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Nearly a century after cannabis was criminalized by the United States, most Americans live in a place where local police no longer arrest all marijuana users. Weed has become so abundant in places like metro Phoenix that you have to wonder how it’s even grown. Reefer Growing Madness from KJZZ’s Hear Arizona podcast unit tracks the roughly four-month journey of marijuana plants from tiny clones to ashes and smoke.
MATT CASEY: A reefer is another word for marijuana cigarette. Reefer Madness is an old anti-pot movie turned into a cult classic by legalization advocates trying to change public opinion. … After months of watching weed grow, it’s finally time to roll up the harvest and smoke on Reefer Growing Madness.
You’re listening to Chapter 5 the Buy and Burn finale of Reefer Growing Madness, a production of KJZZ’s Hear Arizona podcast unit. I’m your host Matt Casey… A warning, dear listener, that you’re going to hear some swearing and cursing at times. Yet government funded research says there’s a positive link between profanity and honesty.
About two ounces of marijuana harvested from four Zpectrum plants were of buds large and pretty enough to be packaged in Alien Labs premium jars. The brand founder and his top local farmers visit a dispensary, pick up a few and then hold a special smoke session. And a third-party weed connoisseur samples the strain.
[REEFER MAN: CAB CALLOWAY]
To be clear, there will be no exchange of money for the weed in question. State rules bar staff from just taking weed from the farm. So to do things on the up and up, we need to pick the Zpectrum up from a dispensary.
Legal marijuana is still a new industry in Arizona. There is no shortage of competition for shelf space in a limited number of dispensaries, which also sell their own house products. Alien Labs and its sister brand come packaged as rosin, flower, vapes and pre-rolled reefers. The last three are all sold at Arizona Organix, where Ted Lidie likes that the menu reflects weed culture. Stores like this one draw the type of consumers he wants and works to keep.
MATT CASEY: So you all have a partnership with this?
TED LIDIE: Yeah, this is one of our top stores, we have the thing up there and we wrapped an ATM machine in here. It’s pretty cool.
MATT CASEY: The thing up there is a mural near the back entrance. So Lidie’s brand flashes in consumers’ faces as they enter and on the showroom floor. He says those in his industry that come from sales often flood dispensaries with experienced teams. Yet, those in marijuana because they came from growing aren’t traditional sales people.
TED LIDIE: You know, in this sense of a regulated market. We all started off selling weed. But your ability to get out there and get in stores is just as crucial as your ability to grow good weed. And most of those things don’t align.
MATT CASEY: With us at a register to get the marijuana, I watched grow are the growers themselves, Alexander Lawrence and Bruno Gagliardi, who says this is where staff pick up samples from the farm. So a couple of the Zpectrum jars are waiting here under his name. Budtender Jordan brings them out.
JORDAN: Alright Bruno.
[Beep from barcode]
TED LIDIE: Have you tried all these?
MATT CASEY: Lidie is asking Jordan about several other strains grown by Lawrence and Gagliardi for his brand and its sister. Jordan lays out a few.
JORDAN: You’ve got some Permanent Marker, (jar hits counter) some Rainbow Sherbert (jar hits counter) and the OZ Kush (jar hits counter).
MATT CASEY: The first one you heard is going to win a state competition tonight. In fact, entries developed and grown by people I’m with are going to take first and second place of both the Indica and Sativa flower categories for Best in Grass Arizona. Zpectrum is one of the winners. Lidie buys a jar of another. Jordan bags up the goods and wonders what’s with the camera and microphones.
JORDAN: You guys filming all day? Or what do we got going on today?
TED LIDIE: We’re gonna go smoke this s**t.
JORDAN: Alright. There we go.
Tim Agne/KJZZ
Ted Lidie smokes the Zpectrum joint.
MATT CASEY: But before we go to the smoke session, let’s visit another to get an analysis of Zpectrum. Sommeliers help wine novices learn about types and vintage. So I went looking for the marijuana equivalent. Certifications are available. One’s called a Ganjier. Another teaches terpene identification. Arizona cannabis industry veteran Fernando Garcia made up his own title.
