Pubdate: Fri, 20 Apr 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Mark Haskell Smith

THE WORLD CUP OF CANNABIS

Last of three parts: A new book explores the world of cannabis
growers, and their competition to choose the world's best weed

I didn't really expect the cannabis seed business to be so lucrative.
Of course, now that I think about it, try telling that to Burpee or
Monsanto. The trade in cannabis seeds isn't quite as big as those
kings of agribusiness, yet it is still a multimillion-dollar-a-year
endeavor. Make no mistake, Green House Seeds, DNA Genetics and the
other big seed companies - Sensi Seeds, T.H.Seeds, Barney's Farm,
Kiwiseeds and Dutch-Passion Seeds, to name a few - are all jostling
for a share of a very robust market. While these companies develop
their own strains, there are dozens of secondary seed brokers, like
the Attitude, a "Cannabis Seed Superstore" operating out of England,
the Vancouver Seed Bank in Canada and sweet Seeds in Spain, that act
as retail outlets for seed companies.

It's unclear just how big the market is because the majority of
transactions are quasi-legal and exact numbers are difficult to pin
down. The 2006 U.N. World Drug Report suggested that an estimated 164
million people worldwide use cannabis regularly and that the global
market for cannabis and cannabis-based products ranged from
$10-billion to $60-billion annually. I think that's actually a
conservative estimate. In 2011, a study done by an independent
financial and information firm called See Change Strategy estimated
the "national market for medical marijuana was worth $1.7-billion in
2011 and could reach $8.9-billion in five years." Another study, this
one by Jon Gettman, who holds a PhD in public policy and is a former
national director of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML), includes illegal sales and estimates that the
U.S. market alone is worth $113-billion a year.

How much of that money trickles back to the seed companies?
$100-million? $200-million? More? The seed companies themselves aren't
saying.

Almost all the big seed companies, and many smaller ones, sell their
seeds by advertising in magazines like Skunk, High Times, W, and
Treating Yourself - a magazine that focuses on the medical side of
cannabis use. Because it's illegal to send marijuana seeds to the
United States, all of them have disclaimers stating that they don't
take orders from the States and that they don't sell seeds to
customers in America.

And yet the seeds somehow find their way to the American market. L.A.
Confidential, Trainwreck, Chocolope and other strains from Dutch seed
companies are sold at several dispensaries in Los Angeles. Those seeds
are either purchased in England or in Holland and then carried into
the country, or the sales are handled by third-party websites and
smaller seed dealers who don't mind taking a calculated risk. As David
Bienenstock, the senior editor at High Times, told me, "It's a
business totally based on trust and reputation. You stick some cash in
an envelope and send it off to Europe hoping you'll get something in
return.

In 1987, the then editor of High Times magazine, Steven Hager, came up
with the idea of a harvest festival to celebrate the new cannabis
varietals that were being developed. It's not like there aren't other
annual competitions for various food and drink around the world. In
addition to the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, the mega wine event
with tastes of more than 6,000 different wines, there's the World Beer
Cup, known as the "Olympics of Beer Competition"; the Superior Taste
Award, which judges food and drink in 270 different categories; and my
personal favourite, the World Cheese Award, "the biggest and most
cosmopolitan cheese festival ever staged." There are hundreds of local
and regional competitions around the world for everything from hot
sauce to apple pie. And those are just the contests that are judged
using taste and smell; there are a multitude of other types of
contests seeking excellence in human endeavors from precision origami
to best pointless ! steampunk invention. There must be some kind of
genetic predisposition that humans share that makes us want to see who
makes the best whatever. But Hager knew that there wasn't an
international competition for cannabis and that Amsterdam, with its
tolerance and coffeeshops, was the natural place to hold the event.

It wasn't always the weeklong cannabis carnival that it's become. In
the early days there were only a few seed companies that entered -
breeders like Neville and Sam the Skunkman - and the celebrity judges
were High Times staffers and the artists who drew the Fabulous Furry
Freak Brothers comics.

But Hager had obviously struck a chord, and the Cannabis Cup took off.
A few years later the "Coffee Shop Crawl" - basically the same idea as
a pub crawl where you go from coffeeshop to coffeeshop across the city
sampling their entries - was added as more and more strain breeders
and coffeeshops joined in.

I don't think the amazing growth in the seed business could've
occurred without High Times magazine and the Cannabis Cup. Nowadays,
of course, wannabe growers can get all kinds of information about
seeds, genetics and quality of the plants on the Internet, but in the
halcyon days of the industry, winning the Cannabis Cup was the only
surefire way of getting your strain and your company - your brand -
out into the world. And if you were good enough or lucky enough to
win? Your reputation - and the money that followed - was assured.

With so much money and prestige at stake, how intense is the
competition?

Each year the big seed companies spend tens of thousands of dollars
advertising in High Times and producing gift bags and parties and
events for the competition attendees. Green House and Barney's -
coffeeshops that are also seed companies and so promote their own
in-house brands - offer free grinders, T-shirts, tote bags and, of
course, free samples of their strains. DNA Genetics doesn't have its
own coffeeshop, but hosts an annual "Hot Boxxx" party that, in 2009,
featured reggae superstar Barrington Levy. All of this is done to get
the judges' attention, show them a good time and promote the brands.
Anyone who comes to the Cup can purchase a "judge's pass" that allows
them to vote on the strains and hashish that the various coffeeshops
have entered.

Coffeeshops typically enter a strain of marijuana, a type of imported
hash, and a Nederhash, hashish that's made in Holland. If a coffeeshop
doesn't have an in-house seed company, they usually align themselves
with a seed company that doesn't have a coffeeshop. This is,
basically, how everyone except Barney's and Green House operates.

Twenty-nine coffeeshops had entries in that competition. What that
means is that a truly dedicated judge, someone who wanted to sample
all of the entries before making a decision, would have to smoke 87
different types of hash and marijuana in the five days of the
competition. That's ingesting 17 different types of cannabis a day.
I'm not saying it's impossible - just like it's not impossible to
climb the highest mountain in the Himalayas or run the 100-metre dash
in 9.58 seconds. But it's not for the faint of heart. It's a good
thing cannabis is a nontoxic plant; it can't kill you no matter how
much you smoke.

- - Excerpted from Heart of Dankness (c) 2012 by Mark Haskell Smith.
Published by Signal, a division of Random House of Canada Limited.
Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D