BOULDER, Colo. — If you live in a state where marijuana is illegal, you don’t typically get to ask your dealer if your weed was grown consciously.
What type of pesticides were used during the process of growing these plants? Where exactly where they grown? When was this plant harvested?
These questions may sound ridiculous to people who don’t live in Alaska, Colorado, Washington state and the District of Columbia, where recreational marijuana is legal. But for marijuana enthusiasts who do live in those areas, asking your budtender specifics about the plants you’re about to purchase is the norm.
“I think a regulated market is safer for everyone,” said Devin Liles, vice president of production at The Farm, a recreational marijuana dispensary in Boulder, Colorado. “You know where it comes from — you know where it was grown.”
Borrowing from the trend of farm-to-table restaurants before it, The Farm cultivates all of its own marijuana, ensuring that the product it delivers to its customers is safe for consumption. Inside their store, a giant chalkboard displays the daily specials. The board is surrounded by distressed barn wood, and feels like something I’d see at home in Brooklyn.
Image: Mashable, Brian Koerber
Alongside regulation and education, an important byproduct of legalization in some areas of the United States is that adults can safely purchase marijuana with knowledge of its roots: not only about which strain you’re getting, but also about how the plants and products are cultivated.
Just like the ever-growing organic sections in supermarkets, people want to know how the pot they’re smoking was grown, and they want it to be clean.
BONUS: Inside an underground Colorado cannabis club
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