MATT CASEY: A reefer is another word for a joint. More slang that means the same thing is spliff, doobie, fatty, pinner, cone and left-handed cigarette. If you’re a Spanish learner like me, try saying sacque el gallo to a friend from Sonora, or people from Central Mexico might call it a flavio.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
CASEY: A warning, dear listener, that you’re going to hear some swearing and cursing at times. And that government funded research has found that there’s a positive link between profanity and honesty.
Welcome to the Primer for Reefer Growing Madness — a production of KJZZ’s Hear Arizona podcast unit. I’m your host, Matt Casey. Get set for a crash course on marijuana terminology you'll hear in this podcast. We’ll also go over the genetic makeup of the plants I watched grow.
[SONG PLAYS: "REEFER" MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
CASEY: Let’s start with some often-used words in commercial weed marketing that you may have already heard -- indica and sativa. They’re names for varieties of the marijuana plant. Think of indica and sativa like umbrella terms to describe the effects from smoking the plant’s buds or nugs.
CALEB COUNTS: So sativas are the type of cannabis plant that grows around the equator, right? And so it's like hot, humid climates.
CASEY: Meet Caleb Counts, CEO of Connected Cannabis, the sister-brand of Alien Labs. He’s talking about all things weed at Walter Studios in downtown Phoenix. Companies like his can’t make money cultivating pure sativas because the plants take longer to grow, they get too big, and they’re ugly compared to what’s widely considered pretty pot.
CALEB COUNTS: On the other hand, indica cannabis, indica was grown in really arid climates, like, like desert climates, right? And so those were smaller, more compact plants. That's where the density came, and the purple coloring came.
Cross breeding an indica with a sativa creates another term used in marijuana marketing — hybrid. The practice enables commercial production. It also led to weed having stronger and diverse effects.
CALEB COUNTS: We want the larger yield of the sativa plant, but we want the beautiful and compact nature of the purple buds from the indica plant. And so yes, they've all been hybridized at this point.
CASEY: So why is marijuana still labeled sativa or indica? The short answer is different fragrant oils called terpenes.
[SOUND OF MARIJUANA NUGS IN A JAR]
ASHLEY FEAGINS: I haven’t had this strain in a while either so it will be fun.
CASEY: Marijuana buds shake in a display container as Ashley Feagins holds the open top up to her nose. She just said another important word, strain. There are thousands of named marijuana strains each distinguished by look, smell and effects. The weed Feagins is holding is called Devil Driver. It’s grown by the Giving Tree Dispensary where we sit in a room Feagins uses to teach pot classes. She passes the container to PR agent Kaylee Erickson.
KAYLEE ERICKSON: This one smells almost sweeter than the last one. I’m getting more herbal from this one than I did in the other one. ASHLEY FEAGINS: So that one you’re going to get those notes from linalool in there that’s bringing out that sweet, lavender, herbaceousness. And then there is also a little bit of limonene in there to give that citrus kind of bright pop.
CASEY: Limonene and linalool are examples of terpenes. So are myrcene and pinene. The dominant
Terpenes in a marijuana strain determine its primary effects. Since all strains are hybrids, an uplifting and cerebral high leans more sativa, while a body buzz and feeling sleepy are linked to indicas. Marijuana criminalization prevented research that could scientifically explain why. So much of what is relied on regarding the effects of marijuana is subjective.
FEAGINS: We’ll have people where they’ll smoke the exact same strain, and it hits a little different. I had Guava Tangie the other day, and it made me super hungry. And then a co-worker had it she was like, "It just made her sleepy and go to bed." So it’s the way your body is processing everything.
CASEY: We all have an endocannabinoid system that regulates and controls many critical body functions, such as learning and memory. Inhaling marijuana smoke sends cannabinoids such as THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in weed, and C-B-D, sold in just about every convenience store ever, into the bloodstream. Feagins says our bodies receive cannabinoids in a similar way as the endocannabinoids we already make.
FEAGINS: And those terpenes act as little boosters for lack of a better word. When mixed together with that, they bring about a symphony effect. If you go and you’re listening to a classical orchestra and you’re missing your strings, it is not going to sound as beautiful and well-rounded as if you had those strings present.
CASEY: This is also called the entourage effect of smoking pot. You can contrast it with the discreet THC vape pens and gummies that just have the high-inducing cannabinoid. Feagins says dispensary customers are typically in one of three categories — people on a tight budget, occasional splurgers mostly for deals, like buy-one-get-one free, and connoisseurs. The latter typically buys Alien Labs because of a crack-the-seal-wow factor that gives it top-tier status.
FEAGINS: Their care from clone to sale is just impeccable where they’re ensuring that that product is going to be super fresh.
CASEY: Reefer Growing Madness isn’t just following marijuana plants from clone to sale. My original pitch was to stop with the harvest. Then my boss said it would leave you, dear listener, hanging. So we’re going all the way to smoke and ashes… The strain in question is a new genetic, often called a phenotype. Let's go back to Walter Studios and talk about breeding pot.
