Heart of Dankness

by Mark Haskell Smith

  I imagine she has to stay on top of it since interpretations of California’s medical marijuana law vary from city to city and county to county and are in a constant state of flux and revision. Local government decisions are often handed down quickly, with little forethought or debate, creating a fluid legal environment for dispensaries and individuals.

  Debby doesn’t appear to be fazed by any of it. She has a longtime activist’s single-minded focus, and yet, her ability to speak like a politician on the campaign trail is offset by a sense of fun and a sincere, easy laugh. It’s hard not to be smitten.

  She was one of the founders of the Cannabis Action Network—a group committed to educating the public about cannabis and sensible and safe access for adult users—and the first activist to be voted a “Top CelebStoner” by CelebStoner.com, a popular website devoted to cannabis news and celebrity drug use. She responded to my mention of this accolade with an ironic “Woo hoo!” She also cofounded several cannabis industry nonprofits, including Americans for Safe Access and the Medical Cannabis Safety Council. She’s a former board member of the Marijuana Policy Project and on the steering committee of the NORML Women’s Alliance, she’s been a VIP judge at the Cannabis Cup, and she was named “Freedom Fighter of the Year” in 2011 by High Times. Basically she’s a supermodel for intelligent grassroots activism. To follow her career is to get a brief history of the marijuana legalization movement in the United States.

  As with many activists, a traumatic incident lit the spark for her, and, like it does for a lot of people, the incident involved police brutality.

  In the early 1980s, the third Wednesday of every April was designated as the day of the “smoke-in.” On college campuses across the country, students would gather, listen to the Grateful Dead or Phish or whatever music was conducive to large gatherings of pot-smoking young people, and share a mutual appreciation for marijuana. It was a peaceful, mellow, flower-power kind of event and was tolerated by most colleges and universities.

  But when Ronald Reagan was elected president, he brought his arrogant new sheriff swagger and an intolerance for anything smelling faintly of disobedience or patchouli to the war on drugs.

  Debby Goldsberry was there when Reagan’s opening salvo was fired. A swarm of riot police attacked a peaceful smoke-in on the University of Illinois campus. The crackdown was bloody and violent, and left her stunned. “I was shocked,” she said. “As a thinking person, I couldn’t understand how something so peaceful and nice could turn into this.”

  Maybe another person would’ve run and hid, stopped wearing peasant blouses, and renounced smoking pot, but Debby decided to do something about it. She and a group of like-minded students got organized, studied their legal rights, and learned how to protect themselves. The next year they held a successful smoke-in despite a campus ban and the threat of arrest.

  Emboldened by their success, they expanded their activism and successfully organized smoke-ins on five campuses in Illinois. The year after that, colleges in Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana held smoke-ins.

  She teamed up with fellow activists Ben Masel and Jack Herer to create a “hemp tour,” moving from state to state, town to town, campus to campus, speaking out, engaging, and educating local activists on their legal rights. They were trying, as she says, “to change the dynamic in the war on drugs.”

  In 1989, she formed the Cannabis Action Network—a group that continued the work she began with the hemp tour—expanding their efforts to include educating the general public on the beneficial uses of cannabis and advocating responsible use. After nearly a decade at CAN, and with California voters approving a medical marijuana initiative, Debby founded the nonprofit Berkeley Patients Group and was able to put her vision of compassionate and responsible cannabis activism into practice.

  Unlike the moldy dogs and stink-eyed Kush dealers you find in some of the more disreputable dispensaries in Los Angeles, the BPG operates with a real concern for their patients, their patients’ rights, and how they can improve their communities. They work hard to be good neighbors and a prime example of what a cannabis dispensary should look like. In other words, I could take my mother there and she would think it was nice and clean and professional. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the feds leave them alone.

  As Debby said, “We could get rich, but then we’d get busted, and that’s not our mission.”

  The Berkeley City Council called the BPG a “national model” and declared an official Berkeley Patients Group Day to celebrate the dispensary’s tenth anniversary.

