Michigan cannabis is having a rough year. These brands want you to judge them anyway

Best in Grass is back, and in a market this beat up, it might be the most important thing happening in Michigan weed right now.

Let’s set the scene.

Cannabis sales are down. A 24% wholesale tax that nobody in the industry asked for has been bleeding operators dry. Dispensaries are closing. Cultivators are consolidating. Workers are getting laid off. The illicit market is thriving because legal weed got too expensive to compete with it.

And in the middle of all of this, dozens of Michigan cannabis brands just submitted their best products to be judged by everyday stoners with a lighter and an opinion.

That’s either delusional or admirable. I’m going with admirable.

Best in Grass — billing itself as the largest consumer cannabis competition in the country — launched its 2026 Michigan judging kits Saturday (May 9). Thirty dispensaries across the state are carrying them. Thousands of judge kits are sitting on shelves, waiting for someone to pick one up and do something genuinely useful with their weekend.

Best in Grass was founded in 2024 by former High Times Cannabis Cup executives who know how to run one of these things. The concept is simple: Instead of having industry insiders or paid judges decide who makes the best cannabis in Michigan, they put it in the hands of consumers.

You go to a participating dispensary. You buy a judge kit, which start at $30 and go up in price from there depending on the category. You take it home. You try everything in it. You rate the products based on aroma, visual appeal, taste and effects. You submit your scores by July 12. Winners get announced at a live event Aug. 13 at the Royal Oak Music Theatre.

Complete your full judging card, and you get free entry to the awards show, plus 20% of the price of your kit back in store credit at the dispensary where you bought it. So, you’re essentially getting paid — in weed money — to get high and have opinions about it.

The categories this year cover the full spectrum: indica, sativa and hybrid flower; infused flower and moon rocks; non-infused and infused pre-rolls; solventless infused pre-rolls; solvent and non-solvent concentrates; rosin vape pens; regular vape pens; gummies; rosin gummies; non-gummy edibles; and beverages and liquids. There’s a kit for every kind of cannabis consumer, from the flower purist to the concentrate head to the person who microdoses gummies before doing the dishes.

Michigan has more than 400 licensed dispensaries and a wholesale price floor that has essentially collapsed. An ounce of recreational flower goes for as little as $60. Brands are fighting for shelf space, fighting for margin and fighting to convince consumers that the legal market is worth choosing over the guy with the $40 zip.

Winning Best in Grass — or even placing — is a sales asset. It’s something a brand can put on its packaging, its social media, its pitch to dispensary buyers. In a market where differentiation based on price alone is nearly impossible, consumer-validated quality is one of the few things that actually moves product. Brands that participated in Best in Grass in previous years have reported real commercial bumps after the winners were announced.

This year’s field includes some serious Michigan names — Hytek, MI Loud, Wojo Co., Peninsula Gardens, True North Collective, Uplyfted, Society C, Superb Cannabis Co., Freight Train Canna, Seed Junky, Midnight Roots, Pleasantrees and Green Dolphin, among others. These are not throwaway entries. Brands paid to submit their best work and put it in front of thousands of judges who have no idea whose product they’re smoking. The judging is blind. The feedback goes back to the brands after the show. It’s one of the few mechanisms in this industry where honest consumer data flows in the right direction.

Michigan cannabis workers are getting fired for trying to organize. The National Labor Relations Board’s jurisdiction over cannabis is being actively challenged in court. A punishing tax structure is driving consumers back to the illicit market.

And yet the plant is still here. The culture is still here. The cultivators who have been growing in Michigan since the caregiver days — the ones who built this industry before it was an industry — are still submitting their work to be judged by the people who love it most.

That’s worth showing up for.

Buy a judge kit. Take it seriously. The brands that win this thing earned it, and in a market this brutal, they deserve to know that someone noticed.

Chris Silva writes the Lansterdam column for City Pulse. Tips? Reach him at silvachr@gmail.com.