The cannabis wellness conversation is hyper-focused on cannabinoids, when it should focus on how weed is grown.
As science further enters the world of weed politics, THC, the cannabinoid that contains the psychoactive properties in cannabis, has become the villain. At the beginning of the War on Drugs, cannabis as a whole was the menace, a scourge that could divide America, a racist tool used to target immigrants and Black and brown communities. But in today’s charged political climate, it’s not cannabis as a whole that’s the perceived danger; it’s THC. And, when it comes to the wellness conversation around weed, the benefits of the plant are far more nuanced than singling out certain cannabinoids. The re-emerging political conversation attempting to define which cannabinoids are “good” and “beneficial” misses a critical component: the way that cannabis is grown is essential to boosting its medicinal properties. In a number of ways, including an aversion to THC, cannabis grown under the sun is better for individual wellness and the world.
Demon Weed
The federal government has taken action to revisit the definition of legal hemp, which, when it was interpreted as plants or products with less than .3% THC by dry weight, opened the door for the wide rainbow of cannabinoids present in the cannabis plant. Once the powers that be caught on to the fact that cannabinoids other than THC could have intoxicating effects, efforts to limit their legality were passed. And, last month, direction to examine rescheduling the classification of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act, which began during the Biden Administration, made headlines. President Donald Trump’s executive order to complete the rescheduling review process for cannabis was coded in a certain language: parts of cannabis, namely CBD, could have some medicinal value.
Flavor & Therapeutic Effects
Beyond cannabinoids, the chemical makeup present in cannabis flowers contains a number of different compounds that contribute to the plant’s therapeutic effect. Cannabis grown outdoors can offer a more balanced high. Compared to indoor cannabis, outdoor flowers have less potency in terms of THC, but offer more diversity in terms of their chemical composition.
“It’s the complete spectrum of what’s in the plant that’s actually going to steer it to a much more pleasant effect,” said Eli Melrod, co-founder and CEO of Solful, a chain of Northern California-based retail shops that sell exclusively outdoor cannabis.
A 2023 research paper indexed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) compared “genetically identical plants grown indoors using artificial light and artificially grown media or outdoors grown in living soil and natural sunlight,” and determined that the outdoor-grown samples had significantly more unusual cannabinoids and higher levels of terpenes. Cannabis grown indoors, the study showed, has a greater volume of oxidized and degraded cannabinoids, while the outdoor-grown flowers (which included samples from California cannabis darlings Moonmade Farms and Huckleberry Hill Farms) “are able to express more cannabinoids with potentially desirable bioactivity.”
Following this reasoning, Melrod believes the wellness benefits of cannabis are predominantly found in flowers that are grown outdoors.
“Whole plant medicine derived from plants that are grown the natural way—in soil, regeneratively without adding nutrients, without using lighting techniques and things like that—produces the most diverse and fullest spectrum of compounds in a plant,” he said.
To further explain the benefits of sungrown flowers, Melrod compared cannabis to organic produce.
“You can almost think of it as nutritional density,” Melrod said. “Like if you eat a strawberry that was grown organically and you bought it at the farmer’s market from a farmer that tended to the soil and picked those strawberries when it was peak ripeness, and you eat that, we know for a fact that it has a way higher nutritional content than something that was mass produced and is flavorless.”
Nate Hayward of Higher Heights, based in Comptche, California, said the superior taste profile of outdoor-grown flowers is “not even comparable” to flowers grown indoors.
“Plants are speaking to each other, chemical signals are getting passed around everywhere,” Hayward said. “So when you’re outdoors, there’s no avoiding that… when the plants are interacting with the environment, they pick up another level of terpenes and another level of general flavor like flavonoids and all of the more complex elements that we haven’t researched enough yet.”
A 2021 study indexed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows that terpenes act as plant-to-plant signaling cues in order to activate a plant’s natural defense system.
“The whole level of oil begets oil,” Hayward said. “When you’re around a resinous plant, the other resinous plants near it up their game.”
Growing Weed Where It’s Environmentally Sound
Hayward pointed out that across Europe, much of the regulated medical cannabis market restricts outdoor cultivation.
“There’s very little outdoor cultivation in Europe, and they’re basically trying to push a lot of the medical to, ‘Oh, it has to be indoor,’” Hayward said. “You’re not even allowed to produce this medical-grade product outdoors, and I just find that ridiculous. Let’s look at the pharmacopeia of GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] and GACP [Good Agricultural and Collection Practices] producers. I mean, these are plants we’re talking about. Are you going to tell me they’re growing ashwagandha indoors?”
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, cannabis grown indoors also places obvious tolls on the environment. These tolls can increase further when indoor cannabis grows incorporate artificial intelligence, which often requires additional electricity and water. Part of the environmental problem in growing cannabis indoors comes from the fact that there is no interstate commerce, and therefore, it must be grown in places that require more electricity to optimize the temperature and humidity of the indoor environment.
“Obviously, the fact that we can’t sell out of state, I think, is a huge barrier, right?” Melrod said. “I mean, imagine if people could come and they could taste California cannabis in California. Have this amazing experience. And then, like the wine model, then they go back to where they live in Ohio or Florida or New York or wherever it is, and they can get California cannabis delivered in the mail. I mean, that’s what built the wine business.”
Hayward argued that limitations in California’s recreational market, such as requirements for products to be pre-packaged in sealed containers, have completely changed the type of weed that people buy.
“Prop. 215 was a radically better structure for the consumer in terms of how they could see and smell and in some cases handle the flower before they’re even going to buy it,” Hayward said. “In that way, the packaging that we’re facing is kind of destroying that cultural element of the flower. I feel like people end up buying stuff that sort of fulfills some of the experience, but it rarely fulfills, you know, the full experience that we all enjoy with the plant.”
And having a negative experience with hyper-potent weed grown indoors fuels a political push to limit THC.
“I have a theory which is that some of the reason why cannabis demand has sort of flatlined or even softened in some of the mature markets is that it’s because what’s actually available is so one-dimensional that it really isn’t a pleasant effect,” Melrod said. “I mean, to be honest with you, if all I had available was ultra-high THC, chemically-grown cannabis, I’m not sure I’d smoke pot either.”
In a world looking towards the medical benefits of cannabis that remains fearful of the potency of THC, the answer is not in other cannabinoids; it’s in flowers grown under the sun.
Photos by Matca Films. Follow them on Instagram.
