I just returned from Nashville, Tennessee, providing Backstage Budtending for a record label's showcases and parties. I've been there dozens of times for similar projects, but this was my first trip in five years.
Over the years in prior visits, I was asked to bring "that good Oregon green," as local flower was of lesser quality and substantially more expensive. The consequences for using or possessing were also substantially more severe. (Possession of a half-ounce of flower or less is a misdemeanor with a mandatory first-time fine of $250, and potential one year incarceration, concentrates are $2,500/11 months, and sale of between ½ ounce and 10 pounds is a felony with a maximum fine of $5,000 and one to six years jail time. Your results may vary by judge and skin color.)
Tennessee remains a minority holdout for medical or recreational cannabis, as in, they ain't got none, making them one of 12 remaining states which do not. They do have a program allowing certain medical patients to avoid prosecution, but solely for CBD products that have up to .9% THC (up from the federal limit of .3%), but products must be acquired outside of Tennessee, so thanks for nothing.
The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp, which effectively legalized CBD, and began the discovery, production and sale of numerous hemp derived cannabinoids, the most popular being Delta 8 THC (aka D8). It's chemically very close to Delta -9 THC, which is what you find in Oregon cannabis products. In 2022, Oregon made Delta-8 illegal, and sale of products containing it. Yet mail-order options abound from other states if you really need your D8 fix.
Traveling through those aforementioned 12 states without access to regulated cannabis reveals wide-ranging availability of D8 THC flower, edibles, vape cartridges and concentrates. Billboards along the freeway from the Nashville airport promise "Cannabis delivery services," "Nashville's Best Cannabis" and "THC Dab Bars." There are dozens of storefronts with neon signs for "CBD-HOOKAH-KRATOM-D8-HHC-THCA."
Google revealed dab bars near me with two-hour private table rentals with flights included for two. Not wanting to risk being the solo dude dabbing in a room full of couples wondering why I didn't have anyone to get high with, I stumbled on a more pedestrian bar based in the back of a one-room, nondescript head shop packed with all manner of smoking and vaping gear.
Along a busy road in hip East Nashville, I found a four-seat bar set up in the back of the shop. Numerous dab rigs and vaporizers are available for rental, along with a menu offering individual dabs and flights of concentrates in different forms, made from D8, HHC, THC0, Delta 10 and THCA.
I selected a $24+ tax flight, and was served three reasonable-sized dabs, in a gleaming glass water rig topped with an electronic device set to my selected temperature of 450 F. I tried Pineapple Express D8 Diamonds, Key Lime Tart Diamond Sauce and Orange Diesel THCA Diamonds. My high was a 4 on a 1 to 10 scale. Fully functional, relaxed but not tired and a mild buzz that lasted a couple hours.
My budtender cleaned my rig between dabs, and we talked about Nashville's "you've got to be kidding me with this shit" recent events leading to selective THC product enforcement, including THCA flower.
This is not hemp-derived, high CBD/low THC flower. The budtender said these were cannabis flowers sourced from growers in California and Colorado, whose producers harvested and had it tested ASAP, when they were so fresh that water in them had not yet evaporated. The evaporation during the curing process allows the THCA to convert to Delta 9 THC.
If testing shows the flower to be .3% THC or less, it's considered a legal product, on par with CBD flower. But as the buds cure, it converts THCA into Delta 9 THC.
I chose a 2-gram bud of purple dwarf star dense "No Llama Drama'' for another $24. The crystal formation was good, with mild but unmistakable cannabis terpenes. I later vaped it to a more familiar Delta 9 high and effects, a 6 of 10.
