types of cannabis a day. I’m not saying it’s impossible—just like it’s not impossible to climb the highest mountain in the Himalayas or run the one-hundred-meter dash in 9.58 seconds. But it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a good thing cannabis is a nontoxic plant; it can’t kill you no matter how much you smoke.

  While the popular vote decides which coffeeshop and strain wins the overall Cannabis Cup and Hash Cups, there is a competition among the various seed companies for the best indica and sativa strains. These categories are called the Sativa Cup and Indica Cup and are decided by a panel of experts called the Temple Dragons—which includes most of the High Times staff—as well as some select “celebrity stoners.”

  Aaron laughed when I ask about the Temple Dragons. “I actually have a Temple Dragon T-shirt and, you know, when I put that on I’m in an elite, secret society.”

  I told him it sounded like something out of a Bruce Lee movie. He shook his head.

  “It’s not like that, bro.”

  I think it’s safe to say that most of the judges—I’m talking about the average folks who attend the competition and make up the popular vote—aren’t able to sample all of the strains and hash in the competition. So is this where the marketing of the big coffeeshops starts to affect the vote? I asked Aaron what he thought.

  “I don’t know, bro. Sometimes I don’t understand how they win. I’ll use last year as an example. Barney’s won [second place] with Vanilla Kush. Now if anyone who was from L.A. was here, they would know that Vanilla Kush had nothing to do with Kush. It didn’t smell like any kinda Kush. I mean, I don’t see how it was a winner. Personally, it wasn’t dank. Forget me being a breeder, just as a connoisseur, I would never have selected the plant. You know?”

  He held up his hands in exasperation.

  “There was nothing there. But you have three hundred people that you give free herb to and you give ’em free goodie bags and you know, maybe it’s not always about the herb.”

  But then he changed his mind. “But then you know new people come in and win the Cannabis Cup too, it’s cool.”

  I discussed this with cannabis activist and connoisseur Debby Goldsberry, a celebrity judge at the 2009 Cannabis Cup. According to her, the Temple Dragons are scrupulous about testing the entries. Strains are given code names and no one knows which coffeeshop or seed company has entered which strain. It truly is a blind tasting, just like the best wine competitions in the world. The public judges, however, don’t taste blindly; they go from coffeeshop to coffeeshop to sample the various entries. Like me, Debby had wondered if the marketing efforts of the big coffeeshops and seed companies skewed the results, but she said that the “blind test came very close to the public test.”

  I told Aaron this story.

  “It’s funny that you say that because they did the blind tasting and everything and I hear this from High Times staff that when they left the hotel after the tasting we had supposedly won the Cannabis Cup.”

  Aaron leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. I could tell his sense of outrage was warming up. “And then when they get to the awards show, we don’t win the Cannabis Cup.”

  He shook his head in frustration.

  “So, I’m not too sure about it. I don’t know. When you win, you win. Now three years ago when Chocolope lost by one vote … I think that was total bullshit and I’ll say that straight up. It lost by one vote to Barney’s?” He gave me a look of complete and utter exasperation.

  “Come on now. And they have on film them taking away two votes? Two Japanese guys were going to vote for Chocolope and then Barney’s gave them a bunch of herb, so they voted for them. They sold their votes. Now, was it real? I don’t know. But there is no fucking way you lose by one vote. Especially when the whole town came up to us and told us how good Chocolope was. Even people who got free judge’s passes from Barney’s—’cause, hey, that’s how it works—even those people were voting for Chocolope.”

  He put his hands over his face and took a deep breath. I could see him telling himself to calm down. He looked up at me.

  “Look, we believe that at the end of the day it’s about the quality of herb. That’s why we’ve lasted so long here in Amsterdam. That, and we haven’t fucked anyone over.”

  It’s not just seed companies that battle for the glory. Coffeeshops can make or break their reputation in the Cup.

  Jon Foster has a unique perspective. Grey Area is almost alway
s in the mix and has won the Cup several times, and yet it doesn’t have the marketing budget of a successful seed company behind them.

  “The key with the Cup is the popular vote. The big coffeeshops, I call them corporate sponsors, have seed companies connected to them and so they enter their own strains and that’s a big commercial side of it for them. But we don’t have that and for the most part we work with DNA and enter one of their strains. The thing with the Cup is, of course, that it’s commercialized and promotion has a large part to play in the winning.”

  He adjusted his glasses before continuing.

  “And you know because we’re so small, we just can’t get the number of people through our shop—you know, give them the whole experience like those other places do. I definitely see that as a factor that could hold us back from winning, even if we have the best strain.”

  Green House, the perennial champion, is one of the big sponsors of the Cannabis Cup, and they don’t hold back. Last year I found Franco working every day at the Cup Expo—a trade show for seed companies and other cannabis-related entrepreneurs—standing in the massive Green House booth, filling up a fifteen-foot-long plastic bag with freshly vaporized Super Lemon Haze and spraying free samples out to anyone who put their nose up to it. But Green House wasn’t the only company that did that. Almost all the seed companies with a strain in the competition were giving away free samples.

  For Jon Foster, the Cup is less about competition and more about celebration.

  “Some of the Dutch shops get really serious and they really try to win so they can say they have the best weed. But for me there is no best weed. There is x number of the best of the best—sometimes from small shops who maybe didn’t get a mention or didn’t get the traffic because they’re too far out.”