Marijuana: The plant, the business and beyond

Smoker's Lounge
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So I am starting this thread partly to rant a little and partly to start a convo about the state of things.

I started growing in 2003. My interest in it started a year or two earlier, I had been smoking weed since about 1990. I remember getting on Marc emorys website and drooling over pictures and thinking, " Man, I could do this, no more dealing with the sharks in the street" No more shitty bags of downtown brown. So after getting married I was allowed by my very cool wife( who also smokes weed) to take a small portion of our wedding money and buy 2 HID lights, pots, and Bags of fox farm soil, which only had one type back then the one with the Fox on the front. I bought seeds from Ganja World seeds which has an ad in the back of High Times magazine. Of course the first grow was a disaster…lol but time after time I bought more seeds and starting reading threads at OG and started realizing the mistakes I was making. Things kept getting better and better. Pretty soon it was getting around that I had good weed, and people started approaching me for sales. Honestly I was wary at first, weed was VERY illegal back then and i was terrified of getting busted.However the demand was huge and I finally gave in, which started a long run of feeling like I was at the top of the food chain. The prices we could command on zips back then would probably blow the minds of some people. It provided me with a great living, allowing to follow other dreams as well, go on vacations, and always had at least a couple of hundo on me at all times. Things were great UNTIL my state Legalized it.

Now that might sound odd, why would legalizing our favorite plant invoke mixed feelings in me?
When I heard the law was up for a vote, I downloaded the PDF and red the entire thing. As I red my enthusiasm began to falter. In fact as I was reading the law, I thought to myself " Holy Shit, this is going to put me and others like me OUT OF BUSINESS" This was NOT the legalization bill I was expecting, but what was I really expecting?? A law that actually benefited the little guy…(in my best Dr, Evil voice) Riigghhtt…
I voted no on legalization, as messed up as that sounds, but I just KNEW the changes this was gonna bring and other than not going to jail for possession(which is good, don’t get me wrong here) were gonna be bad for me.
So fast forward to 2025, My then huge customer base slowly but surely left me for the dispos, who can have 40 strains on hand at all times and are practically GIVING the shit away at this point. How do you compete with that?
The dispos are driving prices down into the ground to the point where it is hardly even worth doing this anymore. I long for the days when I actually made decent money doing this. Growing Pot is a huge sacrifice. Anybody has done it for a while knows this, not only are you shelling out huge money for electricity, but I haven’t taken a real vacation in many years, you can’t really. I don’t trust others to take care of my girls like do.
I been struggling to figure out how to stay relevant. What do you guys do? For the people who live in legal states, and who have remained competitive with the Dispos, what was the defining factor,because at this point I’m kinda out of answers.
I hate to say it but I feel a certain amount of glee when I see a dispo go under, but they are EVERYWHERE. We have at least 10 or 20 or so in the city I live in, plus more being built all the time.

So I thought what about:

  1. GROW THE FLAVORS OF THE MONTH
    The issue with this, is by the time you acquire, veg out, clone , flower and bring to market FLAVOR OF THE MONTH A, people have already moved on to FLAVOR OF THE MONTH B. It’s a lot like chasing one’s own tail.
  2. SELLING CLONES:
    So besides it being a lot like issue 1 above…
    You need to network with Institutions where the General Public can find you. I thought of Strainly, but theres a lot of hoops to jump through there, and frankly their monthly fee is a little stiff (what if you don’t sell anything?) Kind of a waste. Plus you better damn well hope you have NO pest of disease Problems, because if you send somebody an infected clone ,even if unknowingly, if that person wants to be a dick, they can go online and RUIN you. you gotta be REALLY careful.

So to all the people like me. Are we able to survive the Dispo crush?

Also please don’t take this as me complaining. This is an issue I have been thinking about for a really long time, and I don’t seem able to come to any kind of a good solution.

I also don’t hate Dispo owners. I get it…I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit, but your business plan needs to change.Your killing all the rest of us off. It’s the small growers that typically tend to stumble on all the new strains, all the top shelf clones. I just wonder if there is some kind of synergistic relationship that can be forged between the Dispos and the small time growers in the Biz.

