Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at the creation of a very large edible, a cannabis company in Michigan that’s offering to hire displaced workers, an effort to have budtenders discourage consumers from driving while impaired and more. Enjoy.
Spotlight on Edibles
There’s big, there’s bigger and then there’s this. One cannabis company decided to celebrate the 420 holiday by creating the largest cannabis candy bar on record.
A company called Zen Cannabis, which operates in California, Massachusetts, Missouri and Oklahoma, spent four months making a candy bar it calls The Big Zen at its offices in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The candy bar weighs 420 pounds, measures 9 feet by 4 feet and is three inches thick, but that’s not all.
According to David Moye, who reported on the exceptional edible for Huffington Post, what’s really “sweet” is the amount of cannabis it contains—4.2 million milligrams of THC. That’s well beyond the typical 10-milligram dose found in most edibles. And, it can be yours for only $42,000.
According to the company’s CEO Jeremy Zachary, “We wanted to do something that hasn’t been done before, and Oklahoma’s the only state we could do it because it’s the only one with no limit on milligrams.” Moye notes that Zachary estimates 100 pounds of cannabis flower were used to make the five liters of cannabis oil used in the bar.
Zachary also told Moye that the company had to create a custom mold to make the candy bar, along with a custom-made table to hold the product and a custom cooling chamber.
The bar is currently at Zen Cannabis’ Oklahoma City offices, but there are no plans to put it on display. Said Zachary, “This is for serious buyers only.” He also advised prospective buyers to “start with small bites.”
One does wonder just how you would transport this behemoth. Also, if you were stopped somewhere by an overzealous gendarme, could you really argue with a straight face that it was for personal consumption?
To learn more, you can read David Moye’s article in the April 18, 2023 issue of Huffington Post.com.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/420-cannabis-chocolate-bar-oklahoma_n_643eca5fe4b0482824b81f7e
Stats of the Week
This week’s magic number is 32,000. At last count, that’s the number of jobs the cannabis industry has created in Michigan—and that number is about to increase.
Recently, when the owner of a Burger King franchise closed 26 locations in Detroit, Michigan, a cannabis company stepped up to the plate and offered to hire the approximately 400 employees who were laid off.
The California-based cannabis company—Stiizy—offered to hire 200 employees immediately and said it would hire an additional 200 in the coming months if the former Burger King employees were still interested.
According to Steve Neavling, who covered the story for Detroit Metro Times, the new employees will work at Stiiizy’s manufacturing facility in Orion Township, where the company makes its popular line of vape pods, infused blunts, and pre-rolls.
The jobs are said to pay workers more than the $16.00 an hour they earned working at Burger King.
Orion Township is located just outside of Metro Detroit. Make of it what you will, but the official motto of the township and village is “Where living is a vacation.”
Said Ryan Jundt, managing partner of Stiizy, “We’re really blessed to be in the position we are to hire people. We came to the realization a few months ago that every time we make more [products], we simply sell more. We don’t know what our demand is because it’s only hindered by our production capabilities. We are a very aggressive company. So rather than doing it slowly, we’re trying to grow our manufacturing facility as much as possible.”
Added Jundt, “We’re continuing to grow. As we continue to add to our product line, we’re going to continue to add jobs. We’re going to be very aggressive with hiring people.”
The company operates three dispensaries in Michigan (Ferndale, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo) and sells its products to more than 500 cannabis retailers across the state.
Thanks to the kind and thoughtful Miriam Doefield for sending the story our way.
You can learn more by reading the excellent reporting by Steve Neavling in the April 24, 2023 issue of Detroit Metro Times.com.
Travel Tips
Say what you will about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—at least their employees in Denver, Colorado seem to have a sense of humor.
The folks there posted the following tweet on, you guessed it, 4/20.
Don’t let your travel plans go up in smoke. You’ll be @TSA‘s best bud if you understand the laws regarding traveling with medical marijuana. If TSA finds something doob-ious, they will always refer the matter to local law enforcement. Learn more at http://TSA.gov.