TED LIDIE: If you don't know me, my name is Ted Lidie. I'm the founder of Alien Labs. I started Alien Labs back in 2014 so we're 10 years in the game this year. And we came into Arizona in 2020.
CASEY: Lidie and Caleb Counts, the other half of this live conversation, work together. Research and development are their specialty. They regularly breed phenotypes. Introducing a strain that becomes a consumer hit creates brand identity. Doing so is hit-and-miss given the subjectiveness of how marijuana makes people feel.
LIDIE: And then we got Zpectrum coming out here in December, which is Skittles times RS11.
CASEY: Let’s translate what you just heard starting with that last abbreviation. RS11 stands for Rainbow Sherbert Number 11. The brand-name candy I’m not repeating is also a strain name. For legal reasons, it's referred to as Z in Arizona. Also, the presence of the letter Z in a strain name identifies Z as one of the parents. Let’s listen to Lidie again.
LIDIE: And then we got Zpectrum coming out here in December, which is Skittles times, RS 11.
CASEY: So Zpectrum with a Z is a phenotype from parent strains, Z and R-S-11. Zpectrum plants are what we watched grow at the Alien Labs indoor farm in west Phoenix, which can yield tons of weed per year.
You don’t know the power of Reefer Growing Madness.
[TECHNO MUSIC PLAYS]
CASEY: Music thumps as workers with lab coats, hair nets and gloves hang branches decorated by mature marijuana buds upside down on a giant drying rack. Harvests are regular here. They come at the end of the flowering stage. It’s sort of like the equinox in terms of light-and-dark hours. Many more plants new to the flowering phase grow down the hall, where the people leading this farm are about to get to work. Alexander Lawrence is the assistant general manager.
ALEXANDER LAWRENCE: We’re going to be spreading a fresh room. Many different terms, scrogging, trellising.
CASEY: These rooms are made noisy by fans, humidity-control gadgets and the farm’s irrigation system. Trellising means using plastic netting as a framework to support the plants. The goal is to make a solid-plain canopy of marijuana flowers, says General Manager Bruno Gagliardi.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: We’re just trying to open the plant up. It’s going to have a natural tendency to just kind of go straight up. What we want to do is train it.
CASEY: For the both of them, the chance to do hands-on cultivation is rare.
GAGLIARDI: You get a good feel for the plant in the stage that it’s in, especially when we have nice plants that have these tender branches.
CASEY: Gagliardi and Lawrence must communicate constantly. Notebooks and spreadsheets are planners to weave new strains in with fan favorites and maintain the harvest cadence. Market feedback determines what the bosses tell Gagliardi and Lawrence to grow. They then execute.
LAWRENCE: A lot of like the behind the scenes kind of "Wizard of Oz" kind of stuff that happens. That’s more of our side-by-side.
CASEY: The conversation drifts to the parent strains for Zpectrum. Gagliardi and Lawrence also grow — RS11 and Z — among dozens of other genetics. So what if you bought a jar of both, rolled some of each strain in a reefer and burned it down?
Could they expect to have an experience sort of like what the Zpectrum is going to have?
GAGLIARDI: No, BG: So that kind of comes down to how genetics and breeding work. So the product you get at the end from crossing the two is going to be significantly different from either parent. Much like any child in a lot of ways is going to be different than their own parents.
CASEY: Lawrence explains that crossing the strains is likely an effort to get the best qualities from each.
LAWRENCE: So like mixing Skittles and RS11 actually sounds really interesting. I kind of want to try that now to see if it comes through. But a true cross is going to be a different flavor makeup altogether, I think. Different quality, too. We’ll never understand what all those cannabinoids do, the combination of them together, you know.
CASEY: Never is a long time. But Lawrence is right about their being a vacuum of scientific research on marijuana. Dr. Sue Sisley here in Arizona works to change that particular consequence of prohibition.
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CASEY: Que viva Reefer Growing Madness. Next episode we go back inside the lab to meet the Zpectrum clones. Now here’s my project partner Tim Agne with a preview of the photo and video online for this episode.
TIM AGNE: It was unique to hear them talk so openly about the stuff they were doing that is either questionably legal, or full-on criminal activity that is now totally fine. I think that’s part of what we’re doing is kind of shining a light on that and just illustrating how much that’s changed.
We’re also talking a lot about the different kind of terminology. And throughout Alien Labs, there are a lot of places where you see these words written down, spelled out in different ways. So I’m hoping I’ve captured some of that and that I can put that on display, so you can see where these terms pop up in different places.
This is our opportunity to really kind of set the scene and show you what this place looks like.
CASEY: Reefer Growing Madness was produced and hosted by me, Matt Casey. Tim Agne is our digital editor. Assistant News Director Lindsey C. Riley is our project editor. To see photos and other media from this episode, be sure to check out our website rgm.kjzz.org. Thanks for listening.
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