New Mexico’s nearly decade-old medical marijuana market is sprinting ahead as if it had just opened, thanks to a 70% jump in new patients over the past year.
Sales via dispensaries hit nearly $10 million in the first quarter – almost double the total from the same period in 2015.
The growth has enabled marijuana businesses to expand, though companies are still having trouble keeping up with demand.
“Things have taken off,” said Duke Rodriguez, CEO of Ultra Health, a cultivator and dispensary owner. “Demand has been amazing.”
According to the latest report released by the state, medical cannabis sales increased to $9.96 million in the first quarter of this year from $5.7 million in the first quarter of 2015.
The state is now on track for at least $40 million in sales this year, moving it closer to the middle tier of medical cannabis states in terms of market size.
That would also put it within the $40 million-$50 million sales estimate in the 2016 Marijuana Business Factbook. Last year, the state’s dispensaries racked up $25 million to $30 million in sales, according to the Factbook.
The spike in patient numbers has largely fueled the industry’s sales gains. The number of registered medical marijuana patients in the state has surged to about 25,000 through the end of May from 14,600 in May 2015. And the patient count is expected to keep growing this year.
Ultra Health’s five currently open dispensaries see about 2,000 patients per week, but it hasn’t been easy keeping up increased demand.
“We’re stretching product to the max,” Rodriguez said.
Supply Challenges
While he is still able to keep his stores open seven days per week, Rodriguez said he knows of some dispensaries that are open only two or three times per week because they don’t have enough supply.
“There are patients who are being turned away at shops,” Rodriguez said.
The industry’s jump in sales, in fact, hasn’t been distributed evenly among marijuana businesses, according to the state report.
Medical marijuana businesses in New Mexico, where licenses holders operate vertically integrated grow sites and dispensaries, had average sales of $453,000 in the first quarter. The top business had revenues of almost $1.1 million during the quarter, while another business had almost $904,000 in revenue.
By contrast, 13 other businesses earned less than $100,000 during the quarter – including the two state’s two laggards, which earned approximately $7,000 and $27,000 in the quarter, respectively.
For now, there are 23 licensed producers that run 37 dispensaries. Another 12 nonprofits that were awarded licenses by the New Mexico Department of Health last year are setting up new cultivation sites and dispensaries. That will bring the total number of licensed producers to 35, which is the state cap on cultivators.
The state has no limit on how many dispensaries these licensed producers can operate.
Rodriguez of Ultra Health opened his first dispensary in Albuquerque in 2010 and, until late last year, that’s all he needed. Then he opened stores two, three and four in November, December and January respectively, followed by store five in March. Rodriguez will open his sixth store this week, and expects to have 15 open by year’s end.
“We’re very pleased with how business is doing,” Rodriguez said.
Brisk Sales
Diana Schoonmaker, who manages the Albuquerque location of Healthy Education Society, which owns two dispensaries and two grow sites, is seeing the same trend at her stores. “We’re doing really well,” she said.
Why the increase in patients? “We’re not sure,” said Kenny Vigil, a spokesman for the New Mexico Health Department.
Rodriguez wasn’t sure either, but speculated that more information about the medical cannabis program was reaching prospective patients. His business runs radio spots on several prominent New Mexico radio stations, telling listeners to call if they’re interested in getting a medical marijuana card. “And believe me, people call,” he said.
As for supplies, Schoonmaker and Rodriguez have had different experiences.
Schoonmaker – whose stores sees 19 to 25 patients on any of the five days of the week they are open – said the dispensaries haven’t had any product shortages.
Rodriguez, on the other hand, said the state’s cap of 450 plants per grow site has made supplies a tricky issue. That 450-plant cap is actually an increase that state regulators implemented last year from a previous cap of 150 plants. But even then many cannabis business owners worried the increase would still not be enough to meet growing demand.
Removing Limits on Plants
He and other cultivators have hired lobbyists to persuade regulators and lawmakers to eliminate the cap.
