One man's search for the best weed and the best Cannabis dispensaries since legalization in Canada. An in depth gonzo journalism piece by Sean "Suga Jam" Fisher.
There is no doubt in my mind that the west coast of Canada and the United States in general has a better attitude about Cannabis. This is where I encountered my first dispensaries in North America.
My friend Greg and I had decided we wanted to drive down the US coast in the 90s. We were pretty reckless in that we had decided that we would try and find weed on the way down to Los Angeles from Seattle. We were Canadians, and if we had been caught I hate to think what they would have done to us.
This didn't stop Greg from driving like a maniac at top speed. He had already done this in Canada with my Dad's car. He had gotten a speeding ticket somewhere around Trenton, Ontario. Then he realized that this was going to increase my father's car insurance. A few months later he had to drive two hours to Trenton to fight the ticket to get it reduced.
You would think at this point he would have realized he shouldn't speed. This is - by the way - why car insurance is so high for males under 25. It is because of dickheads like Greg who I had foolishly decided to travel with, again. And of course he drove like a cock rocket and we were stopped and received a ticket.
Never travel with your best friend or they will not be your best friend by the time you get to Los Angeles. He loved Prince as much as I did but he sang it constantly off key. So imagine you're trapped in car with someone singing your favourite artists really badly.
So if we were willing to break the law on the highway why wouldn't we be trying to buy weed in a foreign country? What could go wrong?
Cannabis was illegal everywhere. But we had heard that there was a special area in Northern California called the Emerald Triangle where weed is grown and is plentiful.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I think we had read somewhere that if you just stop your car in this area that someone will drive by or walk by and sell you weed. We believed this. We were off the main highway by this time. Everyone had told us to drive on the interstate. But we were not interested. We wanted the longer scenic route. A lot of Americans did not understand this, including my relatives in Seattle. I think Americans generally think you should just take the route that gets you to your destination the fastest.
Enjoy the journey, Yanks. That's a message from Canada.
This is what the cop told us to do. "Oh you're trying to get to San Francisco? Stay on the interstate. It's fastest."
"We want to take the scenic route," I said.
"Why would you want to do that?" he asked.
Americans.
So we pulled over in the middle of a country road in the Emerald Triangle and we actually stood there for a half hour waiting for this mythical person to show up who would sell us weed. It NEVER happened. We were such idiots. Naive Canadians.
