how was the pot, anyways?

my experience is that the quality of legal marijuana in canada has consistently been exceedingly poor due to the mass industrialization and shrink-wrapping of a product that should be available for fresh purchase. if you're happy with the marijuana industry in canada, you're probably the kind of person that buys your vegetables in plastic shrink-wrap; if you like to pick out your own tomatoes at the store, you're never going to really accept how this works, and you're just waiting for an eventual liberalization of the market.

i don't actually think that there is much of a presence of organized crime in the marijuana industry at all, actually - the illegal growing industry is largely local, and, broadly, very small scale. the primary reason that marijuana is unattractive to organized crime is that it's not addictive. it's less addictive than alcohol, even. so, it's useless to them.

i'm not fucking around - go downtown and find some pushers on the street. it's not hard to find them; you probably already know where they are, in your town. you ask them for pot, and they'll try to sell you coke or meth or e instead. they don't even carry pot, anymore.

it's not because the mark-up is too low, although i've remarked repeatedly about the lack of inflation in the cost of marijuana (it's been the same price for decades.). it's because they can't get you on it. these people don't want to sell you a five piece once a month, they want to get you addicted to a substance that is going to lead to you signing over your inheritance within a few months, or otherwise turn you into cheap labour for them. this is a business, a big business. meth will do that. coke will do that. smack will do it, too. pot is useless to them...

in however many years of buying pot on the black market, i believe i ran into a total of one baggie with a confederate flag on it as really my most difficult encounter. and, i had to go upstairs to buy it, too, before realizing what i was buying. 99% of the transactions that i carried through with were kids selling produce from somebody's basement; small-scale grow-ups, essentially. while the number of scenarios over the years has been diverse, i would hazard a guess, based on what i've experienced directly, that a numerical majority of the growers i've bought from over the years actually mostly had middle class jobs, and were trying to put away money for retirement. that's your archetypal pot dealer, in real life - it's not a 20 year old black kid in a gang, it's a middle-aged hippie trying to find some way to beat the banks and retire before he dies of lung cancer.

so, i think the justification of fighting marijuana gangs on the black market is essentially a hollywood fantasy; these don't actually exist, in real life. you're actually fighting against a bunch of 60 year old accountants that are trying to pay their over-priced mortgages down.

i have, however, stuck with the legal product for now, because i'm aware that i'm under surveillance. it hasn't been worth the risk, and it probably won't be for quite a while into the future.

but, the quality of the legal pot here is flat out awful, and if you're coming here to explicitly purchase it then you should be embarrassed by yourself. sales have crashed. the accountants are winning.

how was it, though?

i got something called unplug by soleil, as it was advertised in the upper thc range and the lower price range at the same time. the advertising was about relaxing after work, but i didn't really take it very seriously; it was just advertising, whatever, show me the actual data, that's what matters. however, in the end, what i experienced was a lot of "chill" and a lot of "relaxation", which is really not what i'm looking for in marijuana - i want a heavier buzz, and a more aggressive high that is closer, in feeling, to being drunk. i want the marijuana to make me want to get up and dance. so, i think i ultimately found the strain to be too relaxing, for my tastes. i didn't have any of the giggling attacks or moments of deeper reflection that i've associated with previous head caves; i was mostly just unusually relaxed for the last week, which is not at all what i want, and not a drug i'd have much attraction to, in the long run. above all else, i want to strenuously avoid a "couch lock" effect; i want more energy, not less.

in that sense, the last week was largely a waste of time because the pot kind of sucked.

i don't have any intention of delving into the pseudo-science of terpenes any time soon. i did what i was supposed to do, i sought out a high thc and low cbd strain, and it was too much of a relaxing or "pleasant" buzz for my tastes, regardless. what i actually need is a higher thc strain. but, i'm going to figure that out via trial and error, not by wasting time with pseudo-science.

i want to be clear: the pot was not good. too chill, too pleasant; no racing high, no buzz. no laughing or giggling, just a boring and draining "i'm tired" sort of stone. no introspection. and, it made me sleep, which is bad - good pot should actually keep you awake.

i'm hoping the pot is better in michigan, once i'm allowed to go back over again.