“We’ve been in active discussions to get the department of health to reevaluate the cap, but they’ve been reluctant to do that,” Rodriguez said. “But we’ll keep pushing, because it’s not right that there are patients who can’t get medicine.”
The May 26 state report shows that the average grow site has 286 plants. Only three are at the 450-plant limit, while several others had about 400 plants.
The average price for the quarter was $11.06 per gram, according to the report, with a low of $6.88 per gram and a high of $13.85 per gram.
The number of patients will likely increase, observers predicted. New Mexico has 9.4 medical cannabis patients per 1,000 state residents, above the average for medical marijuana legal states of 8.06 patients per 1,000 residents, according to a March report by ProCon.org, a website that tracks controversial issues.
Will Rodriguez’s supply be able to keep up with demand? If Ultra Heath can’t grow enough product, Rodriguez said he’s lucky enough to be in a state where dispensaries can buy product from other licensed growers.
“We’ll do what we have to do to serve patients,” he said.
“There are 99 licensed medical marijuana dispensaries, with 92 currently open and operating. Approximately 97 percent of Arizonans are now residing within 25 miles of an operating medical marijuana dispensary. There are 75 cultivation sites located outside of the operating dispensaries. Some of those dispensaries and cultivation sites include kitchens approved to prepare edible food products.”
It has been slightly more than five years since the first Arizona patient received a medical-marijuana card.
Voters initially agreed to allow about 10 percent of the number of pharmacies statewide, which would amount to nearly 130 dispensaries.
The most recent report from AZDHS shows that there are 101,416 Arizona Medical Marijuana Active Qualifying Patients, Designated Caregivers and Dispensary Agents.
If you are interested in applying for an Arizona Dispensary or Cultivation License contact Adilas420 for guidance. Don’t delay as the Department will accept dispensary registration certificate applications from July 18 – July 29, 2016.
Did you know the 55-and-older crowd is now the fastest-growing demographic of pot users in the country? Barry Petersen takes a look at how the newest marijuana customers are becoming more serious about their cannabis consumption.
While it is critical for the industry to determine rules, regulations and standards for pesticide use and quality control, the Colorado Governor has set unrealistic and unenforceable standards for Colorado Cultivation Facilities.
More than a year after the city of Denver first started actively policing the marijuana industry’s use of pesticides, the city’s health department is changing its enforcement procedures.
If there’s one thing that Massachusetts public officials — Democrat and Republican, urban and suburban, local and state — seem to agree on lately, it’s that the voters should not legalize marijuana at the polls this November.
What is most remarkable about this unified stand is that, by every metric available, public opinion appears to favor legalization, and by wider margins with each passing year.
You cannot accuse lawmakers of governing according to the polls and public opinion. If anything, the opposite is happening here.
Past Outcomes Suggest Strong Start For Ballot Question
In the last 16 years, there have been 85 ballot questions in Massachusetts dealing with marijuana. All 85 passed. All but two of these were non-binding public policy questions, in which voters instruct their legislators how to vote on an issue, or to introduce legislation producing the desired result. These advisory questions have no legal impact, but are often used to test the waters for potential binding ballot questions, which come later.
By every metric available, public opinion appears to favor marijuana legalization, and by wider margins with each passing year.
COLUMBUS — After Ohio voters resoundingly defeated an ill-formed effort to legalize marijuana last fall, everyone started talking about “doing something” on medical marijuana.
The idea was popular with voters: As many as 90 percent of Ohioans say patients should be allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes approved by a doctor. And 23 states already allow some form of medical marijuana. But state lawmakers had rejected attempt after attempt to legalize it, and federal authorities still list marijuana among the most dangerous drugs.
Even now, with lawmakers mulling a bill and two groups aiming for the November ballot, legalizing medical marijuana is far from assured.
If you agree that medical marijuana should be legal in Ohio — not a given among Republicans or Democrats — there are dozens of other questions to debate: Should patients be allowed to grow marijuana in their backyards? Which health conditions should be covered? How is it taxed? What happens if someone shows up to work stoned?