What are your thoughts? I can’t be the only one who is pondering this…

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I can get an oz for $50 but who knows what’s in it?

I’m more legal here than you probably are and I can’t find anything worth smoking at dispensaries. I can still save a lot of money by growing.

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You don’t. It’s the inevitable. I went from moving 40-50 pounds a month about 10 years ago to not being able to give weed away today. It happened on a steady decrease directly after legalization. We did have a green rush here that was like the Wild West just prior to legalization and first year or two after were great and the money was being thrown at me, that was the craziest weed frenzy I have ever been apart of. Fast forward a few years later and it not worth the effort. Nobody wants flower where I am, can’t even give it away lol, I have to convert my flower to rosin if I want to make any sales and sell crazy fire rosin for dirt cheap if I want to move it and I just said fuck it and got out of the game. I have one guy that trades me my flower for his concentrates and that’s about as far as it goes in terms of “business” for me now

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The glory days are over and not coming back. I started in the late 90’s until 2014 when my first son was born. I made a good amount of money back then but it’s not worth it now. As more states became legal the lower the prices dropped and the market got flooded. Growing is just a hobby now.

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Different now. But still good. If you were lucky enuf to get in on the gravy train while it was around than you struck while the iron was hot. For me it was the mexi brick. Everyone got paid off that stuff.
The cats outta the bag now and its not really a commodity anymore. But thats OK.

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The money isn’t going to be the same. I feel that as the market matures there are going to be opportunities to fill small niche demands for higher quality, long flowering sativas, classic strains etc. but for that to happen people need to know it exists.
Problem is the customer is wildly uneducated about weed and for the most part seems unwilling or uninterested to learn and are far to focused on thc% and the market feeds into it because that’s what they want to buy and it feels like it’s snowballing.

Anyway long story short, there seems to still be some money in hash rosin.

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Thier not going to give one shit.I know Dispo owners and thier the reason why the weed is so shitty.Alot of these guys and ladies had alot of cash to play with and got in on a buisness alot if them didnt know thier ass from a hole in the ground and dont know what good weed was if it jumped up and but them in the face hell some of them never smoked weed in fact some of those people used to Bust people and put them in jail for weed.I know of at least two retired DEA agents that opened up dispensaries and are selling tons of mediocre products making a killing off of a bunch of newage generation smokers that dont know the difference.You will never get what you could back then with 50$ oz floating around.Ive seen the average 50$ OZ and its terrible.You want to tell me you bought that for 50$ and actually enjoy that?Go for it smoke your boof while i smoke top shelf weed that you will secretly yearn for everytime you see me fire up a joint or smoking copius amounts of hand rub hash.Dispos come and go knowledge of growing the wonderful plant is priceless.Reading is Fundamental

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Man, all great responses.
The idea of ex-DEA agents making bank off of dumb dopeheads now that’s enough to make your blood boil.

That is exactly how I feel about the Dispos myself CapnCannabis.
What I saw alot myself, is a bunch of retirees who all had retired from their working lives , who all started growing and were selling it at rock bottom prices to these dispos. Also these guys would show me there weed , and I was like " The Dispensary ACTUALLY wanted to buy this crap" lol.

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See now that is where I was thinking the same thing. Long flowering , more rare sativas. None of my people seemed interested. They were like I want pure Indica and something so strong I sit there , drool and stare at the wallpaper. pffftt…have fun with that.

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Yea dude I think this is one of those time when you do it because your passionate about it not because its very profitable.

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Its the new smoking culture.You have to think some of these kids didnt even really start with weed they had access to Wax and shatter and Oil pens right at the getgo and started with them.Its hard to find weed by itself that is capable of being like wax or shatter.Yeah give me weed that makes me feel like i smoked dabs and get couchlocked im like ah no.Im actually proud that i cut my teeth on Mexican brick weed so i can actually enjoy concentrate every now and then insted of constantly cheifing on wax to keep up

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Ya know… (puffin a dab joint right now)…

Option B. Make house calls. Like lawn care, but for bud growers. Get those garden boys out there. That’d be interesting. More like ‘tech support for your grow’ and send them over weekly/monthly recurring schedule, billing, subscription services. Trimming/drying. all that stuff I hate to do. Or… the stuff med patients can’t get done themselves.

