Last year, Roseburg native Lauren Yoshiko published the well-received Green Scenes: A Guide To Legal Cannabis Destinations Across the US. In 2025 she’s again gone into production, but differently.
More onto that later. In a bit, if you will.
The Sticky Bits Substack author —and before that Broccoli Report cohost—joined me and WCS cohost Lev Anderson on Monday night to do more than the dose of double sadness that is talk about contemporary journalism and the Westside legal weed business.
We focused inordinately on, as Yoshiko put it “navigating the requirement to be aware and in tune with current events as a writer, and feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the trauma overload in all the directions.” Most civilians can’t know the feeling of wanting a month away Instagram, but being tied to the platform by work.
Prior to the last month, I was pretty staunchly in the position that this isn’t really going to affect anything. Ultimately there's weed is flowing: legal THC, hemp THC, medical, it’s flowing in every state in some way or another. Republicans are on board with it in some way or another. Even if they aren't politicians, there are Republican donor CEOs of some major cannabis companies.
From the people I spoke with in December and early January, [they were] like, It’s probably not gonna touch anything. There's bigger fish to fry and it’s money. It’s bringing in money to governments, both blue and red, and there's not enough incentive. Now, looking back at the last 39 days or whatever, it’s certainly a more chaotic.
If you’ve had enough talk of the present political dystopia and are more of a reader than an audio consumer, you might want to consider Lauren Classic.
Lauren Yoshiko and what's next with weed
This week we make our first incursion into the realm of people whom I know mostly from their work and reputation.
Lots of touchstone publishing and cannabis names pop up on our latest sojourn. Broccoli founder Anja Charbonneau gets referenced, though not by name. Menlay (The Art of Butter) Aggrey makes an appearance. We chop it up about the Willamette Week foundation that helped transform Yoshiko from psilocybin-burnished UC Santa Cruz grad to West Coast cannabis reportage leading light.
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