Any one of these hot-button topics could derail an effort from bipartisan lawmakers to tackle medical marijuana. And then, there’s timing. Lawmakers are scheduled for two months of work before breaking until after the November election. Groups collecting signatures to place medical marijuana on the fall ballot have until early July to hit the required number of 305,591, drawn from at least 44 counties.
Gov. John Kasich, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, has increasingly said he is open to legalizing medical marijuana and would sign something, especially if it would help children suffering from seizures.
But Kasich also has repeatedly said he will rely on the advice of doctors, who haven’t explicitly told the governor that medical marijuana would help, aides say. The Ohio State Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Glaucoma Foundation and American Cancer Society all oppose legalizing medical marijuana without more research.
Meanwhile, pressure is mounting from outside groups: dueling ballot initiatives are working toward the November ballot, and some legislators fear another perceived attack on the state constitution like ResponsibleOhio’s proposal last year to give the rights to grow marijuana to just 10 wealthy investors. Despite all the failings of ResponsibleOhio’s proposal, more than 1.1 million Ohioans still voted to legalize marijuana under the oligopoly.
“It’s the very possibility that the voters might foist this upon the state that might keep the legislators moving,” said Doug Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who teaches a course on marijuana policy.
If there’s a chance of legalizing medical marijuana in Ohio, one of these four groups will lead the way:
Ohio Senate
What’s the proposal?
Sen. Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights, was the first to say he’s drafting a bill. The new proposal, which has already undergone at least one revision, would require a physician to have previous history with a patient before recommending medical marijuana. Yuko was mum on other details, saying they would likely change before the bill is introduced in the coming weeks.
“I don’t care what we do or how we do it, as long as we do it,” said Yuko, who went on a three-city tour with Sen. Dave Burke, R-Marysville, to listen to Ohioans opinions on medical marijuana.
What are its chances?
Yuko, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, has introduced a handful of unsuccessful bills to legalize medical marijuana since 2005. He needs Republican support to pass anything in the GOP-controlled Ohio Senate, and his Democratic colleagues aren’t necessarily sold either. Lawyers, in particular, are concerned about the repercussions of legalizing a drug that the federal government still bars, Yuko said. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision not to wade into cross-border marijuana disputes might ease some fears about federal government interference.
Burke, a pharmacist by trade, is even more skeptical. He won’t support anything that legalizes recreational marijuana, allows marijuana users to drive impaired or creates a new, expensive department to regulate marijuana. Burke said he’s working with Yuko to present an option that everyone can agree on. But breaks for the primaries and Easter have meant Burke hasn’t talked with GOP colleagues yet to see where they stand on medical marijuana.
“If there is zero Republican support, nothing is going to pass,” Burke said.
Ohio House
What’s the proposal?
Rep. Kirk Schuring, R-Canton, and his 14-member task force have listened to patients, police officers, physicians and business managers talk about medical marijuana and whether Ohio is ready for it. The sixth and final hearing is March 31 at the Ohio Statehouse. Until then, Schuring isn’t talking about what’s next.
Still, fellow task force member, Rep. Dan Ramos, D-Lorain, expects “something” will come out of the talks. Many lawmakers and advocates would prefer a legislative solution over amending the state constitution, because adjusting state laws is easier and cheaper, Ramos said. For example, when Columbus wanted to move its casino to the other side of town, voters across Ohio had to approve it.
That “something” could be a ballot initiative or a proposed law, but whatever is introduced will likely be limited in scope. Republicans find cannabis oil or pills more palatable than smoking, but it’s unclear whether that would satisfy medical marijuana advocates.
What are its chances?
House and Senate lawmakers took different routes in reviewing medical marijuana, but will need to come together if they want to pass anything quickly. Don’t expect the issue to fall on party lines either, Ramos said.
“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue,” he said.
Marijuana Policy Project
What’s the proposal?
