A lot of us like to shop for weed by THC percentage. But I spent an afternoon in a Lansing lab with one of the people who run those tests—and she wishes we’d knock it off.

The folks at ACT Lab make a convincing case, and I’ve got the full story below.

Plus, a gubernatorial candidate who voted against legal weed in Michigan is cashing checks from cannabis executives, a mother is explaining why new state legislation would make her son a felon, and a popular vape manufacturer just got hit with the biggest regulatory fine in state history. 

Roll one up and read the label.

Every gram of legal weed sold in Michigan passes through a licensed testing lab before it reaches a dispensary shelf. They screen for pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, and mold. 

They also produce the THC percentage that’s printed on the side of every package—the number that often dictates what weed customers end up buying at the dispensary. 

And if you ask their staff, it might just be the least useful information on the label. 

SMOKE SIGNALS: Republican US Rep. John James opposed legalizing weed in 2018 and still carries a D- rating from NORML. But this summer, Michigan’s cannabis industry executives wrote him about $90,000 in checks and are now backing his candidacy for governor. James has since pledged to repeal the state’s 24% wholesale tax without saying what pays for the roads. 

HOUSE PLANTS: Patients and advocates packed the Capitol last week for Cannabis Day, hosted by Michigan Weedsters, to push back on bills that would tighten caregiver cultivation limits. Amie Carter, the group’s president, says her 19-year-old son uses cannabis to manage symptoms tied to his autism—and that a bill from Republican state Rep. Joe Aragona (House Bill 5757) would make them both felons for the amount they have stashed away at home. 

BLIND SPOT: Michigan Investment 10, the Pinconning manufacturer behind Muha Meds vapes, has been hit with a record-setting $2 million fine and lost its processor licenses after state regulators uncovered various surveillance failures, inventory tracking problems, testing noncompliance, and other production issues. State officials called the violations “egregious.”

SECOND OPINION: The Detroit Metro Times staff picked their favorite Michigan flower, rosin, vapes, prerolls, edibles, and dispensaries of the year. Their official list is worth your time—if only to find out who won “Best Weed for People Who Still Miss 2010.” I’d have voted the same way.

ICYMI: If you missed last week’s newsletter, I gave up joints for three days and reviewed three live rosin vape pens from three different Michigan brands—each of them $30, all off the top shelf at Green Acres in Ann Arbor. All three were worth the money, which isn’t a sentence I get to write too often. What really separated them wasn’t quality; it was hardware and personality.

Last week, I asked where I should take this newsletter for my next city-based guide. It came down to a photo finish: New Buffalo edged out Grand Rapids by only two votes.

So, I’m heading to Michigan’s busiest border town to find the best dispensaries and the best things to do in between them. If you live out that way and know something I don’t, hit reply. I’ll take every tip I can get.

In the meantime, I’m curious: 

Do you trust the THC percentage printed on the label?

No wrong answers here. I’ll have the results next week. 

A guy named Evan emailed me a few weeks ago and offered to send samples of a hemp-based product with no THC or CBD. I said sure, mostly because I couldn’t figure out the point of it.

It turns out MONDAYS is a chew based entirely on terpenes. It’s not a low-dose cannabis edible or some kind of intoxicating hemp workaround; these chews have no cannabinoids at all.

What they’ve done instead is captured the terpene profile of a famous strain and folded it into hand-made taffy. Evan’s whole pitch: If THC is the gas pedal, terpenes are the steering wheel. 

Evan and his team spent a decade watching the industry chase potency numbers while the thing that actually makes Sour Diesel taste like Sour Diesel got treated as an afterthought.

I’ll say this much: The flavors are legitimately good and these chews taste like the strains for which they’re named—which is more than I can say for most cannabis-adjacent candy. But as for effects, I didn’t notice much. That’s not a knock on the science here so much as an honest report from one guy who smokes weed every day and may not be the target customer.

The idea is that you can take these with weed or without it—to either help “supercharge” the high or skip it entirely. Personally, I’m more interested in the first option. And I think the people most likely to get something out of these are folks who quit THC but still miss the flavor.

My real reluctance is the price.

Thirty chews in the sampler pack is $54—which is a lot of money for tasty candy with no obvious effects. Still, using real strains to derive the flavor profiles is a genuinely cool idea. And if it gets more people thinking about terpenes instead of THC numbers, then I’m all for it. 

Yesterday was the first full day of fall.

And Michigan’s cannabis industry already has a seasonal drink ready to go.

Lume is running a sale on BUZZN infused cider while supplies last—six cans for $23 or a full 12-pack for $39. Think of it as a cider mill trip (without the kids) that usually ends on the couch.

It’s worth noting: BUZZN comes from Emerald Canning Partners, the same company that makes most of the cannabis drinks sold in this state. I wrote about that earlier this year after realizing five different brands I bought for a review were all coming off the same production line.

For what it’s worth, I think this cider is one of their best products. 

It’s sweet without being syrupy, and if you drink it cold, it goes down like the real thing.

This photo represents the entirety of my Sunday. It rained, I left the house exactly once, and I came back with a handroll from A1ZA called “Zoy Sauce.” Then, my wife brought home Panda Express for dinner and the whole thing just sort of assembled itself on my kitchen table.

We saved the joint for after our fortune cookies.

Zoy Sauce is Zushi crossed with Lemon Cherry Sherb. It had some major creamy, doughy notes to help mellow out the gas. But this was funk-over-fruit weed, which is my favorite sort of profile. The effects leaned on the sleepier end of the spectrum—but that could’ve just been the rain.

A1ZA is an owner-operated brand based in Owosso and according to their website, everything they harvest is hand-watered, hand-trimmed, hand-packed, and hand-rolled. And with 10 pounds or less of any given strain making it to market in a month, it’s truly small batch cannabis.

Everything I’ve ever smoked from them has been reliable and potent.

My wife’s fortune cookie said something about taking chances. I got one about hard work paying off—which sort of felt like a personal attack from the universe after the lazy weekend I’d had. 

I smoked the Zoy Sauce anyway. The cookie doesn’t know my life.

Stay safe out there ‘Ganders. Remember that recreational cannabis is only legal in Michigan for ages 21 and up—and it’s NEVER OK to get high and drive.