Banned Buds Week: Cinderella 99

The greatest worker in the history of fairy tales – outside of the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, or perhaps Hercules and his seven labors, if we’re allowed to include classical mythology – Cinderella is victimized by her cruel stepfamily before her fairy godmother arranges a tete-a-tete with the handsome prince. Midnight comes, her coach turns into a pumpkin, glass slippers, redemption, true beauty, yadda yadda. You know the story – easily one of the most referenced and best-known fairy tales there is. From rags to riches and back to rags, then riches again. A tale with universal appeal, but one that we all first hear as children, which is why the Oregon Liquor Control Commission put Cinderella – and Cinderella 99, its full name – among the 20 strains whose names are no longer allowed in its legal dispensaries.

As for Cinderella 99, its origin story isn’t quite as magical: Word is that geneticist Mr. Soul of Brothers Grimm (of course) found a couple of seeds in a 2-gram bag of Jack Herer bought at an Amsterdam coffee shop. Mixing the tropical notes of Jack with the citrus burst of Haze gives end users an energetic and cerebral high that’s clear enough to function – and may even leave you motivated enough to clean all the floors and get your clothes in order so you can go to the ball, who knows. This strain is great for patients, but Cinderella’s real gift may be to growers.

According to the seed bank who sells the raw starting material – an obviously biased source – this is a rare breed, the result of crossbreeding a rare female with its male plants over three generations, and the result is a sativa that grows like an indica. Meaning, it has the taste and upwardly mobile appeal of a spindly, cranky, and hard-to-grow-inside sativa, but it has the short, squat stature of an indica, along with resinous colas the size of a baby’s arm. Maybe even a big baby. So it’s especially appealing to growers, which – let’s be honest – is something 99 percent of medical patients and recreational users could not care less about.

All this to say, we somewhat understand why OLCC did what it did… somewhat. There is no doubt Cinderella is one of the first moral tales we hear as kids. Then again, the Cinderella story is one of those stories that has appeal across all cultures and all ages. You may as well ban strains named after Biblical figures like Moses, Jesus, or Mary Magdalene. Or, you can do what dispensaries will be required to do under OLCC, and simply rename the exact same strain “Cindy” and continue on as normal. Or maybe “OLCCindy” or “Grimm Bureaucrat” would be more fitting.

Have you ever smoked Cinderella 99?