Lansing is a prime spot to celebrate 710

Happy heady holiday, fellow potheads! Today (June 10) marks another stoner cultural event: 710, a celebration of cannabis concentrates. When rotated 180 degrees, 710 spells out “OIL”; it’s also the temperature early dabbers would take their hits of concentrate at (RIP my lungs). 

Much like 420, this set of numbers has become both a designated time of day to smoke concentrates and a singular holiday. If you read this week’s issue of City Pulse or almost any other outlet that allows cannabis advertising, you’ll certainly see advertisements for the wild incentives retailers are offering to consumers.

This holiday is relatively new to the cannabis community. Since legalization, advances in vape and extraction technology, coupled with an increase in production capacity, have brought concentrates into heavy use among Michigan’s stoners.

Today, disposable vapes and vape cartridges line dispensary shelves, along with old-school hash, live rosin and butane-extracted concentrates. Consumer tastes have shifted since legalization: Flower is definitely still king, but concentrate use is growing every day as consumers seek out potent options without the need for combustion.

Lansing is stacked with companies producing world-class concentrates, from Lion Labs’ Element, which offers some of the best solvent-based products, to Ice Kream Hash Co.’s solventless options.

Along with great producers, we have some equally great retailers that have been selling concentrates since shortly after dabbing was invented. Shops like Pure Options have been carrying vape carts since there was a market for them. In the early years of Lansing’s cannabis market, when caregiver shops were the only accessible option for patients, the city was a mecca for dabbers. It was one of the only places in the state where consumers could access concentrates, including life-saving Rick Simpson oil.

Some of the earliest concentrate brands hail from Lansing. In fact, back when High Times’ Cannabis Cup was judged by industry members, many award-winning extract producers were located here. Butane extraction, the process that was used to produce most concentrates, was very prevalent in Lansing, and the city’s lax attitude toward cannabis made it one of the best and most accessible markets in the state.

Speaking of accessibility, this holiday is the ideal time to stock up on all types of concentrates. If you’ve been reading this column regularly or even visited a dispensary recently, you know weed is cheap right now — so cheap that a lot of operators aren’t making money. Increased production capacity for standard flower has also increased the capacity for fresh-frozen flower, the raw material for live rosin and resin. The result will be some of the cheapest prices on these products ever.

Folks who enjoy distillate vape carts should definitely make sure to stock up. The Cannabis Regulatory Agency recently indicated that it plans to ban MCT oil in vapes. At the same time, there’s a lot of chatter that the CRA might be trying to close the loophole that has allowed many operators to bring unregulated delta-8 THC products into the legal market. When these two reforms hit, I expect the cost of distillate vape products to rise across the board for a significant period of time.

Our city has been and continues to be a pioneer in the legal industry, partially due to its proximity to the state Legislature. The CRA’s administrative offices are also located in Lansing, and many of the extraction technicians and high-level staff members at CRA-licensed processing facilities around the state are Lansing natives.

Long story short, we have a lot of great hashheads around here — not just in the industry but in our consumers. I’m consistently impressed with your e-mails and questions, your preferences and your relentless demands of quality. No other city has a cannabis culture and consumer base like Lansing’s. Our city has been pretty significant in the history of the state’s concentrate industry, and I’m hopeful that as the market continues to mature and consumer preferences become ingrained, our ethos and preferences surrounding concentrates will continue to shine.