That’d be the new service niche market.

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Not being a downer here i like your idea i like thinking outside the box lets mull this .Imagine doing the stuff you hate all day long.I would bet one would hate that job sooner than later and the work would soon reflect.You yourself could hire others to do that work but would the same attitude bleed into the new work??At that point it would be your Monkeys and Your Circus to deal with and may be more hassle than worth.

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You’re certainly right ab young people growing up on only concentrates and not appreciating the actual flower. I’m 40 and we would find anything from dirt swag to mids to headies so the excitement of the new bag was always there instead of hey time for another dab. Smoking that heavy stuff as a teenager no bueno imo but it is what it is.

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Very thoughtful conversation, really enjoy seeing it. I have a slightly different take, based on my experience. I was in the 215 scene, growing/making hash for deliveries and dispos up and down the state. As well as doing all the weed cups, so I got to see the change in real time.

I did the growing hype strains large scale in greenhouses, sold lots of clones/teens(mostly hundreds to commercial grows), and sourced ungodly amounts of trim to make hash. The nosedive in quality was a simple one. The massive majority of the weed on the open market around America was full term outdoor, and a lot of those growers used simple organics, and very few sprayed anything, since they popped seeds every year. Then the model switched to acres and acres of corporate greenhouses basically giving out monopolies to corporate investors.

Problem was none of them know how to grow worth a shit. But what they ALL do is backdoor insane amounts of weed. Ive sat in multiple investor meetings where they said straight up “were going to control the entire legal and black market”. Instead they just crashed the market to drive everyone else out. I started seeing it back around 2017-18. Brokers started only caring about bottom dollar pricing, and quality went from being everything to irrelevant. Partly because all the new people getting into smoking weed, and not knowing any better.

I havent smoked dispo bud in a while, but any time I do I just get a headache and feel sick. Ive been a cannabis patient for 15 years now, and to call it garbage is an insult to trash lol. Ive met more than a few younger smokers that think getting a headache is getting high. Whereas I expect medicinal benefits when consuming cannabis. Not that it has to be sun grown or organic to be medicinal. But rockwool grown boof will never be medicine. We also have idiots like Jungle Boys and Cookies that have never, and will never smoke good weed. But if you go on instagram, youd think they invented the cannabis plant. The marketing won.

In terms of fixing it? I dont think that will ever happen. Its like anything, most people dont care about quality. How many bottles of 2 buck chuck thatll give you a nasty headache get sold vs $300 bottles of dom? And all the old growers think they were growin dom, most were growing 2 buck chuck. We had an old joke buying trim “every grower you meet is the best grower, has the best genetics, and noone can match them. In their own mind only”

At this point I see a clear split in the scene. The average smokers that buy dispo weed and take 2 hits of anything and think theyre baked as hell. And folks like here on OGmthat are super dedicated to the plant and want to grow nice stuff. I think you can cater to that market selling well made genetics(but good luck getting any traction breeding anything but cookies junk it seems) or consulting. But both of those take a lot of experience to do well, and most people dont have that. And youre going up against the same corporate grows making 1 million white label seeds a month who own the SEO crap. So new growers go online looking for “OG Kush” seeds. Theyre gonna buy some ILGM fakeass white label instead of doing all the research to find dudes like 707 doing great OG work. Just as a simple example.

Selling clones to the general public is always a terrible plan. You can expect bare minumum 30% of people to screw em up and blame it on you. That was the rate even the commercial farms would ruin tried and true elite clones Id sell to them. And most people buying clones now are rookie growers that barely know how to grow.

The average modern weed fan really has the odds stacked against them in terms of getting any good information. Genetics and grow methods included. I swear rookie growers are getting progressively worse and worse. Using cheap awful nutes, growing junk genetics. But the part that many overlook is its still better than dispo bud. So youre fighting a constant uphill battle trying to get people to care about quality. Since they have their weed for their 2-3 hits, and their happy enough with it.