FERNANDO GARCIA: I make a joke. I say canna-ssseur. (laughs)
MATT CASEY: Garcia sits on his back patio. In front of him on a table is a premium jar of Zpectrum. It’s from a different batch than the plants I watched grow. So to be clear, his thoughts and what is said during the upcoming final scene of Reefer Growing Madness are about the same strain, but not the same weed.
FERNANDO GARCIA: I’m excited to check it out. Let’s see, it looks like it’s a cross of RS-11 and Z-22. (opens jar and pops top) Alright. Let’s see. Every time I open the jar I like to smell it first. And then take a good look at it. (buds fall onto tray) OK, so first thing I can tell is the bud is not completely dry. That’s great.
MATT CASEY: Plump and dense are words Garcia uses as he slowly squeezes each bud in a rolling tray.
FERNANDO GARCIA: And as far as the scent goes, you know, going back to the jar… I’m getting some of that sweet scent with it, typical of RS-11.
MATT CASEY: Depending on the terpenes, taking a long whiff of marijuana can send a sensation either up the nose toward the eyes or down toward the tip. Garcia uses a metal grinder to break up the buds, and explains that a sensation toward the tip of the nose likely signals relaxing effects.
FERNANDO GARCIA: Right? Based on the terpenes that are expressed in that flower. And if you feel it more toward your eyes, it should be more energetic. So this one I kind of felt it right in the middle, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the hybrid that they’re saying.
MATT CASEY: He doesn’t want the flavor diluted or even masked by old resin built up in a pipe or bong so a reefer is Garcia’s preferred way to enjoy pot.
[Rolling paper crackles]
FERNANDO GARCIA: So let’s see. I’m getting my flower in the joint. (Continues rolling then taps the J on the table to pack it.]
MATT CASEY: Industrialization of marijuana has created more ways to consume the plant, some of them discreet. But Garcia prefers his weed in the most common form pre-legalization — as flower.
FERNANDO GARCIA: I like to take my time. And smoke a joint and relax. That’s part of my ritual, personally. (sparks lighter)
[Rapidly and lightly smacks his lips]
Tasty. It’s definitely sweet. So the flavor of this weed matches its odor. And the white ash it leaves is another sign of quality.
FERNANDO GARCIA: (inhales) Hmmmm. I’m getting a very sweet taste on it. It’s a very, very sweet taste. I guess a little bit herbal but…
MATT CASEY: Marijuana companies can’t match the consistency of a fast-food cheeseburger that tastes exactly the same in Arizona and Ohio. This seems like an unrealistic goal given that farming — even indoors with a controlled environment — is unpredictable. There’s also subjectivity due to the unique way weed affects unique individuals. To that point, Ted Lidie prefers the Zpectrum grown here in Arizona over Alien Labs’ California version. But the opposite is true for other strains.
TED LIDIE: My point is and what I’m illustrating is that weed is room to room and batch to batch. Not everyone f**king nails it every time.
MATT CASEY: Meaning that this next scene was never guaranteed. He’s huddling with Alexander Lawrence and Bruno Gagliardi around a coffee table in a living room to roll up and smoke a few of the buds grown during Reefer Growing Madness.
TED LIDIE: After I get high, my vocabulary goes to like six words and two of them are f**k.
MATT CASEY: First I ask them to each take a long whiff of the Zpectrum.
[jar pops]
Tim Agne/KJZZ
Ted Lidie holds the lit Zpectrum joint.
ALEXANDER LAWRENCE: Minty, limey, cookie dough.
TED LIDIE: It’s just vaporish. Like a Vicks-vapor-rub-type effect in your nose. Even though it doesn’t smell like that, it makes it feel like that. All the best weed does.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: You don’t really get the Zkittles, Zkittles in it. And you also don’t get anything from RS-11, but definitely the sweetness. When you initially open it, you get gassyness. And when that fades away, that’s where the doughiness comes in.
MATT CASEY: Gagliardi and Lawrence use scissors to cut up the buds and roll them into ultra thin papers Lidie pulled from a goody-bag of R&D products he got at a recent marijuana industry conference.
[scissors cutting]
TED LIDIE: Lemme see.
