“What’s your highest THC flower?”

This is a topic that has recently come into the spotlight. Let’s pause, though, and imagine someone walking into a liquor store and asking for the strongest bottle of liquor that the store has. Sounds ridiculous, right? 

Well, in a way, that’s truly the same thing as when someone walks into a dispensary and is asked what’s your number? As in, what percentage of THC do you want? It sort of misses the whole point of cannabis. If strength is all you need, then smoke distillate or other oil. 

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“A total joint experience…”

The reason for choosing flower is to enjoy the total joint experience, meaning the preparation and consumption of cannabis flower, most importantly, flower that is grown over the course of many weeks, then trimmed and cured for sometimes up to another four weeks. The flavor, taste, and smell are the main reasons a consumer chooses to smoke flower over concentrates or other products. The flower itself is the basis of the industry and should garnish the level of respect it deserves by not rating it solely on the percentage of one cannabinoid. 

As a result, consumers and producers have been cornered into this unidirectional approach when it comes to strain selection. This has, unfortunately, pushed a lot of legacy strains out of the marketplace in favor of the hegemony that now exists.

It is one area in modern cannabis that has failed the consumer. Placing an emphasis on THC has taught the consumer only to appreciate one aspect of the plant. In fact, in most connoisseurs’ opinions, THC is the least important part. 

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It’s easy to get high. It’s even easier to get extremely high. But to enjoy the flavor of an immaculately grown flower is the utter peak of consumption. Prior to legalization, flavor was the main driving force behind good cannabis, as well as what breeders were inspired by. 

The dominance of THC being the main barometer by which cannabis is judged, bought, and sold today does the plant and, more importantly, the consumer a huge disservice. The reason behind this push largely came from the big corporations that didn’t understand what drove the industry prior to their takeover, largely because not one of them smoked or understood the culture. This is why they chose to focus on the percentage of a single cannabinoid as a means of rating and pricing their flower products. These chads infiltrated a once-closed world that never would have allowed these corporate executives to enter the room, let alone play on the field. 

Thankfully, this is changing today and should be what drives cannabis flower in the future. As these baby consumers grow into adulthood, so too will their tastes. This will open up the door to some of the classic, more flavor-driven strains making a resurgence as flavor and smell return to their rightful place as the most coveted aspect of the plant. 

This article was submitted by a guest contributor to GreenState. The author is solely responsible for the content.