Your opinion/experience with dispensaries/budtenders, overall?

Smoker's Lounge
#1

Short: What do y’all think of dispensaries in general, the people who work there?

Longer: My personal experience has been largely disappointing because I was naive enough to think some of them might not be profit-machines-first, customer-is-always-second, and that they may have very informative & responsible employees.

In California what I see happening is slightly parallel to alcohol availability, in that afforadble, low-quality, chemical-laden product is very avilable from morally-vaccuous sellers, while premium world class material remains a private Shangri-la for insiders & the well-funded. (Home/personal growers being insiders.) Grog for the peasants, 2 grades of wine for the middle class & their masters.

It seems particularly sad/ironic since so much of the cannabis tolerance legislation over 20+ years has been rooted in the HIV crisis of the 80s, and more recently epileptic children on main-stream TV. I am old enough to remember those who were dying and drove a stake in Nixon’s policy, but only barely (class of '96).

To continue the booze parallel… it’s as if the state has handed Al Capone & his competitors a monopoly instead of just letting a plant grow.

The idiots I encounter working at cannabis dispensaries are only making the public’s misinformation worse, IMO. The future is getting weird. Wah.

cannabis.sequoia

8 Likes
#2

I had high hopes for the ones in my city.
Unfortunately I was disappointed with not just the product but with the product knowledge.
Anything that I would consider a quad was insanely priced.

Don’t get me started on LP’s and our soon to be legal dispensaries… I have a bad feeling they’ll be worse.

5 Likes
#3

After taxes how much do they have to hire knowledgeable people. To have the knowledge you have to grow it and gain experience, to get that experience in a dispensary you have to pay them to leave growing behind. With all the taxes you have to pay i don’t think they can afford it.

4 Likes
#4

i’ve thought a lot about the place that i used for a year before i grew some.

the image does not match the reality; i pressed them for proof that they tested some “durban poison”(probably an OG) and was handed to a manager by a frightened & confused girl, who reluctantly printed a lab report for the supposed bud. “we don’t normally do this.” trying to not be a dick but just requesting honesty when i’m an ACTUAL medical user, not the college-aged kid i was, and politely said so. she told the budtender to give me a free gram, probably just to make me leave less upset.

the reality is that the 3rd party they advertise for supposedly testing everything they carry just sold them a contract, some equipment, and trained their freaky bud-buyer to use it. and we can safely bet only a few batches going in are tested, by very imperfect & unregulated labs.

the place(s) offer “freebies” variously, like yoga, peer-groups, grocery-bags, etc., and while that seems ‘compassionate’ & generous, it’s just more advertising, attached to shadyish non-profit wing of the “collective”. Of course, they don’t have to do that stuff, but it’s relatively cheap image polishing, positioning them ahead of others by default. As for taxe$, this is a potential tax-write off.

the pre-recreational(CA) prices were pretty high, now they’re INSANE! seeing ^^^600/oz!
supposedly due to taxes, right? in an ALL CASH industry? OK. :expressionless:

on a busy weekend, i estimated that particular spot to take in 30-50k per day. i deduced this from: observation of average daily store traffic, guessing average transaction, receipt #s over time. very rough science, i know, but bear with it. total daily overhead/operating cost for: 5000sqft location(combo grow/dispense) & all equip, inventory, 3-5 jokers @ 15/hr 1 senior joker @ 40k/yr + bennies.
and this place is one of 2 in this metro area, almost certain they have others in the others.

so, fwiw, fuck the taxes… it’s the whole damn proposed framework & regulatory clusterfuck.
all about redirecting the cash stream away from Hippie Joe & Pedro Narco to Mr Politician, nothing about helping sick people, public health, or even basic science. this has been demonstrated since the 1970s. if public welfare were a prmary concern of the assholes involved in our daily lives’ mess, a whole lot would be different.

the crux of the issue is people making rules who don’t know enough or care properly.

the artificial tax imposed by the insanity of prohibition is what has generated the 7-8000$/lb. potential on a “weed” that can be produced for maybe $50/lb.

my weekly newspaper(rag) had a segment claiming NorCal growers are taking product to the southern border to get the 1500$ they need/want, instead of the 400$ it’s dropping past as we speak.

so at present, "legal weed"s future is McWeed: cheap, plentiful, toxic, gmo with happy politicians.

damn this coffee’s bitter! :wink: sorry yall

cannabis.sequoia

10 Likes
#5

The fact is, you don’t know how the buds were grown or processed unless you do it yourself. Even my first grow was leaps and bounds better than what I was getting in the dispensary. I know exactly what the plants are fed, whats sprayed on them and when, and whats been used to process the material.

