Savages

put too fine a point on it,
indicas
basically have a higher dose of CBDs than THCs and
sativas
have the reverse ratio.
    Got it?
    No, unless you’re a blazer you don’t, so some definitions (and no, there won’t be a quiz at the end because we’re talking about stoners here):
    CBD is short for a substance in plants called cannabidiol. THC is the acronym of a substance in plants called tetrahydrocannabinol, aka Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol.
    Unless you’re Ben or Chon you don’t need to know this shit, but to understand Ben and Chonny’s you do need to get that the
indica
blends of cannabis—more CBD, less THC—produce a sleepy, heavy, tranquilizing kind of high. The
sativas
—more THC, less CBD—get your brain and genitals really cranking.
    Or you can put it in terms of energy:
    Indica
= low energy. You’re going to flop on the sofa and fall asleep to whatever is on TV because changing the channel requires too much effort.
    Sativa
= high energy. You’re going to fuck your brains out on the sofa and then invent perpetual motion mechanics, or at least try to while you’re repainting the living room.
    So just as wine connoisseurs will yap endlessly about this Merlot, that Beaujolais, grown from this or that fucking grape, stoners will likewise enthuse about different blends of
indica
and
sativa
—for their taste, their aroma, but mostly their effect. And finding the perfect blendof
indica
and
sativa
to suit the individual taste, that is the art of a master grower.
    Just like great wine starts with the grape, great boo starts with the seed.
    To wit, the White Widow.
    The cannabis produced from the White Widow seed is the strongest in the world. The bud of that strain is 25 percent THC—the old Delta 9 is just about bursting out of it.
    Expensive, hard to obtain, difficult to grow, and
    Worth it.
    So on Chon’s last tour of Stanland he came home with—
    A bad case of PTLOSD
    A burqa for O to wear on special occasions and
    A bundle of White Widow seeds.

22
     
    Giving White Widow seeds to Ben was like giving Michelangelo some paintbrushes and a blank ceiling and saying—
    Go for it, dude.
    What Ben did was take the White Widow and selectively breed it until it was even
stronger.
George Washington Ben Carver created a Frankenstein seed, a mutant X-Men seed, a genetic freak of a seed.
    This was a plant that could almost get up, walk around, find a lighter, and fire
itself
up. Read Wittgenstein, have deep conversations about the meaning of life with you, cocreate a television series for HBO, cause peace in the Middle East (“The Israelis and Palestinians could coexist in two parallel universes, sharing space but not time”). It took a strongman—or a strong woman, in O’s case—to take more than one hit of the Ultra White Widow.
    With that as his base, Ben started to create different blends of
indica
and
sativa
, all incredibly powerful, and he could customize them for each individual custom
er.
Of which there evolved an increasing number as the word of mouth got around. Whatever it was you wanted to feel or not feel, Ben and Chon had dope for you.
    One, then five, then ten, then thirty grow houses, all producing primo 420.
    They became almost cultlike figures.
    There developed such a devoted following with such a religious loyalty that they even gave themselves a name.
    The Church of the Lighter Day Saints.

23
     
    When it comes to the War On Drugs, Ben is a confirmed pacifist.
    An Unconscientious Objector.
    He simply refuses to participate.
    “It takes two to fight,” he says, “and I’m not fighting.”
    Anyway, he doesn’t believe that there is a War on Drugs.
    “There is a War On Drugs Likely To Be Produced And/Or Consumed By People Of Color,” Ben allows.
    White Drugs—alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals—deal enough of those, you can overnight in the Lincoln bedroom. Black Drugs, Brown Drugs, Yellow Drugs—heroin, crack, boo—you get caught, you wake up every morning in your cell.
    Chon disagrees. He doesn’t think it’s so much a racial thing as aFreudian thing. He thinks it has to do with anal/genital shame.
    “It’s about hemispheres,” Chon says one fine California day, standing on Ben’s deck sucking on a spliff. “Look at a globe, now analogize it to a human body. The northern hemisphere is like the head, the brain, the center of intellectual, philosophical, superego activity. The southern hemisphere is down there near the groin and the anus, where we do all those dirty,