Marijuana Policy Project is one of the Goliaths of legalizing marijuana across the United States. The nonprofit organization spearheaded legalizing marijuana in Colorado and passing medical marijuana in nearly a dozen states, including Michigan. Ohio is one of more than a half dozen states the group is targeting in 2016. The Buckeye State wasn’t a top priority for the nationwide group until after ResponsibleOhio’s failed initiative last year that got Ohioans and lawmakers talking about marijuana, spokesman Mason Tvert said.
The group’s Ohio operation, Ohioans for Medical Marijuana, has proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow individuals older than 21 to grow up to six marijuana plants with a recommendation from their doctor. Those younger than 18 could use marijuana with a parent’s permission and a physician’s approval.
Those who wish to grow marijuana commercially would apply for a license. Only 15 larger marijuana farms would be allowed in the state and they would pay a $500,000 fee. Smaller operations would pay a $5,000 fee. Local officials and voters would have some say in where dispensaries could set up shop.
What are its chances?
Marijuana Policy Project crossed the first hurdle Friday when Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine approved the group’s petition language. Now, the state’s bipartisan ballot board must decide whether the proposal is one or multiple issues. From there, Marijuana Policy Project has until July 6 to collect valid signatures.
The group would need professional, paid signature collectors, who would shoot for more than the minimum number because at least some of the signatures will be invalid or duplicates, said Carlis McDerment, director of Ohio Medical Cannabis Care. His group is backing off the race for the November ballot after being rejected four times by DeWine.
If Marijuana Policy Project has enough signatures, the group would need millions of dollars more for advertising and campaigning. ResponsibleOhio raised about $20 million for its failed effort — a massive number that most initiatives don’t need. But mounting a campaign in a presidential election year in Ohio still isn’t cheap.
But if there’s a group well-funded and organized enough to make the November ballot on a tight schedule, it’s the Marijuana Policy Project.
Would Marijuana Policy Project hold off to see if lawmakers act?
Sure. That would save Marijuana Policy Project millions that it could spend in another state. “But we’re not just going to take them at their word,” Tvert said.
Grassroots Ohio
What’s the proposal?
Grassroots Ohio was formed by disgruntled members of Legalize Ohio 2015 concerned about Marijuana Policy Project’s approach.
“This initiative is very much ResponsibleOhio all over again,” Athens attorney Don Wirtshafter said of that approach. “Instead of 10 monopolies, they are enshrining 15 monopolies,” he said, referencing the proposal’s limit on the number of large marijuana growers in the state.
Grassroots Ohio is taking a two-pronged approach. First, place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to legalize medical marijuana for adults older than 18 to grow and use. It also would permit farmers to grow industrial hemp. Second, ask voters to pass a proposal to regulate and tax medical marijuana, which would be sent to lawmakers for their approval. That would keep language in the constitution simple, Wirtshafter said.
What are its chances?
Grassroots Ohio must pass DeWine, the ballot board and the signature collection by July as well. Plus, Grassroots Ohio and Marijuana Policy Project will be in a war for signatures. Wirtshafter said it helps that his group’s proposal is two pages compared to Marijuana Policy Project’s 30-plus pages. But Marijuana Policy Project would have the nationwide recognition and fundraising that Grassroots Ohio will not.
Pennsylvania could potentially become the 25th state to legalize medical marijuana, thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 3 in the state House of Representatives this month.
The bill, which was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, will make legal the purchase of marijuana for the treatment of serious medical conditions. With doctor recommendation, patients will be able to acquire a special ID card, which will allow them to purchase strains of cannabis that are deemed appropriate for their diagnoses.
This legislation follows former mayor of Philadelphia Michael Nutter’s decriminalization of small-scale marijuana possession in 2014. As a result of the decriminalization, those caught in possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana are merely fined $25 and given a citation. Anyone caught smoking in public is either fined $100 or required to complete nine hours of community service.
