Black Widow, and an Update to Last Week’s Post

Good morning! I promised an update last week should I learn more about Cannabis Culture Co. and ProVerde Labs, and I have some. A quick internet query easily found a story on MJBiz from 2021, reporting that ProVerde Labs in Maine was shut down for operating without a license in Maine. As far as I can tell, they have not reestablished themselves in the state. There is one article from Cannabis Industry Journal noting a correction to their previous article on the matter, stating in the correction that the closure of ProVerde was temporary pending licensing approval, but that’s the only source I see for that information, and ProVerde’s own website seems to have no information for services in Maine. It feels like any claim of ProVerde Labs testing in Maine has to be over four years old at this point. While I appreciate that at one point Cannabis Culture Co. was testing their product even though they are not obligated to, citing four year old data now on product that is long since gone seems just a bit misleading to me. Perhaps it’s all just an oversight and they don’t update their website very often.

Apologies if this seems like a hit piece. I’m really not out to make enemies hurt anyone’s business who’s just trying to provide good product and good service to their customers. This is more about the opacity of certain aspects of the cannabis industry in general. I’m not an industry insider any more than the fact that I budtend and I read a lot of industry news, but from what I can gather, the lack of federal legality which led to every state having different rules and regulations surrounding cannabis, has created an environment where the average consumer not only has no idea how to navigate all this background information, but in most cases doesn’t even know that there’s all this happening in the first place.

I mentioned last week that there are certain circumstances where I find it important that a customer know that the lack of quality and potency testing required of medical cannabis in Maine is often what leads to those unrealistically low prices, and I could probably count on one hand the number of customers who already knew that, and of those, most had or had previously had some connection to the cannabis industry. Alcohol, tobacco, many types of foods, these are all things for which people seem to have a general sense that there is regulation around how those products can be made and sold. There isn’t much question on a day to day basis that it’s safe to assume that a beer you purchase at the grocery store is going to meet some minimum standard for quality, even if you don’t know those metrics yourself. Even cigarettes, I think it’s safe to assume that most people – even smokers – know that they’re not good for you, but that they are at least regulated at the federal level. I mean, they’ve all got that Surgeon General’s warning on the packs.

But customers by and large assume that all cannabis has to be tested and quality controlled if it’s being sold in a store, even a medical dispensary. It’s a shame that testing is prohibitively expensive for some small operations, and I’ve heard from a number of medical caregivers and growers that if they were required to pay for testing all of their products then they couldn’t continue to operate, and I don’t want to put these people out of business. Many of them are wonderful and lovely people, who are truly and sincerely sharing their own positive medical and therapeutic experiences with others through the cannabis that they lovingly cultivate. I talked myself into this point as I was writing, but now I’m going to do some research and talk to some friends on the inside about what options have or have not been explored around some sort of mechanism for reducing the costs on smaller caregivers so that everyone in the medical market could afford to continue operating while adding the same testing required of Adult Use cannabis. I guess I’ve got my homework for the week.

On to the review!

Black Widow is simply a distinct phenotype of White Widow, and in fact might be considered a more original version of White Widow, as the breeders that first cultivated White Widow from Brazilian and South Indian landraces took the genetics with them when they left the company where they had developed the strain. They changed the name simply to distinguish theirs from the original company’s version.

This nug was medium to pale green, with soft brown undertones contrasted by lighter orange pistils. The texture was dense, with a bit of spongy give over a solid core. The aroma was really excellent, having that classic White Widow bright peppery top note over a musky and skunky herbal undertone. It smells unmistakably like weed, but crisp and pleasant.

The flavor muted as might be expected, starting primarily with a classic skunky flavor and leaving a gassy bitter aftertaste, which sounds gross when I put it in those terms, but it wasn’t bad. Again, it smacked of good old school weed. Same with the quality of the smoke itself. It had a light and easy draw and mouthfeel, but was harsher and spicier in the lungs. It’s one of those hits that reminded me of back in the day when you’d hold a big hit in as long as you could, and if someone asked, you’d say “it’s good” through held breath while vigorously nodding your head and giving a thumbs up. Then you’d cough.

The high was as expected: stoney, euphoric, and very mellow. My head felt as though it were floating a bit, and I felt social and engaged and a bit more prone to laughing aloud. On the body side, also no surprises: I was calmed, almost sleepy, and got a bit hungry and thirsty. It was very relaxing. I guess my takeaway is that this felt like college weed (mind you, college that started when it was still the 90’s). Despite everything I talked about before the review itself, this was really excellent cannabis, and I hope that it is in fact quality controlled somehow, and that the company’s website just needs an update. I just hope it’s clean, as I wouldn’t want to see this off the market.