Outdoor Weed is Better
It’s really something of a miracle. You start out with a tiny seed — or a clone that came from a plant that started from a tiny seed — and you harvest an enormous plant with a stalk and roots weighing several pounds, and maybe a few ounces of flower.
So where does all that mass come from, transforming the seed just a centimeter long to the feet of raw plant matter stretching out wider than your shoulders and growing as high as your head?
There’s water and nutrients in the soil and they are certainly important, but, as we learned in school, plants grow by photosynthesis, which is to say that your cannabis plant is a being that converts light into plant matter, THC, and, ultimately, the buzz you feel when you smoke it. You are literally smoking the sun, dude.
But in Baltimore, you are probably not smoking the sun. With a vast majority of Maryland’s cannabis grown indoors, you are probably toking up on the city’s main sources of electric power. In 2023, only 13% of Maryland’s electricity came from a renewable source. Solar and wind only accounted for 5%, and the rest came from biomass, which uses intensive industrial procedures to turn various forms of waste — wood, agricultural, sewage — into fuel. And don’t forget, Martin O’Malley declared that trash incinerators were “green” energy — so think Bresco tower here.
Natural gas and nuclear power each make up 40% of the state’s energy, with Appalachian coal filling in another big chunk.
So that’s where our energy comes from, no matter what we’re doing. Despite huge advances in energy efficient bulbs, the indoor cultivation of cannabis is highly energy intensive, not only in artificially producing the light which photosynthesis will turn into the actual matter of the plant, but also in ventilation, climate control, and all of that. Looked at from a serious, conservation level, we’re using a lot of energy to produce our weed.
Massive indoor grow rooms not only turn a plant into an industrial product, but the process also converts, say, coal removed along with the rest of a mountain top in West Virginia into the THC that will eventually hook into the cannabinoid receptors in your brain.
But I’m talking some hippie shit here. I’m talking about the way all this affects your buzz. Massive indoor grow rooms not only turn a plant into an industrial product, but the process also converts, say, coal removed along with the rest of a mountain top in West Virginia into the THC that will eventually hook into the cannabinoid receptors in your brain.
There’s not a lot of places to buy weed grown outdoors. In 2019, Culta started the first outdoor grow operation on the East Coast and grows several strains of flower outside. And I think it is better than the indoor weed. But most people feel the opposite. Today, lots of people, especially the generation growing up with corporate cannabis, think that the indoor shit is the premium and the outdoor grow is shit.
But you can also grow yourself. I’ve written elsewhere about my experiences growing so I won’t go into detail here, except to say that Maryland law allows adults to grow two plants — only two per household, though. If you have a yard or a roof deck or a porch, get you a plant and stop smoking burnt coal and trash and start smoking the sun. Now is the perfect time to start. (Baynard Woods)
It is stupid to outlaw Delta-8
In 2025, one of the endless deals to temporarily reopen the government after yet another shutdown also outlawed hemp-derived cannabinoids like delta-8, which were made legal by a loophole in the 2018 farm bill that significantly loosened restrictions of hemp-derived products.
That loophole was, in fact, as big as a billionaire’s ego, so it’s no surprise that prohibitionists leaped on any chance to close it, because it really was sort of the Wild West in Southern states, where weed is illegal, selling THCA flower in gas stations and cannabis seltzers at bars — none of which you can do in Maryland, where weed is legal.
Our state took the initiative to outlaw such products — or, as our Supreme Court affirmed, to assert that they were never legal in the first place — partly as an attempt to protect the businesses of those who are properly regulated and licensed to sell cannabis products.
Delta-8 is one slight molecular click away from delta-9, the THC that normally gets you high, and it binds slightly less tightly to the cannabinoid receptors in the brain. So, you still get high, but it is a bit mellower and more body than brain.
Which can be crucial for medical patients, as I discovered last year when I had shingles (if you’re over 50 — get the shot!). Nothing helped much with the neuropathic pain, except for delta-8. I was taking about 200 milligrams a day to deal with the pain. If I’d taken that amount of delta-9, I would have been in the hospital for an epic, tortuous, shingular bad trip. But the mildness of delta-8 makes it possible to take the higher doses required to ease pain in some circumstances without the paranoia and anxiety that can also come with high doses.
So, let’s find a smart way to bring delta-8 back, so that people in need of it for medical reasons don’t suffer for the sake of the profit of our cannabis industry and a victory for prohibitionists everywhere. (Baynard Woods)
We need consumption lounges, now
In Catalonia, they took an interesting route to legalizing weed: They created private clubs based on the argument that, since the end of Franco’s fascist regime, it has been illegal to prohibit associations of citizens, and so they can create private cannabis clubs.
The results can be glorious. Sure, there are the sort of shitty tourist places in Barcelona where you can go into some dark basement and buy some weed and burn it. But there are also beautiful clubs that feel more like Ceremony Coffee, with gleaming bright wood, people sitting around working… and a bar of 500 varieties of Moroccan hash. These clubs aren’t open to tourists and require memberships, involving a nominal fee.
In Amsterdam, whose coffee shops were, for decades, one of the few places Americans could go to legally smoke, you can walk in off the street, sit down, check out a menu, and buy a spliff and a coffee.
