Culture
Canadian Company Promises ‘Odorless Cannabis’
What is it, is it real and does anyone really want such a thing?
People smoke weed to get high, but people also smoke weed because it is a pleasurable activity. Smoking weed is pleasurable because, on top of ingesting cannabinoids that activate receptors in a body-wide network that regulates mood, appetite, and sleep — the “high” — smoking weed also tastes good.
Cannabis is a plant and like other plants, cannabis includes essential oils that smell and taste a certain way. The Tangie, it tastes like tangerines! The gassy oil Chem Dog, it is so gassy and so oily — delightful!
And based on what we know about terpenes, it is becoming increasingly likely that cannabis’s overall effect on the body and the mind and its flavor profile are related. The cannabis does what it does because of what it is — and what it is includes how it tastes. Remove the flavor from cannabis, in other words, and you are removing something essential from the overall experience.
And this is exactly what a Canadian company is boasting that it can do. Addition by subtraction. Devising, cultivating, and marketing an “odorless cannabis” is what Brampton, Ontario-based CannabCo Pharmaceutical Company believes the market is asking for.
As per a press release sent out last week and picked up by Yahoo Finance, “a number of users… complain about the smell, especially in enclosed areas, condos and apartments, and this technology addresses those concerns,” according to company CEO and president Mark Pellicane, a former software and energy-sector entrepreneur whose company touts its supposed “anti-odor technology” as a “global first.”
It is undeniably true that generations of cannabis users have gone to great lengths to disguise or reduce any olfactory evidence, and many smokers have found themselves dimed out by the smell, which numerous courts have affirmed is probable cause for law enforcement to effect a search. This is why technology like smell-proof containers are popular and why so many of us have fondly remembered stank-reduction techniques like powerful fans and homemade, jury-rigged sploofs.
So there are some practical as well as legal matters odorless weed would address or render moot, but this is the legalization era. And wouldn’t odorless weed be stunted weed?
Maybe, but exactly what CannabCo is selling is unclear. The company’s press release says that its “PURECANN technology” “greatly reduces” the resulting terpene-rich odor when cannabis is combusted. It will also “reduce harshness when smoking and lessens day-after effects” while diminishing cannabis’s smell when in storage so as to be “virtually undetectable.”
So what is it? A high-tech sploof? A really powerful fan? Seemingly not!
“There are no third-party gadgets, or devices on the part of the user,” Pellicane is quoted as saying. “The end result is pure cannabis that doesn’t smell.”
Those of us fussy with language might point out that cannabis must smell in order to be pure and anything else is some contradiction in terms, but apparently this is not so.
As for CannabCo, whose website has the tagline “because nature does it right,” the company first started issuing press releases a few years ago but appears to still be in the building phase. In 2017, the company announced it had secured $24 million in funding and would build a cultivation facility able to produce 15,000 kilograms of cannabis a year. As of its most recent press statements, it appears the company is still seeking final licensing from Health Canada to begin cultivation.
But it turns out that CannabCo’s idea may be even less original than dorm-room era wishful thinking. On the very same day, another company, this one American, announced its own line of odorless cannabis.
Float Technologies, a Los Angeles-company run by cannabis chef Jeff Danzer (also known as JeffThe420Chef) says that its “FreeLeaf” is cannabis that’s run through “a process which keeps the potency of the flower intact while at the same time rendering it completely devoid of the cannabis odor and taste,” as per its press release. But since odorless and tasteless cannabis is boring, the company says it has also figured out a way to add back flavor — any flavor they want.
The public will get its first taste of FreeLeaf in February 2020, when the BudBerry Dispensary and Lounge is said to open its doors in West Hollywood. According to Danzer, his company is currently fundraising to build out its Los Angeles-era production facility. So if you want to see flavorless weed in your brain and body, now’s the time to invest.
TELL US, would you be interested in purchasing cannabis that did not have an odor?
