An anniversary is a good time to look back at highlights of the previous year. The delight of writing for the Emerald Magazine comes from applauding the creative and courageous people who continually take cannabis culture to new heights, including our intrepid publisher, Christina DeGiovanni. To celebrate the Emerald Magazine’s fourth anniversary, let’s look back at some of the cannabis events and companies we’ve profiled and catch up with some of the many wonderful companies presented to our growing readership in the last year.
In October, that month of Halloween treats, we treated our readers to both Kiva Confections and Heavenly Sweet Medibles. Kiva Confections is a Bay Area company with the mission of “redefining cannabis confections.” Premium chocolate, professional chocolatiers, and superb cannabis all come together in a wide range of natural flavors.
That October article noted, “CBD medibles are in development.” Well, the time has come. Kiva Confections just announced their new CBD line. These products are all about balance. Kiva uses a whole-plant extract and so includes all the compounds in the natural plant, and without the use of CBD from hemp grown outside the USA. Kiva uses a balanced CBD/THC strain grown for them in Mendocino County using best agricultural practices that maximize balanced health for Mother Earth and the plants. That balanced strain is blended with pure chocolate and other natural ingredients to produce either their 60/60 mg Espresso or 120/120 mg Ginger bars.
With these products, Kiva yet again demonstrates their commitment to bettering lives. Even the press release announcing the new CBD line does that. It includes extensive information on the benefits of cannabidiol (CBD) for those not in the know and proudly says, “A trusted source for cannabis in medical dispensaries, Kiva is proud to bring integrity and innovation to the world of edibles. Their partner farms grow the cannabis naturally, alongside fruit orchards, herbs and flowers, promoting robust plants and a synergistic plant immunity to pests, so there’s no need for chemical pesticides… The Kiva chocolate bar is a perfect balance of THC and CBD, allowing for a sensation of relaxed calm rather than the psychoactive high associated with pure THC.” Congratulations to Kiva Confections for producing these very welcome medicinal goodies! See their assortment at http://kivaconfections.com.
Heavenly Sweet Medibles continues to lead the way in the breadth of medicinal products they carry. They offer more than 120 different delicious gourmet creations imbued with high-quality lab-tested medicine, even ice cream, potsitcles, breakfast cereals and fr
ozen pizzas! You can also buy cannabutter from them and make your own delights. In everything they do, they live up to their mission statement, “The patient always comes first.” Check them out at
http://www.heavenlysweetmedibles.com.
November, it was Royal Budline with their line of very effective medicinal sprays and salves, topicals not edibles. The original Peppermint Blend salve and spray include peppermint, ginger, and lemongrass essential oils, while the original Chai Blend products use nutmeg, clove, cinnamon bark & leaf, lemongrass, ginger, fennel, & turmeric essential oils.
New to their line are the Pure Blends with no added essential oils, perfect for sensitive skin. Royal Budline won 2nd place at the Emerald Cup last year for their Chai salve. They have been donating their salves and sprays to various events for raffles and gift bags including Weed for Warriors, Northern Nights and the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce. Last year at the Emerald Cup they won 5th place for their Loopy Fruit flowers, created by their good friend Sunshine Johnson of Sunboldt Farms and the Sungrowers Guild. They have added a new location in LA where you can find their products, Royal Budline Collective/8805 (8805 is the address and registered dispensary name). And, they are producing Royal Budline Loopy Fruit and also Cinex oil cartridges for Peak Oil vape pens. Say hi to them again this year at their booth at the Emerald Cup in December and their new booth at the new Buds by the Bay monthly event.
The first purely cannabis culture issue of the Emerald Magazine was in May 2015 and it contained two exciting items, neither medible nor topical, that would blossom in greater ways during the following 12 months. One started with an ad in that May issue announcing a local investment opportunity. Dell’ Arte International’s Mary Jane: The Musical was being made into a movie and financial backing was being sought. The musical ran that June too, up in Blue Lake; it was riotous good fun, filled with the history of the ups and downs of cannabis culture in Humboldt County. Hard to imagine how it could be put together into a coherent story but someone was there at the performance filming. Turns out he was the director, John Howarth. Backers came forth and, wonder of wonders, Mary Jane: A Musical Potumentary went into production.
Along the way, a casting call for extras who could sing went out for a scene being shot in the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ chambers. We pretended to be uninvolved citizens there to observe county government in action. And we got action! Three characters from the musical delivered an impassioned song-argument to the Supes asking them to “Regulate us… bring us out of the shadows.” Their plight soon got us up out of our seats and passionately joining in. That song shows up near the end of the movie and, for the first and probably only time, this writer saw herself in a film and her name in the credits. It was a wow. But the greatest wow was that the film got finished and launched. The world premier was at the Eureka Theatre this past June 10. It was a special treat to watch a movie with a full house of people who recognized the locations or were also in the film, everyone high on the thrill of helping to send this Humboldt baby off to film festivals around the world. The producers announced that they are talking to Netflix and other media outlets about carrying it in the near future. Stay tuned!
Also in that germinal May 2015 issue was a glowing book review of a masterpiece of cannabis journalism, Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee. The book is truly comprehensive, the best resource on U.S cannabis history in print. It also contains detailed explorations of recent medical research on both THC and CBC rich strains. That gem of a book led to Martin Lee becoming a principle speaker at Dandelion Herbal’s second annual Medicinal Cannabis Conference in Arcata in last April where he gave two very different presentations. The first talk, on Saturday, was called “Smoke Signals: A Cannabis History Primer” but was much more than that. Lee spoke of the cultural shifts in music and racial attitudes ushered in by cannabis in 20th century America. On Sunday, Lee presented “The Tao of Healing,” a brief yet nearly overwhelming summary of current studies of cannabis compounds and the human endocannabinoid system, drawn from Lee’s current labor of love, Project CBD (projectcbd.org). Project CBD is designed to inform the public, and physicians especially, about the growing body of research supporting cannabis use and exploring the endocannabinoid system. Lee’s wealth of sophisticated biochemical information was exhilarating, as were references to cannabis-related articles published in such serious scientific journals as the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences and The New England Journal of Medicine.
The Emerald Magazine will continue to publish such cutting edge information as we journey on toward whatever comes in November and beyond. Thanks for being part of our growth, dear reader. We roll into that future together.
Written by Molly Cate
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