What Is “Good Weed”? A Resource for Women, Part 1

[00:00:00] Ellen Scanlon: This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.

[00:00:12] Ellen Scanlon: I love cannabis beverages, especially for people who are nervous about trying weed. Cycling Frog is a beverage brand I discovered recently. I love it and I’m really excited for you to try it too. Like How to Do the Pot, Cycling Frog wants to change the narrative about weed and what it means to be a cannabis consumer.

[00:00:35] Ellen Scanlon: It’s summer. Let’s celebrate that cannabis can be enjoyed with the same ease as your favorite sparkling water or beer. Cycling Frog beverages come in delicious, award winning flavors. They’re affordable and a great alcohol replacement. Their drinks are made with real fruit juice, and you can tell. Try cooling down on a warm summer evening with their yummy Lemon THC Light Seltzer.

[00:01:04] Ellen Scanlon: All of Cycling Frog’s lotus drinks help you ease your way into the night with a bright, happy buzz. You’ll feel the effects in about 15 20 minutes. Which means you can decide whether you feel great with one or want to try another. I’m so happy to share that Cycling Frog’s products ship to all 50 states.

[00:01:25] Ellen Scanlon: Visit their website cyclingfrog. com and use promo code DOTHEPOT for 20 percent off your order. I love the logo. It’s a very cute little frog cycling away on an old fashioned bicycle. Life is short. Enjoy the ride and try a cycling frog today. I’ll add all the details to the show notes. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our show.

[00:01:58] Nichole Graf: At the end of the day, what good weed is for you is gonna differ from what good weed is for me. You know, what’s good for those high time stoner bros who have Declared that weed to be the chronic, the fire, you know, the dopest shit around is not, it’s not my chronic bro. Like I, I like something that has.

[00:02:18] Nichole Graf: It’s less of a THC effect, something that’s more mind windy, get lost in a creative process or that’s really social and chatty is more fun to me than just checking out and going away.

[00:02:35] Ellen Scanlon: Welcome to how to do the pot, a podcast demystifying cannabis for women. I’m Ellen Scanlon. You just heard from Nicole Graff who shared how she defines good weed. Nicole is the Washington State based co owner of the organic farm Raven and one of the authors of a great book about cannabis called Grow Your Own.

[00:03:01] Ellen Scanlon: When I think about good weed, I have to confess, like Nicole, I picture a bunch of dudes on a couch in a smoky room. Um, and It makes me a little sad that I still go to that memory, even as I know that cannabis is something that all kinds of people love and consume. And as the host of a show trying to help women feel more confident about cannabis, I really want to help update that image.

[00:03:38] Ellen Scanlon: Lately, good weed for me has meant that it is consistent and helps me to lower stress. I’ve been paying more attention to where I am in my cycle because it’s kind of hard to believe, but for women, how high you feel can vary by up to 30 percent depending on the time of the month. Another reason that weed is a lot more complicated than drinking alcohol.

[00:04:08] Ellen Scanlon: Weed will feel more potent the closer you get to your period, so you will feel more high from the exact same weed. We have a chart about cannabis and your menstrual cycle on our website, and I’ll link to it in the show notes. Knowing this has helped me enjoy cannabis so much more because I can really dial in how I want to feel, which is a huge part of what makes weed good for me, which leads me to today’s show and the beginning of our series where we answer the question, what is good weed for women?

[00:04:51] Ellen Scanlon: In this series, I’ll have a lot more to say about GoodWeed to help you find the perfect strains to match how you want to feel. On each episode, we’ll give you two essential strains and tell you all about how to get the most out of your new stash. We will hear from so many women in this series, and we’re really excited because many of our listeners have sent in voice notes.

[00:05:19] Ellen Scanlon: Thank you, and we. Always love to hear from you.

[00:05:32] Ellen Scanlon: Before we get into this week’s episode, I want to talk for a second about how to do the pots newsletter. The newsletter is a twice a month resource that will help you feel confident about cannabis for health, wellbeing, and for fun. The newsletter is also our direct line to you. You can hit the reply button and let me know what topics or guests you’d like to hear on the show.

[00:05:56] Ellen Scanlon: There are already thousands of subscribers reading and responding, and the more, the merrier. We couldn’t do this without you, so please go to DoThePot. com to sign up. Thank you, and I really appreciate your support for the show.

[00:06:18] Ellen Scanlon: Today, in the first episode of this series, we’ll take on the sort of abstract concept of good weed. What does that actually mean? I asked some of our favorite women founders in the cannabis industry to help us out. Imelda Wallavalker, the co founder of California based Pure Beauty, shares what good weed means to her.

[00:06:44] Imelda Walavalkar: It’s like the same thing as saying what makes good wine or produce or a good dish. There’s so many components that go into it, some of which are more complex. So for me, I think it’s the perfect storm of many things like the composition of the flower, the nose, the trichromes, the flavor when you inhale it.

[00:07:05] Imelda Walavalkar: How smooth it feels, and then ultimately just how it makes you feel. Is it a good, balanced high? Art and cannabis are really overlapping on that sort of Venn diagram. Many people see cannabis as a vehicle for creativity. And both things, I think, Give you a profound perspective shift that helps take you out of the present moment and makes you feel things you’ve never felt before and ultimately like understand life in new ways.

[00:07:32] Imelda Walavalkar: So that’s what all good art does, you know, from music to film to books to comedy. So we want our weed to make you feel the way good art makes you feel. 

[00:07:41] Ellen Scanlon: California based Maggie Connors is the VP of Marketing for Women Owned Cannabis Brand Garden Society. She shares how her relationship to good weed has changed over time.

