Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we have gardening tips for do-it-yourself cannabis consumers, news of a study of CBD safety, a take on the growing trend toward low-octane cannabis products and more. Enjoy.
Spotlight on CBD
A new study suggests concerns that CBD use can damage a consumer’s liver may be overstated. Funded by cannabis firms such as Columbia Care, Charlotte’s Web, HempFusion and others, the study observed potential liver effects in adults ingesting oral forms of hemp derived CBD for a minimum of 60 days.
Nina Zdinjak, writing about the study for Benzinga, reports the seven months-long research effort was requested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to obtain necessary data to aid in the regulation of hemp-derived CBD products.
According to Jeff Lombardo PharmD, BCOP, and co-investigator on the study, “What we observed to date is no clinical evidence of liver disease in any participants.”
Lombardo added that investigators observed slight, “clinically insignificant” elevations of liver function tests in less than ten percent of consumers irrespective of age, product composition and form and the amount consumed.
In addition, while three of the 839 participants had 3 times higher levels of the liver enzyme ALT, those participants were taking “medications that are known to elevate liver enzymes, and we are investigating whether prescribed medications or other factors contribute to these outliers.”
You can learn more by reading Nina Zdinjak‘s article. It appeared in the March 23, 2021 issue of Benzinga.com.
Gardening Tips
If you are a mature consumer who lives in a state where you can grow your own crop, you may want to take a deep breath before you start throwing seeds around in your backyard.
As with any other type of gardening, preparation is key, particularly when it comes to your soil. So says a fellow who goes by the moniker “Reginald Reefer” who writes for Cannabis.net. Old Reggie suggests preparing your soil properly can greatly increase your yield and improve both the terpene and flavor profile of your crop.
If you have decided to plant your cannabis in containers,—we could have said plant your pot in pots, but thought the better of it—Mr. Reefer offers the following suggestions:
Size does Matter – the size of your container will determine the height and total amount of bud you can obtain from the plant. Find a container large enough to sustain your crops.
Give it some air! – It’s a simple fact, the roots of your plants will need to breathe. Many new growers make the mistake of failing to layer the pot correctly. This can result in the roots being suffocated and the plant dying.
Nutrient Rich – Preparing your soil with the right nutrients will allow your plant to receive everything it needs throughout the life cycle.
Reefer suggests that if you’re a first-time grower, starting with some neutral potting soil is probably your best bet. Simply take about 1/3 of the pot and add some perlite or coconut substrate to it with some sticks. The sticks will create space that will allow the roots to receive enough oxygen and not drown when you water the plants.
He also warns against trying to get the soil “too hot” by overloading it with nutrients. Said Reefer, “You can use things like Coffee Grinds and bat guano to add some more richness to the topsoil – but it’s important to follow the rule of “less is more”. Often when you try to “boost your plant” you end up burning it or Nute-locking it, which then requires a lot of corrective growing.”
If you are planning to start your plants indoors and then transplant them when the weather turns warmer, Laura Drotleff makes the point in Marijuana Business Daily, it’s important to “harden” them before planting them directly in your prepared soil.
According to Drotleff, the process of hardening, while not complicated, can be a key step in helping your young plants adapt to the environment they will experience outdoors, such as direct sun, wind, rain, cool nights and less frequent watering.
The hardening process calls for exposing young plants to the outdoors for a few hours each day, generally after late morning. After a few days to a week, your seedlings will be ready to thrive once they are planted in their “forever home.”
You can learn much more by reading Reginald Reefer’s article in the March 24,2021 issue of Cannabis.net and Laura Drotleff‘s reporting in the March 24, 2021 issue of Marijuana Business Daily.
cannabis.net/blog/opinion/soil-prep-101-getting-ready-for-your-next-cannabis-crop
mjbizdaily.com/how-to-get-marijuana-and-hemp-plants-from-the-greenhouse-into-the-ground/?
Cannabis Trends
While strains of cannabis with enough THC to classify them as rocket fuel seem to get all the press, there’s another trend that’s just starting to get some attention: high-quality cannabis that’s intentionally cultivated to be on the low octane side.
Writing for Vice, Adam Rothbarth profiled two individuals who are helping to popularize this approach to cannabis consumption: Ben Starmer and Joshua Katz, the founders of Dad Grass. This L.A.-based company sells organic CBD joints and flower (un-rolled hemp nugs) that contain, by law, less than 0.3 percent THC. The founders say the company was born out of a mutual desire for a more available, less intense high than what was offered by the products they found available in many dispensaries.
According to Rothbarth, the company partners with biodynamic farms run by like-minded people; that way, the founding duo knows that when they take over in the process, they’ve got an excellent product to work with.
Said Katz, “We hand-select our flower and then we do everything else. We do design, marketing, books. We started off in my living room with a borrowed rolling machine, but evolved into a much more sophisticated operation.”
Starmer and Katz described their customers as people who used to smoke weed but tapered off, people who already love CBD and want to go further, and people who’ve never tried either.
Katz also told Rothbarth, ““The cool thing about weed is that it pairs well with a lot of things. And definitely in addition to the smokeable and drinkable products. I think you could probably see us exploring our versions of some of the other product categories that have CBD in them.”
To learn more we urge you to read Adam Rothbarth’s entertaining and informative article in the March 24, 2021 issue of Vice.com.
www.vice.com/en/article/y3gybg/dad-grass-review-legal-cbd-hemp-thc-free-weed
Stats of the Week
If you wonder what cannabis products your friends and neighbors are buying down at the dispensary, the folks at Marijuana Business Daily (MBD) and the market research firm Headset have put together a snapshot of consumer buying trends for 2020.
According to Andrew Long, reporting for MBD, when you look at what’s in a customer’s basket when they purchase only one product, flower still leads the way at 67 percent, however, pre-rolls were also found in 14.7 percent of those baskets. Other solo purchase trends were pre-rolls alone at 56.3 percent, vape pens at 51.4 percent, concentrates at 50.3 percent and edibles at 39.3 percent followed by topicals, tinctures, capsules and beverages.
Long makes the point that pre-roll, concentrate and vape pen shoppers tend to be particularly loyal to their preferred product with 50 percent or more of their baskets containing only those types of items.
Those who purchased cannabis beverages were not as “loyal” to a single product. Just 22.5 percent of their “baskets” contained only beverages.
You can learn more about consumer trends by reading Andrew Long’s article. It appeared in the March 23, 2021 issue of Marijuana Business Daily.
mjbizdaily.com/adult-use-marijuana-basket-composition-highlights-consumer-buying-trends-in-2020/?
Cannabis Quote of the Week
“There’s a misconception about what a large swath of the market wants out of a cannabis experience. While there’s a legacy community of consumers who want to get very high or for whom a high THC percentage is simply the norm, there’s a much larger existing and nascent consumer demo that is looking for a more moderate and functional high. Just as not everyone wants to be drunk when they drink, not everyone wants to be blasted when they’re high.” – David Weiner, Co-Founder of Gossamer, an online publication that describes itself as looking at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a “green lens.”
Mr. Weiner’s comment is taken from an article by Eli London that appeared in the March 9, 2021 issue of Inside Hook. London asked twelve experts and entrepreneurs in the cannabis business to describe the developments that they think will come to define their industry in the near future. It’s an excellent read.
www.insidehook.com/article/news-opinion/predictions-future-consumer-cannabis-industry?
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.