  Other cannabis activists, most notably John Sinclair and Jack Herer, have been honored by having strains of marijuana named after them. I think it’s only a matter of time before Debby gets a strain named after her.

  “How about Goldsberry Berry Kush?”

  She laughed. “Oh. I don’t know about that.” Then she considered it for a moment. “Maybe if I got to choose the strain. I think I’d like that.”

  Brad, David, and Debby led me through the crowded lounge where I finally spotted a pothead cliché: a long-haired dude in a tie-dyed T-shirt taking a bong hit. We walked past a snack bar and a rack of small plants for sale—part of the DIY credo at work—and into the dispensary room.

  Dozens of people sat in folding chairs, waiting patiently for their turn with the budtenders. There was an impressive selection of cannabis on display, each strain nestled in a glass case, presented like a gem in a jewelry store. The budtenders were friendly but maintained a serious, professional demeanor with their patients. They treated the cannabis as if it were a sacred sacrament or, perhaps more accurately, they treated the bud like it was medicine. I mentioned that it reminded me of some of the upscale coffeeshops in Amsterdam.

  Brad cocked an eyebrow.

  “If I can say it, I think we’re better than a lot of the coffeeshops in Amsterdam. Everything is handled and packaged with real care. We’re not just dumping it into some old plastic tub that hasn’t been cleaned in a year.”

  On an average day, between four and five hundred patients come through the doors of the dispensary, and I’m not so sure the attention to hygiene is what accounts for the BPG’s popularity. It could have more to do with the quality and variety of the cannabis on display.

  The menu was projected on the wall behind the counter, and I watched the familiar brand names of high-grade cannabis scroll past. Brad turned to me.

  “I don’t know why they have to use some of these names. White Widow? Green Crack? Can you imagine a patient who might be new to cannabis, maybe a little nervous about it, coming in here and buying Green Crack?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “We call AK-47 ‘Aff Goo,’ ” he said.

  Aff Goo? I wasn’t sure that was an improvement. It sounded like something you’d use to clean an oven with. “I like the name AK-47,” I said.

  “It’s a good name for a band,” David chimed in.

  Brad continued. “The name thing is a real problem. We’re working with growers to try and get them to change the names they use.”

  Debby nodded.

  “Whenever there’s a natural disaster the next batch of cannabis gets stuck with that name,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what Tsunami will be like.”

  I laughed, but Brad was serious. He pointed to the menu. “White Widow?” He shook his head, and I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or just deeply disappointed. “White Widow? Who comes up with that?”

  I was surprised by the vocabulary that Debby, Brad, and David used. Not once did I hear the words “pot” or “weed.” The plant was called “medicine” or “cannabis.” Customers were referred to as “patients” or “members,” and no one got high: They “medicated.” Only once did I hear anyone say the word “marijuana” and that was connected to “medical.” It struck me as a little odd, this kind of rigorous relabeling, but I understand what they’re trying to do. They are making a determined effort to change the language, to alter the discourse. Debby is still trying
to “change the dynamic”; if the language changes, maybe the culture changes, too. “Weed” becomes “cannabis,” “stoners” become “patients,” “getting high” becomes “medicating,” and what was once an underground and illegal enterprise on the outskirts of society shakes off its youthful rebellion and counterculture ways, grows up, and joins the mainstream. Maybe it even gets legalized.

  The Berkeley Patients Group has developed a form called a “bioassay sheet” that they use to evaluate strains of cannabis. These same surveys were used by the Temple Dragons and celebrity judges at the 2009 High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam to judge the seed cup categories. The forms look at all aspects of a bud of cannabis, taking into account the appearance and density of the flowers as well as the odor, taste, effect, and duration of effect. They are also interested in identifying flavors and scents common to cannabis as a way of systematizing and defining strains. They use descriptors not unlike the kind used to describe wine; words on their flavor wheel include “spicy,” “earthy,” “savory,” “tropical,” “citrus,” “pine,” “diesel,” “fruity,” “creamy,” and “skunk.” The forms also track the effects of a strain, ranging from sedative to euphoric.

