So you like cannabis, and you’re interested in learning a bit more about the Black experience and your favorite flower. So are we! For Black History month, we spoke to a local Black budtender on his experience in the cannabis industry. Some of his answers may surprise you!
Sonny has been a cannabis influencer and vlogger for years. One day he picked up a camera, got in front of it, and just began talking about his favorite flowers from his favorite dispensaries. When brands caught wind of what he was doing, he caught traction, and his social media channels have grown.
Freshness is key
“Freshness is everything,” Sonny said. “I go off smell and how it feels to me. For the sake of the channel I’ll get stuff I don’t even think I’ll like, but my subscribers are the reason I’m at the point I am, and they’ll request stuff and I’ll try it.”
Sonny’s dad was diagnosed with cancer, and this was a tipping point for Sonny. He would see how his dad would be so negatively affected by cancer and chemo, but when Sonny would bring him home a couple blunts, his dad’s pain would be eased so greatly that he could get up, walk around, and use the stairs on his own.
Medicinal benefits
“There’s more to cannabis than just getting high,” Sonny said. He saw it having a huge positive impact on his dad’s quality of life. “I’m the product of productive weed smokers,” Sonny said with a laugh. His dad had a career in the car manufacturing field before he had cancer, and showed his son how you could enjoy weed and still be productive.
Cannabis has been a huge source of positivity for Sonny, but he’s not inured to the judgements that surround weed in general — and for Black men in particular. It’s well known that Black people (especially men) were disproportionately arrested, fined and imprisoned for cannabis usage.
Stigma pervasive in the cannabis business
Even though cannabis is legal now, Sonny said in his experience, racist elements still exist in the stigma that Black people face for using weed.
“I’m dealing with the stigma that Black men who smoke are all lazy,” he said. “But I work sixty hours a week and I drop videos five or six times a week when I get off work. The stigma goes hand in hand with racism: Black men are lazy. But look at my record. It precedes me. I smoke weed every day but I’ve held jobs for eleven years at a time. I’m trying to beat this stigma.”
Sonny feels many of these issues are intersectional. He’s found that at his work place, people often don’t judge him until they find out he smokes weed, and then they begin seeing him through stereotypes. Nothing will have changed in his performance: “I’ll be raking in commissions and bringing in all these sales, and they didn’t think one negative thing about me,” he said. But when they find out he smokes weed, they begin seeing him as lazy.
Sonny wishes people knew that being a person who likes cannabis doesn’t make that your only interest — or even your defining interest. “I’m 100% a car guy,” he said. “I’m an artist. I wanna show people that you can get high after you get the business done.”
RELATED: Cannabis Stem Tea: The Art Making the Perfect Cup
If he could snap his fingers and make a change in Michigan’s cannabis industry, he’d want the budtenders to be more knowledgeable.
“Shoutout to the budtenders that do know their stuff,” he says. “But there are a lot of dispos that just hire a pretty face. There’s nothing wrong with a pretty face! But you need them (budtenders) to also tell you about what you want to purchase.” In cannabis, he said, you need more than just aesthetics: you also need experience and knowledge.
This is one reason why Sonny made his channels: to bring education and research into the cannabis industry, in a way that’s accessible for his viewers.
For readers who want to support more equitable, anti-racist cannabis policies, Sonny said that every little bit helps. “Maybe you find a Black-owned dispo, maybe you read up on a Black-owned farm.” Personally, he tries to focus on networking with other people in all walks of life. “We out here!” he said. “There’s more and more Black people in the industry by the year and we got good product.”
On a fun note, Sonny’s current favorite album that he enjoys listening to when using cannabis is Payroll Giovanni’s “Hustle Muzik.”
“He’s not a smoker but he linked up with a great producer and he’s got that vibe and hustle message,” Sonny explains. “You’re smoking, you’re taking it all in, and it makes me say yeahhhh, after this blunt, I want to go work on my craft.”
Check out Sonny at Instagram @strain_chaser_sonny and YouTube Strain Chaser Sonny.