Watching for a lounge to actually open up is starting to feel like the old days when, to paraphrase Lou Reed, your dealer was never early, always late, and the first thing you learn is you always got to wait.
But in Baltimore, if you want to toke up with some friends outside of the house you’re stuck illegally burning at a park or on a stoop or street corner — and that is some bullshit. It’s been a year since the legislature passed a new bill clarifying regulations around cannabis consumption sites and the governor signed it into law. And yet, watching for a lounge to actually open up is starting to feel like the old days when, to paraphrase Lou Reed, your dealer was never early, always late, and the first thing you learn is you always got to wait.
As it is, the only currently operating cannabis lounge I can find is the unfortunately named Penthaus, which charges a $50 a month membership to consume on the premises and $5 to come in and buy products to take away. That is not the kind of private club most smokers could get behind. Membership fees are fine, but unless you’re getting a lot of free weed with it, $600 bucks a year for a place to smoke is extreme. And it would tend to cultivate the kind of “exclusive” clientele that ain’t no fun anyway.
So, come on, whether coffee shop or private club, we need a place to meet up with a friend and burn one and sit and talk. And it would benefit the city by having fewer people smoking on the street and having fewer people meet up in bars. (Baynard Woods)
Bright Lights, Big Anxiety
Dispensaries are great for the gal on the go. I no longer have time to sit on the loft futon listening to Sublime with three other people I don’t know while “Skip” weighs a quarter ounce of whatever he has in stock with his hand-held scale. It’s nice to be able to shop during business hours for what works best for me, but for goddess’ sake, why can’t they ever keep that good shit in stock? And why can’t they provide a CHILL shopping experience?
Look, I get it, you need customer turnover. You’ve got your capital and operating expenses to consider in this competitive market. But I need time to peruse the menu; I’m a Libra, for crying out loud. If I wanted a Checkers drive-thru experience, I’d drive to Checkers.
In a town this full of artists, why is it so hard to find a spot with humane lighting where I can have a detailed and unhurried discussion with a human I can trust to know what I mean when I say I need this sativa to open my throat chakra instead of making me obsess about the shocking lack of institutional support for mid-career artists?
In a town this full of artists, why is it so hard to find a spot with humane lighting where I can have a detailed and unhurried discussion with a human I can trust to know what I mean when I say I need this sativa to open my throat chakra instead of making me obsess about the shocking lack of institutional support for mid-career artists? (Rahne Alexander)
We need dispensaries West of MLK
A quick look at the Maryland Cannabis Administration’s licensed dispensaries shows that legal weed is concentrated in the “White L” that cuts through the center of the city and east into Fells Point, Harbor East, and Canton (which is home of Forest, the city’s only Black-owned dispensary), with not a single dispensary west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
To ask why is to ask why MLK was constructed to cut West Baltimore off from the rest of the city in the first place. The answer has many facets, but they boil down to the obvious: racism.
Despite the fact that West Baltimore was disproportionately subject to the harms of the drug war (see “Baltimore has more than $35 million in cannabis reparations money, but none of it has reached residents” in this issue) there are no dispensaries in West Baltimore. And people wonder why there’s still illegal weed dealing? It’s the lesson of the drug war all over again: If you don’t offer a legal option, people will pursue an illegal one. And if you leave money on the table — the money that West Baltimoreans want to spend on weed — somebody is gonna find a way to grab it. (Baynard Woods)
We’re All Doing Our Budtenders Dirty
A video recently went viral among cannabis workers where the speaker starts by saying “I’m gonna start showing up at places and order like y’all order weed at a dispensary.” They elaborate: “I’m gonna go to a restaurant. I’m not looking at the menu. When the waitress comes over, I’m just gonna say ‘What’s the cheapest that gets me the most full?’”
This is completely emblematic of the ways I’ve seen people treat budtenders. The industry is moving away from simply seeking the loudest strain with the lowest price tag. And frankly, your budtender is dealing with enough without having to find the mythical unicorn strain.
What’s so hard about being a budtender? Well, to start, most of the time you’re making about $16 an hour, relying on tips to scrape together a higher wage.
What’s so hard about being a budtender? Well, to start, most of the time you’re making about $16 an hour, relying on tips to scrape together a higher wage. (And if you work in processing or another noncustomer-facing role, forget about seeing tip money, ever.) Personally, that’s not enough to work long hours on my feet and stomach the many flavors of verbal abuse from customers, particularly given that the Maryland cannabis industry recorded almost $100 million in sales in January 2025. Most stores seek to collect a 50% profit on all products — and many, myself included, have questions about where that profit is really going.
All the while, policies tend to be stricter than in other retail and customer service roles, with business owners taking advantage of at-will laws in Maryland to discipline harshly and fire at the drop of a hat. If I had a dollar for every cannabis worker I know who’s been wronged by their employer, I could buy myself a nice eighth. If you’re a dispensary worker reading this, start organizing at your store. If you’re an owner or manager, ask what you’ve tangibly done for your employees this week — no, free lunch doesn’t count. And, if you’re a consumer, start by tipping your budtender — ideally proportionately to your order, but even a dollar per transaction goes a long way. (nat raum)