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BY LIZZY ACKER AND MARTIN CIZMAR
Oregon's fledgling cannabis market has a lot of quirks. Chief among them is the fact that recreational consumers can't buy any concentrates, edibles or body oils, despite the fact that some of them are not the slightest bit psychoactive.
Take CBD concentrates. CBD, as we've noted before, is basically the Xanax of weed. It's the cannabinoid in marijuana that gives you the body-relaxing, mind-freeing feeling you get when you smoke. It's mellow and nice, like chamomile tea. It's great for people who don't want to feel "high" but enjoy the physical sensation of marijuana.
But CBD strains don't taste especially good. And, if you want to get extremely chilled, flower won't do it. In that case, you need edibles or concentrates. Luckily for recreational chillers, there are concentrates that exist to help people in extreme pain.
So we asked a patient we know to illegally procure products so we could sample the lesser-known world of CBD concentrates. Here's what happened.
Harle-Tsu (Live Resin)
Jayne, $50 per gram
4.03 percent THC/72.34 percent CBD
Live resin is the freshest form of dabbable concentrate. It's made by taking flower as soon as it is harvested, flash-frozen, and then extracted, leaving the terpenes intact. To use it, you stick a tiny bit on the end of a little metal rod and put it onto a super-hot piece of metal that instantly vaporizes it. The Harle-Tsu live resin was our favorite CBD dab—that freshness translated into a smooth finish and a pleasant taste and it felt like an immediate pain eraser.
Dropperz Honey Lemon CBD Tincture
$35 for 10 servings
Are you one of the people who buys those little tincture vials in the back of New Seasons? Well, try this. You'll have to drive to a Washington dispensary, but one vial has 100 milligrams of CBD and no THC. That's 10 servings of deep relaxation in the form of a greenish-yellow liquid that tastes like a liquified Ricola.
CBD Apothecary (RCO)
Pure Green, $50 per gram
3.16 percent THC/78.91 percent CBD
Refined cannabis oil is made by alcohol extraction of a full plant extraction. This CBD Apothecary oil was our second-favorite dab. It tasted clean—or, as one reviewer said, like "apple skin." These dabs also went down easily and left us feeling a little light-headed but happy.
Charlotte's Web (Shatter)
AmericannaRx, $55 per gram
3.45 percent THC/59.8 percent CBD
Shatter is made through a butane extraction process and this shatter was…just not that good. The taste was described as "earthy" and "like medicine," and it was nobody's favorite. Still, it tasted like medicine and acted like medicine, in that it was relaxing and painkilling. Though not as painkilling as the extracts with higher percentages of CBD.
Harle-Tsu (Sap)
Bloom, $55 per gram
4.20 percent THC/70.20 percent CBD
While we loved the live resin version of Harle-Tsu, the sap version, made using propane extraction, was our least favorite of the dabs. The flavor was soapier and the inhalation was harsher, and while it did ultimately dull the pain, the taste and feel weren't worth it, when you could pay five fewer dollars and get a much better version of the same strain.
Toro Bar
Collective Awakenings, $15 per bar
55.5 milligrams of CBD in the chocolate, no THC
The interesting thing about CBD is that while it doesn't get you traditionally high, it sometimes tastes and smells even weedier than THC. The Toro Bar is a perfect example of this: It's a very classy-looking chocolate bar that tastes and smells like the weed brownies your roommate used to make in college. That said, our reviewers were split: One liked that weediness and one hated it. The effect of the chocolate was much subtler than the taste—it was calming and lightly numbing for sore muscles.
Wee Farms Coconut Oil Capsule
Treehouse Collective, $3 per pill
18.2 mg CBD, 0.81 mg THC in the pill.
There's a hefty dose of relaxation juice inside this little amber capsule, which looks like fish oil. It releases slowly, and you'll notice when it wears off in the middle of the night and all your pains and worries return in a rush.
Willamette Week