Mayor Jim Kenney also supports this decriminalization as he spearheaded the 2014 bill signed by Nutter. Kenney has even said that he would be “open” to the taxation and regulation of recreational marijuana if it were to be legalized in Pennsylvania, according to a Philly.com article.
That being said, possession and consumption of marijuana is still a criminal offense in the state of Pennsylvania and on the federal level. The expected passage of Senate Bill 3, also known as the Medical Marijuana Act, could be the first step toward change in the rest of the state.
However, unlike medical marijuana legislation in some other states, this bill only covers marijuana as legal treatment for what it cites as “serious medical conditions.” Some conditions that satisfy this requirement include cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and autism. According to the bill, though, some of the revenues from taxation on marijuana growers’ sales to dispensaries will be allocated to research into other conditions that may be treated with the substance.
Also limited are the forms in which medical marijuana may be sold and consumed. Approved forms include pills and oils. Smoking is not included in the definition of “medical use” of cannabis.
Only residents of Pennsylvania will be eligible for consideration for a medical marijuana identification card, and health insurers will not be required to provide coverage for the purchase of medical cannabis.
Regardless of its limitations, advocates of marijuana legalization, like the Marijuana Policy Project, consider the expected passage of this bill a victory.
Once upon a time it was my dream job to travel the world and write reviews of people, products and cultural processes. Now, there is nothing I would enjoy more than a Cannabis World Tour. I want to see how the world embraces this plant that has been suppressed for so long. It is my mission to educate others on the benefits of the plant and the great economy that comes with it.
Oklahoma and Nebraska complained that pot purchased legally in Colorado is being transported illegally into or through their states, overwhelming police and courts dealing with a sudden influx of smugglers. An ounce of high-quality marijuana selling for $200 at a state-licensed Colorado store can fetch three times that on the East Coast black market, police say.
The Supreme Court refused Monday to referee a simmering dispute between Colorado and two neighboring states over the cross-border impact of marijuana legalization, heartening legalization advocates who feared the high court could have rolled back their gains.
Because he’s a scientist, not a back-slapping venture capitalist, Mowgli Holmes loathes using the term networking to describe even the portion of his job that entails shaking hands in the cannabis industry. But it was networking that brought the chief scientific officer of Phylos Bioscience in Portland, Oregon, to Las Vegas in November 2014 to attend the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo—and to smoke a massive joint with one of the cannabis movement’s legends, Ohio lawyer Don Wirtshafter.
Holmes had it on good information that Wirtshafter was sitting on a collection of hundreds of very old apothecary bottles filled with antique cannabis tinctures—relics from before marijuana prohibition came along in 1937, courtesy of the weed-criminalizing Marihuana Tax Act. Holmes, a 43-year-old geneticist with a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Columbia University, desperately wanted those bottles—at least what viable strands of DNA might lie inside of them—for a project that has become his life’s work: an ambitious effort to sequence the DNA of every different kind of cannabis in the world.
It’s a quest that could change almost everything we know about marijuana. At this point, most cannabis is produced in the dark, then sold to recreational consumers and medical patients with catchy labels that are nearly always misleading. When Holmes completes his mission, he’ll be able to take any sample of pot DNA and compare it with the most robust database of cannabis strains ever assembled, bringing unprecedented clarity to the marijuana market, from the grow to the dispensary.
First, though, Holmes needed to do a little more networking. And in the cannabis industry, that can sometimes mean getting very high.
Wirtshafter wanted to know the scientist wasn’t a Monsanto in sheep’s clothing. When the two met in the lobby of the Rio Casino, Wirtshafter had already heard of Holmes and his project. Still, the best way to prove yourself in the marijuana world is age-old and simple—you burn one. So on the last day of the conference, Holmes found himself and his business partner, Nishan Karassik, in Wirtshafter’s hotel room, burnishing their street cred with childhood tales from the hippie mecca that is the Oregon Country Fair and puffing on an enormous joint. Seven weeks later, Holmes packed his lab coat and tweezers, then caught a flight to Columbus, Ohio.
