Big Weed Read Online Free Page A

was blown away by the contrast between the smell of street weed and fresh marijuana.
    Jake’s crew had about ten tall glass jars, maybe a half gallon each, with latch lids on them, crammed with fat, healthy, colorful buds.
    His staff—people who called themselves “budtenders”—blew my mind when they asked me a single question: “What kind of marijuana do you like to smoke?”
    Well, shit, I didn’t even have the mental framework to be able to answer that question. As far back as I could remember, there wasonly one kind of marijuana and you got it from a buddy . . . who knew a guy who knew a guy who was going to pick some up from his friend today. So, if you brought your money by now, your buddy would have it later today. And sometimes those best-laid plans just didn’t go down.
    I remember being just a kid, about twelve years old, the first time I saw my older brother and his friends giggling over a black plastic film canister he was holding in his hands.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked them.
    â€œNothing! Mind your own business.” They blew me off, dashed into my brother’s bedroom, and locked the door behind them.
    But I didn’t give up. “What’s that?” I asked the next time I saw them toting one of those little canisters.
    Nothing. Silence.
    And then one day, my brother blurted, “It’s just grass.” The smirk on his face gave it away.
    It’s just grass.
    It’s just grass.
    And then one day, they let me have a little toke. Wow. I laughed for the next few hours.
    I smoked in junior high and even high school. Not often, and I never allowed it to interfere with my relatively normal life. I played football and rugby and hung out with the jocks and preppies more than the stoners.
    But the memory of marijuana still remained with me, as did the whole marijuana experience. The semi-ridiculous dance of calling around all of your friends to see if anyone knew someone who had some. Finally finding that one buddy . . . who knew the guy who knew a guy. Then hammering out a price. Pulling together all the crumpled fives, tens, and singles you and your friends could muster. The meet. The buy. The furtive smokefest in your parents’ basement, always accompanied by the post-toke, rapacious romp through the pantry. Lots of laughter. Music. TV. The paranoia that sometimesgripped us: Would someone notice our red eyes, our incessant laughter, or the remnants of our outing?
    That was the 1980s for me.
    The marijuana we smoked as kids was always sourced the same way. We had one choice, paid one price when we were lucky enough to get to the guy who knew the guy.
    But here in Jake’s dispensary, I was beginning to learn that there were lots of different types of marijuana. Different strains. Each with different names and different personalities.
    I had a lot to learn, but right now I needed to get down to business. I needed about five or six hours with Jake to figure out how his business actually worked so I could put together a spreadsheet that spelled it all out.
    The numbers were fascinating. It cost vendors like Jake about $500 to $800 to grow a pound of legal marijuana. That probably sounds like a lot of money. It did to me. But what did I know? A plant is a plant is a plant. People grew tomatoes and lettuce in their backyards each summer, and it wasn’t rocket science. I didn’t understand why marijuana had to be that much more difficult or expensive. The kicker was guys like Jake could turn around and sell one of those same pounds—at a quarter-ounce at a time—for $6,400 retail. Or he could sell a pound for about $4,000 wholesale at that time.
    A profit margin of 800 percent to 1,300 percent. Un-fucking-believable!
    The numbers looked good for a retail business. Really good.
    So much so that I couldn’t get the marijuana business out of my head even after my consulting gig with Jake was up. I was talking about it with