It’s not often you can find a tweet that combines cannabis, dad jokes and a travel safety tip.
To see the original tweet and related comments, simply click on the link that follows.
twitter.com/DENAirport/status/1649057857239928832
In a similar vein, the New Cumberland Borough Police Department in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania issued a release that encouraged residents to have “a benign #420 day” and said they would be willing to check any “product” for free that residents want to bring by the station. The Department said, “For your troubles you will get a regular size bag of Doritos.”
They also said that if someone wants to turn in their dealer, they’d receive a family size bag of Doritos.
www.abc27.com/local-news/pennsylvania-police-department-offers-doritos-for-dealers-on-4-20/?
Treating Cancer Symptoms With Cannabis
There may be hopeful news for individuals struggling with symptoms often associated with cancer and cancer treatment, such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, lack of appetite, disturbed sleep, nausea, and vomiting.
While there is evidence that cannabis products may offer some relief from such symptoms, finding the optimal combinations of cannabinoids, routes of administration, and dosing can remain a hit or miss proposition.
To help, a research team consisting of individuals from the University of Wisconsin and the Carbone Cancer Center set out to identify promising doses and cannabinoid products associated with improved symptoms in cancer survivors.
The researchers examined patient-reported data from 1,721 patients enrolled in the Minnesota Medical Cannabis Program (MMCP) from 2015 to 2021. Total milligrams of THC and CBD used by each patient in their first 4 months of MMCP enrollment were used to calculate the ratio of THC to CBD.
They found that cannabis products with lower THC to CBD ratios were the most effective when it came to reducing anxiety and disturbed sleep for the cancer survivors whose records were used in the study.
To learn more, we suggest reading the description of the study that appeared in the May issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0885392423002518
Cannabis and Safer Driving
When it comes to safer driving in Colorado, the state’s Department of Transportation wants budtenders to do their part.
That’s the word from Alayna Alvarez, who writes for Axios Denver. She reports that in an effort to quell an uptick in driving fatalities that appear to be cannabis related, state officials recently met with representatives of the cannabis industry to discuss how budtenders can help to prevent people from driving while impaired.
According to Alvarez, the state wants dispensaries to train employees how to spot the signs that customers are already intoxicated when they arrive at a dispensary, such as glassy eyes, dilated pupils and short-term memory loss.
The state DOT has also asked that when someone is intoxicated, budtenders should try to dissuade them from driving. They should also refuse to sell them any additional product—gilding the lily and all that—and offer to call them a ride home.
This approach is in line with a report released in July of 2022 by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). According to Kyle Jaeger, reporting for Marijuana Moment, the document included a number of recommendations on how states may work to reduce THC-impaired driving, regardless of their individual marijuana policies.
More specifically, the Association recommended that when it comes to cannabis and safer driving, “facts and science-based educational messages delivered by diverse and credible non-government messengers has proven to be an effective strategy” and that “Working with cannabis retailers and advocacy groups on events and seller-to-consumer messaging has also been an important strategy in reaching cannabis consumers with safe driving promotions.”
In its report the Association also mentions “budtenders” in particular as individuals who are likely to have a better chance of delivering safety information that will resonate with cannabis consumers.
At the time of the report’s release, GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins said “as more states move to legalize marijuana, motorists need to know the dangers of driving under the influence…But that message won’t be heard if it’s outdated, irrelevant or insulting to cannabis consumers.”
To learn more, we suggest reading the article by Alayna Alvarez that originally appeared in the April 20, 2023 issue of Axios Denver.com.
www.axios.com/local/denver/2023/04/20/driving-high-colorado-crashes-cannabis-marijuana
Kyle Jaeger’s reporting on the report from the Governors Highway Safety Association appeared in the August 1, 2022 issue of Marijuana Moment.net.
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com and at 347-528-8753.
