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As some of our loyal and learned readership has no doubt noticed, the past few years have seen a proliferation of cannabis products — or products purporting to be cannabis — available for purchase at gas stations and truck stops all across the state. Find these establishments most especially along stretches of highway dotted with towns too small to support large truck-stop outfits like Love’s and Flying J. I was not really aware of this phenomenon, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised. For years now, establishments that are definitely not smoke shops — namely, gas stations and truck stops and the like — have been carrying a wide array of smoking devices. Not just rolling papers or the occasional old-timey tobacco pipe, but glass-blown pipes with pretty patterns, larger versions that accommodate a little water in the chamber, and even big 2- and 3-foot glass pipes with multiple chambers and elaborate artistic flairs blown and embedded into the body and base of the device.
Bongs, in other words.
Not to belabor the before-times nostalgia, but I was hard-wired during a period of time when saying the word “bong” — or “pot,” “cannabis” or “marijuana,” for that matter — would see you promptly booted from the place selling the bongs, which were ostensibly not bongs, but “water pipes” for tobacco. All that stuff was illegal then, and the only way you could check out the cool paraphernalia was to studiously stick to the script.
I’m not sure why I never noticed that one could also buy decidedly non-tobacco products for these devices in the very same spot, but the fact that all of this glass started appearing in gas stations just as Arkansas was getting the rules for medical marijuana sorted out probably had a lot to do with it. In fact, there’s a good reason why Arkansas has an incredibly stringent and tightly enforced protocol regulating medical marijuana while also allowing a casual stroll into the local doob and lube to buy a pre-rolled blunt that is absolutely ground cannabis: the 2018 Farm Bill.
Marijuana has been illegal under federal law for decades. It has nonetheless been federal policy for several years now to allow individual states to decide on their own whether to permit marijuana use for that state’s citizens, be it for medical or recreational purposes. But while the federal government was taking a hands-off approach to marijuana and letting states do their laboratory-of-democracy thing, it was taking a more active role in rethinking the status of the cannabis plant. A pilot program mandated by the 2014 U.S. Farm Bill allowed for hemp cultivation for government research — including agricultural and industrial purposes — and the subsequent 2018 Farm Bill established the Domestic Hemp Production Program. That program essentially made the cultivation of hemp for agricultural and industrial purposes not only legal, but feasible for the first time in decades.
A couple of years ago, the Arkansas Legislature passed a bill to ban hemp-derived THC products, but the hemp folks challenged that in federal court. The judge initially agreed with the hemp industry plaintiffs that the ban should be put on hold while the case played out in court, meaning the hemp-derived THC products continued to be legal.
Marijuana, however, remained illegal. The federal government squared this circle by mandating any hemp produced under the new rules contain less than 0.3% Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) by dry weight. THC is the chemical compound in cannabis that produces psychoactive effects, and in turn makes the user high. Delta-9 is the most potent cannabinoid in cannabis, and also the only one — until fairly recently, at least — a layperson could name, or had ever even heard of.
As it turns out, Delta-9 THC, while the most potent cannabinol in a cannabis plant’s makeup, is not the only one, and other THC compounds — especially Delta-8 — will get a person plenty high, thank you very much. Thanks to the wording in that 2018 Farm Bill, so long as a cannabis plant’s Delta-9 makeup flies under that 0.3% dry-weight threshold, as far as federal law is concerned it is cannabis but not marijuana, hemp but not weed. What regular folks have caught onto — value-added producers and card-less cannabis users alike — is that a cannabis plant sitting at <0.3% Delta-9 THC is indeed simultaneously marijuana and not, a stoner-friendly demonstration of simplified quantum theory.
I’ve never been a scientist and my marijuana days are closer to “lids” than “flower,” but I would offer that putting a match to Schrodinger’s Spliff will prove the cat was very, very high the entire time.
So what kinds of things can the astute truck-stop patron find for sale inside the station while the pump runs outside? Friend, the astute patron can find a lot.
Hi on Nature
Standard Delta-8 fare one can find in any number of gas stations, truck stops and smoke shops that sell such things. Distinguished by the ’80s synth-wave stylings on the physical package, and the overt physicality (read: sexuality) of the online marketing, which features a very attractive woman wearing a very aggressive outfit brandishing a Hi on Nature vape pen with the tagline “These F*ck” superimposed. 10/10, no notes.
Alien Exotics
Delta-8 producer seen more often in dedicated vape shops than behind gas station glass. Offers flower and mushroom-infused gummies as well as vape cartridges, pre-rolls and standard Delta-8 gummies.
