Lets talk about super high THC flower. This will be long, lots to unpack here, lots of smoke to clear up (yuk yuk yuk). To be clear, I am talking about flower that tests over 30 percent, some of it well over 30.
Not talking about inflated lab numbers, etc, but about flower that tests a solid 30+ from honest testing.
Where are we now?
Patient’s view: Was told flatout by more than one budtender, and industry people online, that THC doesn’t matter. That is completely absurd.
Industry view: People are choosing flower based only on THC percentage. That is just as absurd, sort of.
Lets go back to the patient’s view. People’s brains are comparison engines, always comparing this to that. Its how we work.
Patient walks in to a dispo. They definitely can’t touch the flower, usually can’t smell it (those sniff jars are good for maybe a half day at best), and might not even be able to see it.
What do they have to go on? A budtender they have probably never seen before telling them “its fiiiiire”. Yeah, the last one told me that too, and it was booooof.
Some patients will research strains, that helps. But often, the only thing they have to go on is that THC percentage on the package. In the absence of any other useful decision making criteria, are you going to pick the one that has more, or less? Patients kind of throw up their hands “okay, I will take the 32 percent over the 22 percent”.
What can the industry do? Simple, test for terps, put them on the packaging. Heck, put them before the THC and make them more prominent. That is one step. We have to figure out more if we want to resolve the THC shopping problem. Stop telling patients that THC doesn’t matter; tell them terps are the other half of the story and just as important.
Now let’s take a walk down memory lane with Big F. There I was in So Cal, smoking weed for my back pain.
Quick word about back pain and THC: For the most part, keep your CBD, give me massive THC. Still needs terps, but the THC is what is doing the heavy lifting.
Back to So Cal. I was smoking the best to be found in the area, including a LOT of Jungle Boys flower. Rainbow Belts is a good example of a lower THC strain that was still very effective for back pain, testing 20% to 24% or so. I smoked Rainbow Belts very regularly, it became a go-to. Then Ivan from Jungle Boys started posting about a new technique they were using, called EC stacking, and how it was pushing THC to crazy numbers
Not long after, they dropped Rainbow Belts grown with the new technique. It tested just over 30 percent. It was just like the 22% Rainbow Belts, with everything turned up a couple notches. Subjectively, nearly twice as potent. Noticeably tastier with more complex flavors. It was a whole new dimension on a day to day favorite!
High THC doesn’t mean high quality flower. But somehow we are moving toward attitudes that the lower testing flower is going to be better, that somehow less is more, that the 20% Gush Mints is somehow better than the 30% Gush Mints. That is completely nuts.
One last perspective to consider. Many say that high THC flower is sort of one dimensional. We agree that some of it is.
Jungle Boys Motor Breath is shy on terps, but tests high 30s every time. It hits like a truck, thrown by Superman. But the taste is lacking. We have grown genetics that looked amazing and probably test mid 30s but just don’t have terps.
However, there is also a lot of high THC flower that is that way because the grower hit it out of the park with great genetics. Good examples are Gush Mints, Animal Face, many OG Kush phenos and the phenos we found of La Bomba Ese.
So, some high THC flower is meh, some is amazing. To bash high THC flower that one hasn’t even smoked is silly, as it is with any flower. THC is not the enemy.
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