11 Likes
#6

Class of 96 as well friend.
My limited experience pretty much mirrors yours. I found a few knowledgeable people in Denver but they were few and far between. Rec prices in Denver were ok, I paid $60 for a 1/4 of platinum cookies that was well grown.
Most bud tendersi met were just uneducated smokers who wanted a “cool” job. No real passion for cannabis other than it got them high…
But if you think cali is fucked look into my state. The medical marijuana commission was just sued for ethics violations, as well as the former attorney general of the state is now a “proud participant” (owner) in this program… after years of locking people up for cannabis.
I better stop before I get myself all pissed off again.

I think there will always be those closed groups that have certain cultivars that don’t make it to “mainstream” cannabis users.

6 Likes
#7

While I wish them all the best, I do not intend to procure my herbs from somebody else. Unless I know them, and they grew it themselves. That’s always fun.

Keep Seedin’

99%

8 Likes
#8

Had two that suited my needs, but not since the first of the year when Rec kicked in.
They took away medical connection to the LOCAL grower and the chain of custody
involved in handling and maintaining a product you could trust.

The same ‘Quality’ from official supply chain was: Untrimmed chunks of buds all in
prepackaged plastic pouches. Try as you might you can’t get the shake out of these
static filled no-recycle plastic.

What’s discouraging is one dispensary owner said the highest volume and biggest
selling items is PREROLLS… Many of which come in glass or plastic tubes, also of
a nature that will cause a trash problem as they are flashy colorful packages that
little kids will be attracted to when found on the ground… Guess if you can trust
what’s rolled up by the gov has to be fine for you…

6 Likes
#9

I’ve been to two in Reno and it’s the same deal.
Strains I never heard of, bud is dried to a crisp with no cure whatsoever.
My first pathetic grow, years and years ago with terrible dry/cure blows their highest priced grams out of the water.
I pitty the consumer really because this is a first time thing for many people.

6 Likes
#10

Pens and prerolls, that’s what the general population wants.

5 Likes
#11

Give them what they want.

Just leave us alone.

5 Likes
#12

it’s pretty much the way they’re going in canada as well except in half the provinces only the government can operate dispensaries and the rest (minus BC prob) you need to have HUGE money to operate a dispensary aka only big business. a couple provinces are trying to completely restrict rec home growing because they know no one will buy their overpriced low quality garbage otherwise. i bet half the government employees or more won’t even smoke weed and will have absolutely zero product knowledge.

the only solution is to educate everyone on how to become medically licensed - you can grow your own, larger personal possession limit, access to gov. approved labs for testing your own products, and its much MUCH cheaper and healthier.

you can bet i’ll be standing outside of the overpriced garbage stores handing out doctors forms and ACMPR applications plus pamphlets explaining all the benefits of home growing. the gov. is spending hundreds of millions of dollars and all the LPs are expanding and increasing production to meet expected demand and i’ll do my part to make sure these crooks fail

8 Likes
#13

If I had to settle for the flower at any shops I have been to I’d want the pens as well.

Industry dictating this which just opens up other doors once most of the country is full rec.

4 Likes
#14

i’m pretty sure prerolls are usually made out of the larf and b grade buds. I don’t think LPs can sell prerolls here so they sell ‘milled/ground cannabis’ for like 4$ a gram. they can’t do smokable extracts either because of THC dosage restrictions, only extracts diluted with coco oil etc

3 Likes
#16

Yeah, larf and shake from the bottom of the jar is what most prerolls are made of. I’ve even heard of places rolling up trim in prerolls. I’m guilty of rolling trim joints on occasion. :blush:

6 Likes
#17

that’s how i survived my wisdom teeth being pulled waybackwhen… a grocery bag of sugar leaf, rolling monsters, then re-rolling the roaches, eventually got to a pretty nasty, sticky, place… cottonmouth certainly didn’t help that situation.! hehe

some of the pre-rolls i’ve gotten as freebies have gone straight into my composter… sooooo bad.
don’t these people know that i’ll never return & spread bad words? duh. then again, this is not a business model for the ages, rather, one for the hot-minute, flybynight & gone when the bottom drops out of the bag. plthhhh.

3 Likes
#18

…i’m afraid you’re right & that’s what’s being paved/prepared: lots of corporate gmo bho, brought to you by scottsmiraclegro&whoeverthefuckelsehasabilliontospareINC.

i’m also afraid i’m headed for the shark tank soon! :wink: heh

1 Like
#19

Fair & solid point, dude… I should temper my whining & realize how much has changed for the better. But I really think increased LE tolerance for cannabis can be attributed equally to information and the FAR NASTIER problems in our society. any cop who’s been out of the academy for a while knows that stoners are not a threat & neither is a plant. In other words, pills, meth, heroin, crack, & strangenewthings.

So let the idiots be idiots and poison themselves, of course, but they deserve a “warning sign” i think. if not, the lawyers will require one! ha!

1 Like
#20

I heard Kevin Jodrey mention in a youtube video that according to the state of CA, pens outsell flower 30-to-1

YUCK

2 Likes
#21

what are thee pens you guys speak of?

1 Like