[Lighter sparks. Exhales.]
TED LIDIE: Pretty good.
MATT CASEY: Smoke from burning the marijuana plants I started watching almost five months ago begins to fill the room. The people who made this possible share reefers and catch up on topics that have nothing to do with weed. What are your kids into these days? Do you still play that one card or computer game?
MATT CASEY: How often do you guys get to sit down and share one?
TED LIDIE: : F**k, us? Not much.
ALEXANDER LAWRENCE: Never.
BRUNO GAGLIARDI: Naw.
ALEXANDER LAWRENCE: I don’t think this has ever happened.
MATT CASEY: It is the first time, because the only other time when they could have smoked together, Lawrence was taking a break. As the Zpectrum becomes ash, the conversation returns to weed and the different ways growers count days. Lidie talks about the gadgets and gizmos for connoisseurs of what once made outlaws of him, Gagliardi and Lawrence. There’s even a new cottage industry of getting paid to be a VIP’s personal roller. Designer reefers go for about $100 each in California.
TED LIDIE: That’s a real life f**king aspiration man. ‘Oh I just roll blunts for whoever.’ That’d be sick. (When) I was a kid, there was nothing like that. We’d didn’t even think this would be… Dude, I’d go to Barnes and Noble and steal High Times and look through them and shit. This was never… Legalization? Never. That’s crazy, bro.
[REEFER MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]
MATT CASEY: Here’s my project partner Tim Agne with a preview of the photos and video available online for this episode.
TIM AGNE: The last episode was funny, because things didn’t go as we planned. The our first destination for where we were going to hold, the scene where all these guys were going to get together and smoke wound up not welcoming us. They turned out they had changed their policy, so we had to go somewhere else, and at the last minute, we ended up at somebody’s house.
And I know it had to have been weird for those guys because of the dynamic like they’re, they’re co-workers, you know, this guy is like the CEO of your company, right? And, and so it’s got to be difficult to just let your guard down and relax, not only that, but you’re being recorded by us for the radio, so there’s a bit of a performance still happening there. And I, I kind of applaud these guys for being able to to do that and still enjoy themselves, which I think they did.
I still have like, 1,000 photos, you know, that I still get to kind of look through and sort through now they come up in my phone memories when your phone creates a little thing to show you a day in your past or whatever. Sometimes you know Bruno and Zander. These guys are people that my phone thinks they’re just my good friends, guys that I hang out with on the regular.
For me, it’s a little weird to not smell like weed anymore. Just just out here smelling like clean.
MATT CASEY: Thanks for listening to Reefer Growing Madness, which was produced and hosted by me, Matt Casey. Tim Agne is our digital editor. Lindsey C. Riley is our project editor.
If instead, somehow, in a very stoned galaxy, this podcast were like a Nirvana concert, destruction of the stage and instruments would come next. I have this image of Kurt Cobain shoving the neck of a guitar through an amplifier … but since I can’t afford to replace a studio, let’s just thank those who helped bring this project to life and get out of here.
Special thanks to Chad Snow and Lindsey C. Riley for believing the idea for Reefer Growing Madness could become a real thing.
Special thanks to Ryan Glazar, the engineer who solved the riddle of recording in a loud pot farm. Use a shotgun mic, in case you’re wondering.
Special thanks to Tiara Vian, producer of the Airing Out segment for the Harvest episode who also did other work behind the scenes. We originally planned to collaborate more on this, but then a fantastic surprise came up. Tiara is going to be a great mom.
Special thanks to the entire staff at Alien Labs who always met – with smiles and warmth – nosy reporters poking around with microphones and cameras first thing in the morning.
Special thanks to Grasslands P-R agency in Denver and senior account executive Emily Meshell.
Reefer Growing Madness is dedicated to the memory of Ethan DeYoung, a brilliant, kind and great man. Bro, I’ve been dreading the end of this project because it gifted me six months to pretend you’re still here. We always talked about ways to approach a creative opportunity like this. I hope I made you proud.
“}]] About 2 ounces of marijuana harvested from four Zpectrum plants were of buds large and pretty enough to be packaged in Alien Labs premium jars. Read More