Blazy Susan
Sorority chic cannabis company. I am staring at a Blazy Susan pre-rolled cone as I write this. Beautiful cone, perfect pink filter emblazoned with “Blazy Susan” in brand-appropriate script, all sealed in a nice translucent cylinder (it looks and feels like glass, but it’s plastic). Smells great. Not sure if the cannabis inside the cone is actually Blazy Susan. Based on the website, which is basically a lifestyle blog selling a mind-boggling array of cute-grrrl-themed smoking accoutrements and cute hoodies, it would appear the answer is “no.”
Big Chief Flower
Ignatius J. Reilly’s favorite flower? Perhaps. But whether fiction’s most famous spiral notebook aficionado would have appreciated the egalitarian thrill of purchasing a classy-looking faux-wood-topped jar of loophole-exploiting cannabis (I’m guessing not, actually, as Reilly also ranks as one of fiction’s most annoying protagonists, a proto-incel blowhard tailor-made to produce bad takes in dorm rooms from sea to shining sea who would no doubt be a) offended by the kind of gray-market chic epitomized by Big Chief Flower, b) too busy telling you that to smoke any Big Chief Flower, and c) scared of smoking Big Chief Flower in the first place.)
Big Chief Flower is also notable for being flower at all, as this particular market is dominated by gummies, pre-rolls and disposable vape pens.
RAW
Not to be confused with Arkan-RAW (a medical marijuana product sold in dispensaries) under any circumstance. Appears to be just a company that produces accessories, especially cones.
Pump gas, grab some grass
As is often the case with an idea or product mixed up in one of America’s myriad and ongoing moral panic foofaraws while being stubbornly profitable, cannabis-derived products are plagued by misconceptions and misunderstandings.
First and foremost among these misconceptions is that the cannabis available in truck stops, gas stations and other retail spaces not regulated by Arkansas’s medical marijuana law is “synthetic marijuana,” a dangerous, chemically derived synthetic drug sprayed on inert vegetable matter that became popular under marketing names such as “K2” and “Spice.” Those products are wholly derived from a chemical process and were sold with packaging marked “not for human consumption” in a ploy to deflect liability. These substances are not cannabis in any true sense of the word.
Maybe the misconception arises because hemp-derived products can undergo a chemical process to amp up the potency of their cannabinoids. But unlike K2 and Spice, they’re still cannabis.
The end result of the process, physically, is a viscous liquid that resists solidification, and is therefore best suited for use in edible products such as gummies. To produce Delta-8 flower, the Delta-8 distillate is sprayed onto cannabis fitting the legal sub-0.3% Delta-9 THC definition of hemp. This is different from synthetic marijuana, which consists of a wholly chemical cannabinoid composition sprayed onto inert vegetable matter.
Even though Delta-8 cannabis products are real cannabis, the fact that they are being sold in what is essentially a gray market — with no federal or state oversight governing any value-added processes applied to legal non-Delta 9 cannabis post-harvest — makes it difficult to know what you’re going to get from any given purchase. Unlike a dispensary, with state oversight of quality and health standards to go along with a professional and dedicated staff, gas stations and truck stops only have to contract with a licensed distributor to get into the legal cannabis game. That means many widely marketed cannabis products are not subject to the quality control and inspection regime that governs medical marijuana.
There are a few other spots where you can buy hemp-derived THC products, including specialty hemp stores, restaurants that sell cannabis beverages and a North Little Rock brewery that sells its own brand of Delta-9 seltzer (Flyway Brewing).
Then there are the vape shops. The storefronts sprang up in abundance as electronic cigarettes gained popularity, and many have since made legal cannabis products a major part of their operations. While the THC products in vape shops are more or less the same as you’ll find in pretty much any other retail space, vape shops do have the advantage of being a specialty store with employees whose only job is directly related to cannabis. With independent vape shops, you have a fair chance of finding the owner-operator behind the counter. The proprietor of a shop dealing in products that have, deserved or no, an iffy reputation has a vested interest in running a tight ship and knowing their wares. That makes them more likely to have relevant advice about this or that product, and means they’ll certainly keep unsafe products such as banned synthetics out of their stores.
“That stuff? That stuff is trash,” said one such shopkeep when I brought up synthetics like K2. “That stuff could actually hurt you.”
“But all of this,” he continued, pointing to cannabis products of all types — edibles, vapes, flowers, pre-rolls — by the score, neatly stacked and arranged behind a dozen cases of pristine glass, “all this is good. It’s hemp. People want it. Not everybody can have a medical card. I’m providing a service.”
I buy a pre-roll (gotta do my due diligence, after all) and look around at the back of the store, noting an old recessed shelf and remembering that several years ago, before the Medical Marijuana Amendment and the Farm Bill and COVID-19 and ivermectin, this place used to be a liquor store.
The guy’s got a point.
“}]] The past few years have seen a proliferation of cannabis products available for purchase at gas stations and truck stops. What’s the story behind this phenomenon? Read More
