Just Say No to Corporate Weed

Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner spent years fighting cannabis legalization in Congress

Do you know where your weed comes from?

So much has changed over the years, including the meaning of that all important question.

On our cannabis tours we educate our guests on not only where to find the best cannabis in the world in one of the most beautiful places on earth – The Emerald Triangle, but also on the history of cannabis from the beginning till now, and on the current state of cannabis today.

Today John Bohner is a lobbyist in Washington D.C. for big corporate cannabis

In the 1970’s when all the herb was black market, it was important to know your sources because some marijuana coming in from Mexico was tainted with paraquat, a deadly poison, sprayed on it by the DEA, and in the 80s and 90s some unscrupulous actors  would pur sugar, (or even worse, glass micro beads!) in their weed to make it falsely look like it was full of crystals. 

Thank goodness those days are behind us.  Now any pot you purchase at a legal California weed dispensary has to pass rigorous quality standards set by the state of California.  When you purchase legal cannabis in California you not only know the levels of cannabinoids like THC and CBD that your cannabis contains, but you also know that it contains no pesticide residues, heavy metals, or funguses. 

Legal pot in California is safe to consume.

So if you can safely imbibe any cannabis you legally purchase in our state, why is it important to know where your weed comes from nowadays?

Nowadays the danger isn’t that you’ll get tainted weed.  The danger today is to cannabis itself.  

Marty Clein of Martyjuana Farms started growing weed to provide medicine for his wife

Today’s unscrupulous actors are corporations who don’t care about the quality of their weed, and are only concerned about profits and squeezing out their competition, the legacy growers that stewarded this healing plant through the dark times of cannabis prohibition.

Exhibit A is one of the top lobbyists for corporate cannabis in Washington D.C.  – ex-Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who voted to prohibit medical marijuana in the District of Columbia in 1999, and when asked by a constituent in 2011 to take Marijuana off the government’s list of schedule 1 drugs, defined as “A drug or other substance that has a high chance of being abused or causing addiction and has no FDA-approved medical use in the United States”, told him, “I am unalterably opposed to the legalization of marijuana”. 

That all took place well over a decade ago, and people change.  Nobody would fault you for assuming that Boehner, a known avid consumer of both cigarettes and alcohol, probably discovered cannabis as a less harmful alternative, and had a change of heart, but when NPR asked the corporate cannabis lobbyist in a 2019 interview if he used the cannabis he was lobbying for, he said,  “I’ve never used the product. I really have no plans to use the product,”

Dennis Peron & Jerry Munn of First Cut Farms -O.G. cannabis freedom fighters – photo by Marnie-

Politicians and lobbyists choose their words carefully, and the fact that he referred to cannabis as, “the product” is very telling, in my opinion.  He doesn’t view cannabis as medicine.  He doesn’t see it as a sacred herb.  He views it simply as a product that only has value as a way to make money for himself and the corporations he represents.

The question you need to ask yourself as a cannabis consumer is, do you want to by “product” from corporations producing minimal quality weed while working to undercut the market, and drive legacy farmers out of business, or do you want to buy quality cannabis from people who care like Marty Clein of Martyjuana Farms who started growing grass because his wife needed medicine, or farmers like Shane Gary of Tall Tree Society farms, who go above and beyond, obtaining multiple voluntary third party certifications like Sun and Earth Certification, that insures they grow in living soil, pay & treat their workers well, and leave the land better than they found it, or legacy farmers like Jerry Munn of First Cut Farms who was one of the OG outlaws who started the Cannabis Buyers Club with Dennis Peron in the 1980s,  risking their freedom to keep producing this valuable plant medicine for cancer and AIDS patients while people like John Boehner were trying to root them out and put them in prison for growing weed?

Your intrepid tour guides with pot farmer Shane Gary (Center) who voluntarily gets multiple 3rd party certifications

The answer should be clear.  Support the growers that are and always  have been good stewards of the sacred herb on their family farms for generations, not those undercutting them to produce inferior “product”, and care only about owning the very market they once demonized, and actively tried to destroy.

Just say no to corporate cannabis.