  After a strain is evaluated with a bioassay sheet, it’s rated on their menu with a star system. The stars not only indicate the potency of the medicine but also the quality and purity of the plant and the way the plant was grown. But who awards these stars? Is there a Robert Parker–type weed sniffer in the house?

  I was taken upstairs, through a succession of touchpad locked doors, to a lab on the second floor, the domain of self-described “canna-nerd,” Eli Scislowicz.

  Amid the NorCal hipsters and stylish professionals that administer the BPG, Eli looks a little scruffy, with the telltale slouch of someone who has played a lot of video games, but once he starts talking about cannabis, his mouth cracks into a sly smile and his passion for the plant comes pouring out.

  “Eli was the right person at the right time for what we’re trying to do,” Debby Goldsberry said. “We’re lucky to have him.”

  Eli is the intake specialist for the BPG. His lab is clean and scrupulously organized. This isn’t about sorting seeds and stems at your kitchen table; this is serious business, the first hurdle a grower has to pass to get his or her product into the dispensary downstairs.

  It’s not necessarily an antagonistic relationship. BPG is actively working with growers to produce better quality medicine. When growers bring their cannabis into his lab, Eli sits down and examines the plant with them.

  “This way they can learn how to be better growers.”

  When a crop is delivered, Eli examines it using what he calls the Herbal Medicine Intake and Evaluation Form (HMIEF). He hands me a copy. It looks like something you’d see a doctor using in an emergency room. It’s similar to the bioassay forms but is more specific to medicinal uses and follows California Health and Safety Codes 11362.5 and 11362.7.

  He starts by giving the product a visual examination.

  “Medicine that is past its prime will have a yellow to brown tinge and will have lost much of its terpenes to the atmosphere. As a connoisseur, I am not concerned at all with the structure or density of the medicine. It all looks the same once you grind it up.”

  Terpenes, as I understand it, are the chemical compounds that provide the various flavors. More than that, according to Eli, they often have beneficial uses. For example, a pine-scented strain such as Jack Herer can act as a bronchodilator. I can imagine that it might be useful, yet I can’t quite see asthma patients firing up a spliff instead of reaching for an inhaler. The terpenes responsible for the citrusy taste of Sour Diesel also act as antimutagenic agents—they prevent cells from mutating—and could help fight various forms of cancer.

  “Do you have a chemistry degree?” I asked.

  He smiled and gave a sheepish shrug.

  “My dad’s a physicist at Caltech.”

  Eli then looks for evidence of mold, mildew, pests, or anything else that shouldn’t be on the plant. What he can’t see with the naked eye he puts under the microscope.

  Next he checks for moisture content. Too much moisture and the smoke will be harsh; if the plant is too dry, all the terpenes evaporate. To make sure the moisture content is just right, Eli performs a “snap test.” If the bud doesn’t snap off, it’s too wet, and if the snap produces a lot of “shake”—brittle trichomes—it’s too dry.

  Even though he’s got a computer-driven microscope and various other scientific gizmos, he can tell a lot by giving the cannabis an inspection that would make Robert Parker proud. In other words, he sniffs it.

  “The most important factor in my mind is the taste and smell. Not only does the flavor of cannabis make or break the enjoyability of the medicine, it may also play a role in the effect of cannabis.”

  This makes sense to me. What’s the first thing I do when I pour a glass of wine? I sniff it. Perhaps nostrils are the starting point to try to determine dankness. “So you give the bud a sniff. What’re you smelling for?”

  “I look for an intense and clean flavor.”

  I kind of understood what he meant by “clean”—like how you don’t want sushi that smells fishy—but he elaborated.

  “By ‘clean’ I mean free of molds, pesticides, mildews, or other contaminants. All good medicine should contain no discernible trace of any of these.”

