Hi there, and welcome to The Dealers Diary - my musings on the cannabis industry in California, New York and Washington, and building Halara.
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In today's entry: the dab bar comes back in LA | who'll actually tell you what's in their cart | Lemon Wreck Slushie
The Dealers Desk
Hey Dealers,
We're bringing the dab bar back. Network Show in LA, September 23rd and 24th.
If you've caught us at Hall of Flowers or Revelry or one of the consumer festivals we do, you've probably already hit it. All the PS1 units that we have with different strains made by Nick.
It's the most fun we have at any show and it's the thing people bring up to me a year later. Everyone asks us each year prior to one of the big shows.
The part I'm actually excited about is what we're pouring it through this time. We're running PS1 units, which take two 510 cartridges at once and pull both of them through a built-in water bubbler. So you can load two different strains and taste them together, through water, in the same pull.
There is no number on a package that tells you what a sativa tastes like sitting on top of an indica. Now you can just try it. We're bringing six of them.
The water completely changes the game and makes it so smooth.
We'll have the rosins out and the best resins we've got. Nick is making special ones just for this and he won't tell me what they are, so come surprised.
The favorites are coming too, and since Strawberry Jack is a sativa and Blueberry Muffin is an indica, one in each slot is the demo I'd start with. If you're in LA, come find us. Tell me what you want in the second slot and I'll pour it.
September 23-24, Los Angeles.
One more thing while I'm on it. There will also be our friends Fig Farms and Sense with the best top shelf flower in the state.
Onwards and upwards,
-Malcolm
What We're Seeing
Every vape brand in California says their carts don't clog, and almost none of them will tell you what's actually in there. I spent this week reading what six of them disclose about their own hardware in public, not what they claim about the outcome, and the results were thinner than I expected. Jetty was the only one that named its hardware outright (CCELL Mini Tank, EVOMax ceramic). Heavy Hitters says its carts are built to avoid clogging and never says how. STIIIZY's product pages don't mention hardware at all. Two of the six I couldn't check at all, which I said in the post rather than quietly drop them to make the table look cleaner. Disclosure isn't proof of anything, it's just the only piece a customer can check from outside, and a brand that can describe its own cartridge has usually thought about the thing. Same reason the dab bar works, nobody at that table is reading a percentage off a box. Full writeup here: which vape carts actually don't clog.
Strain Spotlight
Lemon Wreck Slushie is the one I keep reaching for in this heat. Lemon Wreck crossed with Slushie, a live resin sauce hybrid at 81% THC, California only, running limonene, myrcene and caryophyllene. Sharp, zesty lemon hits first, the kind that makes your mouth water before you even exhale, and behind it a wave of frozen sweetness rolls in. It finishes cool and smooth, with lingering citrus peel and a frosty calm that settles into the body, so it comes across uplifted at the front and relaxed underneath. This one is squarely in the taste the flower half of what we make, and it's going in a PS1 in LA next month.
Lemon Wreck Slushie, live resin sauce
Dealers Choice
This one has been sitting in our reviews since June. I reread it this week while I was writing that blog post.
"You are doing amazing already, 11/10! I finally found one so I can match it with my battery — it is perfect and I am so happy. I love how it is all natural and it is actual high-quality ceramic. I have not had a single cart clog with this battery. Definitely 100% recommending this to my friends and family and buying again."
Verified Customer
Nobody asked them to bring up the ceramic. That's the exact spec I spent all week looking for on six other brands' pages and mostly didn't find, and a customer volunteered it unprompted, right next to "I have not had a single cart clog."
Quick Hits
Legalization is quietly an agriculture story, though the headline number is doing some work. Texas Tech researchers looked at 45 states from 1990 to 2024 using Bureau of Labor Statistics data and found that opening recreational sales raised agricultural employment by about 9%. The average hides a lot, Nevada came in near 46% and Arizona actually went down. It's a conference paper rather than a published study, so hold it loosely, but the direction is worth knowing next time somebody calls this a vice business, because the jobs it adds first are farm jobs. Marijuana Moment has the study.
North Carolina's Supreme Court ruled that police can search you based on the smell of cannabis. That was State v. Dobson back in May, and the court kept its totality-of-the-circumstances standard, which in practice means the odor still gets to be the reason. Legal hemp and illegal flower smell identical, so a legal product in your car in that state can now start a search. Illinois has ruled both ways on the same question, burnt odor is not probable cause but raw odor is, and their own dissenting justices wrote that the two opinions defy logic. The ruling, written up.
Weekly Munchies
Margaritas this week. It's the back half of August and this one takes five minutes.
Refer a Friend
If you know somebody in LA who'd get a kick out of tasting two strains at once through a bubbler, send them this and tell them where we'll be. September 23rd and 24th, and I'll pour for them too.
Know a budtender who'd dig this? Forward it. They subscribe, you get a Dealers hat.
Already got 1 referral? You've got a hat coming. DM me your address if you haven't yet.
P.S - My Weekly Bops
P.S. Both of mine are Post Malone this week, which I did not plan.
Sunflower is off Into the Spider-Verse, which is a great movie, top tier in my opinion. Nobody replied with songs last issue, so it's mine again. Offer's still open whenever.