HAUTE POT

San Francisco's Foodies Are Bringing New Tastes and Sensibilities to
Eating Marijuana

CANNABIS Marijuana edibles have come a long way in a short time.

Just a few years ago, the norm was still brownies of uncertain dosage
that tasted like eating weed, right down to the occasional stem or
lump of leaf, served in a wax paper envelope. But now the foodies
have gotten into the game, producing a huge variety of tasty treats
that are incredibly delicious even before the munchies kick in.

San Francisco could be on the verge of a culinary revolution that
would parallel those being experienced in the realms of boutique
eateries, gourmet coffee, and high-end street food vendors - except
for the fact that makers of cannabis edibles still reside in a legal limbo.

As long as they're operating under the umbrella of a cannabis
collective, getting marijuana from its growers and selling through
its dispensaries, then the weed bakers are in compliance with state
law. But they're still illegal under federal law, and even California
law doesn't allow them to operate independently as wholesalers,
making it difficult to scale up operations and do more than just
break even financially.

Judging from the skittishness of some of San Francisco's top edibles
producers - who didn't want to be identified by their real names and
were wary of letting us know too much about their operations - they
perform this labor of love under a cloud of understandable paranoia.

"Unfortunately, secrecy is a rule we have to live by, day in and day
out," said the founder of Auntie Dolores, who we'll call Jay. She
makes a line of popular, strong, and yummy products that include
pretzels, chili lime peanuts, caramel corn, and cookies of all kinds.

Yet the legal threats haven't stopped producers from
professionalizing the edibles industry - in terms of quality control,
packaging, consistency, and innovation - and drawing on foodie
sensibilities and their own culinary training to develop creative new
products that effectively mask or subtly incorporate that bitter
cannabis taste.

"We're all about masking the flavor of the cannabis because I really
don't like the flavor that much," Jay said of products that are
stronger than most but somehow without a hint of weed in them.
"People here have a high standard. It's their medicine and their
food, and we have a lot of foodies who are really into our products."

Choco-Potamus is an example of this new generation of edibles,
combining gourmet chocolate-making with the finest strains of
cannabis, using only the best buds rather than the leaves and other
plant matter that have often gone into edibles. Mrs. Hippo, the
pseudonym of the chief baker, has worked for a national company in
the food industry for about a decade, mostly doing branding, and it
shows in this eye-catching product.

"I'm kind of a foodie. We have friends who roast whole pigs and brew
their own beer, that kind of thing," she said. "Really good
high-grade marijuana has some really great flavor qualities,
particularly when combined with cocoa. I really want the patients to
enjoy the flavor, not just the feeling."

EAT YOUR MEDICINE

Steve DeAngelo, founder of Oakland's Harborside Health Center, one of
the Bay Area's biggest dispensaries, said edibles have been
increasingly popular, particularly among older users, patients with
medical conditions that make smoking problematic, or those who prefer
the longer body highs of eating it.

"Our sales of edibles has trended steadily upward since we opened,"
DeAngelo said, noting that last year the club sold $1.2 million in
edibles, about 5.5 percent of total sales, compared to $306,000 (3.2
percent) after they opened in 2006. "As an absolute amount, we've
seen the amount of edibles quadruple in the last four and a half
years. As percentage of sales, we've seen it double."

He said the main difference between eating and smoking marijuana is
duration and onset. Smoking it brings on the high within minutes and
it usually last for less than two hours, whereas eating it takes
about 45 minutes for the effects to kick in, but they can then last
for six to eight hours.

"There are different forms for different symptoms," he said, noting
that edibles are perfect for someone with insomnia or other symptoms
that disturb normal sleep patterns, while someone who needs marijuana
in the morning can smoke or vaporize it and have the effects mostly
gone by the time they go to work.

"When you eat it, it goes through your limbic system, so it hits your
brain differently," said Jay of Auntie Dolores, saying that she and
many others prefer the subtle differences in the high they get from
eating cannabis. Others who prefer edibles are those looking to just
take the edge off without being too stoned. "A lot of the people who
like the edibles are moms. They don't want to smell like pot or be
too high," Mrs. Hippo said.