  “You can smell all that?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  He went on to explain that contaminants also show up when you smoke, in the form of bad flavors and cough-inducing harshness. A harsh toke is often a contaminated toke. And I thought it was just me.

  I realized that this process is similar to the one Jon Foster uses to determine the quality of cannabis he sells in his coffeeshop. But the BPG takes it a step further, preparing cannabis samples for laboratory testing for THC levels and to look for contaminants that organoleptic examinations might not detect. All of this is done to provide safe medicine for their patients.

  But there’s something else happening here, as well. By building a library of data on various strains, the BPG is laying the groundwork for fast-tracking FDA approval when cannabis becomes legal.

  I sat down on a rolling stool, the kind you’d find in a doctor’s examination room, and asked Eli if there’s one strain of cannabis that’s the dankest of the dank.

  “I think that is an extremely difficult question to answer since we have not mapped out all, or even most, of the strains in existence based on the cannabinoid, terpenoid, and gene profile,” he said. “It’s like asking a jury to render a verdict after only hearing the opening statements.”

  He gave his scruffy facial hair a thoughtful scratch and continued. “And, really, the best medicine obviously depends on the hands that have cared for it.”

  I admire BPG’s commitment to quality and safety and the efforts they’re making to be an asset to their community. For sure, a lot of dispensaries could learn from what’s going on there. And I can’t help but respect the trajectory of Debby Goldsberry’s career, taking her activism for the plant and for social justice to new levels, and converting the belief that the weed should be freed to an engaged compassion for her community. But what about dankness? Can all this testing and organoleptic inspection find dankness?

  “So say the bud makes it through all these tests and you confirm that it’s good, clean cannabis—which is great, don’t get me wrong—but what about some kind of baseline standard for dankness?”

  Eli considered my question and then answered. “I personally want cannabis that is at least sixteen percent total THC. This is what I call ‘potent medicine.’ From an organoleptic point of view, this is medicine that has a heavy coating of resin.”

  Debby agreed with Eli. “I don’t care if it’s indica or sativa; I just like it strong,” she said.

  In the months since my initial visit to the Berkeley Patients Group, things have changed. For one they are growing, with more than se
venty employees serving almost a thousand patients a day. With that rapid growth comes policies and guidelines to keep the service and cannabis quality high. BPG employees now wear uniforms, which in and of itself is no big deal; they are, after all, trying to reassure a nervous public, and having budtenders dressed in matching polo shirts lends a calming Starbucks vibe to the place. They also, interestingly, sponsor a Berkeley Free Clinic Truck and have their logo on a NASCAR race car.

  Although she remains on the board of directors, Debby stepped down as managing director of the dispensary in early 2011 and has partnered with an urban planner and a real estate developer who specializes in nonprofit and affordable housing developments to create the United Cannabis Collective, a company whose mission statement declares them to be “dedicated to social equity, economic vitality, and environmental stewardship” while providing “medical cannabis, in all of its varied forms, and essential life services that improve the health, housing, and safety of all collective members.” She is, as ever, committed to ending cannabis prohibition. And if the battle for social justice and cannabis freedom didn’t keep her busy enough, she’s also writing a book about the history of the anti-prohibition movement.

  “It just seems like the next logical step for a stoner like me,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He Blinded Me with Science

  I had heard the rumors—the rumble of gossip emanating from various members of the cannabis cognoscenti in Los Angeles. They were all talking about a low-key collective that specialized in rare and unique strains of connoisseur-quality cannabis. It was called the Cornerstone Research Collective, but it wasn’t listed on any of the “weed finder” websites; they didn’t advertise in Kush Magazine or West Coast Cannabis or anywhere else. It was hard to find and even harder to get into once you found it. The collective didn’t accept walk-ins. They didn’t solicit patients. You needed to know someone who was a member who was willing to vouch for you. It made me think of a secret society, like Skull and Bones at Yale or one of those obscure religious cults that pop up in Catholicism with frightening regularity.