Political Extermination
Holmes grew up in Eugene, a small city in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, home to conservative types descended from logging families and ultra-liberals who drape “Free Tibet” rainbow flags on their porches and wear tie-dyed T-shirts to the Saturday market. Holmes went to Vassar College, majored in philosophy and then moved back to Oregon to play the drums in several rock bands in Portland. After five years of that, he headed to New York once more to study microbiology at Columbia University.
In graduate school, his focus was on viruses, specifically HIV research. But when he returned again to Oregon, which in 2013 was a year away from becoming the nation’s fourth state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, he found a new career path staring straight at him: cannabis genomics. “There’s a whole new industry exploding all around it,” he says. Plus, “in every other academic field, you have to find the tiniest little corner of the world to study. It’s almost impossible to find something nobody else has done, and immediately someone is competing with you. Here, we have an entire organism that there’s basically no body of knowledge on…. This doesn’t happen in science, where you have a plant like this that’s been cordoned off from research.”
It was a risk to link his career to the study of marijuana, even with weed legal in Colorado and Washington. Would he still be taken seriously as a scientist, or would he be forever pigeonholed in pot? Plus, there were major roadblocks: Because cannabis is illegal at the federal level, the only way to legally research it is to use cannabis grown by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Mississippi. That pot is “notoriously crappy,” Holmes says, and useless to his project. Researchers are also required to get approval from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration. Federally funded universities are reticent to allow laboratories they host to have anything to do with cannabis.
Holmes’s lab and its 10 full-time employees are housed by Oregon Health and Science University, which does rely on federal funding. But he and Karassik, who have been friends since they were 4 years old, have found a clever way to avoid legal trouble: They don’t handle marijuana itself, just its DNA. As for his reputation, Holmes says, “people don’t even giggle anymore,” he says. “They just go, ‘Tell me about the financials.’”
The samples come from all over the world, via often fascinating treasure hunts conducted largely by word-of-mouth research. There are two or three other labs working on cannabis genome projects, but none have collected nearly as many specimens as Phylos, and most of their samples come from marijuana dispensaries, not from original landraces, Holmes says. He has collected nearly 2,000 specimens so far and entered 1,500 of them into a software program that organizes the DNA into clusters, outputting a visual representation that looks like a constellation of stars. Each dot represents a strain, and the distances and lines between the dots show how they’re related to one another.
A woman samples the scent and stickiness of various strains at a marijuana dispensary. With a robust cannabis genome database, buyers would be able to fine-tune their relationship with different strains and have a better idea of what they’re using. LYNN JOHNSON/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
The rarest and most valuable samples are old and original—landraces compiled from herbariums, museums and collectors in countries like Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan, India, Uruguay, Namibia and South Africa. After months of coaxing, Holmes convinced legendary breeders David Watson and Robert Clarke to let him take samples from their collection in Amsterdam. Now he is trying to acquire a 2,700-year-old strain from northern China.
Holmes arrived at Wirtshafter’s white Victorian in rural Athens County, Ohio, on a sunny, ice-cold January day, wearing a lab coat and carrying a box filled with tweezers, a scalpel, a digital scale, sample tubes and blue rubber gloves. He had a flight to catch, which left him only a few hours to collect all the samples. “You’ll never have enough time,” Wirtshafter told him.
Wirtshafter acquired his collection from the wife of a former federal employee. These jars were supposed to be destroyed after prohibition, but the rogue government worker decided to keep a huge collection of the tinctures. He made his wife promise not to sell them until 10 years after his death. Whatever the motive for that decision, the man’s collection was extremely valuable. Back in the 1880s, breeders recognized the distinct medicinal value of cannabis, but they didn’t have the sophisticated tools to tease apart the active compounds. Still, by the 1920s, growers had by virtue of significant trial and error begun to breed plants that might balance paranoia-inducing effects with sedating ones, and marijuana was widely sold on pharmacy shelves by major pharmaceutical companies, as medicine. “People don’t know how respected this was, how many mainstream companies were involved with it, how sophisticated they were,” Wirtshafter says. Then came prohibition, and “the work of millions of our ancestors was lost in a sheet of political extermination. Not only did we try to wipe out the plant, we tried to wipe out all knowledge of the plant.”