[00:07:52] Maggie Connors: I was reflecting recently on how I’ve had the privilege to become more of a Um, we’d stop, um, living in a rec market, but also certainly working in the industry. But I definitely still carry my scrappy initial relationship to weed 15 years ago. Like when you’d find the tiniest nug in my rain jacket a year later, and it was like the best thing to happen all week.

[00:08:22] Maggie Connors: And I’d call my friend and we’d go smoke it. I still do feel kind of that precious about it. Yeah. Yeah. And I can certainly identify good weed as far as like, if you’re measuring good on like yield and bud structure and trichomes and sort of an indoor grow where it’s maximized for, for all of those things and potency too.

[00:08:44] Maggie Connors: And I love that and nothing smells better than that sort of version of good weed, but at the same time, I love all the weed. I still, I don’t turn any away and. My old weed, I make sure gets used. So I haven’t become too much of a weed snob, actually. 

[00:09:04] Ellen Scanlon: Rebecca Rayfield, the New York based Chief Revenue Officer at Curio Wellness, believes that brands should matter when you think about good weed.

[00:09:13] Rebecca Raphael: That’s what good cannabis or great cannabis is to me. It’s like, what’s the great cannabis brand? And we need to move the population from buying cannabis around potency to buying it the same way you buy all other consumer products, which is what’s the brand that you have affinity for? Because They help your life, they meet you where they are, they satisfy your needs, you trust them.

[00:09:35] Rebecca Raphael: That should just be the same mentality when buying cannabis. 

[00:09:38] Ellen Scanlon: Nicole Graff deeply understands the role of farming practices in creating good weed, but also believes it’s more than just good plants. 

[00:09:49] Nichole Graf: A lot of times what we used to associate with good weed is based on bud structure, based on density, based on how resinous your buds were, based on what it smelled like when you open the jar.

[00:10:01] Nichole Graf: But those things don’t necessarily connote the kind of experience you want. But an interesting thing is smell is a really good indicator, person to person, of what makes good weed. Because if you open a jar of what someone tells you is their favorite weed, and you’re like, oh, I do not like the smell of that at all, that’s probably not great weed for your body chemistry.

[00:10:19] Nichole Graf: Still try it. It’s still a fun experiment to see if your experience matches up with your first smell of it. But by and large, something we’ve found that feels very, um, earth medicine holistically minded is if your body reacts strongly with attraction when you smell A joint opening a jar, that’s usually a good sign that there’s something in that substance that is jiving with your body chemistry and you should try it and see what happens.

[00:10:45] Nichole Graf: If it makes you feel good, it’s good weed. If it is something you find yourself coming back to or missing the experience of and wanting to recreate that, that’s good weed for you.

[00:11:05] Ellen Scanlon: For Marnie Unger, the New York based director of sales and business development at Eaton Botanicals, flavors matter a lot. 

[00:11:15] Marni Unger: I’m a flavor chaser. I love the taste and I specifically like Indica’s. I like creamier weeds. I like weed that is earthier, funkier and has kind of that like Creamy milky to the end.

[00:11:33] Marni Unger: So, a personal favorite strain of mine is like an ice cream cake or a Runtz. Those types of strains, whereas I like specifically do not really like things that are tangy or more of that like citrusy orangey flavor profile. So for me, it’s all about the smell and the taste. If you smell it and it smells like it’s supposed to be in your body, in your lungs, then it probably is.

[00:12:00] Ellen Scanlon: Here’s a little teaser of the episodes coming up in our What is Good Weed series. On next week’s show, we ask, what is good relaxing weed? If at the end of the day, you find that your mind is still wandering. Racing. If you’re dealing with a lot of stress or pressure in your life, if you feel like your body just needs a break, or if you have a hard time getting in the mood to fall asleep, a relaxing strain could add some much needed calm to your day or night.

[00:12:38] Ellen Scanlon: Are you feeling ready to really incorporate cannabis into your well being, mind and body? We’ll answer the question, what is good balanced weed? Kelly, a Do The Pot follower on Instagram, shares what she loves about it. 

[00:12:56] Kelly: I love using balanced strains because that’s exactly how they make me feel. Um, I’m not like melted into the couch or super sleepy or my mind isn’t going a million miles a minute.

[00:13:05] Kelly: Um, the balanced strains just put me in a really nice headspace. I feel really relaxed, but you know, ready to do something. 

[00:13:11] Ellen Scanlon: Or maybe you want strains for feeling fun, happy, and uplifted. We know just what to recommend for good energizing weed. Marley Fair, a Vermont based herbalism student, tells us why they love energizing strains.

[00:13:28] Marley Fair: Whether you’re hanging out with old friends or meeting new people, it makes me feel talkative and bubbly, giggly, like I can just be myself. The little bit of energy boost that it gives you is awesome. 

[00:13:42] Ellen Scanlon: What does good weed mean to you? Please let us know. You can reach out at hi at do the pot. com or DM us at do the pot and stay tuned for the next episode in our series.

[00:13:57] Ellen Scanlon: What is good weed?

[00:14:03] Ellen Scanlon: Thank you for listening to this episode of how to do the pot. For lots more information and past episodes, visit do the pot. com. That’s also where you can sign up for How to Do the Pots newsletter. If you like How to Do the Pot, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It really helps more people find the show.

[00:14:25] Ellen Scanlon: Thank you to producers Maddy Fair and Nick Patry. I’m Ellen Scanlon, and stay tuned for more of How to Do the Pot.