Latest / CashcolorcannabisPodcast / Speaking Bluntly: A Love Letter to the Blunt Era

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Speaking Bluntly: A Love Letter to the Blunt Era · CashcolorcannabisPodcast

• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Cash Color Cannabis, a higher level of conversation.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while, I'll go back through my Instagram and look at some of our past posts.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And recently I saw a post that took me back in time and actually inspired this episode.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're in the new world and consumers have so many available options when it comes to consumption.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can get a pre-roll, you can hit a bong, a vaporizer.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's damn near endless what's available today that wasn't widely available or even known two decades ago.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: But one method has stood the test of time, and that's the blunt.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: From Philly Blunts to Cigarellos, if you're over 40, then there's a good chance this is probably your first introduction to candles.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely was mine.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm from the Philly Blunt White Owl era.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like I still remember how elite I felt when I bought my first pack of Dutch medicines.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I'm gonna talk about the Blunt.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: From his popularity to his practicality.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is speaking bluntly.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So my relationship with Blunts goes back to 1992.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was probably the first time I could really remember seeing one and knowing what it was for.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: See, my father he smoked these little cigars.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: He would do it at the kitchen table every night.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: But he was smoking cigars.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were closer to black and mild.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was different.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm talking about are Philly blunts.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: People would have them tucked in their caps so you knew what they were about.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You would hear it in songs, you would see the signs the second you walked into a corner store saying Philly blunts.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: For a short time I would equate smoking weed with smoking a Philly.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But over time and with practice, I realized that Philly was just one option back then.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Another option was White Out, where it's a method man.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like Philly's, it was a good option if you just couldn't find one.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that was another experience.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You went to the store, you would buy a cigar, then you would take all the tobacco out that somebody worked really hard to put inside, and then you just throw that shit away.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you actually stop to think about it, the concept of a blunt is actually hilarious.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We were buying one product specifically so we could destroy it and put another product inside.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And didn't these companies know?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like they had to have though.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're seeing a spike in sales during the time when smoking was becoming passe.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that wasn't strange to the board of directors.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that episode of ATL where they had the fake commercial breaks, where they included an ad for Swish's sweet cigarellos where the celebs were praising the tobacco quality, but the actors in the ad are blatantly gutting the cigars and replacing the tobacco and weed.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They knew.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they just turned a blind eye to it while also lobbying against cannabis, but I digress.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what we did.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I actually thought the blunt was part of what made smoking weed better.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean the actual experience.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's what I thought until I got to college.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had a roommate in college who was from the Virgin Islands.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Jamal.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: He preferred paper.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he used to say something to us, I still remember these years later.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: He would see us rolling blunts and he'd say, Y'all ain't getting high off the weed, y'all just getting high off the blunt.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now at that time, what he said didn't make any sense.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you mean we just getting high off the blunt?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's actual weed inside.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm thinking we're getting high off of.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But looking back, there's actually something to what he was saying.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: A traditional cigar wrap contains tobacco.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Tobacco contains nicotine.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're smoking weed inside of one, cannabis isn't necessarily the only thing that you're feeling.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: That head rush I thought meant the blunt was making my weed better, could also be coming from a tobacco that's wrapped around it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: My roommate wasn't interested in any of that.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Get that man some papers.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the rest of us were still splitting cigars over.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And soon it wasn't enough just to have any blunt.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: We started having our own preferences.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was damn near like a click.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And once flavors entered the picture, it was over.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I remember Optimos had a mint flavor that I had to get when I saw it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: FYI, the cigars were stale and everything about it was terrible.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow every new version felt like an upgrade.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back, I know the blunt never made the weed better, but even now if I look at it in a way, it kind of did.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is pre-dispose and pre-pop-ups.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like you were lucky if you even found someone who had weed at all.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Forget about what strain it was.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole entire thing was a real experience, especially for me.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was always somebody breaking down the weed while playing music.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: While somebody else was getting the Dutch ready, you know?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody talking shit about who could roll and who couldn't.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: All of us knew this thing was illegal and that was perfectly fine to us.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was moments like when I was all by myself in my apartment in Charlotte, smoking and flipping through copies of Double XL, the source, Black Enterprise, and plotting on how I could build my own empire.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was the crazy decisions like driving across Charlotte looking for vanilla Dutch Masters because Jadakiss mentioned them in a song, and I ain't never had them.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that IG post brought back for me.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the funny thing about nostalgia.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you look back at something and realize it didn't make nearly as much sense as you thought it was while you were actually living in it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was really never the blood.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was really more about just the era and the time that was had.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was when discussing a strain that we were smoking was the least important thing.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: We were just happy to have it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those early years really helped shape who I became and who I am right now.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to say it, but being in the industry makes me miss those days.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, I do still have my regular circle of friends who I can sess with from time to time.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And those times are good enough for me right now.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even as we speak, I'm actually cutting back on smoking.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Since I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and for those who are new to the show, I got diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma about two years ago, went through chemo, beat it, is as it's a past tense conversation.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But since that time, I've been wanting to move away from smoking altogether.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, and it didn't have anything to do with anything else, really, outside of the fact that I was already thinking about quitting before this happened.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I might become a gummy person.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But for right now, I'm gonna go ahead and hit this Dutch that I just rolled.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Mecca, and this is Cash Color Canvas, a high level of conversation, and this was speaking bluntly.