She noted that her chocolates are not as strong as many of the
edibles out there, with each candy bar containing two doses. "It's a
personal preference for how I want the bars to taste," she said,
although she has been working on making a stronger version as well,
which many dispensaries and their customers prefer.

But Mr. and Mrs. Hippo say they think taste is becoming as important
as strength, calling it an emerging area of the market. "I have a
dream that there could be just an edibles dispensary," Mr. Hippo
said, envisioning a pot club with the look and feel of a high-end bakery.

For now, demand for edibles is still driven by "potency and
packaging," says SPARC founder Erich Pearson. "I think people eat
food to eat food and enjoy. They don't eat to get high." Yet as long
as they're getting high in this competitive marijuana marketplace,
the edibles makers have been making better and better tasting products.

Jade Miller makes 12 flavors of cannabis-infused drinks under the
Sweet Relief label, with spiced apple cider being her top seller. She
draws other training at New York City's Institute for Culinary
Education to make some of the best-tasting drinks on the market.

"I got into it because I needed alternative pain relief when I had
whooping cough and a torn shoulder muscle," Miller told us.

She was injured while on a cooking job with Whole Foods Catering in
September 2006. She hated the opiates that she was prescribed for her
shoulder pain, preferring marijuana. But when she contracted whooping
cough, she couldn't smoke pot anymore without painful coughing, so
she got into making edibles.

At the time, many of the pot-laced foods out there weren't very good
or professionally made. "Some edibles were inedible," she said. "I
became a one-woman campaign against brownies."

QUALITY CONTROL

With a background in homeopathy and appreciation for marijuana, Jay
started making edibles 10 years ago, informally helping two aunts
battling cancer. But in the last couple of years she's honed her
recipes, improved her packaging, and transformed her Auntie Dolores
snacks into some of the best on the market, available in several
local dispensaries, such as Medithrive, SPARC, Bernal Heights
Dispensary, and Shambhala.

"I just knew I could make stronger and better-tasting stuff," she
said. "The demand from the patients is really high for great products."

Horror stories abound about users who overdosed on edibles and ended
up being incapacitated all day or night, but that's mostly been a
problem of dosage, which modern technology has helped overcome.
Choco-Potamus and other makers routinely send their batches to a lab
for testing.

"The idea is we can be helping an edibles producer or a tincture
maker quantify the cannabis in the product," said Anna Ray Grabstein,
CEO of Steep Hill Laboratory in Oakland, which tests cannabis and
related products for strength and purity. "They're able to use that
information to create consistency in their recipes."

It's been difficult to meet the rising demand given the current legal
framework.

"Yes, we would love to scale up. I'd love it if more people had
access to our product. We'd love to sell it outside of California,"
Jay said. "But it's tricky because there's so many gray areas,"

Larry Kessler is the program manager for the San Francisco Department
of Public Health's Medical Cannabis Dispensary Inspection Program,
which reviews the procedures of edibles makers and requires those who
work with one than one dispensary to get a certified food handler
license from the state.

"We just want to make sure they know what they're doing," Kessler told us.

San Francisco has some unique rules, banning edibles that require
refrigeration or other special handling, granting exceptions on a
case-by-case basis. Unlike Oakland and some other jurisdictions, San
Francisco also requires edibles to be in opaque packaging. "It was to
get rid of the visual appeal to children," he explains.

All the edible makers say they can live with those local rules, and
they praise San Francisco as a model county for medical marijuana
regulation. The problem is that state law doesn't allow them to be
independent businesses.

"It's against state law. There's no wholesaling allowed, and that's a
big issue around edibles," Kessler said. "It's a complicated issue."

All the edibles makers in this story say they are barely getting by
financially, and all have other jobs to support themselves. Jay says
she's thought about giving up many times, but she's been motivated by
stories they're heard from customers about the almost miraculous
curative properties of their products, particularly from patients
with cancer and other serious illnesses.

"I get an e-mail like this and then it's back to the kitchen," Jay
said, referring to a letter from a customer who credits her with
saving his life. "There are so many positive properties it has.
There's really no other plant like it."