The silver lining is that there’s an avalanche of home growers, and a fair amount do care. What has to adjust is folks thinking they can make assloads of easy cash like the old days. Trust me I miss it too lol. But if youre really passionate about cannabis youll grow stuff you like, and share it with others, and ideally help others learn to grow their own as well. Cannabis was never meant to be a rich mans buzz, its for the people. And it become more available is a net positive. Especially with places like here on Overgrow where trading is part of the lifestyle. Ive never sold a seed, but trading is one of my favorite parts of this modern cannabis landscape. As someone stuck growing the hype for years, its been a life changing journey the last several years. I can grow 5 month sativas, awesome old hashplants, and all kinds of special and unique genetics solely because of other passionate growers keeping that stuff around, and being willing to freely trade/give them out. In my opinion, that is so magical and special, I cant get over it.

Were just all dealing with the growing pains of these assclown corporations thinking they can demoralize everyone and think they can be the only ones left standing. Which is pretty laughably stupid considering anyone can pop up a tent or stick some plants in the back yard and get awesome smoke. Its ironic weve come almost full cirlce in the “overgrow the world” mantra. But instead of overgrowing the govt, now were having to overgrow the corporations and make them all but irrelevant. Dont give up hope! All it takes is 1 good joint to make another convert.

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Treasure those nuances that we we’re fortunate enough to have had.Keep them alive like the last unicorn to know and show others as you have so seen so that they may know the way and choose thier own path and have the knowledge to do so.Man this Jacalyn has me on a philosophical tangent today.All Socrates and shit

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Its at that very moment you realize the Corporations were Government the whole time.It used to be overgrow the government but it will evolve to eventually overgrow the Corporate but the full Circle will be just that,That what we had hoped was weed would be like tomatoes and hopefully the money part doesnt consume some part of our soul in the process.Gain the world to lose your soul no no no child, is no bueno

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It’s no different than when alcohol prohibition ended.
All the small scale backwoods guys shut down for the most part , the variety disappeared and cheap crap beer took over , it took 60+years for small scale micro brewery’s to pop back up with enough demand to stay a float . There was one in San Francisco that managed to stay alive but it took over 60 years for enough of the the customer base to want better beer to make it feasible. Cheap crap beer still is number one by volume sold. Most people who drink a lot can’t afford expensive liquor so they buy the cheapest thing that works. Not everybody can grow where they live and they made that even more true with prop 64 in California.
I hate to say it but it will probably be a similar path for cannabis as it was for alcohol , many years of crap low quality product before a few big guys dominate the market and push everybody else out. Then eventually people will say I wish there was something different and better and the craft cannabis scene might flourish but it will take longer then most think to get there.

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There are some really talented and passionate young growers out there so I shouldn’t lump everyone together but there’s def way too much focus on gear and merchandise these days. I’ve had to tell newbies on other forums look man you don’t have to spend $1,500 to start growing haha seriously small grow tent Amazon LED decent soil and genetics there you go for a couple hundred tops. The idea should be learn the craft instead of puffing your chest arguing over well I have the new AC Infinity blah blah blah. Also nice to see people gardening more than just cannabis

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With Youtube,Instagram and Social media influencers making Money off of sponsorship and Ad revenue being the hype driving the market cats already out of the bag it attracts the younger crowd .Does anyone even buy Hightimes anymore ?I stopped buying them back in the late 90s early 2000s when i found out about this place.When i looked back at those articles now being older i realized the Articles were just geared up to sell you products nutrients and expensive books from George van patton or george Cervantes or Jorge Cervantes what ever he likes to call himself these days or that Goofball Kyle Kushman who exits hightimes as an editor in chief and wins a cannabis cup for a strain he never bred and lied about then said a poor hippy dude gave it to him from a mother being grown in a paint can receives clone from plant in a crumpled dixie cup ,yeah there were a couple good reads but fee and far in between compared to them trying to sell you the whole foxfarm line which could have been made for dirt cheap pennys to the dollar if you knew a couple ingredients (Thank The Gods for Overgrow and all the old cats who shared thier knowledge like OT1 BOG and many others).Same bag Different Media Different time but the exact same Scene you dig?

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