When Holmes saw Wirtshafter’s collection, he was ecstatic. There were bottles with pills, powder or gooey black viscous residue mixed with opium. Some were labeled as “aphrodisiacs.” Others claimed to treat anxiety, insomnia, glaucoma. It was one of the best single collections of ancient cannabis DNA he’d ever seen. “Jackpot,” Holmes said.
A Pot Stud Book
Holmes’s lab, Phylos Bioscience, opened in 2014. The lab’s director of research, Jessica Kristof, a horticulturist and biochemist, is tasked with what’s perhaps the most difficult part of Holmes’s endeavor: designing a method to extract DNA from each sample collected. It’s an excruciatingly time-consuming process because each substance requires a different protocol for DNA extraction and purification. Each of Wirtshafter’s samples needed to be handled differently to dissolve whatever substance was in the way of getting the DNA out. “Ancient DNA is very fragmented,” she says. “There’s may be 1 percent of cannabis material in these samples, and they’re already diluted by whatever buffers that have been added to make it medicinal. Then, on top of that, there’s yeast and E.coli and stuff growing on it for years.” With 1,500 strains sequenced, the constellation is slowly taking shape. “What 23andMe does for humans,” says Karassik, “we’re doing for cannabis.”
Mowgli Holmes looks at samples in a laboratory on August 11, 2015. WINSTON ROSS FOR NEWSWEEK
Once complete, Phylos will hand over its data set to the Open Cannabis Project, a nonprofit effort to build an archival record of all cannabis strains, to ensure they stay in the public domain. Then, Holmes says, they will create a testing program that will allow growers and dispensaries to stamp “certified” on the products they sell to consumers, who can then have a better idea of what they’re using and can fine-tune their relationship with different strains. Robert DeSalle, who studies genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, imagines a “stud book” of different strains. “This is going to lend a lot of legitimacy to the industry,” he says. “It’s kind of a black book now.”
Pot is often categorized in two overly simplistic ways, as either an indica or a sativa strain. The indica makes you sleepy, the sativa, hyper. But that nomenclature is based on old information. Back in the ’70s, narrow-leaf sativa strains tended to produce a more euphoric plant, and broad-leaf indica a more sedating one. We still use those terms to describe characteristics of pot, regardless of whether a given strain actually has any indica or sativa lineage. “People talk about strains that are good for sex, or eating food, or playing with your kids,” Holmes says. “Some are good for arthritis.” But because strains are so frequently mislabeled today, it’s nearly impossible to know whether the Sour Diesel that once relieved your migraines is going to be the same Sour Diesel next time you go looking for it. “Very rarely do even the growers know what they’re growing,” Holmes says. Once his DNA map is complete, Holmes believes it will give growers a better way to understand their horticulture and consumers a better way to understand their product.
The scientist is also hoping to solve some intriguing mysteries. We know that much of the pot consumed today in the U.S. has roots in strains smuggled here from Afghanistan and Thailand in the 1960s, but there was cannabis in America before that, before prohibition. Where did that originate, and what can it tell us about ancient migratory patterns of the human race? Cannabis is one of the few plants carried all over the world, over the past 10,000 years. Tracing its genetics could tell us something we didn’t know before about where humans traveled and when.
Heady stuff. And even answering those questions seems like first steps. When he has a more complete picture of cannabis’s genetic makeup, Holmes intends to work with growers to create hundreds of new strains with specific genomic traits. The popular pot strain Blue Dream might have a particular array of terpenes—the compounds that impart flavor and aroma to the plant—directly connected to boosting energy in the user, for example. What if a new strain could be grown that enhances that particular effect? Cannabis is already the most hybridized plant on Earth. But its evolution has only just begun.
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