“I want your strongest indica”

I must have heard that request thousands of times in my five years as a dispensary worker.

There was an assumption that the highest THC indica is the “best” you could get.

But much like assuming the “best” art is the highest priced or most liked, it is a deeply flawed assumption. For much like art, choosing the “best” strain to smoke is a highly individualised and subjective process.

I spent the better part of my last 2 years in the industry working on educating and explaining the science as best we knew it, and learning from customers the nuances of the experience each was looking for, to deliver better recommendations and experiences to people.

Shocking absolutely nobody it quickly emerged that there was a plethora of different preferences, past experiences, and intermingling of those preferences which made up peoples individual “bests”. They ranged from everything from differing types of neurodivergence, to associative memories, and actual flavour preferences,

And it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, I mean we don’t go to bars and order a their best cocktail or wine and simply expect a giant bottle of 80% proof clear alcohol. We don’t order food and rank it by the weight of the plant we cut the crop from.

I’m not saying these things don’t factor in, the thc percent will affect the feeling, just as someone’s social media profile says something about the quality of their art. But if that thc is affecting a feeling you don’t want then what good is it to you how strong it is. That artist may have a million followers, but their work may be as trite as Kinkades is so is it really something you value?

The problem, as in art as it is in cannabis, is that people have latched on to objective structures of measurement coupled with a small amount of simplified industry knowledge, they are then extrapolating a perception and judgment criteria from that which is inherently flawed as it makes no room for subjectivity, which in both is a vital part of the equation.

This isn’t maths, and I have written in length about how curation should differ from that formulaic world of logic and numbers, you can’t simply plug in a single statistic alongside a word the public like and expect to get actual results.