Continuing the theme...
How the Ultra-Rich Smoke Weed
Cannabis-infused wings. Image: Courtesy of Jeff the 420 Chef
Cheryl Shuman likes to make weed purées for dessert, topped off with Goldschlager Cinnamon Schnapps.
"Imagine a beautiful cannabis infused chocolate soufflé with a raspberry purée on top with the gold sparkles from the Schnapps,” she told me. “It's delicious and oh so glamorous.”
This is Shuman’s world: glitz, glam, and ganj. As the director of the Beverly Hills Cannabis Club, a high-end purveyor of luxury weed and accessories, her love for cannabis overlaps with her activism which overlaps with her pot rebranding campaign. And while we might associate weed with Ziploc baggies and hazy basements, this is more about diamond studded vape pens and Hollywood soirées.
And she’s not alone—Shuman is part of a growing circle of entrepreneurs capitalizing on what she calls the "pot com boom." With US marijuana sales expected to top $10 billion by 2018, there's a lot of money to not only be made in the legal bud industry, but also to be spent. So 14-karat gold vape pens, dank artisan grown bud, golden rolling papers, munchie-free skinny weed, and gourmet edibles are transforming a once underground trade into a luxury business.
Woven gold rolling papers. Image: Courtesy of Shine Papers
"Since Colorado's historic decision to legalize marijuana for recreational use, states are lining up—and so are we as branding experts, designers, and entrepreneurs," said Shuman, who is also the head of Moms for Marijuana, a network of mothers advocating for safe and legal cannabis.
Her cannabis club offers a range of sparkly accessories, from gold and pavé diamond vaporizers to couture handbags with hidden stash compartments. She is also working to soon launch cannabis-friendly resorts, hotels, fine dining, internet cafes, workout yoga centers, and coffee shops with the club's signature products. The team already hosts private Hollywood events, such as a Grammy's afterparty and weed-infused dinner parties, cooked by professional chefs.
The luxury cannabis market is usually not just about getting high. It’s about the taste, texture, quality, feeling, and environment in which the consumer ingests it and in which the bud itself is grown. So it’s not surprising that in our food-obsessed world, the high-end weed industry is taking munchies and edibles to a whole new level.
LA-based cannabis cook Jeff the 420 Chef also caters to this “high” end scene. He travels to individual homes and parties—celebrity parties, yacht parties, cannabis magazine parties—to cook up infused feasts. Kale salad, hazy Thai wings, and 420 Irish Cream (sans alcohol) are some of his favorites. He keeps the dose at around 10 milligrams per person (assuming you don't stuff yourself), which he says would have about as strong an effect as two glasses of wine.
Beverly Hills Cannabis Club products. Image: Courtesy of Cheryl Shuman.
But for those worried the munchies will mess with their lithe yoga bodies, their luxury weed circle has also introduced skinny weed. Bethenny Frankel's "Skinnygirl Marijuana", for example, has garnered press for being specifically engineered to be munchie-free. Perhaps best known for starring in The Real Housewives of New York City, Frankel already made her Skinnygirl cocktails a household name, so cannabis wasn’t far behind.
Skinny weed is based on some very specific chemistry. The endocannabinoid system, or the body's endogenous network of cannabinoid receptors, regulates, among other functions, appetite and metabolism. Endocannabinoid receptors tell the body when to release ghrelin, also known as the "hunger hormone."
Some of the cannabinoids, or chemical compounds in cannabis, activate the same receptors in the brain and digestive tract as the body's endocannabinoids—hence, why some cannabinoids found in cannabis, specifically THC and CBN, stimulate appetite. Others, however, such as THCV and CBD, do the opposite. Cannabis strains like Skinnygirl can be bred to highlight specific cannabinoids. And strains that already have high levels of THCV or CBD include Durban Poison, Doug's Varin, ACDC, and Harlequin.
The way a strain is bred, whether for its effect on appetite, or for its overall quality, has become a luxury craft, like microbrewed beer or aged whiskey. At the Emerald Exchange Farmers Market this past August, pot farmers from Mendocino, California, trekked down to Malibu to show off their crop, just like a wine tasting. And like wine or champagne, high quality cannabis has come to be labeled to prove its quality and origin.
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