Topic: DRUGS - on April 24, 2007 at 12:38:00 PM CEST
Connoisseurs of Cannabis
Like fine wine, growing medicinal weed has become so specialized as to inspire tastings and a new vocabulary.
Stephen DeAngelo bent and sniffed deeply over a clump of frizzy purple nuggets in a petri dish, one of eight sitting in the middle of a long refectory table. They were not labeled or arranged in any particular order, although to the experts assembled in DeAngelo's Oakland loft -- "cannabis is my calling," he says -- their identity was no mystery.
"I would describe this as grapey, candy-like, sweet, with a slight undertone of spice," said DeAngelo, a longtime activist and hemp promoter who is now chief executive officer of Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He was holding the tasting at home where he could properly and legally -- at least in the eyes of California, if not the federal government -- evaluate some samples. To prepare, he'd taken off his green tweed coat, loosened his tie and settled in a chair near his vaporizer, an apparatus that allows him to breathe vapor instead of smoke, because it's less harsh.
"It is grapey, but I get flowers," said Rick Pfrommer, the dispensary's purchasing agent, as he inhaled a strain called the Purps. "I would use the word pungent. It has a pungent funk undertone."
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