The Ruckus Rant: Trust your Budtender

Hello and welcome to another Ruckus Rant.

Over the past few months I’ve bitched about the growers, production facilities, dispensaries, and companies that help us get medical marijuana cards. Although I point out their flaws (and I stand by everything I’ve said) most are also doing wonderful work with the system we have in place. For that I thank them.

The one thing I haven’t bitched about is YOU!! The patient!!!

Cannabis is a huge part of my life. Has been for about 30 years. The past 10 years or so that testing and (minimal) research has been in effect has really changed the game. Studying terpenes and cannabinoids has become a daily thing since I started “budtending”. I can’t speak for every budtender, but the ones I know take this VERY serious. We realize that a lot of the people coming into Nevada dispensaries are new to cannabis. That is why we take the time to find out that myrcene helps with pain and sleep, limonene is better for breast cancer and caryophyllene helps arthritis and neuropathy….. We study this on a daily basis.

So, when you come in and the first thing out of your mouth is “I want your highest THC,” it just lets us know your uneducated.

We are here for YOU. We do this kinda work because we care. We understand this is new to you. It’s still new to us. I learn just as much from the other budtender’s and patients as I do in an hour or two a night studying cannabinoids, terpenes, and diseases. Instead of going off the recommendations of “that one guy you know who smokes weed”, give us a chance.  Let us find the strain or form of ingestion that will get you the help and relief that you need from cannabis. More often than not, the people I see, once I explain that THC is not the be all-end all of cannabis and what parts of it work for what ailments they usually leave happy, educated, spending LESS money, and on their way to relief.

Just remember, times have changed. We aren’t buying a sack of something that we don’t know about anymore in a parking lot. We have safe places where you can take your time asking questions and end up making an educated purchases thanks to the dispensaries. We know exactly what is in our products thanks to testing facilities. We have a wide choice in strains and ways of consuming thanks to production and cultivation facilities. And, we have someone to explain all this thanks to budtender’s (like me) who really do care.

But YOU gotta give us the chance.