Less than a month after dispensaries of everyone’s favorite Schedule I illegal substance were deemed “essential businesses,” following a national shutdown and federal mandate that we all try to stay home and not really do anything, a catchy headline started floating around online about one Canadian study suggesting weed could be a key to beating covid-19… scientifically, not just socially.
Similar findings have done the rounds again recently on social media, but there hasn’t actually been a real update and nothing is proven. If you’re extra curious about the preventive promise that cannabis may yet have, there’s more info linked at the bottom. That said, it seems like time to finally share a bit more on all the reefer madness I was up to in 2020.
While working at a job of nearly three years, which was clear and away my record for anything held in California, the initial lockdown sent most of us to work from home in mid-March. My role there was primarily on tagging TV commercials, which is essentially customizing them for the various US markets or other countries, so work fluctuated seasonally. Needless to say, not a lot of people were buying Jaguars or Land Rovers at the start of a pandemic, so I was laid off a few weeks later.
Amid looking for new work, which is a bit tricky when the world doesn’t exactly know what tomorrow will bring, I was dead-set on a making a movie, but a call came back from a business which was actually doing quite well amid the covid chaos.
Indoor weed grows are popping all across the country. Done right, they’re an impressive sight (and smell). But unlike your own backyard enterprise or some former dealer’s closet greenhouse, these facilities are under an insane amount of pressure and regulation to keep their plants healthy to harvest and then safe for sale. It sounds like factory work, but unlike toys or tires these products are living organisms… and lots of them.
I was hired by one such facility in the Palm Desert area, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, to shoot and produce a series of training videos that spanned the entire cultivation process, to help standardize their operations. While most of the content is industrial and composed, my first foray into plant photography on some of the company’s initial marketing content was truly eye-popping, especially under the right lens.
Macrophotography is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced since picking up a camera. Cannabis is quite the subject too, especially as the flower blooms. If you’ve ever taken a closer look at dry nugs, or seen fairly close-up photos of the plant before its harvest, you’ve probably noticed those little orange hairs (stigmas). But smaller yet, spread all across the plant’s leaves and colas, are nearly microscopic crystals called ‘trichomes’ which under bright lights even glimmer to the naked eye.
To see something small as a trichome, you’ll need lens designed for macro shots. There’s some pretty affordable ones out there now, if anyone reading this is interested, however such shooting certainly has its own laundry list of limitations and obstacles to work through. I’ve also played around with some dandelions and other flowers at 5x magnification… when they aren’t making me sneeze… and the world really is fascinating to see down there at that level.
There are few other plants with trichomes too, should you feel inclined to try but dare not tempt yourself with the devil’s lettuce. They pop much more on cannabis though, since these crystals are the factories from where all the cognitive magic happens, where the cannabinoids are produced. The shinier, the stronger.
It never ceases to surprise just how far networking goes, or where old friendships will eventually take you. Deepest roots water the best. I hope everyone has been able to fund a little something new in their lives from all the sudden isolation this pandemic spurred and that the perceived catastrophe of “the year 2020” will simmer into a tongue-in-cheek joke as a footnote in history. I never thought I’d end up filming weed, let alone stroll through enterprise-level cultivation operations with all my favorite tools.
That was my own fun little “covid infection assessment” tool, besides regular checks at facility entrance. Flower rooms always pack a pungent punch, which sometimes feel more like saunas than a grow. Is that a thing yet anywhere, weed saunas? If it contact highs worked on sober friends sitting beside in cars, I’m sure it’d work in a dedicated room. That could definitely backfire if you have low blood pressure though, so be safe if that spurs any ideas for your own investigative reporting. Speaking of lower blood pressure, mine dropped notably this past year.
The green rush is in full swing and the dam might finally break next year. No pressure tomorrow, Georgia voters, but if you vote blue we’ll probably all get green on a federal level. Some of us could definitely use it after last year. Whether or not we can smoke our way out of a pandemic has yet to be determined, but what a nice twist that would be at the end. Here’s to better times in 2021.
The compound those studies’ speculation were based on was CBD, the main medicinally revered cannabinoid. Its simulated effect on the ACE2 receptors in artificial 3D human models of oral, airway and intestinal tissues is way out of my wheelhouse to summarize here, but neat to read more on if you are curious:
The first study:
https://www.aging-us.com/article/202225/text?fbclid=IwAR1E0ANBOUD1_5R_K0ENbr8gysLkIKU6g0SaTcFahhTsOYXjEbSioi-Y8gs
ACE2 Receptors:
https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-ace2-receptor-how-is-it-connected-to-coronavirus-and-why-might-it-be-key-to-treating-covid-19-the-experts-explain-136928?fbclid=IwAR1nprn9EiuSms05kPy-w94DzZHLnl3ZwvSwV3ozR8IZYRFOgwZBuGHPl_M
The real difference of Indica & Sativa:
https://weedmaps.com/…/difference-between-indica-sativa