Jack Herer, and Jack Herer

Good morning! Or afternoon. Or whatever. Greetings! Welcome back to Stoned Coast for another review, and this time, instead of a story, I’d like to introduce you to a strain that instead comes with an actual historical person: Jack Herer… and Jack Herer.

I wasn’t deeply entrenched in cannabis culture before I started budtending almost three years ago. I followed what was happening broadly and legally, but I didn’t know a lot of strains, or growers, or celebrities within the cannabis community, only the celebrities from other industries  who were advocates of cannabis, like Snoop and Martha, Willy Nelson, Dave Chappelle, and of course Seth Rogan, to name just a few. So a few months ago when I was introduced to Jack Herer – the strain of cannabis – I figured there was a story to the name.

Jack Herer – the person – was born in 1928, on the cusp of the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, a year before the Great Depression, and less than ten years before cannabis was even made illegal in the United States. I specifically note his age here because I feel that many of us Gen-Xers and younger tend to imagine the original cannabis activists as the traditional Boomer/hippie, and contextualizing Jack Herer properly speaks to the depth and breadth of pro-cannabis movements over the last century, and also to where in that history Herer occupied.

As a pro-cannabis activist, Herer (pronounced like “terror,” according to recordings of he himself saying it),

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[s]ometimes called the “Emperor of Hemp”, was an American cannabis rights activist and the author of the 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Herer founded and served as the director of the organization Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP).^[1]

As an activist, he advocated for the decriminalization of the cannabis plant and argued that it could be used as a renewable source of fuel, medicine, food, fiber, and paper/pulp and that it can be grown in virtually any part of the world for medicinal as well as economic purposes. He further asserted that the U.S. government has been deliberately hiding the proof of this from its own citizens.

-Wikipedia, Jack Herer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Herer

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Anyway, Herer is an interesting guy, and I encourage anyone reading who wants to know more about the history of cannabis culture in the US to read more about him.

But the strain named in his honor: Jack Herer. This cultivation comes to us from Divine Buds. I’ve reviewed a few of their strains – five in fact: Blue Widow which started the blog, Moose & Lobsta which inspired the blog, Super Lemon Haze, Strawberry Guava, and Acapulco Gold of which I made beard oil using its terpenes. So some bangers. Jack Herer is another entry. This is one of the cleanest highs, while still feeling properly potent.

The buds themselves are fairly regular to the eye: medium to pale green, orange pistils, regularly-shaped, and medium to small in size. They have a bit of a give to the touch, and are lightly dusty and sticky. Good looking, well grown and cured. Nothing mind-blowing. Yet.

Everything else about this bud is superlative. The aroma from the bag, even a few days after first opening it, is bright and fresh. The quick version is that it smells like all the green spices in the spice drawer, with a bit of pungence over the top. Disaggregating that, there’s a distinct basil/oregano quality reminiscent of “pizza herbs” like that which permeates small local pizza places, but in sticking with the “green” smells, there are also notes of mint and pine, which if it’s around the winter holidays, said pizza places may also have. Interestingly, there’s also a pungent citrus note that carries through the whole aromatic experience which I am having a difficult time describing as being above or below the herbal aromas. It is sweet and light, like something I would describe as a top note or an overtone, but it “feels” like an undertone due to the pungence. It’s a fascinating and inviting aroma.

What is even more fascinating is that that almost completely disappears in the flavor. And that’s not to say that it’s replaced, but instead the aromas quiet nearly to the point of erasure. I had to stretch to dissect what little I was tasting in the smoke, but I settled on very very light bitter, tart, and musky, with a gentle buttery aftertaste. The smoke quality itself was medium-bodied and smooth, with just the lightest suggestion of some tingly throat-feel. It was such an easy smoke, and very enjoyable.

The high is – in a word – fantastic. I wrapped up the introduction to the review portion of the post saying that Jack Herer is both a clean and potent high. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and speaking to customers, coworkers, and friends about what a functional high is. There are obviously countless definitions, as what I think of as “functional” (and for that matter, what I think of as “high”) can vary greatly from what someone else thinks. But there seems to be some consensus on Jack Herer falling into this category. Everyone familiar with this strain with whom I’ve spoken about this strain has agreed to one degree or another that this is an excellent functional high, daytime high, social high, happy high, etc. It’s the kind of strain that people get excited about, like truly, face-lighting-up, kid-in-a-candy-store excited. And that excitement reaches across generations, though mostly Gen-Xers on down, as the strain itself was only first bred in the mid-90’s, so it doesn’t have the nostalgia for Boomers and up, like say Acapulco Gold might.

Broken down, the high is full of almost contradictory effects. There is an immediate mood lifting, paired with a gentle relaxation in the muscles. I feel it as a lightness overall. As the high develops, the head high evolves into a mild energizing focus, with just a halo of euphoric fuzziness. The body high too evolves, where mental tasks and physical movement become easier, more energized, but any sedative activity allows the body to relax further, calming nerves both mentally and physically. I feel inclined to but not beholden to bouts of creativity. I feel engaged with solo activities and also with other people, especially my kids, which I am always so happy to find in a high. I love my kids, I don’t mean to minimize that, or say that I need to be high to have fun hanging out with them, but they are the ages where I am still kind of running on “exhausted parent momentum” but they also are becoming fully developed humans of their own, so I can’t pander or half-ass anything or they’ll know. Hanging with them is playing complex video and board games, or building with Legos or other models or crafts, or even teaching the neighborhood roving gang of adorable 10 year-olds how to throw a football. Jack Herer keeps me level-headed, calm, and happy, while also allowing me to keep my wits about me. If I’m not looking for a highly energizing and super-focusing functional high, I need look no further than Jack Herer.

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